Christine Chiang
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At the Breaking Bitcoin Conference in Paris last weekend, speakers from around the world gave talks about breaking down the technicals of different implementations such as Segwit2x, Bitcoin Unlimited, and IOTA. The most controversial talk was given by alternative Bitcoin implementation developer, Christopher Jeffrey, who revealed to a live audience of about 200 developers, academics, and professionals in the Bitcoin space how he broke the default Bitcoin implementation, bitcoind, better known as Bitcoin Core.
The architect known for conceptualizing the Lightning Network, an off-chain scaling solution for Bitcoin, has done it again. On August 8, Joseph Poon, and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, published a white paper titled Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts. Poon first conceived the high-level construction for Plasma in mid-2014, before the Lightning Network paper was published, before Frontier was released on Ethereum, and when scaling on Bitcoin Talk was just a theoretical slow moving disaster.
Application coins, or “appcoins,” are being minted at an astounding rate. Many of these coins have gone through a fundraising process named Initial Coin Offering (ICO), token sale, or token distribution event. The company behind the 0x project, Zero Ex Intl, recently raised US$24 million in a token sale utilizing a sybil-resistant distribution process by using Linny Vingham’s Civic mobile application. 50% of a total 1 billion tokens were distributed to sale participants, who were limited to 20 ether’s worth of ZRX per account.
EOS is one of the most talked about blockchain projects distributing a token; and it doesn’t even have a blockchain yet. Launched by block.one, the company building the EOS.IO software, the EOS token is explicitly stated not to have any value, utility, or purpose. Yet its token market capitalization has already surpassed that of older and more well-established cryptocurrencies like Zcash, BitShares, Steem, and Augur.
What used to be euphoria has fizzled into despair as the price of Ethereum (ETH) has taken a dive from a June high of US$400 down to US$240. Media outlets covering the crash allegated that it was due to “technical difficulties” that clogged the Ethereum network, causing significant delays in processing transactions.
Dubbed the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” Litecoin (LTC) has been riding the crytocurrency uptrend as wave after wave of bullish news has driven its spot price over US$45, or 0.017 BTC. But beyond price, the Litecoin development playground is also seeing expansion as far as its codebase is concerned.
Decred recently announced a proposal system that allows users to participate in governance, a major milestone in the projects road map. Allowing stakeholders to vote on changes ensures interested parties have representation in major decisions that will affect the cryptocurrency.
In the blockchain space this summer, three white hot letters are buzzing on everybody’s lips: ICO, or Initial Coin Offering. Droves of blockchain developers are scrambling to put together white papers to architect the next big solution since Bitcoin.
