The delays on the Ethereum mainnet occurred with the Open Ethereum client. There was an addition of four improvement proposals (EIP) to the platform.

Berlin, the long-awaited update on the Ethereum mainnet, is finally active. However, there were synchronization delays on one of its clients. The activation of the hard fork occurred at the height of block 12,244,000.

Developers Tim Beiko and Hudson Jameson confirmed that information through their Twitter accounts. Additionally, Jameson explained that the programmers were reviewing the code to solve the synchronization failures with the Open Ethereum client.

“The OpenEthereum team and the Ethereum Core developers are aware of the situation. For that reason, they are working to diagnose and fix the problems that the OpenEthereum client is facing,” said Jameson, who is also a member of the Ethereum Foundation.

After posting a similar message, the Etherscan service said that the new block data would only be available after they solve the problem. According to the platform, Hiveon Pool mined the update block at about 6:00 a.m. New York time.

Most Nodes Are Active but Some Still Need Updating

The programmers opened an issue in the Open Ethereum repository for users to discuss what was happening. User madnadyka raised that there was a “node problem following the Berlin hard fork as it was not synchronizing after block 12,244,294”.

Data from Ethernodes indicates that 85.4% of the active nodes (1,421) are ready and synchronized, but 14.6% (about 242 nodes) are not yet synchronized. The most used client is Geth, with 1,185 synchronized nodes and another 171 on standby. Open Ethereum is the second most popular client on the network, with 199 nodes ready. However, it has synchronization failures and 28 other nodes still need updating.

Coinbase and Bitgo, among other cryptocurrency platforms, also reported the incident, which is affecting their operations. As a preventive measure, Coinbase even temporarily halted withdrawals in Ether and ERC-20 tokens. They also warned that incoming transactions to the exchange could suffer delays.

The Berlin Hard Fork Incorporated Four Enhancements into the Ethereum Network

Berlin is just one more step on the agenda of updates or forks that the Ethereum network is going through. The new hard fork implements a four-enhancement package (EIP) that would allow the smart contract platform to be faster, more secure, and cheaper.

The Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) of this update are 2565, 2718, 2929, and 2930. The first improvement seeks to reduce the cost of pre-compiled ModExp (modular exponentiation) contracts. Its goal is to reduce gas for one type of transaction to make advanced arithmetic operations more practical, according to developer Kelly Olson.

Standardization between different types of transactions occurs thanks to the EIP 2718 protocol. Concerning EIP 2929, it increases gas consumption for those operations that could lead to a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Finally, EIP 2930 is a new type of transaction that serves to create a pre-established list of addresses and amounts, which would reduce fees.

By Alexander Salazar

Pereira’s photograph shows Madrid’s Gran Vía Street, empty. The NFT of the picture will appear on OpenSea through the Foundation.app platform.

The photograph of William José Returns Home, made by the Spanish photographer, Ignacio Pereira, was uploaded to the NFT, OpenSea market on April 7. The image will be the first NFT (non-fungible token) sold by Pereira, which made it on January 21, 2019. The picture shows the street of Gran Vía (the busiest street in Madrid) in total isolation.

According to the digital newspaper El Independiente, the photograph received its tokenization on sale as an NFT. It went viral during 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, taking a different reading from the one it had in 2019 when it represented loneliness in big cities.

During the pandemic, the photograph went through an edition procedure from the Spanish political party, Vox, which manipulated the image and filled the streets within the picture with coffins.

The original photograph of Pereira in the form of NFT will go through auction today, Thursday, April 15, in the OpenSea market, through the NFT platform, Foundation. App (FND), who has also auctioned works such as Kendama Warrior, for 7.70 ETH (at the time of sale USD 18,858), or the piece Fractal Istanbul – Ferryboat – Harem, by illustrator and CGI artist Tarik Tolunay, which sold for 5 ETH (for the time of sale USD 12,252).

Foundation. App currently has an NFT created by Edward Snowden, which until now has not found its sale.

NFTs had gained a lot of criticism in the art world

Regarding the NFTs, Pereira expressed exclusively for El Independiente that this digital asset will turn the art world “upside-down” since it positions artists in a place where they can generate their currency. Pereira also said that in the end, the NFTs would serve as a tool for the discipline of photography to recover its dignity, a struggle that takes years.

Ignacio Pereira, born in 1979, began his role as a photographer in 2005 after having projects for various communication and advertising agencies in Spain.

That same year he founded his agency, Coronal Truman, which dedicates its efforts to deliver multimedia content. In 2018, Pereira was awarded the Photo España award for his project Kenopsia.

Like William José Returns Home, most of Pereira’s photographs represent loneliness in the world’s capitals. Pereira has photographed isolated cities like London, Tokyo, New York, Istanbul, Rome, Paris, and Madrid.

The world of NFTs extends its tentacles every day, not only with the sale of digital works such as CryptoPunks but also with the tokenization of traditional works such as the 10,000 oil paintings by Damien Hirst.

