US authorities accepted Ethereum as payment for fine

US authorities accepted Ethereum as payment for fine

An interesting detail emerged in the SEC case against the founder of digital asset Shopin. A federal judge in New York accepted the Ethereum altcoins as a financial instrument to settle the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) case against the founder of the digital asset Shopin, Eran Eyal. Eyal was allowed to pay a $ 450,000 fine in the form of 3105 units.

Ethereum Grayscale Trust Shares Halve In Week

Grayscale's Ethereum investment trust has dropped 57% since June 18. From the all-time high on June 4, when the ETHE share price reached $ 239.50, the decline as of June 24 was over 65%.

At the same time, there is a decrease in the overpayment relative to the Ethereum spot price on June 4 - from 950% to 370%. This may indicate a lack of correlation between the stock and the underlying asset.

Earlier, Messari analyst Ryan Watkins drew attention to the fact that direct purchase of ETHE is available only to accredited investors, and their resale on the secondary market is allowed only after 12 months. Consequently, a large number of buyers of ETHE shares can easily push the share price much higher than the value of the underlying asset.

According to CMS PRIME, many accredited investors have borrowed Ethereum to issue ETHE shares. To settle accounts with lenders, they need to buy cryptocurrency on the spot market or create new shares through a private placement.

ETHE is currently trading at $ 102.50

As a reminder, Grayscale launched the Ethereum trust in June last year.

In April 2020, according to a Reddit user, the company acquired 48.4% of all Ethereum coins mined since the beginning of the year.

The BitMEX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange will expand the list of supported trading instruments with three futures contracts paired with the stablecoin Tether (USDT).

On October 30, the exchange will launch Quanto contracts on Binance Coin (BNB), Polkadot (DOT) and yEarn Finance (YFI).

The leverage limit is 33x for the first asset and 25x for the other two.

BitMEX explained the addition of the YFI token to the product line by further expanding DeFi-related contracts.

"By the end of the year, we plan to add several more products based on altcoins," the message says.

WordPress started using Ethereum blockchain for copyright protection

The WordPress site's content management system now allows authors to timestamp published content, which is recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

According to the developers, this feature can help with copyright protection, clearly prove who created the content and ensure that it hasn't been tampered with by others. The site itself publishes confirmation of the time of publication, which can be used in potential conflicts of copyright.

WordPress already has a large number of blockchain and cryptocurrency related plugins. For example, a built-in DEX exchange, a gateway for cryptocurrency payments, and a cryptocurrency quotes widget.

WordPress currently powers about 37% of all websites on the Internet and holds 60% of the CMS market.

Orchid has found a new way to use Chainlink oracles

Chainlink developers have created the most advanced smart contract mechanism - oracles capable of transferring reliable information to the blockchain from external sources, without human intervention. The most common use of this technology is to transfer the price stream to DEX exchanges and DeFi platforms.

Startup Orchid (OXT) has found a new use for Chainlink oracles, which will help promote its own product - a decentralized VPN platform.

The cost of services for providing users with Internet access with the ability to geographically select a server and IP, are nominated in OXT tokens. Cooperation with Chainlink allowed us to introduce two types of online oracles, one of which converts the OXT rate into dollars, the other measures the access speed.

In fact, Orchid Network is moving to a user-friendly, reliable display of the cost of VPN services, which will help expand their number. Chainlink hopes that the new integration will allow other projects to focus on oracles. Which can become a technological bridge that has ensured the massive adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum will accelerate to 2000 TPS, catching up with Visa and Mastercard

The new sidechain solution for the Ethereum blockchain promises to provide network scalability up to "VISA level" transaction volume after deployment.

Solving the Ethereum scalability problem

The Matter Labs developers launched zkSync beta testing on the Ethereum network on June 18, as stated in the project's official blog.

The zkSync tier 2 application (a network add-on that transmits transactions to the main blockchain) is a "highly reliable and hyperscale solution on the Ethereum mainnet that allows users to send tokens while eliminating the high gas charges" the network is infamous for.

If successful, the network bandwidth will be significantly increased, and the transaction speed will increase several times. Matter Labs clarifies in its announcement that zkSync's scaling solution is not a decentralized application (dApp).

Overall, zkSync solves a longstanding scalability issue for Ethereum that has been tested on numerous occasions and has resulted in network congestion and slow transaction processing. The blog explains the technology behind the solution:

ZkSync uses a new zero knowledge rollups application that requires a one-time trusted installation that allows updates and new features to be applied without losing the security benefits provided by the Ethereum network.

ZkSync can currently handle over 200 transactions per second - roughly the speed of PayPal's payment processor. The Ethereum network only processes about 12 transactions per second, so the technology is already delivering a 10x speed increase.

Scaling to VISA level

PayPal is not the last frontier, the developers of zkSync want to gradually increase the speed to 2000 transactions per second (TPS) - to go on a par with VISA, Mastercard and other outdated banking solutions.

The speed is expected to be achieved through Matter Labs' proprietary zkRollup technology, which uses third-party validators that "do not have access to underlying transaction data in the rollup package."

In terms of fees, the blog notes that fees will not exceed $ 0.01 per transaction for the foreseeable future and will be paid with the token transferred. Before zkSync, token transfers were paid only in ETH and cost $ 2 million a month.

Read on: ETH miners received 60% more commissions per day than BTC miners

Matter Labs joins Loopring and others to scale the Ethereum network to millions of users every month. The project previously received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation and was founded following an initial $ 2 million funding round held by Placeholder VC in November 2019.

In future updates, zkSync will introduce smart contract compatibility and additional security and anti-censorship features.