Altcoins

Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Threshold Met: Proof-of-Stake ‘Beacon’ Chain Starts in 7 Days

24/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Ethereum network’s ETH 2.0 contract has crossed the threshold needed to initiate the upcoming upgrade. Currently, there’s more 694,368 ether worth over $422 million resting in the contract, as developers hope the proof-of-stake launch will begin on December 1.

At the end of the first week of November, the Ethereum Foundation initiated the first process of the highly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 (ETH 2.0) upgrade specifications, which detailed the initial rules of the genesis phase 0. The genesis phase 0 contract specification noted that there needed to be approximately 524,288 ETH and at least 16,384 validators to invoke the proof-of-stake process.

The requirements needed to kickstart Ethereum 2.0 for December 1, mandated that the threshold be met by November 24, 2020. Additionally, a web portal called Launch Pad was published so users can learn how to be an ETH validator and secure the blockchain.

The requirements needed to spark the genesis phase 0 process were officially completed on the 24th and there’s now 694,368 ether worth $422 million in the contract.

The contract address has seen approximately 16,736 transactions of around 32 ether per transaction. 32 ETH is what is needed to become a validator and earn a stake on the Ethereum chain. At the current exchange rate of $608 per ether, it costs close to $20k per staking validator. Roughly the last 25% of the ether needed to meet the threshold was deposited into the contract in less than a four-hour timespan.

Screenshot from an editorial called “The Genesis of a Beacon Chain” written by Ben Edgington.

Following the deposit milestone, a great number of Ethereum proponents and developers celebrated. “We reached it,” said Ethereum 2.0 R&D member Hsiao-Wei Wang. “Thanks to all the Eth2 teams and the community that wrote the history. And thanks to the Ethereum critics who made us stronger. Don’t forget to update your Eth2 client in a couple days,” Wang added.

The “Eth 2.0 Deposit Contract – Progress Meter Bot” also tweeted about the landmark occasion and stated:

We have liftoff. Thank you to the devs, the researchers, educators, and community members who made this happen. See you on December 1st @ noon UTC.

Many Ethereum supporters also understand that the Ethereum 2.0 genesis phase 0 will initially start with the “Beacon” blockchain, a baby-step that will make it so the upgrade will have less of an impact on the main network. The ETH 2.0 upgrade will start in seven days’ time and the Beacon chain will begin the first of four initial phases.

Estimates say that Ethereum 2.0 validators could earn about 20% in annualized rewards. After the requirements were filled, Ethereum proponent Tom Shaughnessy said that the Ethereum 2.0 launch “got more attention in an hour than every other layer 1 did this entire year put together.”

Ethereum Foundation member Hudson Jameson tweeted about how the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon chain launch will happen the day prior, and what needs to happen in order to create a successful launch.

“The beacon chain marks the beginning of the transition to Eth 2.0, but that doesn’t mean that everything immediately changes,” Jameson wrote. “Eth 2.0 is a multi-year process and the first few pieces of that process won’t heavily affect the current Ethereum mainnet.”

Jameson also stressed that whatever happens, the Ethereum community should be impressed with the Ethereum 2.0 development team. He also explained when he thought the Beacon chain launch would begin.

“My opinion (not an official stance of the Ethereum Foundation) is that we will launch between December 1st and December 5th,” Jameson concluded. “I base this on how quickly deposits are coming in as of the last 48 hours.”

At the time of publication, ethereum (ETH) is trading for $608 per ether, as the token has gained 26% during the last seven days and 49% in the last 30 days.

What do you think about the culmination of the highly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 launch? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Threshold Met: Proof-of-Stake ‘Beacon’ Chain Starts in 7 Days appeared first on Bitcoin News.

XRP Price Climbed 123% in 30 Days, Spark Token Airdrop Pushes Value Higher

24/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

During the course of the week digital currency markets have seen colossal gains and one crypto asset, in particular, XRP, has jumped significantly in value over the last seven days. The distributed ledger token XRP climbed 25% upwards on Tuesday alone, and seven-day price stats show the coin has gained 123% as well.

At the time of publication, XRP is currently swapping for $0.677 per coin as it gained more than 25% during the early morning (ET) trading sessions on Tuesday. The coin holds the third-largest market valuation today with a current liquid market cap at around $22.55 billion.

The market cap gives the XRP token a 4.02% dominance index rating out of the value from all the crypto assets in existence today ($563.91B). The XRP token price has more than quadrupled during the course of the year.

