The mempool progressively decongested in the last five days. The increase in computing power coincides with the activation of new farms in North America

The congestion that occurred in the Bitcoin (BTC) network for two weeks seems to come to an end. Transactions flow at low cost, the list of transactions on hold (mempool) looks clear, and the hash rate just increased in the last 48 hours. A sign that the slowdown in mining that is happening since late October is in reversion.

After reaching high congestion with more than 129,492 pending transactions on October 27 and commissions that exceeded 1,000 sat / vb (about $ 50), the bitcoin mempool is now progressively decongesting. At the time of writing this article, the temporary memory registers just under 10,000 pending transactions with commissions of about 100 sat / vb (USD 2), according to data from the jochen-hoenicke site.

A set of elements may be combining in the recovery that the Bitcoin network is showing: such as the recent decrease in difficulty and the increase in the hash rate, which is an indication that a small army of miners just resumed its operation or new workers already joined.

Is the activation of a small Bitcoin mining army is happening?

After several analysts attributed the drop in the hash rate, that occurred in late October to the end of the rainy season in the mining center of Sichuan City in China. Now, with the rise in computing power, quantum economics analyst Jason Dean believes there are enough signs to think that many Chinese miners have already relocated to other cities. This is because of the cheaper energy sources, so they would have resumed operations.

However, there are also indications that not everything can be attributed to Bitcoin mining in China, as the increase in mining activity coincides with the announcement of the Vancouver-based Company Hive Blockchain, which it claims to have launched since about 1,240 new ASIC miners on Friday.

The communication adds to the activation of the Blockseer Mining Pool, of the company DMG Blockchain Solutions, which claims to be the first highly regulated bitcoin mining group in North America.

Nor should we ignore the information published about the Russian company En + Group, which in alliance with BitRiver, the largest mining hosting provider in that country, will establish a new mining farm, called Bit +. These are all signs that a new era of Bitcoin mining could be emerging that would also extend benefits to the entire network.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Brave promises that in 2021 it will launch a new “more suitable” referral program. Current participants must achieve their activities in 14 days.

The blockchain-based internet browser team Brave decided to end the Brave Referral Program that has been running on the platform for more than two years. It is a program implemented in February 2018, which allowed content creators to obtain Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for the promotion of Brave. Through Brave Referral, the download of the browser was promoted for new users through unique referral codes.

In a publication on its website dated November 9, Brave points out that they have plans to launch a new referral program, “more adapted to our scale and our community,” the details of which will be announced in early 2021.

In the meantime, they will begin to scale back the current program. As a result, as of November 9, content creators currently using Brave Referral have 14 days to complete their promotional activity.

It is further explained that after November 23, new referrals added for the first time will not be eligible for payment. Brave will pay for trades that occur before December 24 only if the user has been active for 30 days. Confirmations in December will be paid at the beginning of January 2021.

Brave indicates in its publication that during this time of the program’s deployment, more than 20 million monthly active users were integrated into the platform. The amount of BAT tokens planned to be in distribution to content creators was also far exceeded.

Fraudulent activities with the Referral Program

Brave made the decision only a few months after they detected fraudulent activities through the program. As Brave reported last June, they managed to identify a large number of fraudulent referrals in a small set of countries.

The browser was reportedly able to stop this activity before the BAT tokens were paid, paralyzing the program for users in China, Russia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Ukraine. As a security measure, from that moment on, an Uphold account with verified identification was a requirement to participate.

Subsequently, other changes were announced in October. On that occasion, it was decided not to accept more participants, due to the rapid growth of new content creators through Brave Referral.

Regarding the closure of the Referral Program, some Brave Twitter followers linked it to fraudulent activities and the focus on paying to get as many referrals as possible. User @ 20pad20 spoke of malvertising by some advertisers, who “have been using the program to mislead the public.”

A few months ago, the company was mired in controversy over the inclusion of referral links in its website “suggestions”. Several people found these types of links that directed them to Binance. Although Brendan Eich, co-founder, and CEO of Brave, said it was a mistake, other users claimed to have found links to the Ledger, Trezor, and Coinbase sites.

The question turned in tone to the fact that publicity was made in a hidden way. A fact that contrasts with Brave’s postulates in favor of privacy and the fight against invasive, and unauthorized advertising, which exists in the rest of the Internet platforms.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Solid is a new technology for organizing data, applications, and identities on the web. The release is aimed at business testing for now.

The first version of the server for the Solid open-source project is already underway. It is a new Internet data management system in the hands of Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web. The goal is to offer users a better privacy system.

According to the information published this November 9 by Berners-Lee on the official site of Inrupt, the startup that manages the project, the Enterprise Solid Server (ESS) is available for business tests after two years of work.

He states that the server is under test by organizations such as the BBC, the British NatWest Bank, the UK National Health Service, and the Government of Flanders (in Belgium).

