Another year.. and another episode of Solana going down. Today it went down for a few hours in the early morning Asia time, and it took almost 4 hours to bring it back up. The Solana community blames it on a DDOS attack. Lol Solana down. As the meme goes, the D in Solana stands…
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The Jamaican central bank successfully completed the pilot testing of its central bank digital currency, a statement from the bank has said. The statement however reveals that only one payment service provider participated in the pilot. Only One Payment Provider Participated in the Pilot The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) recently revealed that it had successfully […]
Ethereum failed to clear the $3,850 resistance and resumed decline against the US Dollar. ETH price is holding the $3,680 support, but there is a risk of more downsides. Ethereum started another decline from the $3,850 resistance zone. The price is trading below $3,750 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. There was a break below a major bullish trend line with support near $3,800 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken). The pair must clear the $3,750 zone and the 100 hourly SMA to turn green in the near term Ethereum Price Starts Fresh Decline Ethereum struggled to gain strength above the $3,850 level. As a result, ETH reacted to the downside and traded below the $3,800 level. There was a break below a major bullish trend line with support near $3,800 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. The pair declined below the $3,750 support level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. Ether even spiked below the $3,700 level, but the bulls were active near the $3,680 level. A low was formed near $3,680 and the price is now correcting higher. There was a break above the $3,720 level. The price even spiked above the 50% Fib retracement level of the downward move from the $3,850 swing high to $3,681 low. It seems like the bears are active near the $3,750 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. The next major resistance is near the $3,785 level. It is near the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the downward move from the $3,850 swing high to $3,681 low. Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com A clear upside break above the $3,785 level could pump the price towards $3,850. Any more gains could send the price towards the $4,000 level. The next main resistance is near the $4,200 level. Downside Break in ETH? If ethereum fails to start a fresh increase above the $3,750 level, it could continue to move down. An initial support on the downside is near the $3,700 level. The first key support is now forming near the $3,680 level. A downside break below the $3,680 level might spark a sharp decline in the near term. The next major support is near the $3,620 level. Technical Indicators Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is now losing pace in the bearish zone. Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is below the 50 level. Major Support Level – $3,680 Major Resistance Level – $3,750
What’s the better long term investment? I have Jade on cdc, so can get staking apy’s of 6.5% for ETH and 12% for MATIC. submitted by /u/InstaMastery [link] [comments]
A little more than two months ago, Taproot went live. What does the biggest update to the Bitcoin network in years bring to the table? How can it help the increasingly popular Lightning Network? That’s exactly what the article we’re about to summarize is about. It starts by informing us that “Bitcoin even has a scripting language,” and that it’s called Script. Related Reading | Number Of Bitcoin Lightning Network Nodes Jumps 23% In Three Months But before we get into that, what is Taproot? “Taproot is a combination of three Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) that enhance this scripting infrastructure: BIP340 – Schnorr, BIP341- Taproot and BIP342 – Tapscript. The key of Taproot that unlocks all the others is the introduction of Schnorr Signatures, which allow for key and signature aggregation. This means that multiple parties are able combine their keys to a single public key, thereby allowing them to sign a single message.” It’s important to know that Taproot won’t allow “fully expressive” or “Turing complete” contracts like in Ethereum and all its related chains. Nor are those kinds of contracts a priority for the Bitcoin network, as our sister site Bitcoinist points out. Also, to curb our expectations, let’s read what Tales From The Crypt podcast’s host Marty Bent warned us about in his newsletter: “It is important to understand that these benefits aren’t going to be immediate. They are going to come to market slowly over time as the software gets implemented into wallets and other services. Many are expecting Taproot to get activated over the weekend and all its potential benefits to be realized immediately. This is simply not the case and it is important that this fact is understood.” Ok, let’s get into the meat and potatoes. How Does Taproot Help The Lightning Network? First of all, every Lightning channel consists of “2 of 2 multisigs”. So, a first benefit of being “able combine their keys to a single public key” is that “we have lighter transactions and therefore cheaper channel openings”. Not only that but “signature aggregation also offers enhanced privacy since its contents are indistinguishable from a single-signature transaction.” To clear up how does this benefit privacy, let’s quote the Binance Academy: “Spending Bitcoin using Taproot could make a transaction in a Lightning Network channel, a peer-to-peer transaction, or a sophisticated smart contract become indistinguishable. Anyone monitoring one of these transactions would see nothing but a peer-to-peer transaction. It’s worth noting, though, that this doesn’t change the fact that the wallets