There is currently a supply of 45,348,221,180 XRP in circulation today and there’s been around $11 billion in reported XRP trade volume during the last 24 hours.

One of the primary reasons for XRP’s current spike stems from the project the Flare Network, which plans to airdrop tokens to XRP owners. This means more than 45 billion “spark” tokens will be given to XRP holders who are holding anytime before December 12, 2020.

XRP is seeing a majority of trades on Binance, Upbit, Huobi Global, and Coinbase Pro. XRP still has a ways to go to catch up to the digital asset’s all-time high recorded on January 3, 2018, at $3.30 per XRP. Many bitcoiners and cryptocurrency advocates dislike XRP and consider the project a very centralized operation no different than traditional databases.

Despite this criticism, XRP fans think the token will continue to rise because the project is bank-friendly and claims to be working with over 350 financial institutions. Unlike bitcoin (BTC), the distributed ledger’s consensus is managed by XRP’s independent servers.

On November 23, XRP settled over 981,000 transactions in 24 hours which is well above (180% larger) BTC’s 350,000 average transactions per day. While confirmation times for BTC can be over 10 minutes or hours depending on the mempool backlog, XRP transactions settle in five seconds.

Even though a few of these benefits are appealing to some users, bitcoiners detest XRP for creating 100 billion tokens at launch. Lots of crypto advocates think XRP goes against the very nature of decentralized cryptocurrencies and many users won’t go near the token.

Meanwhile, the fork of XRP, stellar XLM has also seen massive gains this week as well climbing 54% in value during the last 24 hours. XLM which was created by one of XRP’s cofounders Jed McCaleb has spiked over 93% this week, and 103% during the last 30 days.

What do you think about XRP climbing the cryptocurrency charts and gaining value against the USD? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post XRP Price Climbed 123% in 30 Days, Spark Token Airdrop Pushes Value Higher appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Origin Defi Protocol Suffers Massive Flash Loan Attack- OUSD Stablecoin Value Plunges 85%

18/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

The OUSD stablecoin issuer, Origin Protocol is the latest Defi protocol to fall victim to a flash loan attack. The attack, which occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, on November 17, resulted in the disappearance of tokens worth millions of dollars. Confirming the attack, one of the project’s leaders say they are now working with exchanges in order to identify the attacker, as well as to freeze the tokens before they are liquidated.

Funds Located

The Origin Protocol attack follows a similar incident at Value Defi on November 14 where the criminals stole $6 million worth of tokens. Explaining the attack in a blog post, Origin Protocol Co-founder Matthew Liu insists the stolen funds have been traced to a wallet, which the team is monitoring.

He also reveals that the attacker “used both Tornado Cash and Renbtc to wash and move funds.” According to Liu, there is “still 7,137 ETH and 2.249M DAI sitting in one of the attacker’s wallets.”

Although the Origin Protocol team says it has made progress understanding the attack and tracking the flow of funds, it still warns:

We are continuing to work to try and recover the funds. If you are still providing liquidity on Sushiswap, we advise that you should remove your funds as soon as possible. We also strongly advise that you do not attempt to buy or sell OUSD at this time.

Following the attack, the value of the OUSD stablecoin plunged and traded at $0.15 per token on November 17. Before the price collapse, the stablecoin had consistently been trading at par with the USD.

Reentrancy Bug

Meanwhile, Liu goes on to give details of how the attackers were able to pull this off, even as the Origin Protocol team thought the contract was safe. According to Liu, the “attack was a reentrancy bug in our contract.” He admits that their contract is only safe from such bugs “unless one of our supported stablecoins was attacking us.”

After executing the attack, the criminals then “withdrew most of the stablecoins from OUSD.”

Liu’s statement adds:

They were then able to take extra OUSD after withdrawing and sell it on Uniswap and Sushiswap for USDT in subsequent transactions.

The Origin Protocol team says it will conduct a “thorough transaction by transaction analysis will be forthcoming.” The team is also pleading with the attacker(s) to return the stolen funds after demonstrating their “superior skills as hackers.”

What are your thoughts on this latest flash loan attack? Share your views in the comments section below.

The post Origin Defi Protocol Suffers Massive Flash Loan Attack- OUSD Stablecoin Value Plunges 85% appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Touches $17K Price Zone, BTC Dominance Levels High, Altcoins Still Way Behind

17/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

On November 17, the price of bitcoin touched another 2020 all-time high (ATH) when the crypto asset surpassed the $17k price zone on Tuesday. Bitcoin dominance has risen higher during the last few months and currently hovers at 65% this week. Despite the massive rise in bitcoin value during the last few months, altcoins are not performing as well as they did when bitcoin was at this price range three years ago.

