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Exclusive: How to Ensure Random Numbers in Public Blockchain?

Following Part 1 of our interview, Jing Chen of Algorand further teaches our readers on how to ensure the randomness of a number in public blockchain! She also evaluates the existing Proof-of-Stake (POS) protocols: Delegated VS Bonded VS Pure POS!

Regarding the white paper “Digital Signatures for Consensus” published on March 9, 2019, it states that the signature equation contains a random value r. How do you ensure a random number is really random in the public blockchain?

Randomness is used to select committee members for block generation in Algorand’s pure proof-of-stake consensus protocol. This is done through Verifiable Random Functions (VRF).

The seed of the VRF is generated by block proposers and may depend on the state of the blockchain thus far. The adversary cannot predict the randomness before seeing the block proposer’s message, thus cannot pre-strategize based on it. The randomness used in the protocol is updated every round, and seeing the randomness for the current round does not help an adversary predict the randomness used in future rounds. Similar schemes can be used to generate randomness for other purposes, including digital signatures.

What are the problems of delegated proof-of-stake (DPOS) and bonded proof-of-stake?

While delegated and bonded proof-of-stake approaches are more environmentally conscious – as they do not require the large computation power as found in a proof-of-work system in order to mine a block – they are still centralized by design.

In delegated proof-of-stake, a fixed number of selected entities, or delegates, are selected to generate blocks. Delegates are voted into power by the users of the network, who each get a number of votes proportional to the number of tokens they own on the network (i.e., their stake). However, once delegates are selected, they remain in position for a long time, which inherently makes the system more centralized. Further, there is no guarantee that all delegates will remain honest. And even if their honesty was certain, because their identities are known, they become obvious targets for attackers.

In bonded proof-of-stake, a user’s voting power is proportional to the number of tokens he is willing to “lock-up” —that is, put aside without touching for a long time. If he is caught taking malicious actions within the system, then these tokens may be confiscated. This inherently puts “small” users at a disadvantage, as they may need their tokens frequently and can’t afford to lock a large amount up for a long time. Users with a large total stake, on the other hand, are often more willing to do so, causing the voting power in the system to skew disproportionately towards them.

In comparison, Algorand’s Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) approach randomly selects users in charge of block generation. The randomized selection happens not only per block but actually along every step of the Byzantine agreement per block. Every user may be chosen to propose and vote on blocks. The selection probability is directly proportional to a user’s total stake rather than the stake he is willing to lock up. The protocol does not ask a user to lock up any stake in order to participate, neither does it confiscate a user’s stake.

Why Dutch auction is adopted to determine the token price of Algorand?

The Algorand Foundation is responsible for the distribution of Algos—the native token of the Algorand platform. Algos will initially enter circulation through a sequence of Dutch auctions due to three main benefits they specifically provide – fairness, transparency, and convenience.

A Dutch auction lets the market determines the fair price of tokens rather than having the price set by any specific entity. Also, in a Dutch auction, the token price is the same for all participants who have won any amount of tokens, treating participants fairly.

A Dutch auction is convenient for the users to participate in online. Indeed, during such an auction a user does not need to remain online the entire time. They can make a bid and then move offline, and even return online to make another bid later on.

Finally, auctions are conducted on the Algorand blockchain for transparency. All bids are placed on the blockchain, so everybody can verify that the auction has been conducted properly.

Knowing that most of the dApps in public blockchains related to gaming, how Algorand can attract blockchain developers from existing leaders such as EOS and Tron?

Algorand’s technology stands out in decentralization, scalability, and security. We are committed to building a truly permissionless and decentralized public blockchain; a vision shared by many blockchain developers. The Algorand blockchain offers and will continue to offer many unique features where true technology plays. I invite readers to look at our blog posts on Algorand’s roadmap.

For example, as the Algorand blockchain doesn’t fork, it provides immediate transaction finality. After seeing a newly generated block containing a specific transaction, a user doesn’t need to wait for several other blocks to be generated following it before he can safely rely on that transaction. This is critical for time-sensitive applications, as there is no need to make a tradeoff between having a short confirmation time for transactions and risking certain transactions disappearing from the chain.

Ethereum's Switch to Proof-of-Stake Will be 'Substantial' to the Industry, Binance Research Suggests

Binance’s latest research report published on Oct. 28 stated that Ethereum’s upcoming switch to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) from Proof-of-Work (PoW) is expected to take a ‘most substantial’ portion of the crypto market’s attention.

