testnet

Three Ethereum Testnets Are Transitioning to the Highly Anticipated London Upgrade

22/06/2021 by Idelto Editor

According to a blog post on the Ethereum Foundation’s website, three Ethereum testnets leveraging the London hard fork will go live during the next few weeks. Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko explained last Friday that the “upgrade will first go live on Ropsten, at block 10499401, which is expected to happen around June 24, 2021.”

London Upgrade Begins to Root With Testnet Implementations Slated to Launch

Three Ethereum testnets will see the London upgrade applied in the near future which shows progress is being made toward implementing the new features. Essentially, the London hard fork is the upgrade that follows the Berlin hard fork that took place in April 2021.

The London hard fork will implement a number of significant Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) in order to prepare for the Serenity (ETH 2.0) upgrade slated for 2022. Two EIPs, in particular, aim to enhance the blockchain’s fee model and the ETH mining ecosystem’s difficulty time bomb.

EIP-1559 is the improvement implementation that will tackle the blockchain’s fee model and it was introduced by Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin. Eric Conner, Rick Dudley, Matthew Slipper, Ian Norden, and Abdelhamid Bakhta also contributed to EIP-1559.

The EIP-1559 idea says the network will see a transaction pricing mechanism that introduces a base fee for every block found on the network. Essentially, the remainder of the fees will be burned and people assume this will significantly reduce the overall supply of ethereum.

EIP-3554 has been proposed to help facilitate the Serenity (ETH 2.0) upgrade as it aims to smooth over the difficulty time bomb that slows down proof-of-work (PoW) ETH mining. Essentially, ETH miners will have no choice but to deal with a proof-of-stake (PoS) system.

The upcoming London hard fork with EIP-3554 will make the transitional process easier. EIP-3554 will hinder the time bomb so “to show effect the first week of December 2021,” according to the developer James Hancock. Additionally, the London hard fork also includes:

EIP-3198: BASEFEE opcode
EIP-3529: Reduction in refunds
EIP-3541: Reject new contracts starting with the 0xEF byte

Ethereum Testnets Ropsten, Goerli and Rinkeby Leave Berlin for London

On Friday, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko explained that Ropsten, Goerli, and Rinkeby testnets will see the London hard fork implemented during the next few weeks. Beiko said that Ropsten will be the first to launch at block height 10499401, which should take place on June 24.

Then, Goerli is expected to go live on June 30 and the Rinkeby testnet is slated for July 7. Beiko also highlighted that by working on Berlin and London at the same time, “client teams were able to release this network upgrade at record speed.”

Beiko details that the mainnet London hard fork is to be announced “once testnets fork successfully.” Ropsten miners or Goerli and Rinkeby validators should download the latest clients and validators will need to double the gas limit target to twice what it currently is.

“This is because once London is live, the block size will be doubled and EIP-1559 will keep blocks about 50% full,” Beiko explained. The blog post published by the Ethereum Foundation further notes that the community should “be on the lookout for the mainnet upgrade announcement in the coming weeks.”

What do you think about the three Ethereum testnets applying the London upgrade? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Testnet of Facebook’s Much Vaunted Stablecoin Only Executes 6 Transactions per Second

05/12/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Facebook fronted stablecoin, Diem (formerly Libra)’s dismal testnet results undercut the assertion that the digital currency is a threat to global financial stability. This is the conclusion that can be deduced from a Diem blockchain explorer update which shows the network only processes an average of six transactions per second (tps), with the highest reported figure of 24 tps. The testnet for Diem has been live for more than 43 days at the time of writing.

The stablecoin performance suggests more still needs to be done before the expected launch in 2021, if the coin’s promoters still hope to upstage existing networks. According to a report, the Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) networks already “execute close to four and 13 TPS, respectively.” The stablecoin’s initial figures-which if not improved on-undercuts Diem’s perceived appeal and the unsubstantiated claims that it poses a threat to the global financial system.

