Ethereum-based yearn.finance and its governance token YFI evolved into a major DeFi player.

Yearn.finance's native governance token, YFI, is now the second-biggest decentralized finance (DeFi) coin in the cryptocurrency market. Its market capitalization has surpassed $1.1 billion just one and a half months after its launch.

Four major components contributed to the rapid success of yearn.finance: unique supply, an active community, a respected developer, and innovative products.

Unique Supply, No Premine, Decentralized

The process of yearn.finances launch garnered the attention of many DeFi enthusiasts since the beginning.

Andrew Cronje, the main developer behind yearn.finance, rebranded, and relaunched iearn.finance with a suite of products. Cronje released YFI with no premine, a fixed supply of just 30,000 tokens, and no founder reward.

The transparent and decentralized launch of yearn.finance, which also gives YFI token holders all the governance rights, made the DeFi protocol unique.

The lead developer behind it, Andre Cronje, decided that he would create a $YFI token, and with that pass over control/governance of the entire yearn.finance suite of tools. Despite having the power to give himself a pre-mine or founder reward, he elected instead to keep zero tokens for himself, Daryl Lau, a contributor to Deribit Insights, explained.

A part of the intrigue behind YFI was its token. YFI has a fixed supply of 30,000, which led to the price of each individual token surpassing that of Bitcoin. But, in terms of market capitalization, even at a price point of around $38,300, its market cap is less than $1.2 billion. In contrast, the market cap of Bitcoin is at $216 billion.

The price chart of YFI, the native governance token of yearn.finance.

Respected Developer, Fast Shipping Speed

Cronje, despite receiving no major financial incentives from the YFI launch, has consistently shipped out new DeFi-related products.

Most recently, as an example, yearn.finance announced the launch of yinsure.finance.Yinsure will provide insurance coverage to DeFi users.

The developer has collaborated with various top developers and executives in the cryptocurrency industry. On August 28, Cronje hinted at a collaborative project with Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, one of the largest derivatives exchanges in the cryptocurrency sector. Bankman-Fried is also the chief executive of Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading firm and OTC desk.

Guess the cat is out of the bag, but just so that there is some expectation management, this is a long roadmap that we are working on, so it won't be anything anytime soon. But there will be something very sexy in the future, Cronje said.

The confluence of a low and unique supply model, a transparent launch, and an active developer eventually led yearn.finance to evolve into one of the largest DeFi protocols across various metrics.

According to data from DefiPulse, there is more than $790 million in total value locked in the yearn.finance protocol. It trails just behind Synthetix, Aave, and Maker.

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Yearn.Finance: How Ethereum's DeFi Darling YFI Reached $1 Billion In 2 Months - Forbes

In summary:

Crypto analyst Timothy Peterson of Cane Island Alternative Advisors has shared a densely packed price analysis of XRP. According to Mr. Peterson, XRP may never reach the $1 value let alone $10. He provides two reasons why XRPs future value looks stagnant.

To begin with, be cites that XRP user growth is not there. Secondly, digital fiat is a threat to XRP. To sum up his analysis, he highlights that XRP is one of Grayscales smallest funds thus indicating there is no investor interest in the remittance coin.

Mr. Petersons analysis of XRP was made via the following Tweet.

XRPs role as a remittance coin is slowly losing traction as stablecoins have shot to the limelight thanks to DeFi and Tether being used as a fiat onramp in China. With respect to the latter, a recent report by Bitstamp and Coinmetrics explained how this has come to be.

stablecoins can serve as replacements for fiat onramps and provide liquidity for crypto investors who do not have a direct fiat gateway. This is especially important in countries that have relatively strict restrictions on cryptoasset trading, like China.

Past research has shown that USDT_ETH is redominantly transferred during Asian and European market hours.

In the case of Central Bank Digital Currencies, multiple countries and regions are exploring the use of CBDCs. They include China, England, Japan, Euro Zone, Sweden, and Switzerland. The United States has also been flirting with the idea as seen through the ongoing debate on how to best distribute stimulus checks/funds.

In an earlier analysis, it was concluded that crypto traders still prefer XRP when transferring funds between exchanges. This is due to the efficiency of the XRP ledger that allows for the quick and cheap transfer of funds between exchange wallets.

This means there are traders who know of XRPs capabilities. Therefore, by borrowing a leaf from other projects such as Tron (TRX), Ethereum (ETH) or even LINK, XRP needs additional real use cases. TRX, ETH and LINK have shot to glory through smart contracts that are powering the DeFi boom.

Therefore, the Flare Network might just be what the doctor ordered for XRP. The Flare Network plans to build a two-way bridge connecting XRP with the Ethereum network. Flare plans on integrating the Ethereum Virtual Machine to introduce smart contracts on the XRP network. The team has provided information on how this will work via the following tweet.

If the Flare network can succeed in bringing Smart Contracts to the XRP network, its user base will definitely increase as DeFi protocols will be created to capitalize on the global popularity of XRP. The digital asset is still the number 3 digital asset on Coinmarketcap hinting that it has an appeal to investors and traders.

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XRP May Never Reach $1 Let Alone $10 - Crypto Analyst - Ethereum World News

On Aug. 25, the creator of the well-known Uniswap tokens Antiample (XAMP) and Tokens of Babel (TOB) launched Boa. The Ether whales projects have seen growing interest within the niche Uniswap market.

A common theme among the projects of the pseudonymous developer Bill Drummond is unique supply systems. Through unorthodox mechanisms, like rebasing, the supply of XAMP and TOB decreases through coin burns over time.

TOB, as an example, is a token that uses rebases to decrease its supply but ensures the holder has a certain percentage of the total supply. Bill explains:

Rebases of TOB affect the number of tokens in your wallet, but not your overall share in the total supply. If you own 0.5% of the total supply, you will always own 0.5% of the total supply, regardless of the number of tokens in your wallet.

Similar to Bills other projects, Boa also has a special supply system that makes it a deflationary token. Atop the coin burns, Boa also applies a 1% tax on sellers, not buyers, which disincentivizes sellers.

On paper, Boa hit $100,000, but its circulating supply was below 50, and the supply goes down even further as time passes.

Hence, even at a price point of $100,000, the actual market cap of the token would remain below $5 million. Currently, according to Uniswap, the price of Boa is trading just below $51,000. That places the market capitalization of the token at around $2.5 million.

The price of Boa hits $100,000 on Uniswap. Source: Uniswap.info

The developer said he took inspiration from yearn.finances YFI, which recently achieved a peak of $16,668 due to its small supply of 50,000. The developer said:

People love YFI because it's so expensive. Number go up. Well, with Boa, there are only 50 tokens in circulation. Fifty. And with an incentive to burn, there will be even less and less to go around.

Bills projects and unique tokens are more considered as experiments with specialized supply systems. The cryptocurrency market has seen crypto assets with a fixed supply or an inflationary supply, but none with a continuously decreasing supply with special conditions.

For instance, the developer said Boa was made after the team unexpectedly found some issues with XAMP and TOB. Bill said sellers were attempting to take advantage of the supply conditions. The developer explained:

We studied how Antiample and Tokens of Babel were being traded in the community. There seemed to be activity centering around achieving or not achieving burns. This caused one side of traders to 'push' for a burn while the other side took advantage of this push and bought or sold against them. This created a conflict that was not expected.

Depending on how users perceive the emergence of specialized tokens, whether these Uniswap tokens benefit the cryptocurrency market over the long-term is debatable.