These works are at an eco-friendly platform and artist Beeple’s collage, which found a successful sale last month for $ 70 million at Christie’s auction house.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The investigator said that it is possible to use forensic intelligence tools to find illicit activities on blockchains. The investigation by the former CIA official found that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not full of fraud.

It is not all questioning of Bitcoin by US government officials like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The crypto asset also receives the backing of a former agent of the country’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Former CIA Director Michael Morell, who worked at the agency for 33 years, recently released a document. There he refuted the old narrative that seeks to disqualify Bitcoin by linking it to illicit activities.

The new lobbying group Crypto Council for Innovation commissioned such a report. Its founding members include companies Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Square.

While doing the work, Morell concluded that the broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly exaggerated. Additionally, he found blockchain analysis to be a highly effective crime-fighting and intelligence gathering tool.

Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Are Not Full of Frauds

The former CIA director said that he did not expect to reach those conclusions when he began the investigation. He had wrongly assumed that Secretary Janet Yellen and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde based their opinions on real facts.

Both officials point to Bitcoin as an instrument connected to money laundering and terrorist financing, among other crimes.

According to Lagarde, it is necessary to adopt a global regulation on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The former President of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes that Bitcoin greatly facilitates money laundering. Besides, she said that it is necessary to close any escape gaps to avoid this crime.

Janet Yellen, the new US Treasury Secretary, stated that regulatory mechanisms must adapt to new technological changes. In an address to the US Congress, she said that this would help block the financing of terrorism.

Despite what Lagarde and Yellen have said, Morell found “that [Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies] were not full of illicit activity.” Furthermore, he explained that “there was probably less illicit activity in the Bitcoin ecosystem than in the traditional banking system.”

Blockchain Analysis Allows Finding Illegal Activities

The researcher explained that analytical firms such as Chainalysis, CipherTrace, and Elliptic use forensic intelligence tools to find illicit activities on blockchains. Morel said that he was “shocked by how they find an illicit activity,” which is “great intelligence work.”

The former CIA official mentioned the need to protect the privacy of citizens, referring to the analysis of movements in blockchains. “The 4^th Amendment is paramount, and it is important to maintain the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,” Morel said. “Although it is sometimes difficult, it is always possible to do both,” he added

People generally Fear New Technology as They Do Not Understand It

The eight-page document concludes that various reasons lead to seeing such alarmist statements and articles about the threat of Bitcoin. Morell explains that people, in general, are afraid of this new type of technology as they do not understand it.

In addition to that, the investigator argues that bad news drives perceptions more than good news given that “fear is news.” He cites the case of the French citizen who sent Bitcoin to individuals involved in the insurrection on the US Capitol. There are multiple stories like that, where blockchain forensics help to solve a crime.

According to the former director, the transparency of the blockchain allowed law enforcement to quickly identify the trail of illicit payments. In contrast, payments through the traditional system could have proven to be more difficult to track.

By Alexander Salazar

NFT’s transaction volume surpassed its historical ceiling of $ 1.5 billion. Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain are the blockchains most used by these applications.

According to a report that dates from early 2021, the DApps or decentralized applications industry grew by 639% in the last 12 months. The market evolution of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized platforms (DeFi) were the main drivers of this advance.

The volume of transactions in the NFT market approached an all-time high with an excess of $ 1.5 billion in early 2021.

Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) positioned themselves as the preferred blockchains for DApps developers. However, the high prices regarding operations on the Ethereum blockchain have led to the various platforms that operate decentralized applications to announce their expansion to other blockchains, according to a DappRadar report.

The applications show effectiveness for those users who find the current system slow and unmanageable. But most applications are essential to leave the verification to centralized systems at the hands of a corporation or controlled by a specific country.

The statistics Reflect Good Numbers

Although Ethereum duplicated its total insured value (TVL) in the first quarter of 2021, reaching a substantial sum of USD 54,000 million, BSC got to multiply it by 30 in that same period.

Several DeFi apps switched to Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum’s most significant competitor, during the first three months of 2021. Some of them are 1inch, Matcha, The Graph, bZx, and Alpha Hamora.

During this time, the total number of daily active wallets circled 458,000, of which 105,000 operate on Binance Smart Chain and 75,000 on Ethereum.On the other hand, NFTs and gaming DApps mostly went for Polygon or Flow, the cited source details.

Awesome Records for NFTs

In this first quarter of 2021, several NFT sales reached impressive records for this kind of transaction to date. NBA Top Shot DApp is an excellent demonstration of these records.

This NBA Top Shot DApp, which allows you to acquire tokens of the best plays of various teams in the American basketball league, reported the highest volume of transactions since its creation.

On the other hand, the record set by digital artist Beeple cannot be in omission. In March 2021, his work The First 5000 Days sold for $ 69,346,260 at Christie’s auction, which is the most significant sum ever paid for an NFT.

These days, a lot of participants are joining the use of decentralized applications. The social network Reddit, with more than 430 million users today, recently announced its partnership with the Ethereum Foundation to develop a DApp.

Thanks to this partnership, its users could access this technology to better interact on the well-known content and news platforms to improve their decisions regarding digital currencies and other highlights in the crypto world.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Strict regulations undermine financial freedom and Inclusion. The businessman also thinks that regulating cryptocurrencies could make them grow in popularity.

