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Topics - ZionRTZ

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31
Dash News & Updates / Daexs Integrates Dash, Expanding Liquidity in Colombia
« on: April 05, 2019, 10:41:23 PM »

Daexs, the popular Latin American cryptocurrency exchange, recently integrated Dash, which will expand the liquidity options in Colombia and nearby countries by enabling individuals to purchase Dash via Colombian peso pairings.

Their press release stated that “as part of the integration, the Daexs team in cooperation with Blockchain Center Colombia will organize meetups in Bogota and Medellin” to help facilitate adoption. They also claim to be “the first and only digital assets exchange operating in Colombia” and will have “a zero fee promotion from April 3 until May 3” to promote the integration. Sebastian Cortes, Daexs Tech CEO, highlighted how the integration further helps promote crypto adoption throughout the continent.

Quote
“We are honored to list Dash on our exchange. Dash represents an outstanding alternative and reliable payment method worldwide. This partnership allows us to serve the growing Dash community in Colombia and this will contribute to the massive use of Dash not only in this country but also in adjacent economies like Venezuela, Peru, and Panama. Daexs is permanently enhancing its services, ensuring the adoption of digital assets based on blockchain technology in Latin America.”


Expanding Dash throughout Colombia and Latin America

Dash has been rapidly growing throughout Latin America to the tune of over 2,400 merchants in Venezuela and over 300 merchants in Colombia. This integration, as Dash Core Group CEO, Ryan Taylor, explains will further help increase consumer access.

Quote
“The integration with Daexs greatly increases Dash’s accessibility and allows users to access Dash throughout Colombia and Latin America. The partnership also heavily aligns with our growth strategy in the region, especially with our continued efforts in Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and other countries. We look forward to being able to continue offering an alternative and reliable payment method in Latin America and globally.”


Dash Colombia has been another strong force driving Dash adoption in the country, including POS services for merchants and developing a remittance database platform. They have also been organizing Dash Invite events that focus on growing grassroots Dash adoption by inviting local individuals to nearby merchants that accept Dash. The goal is that since attendees are local, then the Dash spending can begin to become repetitive.

Then in neighboring Venezuela, there have been multiple channels of Dash growth through direct merchant adoption, exchange integrations, partnerships with Kripto Mobile, and more. The durability of Dash was even recently seen during the widespread blackouts that shutdown most payment terminals, including crypto POS devices, but Dash Text was still able to function thanks to its innovative features.


Dash is able to focus on providing solutions
Thanks to Dash’s treasury and DAO structure, Dash is able to fund and incentivize these teams that are responsible for so much of Dash’s growth and adoption. Additionally, since Dash is able to fund many organizations, they are each able to pursue their own, independent adoption strategies that they believe work best. This will allow for competition within the Dash ecosystem that will lead to the best outcome for the overall Dash network and for Dash to become everyday digital cash.



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/daexs-integrates-dash-expanding-liquidity-in-colombia/

32
Dash News & Updates / Dash Embassy Thailand Continues to Advance Dash with Significant Transaction Num
« on: April 05, 2019, 10:37:53 PM »

Dash Embassy Thailand is ranked only behind the United States in number and average amount of Dash payments on AnyPay’s new chart interface.


The new interface form the AnyPay POS service reveals that the Thailand baht had 93 total Dash payments that amounted to an average of 0.15 Dash (~10-15 USD during March). Thanks to the number of merchants that Dash Embassy has gotten to integrate Dash, consumers can actually use Dash in everyday life to purchase everyday items. Sascha Jochum from Dash Embassy Thailand highlights how this is a significant number and is most likely even higher when other POS devices are considered.

Quote
“Only with AnyPay alone there are already around 100 confirmed transactions per month with a pretty high volume. Also, we can only guess how many transactions through other POS systems and the Dash Wallet are coming in, as we can not track this numbers. According to the merchants feedback we would estimate that similar amounts coming in through AnyPay alternatives.”

The Dash Embassy Thailand team has been able to accomplish this thanks to the relatively friendly environment for cryptocurrency in Thailand.

 
Quote
“The crypto currency landscape in Thailand is very positive. For more than 1 year now companies can apply for exchange, broker, and dealer licences. Also an ICO portal is in place. For us most important is that merchants can accept crypto currencies as payments. Especially the SEC is very progressive and we are in regular contact with them. Our approach is working very close with the government here. All this things together leading to an investor and crypto friendly environment which is ideal for Dash.”


Finding unique methods of appeal
According to the AnyPay statistics, Thailand has relatively consistently ranked in at least the top three positions for the past few months. The Dash Embassy team has been able to achieve such significant adoption by focusing on tourism industries that both get Dash exposed to visitors to Thailand, as well as to locals that are getting paid in Dash by the tourists. Additionally, Thailand visitors then take their Dash experience home and potentially spread Dash even further. Sascha also highlighted that “there are many other coins around as we have a very crypto friendly environment in Thailand, but Dash is the only one actively used and accepted at merchants”.

Additionally, the Thai team has focused on educating consumers and merchants about Dash since many are unfamiliar with the service. This not only helps educate more consumers and expand the reach of Dash usage, but also expand the pool of future Dash developers and community members, which will help make Dash even more robust.