For Berners-Lee, who serves as Inrupt’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), this launch represents a new milestone in the way these organizations connect people to their data. For this reason, it invites other companies to join the project.

“Our pilot partners are already using Solid to build new products and services that were impossible before (…) Now the same opportunity is open to organizations around the world,” says John Bruce, CEO of Inrupt. It ensures that the technology is capable of covering tens of thousands of users at the same time.

On the project’s official site, Solid is described as an open-source technology for organizing data, applications, and web identities, based on existing standards on the web. In its testing stage, platform participants can develop and use experimental applications to manage digital containers.

Proposal to manage data on the Internet: digital containers

Solid represents the creation of a personal digital container called POD (personal online data). There, users can save any information they want, such as medical data, personal documents, identity cards, credentials, among many others.

Bruce explains that this POD communicates with Solid’s server and is stored in the service provider’s cloud, which can be Inrupt, the Solid community, or the user himself. These digital containers are stored in an interoperable format, which makes it easy for users to control the permissions they grant.

The main idea is that everyone has their digital container as well as their proper key. Thus, the user decides which entities and applications can access their data. Consequently, online services will grant access to large data warehouses of any POD. But instead of waiting for that data to be uploaded to their sites and servers, they will need to ask for user permission and require access to it.

It is a way of handling data and protecting privacy that differs from the current management of the Internet, where user data “decays into silos (of information), disconnected from the people who value it the most,” as read in a tweet from Inrupt.

These silos are usually in the hands of corporations behind the back of the users. Therefore, with the creation of the POD, people decide what they want to share and with whom, based on a relationship of trust.

Tim Berners-Lee wants to change the way the Internet works

For more than two years Tim Berners-Lee has been working on the Solid project to change the handling of data on the Internet. Source: Paul Clarke / Wikipedia. In a Medium publication, Berners-Lee stated two years ago that Solid will change the model under which users hand over their personal data to digital giants.

“As we have all discovered, this has not been in our best interest. Solid is an evolution of the web to restore balance, giving each of us total control over data, ”Berners-Lee said.

In his writing, the father of the Web recounts how the project came to light, based on his desire to address privacy issues on the Internet through a new set of tools.

With this proposal, Berners-Lee wants to change the management of the web, reiterating that its use serves for purposes that do not relate to the initial goals in the beginning. This occurs 30 years after the first successful transmission from the Internet happened, using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) that he developed.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Monero and Dash have privacy-friendly features. Several governments promote actions against cryptocurrencies focused on privacy.

The ShapeShift exchange removed the ability to trade monero (XMR) and dash (DASH) on its platform. Both cryptocurrencies have features that can increase the privacy of their users when making transactions.

The company did not provide any explanation for the reasons that led to the withdrawal of these assets. “We chose to remove Monero months ago, but I cannot comment further on why at this time,” this was the only statement on the matter from ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees.

Even so, there is pressure from state regulatory bodies for exchanges not to offer cryptocurrencies that allow the anonymity of their transactions. In July of this year, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong exposed these pressures.

Regulatory pressure appears to be global; South Korea will ban Monero, Dash, and ZCash as “dark cryptocurrencies”. Also, the United States tax collector, against the privacy of Monero, seeks to adopt tools that facilitate the tracking of its transactions. Because of this; it signed contracts with the analysis companies Chainalysis and Integra FEC.

Why are Monero and Dash in the sights of regulators?

Monero is the privacy-focused cryptocurrency with the highest market capitalization ($ 2,076 million as of this writing). Through ring signatures, only one of the signatures on the blockchain is real, but there is no way to pinpoint which one it is or where it came from. So, when making a transaction, it keeps the anonymity except for the parties involved.

Since its launch in 2014, the product of a Bytecoin fork, Monero sustained an increase in its transactions over time. Last November 6 was the day with the most transactions in the history of this blockchain. It registered a figure of at least 21,287 XMR movements, representing an increase of 227% since January of this year.

Dash, although initially intended and promoted as a privacy-focused coin, currently provides this feature as optional. The process that allows anonymity is known as PrivateSend. When making a transaction, the wallet sends a merge request to the master nodes. There, only the quantity and denominations (0.01 dash; 0.1 dash; 1 dash; or 10 dash) to be mixed are under specification. It does not reveal any other details.

Both cryptocurrencies are compatible with the values ​​that ShapeShift showed in its beginnings. For example, in 2015 it stopped offering services in New York State with the mission to not provide user data, and two years later it did the same in Washington for similar reasons. Still, it could not help but give in to pressure from regulators and in 2018 decided to adopt KYC (“know your customer”) policies.

ShapeShift, which allows instant conversion between dozens of cryptocurrencies, is built into some wallets, such as Coinomi. Users of these applications can exchange their assets without leaving the wallet thanks to this integration.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

For the European Union, there must be a balance between privacy and security. The body’s position coincides with that of other governments in the world.

