* Binance successfully completes BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) network upgrade and hard fork.
* Deposits and withdrawals were temporarily suspended from approximately 07:15 am UTC and have now resumed.
* The announcement was made on August 30, 2023, at 11:14 AM, and garnered significant attention on social media.
Binance, a global leader in digital asset exchanges, announced today the successful completion of a critical upgrade and hard fork for its BNB Smart Chain (BEP20). The upgrade, which temporarily halted deposits and withdrawals, has now been successfully implemented, and all services have resumed as of 11:14 AM on August 30, 2023.
The Upgrade: A Focused Look
The upgrade was initially announced on August 28, 2023, and was scheduled for today. Deposits and withdrawals on the BEP20 network were suspended from approximately 07:15 am UTC. A reminder was issued an hour before the upgrade commenced, stating that all deposits and withdrawals would be temporarily suspended until the network was deemed stable. Finally, Binance confirmed the completion of the upgrade, stating, “Binance has completed the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) network upgrade and hard fork, with deposits and withdrawals back online.”
User Impact and Market Response
While Binance thanked its users for their patience, it also apologized for any inconvenience caused during the upgrade. The temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals was a necessary step to ensure the successful implementation of the network changes.
Broader Context: BNB Chain’s Future Plans
In a recent interview, Binance revealed ambitious plans for its BNB Smart Chain, aiming to lay the groundwork for the next 1 billion Web3 users. The chain is focusing on performance and scalability improvements, including the implementation of layer 2 solutions like opBNB, which can handle around 4K TPS and offers a 90% reduction in gas fees at $0.005.
Conclusion
The completion of the BNB Smart Chain upgrade and hard fork marks a pivotal moment for both Binance and its community of users. Although the immediate market ramifications remain unclear, the reinstatement of deposit and withdrawal functions signals a return to normalcy for the platform’s operations.
The much anticipated Shapella update for Ethereum (ETH) has finally arrived, allowing staked ETH withdrawals for users who previously had no way to take back their funds after staking. While there were concerns of a potential dump due to a new supply of Ether hitting the markets, the price of ETH still managed to hit $2,000 and currently maintains the level at the time of writing.
According to crypto analytics firm Glassnode, only around 1% of staked ETH may hit the market after Shapella goes live. The firm expressed confidence that the newest update on the network will not have a “dramatic” effect on the price of Ether. Glassnode reported that only 253 depositors have signed up to withdraw their staked ETH positions.
After the hard fork was seamlessly executed on the Ethereum mainnet, a total of 12,859 ETH, worth almost $26 million at the time of writing, were unlocked in 4,333 withdrawals just within the first hour after withdrawals were enabled. This suggests that there is still a significant amount of staked ETH that is being held.
The community celebrated the new milestone with various sentiments. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a live stream that Ethereum is currently in a “really good place.” Buterin highlighted that there is a lot more to be done but those can be done at a slower pace.
Crypto exchanges have also expressed their support for ETH unstaking. Coinbase and BitGo have already enabled withdrawals on their exchange. Binance said that it will support withdrawals on April 19. Meanwhile, Kraken started withdrawing validators for United States users on April 11 and started processing as soon as the Shapella upgrade was implemented.
It is worth noting that the Shapella update is just one part of the larger Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which aims to move the network from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. The upgrade is expected to bring significant improvements to the scalability, security, and energy efficiency of the network.
The successful execution of the Shapella update and the support from crypto exchanges suggest a positive outlook for the future of Ethereum. While the new supply of Ether hitting the markets may have initially caused concerns, the market seems to have absorbed it without a significant impact on the price of ETH. As the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade continues to roll out, it will be interesting to see how it affects the overall performance of the network and the price of ETH in the long term.
Since October 11, the proportion of Ethereum blocks that are compliant with orders made by the United States Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has decreased to its current level of 47%, which is the lowest level since that date.
The most recent achievement in the fight against censorship comes about two and a half months and one day after the proportion of OFAC-compliant blocks reached its all-time high of 79% on November 21.
