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Why everybody wants Proof-of-Stake?

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Without going into too much details, since anyone can create a block in a public blockchain network, there needs to be a way that everyone on the blockchain can reach consensus, deciding together what block accurately represents recent transactions across the network. This is a challenging problem to get so many users agree on the current state of the blockchain even though they don't trust each other or any central authority. Today there are two types of consensus protocols used in the blockchain networks: proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS). Other options are suggested (like proof-of-activity or proof-of-burn ), none of them implemented. So, let’s see if the rising PoS’s advantages over PoW are decisive. We will look over the reasons why people want to execute a proof-of-stake and what the primitive version of this consensus algorithm looked like. It is surprising, why no one has not yet managed to execute a good PoS (which attacks on existing solutions do we...

Puzzling out Upcoming Hard Forks

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One may think of a hard fork as a possible permanent divergence of a blockchain that might result in splitting a chain into two, thus producing an extra new coin for every existing coin. We have broken hard forks down in our previous publication , so you can refer there to get more information and also learn about a Bitcoin hard forks, which had already changed the blockchain, and one – SegWit2x – that never happened , for better or worse – we’ll never know. The organizers of the SegWit2x hard fork unexpectedly decided to suspend their plans. In an email, Mike Belshe , the CEO and co-founder of BitGo, explained the decision not to move forward. “Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean block size upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of SegWit2x.” In other words, in order to keep the community together, SegWit2x backers have decid...

ICO regulation: Global trends

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The year of 2017 has been namely the year of ICOs. This innovative form of financing involves issuing a digital token to early contributors of a (usually) blockchain-based project in exchange for cryptocurrency. ICO projects have raised over $2 bn   since the start of the year. This figure even   surpasses that of traditional VC funding of bitcoin and blockchain startups! Obviously, ICO is a genuine innovation with long-term potential, but the industry is currently experiencing growing pains. One of the reasons why ICO has become such a popular method of funding is because it was entirely unregulated until this summer. Anyone with sufficient technical knowledge could launch his or her own startup. For a long time, the legal status and necessary procedures of ICOs have not been determined in any country in the world. While offering more freedom to entrepreneurs and backers, at the same time this position increased doubts of ICO’s reliability and security level. Actuall...