The European Union (EU) has its sights set on services with encryption, considering that it represents a threat to citizen security in member countries. In a draft resolution by the EU Council, the body defended the need to have a balance between privacy and security regarding the encryption of communications.

The text states that it is necessary to “protect the privacy and security of communications through encryption.” However, it also ensures that the authorities must have a certain level of access to these communications to carry out security tasks against “serious” crimes.

Despite expressing itself in favor of encryption, the institution values ​​this ability to access encrypted data as “extremely important” by security agencies. “Some of the actions taken must balance these interests,”

The European Union advocates permanent cooperation and debate with companies in the technology sector to achieve the abovementioned balance. “The technical solutions to obtain access to encrypted data must comply with the principles of legality, transparency, necessity, and proportionality.”

The European Union calls for a “coherent regulatory framework”

Since it is still proposed as a future scenario, the European Union document does not even outline how this “balance” between respect for privacy and the guarantee of security for the citizens of the region would be achieved.

What the institution does state is that there must be an exhaustive review of the regulatory frameworks of each EU country to develop “a coherent regulatory framework throughout the EU.” Mainly, this legal framework should allow the authorities to “carry out their operational tasks effectively” and “use their investigative powers”.

Concerning these powers, the Council recognizes that they must be subject to judicial control and must respect the fundamental rights of citizens, preserving “the advantages of encryption”.

Furthermore, the EU outlines some key aspects to advance its vision on encryption. For the Council, this happens through the union of efforts between all the Member States, the definition of innovative approaches from the technological point of view, the analysis of solutions, and high-quality training in these solutions.

The position of the European Union only adheres to that of countries such as Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, India, and New Zealand, that group of nations issued a joint statement at that time assuring that end-to-end encryption represents “serious risks to public safety”.

Even the communiqué of the Council of the EU has approaches very similar to those of these seven countries. In both cases, they claim to defend the encryption of communications saying that it is a safe way to protect the privacy of their citizens while also claiming to have access to their communications. In the case of the October communiqué, the countries involved advocated such access “in any circumstance.”

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Older versions of Geth could contain consensus flaws on the network. The correction of the error was ready five versions ago, but the clients still needed updating.

On November 11^th, the ecosystem around the Ethereum project suddenly dawned with a chain split. This could have occurred due to delays in updating the clients of its nodes. One of the most prominent is that of the Infura Company, which reportedly ran an old version of the Geth client.

Blockchair developer Nikita Zhavoronkov described the situation. He said that, at some point, the Ethereum developers introduced a change to the code. This may have led to a chain split starting from block 11234873 (07:08 UTC). Those that have not upgraded (@Blockchair, @infura_io, some miners, and many others) got stuck in a minority chain (~ 30 blocks in 2 hours).

According to the programmer, this was technically a hard fork that occurred unannounced. He also questioned the situation by saying that it was a “failure” for the Ethereum consensus, which no one should underestimate. He considers what happened to be the most serious problem Ethereum has faced since the DAO debacle in 2016.

Infura’s Maneuvers about What Happened on Ethereum

In the case of Infura, the error led to multiple delays and drop-in services. This occurred because the company offers support to various companies that do not run their own nodes but rather use their services as an outsourced provider.

In an alert (08:12 UTC), Infura warned that they had recorded a “service outage” for their Ethereum API. They identified the problem (09:47 UTC) without providing details on what happened.

Two hours after the incident, they indicated that they traced the root cause to various components within their infrastructure, locked to an older stable version of the go-ethereum client. A critical consensus error in block 11234873 affected several versions of Geth, including 1.9.9 and 1.9.13. Components that worked on 1.9.19 and later had no problems.

Stopped Services and User Reactions

On his Twitter account, the CEO of the Binance exchange, Changpeng Zhao, posted that they had temporarily suspended withdrawals, but that the funds were safe. An hour later, he informed about the resumption of both deposits and withdrawals for ERC20 tokens.

Paolo Ardonio, Chief Technology Officer of the Bitfinex exchange, warned that exchanges should run their own Ethereum nodes. In this regard, Zhao himself said that they have it on Binance, but that he was not “sure if it will be in an orphan chain.”

Reddit users also expressed their views, highlighting the issue of centralization of services. One of them, identified as nice2yz, said: “What happened to decentralization? This is shameful for services that are not running their own nodes.”

Another user, eastsideski, said that “there are many alternatives to Infura, but most dApps (and apparently even exchanges) have been too lazy to switch.”

Information services such as CoinMarketCap alerted that Infura was experiencing problems, which led to delays in reflecting quotations. At the time of writing this article, Ether (ETH) is trading at USD 461 per unit.

By Alexander Salazar