Tag: Ethereum

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Leading Crypto Projects, dApp Devs Flock to San Francisco to Talk Ethereum, Web3 at The Graph’s Graph Day

Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco

Some of the most innovative minds in the crypto industry are uniting at Graph Day today, where the future of the emerging Web3 movement will be explored from a range of perspectives such as that of software developers, investors, and community members.

Located at the Grand Theater in the heart of San Francisco, Graph Day, which is organized by The Graph, an indexing and query protocol for Web3 using GraphQL, has been in the making for several months.

Speaking at the one-day event are members from various San Francisco-headquartered projects, including Josh Fraser (Co-Founder & CTO, Origin Protocol), Alex Skidanov (CEO, Near Protocol), Robert Leshner (CEO, Compound).

Many others are flying in from all over the United States to present at Graph Day, too. Specifically, these people are: Lane Rettig (Independent Core Developer, eWASM), Eric Tang (Co-Founder & CTO, Livepeer), Esteban Ordano (Co-Founder & CTO, Decentraland), Tara Tan* (Venture Studio Lead, IDEO CoLab) and Josh Nussbaum (Founding Partner, Compound VC).

Of course, it couldn’t be Graph Day without some representation from The Graph team. The following three members from the team are presenting: Yani Tal (Project Lead), Brandon Ramirez (Research Lead) and Rodrigo Coelho (Community Lead). Additionally, Jannis Pohlmann (Tech Lead) will feature alongside Tal and Ramirez in will be a 30-minute-long, Q&A-style panel.

In his keynote presentation earlier in the day, Yaniv Tal unveiled The Graph’s new explorer user-interface and hosted service, according to the below tweet from Ramirez.

The explorer – which lets users discover so-called subgraphs – has been released in collaboration with the following seven Web3- and Ethereum-oriented projects: Dharma, Compound, Uniswap, Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Origin Protocol, Decentraland (MANA), and Livepeer (LPT). The page for each of the seven subgraphs contains a playground that lets you query that subgraph’s data with GraphQL, a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data.

*According to her LinkedIn profile, Tan is in fact based out of San Francisco. IDEO CoLab, however, is headquartered in Massachusetts.

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NEO to Ethereum: NKN Seeking “Improved Liquidity” as Token Swap Announced

water ripple

The team behind NKN (NKN) – described as “a new generation of highly scalable, self-evolving and self-incentivized blockchain network infrastructure” in its whitepaper – have proposed a one-to-one token swap from the extant NEP-5-compliant NKN token to one that is compliant with the Ethereum network’s ERC-20 standard.

NKN’s decision, according to their announcement published on Friday, was “based on feedback from community members, institutional investors and leading digital asset exchanges.” Without knowing for certain, one would suspect that much of this feedback concerned a lack of liquidity regarding NKN’s token. Indeed, NKN made a point of suggesting “improved liquidity” would come about as a result of the token swap.

Until today, just five cryptocurrency exchanges – gate.io, Switcheo, BCEX, Bitrue, and LATOKEN – had listed NKN’s NEP-5-compliant token. For one reason or another, a lack of liquidity appears a common problem facing projects who decided to conduct their initial coin offering (ICO) on top of the NEO blockchain.

When one takes a look at the listed digital assets on top-tier crypto exchanges like Binance, Bithumb, Huobi Global and Coinbase, the dearth of NEP-5-compliant tokens quickly becomes telling.

It is worth noting that the liquidity of the NEP-5 NKN token – a so-called ‘placeholder’ token (i.e., another token swap will occur once NKN launches on mainnet (planned for June 2019)) – was close to being a non-issue for the NKN team and its investors.

Indeed, last July, NKN featured in the controversial eighth round of Binance’s Community Coin of the Month event whereby Polymath (POLY) was declared the winner despite tallying less votes than each of Mithril (MITH), NKN (NKN), and Libra Credit (LBA).