On the one hand, it allows a relative niche market and community to experiment with cryptocurrencies that operate based on conditional supply systems. But given their small market caps, experimental supply schemes and code, investing in such bleeding-edge digital tokens certainly carries major risks.

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Ethereum whale's uniswap token briefly hit $100K but theres a catch - Cointelegraph

A number of university researchers published a study that demystifies the fake deposit vulnerability in Ethereum-based smart contracts. The findings show that over 7,000 tokens worth more than $1 billion built on top of Ethereum are vulnerable to two types of attacks that exploit smart contracts.

Researchers from the University of Queensland, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Zhejiang University, and Peking University have published a paper that describes a vulnerability held by over 7,000 Ethereum-based tokens.

Essentially, the tokens created have verification methods that are subpar to ERC20 contracts released after 2017. The vulnerability allows the tokens codebase to be manipulated and hackers can easily steal millions of dollars by executing the fake deposit vulnerability.

What is worse is that there are more than 25 million smart contracts built using the Ethereum network and the researchers say only 0.36% of them have released their source code according to our dataset.

Moreover, the paper discusses that the tokens are vulnerable on both decentralized exchanges (dex) and centralized exchanges (cex) because they allow these coins to be swapped without comprehensive verification.

The team of researchers leveraged a tool called Deposafe, which allows the testing of a large number of ETH-based smart contracts.

In this work, we have systematically characterized the fake deposit vulnerability in Ethereum. Deposafe, an automated tool is proposed to perform the detection and verification of the vulnerability, the paper states.

We demonstrate the efficiency of Deposafe with experiments on a large number of smart contracts. Our observations reveal the prevalence of fake deposit vulnerability in the ERC20 smart contracts, the universitys scholars wrote.

The investigators found that 7,735 tokens can be influenced by the fake deposit vulnerability using a Type-I attack. While 7,716 tokens that are vulnerable to Type-II attack with a market cap of over $1 billion.

The number of holders and transactions would be 695K and 4.6 million respectively, the paper stresses.

The paper also identifies the dexes that have high active trading on a daily basis and could suffer from the fake deposit attack. Dex platforms listed in the researchers paper include Ether Delta, DDEX, and IDEX.

Centralized exchanges (cex) that fall victim to the fake deposit attack could lose substantial amounts of funds.

If a cex allows these tokens to be traded without comprehensive verification, the financial loss will be tremendous, the paper highlights.

The authors of the report say that the efforts they have provided can contribute to bring developer awareness and hopefully promote best operational practices across blockchains.

The listed cex platforms mentioned in the researchers study include companies like Kraken, Binance, and Coinbase. ERC20s who are allegedly vulnerable to the fake deposit exploit include BRC token, PWR token, BAT, HPT token, Cloudbric, RPL token, Moviecredits, and more.

What do you think about the fake deposit attack? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Over $1 Billion Ethereum-Based Tokens Vulnerable to 'Fake Deposit Exploit' - Bitcoin News

Ethereum is up over 2% and it broke the main $400 resistance against the US Dollar. ETH price is likely to accelerate higher once it clears the $408 resistance zone.

After a strong downside correction, Ethereum found support near the $370 level against the US Dollar. ETH price made two attempts to decline below the $370 support, but the bears failed to gain momentum.

As a result, ether started a strong increase and broke the $385 resistance. It opened the doors for more gains above the $395 pivot and resistance level. The price climbed above the 50% Fib retracement level of the downward move from the $411 high to $370 low.

More importantly, there was a break above a crucial bearish trend line with resistance near $395 on the 4-hours chart of ETH/USD. The pair is now trading nicely above the $400 resistance level, the 100 simple moving average (4-hours), and the 76.4% Fib retracement level of the downward move from the $411 high to $370 low.

An immediate resistance is near the $408 level (the last key breakdown zone). A successful close above the $408 level may perhaps open the doors for a larger increase in the near term.

The next major resistance for ether could be near the $420 level or the 1.236 Fib extension level of the downward move from the $411 high to $370 low. Any further gains could lead the price towards the $450 resistance.

If Ethereum fails to clear the $408 resistance zone, it might start a downside correction. An initial support is near the $395 level and the 100 simple moving average (4-hours).

The next major support is near the $390 level, below which the bears are likely to target a retest of the $370 support region in the near term.

Technical Indicators

4 hours MACD The MACD for ETH/USD is slowly moving in the bullish zone.

4 hours RSI The RSI for ETH/USD is now well above the 50 level.

Major Support Level $395

Major Resistance Level $408

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Ethereum Just Saw A Key Technical Breakout: Big Reaction From Bulls Imminent - NewsBTC

Quick take:

The Founder of Tron, Justin Sun, has made an announcement stating that he has made a bold decision that will benefit the communities of TRX, BitTorrent (BTT), Just (JST) and Wink (WIN). Mr. Sun made the announcement via the following tweet.

To note is that Justin Sun has had a reputation for making announcements about announcements.

However, Mr. Sun has always delivered to the Tron community members each time. Going back in time and during the Tron Mainnet launch, Justin Sun promised to launch it ahead of time and came through for the community. Other instances where he showcased his reliability include:

Given the current crypto-verse euphoria surrounding DeFi, high chances his decision will hover around the Decentralized Finance industry. This is based on his statement that the new adventure will involve TRX, BTT, JST and WIN. The only plausible way these four digital assets can benefit mutually is through some type of DeFi platform.To note is that this is based on pure speculation and not the actual decision by Justin Sun.

Also this week, a new version of the Klever App is now available for download on iOS and Android. The team at Klever made this announcement on the 28th of August and explained that the new iteration had new features, upgrades and improvements.

Klever stands out from other blockchain wallets in that it supports several chains as explained below.

Klever is a multi-chain wallet and fully integrated with the Bitcoin (BTC), Tron (TRX), and Ethereum (ETH) blockchains, with more chains to be added directly after launch.

Klever supports thousands of TRC10, TRC20 and ERC20 tokens in its wallet. An innovative new feature of Klever is that it allows the user to save BTC, ETH, and TRX contacts and addresses directly in the cloud.

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Justin Sun Promises the Tron (TRX) Community a New 'Adventure' - Ethereum World News

In the traditional world of finance, risk management is a key aspect of any investors skillset. In crypto, it seems that investors throw risk management out the window, depending on how you see it.

As polled multiple times by Bitcoin traders and others in the space, many on Crypto Twitter have locked up a majority of their net worth in digital tokens.

Even executives in the space suffer from this mindset, with one recently revealing he has basically all of his net worth locked up in digital assets, in a single cryptocurrency no less.

In a recent discussion on Twitter, Kain Warwick, the founder of the Synthetix protocol, discussed how interesting it was to see the crypto exchange FTX/crypto fund Alameda Research put millions of dollars worth of capital towards an unaudited protocol called SushiSwap.

Warwick noted that he personally wouldnt put more than one percent of his capital at such a risky protocol, which could be drained of its funds at any moment by the admins or by hackers.

FTXs CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried fired back (in a friendly way) by asking how much of Warwicks net worth is locked up in the native Ethereum-based token of Synthetix, the Synthetix Network Token (SNX).

The cryptocurrency pioneer remarked that currently >95% of his net worth is in SNX, though he noted that its hard for him to realistically diversify those funds because he is escrowed as a core contributor and escrowed via staking rewards for at least another year.

