“By migrating USDt value transfers to the OMG Network we save costs, drive performance improvements and relieve pressure on the root chain network. This is good for Bitfinex and our customers, and the whole Ethereum ecosystem.
By processing USDt transactions on the OMG Network, users benefit from transaction validation times as low as a few seconds and transaction fees of a few cents — all at the same level of resilience as the Ethereum Network.
USDt is one of the most transacted assets and commands a high portion of transaction fees on the Ethereum network. According to Ethereum Gas Station, USDt gas fees amounted to US$6.39 million over the past 30 days.”
“This is an important step that can inspire confidence in the global digital securities market. It will now be possible for digital issuances around the world to trade on a secondary market authorised by a globally recognised regulatory body.
This move can also help mainstream blockchain technology, which digital securities use to tokenise real world assets. The FCA license covers trading, as well as custody and brokerage permissions.”
“To provide the best user experience for traders, we have decided to transition to Layer 2. Traders can expect significantly lower gas costs, and in turn, lower trading fees and minimum trade sizes.
Our engineering teams are collaborating on a Layer 2 scaling solution for Perpetual Contracts, based on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine and dYdX’s Perpetual smart contracts. Our Perpetual Contracts will be powered by StarkEx by the end of this year.
StarkWare is developing software to dramatically improve blockchain scalability by allowing any type of computation to move off-chain, using the Ethereum blockchain as a public immutable commitment layer. StarkWare’s dYdX integration combines STARK proofs for data integrity with on-chain data availability to ensure a fully non-custodial protocol.”
“Wrapped Bitcoin competitor, renBTC, has made massive gains over the past week as the project’s token’s price, and the total amount of Bitcoin tokenized using the protocol surges.
In less than a week, the total value locked (TVL) on the RenVM platform, surged more than 210% to hit a new high of $175 million according to Defipulse.com.
renVM’s native token, Ren, has also seen a parabolic increase in prices surging by 245% from $0.16 at the beginning of August to $0.55 on August 19.”
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“Data provider Chainlink will provide decentralized weather data for insurance startup Arbol. Arbol provides crop insurance for small to medium-sized farmers or enterprises.
Smart contracts pay claims to subscribers when a preset value – such as the average monthly temperature or rainfall – turns out different than the contract specifies.
Users are able to create derivatives on the blockchain that pay out based on weather outcomes. This allows weather-exposed entities like farmers to hedge their weather risk.”
“The eth2 public testnet, Medalla, spiraled into a series of cascading failures this past weekend which exposed several vulnerabilities and process faults in how to best handle critical scenarios.
We believe this incident does not inherently affect the launch date. The Prysmatic Labs team recommends ETH2 launch schedule to continue with no delay. The incident from this weekend was a good stress test for many clients. We believe the expected launch target of 2 to 3 months from Medalla genesis is still an ideal timeline.”
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“The Chinese iron ore sector is shifting towards blockchain-powered cross-border platforms to conduct trade deals in the national currency yuan (RMB), rather than the more usual USD transactions, as importers begin to adopt the technology.
The report suggests importers also want to adopt the upcoming digital yuan as soon as it’s launched officially in the country, in order to make transactions less dependent on American currency.
Recently, Ansteel Group International Economic and Trade Co., Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group completed an RMB 100 million ($14.44 million) cross-border settlement transaction powered by blockchain.”
“Despite the coronavirus pandemic’s continued onslaught on the global economy, China’s blockchain sector has exploded, with over 10,000 blockchain-related companies being created in the first seven months of 2020.
Shenzhen—hosts the largest number of blockchain companies in the country, at 26,196.”
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“Lower profitability and a mature market are forcing the Bitcoin industry’s biggest players to shift their focus to new technologies.
Newer rig makers such as WhatsMiner and the advent of proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies—which do not rely on mining pools—are further challenging the profitability of the bigger firms.
Mining firms have both the technological prowess and the finances to pivot to AI chip making. AI chips are specialized processors that conduct millions of calculations per second to run software, similar to how mining chips operate.”
“There will be two blockchain voting pilots in different regions of the country next month. One will be run by Rostelecom, the state-owned major telecom provider, and the other by the Department of Information Technologies, a branch of the Moscow city hall that ran the previous blockchain voting pilots.
The system will be based on the private enterprise version of the Waves blockchain. Nodes of the blockchain will be located on Rostelecom servers exclusively.
The system will allow for control by all authorized participants of the elections, including independent observers.”
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“According to a Reuters report on Aug. 14, locals are dumping lira, converting it to dollars and buying gold.
Locals expect more panic-selling of the lira if the government can not boost confidence in the currency, which has dropped by almost 20% in 2020. Inflation is currently at 11.8%.”
The Disrupt 