OFAC-compliant blocks are ones that do not include any transactions that involve parties who have been blacklisted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control within the United States Treasury Department.
Those individuals who are opposed to censorship inside the Ethereum ecosystem may see a decrease in the number of compliant blocks as a victory.
According to a statement released by the blockchain consulting company Labrys, the originator of MEV Watch, the decline may be linked to more validators choosing to utilize MEV-boost relays that do not filter transactions in compliance with OFAC standards.
The majority of the shift in market share has been taken up by the BloXroute Max Profit relay, the Ultrasound Money relay, and the Agnostic Boost relay in particular.
MEV-boost relays play the role of trustworthy middlemen between block producers and block builders, which paves the way for Ethereum validators to delegate the construction of their blocks to third-party block builders.
The Chief Executive Officer of Labrys, Lachlan Feeney, issued a statement on February 14 in which he expressed his satisfaction with the manner in which the Ethereum community has reacted to the censorship problem ever since it first appeared during the Merge event.
He pointed out that the recent decline of censorship-compliant blocks was especially noteworthy since it was accomplished without the involvement of a user-activated soft fork (UASF). He made the observation that “many individuals” of the Ethereum community had requested the soft fork prior to the Merge in order to resist censorship.
“I am incredibly proud of the Ethereum community for the progress we have made with this issue,” said Feeney, adding: “When we released the MevWatch tool drawing attention to a flaw within Ethereum, the community did not stick its head in the sand but instead rose to the occasion and made significant progress addressing the issue.” “When we released the MevWatch tool drawing attention to a flaw within Ethereum, the community did not stick its head in the sand but instead rose to the occasion and made significant progress
However, as Feeney emphasized, “there is still a great deal more work to be done.”
On August 8, OFAC sanctioned wallet addresses that transact using the Ethereum-based privacy mixing technology Tornado Cash. These wallet addresses are associated with Ether (ETH) and USD Coin (USDC).
On September 16, during the first 24 hours of Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, just 9% of blocks were filtered by OFAC.
Nevertheless, this number shot up dramatically over the subsequent two months, reaching its highest point of 79% on November 21.
After then, the proportion of OFAC-compliant blocks stayed anywhere between 68 and 75% until the 29th of January, when it dropped to 66%. Since then, in spite of a few brief increases, it has been consistently going down.
“The Terra chain as it currently exists should be forked into a new chain without algorithmic stablecoins called “Terra” (token Luna – LUNA), and the old chain be called “Terra Classic” (token Luna Classic – LUNC). Both chains will coexist.”
According to Investopedia, a hard fork refers to a radical change to the protocol of a blockchain network that effectively results in two branches, one that follows the previous protocol and one that follows the new version. In a hard fork, holders of tokens in the original blockchain will be granted tokens in the new fork as well, but miners must choose which blockchain to continue verifying.
After being forked, the new chain, Terra (LUNA), will not support the algorithmic TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin, whereas the old one will house the Luna Classic (LUNC) token.
Kwon’s proposal for a hard fork is based on the lack of a consensus among different stakeholders. He stated:
“Competing interests from varied stakeholders (e.g.,$LUNA holders, UST holders, Terra builders, etc.) make it extremely difficult and unlikely to achieve consensus on a cohesive, congruent plan.”
Therefore, the new LUNA will be airdropped to residual UST holders, essential app developers, and LUNC holders.
The rain started beating the Terra network after UST’s price experienced a free fall to the extent that leading crypto exchange Binance temporarily halted its withdrawals together with that of LUNA.
Things got worse for LUNA, given that it sent shockwaves to the crypto market by collapsing to near-zero overnight.
At the time, Kwon pointed out that the price stabilization mechanism had a hand in the problem. He noted:
“The price stabilization mechanism is absorbing UST supply (over 10% of total supply), but the cost of absorbing so much stablecoins at the same time has stretched out the on-chain swap spread to 40%, and Luna price has diminished dramatically absorbing the arbs.”