of the initial sender and final recipient will be exposed.” However, this is not quite true… yet. The Voltage article clarifies, “Does this mean that lightning channels are now unidentifiable on the blockchain? Well, the answer is ‘yes’ for private channels and ‘not quite yet’ for public channels.” BTC price chart for 01/04/2021 on Gemini | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com Private And Public Lightning Network Channels What’s the problem? Well, the network doesn’t announce the creation of private channels. The public ones, on the other hand: “Unfortunately, even if we do hide the channel openings on the blockchain, the current specification of the lightning protocol requires nodes to broadcast the details of the funding transactions when announcing their channels. This might seem counterintuitive at first, but it’s also an elegant way to prevent nodes spamming the network with fake channels.” Related Reading | How Big Is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network? The Answer Will Surprise You Also, let’s take into account that surveillance firm Chainalysis already announced a Lightning Network-related service. We should assume there are “sybil nodes surveilling the network”. And that “With enough hostile nodes” a bad actor could paint “a fairly detailed picture of the flow of funds”. Well, Taproot has an elegant solution for that: “Taproot’s introduction of Schnorr signatures paves the way for a type of smart contract called Point Time Locked Contracts (PTLCs). PTLCs operate in the same manner as HTLCs by allowing payments to be identified by nodes, but PTLCs come with a handy feature of being able to randomize its identifier with each hop thereby making it impossible for nodes to correlate the traffic of sending and receiving nodes.” Understand that “Taproot is a door that opens many other doors”. It’s a new toolkit with which developers all over the world will create new features and improvements. The info this article contains is just the beginning, the low-hanging fruit that we can see from our advantage point. Remember what Marty Bent said, “these benefits aren’t going to be immediate.” The Taproot-enabled stage of Bitcoin is just starting. Featured Image by Cooper Baumgartner on Unsplash | Charts by TradingView
Data shows that OpenSea has generated more than $700 million in sales so far this year putting the NFT marketplace on track for another record month.
The advent of the internet laid the foundation for eCommerce, but it currently utilises the centralised financial system for payments. With the proliferation in the use cases of crypto and DeFi, it won’t be wrong to expect that crypto projects will tap into eCommerce to create a new shopping model that benefits all stakeholders. For instance, blockchain can integrate eCommerce applications seamlessly with DeFi mechanisms that negate the high interest charged by legacy financial services. Doing this can also allow users to benefit from more personalisation since they can be actively involved in governance decisions that affect the quality of products and services available on the network. @Pay, a decentralised global platform creating payment solutions for shoppers, merchants, and marketplaces, aims to make such an eCommerce network. @Pay, Shop, Save and Get Rewards @Pay is a first-of-its-kind DeFi platform that integrates blockchain and smart contract technology with a Buy Now Pay Later mechanism. Through BNPL, @Pay users can make repayments in four tranches over three months without being charged interest or late fees. This will be applicable across online and in-store purchases of products from the platform’s list of onboarded merchants. When users complete their repayments within the stipulated time, they are eligible to receive @Pay governance tokens, the native token of the @Pay platform, programmed to perform several critical utilities for users. Users can use @Pay tokens to increase their credit limit, purchase products and services from @Pay merchants in the marketplace, and vote on critical decisions that can shape the platform’s future. Upon registering on the platform, approved users are immediately provided with a credit line of $250 that they can increase later with the @Pay governance token. For example, if a user earns 20 @Pay tokens, they can exceed their credit limit to $1200 worth of purchases. This business model, based on the concept of BNPL, enables the platform to act as a fiat-to-crypto bridge between merchants and users. Additionally, the platform has developed a staking mechanism where users can stake approved cryptocurrencies like stablecoins USDT and USDC. Stakers will earn a variable yield. Stable coin stakers capture a yield based on the revenues generated over the staking period. @Pay has created a synergistic mechanism to ensure that users are rewarded for participating in the network’s governance and staking. This increases the ability for users to upgrade their transaction limits over time and gain rewards for responsible financial behaviour while purchasing products. The same ethos is also followed for onboarding merchants who want to tap into the benefits provided by DeFi while using blockchain to develop one-on-one relationships with their customers. Shopping Redefined With increasing competition among businesses in all industries, every innovation that creates more value to the end-user becomes a competitive advantage. By incorporating a DeFi layer for eCommerce via BNPL, @Pay stands to redefine the shopping experience by rewarding good financial behaviour. This makes the business sustainable and resilient, owing to the user’s increased propensity to contribute to the network’s long-term well-being.
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The founder of FTX exchange thinks the crypto industry will enjoy an increased rate of institutional adoption as regulatory clarity improves around the world.