Back in 2017, bitcoin (BTC) touched an all-time high (ATH) on December 17, when it reached $19,600 per coin that year. Bitcoin’s dominance index was slightly different in 2017 than it is today, as numerous altcoins saw significant increases in value three years ago. Bitcoin dominance is essentially the recorded metric of BTC’s market capitalization paired against the 7,000+ other altcoin market valuations in existence today.

The altcoin value increases seen three years ago, continued into the next year and on January 14, 2018, Bitcoin’s dominance index fell to an all-time low of 32%. With BTC holding a 65% dominance level today, the crypto asset’s dominance increased 103% since the second week of January 2018.

On Tuesday, bitcoin’s (BTC) price is hovering just above the $17k zone and the crypto asset’s market cap is around $315 billion at the time of publication. Historical price charts show that when BTC was priced at $17k or above three years ago, altcoins were performing much better than they are today. The trend has given traders and speculators the opinion that the infamous ‘altcoin season’ has not started, and some believe it never will. For instance, history shows on December 17, 2017, ethereum (ETH) was swapping for $719 per unit. Today, even though ETH has gained 256% this year, the crypto asset is still down 34% from that price range on December 17.

ETH also touched an ATH of $1,431 and the crypto asset still needs to gain over 67% to get to that position again. Another historical snapshot from the same day in December indicates that XRP was swapping for $0.72 on the 17th, and it is still down 58% from that position. In fact, XRP is down considerably from the $3.84 ATH, as it remains 92% below that point today. Another interesting change during the last three years is how tether (USDT) has grown massively since December 17. On that day, USDT the notorious stablecoin was of course swapping for a dollar, but in terms of market cap, the stablecoin sat in the 24th market cap position.

Today, tether (USDT) is the third-largest blockchain in terms of market valuation with $17.9 billion under the hood. That means that tether’s market cap has increased a whopping 1,527% since the 17th of December 2017. If any market cap in 2020 is stopping bitcoin (BTC) from capturing a much higher dominance percentage it is tether’s valuation. Interestingly, back in December 2017, litecoin (LTC) was also hovering in the fifth-largest market cap position and just the other day, LTC managed to capture the position again.

Still, on the 17th of December 2017, LTC was swapping for $318 per unit, and it’s still down 77% from that range. In fact, LTC needs to gain over 80% to reach the $375 ATH it touched years ago. Bitcoin cash (BCH) also held the third-largest position on the 17th of December 2017, and was trading for $1,862 per unit. The crypto asset BCH needs to climb more than 86% to capture that price range again, as the digital currency trades for $252 today.

You know what??!! ALTCOIN SEASON IS HERE!! All of my alerts are going OFF!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

— Derrick Purcell Jr (@sonofdestinyxrp) November 17, 2020

The rest of the coins in 2020’s top ten rankings were not present in the top ten back in 2017, except for cardano (ADA). The three coins that were present in the top ten on the 17th of December 2017, were IOTA, dash, and monero. Today in 2020, those positions have been replaced by polkadot, chainlink, and binance coin. At that time three years ago, cardano (ADA) was trading for $0.51 per unit. On November 17, 2020, ADA is still down 78% from that point and 91% behind the $1.33 ATH.

Despite the statistics, traders are still waiting for the notorious point in time referred to as ‘altcoin season’ or ‘altseason.’ On crypto-related forums and social media, the altcoin season topic is trending and a number of crypto proponents are waiting for it to arrive. The other day one individual tweeted:

What comes after Spring? Summer. What comes after Bitcoin season? Altcoin season.

The same day, another crypto proponent wrote about how “it looks like BTC dominance is rising, while the price is not rising so much.”

“I think the money is leaving Alts —> BTC —> USDT which keeps BTC up for a while,” the individual tweeted. “Until Alts without USD pairs exit into BTC to then dump in USD.” The Twitter account dubbed ‘Altcoin Sherpa’ agreed with the analysis and said: “Money definitely seems to be leaving [altcoins] in general. The high time frame trends on those are still bearish IMO, not altseason quite yet,” he added.

