Serenity Now! 2018 was a tumultuous year for Ethereum, as the leading blockchain smart contract platform went through both impressive growth and extended stagnation. ICOs were the major driver of volatility earlier in the year, with projects raising on Ethereum in order to fund their development. As the year went on, the ICO market slowed
If you’ve been following our social media, you’d have seen our optimism about the development of the Bitcoin Lightning network. Back in June, we released an article summarising the functionality and the current state of Lightning, but the progress in volume and technology since has been nothing short of remarkable. Amongst all the ongoing drama in
Why regulators are not avant-garde IMF Chief Christine Lagarde gave a speech last week at the Singapore Fintech Festival that was based around digital currencies. Her speech followed a well trodden path for regulators views on digital currency, where the benefits of decentralised currencies are dismissed or outright ignored for the purposes of pushing the
The Wright Way? In what has been a relatively flat period for the rest of the market, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has been at the centre of an increasingly controversial hard fork debate. The division of the community and subsequent development from that has been an incredibly interesting case study in how decentralised protocols deal with decision
One of the major characteristics driving innovation in blockchain is the prevalence of open source projects. Making protocol code accessible to community developers has seen massive acceleration in the technological development of networks. Whilst this system may be good for the development and evolution of protocol technology, it hasn’t been able to facilitate the creation
A key driver of liquidity and value in the blockchain technology space is the development of interchain operability. With so many powerful blockchains being developed and deployed for different use cases, the potential for a bridging system that efficiently connects blockchains together is massive. We will provide a quick overview of what technologies exist now,
Weapon’s Grade Privacy A recent hard fork in the privacy network Monero has seen the implementation of its Bulletproof Update. The update has generated a lot of interest in the Monero community, as it provides a clear improvement in the scalability of the network. We will unpack the technical portion of the update, and evaluate what it
You may have seen a recent announcement regarding the launch of Blockstream’s new Protocol called “Liquid”. In development since 2015, the Liquid Protocol represents part of a paradigm shift in blockchain. With major networks experiencing scalability and efficiency issues, developers and investors have looked to the potential of layer-2 sidechain based solutions in order to improve usability
One of the fundamental aspects of blockchain design is the development of blockchain governance mechanisms. Blockchain governance, in simple terms, is the mechanism by which design changes are enacted on a blockchain. A governance system which encourages the ability to adapt and evolve to change is key in a blockchain that aims to be successful
