Home Blog Page 56

Meat Processor, JBS Adopts Blockchain Tech In Monitoring Deforestation In Amazon Forest

By
Adam Barry
-
0

Brazilian meat processing firm, JBS S.A., which has been criticized for its alleged role in the unlawful deforestation of Amazon forest, has indicated that it will use blockchain technology in creating a unique solution to this problem.

JBS using a blockchain traceability system to monitor indirect suppliers

A report from Reuters on September 23 indicated that JBS was planning to launch a blockchain traceability system for their meat supply chain. The blockchain-based system aims at ensuring the company doesn’t purchase livestock from farms that have cleared trees in the Amazon rainforest. With pressure mounting from investors and environmentalists, the company has promised to combat deforestation by 2025 by monitoring its whole supply chain.

In the past, the meat processor has been monitoring the final link of its supply chain, which implies that around 50,000 Brazilian ranches doing business with the company might have received their livestock from suppliers destroying Amazon. In July, The Guardian reported that JBS might have been doing business with at least one supplier sanctioned for Amazon’s deforestation to increase their pasture space.

JBS commits 250 million reais to protect Amazon

Following the reports, the company’s CEO, Gilberto Tomazoni, promised to monitor indirect suppliers using a blockchain tracing system. He said that no company currently monitors indirect suppliers, and they are planning to leverage tech to fill the gap. JBS will start monitoring from next year in the Mato Grosso state, which has accounted for more than 31% of the forest’s deforestation in the past two decades.

The company announced a range of environmental actions on Wednesday as part of its 1 billion reais to fund social-economic developments in the Amazon. JBS plans to invest 250 million reais up to 2025, which will add another 250 million reais by 2030. There are third-party companies expected to join the initiative with investment growing up to 500 million reais.

Besides Brazil, JBS has also developed tracing systems that offer data on their meat suppliers for subsidiaries outside the country.

Accenture Becomes The Latest Organisation To Support Baseline Protocol As Adoption Of Ethereum Enterprise Grows

By
Adam Barry
-
0

In the first stage of the Ethereum blockchain upgrade, Ethereum 2.0 is expected to launch at the end of the year, and it promises to increase throughput as well as lower Ethereum miannet latency. These steps are likely to enhance the blockchain’s adoption for businesses and commerce with major placers such as Accenture and EY supporting it.

Ethereum 2.0 to address major problems for enterprises

According to Teku product owner Ben Edgington, Ethereum 2.0 will solve major barriers for enterprises seeking to employ use cases on the Ethereum enterprise. Teku is a client of Ethereum 2.0 designed for institutional stakers and enterprises. Edgington said that they expect the upgrade to accelerate private chains convergence with public mainnet while promoting new use cases with enhanced capacity.

It is important to note that a blend of technologies will be used in Ethereum 2.0 in addressing current performance, privacy, high gas fees, and permissioning challenges. Baseline Protocols will be important in the development of enterprises seeking to incorporate Public Ethereum mainnet into IT stacks. Baseline protocol, which launched officially in March as an OASIS open source project enhances open source initiatives in advancing interoperability for blockchain applications.

Accenture joins the Baseline Protocol community

Started with only 14 companies supporting the Baseline Protocol it has grown to around 8 sponsor organizations and 700 members making up the Baseline Protocol community. The latest notable professional services organization to add support for Baseline Protocol is Accenture. Accenture becomes part of the 8 sponsor organizations with its blockchain technology director Michael Klein said that there is significant potential in Baseline Protocol.

Klein pointed at the protocol’s ability to offer confidentiality and double-spend protection more so on permissionless networks such as Ethereum and permissioned private and public networks. Most importantly, Klein is optimistic that other major organizations will eventually realize the Baseline Protocol’s potential and the objective of the Ethereum OASIS project. Klein noted that enterprise sponsorship of open source code is crucial for enhanced tech adoption across various industries.

OKEx CEO Binance And Its CEO For Promoting Questionable DeFi Projects

By
Adam Barry
-
0

OKEx CEO Jay Hao has slammed crypto exchange Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao for promoting questionable DeFi projects. Besides, Hao also claimed that Binance Smart Chain or BSC is highly centralized and controlled by only one team. He also disclosed that BakerySwap, which is built on BSC, went down within 12 hours of its installation, causing many protests in China and other parts.

The OKEx CEO recently called out Zhao and Yi He, his fellow Binance co-founder, for their platform’s hasty SUSHI listing. In a series of tweets, the OKEx CEO condemned Zhao and his partner Yi He for what he termed Binance’s hasty SUSHI listing.