Governance and rewards

PoS blockchains allow network participants to earn rewards by staking cryptoassets on-chain. Compared to block rewards being awarded to miners in proportion to their hashpower in PoW blockchains, rewards in PoS are distributed in proportion to users who stake their cryptoassets on the network.

Participants involved in staking are incentivized to vote for decisions and enhance governance calls for the chain and the ecosystem. This will encourage participants to engage in online discussions, forums, and communicate with other nodes to develop better standards and best practices.

Although there are physical hardware costs for PoS systems, the costs go nowhere nearly as high as those involved in PoW blockchains.

Risks

Staking rewards are usually denominated in a non-fiat pegged cryptocurrency, which means that it could carry potential volatility risks.

There are also required exposure to governance, where users outside of the large holdings circle may face some risk of being exposed to the whims of larger staking participants. This is due to the fact that large token holders can exert a ‘proportionate amount of power’ in the decision making of the ecosystem.

Users are also encouraged to check if the chain requires un-bonding period and other loss of liquidity towards the count of a balance being staked to avoid risks.

Custody may also be a burden in the case of lost private keys as some staking mechanisms require funds to be directly held on the wallets of nodes participating in staking.

Ethereum 2.0 and Instanbul upgrade

Vitalik Buterin mentioned in a recent conference that there are a few teams already looking into implementing Phase One of Ethereum 2.0, in parallel with all the work involved in Phase Zero to production quality.

After the Istanbul network upgrade, which is expected to happen on the testnet this month and on the mainnet a month from now, Buterin suggested that we can expect to see about 4000 transactions per second in the absolute best case.

The best-case scenario describes where people are just making payments, and everyone is running on a rollup, even in realistic cases, it can reach over 1000 transactions per second.

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Payment Giant Visa Sets to Modify PoS Charges to New Business Categories

United States-based merchants are set to see an adjustment in fees to be paid as part of the updates of payment giant Visa point-of-sale (PoS) system.

This situation was made open in a document sent by representatives of Visa to banks notifying them of an upgrade of its system, set to be implemented in the months of April and October respectively. This change in direction is part of the payments giant goals to force merchants to halt the use of checks and to also modify its new fee structure for upcoming businesses.

The potential outcome of the decision

The payments giant is allegedly preparing to implement higher rates for transactions made on e-commerce platforms while lowering the rates for specified service categories such as healthcare, educational system, and real estate. Therefore, traditional holders of Visa cards will pay 9 cents more for the transaction of $100, while holders of premium cards will have to pay 10 cents more in comparison to current rates.

Premium-card holders will see 33% drop rates in interchange fees for the transaction of $50 categories to be enjoyed by supermarkets, as reported by the documents sent by Visa.

The report read, “In the past ten years, there has been no change in the U.S credit interchange structure. This is based on data of the most recent review in the U.S. Visa now tries to modify its default interchange rate structure in order to maximize acceptability and usability, which will then mirror the present value of Visa products.”

Visa also aims to seize the opportunity that abounds in the continuous change in the global financial and payments landscape, which is witnessing drastic changes with the emergence and development of digital currencies.

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Blockstack Breaks New Ground with Proof of Transfer (PoX) Consensus Mechanism, like PoS Without the Risk

Blockstack recently released a white paper for a new blockchain consensus mechanism called Proof of Transfer (PoX). The mechanism is for blockchains piggybacking off the Bitcoin blockchain and would require miners to commit BTC to secure the block rather than proof of work.

PoX will be the consensus mechanism used for Blockstack’s project Stacks 2.0and is designed to facilitate transactions within the Stacks ecosystem while leveraging the security of the Bitcoin network.

PoX – Proof of TransferThe white paperreleased on Feb. 6 explains that traditional consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work (PoW), as leveraged by Bitcoin, use a large amount of electricity in their computations. Typically a blockchain leveraging a larger network would be sidechain, which would operate within the same consensus mechanism. This would mean that the proof of work consensus requires the second chain to expend nearly as much power as the source chain.

In an interview with Cointelegraph,Blockstack’s CEO Muneeb Ali explained that PoX was born from the realization that this computational power spends only needs to happen once. Ali highlighted that there needs to be cost for mining, in PoX miners expend Bitcoin instead of electricity, he explained, “ There are two types of entities: one is the Stacks miner that is processing transactions, writing new blocks on the Stacks blockchain and getting newly minted tokens. Then there are Stacks holders who can also participate in the consensus algorithm.”