Dash becoming self-sustaining
Dash Embassy Thailand is a prime example of how the Dash DAO and treasury is able to fund these community outreach groups to help spread Dash awareness. This helps avoid calamities that other crypto projects have seen, such as developers becoming beholden to third party interest groups, #DevelopmentTeam s shutting down, and a lack of general knowledge among marginal users. While cryptocurrency may offer superior services, Dash is able to convince consumers to actually use Dash by providing the infrastructure and knowledge that consumers require to switch from fiat money.



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/dash-embassy-thailand-continues-to-advance-dash-with-significant-transaction-numbers/

33
Dash News & Updates / Discover Dash & Really Bad Apps Launch Global Dash Merchant Directory Mobile App
« on: April 03, 2019, 09:51:32 PM »

Discover Dash has launched a native mobile app for its merchant directory in partnership with Really Bad Apps.

A merchant listing dedicated to providing easy access to all the Dash-accepting businesses around the world, Discover Dash is arguably the world’s largest listing of cryptocurrency-accepting businesses with over 4,800 merchants. To improve the quality of the user experience for the average Dash user, Discover Dash partnered with mobile app development group Really Bad Apps to produce a streamlined dedicated mobile version of the app for Android. The mobile version of Discover Dash offers geolocation to effectively locate merchants closest to the user, as well as automatic translation into English, Spanish, and Russian, and allows users to filter by a wide range of categories including restaurants, entertainment, business services, and Dash ATMs, giving easy access for users seeking to buy Dash at an ATM near them. It is now available for download in the Google Play store.

Discover Dash was first announced in May of 2017, and within a year was re-released with a streamlined experience and live support chat function and passed 1,000 merchants listed globally. Under a year later this number has been multiplied nearly five times. According to Matthew Carlstrom, Really Bad Apps co-founder and VP of Product, the team saw an opportunity to advance the usability of cryptocurrency for mobile users:

Quote
“From the beginning we have been passionate about the opportunities that cryptocurrency creates for mobile users around the world. Developing a native app for Discover Dash has been an amazing experience, and we’re looking forward to seeing the community grow as Dash customers use our app to discover the many businesses that accept Dash nearby.”

The first complete iteration of the Discover Dash app was created by Really Bad Apps free of charge because of the team’s belief in the projects long-term viability.




Streamlining access to Dash’s impressive merchant count
The release of a streamlined mobile app for Discover Dash vastly improves the usefulness of Dash’s significant merchant count to its community of users. According to Discover Dash Co-Founder and Webmaster Mark Mason, providing an efficient mobile experience when locating Dash-accepting merchants is a critical step for facilitating wide adoption among Dash’s global user base:

Quote
“We wanted to provide a practical solution that is user-friendly and suited for mass adoption to help facilitate the expanding Dash ecosystem. The Discover Dash mobile app helps you to easily locate merchants to spend Dash wherever you are in the world, right from your Android device. The worldwide directory of business and services that accept Dash is now fast approaching 5,000 merchants. The creation of this app was essential in order to help facilitate the surge in growth of merchant listings and strong consumer demand. The mobile app provides a greater user-experience and is a one stop resource for the international Dash community to search & find Dash accepting businesses.”

At present, Discover Dash lists over 4,800 known merchants worldwide that accept Dash for payments. Thousands of these are located in Latin America, most notably Venezuela and Colombia, a region which has experienced significant growth due to hyperinflation and remittances, two use cases that Dash is well-suited to tackle with its limited supply emission and extremely cheap transactions to anywhere in the world. Recently, Latin American exchange Cryptobuyer partnered with Venezuelan department store chain Traki, waiving fees for Dash purchases over its ATM network to facilitate the sending of remittances, which can then be spent at Traki thanks to the chain accepting Dash payments through Cryptobuyer’s point-of-sale merchant solution. Users will now be able to use the Discover Dash mobile app to easily locate both ATMs in the Panama area to buy Dash from, and merchants at which to spend the Dash once received.




Dash has completed two of three critical developments for wide adoption this year
The Dash #DevelopmentTeam  has produced several major improvements this year alone, filling several important gaps before Dash becomes a fully-viable product for general public use. Earlier this year, the version 0.13 update was released, representing one of the most significant overhauls of Dash to date. Most significantly in this update is InstantSend by default, enabling Dash’s special instant transactions feature by default for nearly all transactions, waiving the extra fee and creating a true universal instant transaction experience for Dash users and merchants. The second major update, version 0.14, was recently released on testnet, and includes ChainLocks, an innovation to leverage the masternode network to protect against 51% mining attacks. This will make the Dash network significantly more secure and reliable, creating a payment network where businesses and their customers do not have to worry about major disruptions.

Finally, Dash’s version 1.0, the initial version of the long-awaited release codenamed Evolution, is scheduled for subsequent release. This update will include blockchain usernames and contact lists, giving a streamlined and social user experience instead of the present-day cryptocurrency experience of long cryptographic hashes. The combination of these three important updates will create arguably one of the fastest, most secure, and easiest to use decentralized payment systems in the world. These updates have been developed in private, however the first repositories have recently been made public, with the entirety of the Evolution platform intended for open-source release once completed.