Many central banks and governments around the world expressed alarm when Facebook and its partners announced the impending launch of Libra in 2019. Since then, some central banks immediately began exploring the possibility of launching their own central bank digital currencies to forestall Libra. Since then, the company changed the stablecoin’s name and branding from Libra to the “Diem dollar.”

Yet based on these testnet results, Diem compares poorly against the payments giant, Visa which can execute “1,700 transactions each second.” Visa’s transaction throughput, which is 70x more than Diem’s highest reported tps, exposes the baseless fearmongering that followed Libra’s announcement.

Despite the many challenges, the determined Diem Association says it plans to “roll the testnet out and into the hands of potential users, potential customers, and potential companies.”

What are your thoughts on Diem’s reported testnet tps? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The post Testnet of Facebook’s Much Vaunted Stablecoin Only Executes 6 Transactions per Second appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Yearn Finance Token Value Slides 67%, While Locked Value Loses Over $300M

08/10/2020 by Idelto Editor

Yearn Finance’s native token YFI has been seeing significant capitulation as the price has dropped from an all-time high (ATH) of $43k in mid-September to today’s $13,875 USD value. Despite the -67.7% loss since the token’s ATH, the Yearn Finance project still has around $624 million total value locked into the platform.

Yearn Finance and the native token YFI has been a hot topic during the latter half of 2020. This is because the YFI token went from an all-time low of $739 on July 21, 2020, to reaching an ATH of $43k on September 12. In between that time, YFI saw a whopping 5,718% gain for anyone who held YFI at those times. Additionally, on August 29, the Yearn Finance project had around $967 million locked into the protocol according to Defipulse.com stats.

However, since these recent ATHs, both the project’s TVL (total value locked) and the native token’s value has plummeted. The project’s TVL has slid to $624 million in assets locked on Wednesday, October 7, 2020. That’s a large decent of around -35% since the August 29 TVL-ATH locked into the Yearn Finance project. The coin itself, YFI has lost a critical -67.7% since the September 12 ATH and has been sliding relentlessly since that day.

Some people blame the drop on the lack of trust in Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje. Not too long ago the decentralized finance (defi) crowd witnessed a mishap with Cronje’s secret Eminence (EMN) project. “YFI has been getting creamed,” tweeted the crypto proponent Alex Krüger in regard to the declining YFI value. “Recent underperformance relative to other cryptos has been notable. One could argue it is the chart. But it is not. One can find plenty of equally poor charts across crypto. This IMO is the marketplace punishing YFI by removing the Cronje premium,” Krüger added.

Krüger also said:

The main reason IMO was Yearn’s blatant negligence around the EMN launch, and how poorly the aftermath was handled. Said so when it happened, not in hindsight later. Many exited/reduced YFI positions because of it.

The Eminence (EMN) project was considered “bizarre” as the unfinished project was hacked for $15 million before it even launched. Even after the incident, Cronje said that he was going to continue building Eminence.

“I am still building [Eminence],” the Yearn Finance developer wrote on Twitter. “I love the metaverse and metaconomy. I am also going to continue deploying test contracts. I have over ~100 deployed contracts, of which probably >half have vulnerabilities.”

Still, Cronje was criticized for putting unfinished work on the main network instead of using an Ethereum testnet.

“Why put unfinished code on mainnet to be tested?” an individual asked Cronje after his statement. “The contract should have been on a testnet. Any noob programmer knows not to test on a live server. With great reputation comes great responsibility. You need to own this and return funds fully before the hack.”

What do you think about the Yearn Finance and YFI decline, as well as the Eminence controversy? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Yearn Finance Token Value Slides 67%, While Locked Value Loses Over $300M appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Xthinner Protocol Tested on BCH Mainnet Shows 99% Block Compression

09/04/2019 by Idelto Editor

On April 8, BCH developer Jonathan Toomim revealed how far he’s come with the Xthinner block compression protocol. Toomim tested the platform between two Bitcoin ABC full nodes on the BCH main network and a 363 kB block was compressed down to 1,660 bytes, or 99.54% compression.

