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Ethereum competitors Solana, Avalanche and Tezos on the merge upgrade

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In the world of Ethereum, groups of developers, engineers, and so-called “proof-of-stake implementers” come together each week to chat by Zoom. Time after time, call after call, the biggest topic for discussion has been the timeline for the “merge,” a massive years-in-the-making upgrade for Ethereum that will dramatically improve its efficiency while reducing its environmental impact. On the calls, opinions had been split over whether to announce a specific timeline for the merge: a step that would generate buzz and excitement but, given the complexity of the upgrade, could lead to undue pressure and dashed expectations. But, on July 14, the influential Ethereum developer Tim Beiko released an estimated date for the merge: the week of September 19. Ether rallied in response. 

When it comes to the merge, the stakes are enormous for the Ethereum community, but they’re not the only ones watching closely. Also keeping a close eye are the so-called Ethereum “killers”—rival blockchains that purport to offer similar features but in a way that is faster and cheaper. For them, a successful merge could undermine some of their claims to be superior, but it could also come to pass that Ethereum’s success boosts the fortunes of the broader crypto world. To get a sense of how competitors see the big event, Fortune spoke to leaders of rivals blockchains that have long used the “proof-of-stake” model that Ethereum is vying to achieve with the merge. Interviews with leaders at Avalanche, Solana and Tezos revealed that they have distinct thoughts on how the merge will (or will not) affect their projects. But they do share one perspective: All agree that Ethereum’s merge is “long overdue.”

If the merge succeeds, Ethereum will shift from the energy intensive “proof-of-work” method for validating transactions on the blockchain to the “proof-of-stake” model, which relies on a trusted network of validators instead of brute computer force. A successful shift to proof-of-stake will dramatically reduce Ethereum’s environmental impact, and pave the way for cheaper and more efficient transactions.

The merge is one of the most ambitious initiatives in blockchain history, and no one is entirely sure it will work. But as the fateful day approaches, Ethereum will have one final dress rehearsal for the upgrade using one of its test networks (testnets), this one known as Goerli.

Testnets are crucial for blockchains, as they’re used by developers to test upgrades before being deployed on the so-called mainnet used by everyone. The testnets are similar to their mainnet variants, and let developers run tests and check for bugs or security holes—preventing such shortcomings from impacting the main blockchain. In the case of Ethereum, its Goerli testnet will undergo the merge and shift to proof-of-stake between August 6 and 12, serving as a final dry-run before the mainnet seeks to achieve the same thing in September.

When it comes to Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake, developers have run through countless tests. Though most view the elaborate warm-ups as justified given the stakes—a failed mainnet upgrade would be disastrous—Ethereum is also playing catch-up given that most of its competitors were built with proof-of-stake to begin with. 

That’s in part why “the merge is long overdue,” Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, told Fortune. “All the networks that launched over the last three years have been using proof-of-stake.”

Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, mentioned the same. “It’s a good thing that it’s moving to proof-of-stake, but it’s not a huge differentiator today. This is not an accomplishment. Every other blockchain is proof-of-stake now,” he told Fortune.

Not mincing words, he added, “I would love to get press for something I promised eight years ago.”

Ethereum merge for the greater good?

Some in the crypto space are implacably opposed to proof-of-stake as a whole, claiming that it isn’t as secure or decentralized as proof-of-work. Most critics of proof-of-stake are Bitcoin maximalists, or those who are all-in on Bitcoin, a blockchain which depends on proof-of-work. On the other hand, proof-of-stake supporters see the upcoming Ethereum merge as a positive, citing its environmental impact and their belief that it’s equally as safe as proof-of-work. 

Though they support proof-of-stake, Yakovenko and Breitman don’t foresee a massive impact post-merge on the greater space and Ethereum competitors.  

“The only impact that I see is that the industry can finally as a whole point to blockchain as an energy efficient way to build Web3,” Yakovenko said, referring to the blockchain-based, decentralized iteration of the internet.

Breitman agreed. But “aside from that, I don’t think it’d be a major shift,” he said, adding that the Ethereum merge and move to proof-of-stake only feels like a big event because it has been delayed so many times. 