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/discover-dash-and-really-bad-apps-launch-global-dash-merchant-directory-mobile-app/

34
Dash News & Updates / Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust Completes Trust Protector Election in Historic Govern
« on: April 03, 2019, 09:43:08 PM »

The Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust concluded its first election for trust protectors in a historic first for self-governing decentralized systems.

Recently, the Dash network voted to elect trust protectors for the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust (or the Dash Trust), the New Zealand-based legal entity controlled by the Dash network that allows the network to legally own property.This entity legally owns the Dash Core Group, the largest organization under the Dash decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and the main developer group. The trust’s protectors direct the work of the trustee, who carries out the will of the masternode network, effecting more direct control over the network-owned groups than a simple masternode vote alone could do.

The trust protector election was announced in January, with details and parameters released in February, with Dash Watch assisting in auditing the process. Voting concluded at the end of March, and six trust protectors were chosen. According to Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor, this represents a clear break from the all-too-common model in cryptocurrency of running systems with minimal accountability to their user base:

Quote
“We are very proud of this milestone. Our model stands in stark contrast to many other projects, which frequently feature foundations, companies, or founders funds which lack true accountability to the communities of users they are supposed to serve. In the short-term, I suspect that the importance of our model will be underestimated. Over the fullness of time, that will change.”

The winners of the trust protector election are Pieter Bakhuijzen, Raleigh Barrett, Michael Lewis, Mark Mason, Eric Sammons, and Perry Woodin, representing well-known community members and masternode operators, as well as members from media and outreach group Dash Force and cryptocurrency accounting and compliance firm Node40.


A historic moment in the evolution of the governance of decentralized systems
According to newly-elected trust protector Michael Lewis, this first step represents an unprecedented advancement in cryptocurrency governance that will provide a long-term competitive advantage:

Quote
“The Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust Election is yet another ‘first’ in the cryptocurrency world. Whilst other networks are struggling to get to grips with how to govern their decentralized networks, often taking the ‘nuclear’ option of forking, Dash – through the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust – has shown that it is possible to ‘close the loop’ on ‘the governance question’ that has been the Achilles Heel of cryptocurrency projects since the birth of Bitcoin, over a decade ago.”

Lewis sees the Dash Trust as an innovation that so far has not been successfully imitated elsewhere in the cryptoverse, and believes that it will have a significant impact in how the space grows and how governance models are developed in the future, particularly with relation to present-day legal systems:

Quote
“At Dash, we now have a fully decentralized governance model with real-world legal standing, accountability and direct fiduciary duty to the network. This ability to truly self-govern in a decentralized and autonomous way is a challenge that eludes every other cryptocurrency network to date. The importance of this ground-breaking development may be underestimated in the short term, but I have no doubt that the model we’ve implemented at Dash will be adopted by many other projects in the future and play a crucial part in unlocking the true potential of this amazing technology. Dash has made history yet again and developments like this will shape the evolution of cryptocurrency for many years to come.”

Dash stands as the first known DAO, both fully-decentralized and fully-autonomous, able to be run without outside funding or control while still being open to participation from anyone without restriction.


The balance between anonymity and real-world identity in governance
An element which is both viewed as a key benefit and a cause for concern for cryptocurrency systems is anonymity, particular for projects such as Dash with improved privacy functions. Large institutions and governments may be wary of interfacing with said technology, while its users can be averse to revealing their real-world identities. New trust protector Eric Sammons sees a “real-world” presence as key for Dash’s growth:

Quote
“The first—and best—use case of cryptocurrency is currency, which means it is used for real-world, physical items. So a successful cryptocurrency project must acknowledge that and work on interfaces with the “real world.” The Dash legal trust is a perfect example of that: it gives Dash the ability to grow and expand without being constrained by a lack of legal structure.”

Sammons initially embraced the anonymity offered by cryptocurrency, but saw the benefit of giving a clear face behind a technology that many still do not trust:

Quote
“My first year or two in crypto I remained anonymous, and I believe it’s absolutely essential that the ability to remain anonymous is available. However, I felt that for cryptocurrency to succeed long term in the world, there needed to be people to come forward and publicly use and embrace it. This would give it more credence to those who associated Bitcoin or Dash or other cryptos only with crime, drugs, etc. In my own experience, I’ve been able to introduce a lot of my real-world friends to cryptocurrency because they found out I was involved in it. That wouldn’t have happened if I remained anonymous.”



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/dash-dao-irrevocable-trust-completes-trust-protector-election-in-historic-governance-moment/

35
Suggestion Box / Anti-Karma Abuse?
« on: April 02, 2019, 10:31:50 PM »
At the moment, the only thing that's restricting karma abusers is the 1 in 100 hours per user rule. So I'm thinking maybe other rules can be implemented also such as:

1.  Each user can only give 10 karma week.
- 1 karma each to 10 different users
- Each eligible user will be given 10 new "sendable" karma every week whether or not he/she used all from the previous week.

2. Those who became eligible by reaching Sr. member rank cannot give out karma if they have -5 karma or more. They can only be allowed once their karma becomes neutral or positive.


What do you think?

36
Crypto Exchanges / Exchange Hacks Highlight Need for Better Consumer Habits
« on: March 29, 2019, 08:47:39 PM »

The Singapore-based exchange, DragonEx, recently revealed that it was hacked for an undisclosed amount, which also follows rumors that Coinbene was also compromised.

