Blockchain News

Microsoft Ditches The Mining In Its New Ethereum Blockchain Product

Published

7 months ago

August 9, 2018

Stefan

Microsoft has introduced us with a new Blockchain product that basically works as a Service or BaaS, which helps business in various industries to utilize an instance of Ethereum especially made for enterprises.

Ethereum Proof-of-Authority makes possible for enterprises to create and build applications on the Ethereum blockchain that doesn’t use the Proof-of-Work algorithm which means it doesn’t require for mining. This is extremely important because if an algorithm doesn’t require mining it means that is more efficient and better for networks in which there are hundreds of participants that do not trust each other.

PoW is maybe great for open networks that are anonymous but in private ones, this mechanism combined with ether has no real value. This means that all the participants on the blockchain that one enterprise will use, are known, governance would be separated from the network operation. The Proof-of-Authority algorithm has its own unique built-in dApp called the Governance dApp. This dApp enables its members to have authority over the network or to be free to delegate their power to vote on other participants. They can also delegate other nodes to vote if primary nodes go offline just to make sure that the consensus participation will be maintained.

Blockchains that will use this new consensus algorithm can be set up in right under 5 minutes and enterprises will have a single-click DLT solution. Microsoft also gives support for smart contracts that are built with the Parity WebAssembly toolkit, which is great for developers to write contracts in programming languages such as C, C++ that are already Ethereum’s primary programming languages.

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Stefan

Stefan has been a Bitcoin Specialist for over 5 years. Providing daily news and updates for DC Forecasts.

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Blockchain News

Russian State Duma To Review Crypto Regulation: Preparing For Oil-Backed Crypto

Our DC Forecasts crypto news site has always been active on the field of cryptocurrency regulation. Right now, the latest news show that the Russian State Duma (which is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia) is planning to review and adopt new regulation efforts. It all started with the former Energy Minister Igor Yusifov who proposed an oil-backed crypto as the financial outlet Rambler reported on February 21st. The reports mention that the head of the Energia investment-focused corporation also has some tangible prospects for proposing an oil-backed cryptocurrency. The construction of the project's roadmap is almost at the final stage. In one interview, Yusifov said the introduction of a crypto settlement system on the energy market could allow for the avoidance of costs associated with the use of not-backed-up currencies and their fluctuations of the exchange rates. He also cites that the savings on currency exchange commissions and trade restrictions as other examples of advantages that the system could bring. Furthermore, Yusufov said that the blockchain would be used to track and verify every barrel of oil along the entire chain with no additional costs. The former head of the Federal Securities Commission of Russia, Igor Kostikov, suggested that not only oil and gas could be connected to it - but any exchangeable resource in general.

“Perhaps the oil-backed cryptocurrency will be the pioneering project that will create a reliable structure for the cryptographic market as a whole," he concluded.

Blockchain News

Fidelity Investments Adopts Lighting Torch

In the latest crypto news, we see the financial derivatives giant Fidelity Investments has officially received and passed on the Lighting Tech, in an official tweet that was sent by the company this February 22nd. For those of you who don't know, the Lighting Torch is a blockchain solution that started when the Twitter user and Bitcoin enthusiast Hodlonaut first sent 10,000 satoshis (the smallest bits of Bitcoin) to another Lighting user who adopted another 10,000 satoshis and passed it on. Fidelity passed this solution to the Harvard School Blockchain & Crypto Club in the wake of the upcoming dedicated conference. Before this, the torch was held by the 88-year old grandma of another crypto enthusiasts and the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, who held it at the beginning of the current month. The Lighting Network is the mother protocol that works as a second layer on top of a blockchain. According to many entusiasts, it is a potential fix to Bitcoin's scaling problem. Fidelity now manages over $7.2 trillion in client assets after in October last year, it announced the launch of a new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, that targets institutional crypto assets and investors.

Blockchain News

New Privacy Mechanism For ETH Smart Contracts Developed By Stanford Researchers

Stanford University researchers are in our blockchain news today after partnering with VISA research to develop a privacy mechanism for ETH smart contracts according to a published paper on the university’s applied cryptography group website. The paper notes that the researches created a fully-decentralized mechanism that is confidentially called ‘’Zether’’. The developers developed a new smart contract that can be executed by other smart contracts or individually and at the same time is able to maintain the account balances encrypted. The authors of the paper claim that Zether transactions are confidential and one transaction costs about $1.51. Users will be able to lock funds in the account to the smart contract and according to the report:

“We describe an extension to Zether that can also hide the sender and receiver involved in a transaction among a group of users chosen by the sender. Though the overhead associated with anonymity scales linearly with the size of the group, no trusted set-up is needed and no changes to the underlying smart contract platform are required.”

The report specifies that the Zether contract will never transfer funds without checking a transfer proof in order to prevent illegal transfers. This new design makes sure that the security of Zether depends on itself and not on third-parties or outside smart contracts. All of the privacy coins that provide users with a higher level of anonymity are still receiving mixed feelings from the community. For example, Charlie Lee declared he is focused on making Litecoin more fungible and private and to implement confidential transactions sometime in 2019.

Altcoin News

Two Ohio-Based Companies Officially Paid Taxes With Cryptocurrency

Two companies based in Ohio, United States, have officially paid their taxes using cryptocurrencies according to the State Treasurer Robert Sprague’s announcement on a forum that we are reading more into in today’s crypto news. Ohio is the first state to allow paying taxes with cryptocurrency since November 2018. Sprague explained that the Treasury has collected only two tax payments in cryptocurrency but he didn’t say the amount of the paid taxes. He made clear that the Ohio State Treasury doesn’t manage the cryptocurrencies themselves and they do not accept any other currency than the US dollar explaining that the crypto tax payments are conducted to a specialized crypto platform:

“We will never accept won or renminbi or francs or cryptocurrency, or any other currency. You have to relieve your debts to the state of Ohio with U.S. dollars. That’s what we’re currently accepting. This platform just allows for that exchange, basically before that debt is settled to the state of Ohio.”

Sprague pointed out that the treasury is reviewing how the program can be expanded and they are looking into the potential risks that can come up by using this method of tax payments. Ohio is working hard to attract blockchain-related businesses to the state. The state has already passed a law allowing businesses to pay taxes in crypto but the State Treasurer Josh Mandel stated that the legislation ‘’pants a flag’’ in Ohio regarding cryptocurrency adoption. Two days ago, the County Auditors’ Association of Ohio announced the gathering of a group that will work to explore the benefits of blockchain in real estate and transfer of land titles.