NKN stated on Friday that NKN token holders can swap to the ERC-20 variety up until March 31st, pending any change “due to demand.” Importantly, holders of the current NEP-5-compliant token are not required to partake in the token swap. For those that wish to, we encourage you to check out this step-by-step guide created by NKN.

The NKN team also reinforced that, because the optional token swap is to be executed at a ratio of one-to-one, “there [will be] no change to total number of NKN token issued or token economics.”

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Greek Property Listed For Crypto

There is property on an island that is on sale currently. While this alone would not be considered groundbreaking news, the fact that the island will be sold for cryptocurrency obviously was praised by the cryptocurrency community.

The property consists of over 2 acres on the island of Lemnos in Greece, and can be bought with cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrencies that can purchase the acres are as follows: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Zcash (ZEC), or Euro.

About The Property

The property is located outside of Moudros, Greece, which is the second largest town on Lemnos, the eighth-largest island in Greece. The property boasts “panoramic views of the Aegean Sea”, as well.

History fans might be interested to know that Lemnos was the island of Hephaestus, the god of fire and volcanoes, and is known for volcanic rocks, beaches, and gulfs. The surrounding region also boasts tourist attractions such as The Medieval Castle Of Myrina and the cave of Philoctetes.

For those that are unaware, Philoctetes was considered a hero of the Trojan War, and known for his archery skills. He was the subject of four different plays of ancient Greece, although the only one that survived was a play by the Sophocles, who is one of the most well-known Greek tragedians of all time.

More Information

For those who are interested, the property is available for sale for a fiat equivalent of $180,000. The listing also boasts that there are “water and electricity sources nearby”, so someone interested in building a property would have access to these sources, presumably.

The property is also close to Poliochni, believed to be one of the oldest civilized towns in Europe. It is a community that has been around for over 4,000 years. The listing is proof that there are more individuals interested in listing their property for cryptocurrency. This particular listing is available on the website Bitcoin Real Estate.

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Jimmy Song Calls Out Joseph Lubin Over Ethereum (ETH) Bet

One of the aspects of an emerging technology is that some of the most well-respected and well-known figures have all sorts of different theories and ideas about cryptocurrency and blockchain. For example, there are all sorts of various figures that have made different price predictions, or claimed that various catalysts would lead to mass adoption. Of course, some have been more accurate than others, and some have been more optimistic than others, as well.

It appears as though Jimmy Song, the famous Bitcoin engineer-turned-instructor, is tired of Joseph Lubin not respecting a bet regarding the future of Ethereum. Lubin has recently been scrutinized tremendously, given the fact that his blockchain startup, Consensys, is undergoing massive layoffs currently.

Details Of Bet

Jimmy Song has taken his frustrations to Twitter. He quoted a Joseph Lubin tweet and pointed out that Lubin had predicted that “dApps will take over the world by 2023”, but that the bet – to this day, hadn’t been finalized.

The particular tweet that Song quoted was Lubin’s assertion that we had reached the “cryptobottom of 2018”. Jimmy Song appeared to attack Lubin’s credibility in general, as well. You can find Song’s tweet here:

More Information

Jimmy Song has always maintained that BItcoin will be the “prime” cryptocurrency, and is a well-known Bitcoin proponent. It’s only natural that the two would clash on this topic, given the fact that Lubin is a co-founder of Ethereum.

Song has stated that if five dApps have 10,000 daily active users, and 100,000 monthly active users over a 6-month period. Give the fact that Lubin’s company is actively developing dApps, it’s important to note that this has not been met. In addition, it is clear that – at least according to Song – Lubin has not truly committed to the bet.

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UK Cryptocurrency Company Data Released

This year has been tough for all sorts of cryptocurrency companies who had high hopes in 2017. As one can imagine, the idea of cryptocurrency had a much more different sentiment a year ago today, when Bitcoin was in the middle of a huge cryptocurrency bull run that took it over $19,000.