Although the exact sum of SNX he owns is unclear, ICODrops reports that the team of Synthetix will eventually have access to 20 percent of all coins in circulation. This in itself is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Although SNX has already seen a parabolic rally over the past few months, the coin may have further to rally.

In a recent podcast with Jason Choi of The Spartan Group, a crypto venture and hedge fund, Warwick noted that Synthetixs second-layer scaling solution is a matter of months away.

At current, the Synthetix exchange, which is at the core of the entire protocol, suffers from the drawbacks of the layer-one Ethereum blockchain. For instance, the gas cost right now is 300 Gwei, which is close to an all-time high, and the time for transactions to reasonably go through takes around 15 seconds to one minute.

This means that Synthetix cannot reasonably reach parity with centralized exchanges.

Though with the planned layer-two upgrade, Synthetix may begin to resemble the incumbents, driving demand for SNX and giving the cryptocurrency the ability to accrue value in the longer run.

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More than 95% of the net worth of Ethereum protocol Synthetixs founder is in SNX - CryptoSlate

Ethereum whales are on the rise, of late. This is because the second most valuable crypto continues to remain attractive to many investors and crypto-traders.

Data from an advanced crypto tracker, Whales Alert, showed that an ETH whale moved 62,134 ETH (24,079,813 USD) from an unknown wallet to another unknown wallet.

READ: Crypto: Celo gains over 50% within a day, as Coinbase announces its listing

Priced at $387 as at the time of this writing, the increased activity is a good long-term sign of things to come for Ethereum holders.

Ethereum 24-hour trading volume is $8,717 billion. ETH price is up 1.4% in the last 24 hours. It has a circulating supply of 110 million coins and a max supply of coins.

READ: Chainlink: Most valuable DeFi crypto is attracting investors again, gains over 8%

In the Ethereum world, traders or investors who own a large number of Ethereum are typically called whales. This means an Ethereum whale would be a single Ethereum address owning around 1,000 Ethereum or more.

Meanwhile, Ethereums daily transaction count neared an all-time high this week. Its ATH of 1.34 million was set on Jan 4, 2018, when Ethereum had an average market price of $1,042. Just last week, its transaction counts were within a shouting distance at 1.27 million.

READ ALSO: Two Ethereum Whales move 53,455 ETH, as DeFi tokens gain popularity

Nairametrics believes that the recent whale movements are triggered by the DeFi token phenomenon which uses the ERC-20 protocol for facilitating transactions. Ethereum 2.0, the long-term protocol upgrade of Ethers parent network, is set to launch its final testnet this month.

READ: Crypto: LEND gains more than 4000% in one year, set to rally higher

Ethereum is a cryptocurrency designed for decentralized applications and deployment of smart contracts, which are created and operated without any fraud, interruption, control or interference from a third party.

It is a decentralized system, fully independent, and is not under anybodys authority. It has no pivotal point, and its platform is connected to thousands of its users through their computing system around the world, which means its almost impossible for Ethereum to go offline.

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Ethereum whale transfers 62134 ETH as Ether remains above $385 - Nairametrics

TipRanks

If investing is entertaining, if your having fun, youre probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.The words are George Soros, and whatever you may think of his politics or activism, it is impossible to deny that he is one of the worlds greatest stock market investors. In some 30 years of active trading, his hedge fund saw an annualized average return exceeding 30%; it was one of the greatest runs of sustained profits in Wall Streets history. Soros ran his hedge fund behind the scenes, building a portfolio based on reliable dividends and solid returns.He has continued that strategy in recent years, after taking his firm private. Considering his aphorism, Good investing is boring,' its no wonder that Soros gravitates toward stocks with proven returns. His recent new positions simply bear this out, as Soros has bought into three stocks considerable return potential dividend yields of 4.5% or better and upside potential starting at 15%, according to the analyst community. With this in mind, we used TipRanks database to find out what else makes these picks so compelling.Blackstone Mortgage Trust (BXMT)The first Soros pick were looking at is Blackstone Mortgage Trust, a real estate investment trust. Its no wonder that Soros turned to BXMT if he was looking for dividend returns REITs are well known for their high-yield dividends. Blackstone, which holds a portfolio exceeding $167 billion in real property assets under management, focuses on collateral-based senior mortgage loans in the Western markets: North America, Europe, Australia.After a hard hit in Q1, due to the coronavirus crisis, Blackstones Q2 report gave investors a pleasant surprise by beating expectations on both revenues and EPS. While the top line came in at $107.1 million, or 1% above the forecast, the per-share earnings of 56 cents showed a stronger beat of 14%. In a display of confidence, the company has kept its dividend payment stable through the chaotic first half of the year. The 62-cent quarterly dividend was paid out in mid-July, and at $2.48 per share annualized, it offers investors a robust 10.3% return. Thats more than 5x the average found among S&P listed stocks and 4x the average found among peer companies in the financial sector.High returns are always an attraction for Soros, and he initiated his position in BXMT with 355,000 shares. At current share prices, these shares are worth more than $8.5 million.Analyst Donald Fandetti, covering BXMT from Wells Fargo, sees reason for optimism in Blackstones balance sheet, and what that means for the dividend. He writes, Reflecting a competitive advantage, BXMT was able to raise $607 mm of debt and equity capital in the quarter, boosting their liquidity to $1.3B (mostly cash). This puts them in a position to go on offense as high return opportunities begin to arise We believe BXMT will continue paying their quarterly dividend unless the economic situation deteriorates further Fandettis comments back up his Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating, and his $33 price target suggests a 37% upside for BXMT in the coming year. (To watch Fandettis track record, click here)Overall, Blackstone Mortgage has a Moderate Buy rating from the analyst consensus, with 5 recent reviews breaking down to 2 Buys and 3 Holds. Shares are selling for $23.79, and the $27.75 average price target implies a 15% upside potential. (See BXMT stock analysis on TipRanks)Truist Financial (TFC)Formed this past December, through a merger between SunTrust and BB&T, Truist is the eighth largest bank holding company in the US. Its main subsidiaries operate over 2,000 bank branches in 17 states, with company headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Like many banks with a reliance on brick-and-mortar retail branches, the companys shares saw heavy depreciation during the corona crisis, and have only partially recovered. Through the hard 1H20, Truist paid out its dividend regularly, at 45 cents per common share. The most recent declaration, from August 13 for a September 1 payment, continues that reliability. The 45-cent payment gives a yield of 4.5%, strong by any standard, and made better by the companys reliable payment history.Soros fund took the bank merger as an opportunity to buy into a larger bank with greater resources. The billionaires fund bought 498,669 shares of TFC, a holding now worth $19.74 million hardly chump change, even for George Soros, and an indication of a commitment to the new holding.Wall Street agrees that TFC is a buying proposition. Wolfe Research analyst Bill Carcache rates the stock an Outperform (i.e. Buy) rating, and his $52 price target indicated confidence in a 31% upside potential. (To watch Carcaches track record, click here)Backing his stance, the 5-star wrote, We see opportunity for TFC to drive CET1 closer to peer levels as we move beyond near-term merger execution and COVID-19 related risks. TFCs medium-term CET1 target of 10% appears conservative relative... By our math, each 50bp reduction in CET1 would translate into an ~90bp improvement to ROTCE.TFC's Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating on Truist comes from 7 reviews, including 5 Buys and 2 Holds. The average price target of $45.86 implies a 16% upside from the trading price of $39.12. (See TFC stock analysis at TipRanks)US Bancorp (USB)Last up on todays list is another bank holding company, US Bancorp. The parent company of US Bank, and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US Bancorp is the fifth largest of American banks, providing banking, investment, and mortgage services to individuals, small and medium business, and government entities, mainly in the Midwest and West. The company boasts over 3,000 branch locations and 4,800 ATM machines across is service area, and a market cap of $56 billion.The large network and deep pockets came in handy for the company during 1H20, when earnings dropped from $1.08 in Q4 to 41 cents in Q2. Revenues grew slightly during the same period, from $5.6 to $5.8 billion. The social shutdowns and consequent reduction in traffic at branches cut into day-to-day business. The second quarter saw business recover to a degree, with a 7% gain in total loans and an 11% gain in average deposit balances.The companys regular quarterly dividend was paid out in mid-July at 42 cents, the fourth quarter in a row at this rate. The $1.68 annualized payment gives the dividend a yield of 4.5%, and the companys 11-year history of regular dividend increases gives it a clear attraction for return-minded investors.Clearly, Soros would agree. His fund staked a position in USB by buying 614,294 shares of the stock. The holding is worth $22.85 million at the current share price. Turning to Wall Street, Chris Kotowski, a 4-star analyst with Oppenheimer, sees USB as well-adapted for the current 'coronavirus environment.USB remains the "flight to safety" name in the space as the diversified model is able to generate pre-provision earnings that could handily fund future potential reserve builds without diluting TBV UBS guided to a stable revenue and expense outlook. NII is expected to be flat in 3Q20 compared to 2Q20, mortgage banking could be up Y/Y but lower than 2Q20, and payment is trending up due to the gradual re-opening of economy. USB also expects non-interest expense to be stable in 3Q20 vs. 2Q20 and FY2020 tax rate of 15%," Kotowski opined.To this end, Kotowski rates USB shares an Outperform (i.e. Buy), which is supported by a $75 price target that implies an upside potential of 101% for the coming year. (To watch Kotowskis track record, click here)All in all, US Bancorp holds a Moderate Buy rating from the analyst consensus, based on 6 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell set in recent weeks. The stock is selling for $36.82, and the $44.40 average price target suggests it has room for 21% growth in the next 12 months. (See USB stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for dividend stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Safex Platinum to Offer Non-Ethereum Based Decentralized Finance - Yahoo Finance

