SHARD BY SHARD: Vlad Zamfir says he and other developers have done a successful proof-of-concept for sharding, one of the most hotly anticipated solutions for ethereum's scaling challenges.
While the code is "not even close" to production-ready, Zamfir says, it's significant for demonstrating that ether and other data can be securely sent across a blockchain that's been broken up into pieces, or sharded. Full Story
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Josh Garza, the CEO of the now-defunct cryptocurrency mining company GAW Miners, has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to a wire fraud charge.
The verdict ended an investigation that started in 2014, with allegations that GAW was acting as a Ponzi scheme by selling more cryptocurrency mining processing power than the firm actually possessed.
Also, GAW infamously released cryptocurrency called paycoin with a promise that the price won't go lower than $20, which ultimately failed. A U.S. district judge held Garza liable for more than $9 million. Full Story
ALIVE AND WELL? Reports of R3's financial struggles notwithstanding, it's clear there's a vibrant community around its open-source enterprise blockchain platform, Corda.
CordaCon, the startup's annual forum in London for developers and adopters, was packed, with standing room only for some sessions. Noteworthy announcements included the launch of Corda Marketplace, "a pseudo app store" for solutions on Corda (CorDapps), and the U.K. government's HM Land Registry choosing Corda to digitize the house buying process.
But perhaps the biggest bragging point for R3 was the presence of consortiums from the insurance and trade finance industries (B3i and TradeIX, respectively), both converts to Corda from rival platform Hyperledger Fabric. Full Story | 