Even though the past few days has seen a nice rally for the digital asset, there is still plenty of hesitation, given the fact that Bitcoin and Ethereum lost the vast majority of its value, and the cryptocurrency markets have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization. A new report has detailed which blockchain-related and cryptocurrency-related companies have been affected in the UK.

About The Report

 

A Sky News article recently elaborated on how data has shown that over 300 companies have closed in the sector this year. Of course, not every business survives for various reasons, but the markets obviously are a huge factor. For some context, only 139 companies closed in the sector in 2017, and at least 340 companies related to cryptocurrency closed this year.

The data was gathered by OpenCorporates and Companies House. One blockchain entrepreneur and early Bitcoin adopter by the name of Hugh Halford-Thompson spoke about how the influx of inexperienced investors concerned him.

He stated: “There was a lot of people getting in, and I think for the first time I felt there were a large number of people who really didn’t understand what they were getting into as well.

“So every Uber driver I had either had invested or was thinking about it. I had people asking me genuinely which coin to put their children’s university funds into. That’s not good. I didn’t follow up with them, but I hope they didn’t.”

Overall Downturn

The data isn’t that surprising, given the fact that the UK is not the only country in the world with cryptocurrency companies or blockchain startups. One recent story that has grabbed headlines within the cryptocurrency community is the fact that Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Consensys is laying off a large percentage of its workers. The company is founded by cryptocurrency enthusiast Joe Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum. Lubin recently took to Twitter to assuage fears about his company, as well:

Interestingly enough, regardless of the 2018 bearish sentiment, there are more jobs associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency than ever. Specifically, Linkedin stated that “blockchain developer” was the fastest-growing job in the United States.

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John Mcafee Talks SkyCoin, Urges People To Use Crypto

There’s no question that John Mcafee, the cybersecurity pioneer and cryptocurrency enthusiast, is one of the most controversial figures in cryptocurrency, whether it’s his controversial tweets or the fact that he seems to advocate for drug use. He recently gave an interview with the “Larry and Joe Show” where he spoke about “all things crypto”. The interview was streamed live less than 4 hours ago (as of press time), and can be found below:

About Skycoin

John Mcafee seemed to be in a positive mood at the outset of the interview. He stated, “Christmas is in a couple of days, what could be better?” and spoke about how he had been “watching movies, getting high, and having fun”. Of course, the conversation eventually turned towards Mcafee’s cryptocurrency endeavors in general.

Mcafee spoke about how “things are going great” with his Skycoin association. Mcafee recently made headlines for getting a Skycoin tattoo, which actually led to a momentary price increase. He stated that he believes “Skycoin is going to be the major winner in the next couple of years.” Skycoin has marketed itself as a “complete ecosystem” with its own consensus algorithm, and it aims to leverage blockchain technology to become a new kind of internet.

He spoke on these ambitions as well, stating: “It’s not a replacement to the internet, necessarily, it is an alternative. If you are using cryptocurrency, for example, and get connected to the Skycoin network, which is worldwide, then basically you have a distributed network of users, of crypto, that can transact things, completely outside of anyone, other than us, the crypto community.”

Mcafee also offered a last egotistical statement about the project, stating: “If it does not flourish, I will have failed…and I never fail.”

About The Market

Of course, the hosts, Mcafee was asked about his thoughts on the market. He pointed out first and foremost that the markets are not always necessarily right. Specifically, he said: “Markets do not always track the success of companies. A company could actually be making a fortune and the market might not reflect that, maybe not for a year. I’m not concerned about the markets.”

“Markets go up more, and come down a little, and that’s what Bitcoin is doing now.” Overall, he appeared to be optimistic, saying: “I think the bull market is just around the corner, if it isn’t here already.”

Mcafee then talked about the fact that not enough cryptocurrency enthusiasts were using cryptocurrency, and that this would be the real catalyst for the markets.

He said: “Here’s the thing – start using the freaking coins, people. If you don’t use the coins and tokens that you have, for their intended purpose. We can’t succeed.”