The method of token holders’ contributions resembles staking as they must commit some of their funds to the system. By committing funds to the Stacks chain, the holder signals which fork of the chain they are on and validates the separate chain.

On the difference between PoX and PoS Ali made the distinction saying, “ Your funds are not at risk – this is the big thing with staking, that when you’re participating in consensus you could be slashed… Over here your funds are sitting on a different address.”

To generate blocks, a randomised leader election takes place among the miners, where the elected entity becomes responsible for writing the next block. While it is random, there is a correlation between the amount of BTC the holder contributes and successfully earning the Stacks tokens minted by the new block.Blockstack LeadingWhile Blockstack may be breaking new ground with the PoX consensus mechanism, it is not the first time they have been pioneers. In July 2019, Blockchain.News reportedthat Blockstack had the first token offering to be approved by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the SEC Regulation A+.This was a massive step forward as Blockstack Co-founder, Muneeb Ali said at the time,“Only accredited investors could participate in our 2017 offering under Regulation D. Now, thanks to this SEC-qualified offering, the general public can participate and fully interact with our network.”The Blockstack network currently supports more than 165 applications with startups such as Dmail, the decentralized email solution firm and Graphite Docs, the decentralized document management service firm that aims to protect the privacy and freedom of speech for the jeopardized group.Image via Shutterstock

Tezos Looks Set to Beat Bitcoin In 2020

So far, Bitcoin has outperformed all other major assets this year, and it is one of the best crypto performers in 2020. Although Bitcoin’s price plummeted in March amid a broader coronavirus-induced market sell-off, it is so far up around 30% this year.

But one lesser-known cryptocurrency has nearly doubled since January, with expecting it to rise even higher. Since the beginning of the year, Tezos (XTZ) has risen by 85%, adding to gain made during the previous year and giving the cryptocurrency market capitalization of nearly $1.8 billion.

By market capitalization, Tezos was the 15th most valuable cryptocurrency at the start of the year. However, now the cryptocurrency has broken into the top ten and could move quickly past some rival cryptocurrencies if its run continues.

Tezos has indicated strong gains in 2020 with the current price of $2.68 almost double the price coming into this year.

Tezos is a preferred way for holders to profit

Tezos (XTZ) is one of the most prominent and largest among a fast-growing list of digital currencies recognized as “staking tokens.” Tezos is the most among crypto assets with a market value of at least $1 billion. That is more than double the 37% gain for Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market value.

Tezos styles itself as a self-amending cryptographic ledger and utilizes the so-called “proof-of-stake” consensus model. The crypto has emerged as a favorite cryptocurrency and blockchain for tokenized security and real estate tokens.

But Tezos cannot be mined like Bitcoin because it uses proof-of-stake rather than Bitcoin’s proof-of-work.

Proof-of-stake blockchains are normally considered to be less resource-intensive and more scalable as they do not expect miners to solve complicated mathematical problems so that to create the next bloc.

Proof-of-stake blockchains also incentivize token holder participation in network security. If Tezos holders store their funds in certain wallets, then they can stake their XTZ and get additional tokens as a reward for verifying and creating new blocks in the chain.

Joseph Todaro, managing partner at Blocktown Capital, an investment company specializing in digital currencies, said that the strong performance of Tezos is partly because of increased interest in staking-based returns.

Some crypto exchanges provide staking as a service to make it easier for investors to participate. Recently, Tezos has benefited from new listings on the exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Bitfinex.

The Tezos rally started in November last year and has been pushed on by key partnerships with financial institutions and the so-called Tezos Foundation, which awards users up to 0.01 XTZ every 12 hours.

Ethereum, which is the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, intends to upgrade to a staking model in July. Some analysts state that ether has created additional interest among speculators because of the transition to staking.

Latin America’s largest investment bank boosts Tezos with 1 billion STO

Tezos has been one of the best performing crypto assets of this year. The blockchain of Tezos run by the Tezos Foundation has made important achievements in recent years in terms of joining forces with platforms, groups, and banks to further develop Tezos’ potential.

Several partners use Tezos as a part of the solutions applied to everyday life. June last year, BTG Pactual, Latin America’s largest investment bank announced that it plans to use the Tezos blockchain for security token offering potentially worth $1 billion.