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have stalled, but it seems that altcoins are once again popping off. A swath of digital assets in the top 100 have gained dozens of percent in the past 24 hours, with some managing to even double.

One such digital asset outperforming the market leaders is BZRX, the native token of the bZx Protocol. That cryptocurrency is up 30% in the past 24 hours, surmounting the value of $1.00 for the first time ever. BZRX, based on Ethereum, trades at $1.11 as of this articles writing.

The coin is up a lot in the past 24 hours due to a listing on Binance. Binance has rapidly ramped up its listing process over recent weeks due to it being a bull market. By NewsBTCs estimates, approximately two-dozen coins have been listed in the past month alone.

Coins listed by notable exchanges like Binance and Coinbase often lead to rallies in their price due to these exchanges often being these coins first source of real liquidity.

BZRX has been no exception.

Continued here:

Why This Ethereum-Based DeFi Coin Is Up 30% on the Day - NewsBTC

Darwins theory of natural selection, and by extension, the idiom Survival of the fittest, is incredibly apt when it comes to describing the digital asset industry. For long, Bitcoin was considered to be the only fit candidate in the crypto-ecosystem. Over the years, however, Ethereum has managed to carve out its own position of strength as well.

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Its credibility was highlighted by its recent price action after the crypto-asset did not suffer significant depreciation on the charts, despite a lot of bearish pressure. In fact, ETH hit back even harder, with the cryptocurrency registering a 7 percent move north over the past 24-hours, climbing up to $430.

The aforementioned incline felt like a statement of intent, one that brought the ETH at $500 narrative right back into the picture. So, what are the chances?

Ethereum Options riding high with the bulls

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If Ethereums derivatives traders had a direct say, bullish optimism would be written all over the walls. In fact, during the week when Ethereums price faced constant pressure from the bears, total ETH Options Open Interest managed to note consistently high levels.

Skews charts further indicated that the OI relative to the Put/Call ratio had dropped down to its lowest level in 3 months, an observation that suggested that a majority of the traders were expecting the price to go up.

Other than the derivatives market, Weiss Ratings also believes that most projects are now inclined towards connectivity with Ethereum.

Weiss further added that due to the presence of DeFi, Ethereum is rapidly becoming the most desired platform in crypto since the worlds largest altcoin platform has also established itself as a smart contracts platform.

Each of these factors has been attached to a lot of positivity lately, and each of them will eventually play a role in Ethereums price.

Is Ethereum at $500 a possibility soon?

Ethereum is eventually going to be worth over $500, but the question is how. Swing trading based on current volatility has been identified as a major catalyst, but it might not be desirable considering the fact that it leads to weak sustenance.

Let us get our facts straight. The last time Ethereum was valued at $500 was back on 19 June 2018. Simply put, over two years have passed since the crypto-asset registered trading at this range. Now, swing trading based on a short-burst of volatility may allow Ethereum to bridge the gap to $500 within a week, but that might not be ideal. From the attached chart, it can be observed that Ethereum consolidated between $422-$464 for a period of three weeks in late-2017, movement that later fueled ETHs strong rally above $500.

Now, if one were to take into account ETHs recent success at the $400-mark, it can be observed that consolidation has been key. So, rather than taking the short way out to $500 and account for pullback uncertainty, a resistance-by-resistance climb would be more beneficial for Ethereum.

The goal, after all, is to stay above $500, not touch it and come back to the present or lower price range.

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Ethereum's move to $500 Shortcuts aren't the way to go - Digital Market News

Ethereum 4 Hour Price Update

Updated August 31, 2020 01:36 AM GMT (09:36 PM EST)

Ethereum came into the current 4 hour candle up 0.4% ($1.69) from the open of the last 4 hour candle, marking the 6th straight candle it has gone up. Ethereum outperformed all 5 assets in the Top Cryptos asset class since the last 4 hour candle. Congrats to its holders!

Ethereum is up 7.59% ($30.25) since the previous day, marking the 3rd consecutive day an increase has occurred. As for how volume fared, yesterdays volume was up 61.05% from the previous day (Saturday), and up 11.83% from Sunday of the week before. Out of the 5 instruments in the Top Cryptos asset class, Ethereum ended up ranking 2nd for the day in terms of price change relative to the previous day. The daily price chart of Ethereum below illustrates.

Moving average crossovers are always interesting, so lets start there: Ethereum crossed above its 20 day moving average yesterday. The clearest trend exists on the 90 day timeframe, which shows price moving up over that time. Or to view things another way, note that out of the past 14 days Ethereums price has gone up 7 them.

Behold! Here are the top tweets related to Ethereum:

No matter what you think about $YFI, itll bring tremendous attention to #Ethereum as a whole.Really, it already is. Yes, because of token price.But once they learn what Yearn can do, and how it connects value across myriad DeFi apps, its going to blow uninitiated minds.

