3,700 BTC crowdsale and 5 years later. Where is ethereum in completing its promise of a global decentralized computer. Which allows developers to upload applications to the blockchain for use across the world.
What I have noticed is that, though projects like Augur and CryptoKitties were able to create lot of buzz in the community. They failed at attracting sustained usage and are nowhere close to the billions of active users that companies like Facebook & Google boast of. Then, there’s also an incident whereby when CryptoKitties became a hit, Ethereum transaction fees rose to .02 ETH. What I have noticed here is one big issue which is haunting the growth of ethereum as a global alternative decentralized app space. And that is Scalability.
Active users of Ethereum Dapps declined nearly 60% from January 2018 to January 2019.
To battle this crisis, ethereum developers introduced a very ambitious plans for Ethereum 2.0 mid this year. Which includes Proof-Of-Stake, Sharding and many more features and concepts.
A diagram of Ethereum 2.0.’s roadmap. Source: Hsiao-Wei Wang.
The two main goals as defined by the developers of Ethereum are as follows:
Introduction of Proof-Of-Stake, aimed towards eliminating the need for expensive Proof-Of-Work mining.
Introduction of Sharding to improve the speed and throughput of ethereum transactions.
One thing to note is that Ethereum 2.0 will be building out a new, separate for the main chain that will eventually replace it in the future. There will Beacon Chain which will be acting out as the brain of the Ethereum ecosystem and Ethereum’s PoS chain will be running parallel to PoW’s chain. Also, the initial version of the Beacon Chain will be barebones with no support for smart contracts or accounts. All in all, everything seems very exciting for the Ethereum project in the coming months. What I also feel is, if Ethereum is able to solve hard problems around proof of stake and sharding, then it may be well-poised to maintain its lead as the biggest smart-contract-computing platform in cryptocurrency. But, we as supporters and investors should also keep in mind that Ethereum Development is a marathon, not a race. And it won’t happen overnight. Also, there are three phases which are needed to be launched before before developers can actually build on top of Ethereum 2.0. So, fingers crossed and let’s wait and hope for the best.
Selected Headlines: So that you don’t have to
Russia’s central bank sees no strong reason to launch a national cryptocurrency that would override the potential risks. Bank of Russia, said their institution had been investigating the possibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and the need the launch the new technology “is not obvious for us.”
A class-action lawsuit was filed today against Bitfinex, Tether and others was filed in the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York, The Block reports. Relying on publicly available documents, plaintiffs describe a “sophisticated scheme that coopted a disruptive innovation — cryptocurrency — and used it to defraud investors, manipulate markets, and conceal illicit proceeds.” The new federal court class-action lawsuit alleges over $1.4 trillion in damages suffered by class members.
The SEC released a rule change proposal that would allow tZERO's Boston Security Token Exchange (BSTX) to launch its jointly-owned equity trading platform with ownership records stored on the Ethereum blockchain.
Societe Generale, the French financial institution that made headlines when it tokenized a $110M bond on Ethereum earlier this year, is interested in pursuing additional security token experiments in the future -- such as offering a blockchain-based bond to external investors.
The SEC sued and secured a TRO against messaging app giant Telegram to stop the distribution of its tokens in the U.S. (previously sold in a $1.7B token sale)
China's central bank, The People's Bank of China (PBoC), is hiring six more technology experts to help launch its upcoming digital currency
Stripe, eBay, Paypal, Mastercard, and Visa are all leaving Facebook's Libra crypto project after blowback from regulators
Thought Starters
Good Investors = Scalable Consistency a.k.a Daily Improvisation
The Boring Company targeted those who wanted Flamethrowers
StakeHolders...
Singapore is the Pre Product Market Fit City
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK
The 1% HODL Club…
Curated Articles of Past Week: Best of the Best
The eth1 -> eth2 transition - Vitalik Buterin
Eth2 shard chain simplification proposal - Vitalik Buterin
Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World - Collaborative Fund
Ripple’s Trillion-Dollar Man - Michael De Costillo
Becoming the Landlord of the Future - David Hoffman
Top Listen: Best of the Best Podcast
How Crypto Investment Fund Manager Nick Tomaino Evaluates Tokens - Blockchain Curated
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