What do you think about bitcoin (BTC) dominance reaching 65% and people’s opinions about another altcoin season? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Bitcoin Touches $17K Price Zone, BTC Dominance Levels High, Altcoins Still Way Behind appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Cash Might Split Again This Weekend. This Is Why (And How)

13/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) might split again this weekend.

The Bitcoin ABC software client forked away from the Bitcoin protocol in mid-2017 to form a cryptocurrency of its own: Bitcoin Cash. Since then, Bitcoin Cash has deployed a backwards-incompatible hard fork upgrade every six months, requiring a network-wide upgrade across all Bitcoin Cash clients. While most of these upgrades have gone through relatively smoothly, a conflict within the Bitcoin Cash community in 2018 resulted in a split between Bitcoin Cash (the side that kept the original name) and Bitcoin SV.

Now, two years later (on November 15, 12:00 UTC, to be precise), another hard fork upgrade and another dispute within the Bitcoin Cash community could once again result in a coin-split.

What Is The Dispute? (And Between Who?)

At the heart of the dispute is an upgrade called the Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP). The IFP would, as a protocol rule, enforce that 8 percent of every block reward — the coins earned by miners — is delegated to software projects working on Bitcoin Cash, like Bitcoin ABC.

According to the Bitcoin ABC team, the IFP — sometimes also referred to as the “miner tax” — would be designated through a new organization called the Global Network Council, consisting of major miners and holders of the cryptocurrency. The Global Network Council is scheduled to meet for the first time in January 2021, but beyond that, not very many specifics have been revealed about the selection of members or the procedure to distribute funds.

Bitcoin Cash Node — a software fork of Bitcoin ABC — is an initiative by various Bitcoin Cash developers and users who oppose the IFP, and have removed the upgrade from their source code.

There are a few different reasons the IFP is controversial. Some reject the upgrade on philosophical grounds, as they believe a “miner tax” is incompatible with Bitcoin Cash’s (or Bitcoin’s) philosophy and original design. If miners earn fewer coins when mining a block, this should also result in a decrease in hash power securing the network. Other concerns with the IFP include the lack of specifics regarding the distribution of funds, and they believe the setup may end up benefiting Bitcoin ABC more than other clients. Bitcoin ABC’s attempt to push the change through despite community opposition is also a concern in itself.

Does The Hard Fork Include Any Other Protocol Changes?

Yes, both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Node will deploy a new difficulty adjustment algorithm.

New Bitcoin Cash blocks (like Bitcoin blocks) should be found about once every 10 minutes on average. However, due to Bitcoin Cash sharing a mining algorithm with Bitcoin, some Bitcoin miners occasionally switch to mining Bitcoin Cash when that blockchain is more profitable to mine. Because Bitcoin Cash usually has a mere fraction of Bitcoin’s hash power, such a switch results in big swings in the amount of hash power on Bitcoin Cash. This in turn results in periodic bursts where blocks are found much faster than once every 10 minutes, followed by a jump in difficulty. The switched miners then return to mining Bitcoin, leaving the original Bitcoin Cash miners behind on a chain that is now less profitable. Moreover, the sharp decrease in hash power tends to result in a much slower rate of block production. The hash power swings make the pace of transaction confirmation on Bitcoin Cash less reliable.

To help stabilize the pace of block production, the Bitcoin ABC team originally proposed a new difficulty adjustment algorithm called Grasberg. Grasberg would include an additional change however: block production would intentionally be slowed down for a few years to correct for “historical drift.” (For a couple of reasons, including a previous difficulty algorithm, Bitcoin Cash blocks have so far been mined faster than originally scheduled.)

The additional historic drift correction was controversial within the Bitcoin Cash community, however. This was, in fact, the original motivation behind the launch of Bitcoin Cash Node, which includes an alternative difficulty adjustment algorithm called ASERT. (ASERT is also new, though it predates Grasberg and was initially rejected by the Bitcoin ABC team.)

The Bitcoin ABC team eventually conceded to the implementation of ASERT, however, thus dropping Grasberg. This means that Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node will be compatible — except for the IFP.

Why Has Bitcoin ABC Released Two Versions Of Its Software Client?

Late last week, Bitcoin ABC announced that it will in fact release two versions of Bitcoin ABC. One version of the software will enforce the IFP protocol rule as planned. Another version, however, will not, and will therefore be fully compatible with Bitcoin Cash Node.

The Bitcoin ABC team will only work to realize its development road map on the version of their software that enforces the IFP protocol rule, however. (This road map includes a flexible block size limit and decreasing the risk that unconfirmed transactions are double-spent, among other things.) The version without the IFP protocol rule will be minimally maintained to remain compatible with Bitcoin Cash Node, without further improvements.