Im excited about the fair launches in Ethereum. Well continue to see many more of them become successful. Well also continue to see founders raise from VCs but likely the trend being much smaller rounds to get to launch with lower caps per investor which IMO is a good thing!

the regulators failed on every possible levelthey couldve created a compliant path for Reg A+s and Reg CFs on Ethereum and they just sat around and went after Kik and Telegram theyll be totally lost on DeFi, I dont think theyll know where to start, its way beyond them

As for a news story related to Ethereum getting some buzz:

Ethereum is a Dark Forest. A horror story. | by Dan Robinson | Aug, 2020 | Medium

When anyone calls the burn function on a Uniswap core contract, the contract measures its own liquidity token balance and burns it, giving the withdrawn tokens to the address specified by the caller.(This concept is also the inspiration for the Dark Forest game on the Ethereum testnet.) In the Ethereum mempool, these apex predators take the form of arbitrage bots. Arbitrage bots monitor pending transactions and attempt to exploit profitable opportunities created by them.In addition to burying the call as an internal transaction, we would split the transaction in two: a set transaction that activates our contract, and a get transaction that rescues the funds if the contract has been activated.This would be implemented as follows: If the attacker only tried executing the get transaction, it would revert without calling the burn function.We were hoping that by the time the attacker had executed both the set and get transactions in sequence to spot the internal call to pool.burn and frontrun us, our transactions would already be included.If we had spent more time on the scripts, tweaked the contracts (perhaps changing the Getter contract to do nothing instead of reverting if called before being activated), or even synced our own node to avoid using Infura, we probably would have been able to get the transactions into the same block.

Excerpt from:

Ethereum (ETH) Up $1.69 in Last 4 Hours, Moves Up For the 3rd Consecutive Day; Crosses 20 Day Moving Average - CFDTrading

Gabriel J. Shapiro, a US attorney focused on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), venture, governance, Infosec, and digital assets, is arguing that its pretty much pointless to be a lawyer in the crypto and blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) space.

He points out that professionals with computer programming or trading skills are able to make a lot of money or get a chance to explore their creative side. However, he claims that law is irrelevant to these people and argues that its also not relevant to crypto-related tech.

He acknowledges or understands how most lawyers either go native or become no-coiners, meaning they do not hold or invest in speculative cryptocurrencies but are actively involved in the DLT sector in other ways.

Shapiro notes that many young people ask him about a potential career in crypto law. He admits that it may be more appealing or interesting than other law, however, he questions whether people want to feel close to completely pointless in everything youre doing and make chump change while working for newly minted millionaires?

He notes that these developers or coders and investors are going to ask you (the lawyer) if x,y, z is illegal and yes its illegal and then theyre going to ask you if being outside the U.S. would helplike, its really just pointless. He suggests that teams should just operate anonymously, avoid fraudulent activities, keep away from VCs, and just do what they want.

He reveals:

Its a lot worse for me because my ability to delude myself into thinking that Ive discovered some weird loophole in the law that miraculously makes exactly what my client wants to do perfectly okay.I dont have that ability, which is either a + or depending on your point of view.

He adds:

Ive been very consistent since pretty much my first article in cryptothis tech is really an anti-law tech. If you dont get that your money probably depends on ite.g. you probably work in enterprise blockchain or youre Vlad Zamfir.

(Note: Vlad Zamfir is a highly-skilled Ethereum developer, mathematician, and has been interested in legal issues related to the crypto and blockchain space for a long time, based on his social media activity.)

He continues:

In all seriousness, to my fellow members of the cryptobar, on some level this is really just a weird protection racket, isnt it? Most of the advice for like a DeFi project would just be put a band-aid on your gunshot wound it might helpcant hurt.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as an extremely fast-growing area of finance. The entire ecosystem was valued at only $1 billion earlier this year. However, it has now grown to nearly $9 billion at the time of writing, and includes various so-called decentralized protocols for lending, asset management, and operating non-custodial crypto trading platforms (among other use cases).

Shapiro claims:

The regulators failed on every possible level. They couldve created a compliant path for Reg A+s and Reg CFs on Ethereum and they just sat around and went after Kik and Telegram. Theyll be totally lost on DeFi, I dont think theyll know where to start, its way beyond them.

Regulation A+ facilitates investment crowdfunding for up to $50 million. Both accredited and non-accredited investors may participate in securities offers.

Meanwhile, Reg CF (or Regulation Crowdfunding) is a securities exemption that allows small companies to raise up to $1.07 million in capital online. It recently had the best month ever regarding investor commitments at $23.2 million (as reported in July 2020).

Shapiro further claims that lawyers might just be content with getting paid to deal with these so-called DeFi projects and their never-ending issues (both hacks and scams and other technical problems).

He claims that lawyers may create some nonsense analysis, but if theres no law on the subject youre really just speculating, and theres really no law on the subjectsomeone will make it up later, probably 2 years from now.

The rest is here:

Regulators Couldve Created a Compliant Path for Reg A+ and Reg CFs on Ethereum, but they Failed, Crypto focused Lawyer Claims - Crowdfund Insider

In summary:

In their most recent market analysis, the team at Crypterium research explained to readers that Bitcoins weekly chart was showing serious signs of weakness and should not be ignored. According to the report, Bitcoins weekly RSI and Stochastic indicators are overbought and foreshadow a possible fall for BTC to $10k in the future.

At the same time, with a high probability, we can see the price of $10,000 per Bitcoin in the near future.

On the weekly timeframe, the RSI and Stochastic indicators are still in the overbought zone. In addition, candlestick patterns also indicate a trend reversal. All this foreshadows the imminent fall of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, and using Metcalfes law, the team explained that Bitcoins user base was decreasing and this was another warning sign that a move down was in the making.

In addition, we have big doubts about current and future growth. This is due to Metcalfes law, which says that the value of the network directly depends on the number of users

We see a large divergence. The price is growing much more actively than the network itself, which is not typical for global growth cycles.

Moreover, for Bitcoin, active addresses have always been a leading indicator. The price followed the activity, not the other way around. The opinion that the asset will grow first, and then the network activity will grow, does not pass the test in its 11 years of history.

The weekend is once again upon us, and with it, Bitcoins weekly close tomorrow, August 30th. Since the $11,600 support level was lost earlier this week, $11,200 will be the level to watch this weekend.

Additionally, and on the following day, August 31st, Bitcoins monthly close is also on the horizon. These back to back events will most definitely set the pace for Bitcoin in the month of September. A monthly close above $11,200 will be a second for Bitcoin. The last time the King of Crypto opened and closed a month above $11,200 was in December 2017.

To note is that Bitcoin opened the month of August above $11,300. Therefore, a close above $11,200 would provide some level of confidence for bulls.

More here:

Report: Bitcoin's (BTC) Weekly Chart Hints of a $10k Retest - Ethereum World News

In summary:

The crypto exchange of Bitfinex has officially switched to CoinGecko for all its crypto information widgets. This move was announced earlier this month by Bitfinexs CTO, Paolo Ardoino via the following tweet.

Bitfinex switching to CoinGecko came after Mr. Ardoino pointed out that Coinmarketcap only accounted for perpetual contracts belonging to specific exchanges. His observation was shared via twitter on the 15th of August and foreshadowed the move by Bitfinex to use CoinGecko exclusively.

Below is the tweet by Bitfinexs CTO making the observation about Coinmarketcap.

In addition to switching its crypto information widgets to CoinGecko, Bitfinex has had several news developments that might have gone unnoticed in the crypto-verse.

Following the listing of ChainLink (LINK)

Also to note, is that Bitfinex carried out a token sale of Fetch (FET) on the 27th of August. The token sale was open to all verified users of the trading platform with a total of 1.9 Million FET up for sale. The minimum investment allocation was 10 USDT with the maximum being 10,000 USDT.