If Kwon’s proposal sees the light of day, the new chain will go live on May 27 because he trusts that Terra is more than UST.
The Polygon team offered an explanation andhere it is. A few weeks ago, the Ethereum Layer 2 network hard-forked their blockchain, seemingly without explanation. As usual,NewsBTC got to the bottom of the caseand presented all of the available information. The only piece missing was a promised official report with a detailed explanation from Polygon’s experts. Is this it? Apparently so.
Related Reading | Community Voted, Why Uniswap Will Be Deployed On Polygon
Before we get into it, let’s remember Polygon’s co-founder Mihailo Bjelic’s explanation as reported by us:
5 BTC + 300 Free Spins for new players & 15 BTC + 35.000 Free Spins every month, only at mBitcasino. Play Now!
“We’re making an effort to improve security practices across all Polygon projects,” Bjelic tweeted. “As a part of this effort, we are working with multiple security researcher groups, whitehat hackers etc. One of these partners discovered a vulnerability in one of the recently verified contracts. We immediately introduced a fix and coordinated the upgrade with validators/full node operators. No funds were lost. The network is stable.”
It’s important to remember that the crypto ecosystem was concerned that the way that they managed to do all this seemed centralized. However, the co-founder assured everyone that “The network is run by validators and full node operators, and we have no control over any of these groups. We just did our best to communicate and explain the importance of this upgrade, but ultimately it was up to them to decide whether they will do it or not.”
However, this was Polygon node operator Mikko Ohtamaa’s further complaint:
“Next time it happens can you at least announce a critical update to all Polygon node operators. Now this looks super unprofessional and confusing for the community. It was not mentioned or pinned down in any major channels or publications.”
What Did The Polygon Experts Say?
Considering the infamousPoly Network exploitwas merely in August this year, it’s good to hear Polygon is working hard in securing their whole operation. They’ve ”been investing significant effort and resources into creating an ecosystem of security expert partners, with the goal of improving the security and robustness of all Polygon solutions and products.” With that in mind, this is the company’s version of what happened:
Get 110 USDT Futures Bonus for FREE!
“Recently, a group of whitehat hackers on the bug bounty platform Immunefi disclosed a vulnerability in the Polygon PoS genesis contract. The Polygon core team engaged with the group and Immunefi’s expert team and immediately introduced a fix. The validator and full node communities were notified, and they rallied behind the core devs to upgrade the network. The upgrade was executed within 24 hours, at block #22156660, on Dec. 5.”
So far, so good. This rhymes with Bjelic’s explanation and gives the community more details. However, we know that they barely notified the validators and node operators. They don’t even have to lie about it, because they do have a great explanation as to why they ran the whole operation in stealth mode.
“Considering the nature of this upgrade, it had to be executed without disclosing the actual vulnerability and without attracting too much attention. We are still finalizing our vulnerability disclosure policy and procedures, and for now we are trying to follow the “silent patches” policy introduced and used by the Geth team.”
According to Ohtamaa, “there are multiple open source projects out there” that have done similar operations in a more effective manner. And that might be true, but it doesn’t take from the fact that Polygon’s actions were justified.
MATIC price chart on Binance | Source: MATIC/USD on TradingView.com
The Aftermath
In the end, the critical update worked out fine enough:
“The vulnerability was fixed and damage was mitigated, with there being no material harm to the protocol and its end-users. All Polygon contracts and node implementations remain fully open source.”
Related Reading | Polygon Opens Vault On MakerDAO, Commits $50 Million Worth Of Matic Tokens
Remember, one of the early criticism was that they forked the Polygon blockchain “to a completely closed-source genesis.” Here, the official source assures that “contracts and node implementations remain fully open source.” Is there something else they want to tell us?
“We are still working on closing the final proceedings with Immunefi and the whitehat hacker group, primarily in terms of their rewards and multiple rounds of reviews of the fixed vulnerability. We will post a detailed postmortem once this process is finished, likely by the end of next week.”
The team will publish yet another post with even more details for the technically oriented people. That’s above our pay grade. Stay tuned toPolygon’s blogif you’re interested.