Is A Coin-Split Guaranteed?

Not quite.

First of all, it’s worth noting that Bitcoin Cash clients (both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node) are programmed to abort the current protocol, so a hard fork upgrade is more or less necessary. The current version of Bitcoin Cash will almost certainly not live on.

And obviously, if either Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin Cash Node fails to attract enough hash power to produce a valid blockchain at all, there will be no coin-split. Only the version that attracts sufficient hash power would live on.

A coin split would in fact only happen if both the Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node sides attract enough hash power to produce a viable blockchain, as long as Bitcoin Cash Node attracts more than half of the total hash power between the two.

There is one other interesting scenario where a coin-split is avoided. If Bitcoin ABC attracts more than half of all hash power between the two (and maintains this majority), Bitcoin Cash Node clients would actually follow the Bitcoin ABC blockchain. This is because the new Bitcoin ABC software would be a soft fork in respect of Bitcoin Cash Node. Its protocol rules are the same, but with the IFP rule as an added restriction.

Put differently, Bitcoin Cash Node clients will accept it if a portion of the block reward is delegated to a Global Network Council (or to anyone else), they just won’t require that this happens. Blocks that don’t delegate the IFP funds would in this scenario be rejected by a majority of miners, and therefore not make it into the blockchain at all, ensuring compatibility.

(There are some more complicated scenarios, with new hard forks, that could also lead to a coin-split — but these are less likely and beyond the scope of this article.)

What Is Likely To Happen?

Currently, Bitcoin Cash Node has much more hash power support than Bitcoin ABC: more than 80 percent at the time of writing this article, versus less than 1 percent for Bitcoin ABC. Bitcoin Cash Node also appears to have significantly more community support, and large Bitcoin Cash-supporting companies like Coinbase, Kraken and BitGo have also indicated support for Bitcoin Cash Node. It therefore seems likely that (the name) Bitcoin Cash will live on through Bitcoin Cash Node and the compatible version of Bitcoin ABC. (It would then probably also receive the “BCH” ticker on most exchanges, though some may opt for “BCHN” or another variant.)

Whether (the IFP version of) Bitcoin ABC will attract enough hash power to produce a viable blockchain remains to be seen. But if it does, it will have one strategic advantage over Bitcoin Cash Node. If it attracts more hash power than Bitcoin Cash Node, even after the split has occurred (but only up until ten blocks), the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain would (in theory) “collapse,” and essentially disappear as Bitcoin Cash Node clients would accept the Bitcoin ABC blockchain instead. Any coins mined on the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain, and any coins received on the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain, would disappear with it. If Bitcoin ABC attracts enough hash power to even just make this a viable scenario, it might undermine trust in Bitcoin Cash Node, potentially only helping Bitcoin ABC further. (In practice, however, this unlikely scenario could itself be countered by the Bitcoin Cash Node scenario through another protocol upgrade.)

All things considered, however, it seems most likely that Bitcoin Cash Node will live on as “Bitcoin Cash,” and Bitcoin ABC will create a “new” cryptocurrency, most likely to also be called “Bitcoin ABC” (and probably with the ticker “BAB”).

I Hold BCH. Do I Need To Do Anything?

If you hold the private keys yourself, you don’t need to do anything. If a split happens, you will have access to both coins. (You might have to upgrade to new client/wallet software, depending on your client/wallet software.)

You might want to hold off from sending coins shortly before and after the hard fork happens, however. Because neither Bitcoin Cash ABC nor Bitcoin Cash Node implemented replay protection, sending one of the coins could accidentally result in sending the equivalent on the other blockchain. To be sure this doesn’t happen, wait until there is more clarity on this issue.

You might also want to hold off from receiving coins on the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain. Although the risk seems slim, this blockchain could potentially “collapse” into the Bitcoin ABC blockchain if the latter attracts more hash power, and the coins you received will disappear with it. To be absolutely sure this doesn’t happen, wait until there is more clarity on this issue.

If you hold your coins on an exchange (or another custodial service) and a split occurs, the exchange determines whether you receive both coins, or one of them (and which one). Several exchanges have published announcements of their plans, with most supporting the Bitcoin Cash Node side of a potential split, or both. Ask your exchange for more information (or withdraw your coins before the split).

The post Bitcoin Cash Might Split Again This Weekend. This Is Why (And How) appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.