Jesse Powell, CEO of the Kraken exchange house, in an interview with CNBC, said he was concerned about the strict regulations that could be applied to the cryptocurrency markets in the future in the United States of America.

The world’s governments could strengthen their regulatory mechanisms against bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as their adoption spreads and grows.

The executive of one of the world’s largest exchanges affirmed that these measures would not apply in the short term but the long term.

The United States of America seems to reject an utterly hostile position against cryptocurrencies for fear of damaging its financial system. The CEO also notes that “other countries, specifically China, are taking cryptocurrencies very seriously and taking a long-term perspective.

The US Federal Reserve still Needs More time to Reach a Position like China’s

In this sense, it is also essential to consider that China is carrying out an immense amount of tests with the digital yuan as an electronic instrument to replace its national currency. For its part, the US Federal Reserve still needs more time to reach a position like that of its Asian geopolitical rival, but it would present a digital dollar prototype later this year.

Regarding regulations like needing user identification for self-custodial cryptocurrency wallets, the executive noted that these kinds of measures could harm digital currencies and strangle their primary functions and features, allowing access to financial services to everyone.

On the way to the considerable expansion that Bitcoin is facing, rules will always work for businesses that focus on this technology. The regulations also include the fact that Bitcoin is solid enough to prevail.

Also, anti-money laundering measures suppose sky-high costs in terms of financial exclusion, business friction, bureaucracy, and regulatory compliance, violation of privacy, and so on. With a trillion or more, laundered by the world’s largest banks, these measures’ effectiveness becomes minimal even in the traditional centralized system.

Criminal behavior increases when structural incentives pave the way to these events, even when poverty increases and access to a decent life becomes difficult, but not when there is greater openness to global finance and a stronger currency.

These Kind of Measures Could Harm Digital Currencies

The executive noted that these kinds of measures could harm digital currencies and strangle their primary functions and features, allowing access to everyone’s financial services.

This same observation goes regarding the provisions that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suggests implementing to the world’s governments. Pursuing self-custody and the free exchange of value are set against individual autonomy and directly attack the essence of Bitcoin.

However, the executive also thinks that imposing regulations on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies could have the opposite effect. Kraken and Coinbase have opposed legislation before. They consider that it is contrary to the spirit of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Kraken, which has grown in both the bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) staking markets, evaluates entering the US stock markets next year; CNBC and Coinbase already did it.

By: Jenson Nuñez

According to a group of developers, the first part of the merger would be ready in 2021. Another Ethereum developer considers that 2021 as a launch year is aspirational.

One of the steps to get to Ethereum 2.0 is a minimum functional viable product. In this, proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS) consensus could work in tandem. However, there appears to be no consensus as to the launch date of the first merger. The programmers in charge cannot define an exact period for the launch.

Ethereum programmer and researcher Justin Drake applied a survey to a group of developers. They had to answer whether they considered the possibility of achieving a minimum viable merger by 2021. Eighty-six per cent of those surveyed agreed with such a possibility.

Regarding the merger, the developer said that it will occur after the London hard fork proposed in EIP-1559. That event is scheduled to happen in July or August. The goal is to mitigate the high fees that users currently have to pay.

Drake posted the survey results on a Twitter thread, tagging some of the contributors who had responded thus far. Among them was Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin himself. However, Drake raised/mentioned the fact that some developers still have to cast their vote.

In contrast, Ben Edgington, lead Ethereum 2.0 developer at ConseSys, published an article mentioning Drake’s Twitter thread. He stated that expecting a minimum viable merger by 2021 was “aspirational.” Additionally, he said that the first quarter of 2022 was a more realistic year for this goal.

Edgington describes the efforts to achieve such a consensus, not only among developers but also among the wider community. He mentions the initial specifications of the feature, which developer Mikhail Kalinin released. This fact was a mechanism to prepare ETH 1.0 clients with PoW, in their move towards PoS.

Ethereum 2.0 Has Already Suffered Delays

In mid-2020, Vitalik Buterin and Justin Drake discussed the Ethereum 2.0 Genesis block launch date. On that occasion, Drake considered that ETH 2.0 would go into operation in early 2021, while Vitalik bet everything on 2020.

Before that, Vitalik had already admitted his mistake in announcing the launch date of Ethereum 2.0 for January 2020. Subsequently, he stated that it would be operational in July of the same year, which finally occurred on December 1^st, 2020.

Some Steps Remain for ETH 2.0

There is a high expectation as Ethereum 2.0 would mitigate the saturations that usually affect the network. The scalability of this model, thanks to the side chains, would allow achieving this objective.

It is still necessary to take some steps, beyond the fact that BeaconChain, or chain of Ethereum 2.0 with PoS, is already operational.

Although the London hard fork refers, in theory, to a reduction in fees through EIP 1559, it has already found detractors. That happened with the protest of Ethereum miners against the burning of fees that this would represent. Although it did not work, it could have been a setback in the development of Ethereum 2.0.

By Alexander Salazar