Featured Image by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash - Charts by TradingView
What’s going on at Polygon? There seems to be a disturbance in the force over there. Is the Ethereum Layer 2 project alright? Are they doing everything above board or is there something sinister going on? Are they even decentralized if they can hard-fork just like that? Or did they follow the proper procedures and their critics are just uninformed? Can we even answer all of those questions? Probably not. But we can present all the information available and let you all get to your own conclusions.
Let’s start with DeFi Builder Nathan Worsley’s accusation. Or is he just requesting information? Worsleyrecently tweeted, “Are we all supposed to just shut up and forget about the fact that over a week ago Polygon hard-forked their blockchain in the middle of the night with no warning to a completely closed-source genesis and still haven’t verified the code or explained what is going on?”
5 BTC + 300 Free Spins for new players & 15 BTC + 35.000 Free Spins every month, only at mBitcasino. Play Now!
Related Reading | Polygon: Ethereum’s Friend Is Looking To Make Big Strides
The “middle of the night” part is arguable since everyone is in different timezones and the Polygon blockchain is everywhere. However,he cleared up whythe issue is important, “Until the code is verified there are no security guarantees about the billions of dollars in assets the chain currently secures.” And tweeted proof of everything else, “Here’s the commit that was hard-forked into production.”
To add credibility to his claim, DeFiance Capital’s Zhu Su joined the chorus asking for answers. “Was this to patch a critical bug? Why and how did this happen?”
The criticism got a response from Polygon’s co-founder Mihailo Bjelic. “We’re making an effort to improve security practices across all Polygon projects,” Bjelic tweeted. “As a part of this effort, we are working with multiple security researcher groups, whitehat hackers etc. One of these partners discovered a vulnerability in one of the recently verified contracts. We immediately introduced a fix and coordinated the upgrade with validators/full node operators. No funds were lost. The network is stable.”
Ok, that sounds reasonable. Bjelic also promised, “A detailed blog post coming, we are finalizing additional security analyses.” A question lingers in the air, though. And crypto enthusiast J. Vicente Correa asks it in the most direct way possible, “U can fork the chain by yourself and take all my funds as u wish?”
And Polygon’s Mihailo Bjelic answers in the most political way possible. “Absolutely not. The network is run by validators and full node operators, and we have no control over any of these groups. We just did our best to communicate and explain the importance of this upgrade, but ultimately it was up to them to decide whether they will do it or not.”
MATIC price chart on Poloniex | Source: MATIC/USD on TradingView.com
A Node Operator Has Some Criticism Of His Own
In the same thread, Polygon node operator Mikko Ohtamaa blasted the way the company handled the whole thing and also showed receipts. “Next time it happens can you at least announce a critical update to all Polygon node operators. Now this looks super unprofessional and confusing for the community. It was not mentioned or pinned down in any major channels or publications.”
He got a response from Polygon’s other co-creator, Sandeep Nailwal. “This was a security update, and hence pre-public-announcement could’ve escalated things.”
Ok, that makes sense. However, Ohtamaa had more complaints. “Some bug fixes” for a critical patch is not good. If there is a critical fix you co-ordinate with validators.” Plus, he reinforced Nathan Worsley’s original complaint. “It’s really obvious it is a critical security bug if you do unannounced no notice hard fork in the middle of a weekend.”
According to Ohtamaa, “there are multiple open source projects out there” that have done similar operations in a more effective manner. Someone asked what could Polygon have done better. Heanswered with a seriesof simple steps.
Prepare the patch privately.
A few days before, announce a critical security fix is coming. All node operators need to be prepared.
Distribute the patch at the preset time.
Not downplay the criticality of the patch and make idiot-looking release notes.
Related Reading | How Polygon Sealed A $400M Deal To Get Ahead In The Ethereum ZK Rollup Race
So, is there something rotten at Polygon? We will have to wait for the “detailed blog post” Bjelic promised to know for sure.