To Yakovenko, however, the merge isn’t overhyped, and is important.

“For folks that are not deep in the technical details, it will finally be obvious that proof-of-stake is as secure as proof-of-work, but much more energy efficient,” he said. 

Leaders behind other competitors, like John Wu, president of Ava Labs, the company building Avalanche, also see the Ethereum merge as a good thing for the space overall. Wu told Fortune he sees room for all Ethereum competitors with solid utility to grow. 

“You have all the variations of ‘Layer 1s’ that will be around for various purposes because their communities and technologies all have slight differences,” he said, adding that each can complement the others. “It’s pretty hard in today’s world to be good at everything, regardless of Web2 or Web3.” 

The potential impact of the Ethereum merge on Avalanche will likely be a positive one, Wu said. “Avalanche, obviously, [and also] the ‘Layer 2s’ out there, definitely benefit from Ethereum growing. There is a symbiotic relationship.”

Once Ethereum shifts to proof-of-stake, and continues to evolve over time alongside its competitors, Wu believes more institutional investment and mainstream adoption will come. 

“I think it will take a while, but it will evolve,” he said.

Long road ahead for ‘Layer 1s’

While most acknowledge its importance, it’s not surprising that Ethereum’s competitors appear to be downplaying the potential impact of the merge—after all, a wildly successful merge could arguably decrease the need for rival blockchains.

Beiko, the prominent Ethereum developer, declined to comment on how the merge might impact other competing chains, as he (and most others in the Ethereum realm) tactfully avoid commenting on other networks. But, he did tell Fortune that Ethereum’s proof-of-stake design today is “the one which can accommodate the largest number of individual validators.” 

To him, the merge means a lot for Ethereum: It can expand the amount of participants in the consensus process that validates blockchain transactions, while reducing the amount of energy usage to “almost nothing” and “lay the groundwork” for Ethereum to scale further.

What sets the Ethereum merge apart, Beiko said, is that its proof-of-stake design “allows Ethereum to respond to misbehaving block producers with penalties and slashing, which currently isn’t possible in proof-of-work or many of the other proof-of-stake networks,” he said, referring to the process of removing a big portion of a validator’s stake—or even ejecting them from the network—if they break the rules of the network and are bad actors. “This extra degree of constraints the protocol imposes leads to higher security and lowered issuance for the Ethereum network.”

Nonetheless, the merge is far from a slam-dunk despite the years of preparation and tests.  Alongside the possibility of another delay, there’s also various issues that may arise—like hiccups with clients, or software verifying transactions, and conflicting blocks, among others—that are so complex they can be difficult to plan for. Ethereum developers and engineers are working to be ready for any potential problems, however.

And even if the merge does happen this September and all goes well, Ethereum still has a long road ahead in terms of its development.

Speaking at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) in Paris last week, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin said he considers the network to be about 40% complete, and after the merge, “Ethereum can go up to being 55% complete,” he said.

Also on Ethereum’s roadmap are four other phases happening in parallel that developers are calling the “surge, verge, purge, and splurge”—all of which aim to make Ethereum much more secure and decentralized.

“At the end of this roadmap, Ethereum will be a much more scalable system … By the end, Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second,” Buterin said.

The upshot is that, even if the Ethereum merge goes off without a hitch, it still has a long road until it achieves the speed and efficiency that its boosters say is possible. This means that, for now at least, the Ethereum “killers” still have an opportunity to compete. 

Avalanche’s Wu, however, is taking the long view. For both Ethereum and its rivals, he says “there’s still a lot of work to be done for many, many years.”

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Tulip Protocol Officially Integrates Chainlink on Solana Mainnet

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Tulip Protocol Officially Integrates Chainlink on Solana Mainnet

Today, Tulip Protocol made the announcement that they have integrated Chainlink Price Feeds in order to better secure their yield aggregating platform that is running on the Solana mainnet. The team had previously stated their intention to integrate Chainlink Price Feeds, and at this point, the connection has been completely put into action. Chainlink is the premier decentralized oracle network in the world, safeguarding tens of billions of dollars in smart contracts. It has diversified its offerings across other blockchains, notably Solana, Fantom, Polygon, BNB Chain, and others.