“Those financial losses are a result of blind trust in Binance. Despite Yi He’s claims that projects on BSC must pass all security audits, BAKE still plunged, leading Zhao to delete his BakerySwap endorsement tweet just like he did with SushiSwap previously,” he tweeted.

SUSHI was listed on September 1, the same day as Binance.

It should be noted that OKEx listed SUSHI on the same day as Binance — September 1. Decentralized platforms have had a lot of success in the recent past, which has placed centralized platforms in a difficult position. They have two options. Either avoid listing trending DeFi tokens and possibly lose users to DEXs or join the club, leading to listing of unqualified tokens that could devastate the crypto ecosystem.

Binance Expanding Globally

Binance, one of the leading crypto exchanges globally, has been spreading its roots and expanding its operations around the world. Over the last few years, the exchange has launched operations in different countries around the world.

In a bid to increase its presence worldwide, the crypto exchange has been on a shopping spree, which has seen it acquire several startups and local businesses around the world.

In a recent announcement, Binance said it’s UK subsidiary had joined the country’s self-regulating associations while its subsidiary in Australia has joined Fintech Australia, the country’s fintech industry advocacy body.

Binance is an executive member of CryptoUK, the self-regulating industry association, which places it in the same league with peers like Ripple, eToro, CryptoCompare, Coin Shares, and Coinbase.

Launch Of Binance Smart Chain-Developed BurgerSwap Pumping BNB Price

By
Adam Barry
-
0

Uniswap has revolutionized DeFi Projects, and the Binance Smart Chain is making them available to everyone. The latest DeFi to launch is BurgerSwap, which aims at improving Uniswap by offering a different community governance and reward approach.

BurgerSwap latest DeFi on BSC

Over the past few months, there we have witnessed a food-connected yield farming craze that doesn’t seem to stop. We have been treated to Cream, Shrimp, Yam, Spaghetti, and Sushi in the crypto spaces, and now the latest addition is the BurgerSwap DeFi. Although BurgerSwap is a clone of SushiSwap, there is some variance in other aspects. One of the most notable features of BurgerSwap is its democratic governance, which means token holders can vote to change the features of the exchange, such as staking rewards, trading fees, and mining activity, among others.

Most DeFi projects are preferring to launch on the Binance Smart Chain, and BurgerSwap has followed that path. BurgerSwap will be developed on the EVM-compatible BSC, which launched on August 31. In a post that appeared on Medium, BurgerSwap confirmed that its tokens will have BNB pairs. This will offer a new use for BNB holding yield farmers. The launch of BurgerSwap has pumped the price of BNB, which jumped 33% to new yearly highs following the launch.

Binance will be looking to avoid a repeat of SushiSwap with BurgerSwap

Currently, Burgerswap token ranks high alongside the BUSD stablecoin in transaction volumes. This is good news for Binance, which has been aggressively charting its path in the DeFi sector. However, recently there was controversy concerning SushiSwap, which is listed on Binance and its founder Chef Nomi. For now, Binance is treading carefully with the new project, which could be sensible to avoid ending up the SushiSwap way. That could damage the reputation of the exchange and even burn the BNB token.

Despite the challenges that have been faced before with projects like Yam Protocol, the SushiSwap saga has been damaging. SushiSwap has been using liquidity pools of UniSwap to allows the mining of SUSHI, resulting in a spike in price.

Autonomous Country Abkhazia Blaming Illegal Crypto Mining Activities for Electricity Conundrum in Country

By
Adam Barry
-
0

The South Caucasus Mountain region’s Government is squarely laying the blame on increased crypto mining activities to the over-consumption of limited power.

Abkhazia, an autonomous country and a country viewed by many as part of the country Georgia, has declared explicitly that its power problems can be traced to the increased activities of the crypto mining activities in the region. Crypto mining around the region is, in fact, illegal and ends up consuming a lot of power all year round. This is all in line with a news article published on December 12 last year when the Prime minister of the region, Valerie Bganba, convened a cabinet secretary meeting to tackle the issue of the region’s electricity grids that supplied power to the nation of around 245,000 people. The article was published on the Cabinet Secretary’s website.

Crypto miners are taking advantage of the area’s cheap expenses on energy. This has increased crypto mining hardware being imported into the country last year. Customs department of the region reported that hardware of over $589,000 entered the country. It was also noted in the discoveries that the connection of these illegal cryptocurrency mining farms to Chernomoronergo, the main electric utility for the state, further complicated power issues by overloading the system.

A director of the state’s main electric utility stated recently that the entire capacity of the mining equipment in operation in the region is not lower than 40-45 Megawatts. This implies that year-round, this equipment’s consumption is responsible for the consumption of 400 million Kilowatt-hours. This is a huge percentage of the prognosticated power shortage in the country.