Additionally, Bitfinex hit a new milestone by integrating the OMG network with a 3 Million USDT transaction. This comes after the parent company of Tether announced that it will be using the OMG Transport Network for USDT transactions.

Lastly, traders can now execute custom algorithmic orders and trading strategies using Bitfinexs Honey Framework. The exchange made the announcement of the new capability at the exchange via the following tweet.

Read more:

Bitfinex Switches all Crypto Information Widgets to CoinGecko - Ethereum World News

ConsenSys an industry-leading blockchain software company recently announced the acquisition of Quorum, an enterprise-variant of the Ethereum blockchain developed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM). And with the addition of Quorum, ConsenSys now offers a full range of products, services, and support for Quorum, thus accelerating the availability of features and capabilitiessuch as digital asset functionality and document management.

JPMorgan and ConsenSys are two leading organizations in Enterprise Ethereum and they have a long history of collaboration after leading the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, helping bring a Mainnet Ethereum client Hyperledger Besu to The Linux Foundation,and working together on industry applications built on Quorum like komgo and Covantis. And since the launching of Quorum in 2016, ConsenSys and JPMorgan have collaborated to make Ethereum the platform of choice for enterprises building secure and customizable business networks at scale.

ConsenSys is merging its existing protocol engineering roadmap with Quorum, leveraging the best of both codebases. And all Enterprise Ethereum protocol technology at ConsenSys will fall under the ConsenSys Quorum brand and developers will have the option to choose their underlying technology stack. Quorum will remain open source and become interoperable with ConsenSys other leading blockchain products like Codefis finance and commerce application suite. JP Morgan will be a customer of ConsenSys advanced features and services deployed on Quorum.

In addition to ConsenSys acquisition of the Quorum, JP Morgan made a strategic investment in ConsenSys to support its mission to help developers build next-generation networks and enable enterprises to launch more powerful financial infrastructure.

KEY QUOTES:

The creation of Quorum was a first for J.P. Morgan, both in terms of developing its own blockchain protocol, and open sourcing software for the developer community. Were incredibly proud of the usage of Quorum over the past few years and are excited to have ConsenSys as a partner to take the vision forward.

Umar Farooq, Global Head of Blockchain, J.P. Morgan

Even before the very first block on Ethereum was mined and ConsenSys was formed, weve collaborated with J.P. Morgan on Ethereum proofs of concept and production systems. We are enormously excited to onboard Quorum into the ConsenSys Enterprise Ethereum stack, and look forward to unifying our Hyperledger Besu-based Enterprise Ethereum client with Quorum, and supporting all of the Quorum installations globally. We look forward to continuing our multifaceted partnership with J.P. Morgan for many years and ushering in an era of enterprise and mainnet compatibility.

Joseph Lubin, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys and Co-creator of Ethereum

Here is the original post:

Why ConsenSys Is Buying The Quorum Platform From JPMorgan - Pulse 2.0

Open source blockchain computing platform

Ethereum Logo

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency platform by market capitalization, behind Bitcoin.[1][2] It is a decentralized open source blockchain featuring smart contract functionality. Ether is the cryptocurrency generated by Ethereum miners as a reward for computations performed to secure the blockchain.[3] Ethereum serves as the platform for over 260,000 different cryptocurrencies, including 47 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.[4][5]

Ethereum provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.[6] The virtual machine's instruction set, in contrast to others like Bitcoin Script, is Turing-complete. "Gas", an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.[6]

Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale that took place between July and August 2014.[6] The system then went live on 30 July 2015, with 72 million coins minted.[7][8] This accounts for about 65 percent of the total circulating supply in April 2020.[9][10][non-primary source needed]

In 2016, as a result of an exploitation of a flaw in The DAO project's smart contract software, and subsequent theft of $50 million worth of ether,[11] Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains. The new separate version became Ethereum (ETH) with the theft reversed,[12] and the original chain continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC).[13]

Ethereum is currently developing and planning to implement a series of upgrades called Ethereum 2.0.[14] Current specifications for Ethereum 2.0 include a transition to proof of stake and an increase in transaction throughput using sharding technology.[15][16]

Vitalik Buterin picked the name Ethereum after browsing Wikipedia articles about elements and science fiction, when he found the name, noting, "I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen; I suppose it was the fact that [it] sounded nice and it had the word 'ether', referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."[17]

Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin,[18] a programmer and co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications.[19][20] Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed the development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.[6]:88

Ethereum was announced at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, in January 2014.[17] During the same time as the conference, a group of people rented a house in Miami: Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio, a Torontonian who financed the project.[17] Di Iorio invited friend Joseph Lubin, who invited reporter Morgen Peck, to bear witness.[17] Six months later the founders met again in a house in Zug, Switzerland, where Buterin told the founders that the project would proceed as a non-profit. Hoskinson left the project at that time.[17]

Ethereum has an unusually long list of founders. Anthony Di Iorio wrote "Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin, Myself, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, & Amir Chetrit (the initial 5) in December 2013. Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, & Jeffrey Wilke were added in early 2014 as founders." Formal development of the Ethereum software project began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse).[21][22]The basic idea of putting executable smart contracts in the blockchain needed to be specified before the software could be implemented; this work was done by Gavin Wood, then chief technology officer, in the Ethereum Yellow Paper that specified the Ethereum Virtual Machine.[23]Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was created as well. Development was funded by an online public crowdsale during JulyAugust 2014, with the participants buying the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, Bitcoin.

While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions were also raised about its security and scalability.[19]

In 2019, an Ethereum foundation employee named Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government for presenting at a blockchain conference in North Korea.[24]

In March 2017, various blockchain start-ups, research groups, and Fortune 500 companies announced the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) with 30 founding members.[25] By May, the nonprofit organization had 116 enterprise membersincluding ConsenSys, CME Group, Cornell University's research group, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J. P. Morgan, Cooley LLP, Merck KGaA, DTCC, Deloitte, Accenture, Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, ING, and National Bank of Canada.[26][27][28] By July 2017, there were over 150 members in the alliance, including recent additions MasterCard, Cisco Systems, Sberbank and Scotiabank.[29][30]

Several codenamed prototypes of the Ethereum platform were developed by the Ethereum Foundation, as part of their Proof-of-Concept series, prior to the official launch of the Frontier network. "Olympic" was the last of these prototypes, and public beta pre-release. The Olympic network provided users with a bug bounty of 25,000 Ether for stress testing the limits of the Ethereum blockchain. "Frontier" marked the tentative experimental release of the Ethereum platform in July 2015.[31]

Since the initial launch, Ethereum has undergone several planned protocol upgrades, which are important changes affecting the underlying functionality and/or incentive structures of the platform.[32][non-primary source needed]

Protocol upgrades are accomplished by means of a hard fork.

The Ethereum Difficulty bomb is the difficulty of the blockchain mining algorithm puzzle which began increasing in November 2016, from block 200,000. The onset of the Difficulty Bomb is referred to as Ethereum's Ice Age, as the Ethereum network started the transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). A difficulty bomb was scheduled in February 2019 but was pushed back by developers.[33]

In 2016 a decentralized autonomous organization called The DAO, a set of smart contracts developed on the platform, raised a record US$150 million in a crowdsale to fund the project.[34] The DAO was exploited in June when US$50 million in Ether were taken by an unknown hacker.[35][36] The event sparked a debate in the crypto-community about whether Ethereum should perform a contentious "hard fork" to reappropriate the affected funds.[37] As a result of the dispute, the network split in two. Ethereum (the subject of this article) continued on the forked blockchain, while Ethereum Classic continued on the original blockchain.[38] The hard fork created a rivalry between the two networks.