BTG Pactual bank partnered with the leading Dubai-based asset management company Dalma Capital to issue $1 billion of real estate securities on the Tezos network. It is, therefore, clear that the Tezos Foundation remains committed to consolidating vital strategic cooperation with the aim of developing real use cases for Tezos (XTZ).

Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Says Layer 2 Scaling Solution Has ‘Basically’ Succeeded

Ethereum has been seeing an upward trend, and demand may increase further in anticipation of the upcoming ETH 2.0 update expected in Q3 2020.

Ethereum is scheduled to undergo a major change of its consensus mechanism, transitioning from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Ethereum has been expecting its scaling to occur for some time, and according to Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, it could already be happening.

Vitalik Buterin recently tweeted that the Ethereum blockchain network’s “layer 2 strategy has basically succeeded.”

Previously, Buterin identified blockchain scalability has a difficulty for typical blockchain designs because it requires every node in the network to process every transaction, limiting the transaction processing capacity of the entire system.

To solve the scalability issue, the Ethereum creator identified strategies for scaling, including sharding, also known as the “layer 2 protocols,” which allows transactions to go through without every node processing the whole transaction.

Token transfers will continue moving to layer 2 solutions due to the fact that these transactions take up a large chunk of the network activity, according to Buterin.

Scalability: Shard Chain Simplification

Dubbed as “HackMD,” Buterin proposed the ETH2 shard chain simplification in early October 2019. In this proposal, a persistent shard chain will be abandoned, and it is replaced by every shard block which is a direct crosslink.

The number of shards is reduced from 1024 to 64 and the maximum number of shards per slot increased from 16 to 64. The “optimal workflow” is revised that there is a crosslink published for every shard during every beacon chain block. Other simplifications include less shard chain logic required, simplification of EEs, and decentralized exchanges no longer needed to facilitate paying transaction fees across shards.

The simplification proposal does come with limitations. There will be more beacon chain overhead with the attestation aggregation having an overhead of 307,200 bytes per slot in each shard. As there are more pairing from a maximum of 128 to 192 per block, the block processing time will increase by around 200ms.

Cardano’s Shelley upgrade is also expected soon, for June 30. While speculation around the upcoming hard forks, ETH and ADA prices are expected to rise, as people who want to earn staking rewards will push buying pressure.

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Ethereum Calls On Hackers to Attack Ethereum 2.0 in Exchange for Bug Bounty

With Ethereum’s plans to launch its 2.0 protocol network, the open-source platform has also decided to tweak its blockchain project to perfection by calling all hackers and challenging them to break into two Ethereum 2.0 attack networks.

Ethereum Creates the “Hacking Challenge”

What an attack network basically entails is a virtual attempt to break into an organization’s network, without the necessary authentication access passwords and locks required. Usually, the objective of an attack network is simply to steal data or perform other malicious activities.

In the case of Ethereum’s public “attack network” launch, it is mainly to test the vulnerabilities and potential security loopholes of Ethereum 2.0, which consists of an upgrade from the Ethereum blockchain. The cryptocurrency platform hopes that with this “attack network” set in place, Ethereum 2.0 will be perfected — shortcomings of the blockchain may be brought to light with the challenge, that simple testing just won’t be able to reveal.

How to Overcome the Attack Networks

The goal of the attack challenge launched by Ethereum is to prevent finality for 16 consecutive epochs on a network. This means that in order to successfully accomplish the digital mission, hackers would need to be able to intercept “finality” from happening for at least 102 minutes (1 h 42 min). “Finality” simply refers to a type of faster on-chain communication, where a block transaction, once finalized, will not be reversible and will therefore not have to wait for multiple acknowledgments before proceeding forward.

The objective of these attack networks is for others to find potential vulnerabilities and security loopholes that simple testing might not reveal.

In exchange for hackers’ efforts, Ethereum will award a $5000 bounty for each individual hacker or hack group who successfully completes their request.

Ethereum Co-Founder Speaks of 2.0 Project

Vitalik Buterin, one of Ethereum’s most recognized co-founders, is particularly proud when speaking of his Ethereum 2.0, and he emphasizes the fact that the data capacity of the developing blockchain will be immense. However, as his blockchain ecosystem is still developing, the upgrade will not translate to higher scalable transactions, meaning that the blockchain will not necessarily process more transactions.

