A new iteration of the Ethereum blockchain called 'Phase Zero' has brought up a lot of positive altcoin news in the headlines today. As the news show, the next Ethereum blockchain iteration (which is dubbed Ethereum 2.0) may see a partial launch as early as January 2020. First proposed by the Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake in a bi-weekly coordination call between the Ethereum 2.0 developers, the date which was suggested for the next Ethereum blockchain was raised after affirming that a code freeze over the first iteration of Ethereum 2.0, called Phase Zero, was "on track" for June 30.

“We still have quite a bit of time before the end of 2019 so I think looking at a target genesis date towards end of 2019 could be realistic. One thing that could work well is the 3rd of January 2020,” Drake noted during the call.

Still, the coming altcoin news show that January 3rd 2020 is not a date that is set in stone - in spite of the reports which show the contrary. According to a fellow Ethereum Foundation researcher named Danny Ryan, the proposed date has not been finalized and additional work on testing the Ethereum 2.0 will factor in such a decision.

“Although it is feasible, the client teams are not yet ready to commit to a date, especially considering we haven’t entered into multi-client testnets yet. With each phase of development there are plenty of unknowns so we will just keep … tackling them as they come," Ryan stressed.

The next Ethereum blockchain iteration was observed from many angles. The developers spoke more deeply to the requirements needed for a stable launch. Then, Drake highlighted that researchers are currently targeting a minimum amount of 2 million ETH to be staked on the Ethereum 2.0 network. This, as many best cryptocurrency news sites shared, would mean that the re-vamped ETH blockchain would be launching with over $500 million in ETH locked by prospective Ethereum 2.0 validators who would have the role of miners on the current Ethereum blockchain. Even though the timeline for the next Ethereum blockchain iteration is not yet finalized, past experience suggest that a mainnet launch in January 2020 is within reach for many of the developers and researchers.

Crypto stamp collectibles are now available by the Austrian Post Office powered by the Ethereum Blockchain as a limited edition and we read more about it in the latest cryptocurrency news. There will be a limited 150,000 units of crypto stamp collectibles of five different stamps: black, blue, red, yellow and black. The stamps will allow the owners to use a physical stamp and can later save its image in their wallets. According to a Reddit user, the distribution is as follows: 1,500 red stamps, 10,000 yellow stamps, 20,000 blue stamps, 40,000 green stamps, and 78,500 black stamps. The stamps retail for 6.90 Euro which means that the project will bring up to $1 million in revenue. The ‘’Crypto Stamp’’ is the first use case for non-fungible tokens which are launched by the government making it a milestone. The major success will help to determine the future for NFTs which can now be spread across multiple Ethereum token standards. The recently completed ERC-1155 enables the developers to issue cheaper fungible and non-fungible tokens. The stamps will use the Ethereum’s first NFT standard the ERC-721. The standard was invented by Enjin’s Witek Radomski and can be described as a hybrid of ERC-2- and ERC-721. The standard was very important to Enjin who aims to facilitate a gaming marketplace and development tools for everyone that builds games on the ETH blockchain. As reported in the previous coming altcoin news, the Austrian crypto stamps show a slight glimpse of the future of the digital property. The use case is pretty new compared to the types of things that you can use your blockchain wallet in the future. One day it may be possible to prove the ownership of a car or a right of any kind. The crypto community asks the question: how will this work? Most likely the blockchain will handle all the given challenges the world has to throw at it. The permission-less blockchain requires a significant amount of resources to secure and run. Therefore, the future most likely holds multiple blockchains with many people using crypto wallets to enable them to connect to all the most popular ones.

A bank based in Warsaw named Alior Bank has decided to step up and use the public Ethereum blockchain. The Polish bank will use the public blockchain to authenticate its client's documents, as a new report by Forbes posted in the latest cryptocurrency news shared on June 17. The report also notes that with the Ethereum blockchain, the Polish bank will serve clients in a better way. For example, when a client at Alior receives their document, they can now verify its authenticity by following a website link to its spot on the public blockchain. In other words, customers can verify that the document in question was in fact issued - in the exact wording provided - when the bank claims. The blockchain technology lead at the Polish Bank Alior, Piotr Adamczyk, explained:

“We know exactly in which block of Ethereum the document with a given hash is published. If we know the block number, we also know the timestamp [...] We know that the document was published some time ago and hasn’t been changed in that time [if the hash stored on the blockchain is identical to the hash calculated from the document], so we can prove it hasn’t been replaced on our servers.”

Meanwhile, the best cryptocurrency news sites show that Alior has reportedly developed the blockchain solution in response to the changing regulations in Poland, where the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection in 2017 ruled that website pages do not constitute a "durable medium" necessary for issuing the customer documents. Then, the Polish bank came up with a blockchain solution that provides online documentation through a suitably durable medium. The management at Alior also said that it is the first bank to use a public (as opposed to a private) blockchain for its customer service. The blockchain strategy lead, Tomasz Sienicki, was also featured in the altcoin news for stating:

“We want people to verify that we did everything right and we don’t conceal anything. If we say the documents are actually verified and authentic, everybody can check it and confirm [...] That’s not possible using a private blockchain.”

All of this proves that the Ethereum blockchain is still in demand as one of the most popular solutions out there. On another note, it proves that the Polish bank Alior is keeping up to date with new technologies and knows how to implement them.  

Google Cloud Services now support Ethereum smart contracts and the company is even expending resources to learn how the smart contract platform works. In today’s coming altcoin news we read more about how the people can integrate with the Google services and the smart contracts platform. None of the major tech companies want to miss out on the blockchain race but Google has been really quiet on the issue. The company makes billions by selling ads for its dominant search engine but it did mention that they had to learn how the Ethereum blockchain might work in the cloud environment. Google aims to enable its clients to operate on the ethereum blockchain and expand its services even more. The company is also looking at hybrid cloud-blockchain solutions with the help of Ethereum. Companies like Microsoft and Google are already providing blockchain services for the tech companies so the goal is to maintain clients in the ever-changing landscape. Most of the companies choose Google and Amazon depending on their needs since they both made efforts to integrate blockchain services but it seems like Microsoft is leading the way. Google integrated Chainlink and described:

 “Participants in prediction marketplaces allocate capital to speculate on future events in general. One area of intense interest is which smart contract platform will predominate because, being networks ecosystems, their value will follow a power law (i.e. winner-take-all) distribution. There are many differing opinions about which platform will succeed, as well as how success can be quantified.”

The reports in the latest cryptocurrency news explain how smart contracts can be helpful for these tech giants and how Google’s services can be used in these tech giants. Google Cloud Services will apply hybrid applications will be built on the cloud infrastructure using the blockchain technology. While Google has yet to follow the path of Telegram and Facebook and announce some broader blockchain integration, they do however understand the importance of helping companies who need the blockchain. The mainstream service providers that offer blockchain services is the best way to mass crypto adoption. When the smaller companies find out that they have easy access to blockchain services, they are most likely to consider the technology and integrate some form of the decentralized ledger technology.