He continued: “Use these coins. Buy s–t with Bitcoin, buy it with Ethereum, with Monero, with whatever you f–king have. Please. We need to do this.”

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South Korea Business School Offers Crypto MBA

In order for the cryptocurrency markets to thrive, more and more investors are going to have to enter the space. This also means that more cryptocurrency traders and investors need to learn about cryptocurrency, as well.

One country that has been particularly interested in cryptocurrency is South Korea. A major business school in South Korea is now offering a “Crypto MBA” now, following the lead of many other prestigious educational institutions as University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, which also offer blockchain-related courses, as well.

About The Course

Seoul School of Integrated Sciences And Technologies is commonly known as “Assist”, and now offers a year-and-a-half Crypto MBA program. The program will cover much discussed topics in cryptocurrency, such as smart contracts, game theory, decentralized apps, and other topics.

The school offered an official statement: “The mission of Assist business school’s Crypto MBA program is to remedy the lack of academic research and systematic education currently available in the industry, despite a high level of social interest in the blockchain and cryptocurrency.”

Education Trend

More universities around the world are offering courses related to cryptocurrency and blockchain, and this includes some of the most well-respected educational institutions in the world.

Emin Gun Sirer, an Associate Professor at Cornell University, recently spoke about how surprised he was at how many students were interested in learning about blockchain. He was stunned to find out that over 80 students had shown up to the class. For context, he said: “Usually when you have five to a dozen students in such a class, you’re teaching a popular class.”

The trend doesn’t appear to be slowing, either. In fact, in a new survey of hundreds of undergrad students – over a quarter of them are interested in taking a blockchain course, and almost 10% of those surveyed already have. The survey was conducted by Coinbase, in conjunction with research firm Qriously.

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WBTC’s Ethereum-powered Bitcoin “on track” for mid-January launch as more blockchain startups lend support

water

A community-driven initiative aiming to bring Bitcoin (BTC), and potentially other cryptocurrencies, to the Ethereum (ETH) network has updated the public on its progress for the first time since being announced.

For those unaware, the initiative, dubbed Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), was unveiled in late October by its three founding projects – Kyber Network (KNC), BitGo and Republic Protocol (REN).

The idea was born out of a need to solve a pain point of the Ethereum network, that is, a general lack of liquidity; a problem that has negatively impacting the user-experience on various Ethereum-powered decentralized exchanges and lending platforms.

Count us in

It was evident by reading through today’s announcement, authored by Anton Buenavista (Developer, Kyber Network), that the ecosystem has indeed rallied behind the WBTC project; indicating just how pressing Ethereum’s need for an injection of liquidity really is.

At the time of its unveiling almost two months ago, WBTC had already attracted a host of launch partners – sixteen to be precise. These included some of the most prominent projects in the Ethereum ecosystem such as MakerDAO (MKR), Gnosis (GNO) and Dharma.

Today’s announcement revealed that interest in WBTC – which is anticipated to go live in mid-January – has only strengthened ever since, with the following six teams now also on-board as launch partners: OmiseGO (OMG), dYdX, Loopring (LRC), GOPAX, bZx and TheOcean.

Brace yourselves, WBTC-related announcements are coming

With WBTC going live in a matter of weeks, expect to see a blitz of announcements from Ethereum-powered projects coming out. As per today’s announcement on Kyber Network’s blog, each of DDEX, IDEX, RadarRelay and AirSwap (AST) have committed to supporting WBTC trading pairs from launch date.

Additionally, fellow launch partners Dharma and Compound will have support for WBTC integrated on their respective financial dApps upon its launch. Another member of the budding DeFi movement, Set Protocol, has agreed to support WBTC, too, when it launches on mainnet at some stage next quarter.

Kyber Network used the announcement to reveal that its KyberSwap product will list WBTC once it launches. What’s more, they “have developed the implementation of a new trading algorithm to support WBTC on the Kyber reserve;” just one of the various initiatives Kyber Network’s developers have completed to help spur along adoption of the WBTC ecosystem.