DragonEx announced the hack via its Telegram channel saying their “users’ funds and Platform crypto assets were transferred and stolen”. Interestingly, DragonEx took the platform offline earlier in the day claiming that it was upgrading its systems and even provided an update later in the day that they were “still working on system maintenance”, but they finally admitted that they had been hacked. After admitting the hack, they also said that “part of the assets were retrieved back, and they will do their best to retrieve back the rest of stolen assets” and are working with authorities from Estonia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Quote
“We’re assisting policemen to do investigation. All platform services will be closed and the accurate assets loss recovery situation will be announced in a week. For the loss caused to our users, DragonEx will take the responsibility no matter what.”

Also recently, Coinbene announced that it was undergoing maintenance, but users are skeptical and afraid that the exchange has been hacked, as well, and is trying the same strategy as DragonEx to mitigate immediate reactions. Driving the fear is the disabling of withdrawals an deposits along with twitter users citing abnormal blockchain activity leaving the site’s wallets.

Quote
“In order to enhance the user experience, CoinBene upgraded the platform wallet on March 26, 2019. During maintenance, it will affect related operations such as deposit and withdraw, trading will not be affected.”


Responsible consumer money management
Cryptocurrency is very secure by itself on the blockchain since it requires a 51% attack to be compromised, which is typically both expensive and counter to most economic incentives. However, these hacks occur mostly due to user error when they put their cryptocurrency on exchanges since that means entrusting the exchange with their private keys. The exchange will then improperly protect their private keys and thus make the money more vulnerable to being stolen.

Cryptocurrency provides a lot of power to consumers through financial and monetary independence, but that power also requires responsibility since every consumers controls access to their fund via their private keys and if lost or stolen, there is a very limited number of ways to retrieve said money. Cryptocurrency exchanges have become honeypots for hackers and highlight the inexperience of consumers when it comes to knowledge around cryptocurrency. It also highlights the need for decentralized and peer-to-peer exchanges, such as DynX, Bisq, Komodo, DashNearby, Dashous, and Wall of Coins to mitigate the creation of these honeypots.



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/exchange-hacks-highlight-need-for-better-consumer-habits/

37
Dash News & Updates / Dash Version 0.14, Including Anti-51% Attack ChainLocks, Released on Testnet
« on: March 29, 2019, 08:42:24 PM »

Dash Core Group has released version 0.14.0 to testnet, which introduces LLMQs, LLMQ-based ChainLocks, and LLMQ-based InstantSend as the next network upgrade before Evolution.

As Liz Robuck, Dash Core Group Product Manager, details in her post, LLMQs “will increase scalability through improved consensus and expand the universe of potential use cases of the network” and ChainLocks will “leverage LLMQs to improve network security by mitigating 51% mining attacks”. Then LLMQ-based InstantSend will “reduce the messages propagated on the network for InstantSend transactions, which increases the scalability of InstantSend on the network”. These upgrades will help Dash scale to handle more traffic as its network grows with Evolution to handle not only more transactions, but more data in general.


After sufficiently being vetted in testnet, the upgrade process is planned to start with miners signaling DIP8 support and 80% of blocks within a 1152-block window locking in the change. Once there is sufficient adoption, LLMQs will be the first phase to take effect along with Spork 17. ChainLocks will be the next phase with Spork 19. Then once DIP8 activates, ChainLocks will begin being enforced and single confirmation transactions can be considered fully confirmed. Finally, LLMQ-based InstantSend will be implemented via Spork 20, but this might only be available in limited service until more testing is conducted. Dash Core Group Developer, Codablock, has also released testing instructions for those that wish to help do so.


Improving the network operations of Dash
These Long Living Masternode Quorums are revolutionary in that they significantly reduce the time and network capacity to verify transactions. As Liz explains and previously covered, Dash currently utilizes quorums by having many masternodes vote as to whether a transaction is valid or not, but this requires one message from each masternode, which can quickly increase depending on the amount of data being processed. Plus, each node has to verify and store this information in-memory until the transaction is mined on-chain. LLMQs fix this by pre-building quorums and allowing them to “live” for a long period of time rather than being assembled on demand. Additionally, LLMQs only submit one verification message for all masternodes that are a part of that quorum rather than multiple messages.

Then ChainLocks is set to significantly mitigate the risk of a 51% attack on Dash since the LLMQs will lock-in the first block it sees published and reject all others at that height. This mitigates malicious mining that attempts to hide blocks to reorganize the blockchain, which is why many concerned individuals dealing with high transaction values previously would wait for a significant amount of block confirmations before accepting the payment as final.

Quote
“This means that transactions can be considered fully confirmed after the first on-chain confirmation inside a block protected by ChainLocks, and there is no need to wait for more confirmations until a received transaction is considered secure.”

Then the LLMQ-based InstantSend will also reduce the amount of messaging bandwidth stress on the network, while still enabling superior consumer service. Additionally, when combined with ChainLocks, the improvements will allow “in most cases received funds [to] be re-spent immediately via InstantSend”. However, Dash Core Group is moderating the release expectations of this feature since they expect this to require more testing.