After the hard fork related to The DAO, Ethereum subsequently forked twice in the fourth quarter of 2016 to deal with other attacks. By the end of November 2016, Ethereum had increased its DDoS protection, de-bloated the blockchain, and thwarted further spam attacks by hackers.[unbalanced opinion?][citation needed]

Development is underway for a major upgrade to the Ethereum platform, known as Ethereum 2.0.

The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade (also known as Serenity) is designed to be launched in three phases:

Ethereum 2.0 has five main design goals:

As with other cryptocurrencies, the validity of each Ether is provided by a blockchain, which is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.[41][42] By design, the blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.[43] Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum operates using accounts and balances in a manner called state transitions. This does not rely upon unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). The state denotes the current balances of all accounts and extra data. The state is not stored on the blockchain, it is stored in a separate Merkle Patricia tree. A cryptocurrency wallet stores the public and private "keys" or "addresses" which can be used to receive or spend ether. These can be generated through BIP 39 style mnemonics for a BIP 32 "HD Wallet". In Ethereum, this is unnecessary as it does not operate in a UTXO scheme. With the private key, it is possible to write in the blockchain, effectively making an Ether transaction.

To send the Ethereum value token Ether to an account, you need the Keccak-256 hash of the public key of that account. Ethereum accounts are pseudonymous in that they are not linked to individual persons, but rather to one or more specific addresses.

Ether is a fundamental token for operation of Ethereum, which thereby provides a public distributed ledger for transactions. It is used to pay for gas, a unit of computation used in transactions and other state transitions. Mistakenly, this currency is also referred to as Ethereum.

It is listed under the ticker symbol ETH and traded on cryptocurrency exchanges, and the Greek uppercase Xi character () is generally used for its currency symbol. It is also used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the Ethereum network.[44]

Ethereum addresses are composed of the prefix "0x", a common identifier for hexadecimal, concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash (big endian) of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so-called secp256k1, the same as Bitcoin). In hexadecimal, 2 digits represent a byte, meaning addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits. An example of an Ethereum address is 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however, they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce.[45] User accounts are indistinguishable from contract accounts given only an address for each and no blockchain data. Any valid Keccak-256 hash put into the described format is valid, even if it does not correspond to an account with a private key or a contract. This is unlike Bitcoin, which uses base58check to ensure that addresses are properly typed.

Ethereum is different from Bitcoin (the cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization as of August 2020) in several aspects:

The total supply of Ether was around 110.5 million as of 16 April 2020. In 2017, mining generated 9.2 million new ether, corresponding to a 10% increase in its total supply. Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG), which is a hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake scheme, and Casper Correct-By-Construction (CBC), a separate Proof of Stake design of Casper, are expected to reduce the inflation rate to between 0.5% to 2%.[citation needed] There is no currently implemented hard cap on the total supply of ETH.[46]

Ether can be traded by regular currency brokers, cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as many online cryptocurrency wallets.[47]

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the runtime environment for smart contracts in Ethereum. It is a 256-bit register stack, designed to run the same code exactly as intended. It is the fundamental consensus mechanism for Ethereum. The formal definition of the EVM is specified in the Ethereum Yellow Paper.[45][48] Ethereum Virtual Machines have been implemented in C++, C#, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Rust, Elixir, Erlang, and soon, WebAssembly (currently under development).

Ethereum's smart contracts are based on different computer languages, which developers use to program their own functionalities. Smart contracts are high-level programming abstractions that are compiled down to EVM bytecode and deployed to the Ethereum blockchain for execution. They can be written in Solidity (a language library with similarities to C and JavaScript), Serpent (similar to Python, but deprecated), LLL (a low-level Lisp-like language), and Mutan (Go-based, but deprecated). There is also a research-oriented language under development called Vyper (a strongly-typed Python-derived decidable language).

Smart contracts can be public, which opens up the possibility to prove functionality, e.g. self-contained provably fair casinos.[49]

One issue related to using smart contracts on a public blockchain is that bugs, including security holes, are visible to all but cannot be fixed quickly.[50] One example of this is the 17 June 2016 attack on The DAO, which could not be quickly stopped or reversed.[35]

There is ongoing research on how to use formal verification to express and prove non-trivial properties. A Microsoft Research report noted that writing solid smart contracts can be extremely difficult in practice, using The DAO hack to illustrate this problem. The report discussed tools that Microsoft had developed for verifying contracts, and noted that a large-scale analysis of published contracts is likely to uncover widespread vulnerabilities. The report also stated that it is possible to verify the equivalence of a Solidity program and the EVM code.[51]

Ethereum apps are written in one of seven different Turing-complete languages.[52] Developers use the language to create and publish applications which they know will run inside Ethereum. The stablecoins Tether and DAI [53], and the prediction market Augur are examples of applications that run on Ethereum.[54][55]

Many uses have been proposed for the Ethereum platform, including ones that are impossible or unfeasible.[56][44] Use case proposals have included finance, the internet-of-things, farm-to-table produce, electricity sourcing and pricing, and sports betting. Ethereum is (as of 2017) the leading blockchain platform for initial coin offering projects, with over 50% market share.[57]

Ethereum-based customized software and networks, independent from the public Ethereum chain, are being tested by enterprise software companies.[58] Interested parties include Microsoft, IBM, JPMorgan Chase,[44] Deloitte,[59] R3,[60] Innovate UK (cross-border payments prototype).[61] Barclays, UBS and Credit Suisse are experimenting with Ethereum.

Ethereum-based permissioned blockchain variants are used and being investigated for various projects.

In Ethereum all smart contracts are stored publicly on every node of the blockchain, which has costs.[66] Being a blockchain means it issecure by design[clarification needed]and is an example of a distributed computing system with highByzantine fault tolerance. The downside is that performance issues arise in that every node is calculating all the smart contracts in real time, resulting in lower speeds.[66] As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second.[66] In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second leading some to question the scalability of Ethereum.[67] On 19 December 2016, Ethereum exceeded one million transactions in a single day for the first time.[68]

Ethereum engineers have been working on sharding the calculations, and the next step (called Ethereum 2) was presented at Ethereum's Devcon 3 in November 2017.[69]

Ethereum's blockchain uses Merkle trees, for security reasons, to improve scalability, and to optimize transaction hashing.[70] As with any Merkle tree implementation, it allows for storage savings, set membership proofs (called "Merkle proofs"), and light client synchronization. The Ethereum network has at times faced congestion problems, for example, congestion occurred during late 2017 in relation to Cryptokitties.[71]

Decentralized Finance is a fast growing use case of Ethereum.[72] It offers traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies and governments control, such as money market funds which let users earn interest.[73] This economic model is based on supply and demand DeFi assets such as DAI, Compound, WBTC and others. There is still uncertainty of its future because of the lack of regulation.[74]

On social governance

Our governance is inherently social, people who are more connected in the community have more power, a kind of soft power.