Also read: Uyen T Nguyen: The Powerful Young Woman Behind the Alleged ‘Satoshi Affair’

Xthinner Compression and CTOR in Action

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community is all about scaling and increasing the block size, but very adding large blocks is just one part of the equation. In the first week of September, the BCH chain processed some significantly large blocks and millions of transactions per day. However, developers noticed issues with block propagation, bottlenecks, and nodes crashing when very large blocks were processed. Last January, news.Bitcoin.com reported on Jonathan Toomim’s project Xthinner, which could help alleviate such problems in the future. Xthinner is block propagation software that leverages canonical transaction ordering (CTOR) and can compress blocks by more than 90%, if all of the transactions in the block were previously transmitted. On Monday, Toomim detailed that he’s been testing the protocol on the main network and used two Bitcoin ABC full nodes to record his data.

“A few hours ago, I fixed the last showstopping bug in my Xthinner code and got it running between two of my ABC full nodes on mainnet,” Toomim told members of r/btc. “One node serves as a bridge to the rest of the world, receiving Compact Blocks and transmitting Xthinner — The other is connected to no other nodes except this bridge.”

One Block Showed 99.54% Compression

The first block Toomim transmitted through Xthinner was BCH block 577,310 and he had a few issues transmitting a portion of the block’s transactions. Following that block, Xthinner worked on “every block since then, with no failures, and with no block taking more than 1.5 networking round trips,” Toomim explained. The developer noted that most “non-tiny block” got around 99% compression while compact blocks got roughly 96-97% compression. “Eight blocks have been complete on arrival without any missing transaction fetching (0.5 round trips), and 24 blocks have required a round trip to fetch missing transactions,” Toomim added.

Moreover, Toomim revealed that one specific block of 363 kB with 841 transactions was compressed to 1,660 bytes. According to the programmer that’s roughly a 99.54% compression or 15.79 bits/tx. “Uncoincidentally, this was also one of the largest blocks so far, with 23 minutes elapsed since the prior block,” said Toomim. The BCH developer further stated:

Bigger blocks get better compression because the header, coinbase, and checksum specification overhead is a smaller proportion of the whole, and sometimes also because the Xthinner algorithm can more consistently omit the initial bytes of the TXID.

Toomim Might Release an Alpha Version of Xthinner Soon

Bitcoin Cash enthusiasts were pleased to hear about Xthinner being tested on the main network and discussed the project throughout the day. “Wow, 99.54% compression, I’m impressed — Thank you, Jonathan, for your marvellous work and thanks lead devs for sound roadmap and CTOR/LTOR which made this possible,” one BCH supporter wrote. Toomim also detailed that he would likely be releasing an alpha version of the Xthinner protocol soon so other developers can experiment with the platform as well. He stressed that the code still has a few bugs and vulnerabilities and recommends that people don’t run the software on a node that needs to stay running. “There’s still a lot of work to be done before the code is of high enough quality to be merged into Bitcoin ABC,” the developer concluded.

What do you think about Xthinner and the possibility of 99% block compression? Let us know what you think about this project in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Jonathan Toomim, and Bitcoincash.org.

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The post Xthinner Protocol Tested on BCH Mainnet Shows 99% Block Compression appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Mempool ‘Spam’ and Rising Fees: The Consequences of Veriblock’s Mainnet Launch

29/03/2019 by Idelto Editor

Last month the Veriblock testnet represented more than 30 percent of BTC’s network transactions but the project took a hiatus before launching the protocol’s mainnet. When the project stopped, the BTC network’s mempool dropped, transactions per day were cut in half, and fees slightly dipped. However, since the mainnet launch of the Veriblock blockchain, the mempool is once again getting ‘spammed’ and average transaction fees have increased over the last few days.