However, instead of stiffening their stance on mining activities’ illegality, the Government is seeking ways to make it legal to keep a better leash on the activities and power consumption. The president also stated that they sought to build a large cryptocurrency mining farm in the country to aid the country’s budget.

Yearn Finance Is Launching A New Stablecoin Lending Protocol With No Governance Token

By
Adam Barry
-
0

Yearn Finance, a popular decentralized finance platform, has announced the launch of a lending protocol called StableCredit. The new platform offers a completely decentralized lending platform through the use of a combination of tokenized debt stablecoins, lending, and single-sided automated market makers. It offers a lending protocol that is similar to MakerDAO.

Users will be able to deposit USD Coin (USDC) and redeem StableCredit USD at a rate of 75%. The StableCredit USD is then used to buy other crypto assets. Users need to deposit the borrowed StableCredit USD back into the protocol to release then unlocked USDC.

Ready for launch

In a recent announcement, the company indicated that StableCredit’s user interface is in the final development stages. This is an indication that it will be ready for launch in the coming weeks.

As an incentive to users of the new DeFi platform, the protocol will not distribute a governance token to users. YFI, the company’s governance token, got a major boost with the recent DeFi bubble jumping over 800% to trade at a high of $38,000.

Yearn has been gaining popularity in recent years through its portfolio of lending protocols, including its “vaults,” which have recently attracted many investors with promise of low transaction costs and increased returns.

YFI Token Surges on Pro Listing News

The YFI rose by over $6,000, and more than half of bitcoin’s current price following news of its listing on the more advanced level “Pro” exchange. In a recent update, Coinbase indicated that it had started accepting deposits from the DeFi. This led to a spike in the YFI token jumping by 10% from just above $29,000 to around $35,000, within a span of just hours.

Coins listed on Coinbase always experience a phenomenon called the “Coinbase Effect,” which involves some degree of increase in market price. This means that the Coinbase name carries a lot of influence in the digital asset market, and once associated with, companies can gain some trading influence.

Yearn Finance is working to become a gateway to a variety of high-yielding investment products in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Jack Dorsey Touts Bitcoin As Native Internet Currency

By
Adam Barry
-
0

Jack Dorsey is bullish on Bitcoin. Twitter and Square founder says Bitcoin has the potential to become the first “native internet currency.”

“I think the internet warrants a…native currency and…bitcoin is probably the best manifestation of that thus far,” the 43 years old told Reuters. “I can’t see that changing given all the people who want the same thing and build it for that potential.”

Bitcoin is still the leading Internet Currency

In a recent interview, Dorsey said Bitcoin beats its competitors by far in the race to become the world’s first internet currency. He added that Bitcoin was founded on principles that are reminiscent of what the internet was created for. According to Dorsey, Bitcoin’s features like decentralization and consensus make it the perfect internet currency.

The tech mogul said the internet is driven by consensus and is built by everyone. In addition, everyone has an equal chance to change the course of the internet.

Recently Dorsey’s Square reported increased revenue from its Cash App, allowing users to buy and sell bitcoin.  The company reported $875 million in bitcoin revenue and $17 million in gross profit from bitcoin in the Q2 2020. This represents a 600% increase from what the company reported in Q2 2019.

Increase in bitcoin active users

Square has attributed the increase in revenue and gross profit to an increase in bitcoin active users. In addition, the company says there has been growth in demand for the service among customers. Square has been a major cryptocurrency supporter and reported $65.5 in revenue from bitcoin in the first quarter of 2019.

Despite being a big supporter of Bitcoin, Dorsey has highlighted key issues that he says are affecting its growth and its adoption in the mainstream financial system. He noted the Bitcoin needs to be more time-effective and affordable. He expressed concerns that it takes more time to complete a Bitcoin transaction and may cost more. On average, a Bitcoin transaction will cost up to $2.5 and last as long as 9 minutes.

Dorsey also says Bitcoin needs to be people-friendly saying that people need to be confident to use it and understand how it is used.

Square Creating Patent Library To Stop Patent Trolling

By
Adam Barry
-
0

Square has formed a consortium to help stop the abuse of the patent process. Dubbed the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (Copa), the non-profit was formed by Square, the payment processors founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Dorsey took to his Twitter account to explain that the payment company based in San Francisco will seek to keep open access to the crypto industry. The consortium will work by either hindering competitors’ research efforts or by preventing access to useful technologies.

“Locking up foundational cryptocurrency technologies in patents stifles innovation and adoption; and offensive use of patents by bad actors threatens the growth of cryptocurrency technologies,” Square said in a statement.