Dash changing the status quo of cryptocurrencies
Dash learned a lesson from Bitcoin failing to satisfy consumers with on time scaling to meet demand and is thus working towards implementing key upgrades to allow the decentralized network to work more efficiently to make scaling even more possible while still providing excellent services. Dash already implemented automatic InstantSend, PrivateSend Improvements, and other advance features that were working well on the network, but wanted to beat the adoption curve by implementing these LLMQs to further secure the blockchain from potential attacks, as well as its own growth that is expected with the coming Evolution upgrades.

Dash Evolution is trying to make cryptocurrency easy for everyday consumers through feature like Blockchain Usernames, DashPay Wallet, DAPI/DApps, and more. These will become more possible and easier to build as more infrastructure is created with the version 0.14 release.


SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/dash-version-0-14-including-anti-51-attack-chainlocks-released-on-testnet/

38
Dash News & Updates / Cryptobuyer ATMs Offers Zero-Fee Dash, Partners With Dash-Accepting Venezuelan C
« on: March 29, 2019, 08:38:10 PM »

Cryptobuyer has partnered with Venezuelan department store giant Traki and has rolled out zero-fee Dash buying on its ATM network.

One of Latin America’s major exchanges, Cryptobuyer currently supports Dash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin, and operates both a network of ATMs and a merchant point-of-sale solution. The company recently announced a promotion for its ATM service, offering zero-fee Dash buying to facilitate the acquisition of Dash for use as remittances to Venezuela. Partnering with Cryptobuyer is Venezuelan department store Traki, which accepts cryptocurrencies including Dash, and will use Cryptobuyer’s point-of-sale solution. This partnership will allow Dash to be bought with no fee in Panama and sent to Venezuelans, who will then be able to buy a wide variety of products with it directly at Traki.

Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core Group, believes that this initiative will solve a critical barrier to adoption in the one country where Dash has seen the most:

Quote
“Dash usage is growing at a rapid rate in Venezuela, as it provides an alternative that is a more reliable payment method and store of value. We’ve anticipated this initiative from Cryptobuyer, as it provides the everyday person a seamless and efficient way to access Dash and lowers barriers to entry.”

The Dash integration through Cryptobuyer will initially be run at Traki’s El Recreo store, with plans to expand to all 46 stores later this year. The zero-fee Dash ATM promotion will run until the first of May.


Dash’s Latin American explosion in Venezuela and Colombia
Dash is at the forefront of cryptocurrency’s rapid expansion in the Latin American region. According to Cryptobuyer CEO Jorge Farias, this region is significantly ahead of the global average in terms of using cryptocurrency as an actual form of payment:

Quote
“The usage of Dash in South America is just another example of how this region is ahead of the curve in adopting cryptocurrency as a real method of payment. The whole team at Cryptobuyer is very happy to continue reinforcing this collaboration in each and every one of the services that we launch, and in the markets in which we are expanding to including Mexico, Argentina, and Central America.”

Presently, Venezuela, which has experienced severe economic issues including hyperinflation and blackouts, is a premier Dash hotspot, with a current 2,431 Dash-accepting merchants listed on Discover Dash. Colombia has made significant strides in merchant adoption as well, with a present 327 Discover Dash listings.


Reducing pain points in acquiring Dash to complement high merchant adoption
With global merchant adoption for Dash at a high at at estimated 4,900 or more merchants, the focus turns to expanding options for consumers to acquire, and therefore spend, Dash. Last fall, strategic Dash partner Uphold integrated its service directly into the main Dash mobile wallets, providing an easy method for customers to acquire Dash in the same app they use for storage and spending. Bitnovo integrated Dash Text into the platform, allowing customers in Spain to buy vouchers and redeem them direct to a Venezuelan mobile phone number, providing an easy remittance system to even those without internet-capable phones. Promotions such as Cryptobuyer’s ATM network discount further enable and encourage remittances and acquiring Dash for the purposes of spending at large retailers.



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/cryptobuyer-atms-offers-zero-fee-dash-partners-with-dash-accepting-venezuelan-chain-traki/

39
Dash News & Updates / Dash Releases Long-Private Evolution Repositories to Public
« on: March 29, 2019, 08:32:43 PM »

Dash Core Group is releasing more Evolution code repositories to the public as it aims to further open-source the project that has been kept private from the rest of the Dash core code for competitive reasons.

A part of the software release will be the Distributed API (DAPI) and Drive code, which combined with Core and the DashPay Wallet create the larger Evolution release. The code has previously remained private until the team was confident enough to release it as a version ready enough for open-source collaboration while also maintaining a competitive advantage for Dash. The team has slowly been releasing the code in batches and should be completed at the end of this month, according to Nathan Marley, Deputy CTO of Dash Core Group.

Quote
“The entire #DevelopmentTeam  is really excited and has been itching to get these projects released to the community. I’m super proud of them for everything they’ve accomplished to create this code, and grateful for the support of the rest of the team and the community to help us get where we are now. It’s definitely been a team endeavor and we couldn’t have arrived here without the combined efforts of everyone involved.”

This now totals 51 repositories that Dash has made open-source and available to the public, according to Agnew Pickens who has been compiling code repository statistics. This marks significant progress of advancing Dash Evolution towards being ready for consumer use.


Taking time to properly evolve cryptocurrency
The Dash Core Group has received a lot of criticism for missing Evolution release deadlines and for the length of time of the release. However, the context is that Evolution intends to evolve cryptocurrency usability and thus is taking a significant time to get right. Part of the delay was caused by underestimating the time to actually develop the vision that Dash creator, Evan Duffield, had laid out, which Dash Core Group’s CTO Bob Carroll previously highlighted.