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Consensys To Lay Off Half Its Staff Or More

In the wake of cryptocurrencies losing hundreds of billions in market capitalization – it’s been tough for cryptocurrency companies and blockchain startups of all kinds. Of course, to some – this means that it is perfect time to invest in companies, while the sector is quiet, and before more institutional money comes in.

Consensys apparently will be laying off a significant percentage of its staff, a further sign that the cryptocurrency markets are not conducive to blockchain startups thriving at this time.

About Consensys

However, one blockchain startup that is clearly having issues is Consensys. Consensys is one of the most discussed blockchain startups, because it is founded by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, and is one of the few high-profile blockchains startups in New York City (Consensys is based in Brooklyn).

For those who are unaware, Consensys was founded earlier than many other blockchain startups, in 2014. The startup is ambitious, and aims to develop various blockchain-based services, platforms, and infrastructural projects in various sectors.

Layoffs

To Lubin’s credit, he appears to have seen this problem coming for a while. He recently addressed the urgency to remain “lean” during this bearish phase, writing in a letter to his staff: “We must retain, and in some cases regain, the lean and gritty startup mindset that made us who we are. We now find ourselves occupying a very competitive universe…we must recognize that what got us here will probably not get us there, wherever ‘there’ is.”

 

It is clear that Consensys will be doing more than simply restructuring, but instead will be laying off more employees. It’s important to note that many believed the company had already trimmed costs by laying off 13% of its staff not too long ago, but apparently, it wasn’t enough.

The company plans on spinning out startups and laying off up to 50-60% of its staff, according to an unnamed source. A representative for Consensys apparently did not deny this assertion.

A source pointed out that the environment at the company is more tense than ever, stating: “The office is empty, people are only finding out who’s getting fired because you try to to send Slack messages and they’re not there,” a source says. “ConsenSys won’t create a list [of the projects that are being spun out] or send out anything in writing because they’re afraid of everything going to the press.”

 

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Coinbase Moves Billions In Crypto

If you are a cryptocurrency enthusiast, or trade/invest in cryptocurrency; there is little doubt that you are aware of Coinbase. The San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange is widely considered one of the most important companies in the sector, and has been valued in the billions, despite the fact that it has been a tough year for cryptocurrency markets in general.

For example, while other cryptocurrency exchanges were struggling, Coinbase was featured in the opening credits for the hit HBO TV show Silicon Valley, which many in the cryptocurrency community took as a sign that more people are aware of the cryptocurrency markets and their potential.

Moving Billions

The exchange’s importance was shown again in a tweet, where the company confirmed the fact that it moved billions in cryptocurrency funds into cold storage. The announcement was made in a tweet. Specifically, Coinbase announced that it had moved “5% of all BTC, 8% of all ETH, and 25% of all LTC in circulation to our next-gen secure cold storage.”

https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1075465004629995521

In the associated Medium post, Coinbase boasted that it could be the “largest crypto migration on record”. The post elaborated that this was not a sudden move, but Coinbase had been preparing for the migration for some time now. Specifically, the post stated that the company “conducted risk assessments, honed monitoring plans and conducted test migrations until we were positive that the live migration would go off without a hitch.”

Cold Storage

Coinbase also seemed to take a bit of a nostalgic look back at memory lane to remember how much its grown, and how much its definition of cold storage had changed. In 2012, Coinbase simply placed keys in a safe deposit box. Obviously, the company has grown immensely since then, and its definition of “cold storage” is radically different.

The company elaborated that these days, the company utilizes Coinbase Custody, a secure foundation with a highly controlled and audited key generation process and continue with a globally distributed key storage and transaction approval system.

It seems like Coinbase went out of its way to explain that moving this amount of cryptocurrency was not something that they took lightly, and even ended the blog post to point out that they were hiring anyone who might be interested in helping keep the exchange as secure as possible.