Another key feature of Ethereum 2.0 is the fact that it will run on a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm instead of the current Proof-of-Work Ethereum mainnet. This will enable users in the Ethereum network to lock up their accumulated digital coins and get paid for helping secure the blockchain.

Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Concerned About Security Risks That Come With High ETH Transaction Fees

By now, it is no secret that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and his team are busy perfecting Ethereum 2.0 and preparing it for its official launch.

Ethereum 2.0

One of the key elements of the blockchain ecosystem is that it runs on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, as opposed to the conventional Proof-of-Work (PoW). This enables Ethereum blockchain users to reach distributed consensus when mining a block, and for bullish crypto investors to determine the next block.

Digital asset owners can also lock up their accumulated digital coins and get paid for helping the blockchain.

Will An Upgrade Make Ethereum Faster, Bigger, Stronger?

However, Buterin came forward and while he proudly announced that the data capacity of the developing blockchain will be huge, the Ethereum creator admitted that the higher transaction fee on the blockchain-network may cause unintentionally trigger security risks. Buterin, who can boast that he has co-founded the second largest blockchain network in the world, behind Bitcoin, came forward in a tweet and mentioned a research paper provided by highly reputed Ivy League university, Princeton U. Buterin wrote:

“Transaction fee revenue is now nearing half as high as block reward revenue. This actually risks making Ethereum *less* secure because of https://cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CCS.pdf. Fee market reform (ie. EIP 1559) fixes this; another reason why that EIP is important.”

In other words, though it may not be a security issue at this point in time, the higher fees that Ethereum 2.0 will run may potentially cause a security problem long term and be threatening for the blockchain network. The analysis conducted by Princeton university addressed this issue and voiced that selfish mining may pose a real threat, especially in cases where transaction fees surpass the block rewards.

The research paper goes on to name several malicious mining behaviors, that are deviant and may negatively impact Ethereum blockchain.

Introducing EIP 1559

The fee market reform that Buterin referred to in his tweet is none other than the “Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559”, which was first introduced in April 2019. The whitepaper proposes upgrades that would make transaction fees on Ethereum more predictable. This would enable the blockchain network to be more flexible, by dynamically alternating the block size based on the number of transactions that are queued and waiting for validation.

Furthermore, to prevent congestion from happening in the ecosystem, the whitepaper proposed charging users during times of high demand. Buterin publicly voiced his approval and support of EIP 1559 fee market reform.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Ethereum Surpasses Bitcoin

The market capitalization of Ethereum currently stands at approximately $26 billion dollars. The astonishing thing about this is that the given value does not even include all of the crypto assets founded atop the Ethereum blockchain ecosystems, such as the stablecoins – Tether and USDC – and altcoins.

Also, data from digital-asset data firm Messari showed that Ethereum had now surpassed Bitcoin as the network that settles the most value per day. Ethereum blockchain daily settlement value is estimated to be about $2.5 billion, which makes it the first time since early 2019 that the blockchain has outranked its rival Bitcoin.

Cardano’s Stake Pools Reached 700 Just Five Days after Successful Shelley Hard Fork

Cardano’s Shelley hard fork was successfully launched on July 29, and within 8 hours, 267 stake pools have already registered. The Shelley hard fork took Cardano’s network into its second phase of development, succeeding the Byron era. The Shelley update enables Cardano to become more decentralized and autonomous.

Users can start to delegate their ADA cryptocurrency to independent stake pool operators to earn staking rewards. Previously on Cardano’s testnet, there were 1061 registered pools, 986 active pools and 12.9 billion ADA at stake as of June 22. At press time, there are 701 stake pools, and it seems likely that the 400 other pools might migrate to the current network soon to participate in staking.

With every block made and signed by stake pool operators, Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson said that it is a testimony to the network. He described Cardano as the world’s eventual financial operating system, which will be around forever.

Comparing to other blockchains, Shelley allows Cardano to become 50 to 100 times more decentralized, where the Cardano community and Cardano’s native token ADA holders would be able to decide how the system will evolve.

According to IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson, there are still a number of performance updates to follow up on in August. Updates for Ledger and Trezor wallets are also scheduled for this week while staking function with cold wallets will also be implemented for hardware wallet users to participate in staking.

Cardano is one step closer to full decentralization and more capabilities added, including smart contracts, and decentralized applications (Dapps). Developers, businesses, governments, and corporations will be able to deploy solutions using Cardano.