Quote
“The real work began as detailed designs were created along with working code and corresponding DIPs. It wasn’t until that time, that we knew the real complexity of the effort. Challenges to building Evolution were more complicated than anyone could have reasonably estimated along with the initial vision.”

Many have also criticized Dash’s approach to developing Evolution in private, but this was done to ensure the code was developed well enough before being made open-source to provide the most consumer value and ensure Dash still had a competitive advantage once the code was free for anyone to use. Additionally, due to this strategy, many have wrongly classified Dash as not having an active #DevelopmentTeam  since their study methodology simply looked at public GitHub repositories. This wrongly skewed the data against Dash since, at the time, many of Dash’s repositories were still private or were released and modified in batches to increase efficiency. Looking at past comments and history, such as this comment from Bob Carroll, Dash has followed through on its promises to make the code public and thus it is a positive sign that Dash will continue to deliver on its promises.

Quote
“Trying to measure progress through GitHub commits is not an effective method. We will eventually share the amount of effort that went into the building of Evolution, which will be tallied in man-years. For visibility, all of the foundational elements for Evolution, including the entire 0.13 release, are in public C++ repositories. Additional elements such as a Layer 2 protocol, the decentralized API, and the decentralized data storage component are written in Javascript and will be made public soon.”

Dash has been putting in quality time to ensure the code that it releases, even as open-source and long before a network release, is up to par to meet the quality that Dash supporters expect.


How Dash Evolution is going to change cryptocurrency
Dash’s founder recognized that many cryptocurrencies had amazing technologies, but they lacked consumer usability that would take it to the next status level of money. Thus, he thought of Evolution so Dash would not only have the infrastructure to super fast, super inexpensive, and super secure peer-to-peer digital money transfers, but also be easy and fun to use for everyday consumers.

Evolution intends to do this through improvements like Blockchain Usernames and contact lists so consumers can deal with easily recognizable names rather than computer-like alphanumeric strings. There is also going to be infrastructure set up for decentralized apps (DApps) to enable a community to form that will build out decentralized programs that will help individuals live more fun and efficient lives. DApps have been seen on other blockchains, but Dash has the opportunity to provide even more value since it is already being used as money at merchants around the world. Consumers on other DApp platforms have to worry about switching to a usable coin when doing tasks outside the platform. Despite delays and criticisms, Dash is advancing closer to the release of Evolution and the release of more code repositories is yet another positive sign.


SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/dash-releases-long-private-evolution-repositories-to-public/

40
Crypto Exchanges / Crypto Exchange CoinBene Assures Users That Prolonged Maintenance Not Due to Hac
« on: March 27, 2019, 07:55:48 PM »

Top-ranked cryptocurrency exchange CoinBene has reassured users that its prolonged maintenance downtime is not due to a hack, as some community members had feared. The exchange made its official announcement in an official tweet today, March 27.

With the announcement, CoinBene has responded to users’ ongoing concerns that delays in processing deposits and withdrawals were signs of a possible platform hack.

In its statement, CoinBene — currently ranked 4th on CoinMarketCap by adjusted daily trade volume — clarifies that is has been undertaking measures to update the exchange’s wallet immediately. The exchange reports that it had received news from multiple other — unnamed — crypto exchanges of recent thefts of their users’ assets. The CoinBene security team says it then took swift action to protect and upgrade the wallet’s security to protect their users.

The announcement, emphasizing this has been a preventive — not reactive — measure, reassures users that:

Quote
“User assets on CoinBene platform are 100% secure, our platform promises that if any user assets will be lost, we will compensate 100% [sic]. [...] The CoinBene security team monitors any anomalies at all times and will issue a warning the first time to prevent any possible risks.”

The statement also instructs any user aware of a security risk to their account to contact the platform’s support team. In a separate tweet in the same thread, CoinBene emphasized that users should not worry about the prolonged maintenance currently underway.

Evidently relieved twitter users responded positively to CoinBene’s clarification, although stated it would have been preferable to issue an announcement sooner to quash community concerns.

One user expressed their ongoing frustration over frozen deposits, to which CoinBene responded that Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) deposits have already been reopened, and others are set to be opened “asap.”

As previously reported, community members had been closely eyeing open blockchain transaction data records in light of their suspicions surrounding CoinBene. One industry figure had proposed that massive outgoing transactions from CoinBene shown on major statistics website for Ethereum, Etherscan, might serve as an evidence of an attack — concerns that a fellow sleuther assuaged by noting that the transactions in fact appeared to indicate transfers to a wallet designated as cold storage.

In a recent report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, crypto index provide Bitwise Asset Management stated that it believes CoinBene’s trading activity is suspicious, especially due to the fact that trading timesteps frequently coincide and the amounts of buying and selling are almost similar.

Just yesterday, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange DragonEx notified its users that it suffered a hack on March 24, the full details and scales of which are yet to emerge.



SOURCE: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-exchange-coinbene-assures-users-that-prolonged-maintenance-not-due-to-hack

41
Crypto Exchanges / Huobi's US Partner Hbus Forms New Group to Launch Institutional Products
« on: March 27, 2019, 07:51:08 PM »

The United States-based operator of crypto exchange Huobi, Hbus, has formed a new team to launch institutional products and services, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on March 27.