Featured Image by Mae Mu on Unsplash - Charts by TradingView
NEM nodes will vote on whether or not to merge into a subChain of Symbol.
NEM is known for pioneering the “proof-of-importance” consensus mechanism.
Share this article
NEM has announced its Harlock hard fork, which it says will “decide the future of #NEM.” The hard fork will enable voting on whether NEM will integrate into the Symbol blockchain.
Hardfork x7
Harlockwill allownodes to vote on whether they supportNEMbecoming a dedicated subChain of Symbol, an enterprise blockchain launched by the NEM project in March 2021. NEM nodes will vote on whether or not the NEM blockchainwill mergeinto Symbol as a “subChain,” or “a type of transaction-specific sidechain.”
Symbol was launched earlier this year, and thevisionof its founders has grown since then:
“…subChains will be a pinnacle of innovation: not just Symbol, but the broader blockchain space. We already have plans to collaborate with other chains on research and development, and we envision a future where other cryptocurrency projects are brought in as dedicated subChains of Symbol, supplying new logic and transaction types to the entire platform.”
The Harlock update represents NEM’s seventh hard fork—historically, roughly one every few hundred thousand blocks. The last hard fork occurred at blockheight 1,250,000 and represented a fee modification to the network. Harlock is expected to execute at blockheight 3,464,800.
NEM(New Economy Movement)was an early crypto project, launched in Q1 of 2015. Its native cryptocurrency is XEM. Ithas been prominentin Japan since 2016, seeing enterprise adoption and acceptance as payment in restaurants and hotels. According to NEM, it has also “inspired art exhibits and community-run cafes and even donation drives.”
The project maintains that its most important contribution is itsproof-of-importanceconsensus mechanism (rather than, say, proof-of-stake or proof-of-work), which seeks to “deter the concentration of wealth commonly associated with proof-of-stake.” It does this by rewarding on-chain activities, such as transfers, in addition to giving rewards based simply on the amount vested.
NEM’s XEM is responding to the news. At the time of writing, it is up roughly 7% on the day, with trading volume up approximately 330%.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece held BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.
Share this article
The information on or accessed through this website is obtained from independent sources we believe to be accurate and reliable, but Decentral Media, Inc. makes no representation or warranty as to the timeliness, completeness, or accuracy of any information on or accessed through this website. Decentral Media, Inc. is not an investment advisor. We do not give personalized investment advice or other financial advice. The information on this website is subject to change without notice. Some or all of the information on this website may become outdated, or it may be or become incomplete or inaccurate. We may, but are not obligated to, update any outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate information.
You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities.
See full terms and conditions.
What Is NEM? Introduction To XEM
What Is NEM? NEM is a dual-layer blockchain similar to Ethereum but written in Java, a popular computer programming language. Launched on March 31, 2015, the NEM mainnet supports multiple ledgers…
How SocialGood Is Offering 100% Crypto Cashback on Online Shopping
In recent years, the rise of Bitcoin and tokenized assets has made the cashback vertical ripe for disruption. Within the cashback market, blockchain-based loyalty networks are rising in popularity among…
Will Symbol Help NEM Regain Its Former Glory?
NEM, one of the earliest and most notable crypto projects, has reinvented itself by launching its new Symbol blockchain. Symbol Reinvents the NEM Blockchain Mar. 15 marks the launch of…
Ethereum Successfully Launches Berlin Hard Fork
The second-biggest blockchain by market cap completes another major upgrade. Ethereum Berlin Fork Launches Ethereum has just completed its Berlin hard fork. The update went live on Ethereum’s block 12,244,000…
The Ethereum network’s long-planned upgrade to a scalable, proof-of-stake consensus model grows closer as developers set a date for the Altair upgrade.
Altair, which is described as the first mainnet upgrade to the Beacon Chain, is scheduled to take place at epoch 74240, or roughly Oct. 27, according to Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan.
Ryan described the technical upgrade as follows:
“This upgrade brings light-client support to the core consensus, cleans up beacon state incentive accounting, fixes some issues with validator incentives, and steps up the punitive params as per EIP-2982.”