Vlad Zamfir, Ethereum core developer, The New Yorker[17]

In October 2015,[75] a development governance was proposed as Ethereum Improvement Proposal, aka EIP, standardized on EIP-1.[76] The core development group and community were to gain consensus by a process regulated EIP.[citation needed]

Izabella Kaminska, the editor of FT Alphaville, pointed out in 2017 that criminals were using Ethereum to run Ponzi schemes and other forms of investment fraud.[77] The article was based on a paper from the University of Cagliari, which placed the number of Ethereum smart contracts which facilitate Ponzi schemes at nearly 10% of 1384 smart contracts examined. However, it also estimated that only 0.05% of the transactions on the network were related to such contracts.[78]

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Ethereum - Wikipedia

What Is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a smart contract platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) on its blockchain. Ether (ETH) is the native digital currency of the Ethereum platform.

Ethereum is supported in part by the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit that is part of the larger Ethereum ecosystem including enterprise Ethereum consortiums like the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance.

Vitalik Buterin first conceptualized Ethereum in 2013 with the idea of developing an open-source blockchain platform different from Bitcoin (BTC), thus pioneering smart contracts. On the Ethereum blockchain, a smart contract behaves like a self-operating computer program that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. Blockchain allows smart contracts code to be run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.

The Ethereum network went live on July 30, 2015, with 73 million Ether pre-mined.

Ethereum mining is currently based on a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol (like Bitcoin), with future plans to switch to proof-of-stake. Ethereum mining works when miners use their computational power to solve a mathematical problem (finding the hash of a blocks unique header metadata). The first miner to successfully solve the problem (find the hash) then broadcasts that the block has been mined to the entire Ethereum network for other nodes to validate and add the block to the blockchain.

The Ethereum blockchain was supposed to migrate from a PoW system to the less energy-investive proof-of-stake system (PoS) system in January 2020, but the deadline was not met. A switch to PoS and the release of Ethereum 2.0 is still expected for later in 2020.

Ethereum mining is based on the Ethash algorithm, and ETH miners originally received a block reward of 5 ETH per block when the network first went live. In the end of 2017, the Byzantine hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain lowered the block rewards from 5 ETH to 3 ETH. In early 2019, the reward was again lowered to 2 ETH in what is known as the thirdening.

The Ethash proof-of-work protocol makes it not profitable to use ASICs to mine (unlike Bitcoin). Each Ethereum block aims to take an average of 12 seconds to be mined, and the level of difficulty of mining is proportional to the total amount of computer power (or networks hashrate) being used to mine Ethereum.

Ethereum transactions are called gas and they are responsible for powering operations on the entire network, meaning you have to spend your gas (Ether) in order to make changes to the blockchain. Ethereum also has a Turing complete internal code.

The Ethereum platform is used by developers to build new kinds of DApps, which can have a variety of uses ranging from the creation of new digital assets and uncensorable web apps to building decentralized autonomous organizations and more. Anyone around the world is able to freely connect to the Ethereum network.

Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain, is also used as digital money and can be sent to anyone in the world instantly. Ether can be used as a form of payment or a store of value.

If you are not mining the Ethereum blockchain (which can be prohibitively expensive unless you are a professional miner), you can buy Ethereum on a cryptocurrency exchange. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab. Make sure to do your own research before choosing an exchange. You can also store your Ether on an exchange or a hot or cold wallet.

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Ethereum (ETH) price, charts, market cap, and other ...

Source: Phongphan - Shutterstock

In a new video on the state of the crypto market, trader and analyst Michal van de Poppe shared his possible scenarios for the coming days. The analyst advised his audience not to fall in FOMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out) for altcoins that have moved strongly in the last days.

The trader first concentrated on some tokens from the Ethereum DeFi sector. With exorbitant profits, these tokens can be a huge opportunity for investors but also for a total loss. As an example van de Poppe cited BAND of the Band Protocol. As can be seen in the chart below, BAND has experienced a significant increase in a short time. The trader explained that the chances that BAND and other tokens with similar gains will continue the upward trend are low, at least in the short term:

Bringing a coin into this area is completely idiotic. If you want to take over the trade in this area, better donate the money to a charity and dedicate yourself to something else. (For BAND trading) I am more interested in a longer delay (in price) as we saw in the last price increase.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Gmljp7CQNz0&feature=emb_logo

The analyst stated that he is more interested in other coins such as Celer Networks CELR. He believes that CELRs performance indicates an upcoming rally. Comparing the current state of CELR with the state of BAND before the massive increase shown above, Michal said:

Celer Network is showing a clear volume accumulation, which is showing that people are interested in this asset We see that we are above the 100-day and 200-day (moving average) for the first time since the listing. So were getting into the bull territory for the first time since it has been listed.

Van de Poppe predicts an increase of the price of Celer Networks token in the CELR/BTC pair towards 200 Satoshis which would represent an increase of 140%. Additionally, the analyst believes that Harmonys ONE has similar indicators to CELR. In the ONE/BTC pair, the currency is priced at around 80 Satoshis with the potential for a parabolic increase of 110% towards 180 Satoshis.

The trader also advised investors to keep their eyes on the MANA token of Decentraland and the ALGO token of Algorand. According to Michal, these tokens could have increases close to 100% if they manage to maintain their current support levels.

In a video titled Ethereum And Ripple: Where To Buy The Dip? van de Poppe also states that he expects a setback for ETH and XRP. According to him, ETH will reach 280 dollars while he recommends investors to wait until this level before taking a long position. He also expects that XRP will also go down after reaching $0.32. Van de Poppe determined as possible support level at $0.28 or $0.24 before establishing a long position.

Finally, the van de Poppe referred to the Bitcoin price (BTC) and stated that the cryptocurrency should turn the resistance level of $12,000 into support. Otherwise, he expects a drop to $9,800. Below you can see Crypto Michals full analysis:

Excerpt from:

Analyst picks top-5 altcoins, predicts correction for Ethereum and Bitcoin - Crypto News Flash

Quick take:

The DeFi boom of 2020 has had a positive impact on the Ethereum network in more ways than one. According to the Q2 DeFi 2020 report by DappRadar, the Ethereum ecosystem has been the major beneficiary of the increased interest in Decentralised Finance. The report explains that:

2020 has been the year of DeFi. With the emergence of liquidity mining, the sector has seen a flood of investor and user capital as well as developer interest

TheEthereum ecosystem has been the main beneficiary of the DeFi wave, but key competitors are now looking to replicate its success on their own network.

The team at DappRadar further concludes that due to DeFi, Ethereum has managed to re-establish itself as the number one Dapp platform in the industry. This is despite the fact that ETH2.0 yet to be fully implemented.

The number two blockchain has re-established itself as the number one dapp platform in the industry. Despite concerns surrounding scalability and skyrocketing transaction costs,Ethereum has been at the center of user and developer activity in DeFi.

Further checking the progress of the DeFi industry via DeFiPulse.com, it can be observed that over $4.5 Billion in total value is locked in Decentralized Finance.

Of this amount, 4.3 Million ETH is being utilized on these platforms. The latter figure is up by 800,000 ETH since mid-July indicating the continual use of Ethereum to participate in yield farming that is the centerpiece of DeFi.

Taking a brief look at the market performance of Ethereum, we find that ETH is currently consolidating between the $365 support zone and the $400 resistance level. With Bitcoin struggling to keep its value above $11,700, the fate of Ethereum rests with the ability of BTC to remain bullish or to experience some form of sideways movement.

As with all analyses of Ethereum, traders and investors are advised to have an eye out for any sudden Bitcoin movements that might affect their ETH positions. Additionally, stop losses and the use of low leverage is advised during uncertain times.

See more here:

Ethereum (ETH) is Reestablishing itself as the #1 Dapp Platform - Ethereum World News