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UPGRADE AHEAD: Ethereum's long-awaited Constantinople upgrade is set to kick off next week, implementing a host of features to lower gas costs and support layer-two solutions.
Constantinople is part of a three-part upgrade to the ethereum network called Metropolis, and combines five different ethereum improvement protocols (EIPs). While most of these are not especially controversial, one EIP will delay ethereum’s difficulty bomb and reduce its mining reward, which some miners have opposed.
“The main importance of Constantinople is to delay the difficulty bomb, otherwise mining difficulty would start climbing up sharply. Other than that, there are no changes that are really crucial,” Turbo Geth’s Alexey Akhunov said.
That being said, major mining pools have fallen in with the change – an important development, given that miners will be responsible for pushing the change. As Parity release manager Afri Schoedon explained, “miners are ready.” Here’s what to expect when the hard fork commences.
SAMOURAI CODE: The team behind Samourai, a privacy-focused bitcoin wallet, has had to remove a series of key security features from the Android version of its app as a result of what it called "extremely restrictive policies" by Google.
Having released version 0.99.04 of the app on Google Play this Tuesday, Samourai explained in a blog post that three features – stealth mode, SIM switch defense, and remote SMS commands – have been removed as a result of Google’s push to “become more of a ‘walled garden’ experience.”
Stealth mode is a feature that cloaks the existence of a bitcoin wallet on a user’s mobile device such that transactions can be made without detection in dangerous parts of the world. Remote SMS commands as highlighted by SW to CoinDesk ensures if a user’s “phone does get stolen, they can just send an SMS and wipe their wallet off of the phone securely.”
SW is hopeful that a compromise can be drawn between Samourai and Google Play to reintroduce these features at a later date, saying:
“If [Google] reached out to us, we’ll be able to make arrangements and be able to figure out a way to keep these features. We’re happy to change code on our end to keep in compliance with them.” Full Story
TOKEN TIME: Security token trading platform tZERO, a portfolio company of digital retailer Overstock, has begun the process of giving investors control of $134 million-worth of security tokens bought during a sale completed last August.
TZERO said in October that it had completed the issuance of the tokens, after which they were locked up in a custodial wallet until January 10. In a letter sent to investors on Thursday, the firm’s CEO, Saum Noursalehi, outlined the first steps toward taking custody of the tokens.
"Now that the three-month lock-up period has concluded, you must decide where to hold your security tokens," Noursalehi wrote.
According to the letter, investors now have two options: create a brokerage account with broker-dealer and tZERO partner Dinosaur Financial Group or hold the tokens in a personal wallet, which is subject to a two-step verification process.
What isn’t clear at this time is exactly when tZERO is expected to begin actual trading of the security token on its platform. In the letter, tZERO told investors to “look out for another tZERO update regarding the commencement of security token trading.” Full Story |
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 CoinDesk’s Crypto-Economics Explorer aggregates data points across the industry to measure the size and opportunity of crypto markets. In addition to price and market cap, CoinDesk’s explorer provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset’s market maturity, growth, and potential. Network interest is important in determining the activity occurring within a blockchain’s internal ecosystem. Exchange interest is also valuable to understand the trading dynamics. Today, January 11, we observed two key metrics from each category: OnChain Volume and Exchange Volume (OffChain Volume). We then measured the ratio between those values, which is called the On-Off Ratio, for BTC since December 2013. This simply tells us how many dollars moved on the blockchain for every dollar moved on exchanges. A ratio above 1 would indicate higher OnChain Volume relative to exchange, and vice versa. This should be used to evaluate the utilization of a blockchain compared to its coin’s usage as a trading asset. For much of BTC’s history, we see the ratio indicated that there was always more OnChain Volume occurring than exchange volume. This was the case up until the dawn of Q1 2018 when the trend flipped. Ever since, the average has been .94 with a standard deviation of .31. For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Crypto-Economic Explorer here.
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 The Oxford Blockchain Strategy programme is developed for business leaders, innovators, and future thinkers with an interest in blockchain. This programme gives you a fundamental understanding of blockchain, and its implications and effects on your business strategy. Visit the programme page to learn more. |
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| GAINS LOST: Bitcoin’s bears may be feeling emboldened following a 9 percent drop in prices on Thursday. Worse, immediate support lined up near $3,650 could be breached soon. If confirmed, that would bolster the bearish technical setup and potentially see a return to the December low of $3,122. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST FORBES: For six years, a British coder called Dan Hughes has been working, largely alone, on building an alternative to blockchain. Forbes writes that Hughes is seeking “a complete transformation of data-sharing and transactions worldwide – and possibly, new plumbing for our future internet,” marketing and building the tech via his new startup, Radix. With the Achilles’ heel of current major blockchains being scaling for mass adoption, Hughes went back to the drawing board to build something he says will be able to handle millions of transactions per second – a “sharded, decentralized ledger,” according to the piece. While he was inspired by bitcoin’s white paper, Hughes’ Tempo protocol (now in its fourth iteration) is totally built from scratch. Radix will formally launch later this year. It already has $1 million in VC investment and has just starting to build up its team – now in an office, rather than Hughes' home – in London. THE REST INFORMATION WEEK: Businesses may be able to leverage blockchain with a "limitless" number of applications, but the space needs to establish practical real-world use cases first, writes Kadena head of growth Ben Jessel in Information Week. To do that, first businesses need to establish what blockchain is useful for. “It’s not a universal technology that will solve all business problems,” the piece notes, but the technology “is inherently good at dealing with databases, transactions and transparency.” Blockchain may also prove to be a more expensive or troublesome solution to problems which can use existing technology platforms for lower prices or less effort. As such, Jessel adds, it is important to understand how blockchain would fit into a project and who would be needed to operate it. THE JAPAN TIMES: Cryptocurrency startups in Japan are facing an important year, The Japan Times says. Local companies in the nation faced a number of new regulatory hurdles after Tokyo-based Coincheck lost more than $500 million in cryptocurrencies during a hack. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) began taking a closer look at exchanges, and declined to approve any new exchange operators in 2018. That may change this year, according to the report. New regulations aimed at protecting consumers have been implemented and it is likely that more firms will be allowed to enter the exchange market. Because of the Coincheck hack, companies have also now largely implemented new security and management systems. Pina Hirano, head of Tokyo's Blockchain Collaborative Consortium, said "the groundwork to reinforce the foundation of the crypto-industry in Japan was laid out [in 2018]." |
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