In a recent blog post, the team behind the Tulip Protocol explained that they had integrated Chainlink to provide users with more confidence that leveraged positions will be liquidated equitably using extremely accurate price data and that the protocol will continue to be completely collateralized at all times.

According to Tomasz Wojewoda, Head of Global Sales at Chainlink Labs:

“We’re pleased that Tulip Protocol has integrated Chainlink Price Feeds on Solana, helping secure its yield aggregation protocol with highly robust, decentralized market data. With the high-throughput performance of Solana and the strong security guarantees of the Chainlink Network, Tulip Protocol is able to empower users with a performant and secure platform.”

Tulip Protocol Seeks To Take Advantage Of Solana

Tulip Protocol brings together lenders who receive a return on their deposits and borrowers who are interested in gaining access to leverage. Users who initiate leverage positions are responsible for maintaining a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio that has been previously established. The Tulip Protocol then uses the asset price data that is provided by Chainlink Price Feeds to verify that this ratio is accurate. If the value of the collateral falls below the threshold that was established by the protocol, then their position will be immediately liquidated to assist in guaranteeing that the lenders will be repaid.

Tulip Protocol intends to capitalize on Solana by giving users the ability to more regularly reinvest their income and grow their assets without having to pay exorbitant amounts of gas expenses. Chainlink oracles can now be natively integrated on Solana, making it possible for Solana-based applications to benefit from enhanced levels of security and transparency. Yesterday, OpenOcean made the announcement that they would be integrating Chainlink Price Feeds in order to help secure the limited order functionality on many chains. These chains include Avalanche, Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, and BNB Chain.

According to Senx, Co-Founder of Tulip Protocol:

 “We’re excited to be using Chainlink Price Feeds on Solana to help secure our yield aggregation platform. By leveraging the most secure and reliable on-chain data available, we’re able to provide our lenders and borrowers with greater assurances that liquidations are based on accurate price data, and the protocol will maintain a healthy loan-to-value ratio through all market conditions.” 

Allowing Stakers To Benefit From Higher APYs

Natives of the blockchain as well as newcomers to the technology are beginning to understand that decentralization does not necessarily equate to a secure platform. Given that Web3 services are currently disclosing their susceptibilities to attacks from both within and outside the network, further initiatives should be undertaken to improve the safety of user assets. Fortunately, a growing number of blockchain businesses are beginning to add various levels of security to their services in order to solidify the trust of their existing customers and attract additional investors in the near and distant future.

Tulip Protocol is the very first yield aggregation platform to be built on Solana, and it features auto-compounding vault techniques. The dApp was developed to make use of Solana’s blockchain, which has a low cost and high efficiency, hence enabling the vault techniques to compound frequently. Stakeholders are able to reap the benefits of greater APYs as a result, without the need for active management.

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Is your SOL safe? What we know about the Solana hack

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On this week’s episode of “The Market Report,” Cointelegraph’s resident experts discuss the latest updates concerning the recent Solana (SOL) hack.

To kick things off, we broke down the latest news in the markets this week:

Bitcoin realized price bands form key resistance as bulls lose $24K, significant whale activity between $22,000 and $24,800 adds to the complexity of the current spot market setup. Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated lower on Aug. 9 after familiar resistance preserved a multi-month trading range. When will we finally break out of this price range and make the move towards $30K?

Institutions flocking to Ethereum for 7 straight weeks as Merge nears: Report, “Greater clarity” around the Merge has driven institutional inflows into Ethereum products, according to a CoinShares report. Is the ETH merge finally around the corner and will it bring new all time highs to ETH or has the price already been factored into the current price?

Circle freezes blacklisted Tornado Cash smart contract addresses, Crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics said that, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Could this mark the end for Tornado Cash or is there a way they can redeem themselves?

Next up is a new segment called “Quick Crypto Tips,” which aims to give newcomers to the crypto industry quick and easy tips to get the most out of their experience. This week’s tip: Have some funds ready to buy further downturns.

