Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a technique to incentivize better decentralization of Ethereum by penalizing correlated failures among validators. Buterin posted his thoughts on March 27 regarding supporting decentralized staking “through more anti-correlation incentives” to the Ethereum Research forum. He suggested if multiple validators controlled by the same actor fail together, they would receive a higher penalty than…

Ethereum layer-2 scaling network Optimism is putting aside $3.3 billion worth of its Optimism (OP) token for its community to grant to projects or people deemed important contributors to the blockchain’s ecosystem. On March 26, the chain’s governance and community arm, Optimism Collective, said that some of the 850 million OP would be doled out…

A United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brief detailing proposed fines and penalties for blockchain firm Ripple describes a different narrative than the one pushed by the company’s executives. In a March 25 filing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, attorneys for the SEC proposed Ripple pay $876,308,712 in disgorgement and…

As Bitcoin toes around the $70,000 price mark, there’s speculation that short-sellers are feeling the pressure due to diminishing downtrends and quicker-moving uptrends, potentially driving Bitcoin’s price to $80,000, according to an analyst. “This is a textbook sign that shorts are being squeezed as we hit fresh all-time high territory,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter stated…

Grayscale is confident that spot Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds will be approved in May despite recent “chatter” about the U.S. securities regulator’s “lack of engagement” with applicants. “I don’t think perceived lack of engagement from regulators should be indicative of one outcome or another […] I personally am not deterred by it and believe the ETFs should…

The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) is preparing to implement the first phase of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) strategy. It is looking at CBDC for both retail and wholesale use. The CBUAE kicked off the new strategy with a signing event on March 23 with R3 and G42 Cloud, part of the…

The rewards for mining Bitcoin are about to be chopped in half for miners in a scheduled event called “the halving.” This anti-inflationary measure is predicted to occur on or about April 17, 2024. Though it won’t be the first such halving event, the crypto world is poised to enter the unknown, as recent all-time…

What is Bitcoin halving, and how is it related to cross-chain interoperability? The Bitcoin protocol reduces the supply of new Bitcoin by 50% via the quadrennial Bitcoin halving. This translates into a 50% reduction in revenue (in BTC terms) for Bitcoin miners and poses indirect implications for cross-chain interoperability.  Bitcoin halving events, occurring approximately every four…

Layer-1 blockchain Tron is considering a Bitcoin layer-2 solution that would support a “wrapped” version of Tether (USDT), potentially allowing billions of dollars of liquidity to flow into the Bitcoin ecosystem. In February, Tron’s founder, Justin Sun, announced a roadmap for Tron’s Bitcoin layer 2 solution in an X post, which would allow stablecoins and tokens to move…

A hospitality worker has reportedly been found guilty of money laundering in a United Kingdom specialized court for major fraud cases, following the discovery of $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in her possession. According to a recent BBC report, the Southwark Crown Court has found Jian Wen guilty of laundering money using Bitcoin to purchase “multi-million pound…