Democratizing Patents

In the tweet, Dorsey said that Square will bring all its crypto patents under COPA, and the organization will ensure open access to crypto industry technologies as this will ensure growth in the sector. Square is inviting crypto companies to join the group to maintain an open-source community in the industry. According to Square, this will mitigate the malicious use of crypto patents.

According to details available on the group’s website, members who join will agree to pool their patents and create a library. The group further says that the industry’s growth will only be seen if the fragmented technologies are put together.

Pre-emptive patents

A major problem in the industry regarding patents is applicants who have no plan of developing the plan but just claiming ownership and preventing other companies from developing the idea.  These are called pre-emptive patents and have led to increased patent trolls who speculatively launch patent applications every year. Of the more than 5,800 applications made in 2019, only 3% were successful.

To join COPA, applicants must commit to allowing free access to their patents and pledge not to use their patents in a harmful or offensive way. In main objective is to grow the patent library and attract more companies to join. This, in the end, will allow easy access to innovative technologies. Square has promised to make its crypto patents available in the new library, although it will make exceptions for filings related to existing applications.

China’s Nationa Blockchain Platform Adopts DAML As A Smart Contract Programing Language

By
admin
-
0

Blockchain Services Network (BSN), China’s largest blockchain infrastructure project, has partnered with Red Date Technology to integrate Digital Asset Modeling Language”, or DAML, as its smart contract programming language.

Red Date Technology is a tech company that was also involved in the development of BSN and will add a smart contract language developed by Digital Asset, an American blockchain startup.

In a recent announcement, executives from the two companies noted that DAML will be the “exclusive standard” for developing decentralized applications, or DApps. The integration will make DApps be interoperable regardless of the blockchain platforms they are built on.  With this, developers will not be required to rewrite their smart contracts every time they are deploying a new application on BSN.

In the announcement, both Digital Asset and Red Date Technology said they intend to complete the first DAML pilot’s development on the BSN by November 2020. The pilot program will involve deploying a DAML application interoperating two blockchains WeBank’s FISCO BCOS and IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric.

According to sources close to the matter, the companies will integrate the application into the core BSN architecture. After the pilot program, the application will be available for general use by all developers with DAML on BSN in 2021.

“By selecting DAML as the exclusive smart contract language of the BSN itself, our developers will gain the choice of using one unifying smart contract language seamlessly and interoperably across every blockchain,” said Red Date Technology CEO, Yifan He.

On the other hand, Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz said it is important to connect global blockchain platforms to enhance blockchain technologies’ adoption.

China’s national blockchain infrastructure takes shape

China has made a lot of progress in developing its Blockchain Service Network (BSN) infrastructure. In a recent announcement, the team said the new platform will be built on FISCO BCOS as the open-source protocol. One of the main reasons behind this infrastructure’s development is for China to offer its SMEs a low-cost way to adopt blockchain.

As part of the development initiative, state-owned companies China Mobile and China UnionPay, the State Information Center (SIC), and three other organizations that started the BSN program have signed an agreement establishing the BSN Development Alliance.

Crypto Licensing Could Accelerate Adoption Of Digital Assets

By
Adam Barry
-
0

The move to have licensing regulations for cryptocurrencies could boost their adoption into the United States’ mainstream financial system. Brian Brooks, the current U.S. Comptroller of the Currency and former chief legal officer at Coinbase, is pushing to have federal licensing for crypto payments in the United States.

Lack of clear state and federal laws governing the possession, use, and trade of digital assets has been a major impediment to their use of cryptocurrencies as well as their adoption into the mainstream financial system.

States likely to push back on crypto licensing

Market players have projected that states will back against federal licensing of crypto payments due to an ongoing dispute a fintech charter between OCC and the New York Department of Financial Services.

The licensing initiative is also facing opposition from other players in the mainstream financial industry like John Ryan, president of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), who recently issued a statement expressing the association’s opposition to federal licensing crypto payment methods.

“The OCC’s proposed payments charter is no different than the fintech charter already rejected in federal court and subject to a nationwide order preventing the OCC from accepting applications from a company that does not take deposits,” the letter said.

Despite the opposition, the OCC says it is ready to start receiving applications from firms seeking licensing for crypto payment systems. Players in the U.S crypto industry have welcomed the appointment of Brian Brooks to head the OCC.

Banks are key pillars to crypto adoption in the U.S

The United States Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) was established to increase access and adoption of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. Through the OCC, Federal Savings Associations and National Banks can offer cryptocurrency custody services to customers.

With the new regulations, banks offer custody services for digital assets and recognize them as valid instruments of investment. This is a significant step towards the use of cryptocurrencies. According to Nasdaq, such regulations could see major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America offering custody services for digital assets to customers.

1...555657...66Page 56 of 66

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

©