On May 15, the cryptocurrency markets saw a 5.5% increase in total capitalization following the release of inflation and retail sales data from the United States. However, Ether failed to fully capitalize on this bullish momentum. Ether last closed above $3,000 over five days ago and has underperformed the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, by 22% since the…

As organizations increasingly rely on biometric data for various applications, from access to physical spaces to financial services, the frequency and impact of data breaches continue to escalate. On May 15, the Worldcoin Foundation, the organization behind the Worldcoin iris biometric cryptocurrency project, announced that it open-sourced its secure multi-party computation (SMPC) system. The new…

Fintech giant Mastercard announced the addition of five new startups to its Start Path Blockchain and Digital Assets program on May 15. The Start Path Blockchain and Digital Assets program is a fintech accelerator program that focuses on “exploring future use cases to scale new solutions with startups around the world.” Joining the program are…

Analysts have unearthed details from a March filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that suggest the regulator may consider labeling Ether a security. In a May 13 X post, Davis Polk and Wardwell Associate Scott Johnsson reviewed a March 4 filing from BlackRock over its application to list and trade a spot Ether exchange-traded…

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a new Ethereum improvement protocol, EIP-7706, focused on a new gas model for transaction call data. Ethereum-based transactions currently have two types of gas fees: one for transaction execution, which covers the computational effort required to perform a transaction, and one for storage, which is the cost of storing data in…

Regulators are cracking down on privacy-preserving protocols like cryptocurrency mixers, but zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) could offer a solution for both developers and regulators. Offering privacy-preserving features in a legally compliant manner is among the biggest concerns of today’s privacy-focused blockchain protocols, which can be used by virtually anyone with internet access. However, the evolution of…