EIP-2982 introduces “punitive parameters” to ensure that the proof-of-stake protocol is economically secure. “Inactivity leak” and “slashing” are the two proposed penalties under the improvement proposal.
Ethereum’s London hard fork arrived almost on schedule on Aug. 5, ushering in the highly anticipated EIP 1559 proposal. Proponents touted EIP-1559 as the deflationary switch because it involved burning base fees, thereby reducing the circulating supply of ETH.
Related:Ethereum alternatives and layer-one solutions see steady gains in September
Joseph Lubin, who co-founded Ethereum before moving on to ConsenSys, said London puts ETH on track to become “ultrasound money.” The concept of “sound” or “ultrasound” money was popularized by the Bitcoin (BTC) community and refers to an asset that is not susceptible to a sudden depreciation in value or purchasing power.
The ETH price was down sharply on Tuesday, as cryptocurrencies sold off along other risk assets, including stocks. ETH was last seen trading at $2,822, having declined 6.5% on the day.
Cardano (ADA) reached a major milestone in its roadmap on Sep. 13 as its blockchain successfully launched Plutus-powered smart contracts as a part of the Alonzo hard fork.
The Alonzo hard fork has been highly anticipated in the Cardano community as well as the cryptocurrency sphere at large.
The smart contract functionality is meant to allow Cardano to become a platform on which developers can build decentralized applications (DApps) and even mint nonfungible tokens (NFTs). This milestone has been hailed as the point in the development of the network where the “mission truly begins.”
However, the news of the successful execution of this milestone didn’t prevent the network’s native token, Cardano (ADA), from falling into the wider slump that has gripped the crypto market since Bitcoin (BTC) flashed crashed below $43,000 on Sep. 7. In the aftermath of the Alonzo hard fork on Sep. 10, ADA dropped 10% to hit an intraday low of $2.3 while BTC and Ether (ETH) only fell 4% and 6.97%, respectively.
Marie Tatibouet, the chief marketing officer of crypto exchange Gate.io, told Cointelegraph:
“This changes everything for Cardano! For the longest time, Cardano was known as the smart contract platform without the smart contracts, but now the critics will have to change that narrative. With the advent of actual contracts, Cardano’s utility and usability goes through the roof.”
Cardano developer activity amongst the highest
According to a report by Outlier Ventures titled, “Blockchain Development Trends Q2 2020/21,” Cardano is one of the most actively developed blockchains out there, with the highest average monthly commits per month on Github code repositories at 701 commits per month (CPM).
The average CPM for all protocols considered in the report is 107 CPM. These “commits” essentially represent any additions or amendments made to the network’s source code on Github.
In terms of these commits, Ethereum comes in second with 447 CPM, IOTA stands third with 394 CPM with Filecoin and Flow rounding up the top five with 368 CPM and 306 CPM, respectively. This shows that Cardano is 555% more active than Ethereum and 317% than the average of all the blockchain networks connected.
In terms of the total number of developers building a particular blockchain network, Ethereum is still ranked at the top with 168 monthly active developers (MAD). Cardano follows closely in second place with 165 MAD, showing a higher year-over-year increase of 31.8%. The network already has the functionality that allows the creation of NFTs. According to data provided by Cardano to Cointelegraph, there have been 780,436 NFTs minted on the network.
Such an active developer community is a testament to how fast the network is developing and adapting to the changing needs of the ecosystem. Cardano has a high developer count with the highest development activities amongst similar blockchain protocols thus improving the security and transparency of the network. The Alonzo hard fork bringing in the smart contract functionality will only push these trends to greater heights.
Cardano DApps are still on the distant horizon
Even though the Alonzo upgrade, a part of the Goguen phase of Cardano’s roadmap, allows developers to deploy Plutus-powered smart contracts on the network, the network hasn’t quite reached that stage.
Despite the belief in the market that over 2,000 smart contracts have been deployed on the network, according to data from Vercel app, a third-party data provider that uses data from adapools.org, there are only 26 Plutus-powered smart contracts that have been deployed at the time of writing.