Also read: Indian Supreme Court Set to Hear Crypto Case on March 29

Veriblock’s Mainnet Captures 18% of BTC Transactions

The Veriblock blockchain launched its mainnet on March 25, and since then the project has been using a lot of BTC transactions again. News.Bitcoin.com reported on the Veriblock testnet back in February when the blockchain platform was piggybacking off the chain and utilized more than 30-45 percent of transactions on a daily basis. Often times last month, BTC transactions per day numbered 285,000-350,000 when Veriblock was testing.

Then, at the beginning of March, Veriblock stopped its testnet and BTC transactions (txn) slipped to 212,000 txn on March 9. After the latest Veriblock launch, the project is now capturing 18.6 percent of BTC transactions at the time of writing and BTC hit a weekly high of 393,000 txn on March 27. Moreover, because of all of these transactions, BTC’s average fee jumped from $0.34 to $0.49 per txn and the mempool (transaction queue) has spiked considerably.

The Veriblock chain is a project that aims to “help secure blockchain networks against 51% attacks so they can thrive.” The project uses a system called proof-of-proof (PoP) and the ‘proof’ is tied to the OP_Return transactions used within the BTC network. Essentially Veriblock can create a snapshot of any chain state and secure it with BTC in a transparent and permissionless fashion. When the mainnet launched, the Veriblock team explained that it is committed to helping other blockchains fend off malicious attacks.

The team mentioned the 51 percent attacks and deep reorgs that happened to Bitcoin Gold, Zencash, Ravencoin, FLO, Vertcoin, and Ethereum Classic as recent examples. Veriblock says that cryptocurrency development teams can now concentrate on programming new features, instead of stressing about attacks. “The marketplace has validated this approach, with over 6,000,000 security transactions on Bitcoin to date,” Veriblock claims.

Some Take Issue With Using BTC for Storing Arbitrary Data and Have Criticized ‘Unneeded’ Purchases

Last time Veriblock used a very noticeable amount of BTC transactions, many hardcore maximalists didn’t like the use of the opcodes and accused the project of “spamming” the network. Developer Jameson Lopp called the project “inefficient” at the time and others called it “garbage.” With the recent Veriblock mainnet launch, spectators are noticing the “fee pressure rises” and others have started getting salty again. There are others that see the fees as positive because they could kickstart Segwit adoption and force people into using the unfinished Lightning Network. For instance, one observer tweeted:

Seems like Lightning channel opens and Veriblock PoPs will make up the majority of transactions soon — This could force exchanges to look into adopting Lightning sooner rather than later.

Op_Return transactions have been very popular throughout the community lately and other blockchains like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) have been using them widely as well with concepts like token creation and platforms like Bitcoinfiles.com and Memo.cash. In fact, OP_Return transactions have been popular throughout the Bitcoin economy since 2013, when people became fascinated with tethering bits of data into transactions to benefit from the blockchain’s immutability. However, some people have taken issue with people using BTC for arbitrary data and have called these transactions whimsical and unneeded spam. With the fees rising and BTC’s transaction congestion in 2017, it caused people to reveal their subjective valuations on what they think people should spend BTC on — to the point where a coffee purchase with bitcoin is considered infeasible.

Supporters of the BCH network believe that a focus on improving onchain scaling is a far better method than forcing people to pay high network fees and onboarding people onto an unfinished and insecure network. There are not many BCH proponents who take issue with people paying for transactions in a permissionless manner, even if it’s aimless and arbitrary information. Moreover, the BCH network has proved it can handle a significant surge of onchain transactions when it processed more than 2 million transactions in 24 hours on Sept. 1, 2018. In fact, the chain continued to process record-breaking daily txns per day that entire week and miner fees declined instead of doubling. It’s hard to say whether or not BTC’s increasing network fees and Veriblock paying for a large portion of transactions will push people toward the Lightning Network or towards other chains as it has done in the past.

What do you think about the Veriblock chain buying a lot of BTC transactions in order to operate its proof-of-proof (PoP) consensus? What do you think about the rising BTC network fees associated with this issue? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Blockchain.com, Grafana OP_Return statistics, Veriblock, and Bitinfocharts.com.

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