Market expert Marcel Pechman then carefully examines the Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) markets. Are the current market conditions bullish or bearish? What is the outlook for the next few months? Pechman is here to break it down. The experts also go over some markets news to bring you up to date on the latest regarding the top two cryptocurrencies.

After Marcel’s market analysis, our resident experts discuss whether your SOL is safe and the latest updates on the Solana hack. We also discuss why the network has been victim to so many hacks and downtimes. What exactly do these exploits mean for the Solana platform and if you should be worried.

Lastly, we’ve got insights from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a platform for crypto traders who want to stay one step ahead of the market. The analysts use Cointelegraph Markets Pro to identify two altcoins that stood out this week: Radicle’s RAD and DigiByte’s DGB.

Do you have a question about a coin or topic not covered here? Don’t worry. Join the YouTube chat room, and write your questions there. The person with the most interesting comment or question will be given a 1 month free subscription to markets Pro worth $100!

The Market Report streams live every Tuesday at 12:00 pm ET (4:00 pm UTC), so be sure to head on over to Cointelegraph’s YouTube page and smash those like and subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

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Web3-Based ZepetoX to Build on Solana

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Web3-Based ZepetoX to Build on Solana

Singapore, Singapore , Aug. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, the ZepetoX team (ZTX, ZepetoX.io) announced its foray into the web3 space, sharing its vision to build an open world that empowers creators and communities to build, play and earn.

ZepetoX is the crypto metaverse initiative jointly incubated by ZEPETO – Asia’s largest metaverse platform with over 320 million registered users – alongside leading global blockchain organizations including Jump Crypto.

As the sole blockchain project comprehensively backed by ZEPETO, ZepetoX will have exclusive ties to ZEPETO in terms of IP including technological, design, and content assets as well as bridges to facilitate user onboarding between the two platforms. ZepetoX’s blockchain development efforts will be advised by Jump.

“ZepetoX is our official venture into the blockchain industry. We feel that web3 opportunities should be advanced through a crypto-native approach, which is why we are excited to have Jump as a contributor to developing a new platform that would have exclusive connections to ZEPETO. Overall, we believe that ZepetoX can build the ideal web3 platform to not only bring blockchain to our existing users but also to expand our footprint in the blockchain space through various disruptive initiatives,” said Daewook Kim, CEO of Naver Z – the operating entity of ZEPETO.

“We are excited to support ZepetoX’s efforts aimed at onboarding new audiences into the rapidly growing crypto space. ZEPETO’s expertise and technological know-hows accumulated over the past years from building an immersive social platform will serve as a springboard for ZepetoX,” said Saurabh Sharma, Partner at Jump Crypto.

Building on the Solana network, ZepetoX will offer a web-based 3D open world with varying levels of gamification integrated as well as opportunities for users to monetize via ownership of digital assets and social interaction. Ultimately, ZepetoX aims to empower self-expression through customizable avatars and lands that can be equipped with NFTs from a rich collection of assets created by diverse creators, DAOs, or communities.

“I am thrilled to see IP powerhouses like ZepetoX choosing to build their metaverse on Solana,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-Founder of Solana. “Projects like ZepetoX create new pathways for onboarding millions of users to web3.”

“Our global team brings a depth of crypto native experiences and our goal is to build on the foundation of ZEPETO to spearhead the adoption of blockchain among metaverse users, developers, and creators,” said co-CEO of ZepetoX, Chris Chang.

In the coming months, ZepetoX will launch its first land sale. The lands will be tradable on the ZepetoX marketplace, which will feature a variety of different NFTs as the open world project evolves. Further details on the sale will be available on the ZepetoX website in the coming weeks.

# # #

About ZepetoX: ZepetoX (ZTX) is a web3 company building an immersive content-driven platform for users to create, trade digital assets and enjoy social interaction. Founded in 2022, ZepetoX is the blockchain initiative of ZEPETO, widely regarded as the largest Asia-based metaverse platform boasting over 320 million lifetime users with over 2.5 billion virtual fashion items sold.

Contacts:

Vera: vera@ztx.foundation

News Via KISS PR Crypto Press Release Distribution Media Contact az@kisspr.com

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