There is also a market-wide perception that these smart contracts are in timelock. But, a spokesperson from Cardano clarified to Cointelegraph that the network has had timelock scripts since the Allegra era of the project’s roadmap. These time-locked scripts are used for activities like aiding NFT minting by making NFTs run unique for-instance and multisig schemes. Smart contracts highly differ from these scripts and cannot be placed “in timelock.”
Hunain Nasser, senior analyst at OKEx Insights — the research team at cryptocurrency exchange OKEx — told Cointelegraph:
“Timelocks are used to protect users from changes made to contracts after they are created. Not all 2,300 or so scripts seen on the Cardano network are actual apps, most of them are minting policies for tokens and NFTs on the Cardano network, and they are time locked to prevent changes.”
However, timelocks can be used once DApps are created and widely used. They can also be used to provide users alerts once any changes to a smart contract are triggered. This feature prevents the implementation of these changes instantly, giving users time to review them and act on them if necessary before they get implemented.
It remains to be seen how fast real utility could come to the Cardano network in terms of DApps and other decentralized finance features. But it also could be a case of managing expectations. Johnny Lyu, CEO of crypto exchange KuCoin, told Cointelegraph that even though the Alonzo upgrade is a landmark event for Cardano, one shouldn’t expect lightning-fast achievements in a short period of time.
“Users need to be patient, and developers need to move on and do a lot of work to prevent mistakes that can lead to hacks and loss of funds on smart contracts.”
An instance of smart contracts being fast-tracked into a network can be witnessed in the case of the Binance Smart Chain, the most recent one being the $12.7 million BTC hack from the pNetwork.
Related:DeFi hacks on Binance Smart Chain rise as TVL and volumes increase
“At the same time, I believe that after launch, it will take more than two years for DApps to be deployed and operate at full scale on Cardano, as it was with the Ethereum network, “ Lyu said, adding “I think everyone is ready to start now and offer some new products and applications to users, but it is necessary to make sure that they are safe.”
Since Cardano is a blockchain project that has always focused on the fundamentals, one might assume that they will allow funds to flow through smart contracts only once they are deemed safe and secure. The Founder of Five Binaries, Marek Mahut, who ran the first smart contract on Cardano said that “Safety and scalability are major features for any developer. Cardano’s accounting technology, eUTXO, provides a novel approach, which makes writing secure smart contracts easier.”
The Cardano Foundation is held the Cardano Summit 2021 on Sept. 25–26. IOHK, the blockchain research and development company that backs Cardano’s infrastructure, discussed the planned upgrades and improvements to the smart contract functionality at this summit. It remains to be seen when the deployment of actual DApps can be done on the network, but it’s not an instantaneous process.
Over $1 billion worth of Ethereum (ETH) has become unusable since the top altcoin implemented its “London hard fork” system upgrade six weeks ago.
The change introduced a new mechanism to burn transaction fees as a way of countering inflation concerns and has thus far discarded around 304,000 ETH, according to Dune Analytics.
The new mechanism requires users to pay a fee to initiate transactions, which is subsequently burned. Part of that fee is then given to miners as a tip. Ethereum miners used to receive about 13,000 tokens per day, but due to the recent hard fork, they only get about 6,000 instead.
According to DelTec bank, the company behind Ethereum-based altcoin Tether (USDT), this new feature will help ETH deflate.
“The London hard fork has meant that the network is now burning thousands of ETH, which immediately changes the inflation dynamic of the potential 18 million Ether [per] year creation.
Previously there was a fear that eventually the supply of ETH could outpace demand, creating a never-ending supply and [sending] its value to zero.
With the [new] change, the variable base fee system has lowered the number of ETH created by not paying the miners the total fee and forever removing it from the network by burning.”
Ethereum has seen its price surge 29% since the implementation of the hard fork, according to CoinGecko.
Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get crypto email alerts delivered directly to your inbox
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Telegram
Surf The Daily Hodl Mix
ADVERTISEMENT
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.