The Goguen era is Cardano’s next development phase, which is expected to start in the third quarter of 2020 with the release of its testnet. When Goguen launches, Cardano will become a multi-asset ledger that allows users to define, forge, and transfer their custom tokens on the network. The Goguen update will also bring applications including Plutus and Marlowe contracts.

Aimed for developers, the Goguen platform caters to the cohort with the foundation and tools they need to build applications on Cardano. According to Vojvodic, mobile, web, desktop application developers, blockchain protocol developers, embedded developers, fintech developers, and smart contract developers will be able to use Goguen and this will help with the exploration of building alternative environments on the Network and grow the developer community.

Hoskinson mentioned that he would leave Cardano at some point to allow the ecosystem to function in a completely decentralized manner. IOHK’s contract was set to be over in December 2020, but Hoskinson stated that he will not be leaving until “what’s done is done.”

Shelley has a few milestones yet to reach, while the next phase, Goguen is still yet to roll out. He added that he would leave Cardano at some point to allow the ecosystem to function in a completely decentralized manner. The following phase after Goguen is Basho, and Cardano’s last phase is Voltaire.

Ethereum Launches ETH 2.0 Multiclient Testnet – Medalla

Ethereum software developers proudly launched the Ethereum 2.0 multiclient testnet, Medalla – the next step on the road to pure Proof-of-Stake.

One Step Closer to ETH 2.0 Mainnet

As promised, Ethereum launched on August 4, at 1 pm UTC. Ethereum enthusiasts have been anticipating the official release of the testnet since Ethereum software developers have announced that Medalla was in the works and will be the last trial blockchain launched before Ethereum 2.0 mainnet comes into play.

Medalla: A Community Project

Ethereum is hoping to transition to a Proof-of-Stake rather than a Proof-of-Work format with Medalla testnet, meaning that block mining will depend on how much an individual has staked. Another key feature of Medalla that Ethereum proudly announced was that the testnet is almost entirely in the hands of the community, meaning the stability and health of the multiclient blockchain will mostly depend on Ethereum validators’ participation. Those who mine on Medalla will reap the rewards of a transaction fee.

Ethereum’s Bull Run

It has been a rewarding year for Ethereum, to say the least. The blockchain ecosystem recently celebrated its 5-year anniversary last week, and they have come a long way since. Five years ago, when the genesis block was first mined into existence on the network, few people outside of the industry had ever heard of Ethereum blockchain.

Now, fast forward to five years later, Ethereum has been making headlines for quite awhile, recently undergoing a flash crash on the crypto market, before steadying back at around $385. Ethereum’s cryptocurrency Ether is the second-largest crypto by market capitalization, trading around $385 at the time of writing. The blockchain ecosystem has also been dominant in the decentralized finance (DeFi) scene, as it is reputed to have the most DeFi applications run on a blockchain, leveraging smart contracts rather than an intermediary.

Ethereum 2.0 Finally Launched

Ethereum programmer Hudson Jameson announced that “Eth 2.0 is a success, it is going really well right now” and hopes that the transition from Ethereum 1.0 to Ethereum 2.0 mainnet will be smooth.

As developers went live on Ethereum Foundation’s YouTube stream to discuss the launch, it seemed that the only cause for concern were that they were seeing lower participation levels from the validators than expected. However, Ethereum software developers stood by the fact that it was just temporary, and that crypto enthusiasts should not jump to conclusions on that aspect. One Ethereum executive said:

“Low participation is just temporary; we will get through this. We have genesis, we have a chain running and resilience built into the protocol. We have an opportunity for the protocol to demonstrate what it can do, which is to recover from low participation from validators.”

Ethereum CEO Vitalik Buterin Pushes for Phase 1

Co-founder and CEO of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, had previously commented on his blockchain project, and expressed his wishes to see phase 1 of Medalla testnet initiated as soon as possible. Though phase 0 is still mature and being perfected at the time of writing, Buterin said that phase 1 was all about “spec optimization and development, and that there was no unfinished research required for it.”

Medalla Team Hunts for Cybersecurity Talent

To finish off the live launch, Ethereum developers said that that updates on the progress of Medalla blockchain will be provided on Ethereum’s Reddit account. With Ethereum Foundation doing everything they can to perfect ETH 2.0, Ethereum has also recently announced that it was looking to build a cybersecurity team dedicated to maintaining the ETH 2.0.