The company’s new team will be led by Katelyn Mew, who previously worked at a global investment company BlackRock VP and is currently heading Hbus' sales and marketing department. The other director is Oren Blonstein, Huobi's vice president of technology, formerly of Tora Trading Services and Caspian.

According to the announcement, Hbus is evaluating several potential services designed for institutional clients, including token lending and over-the-counter trading. Moreover, the company said it is considering issuing a stablecoin.

Mew says that Hbus’ decision to focus on institutional clients was made according to growing demand, as such customers need a secure and trusted marketplace to use crypto services.

Frank Fu, CEO of Hbus, says that the group, which will interact with "top investors," is now searching for more members with a strong background in financial services

Fu believes that the so-called crypto winter has in fact benefitted the industry due to the fact that only the most useful projects survived. He also thinks that the crypto area will see more involvement from traditional hedge fund managers, banks and tech giants, such as IBM, as more regulations are solidified.

In February, digital asset management fund Grayscale Investments released a report that revealed significant investments in the crypto space made by institutional investors. For Q4 2018, Grayscale found that institutional investors accounted for the majority of investments, or 66 percent. In addition to that, investors were almost exclusively based in the U.S. (99 percent), although full year statistics involved participants from other countries.

As Cointelegraph reported in late 2018, multinational investment bank and financial services company Morgan Stanley named cryptocurrencies as a new institutional investment class, noting the formation of new funds targeting the sector.

Earlier in 2019, crypto exchange Seed CX — a Chicago-based licensed platform targeting institutional clients — launched a digital asset wallet solution with on-chain settlement in partnership with its settlement subsidiary, Zero Hash.



SOURCE: https://cointelegraph.com/news/huobis-us-partner-hbus-forms-new-group-to-launch-institutional-products

42
Stellar Forum / Stellar Patched an Inflation Bug and Burned the Resulting 2.25 Billion XLM
« on: March 27, 2019, 07:48:32 PM »

Cryptocurrency intelligence company Messari has claimed that Stellar (XLM) suffered an inflation bug in April 2017 that was exploited to create 2.25 billion XLM (worth about $10 million at the time), which were later burned. The news was revealed in a Messari report published on March 27.

Per the report, the illicitly created XLM — which was equivalent to nearly a quarter of the circulating supply — was moved to exchanges and likely sold during the first half of 2017. An equivalent quantity of XLM was purportedly burned to preserve the intended supply and avoid the dilution of the value of the tokens.

The research also notes that the involved addresses and related records are no longer accessible on Stellar Expert or other block explorers but can be found using the Horizon Application Programming Interface. Also, the company claims that seemingly no media reported on the bug, its exploitation and the consequent burn before Messari.

Stellar, currently the eighth largest cryptocurrency by market cap with a total market value of over two billion, noted that the company has not concealed the issue. More precisely, a Stellar representative is cited in the report stating that the aforementioned bug and its exploitation were mentioned twice in the protocol’s release notes. The statement also acknowledges the importance of proper disclosure:

Quote
“We recognize that Stellar has since become significant financial software, and our disclosure standards have grown to reflect that reality. There’s been no notable bug since, and if there were we would disclose it in full detail as soon as it was patched.”

Lastly, the company noted that in its roadmap for 2019 released last month, Stellar committed to a full accounting of all Stellar Development Foundation XLM by the end of the current year, which includes more details around this bug.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, payments giant Western Union (WU) is partnering with Thunes — which previously collaborated with Stellar — to enable WU clients to transfer funds directly to mobile wallets globally.

In September last year, an inflation bug was discovered and patched in Bitcoin (BTC) as well.


SOURCE: https://cointelegraph.com/news/stellar-patched-an-inflation-bug-and-burned-the-resulting-225-billion-xlm-research

43
News related to Crypto / Swiss Regulator FINMA Concludes That Mining Firm Envion’s ICO Was Unlawful
« on: March 27, 2019, 07:44:42 PM »

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has finished enforcement proceedings against crypto mining firm Envion AG, the authority announced on March 27.

As a result of the investigation launched in July 2018, FINMA concluded that Envion’s initial coin offering (ICO), which closed in early January 2018, was unlawful.

Envion, a blockchain firm that claims to provide decentralized, clean energy for mobile mining units, faced a liquidation order from the cantonal court of Zug in November 2018 for conducting an allegedly unauthorized ICO. According to FINMA, the ICO raised more than 90 million Swiss francs, or roughly $90.5 million, from at least 37,000 investors without the necessary statutory license from the regulator.

While Envion’s co-founder Michael Luckow made an effort to save the firm and its original concept, financial supervisors appointed an investigator to ensure that liquidation was unavoidable, as reported last year.

Following today’s announcement, FINMA stated that from now on the authority will not be responsible for supervision of Envion. FINMA also stated that it will not be able to provide information about the financial situation of Envion as the bankruptcy proceedings are controlled by the Bankruptcy Office of Zug.

At press time, Envion’s EVN token is down almost 30 percent, trading at $0.056, according to CoinMarketCap. The token’s market share now amounts to around $6.2 million, while its trading volume is around $3,300 at press time.

Recently, the Swiss Federal Council announced the start of a consultation period on the adaptation of federal law for blockchain development. The authority said it was aiming to bring more legal certainty over blockchain applications and build a basis for a regulatory framework for the industry in Switzerland.


SOURCE: https://cointelegraph.com/news/swiss-regulator-finma-concludes-that-mining-firm-envions-ico-was-unlawful

44
Dash News & Updates / Top Exchange Binance Adds New Dash Trading Pairs
« on: March 27, 2019, 07:36:59 PM »

New Dash trading pairs have been added to top exchange Binance.

As announced in a new post on its website, exchange giant Binance will be listing two additional trading pairs for Dash on the exchange:

Quote
“Fellow Binancians,

Binance will open trading for DASH/BNB and DASH/USDT trading pairs at 2019/03/28 4:00 AM (UTC).

Risk warning: cryptocurrency investment is subject to high market risk. Please make your investments cautiously. Binance will make best efforts to choose high quality coins, but will not be responsible for your investment losses.

Thanks for your support!

Binance Team”


The two pairings announced were for Binance Coin, the exchange’s propriety token, and Tether, a token pegged to the value of the US dollar. Tether in particular constitutes a useful pairing because of its equivalence to a fiat trading pair, allowing traders to go in and out of Dash directly from a USD valuation balance.


Binance’s rise to the top of the exchange rankings
The inclusion of additional trading pairs on Binance represents a significant growth in access for Dash on one of the world’s top exchanges. According to CoinMarketCap, Binance ranks as the top exchange in the world by adjusted trading volume with over $1.4 billion in daily trading volume, and in the top three by reported volume. Binance Coin has seen a significant rise since its inception in mid-2017, growing month after month to a current top-ten market cap ranking and nearly $2.4 billion valuation during the worst of the cryptocurrency bear market which claimed over 90% drops in the valuation of some coins.


Dash’s liquidity challenge to rise to meet merchant adoption figures
Extra sources of Dash liquidity are particularly valued to increase access to the currency as a complement to Dash’s impressive merchant adoption. According to statistics from major Dash merchant directory Discover Dash, nearly 5,000 known merchants worldwide accept Dash for payments. An important complementary step to merchant adoption is to increase the availability for Dash for purchase, particularly in important adoption hotspots such as Venezuela and Colombia.


SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/top-exchange-binance-adds-new-dash-trading-pairs/

45
Dash News & Updates / Tor Accepts Dash Donations, Advancing Privacy Initiative
« on: March 26, 2019, 08:13:55 PM »

The Tor Project is now accepting donations in Dash and eight other cryptocurrencies to fund the initiative of increasing individuals’ privacy for “protection against tracking, surveillance, and censorship”.

Donations will go towards paying the 47 paid staff of the The Tor Project since they still rely on thousands of “developers, designers, relay operators, researchers, cryptographers, computer scientists, and privacy advocates” around the world to keep the platform running. Tor works by “bouncing your communications around the Tor network, which is a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world” and “prevents [individuals] from finding out what sites you are visiting” and “your location”.

The Tor Project is open to be used by anyone including “journalists, human rights defenders, domestic violence survivors, policymakers, diplomats, and academic and research institutions”. The Tor Project is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit organization that is currently based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and founded in 2006. Tor relies on numerous funding sources to prevent centralization and has thus expanded to more cryptocurrency options to enable new and more private donations.


Different variations of privacy
A reddit user, SilentLennie, made a good comparison between Tor and VPN services to cryptocurrencies since “the only thing it does for you, as the user, is it hides not your traffic, but it hides that the traffic came from you”, and “if the traffic itself is not encrypted and sometimes even if it is, the traffic can contain information which tells others it is about you”. He went on to illustrate how a VPN service can only hide where the traffic is coming from, but not where it may be going once it exits the VPN “tunnel” or the meta data that could shed light on the user.

Comparing to cryptocurrency, most coins store all information on the blockchain after being verified by the owners private keys and the network. This provides a full record of all transactions, which makes most cryptocurrencies only pseudo-anonymous and the user has to be cautious not to link their cryptocurrency address to their personal identity if they wish to maintain privacy. The redditor also detailed how cryptocurrency coins that utilize encryption only hide where the transaction is coming from much like how VPNs or Tor hide IP addresses. However, mixing, like Dash’s PrivateSend can help “break the relation between the 2 pseudo anonymous addresses”.


Dash is committed to increase individuals’ privacy
Dash has long been committed to providing enhanced consumer privacy every since its days as Darkcoin. While Dash has shifted to focus on becoming everyday digital cash, it did not forget about its privacy-focused consumers and thus built PrivateSend as a transaction option for those that wish to use it, but not obligatory for those that do not want to use the service. As the reddit post mentioned, PrivateSend helps obscure the link between the pseudo-anonymous addresses by mixing the money around. Additionally, PrivateSend recently got cheaper and faster with version 12.4 upgrade by introducing a lower denomination (0.001 Dash) and increasing the maximum rounds of mixing to sixteen from eight rounds. These features help Dash better service consumers that wish to maintain their privacy, which makes it a great pairing for Tor donations.



SOURCE: https://dashnews.org/tor-accepts-dash-donations-advancing-privacy-initiative/

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