The Phantom team is proud to announce that, starting on September 6th, the Phantom Protocol will kick-off public token offering.

The campaign will take place in a total of 7 major public platforms, which include 5 Initial Decentralized Offerings (IDO) and 2 Initial Exchange Offerings (IEO). Details of the offerings are as follows:
IDO Platforms:

    Pentalaunch (BSC based)
    Bounce (Ethereum based)
    WeStarter (BSC based)
    DODO (Ethereum based)

IEO Platforms:

    Gate.io
    MEXC
    Flybit

Details on each offer will be shared shortly and synchronized on this post as well; please check back to this report to stay updated on the latest news. Also, you can follow Phantom’s official Twitter and Telegram groups for the most up-to-date information.

About Phantom Protocol

Phantom Protocol is a next-generation “DeFi+NFT” solution that supports NFT issuance and fractional trading. Phantom is incubated by Conflux and invested by LD Capital, NGC Ventures, Kyros Ventures, Gate Labs, DFG, MXC among others.

Learn more about Phantom Protocol:

Website: http://phm.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhantomDefi
Telegram Group: https://t.me/PhantomProtocol

New research from mobile mesh networking company goTenna explores how mobile communications can be decentralized with the help of bitcoin’s lightning network.

Technologists have long explored how to use cryptocurrencies and blockchains to build programs where users are more in control of their data. GoTenna, the company behind mesh network devices for internet-less connections, is exploring a novel approach.

To that end, the GoTenna team has released a new paper describing how decentralized mesh networks for sending “mobile communications” (such as text messages) could be powered by bitcoin micropayments. What’s more, they’ve establised a new subsidiary Global Mesh Labs LLC to move forward with this goal.

“80 billion mobile messages are sent each day via carriers and [Internet Service Providers (ISPs)]. Mobile mesh networks offer an anti-fragile, decentralized alternative that can extend connectivity to places centralized networks can’t,” the project website argues.

One hurdle to mesh network adoption is that people aren’t really incentivized to run the infrastructure required to relay data across the network, the paper argues. GoTenna attempts to fix that by describing a new “trust-minimized” protocol with bitcoin’s lightning at the center, called Lot49, which would pay users for relaying data.

“Any node can earn a reward for relaying data for others and by being at the right place at the right time,” the paper, written by goTenna engineer Richard Myers, explains.

The proposal is reliant on a couple of bitcoin proposals that have been widely discussed, but haven’t yet been incorporated: Schnorr and sighash_noinput. Before building and trying out the protocol, these things will need to be added, if the bitcoin community agrees that they are good changes to make.

One is Schnorr, a much-anticipated, new bitcoin signature scheme that was first proposed years ago, and has seen progress recently through the release of test code.

“To reduce incentive protocol overhead we propose using signature aggregation, simplex payment channel updates and payment channels formed between mesh nodes within direct communication range,” the paper explains.

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Payments company Square has hired former Google director Steve Lee as the first member of its new crypto team.

A Square Twitter account teased the news Wednesday afternoon without specifying what Lee’s role at the company would be. A spokesperson for Square declined to comment.

The maker of the bitcoin-friendly Cash app led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced it was hiring a crypto team in March. At the time, Dorsey said the new roles would be focusing not on Square’s own commercial interests, but rather “on what’s best for the crypto community.”

Lee, who left Google in 2015 after eight years at the search giant, has since become a Bitcoin Optech contributor. He’s also an angel investor who lists Lyft, Pinterest and Yardbarker as key exits.

Square generated $65.5 million in bitcoin-related revenue in the first quarter of 2019, its highest quarterly volume to date.

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Eos (EOS) parent company Block.one has disclosed that it is a client of a lobbying firm in a disclosure form registered in May.

In the document, Block.one is cited as the client of international law firm Holland & Knight LLP, whose offices globally work on over 200 different practice areas including regulatory and government affairs, blockchain technology and e-commerce.

In the Specific lobbying issues (current and anticipated) field Block.one indicated “policy related to blockchain.” Block.one has apparently contributed $30,000 for lobbying activities.

The document also reveals that Scott Mason and Norma Krayem will act as lobbyists for Block.one. Before joining Holland & Knight, Mason served for sitting United States president Donald Trump’s administration as the director of congressional relations, where he specifically was responsible for leading efforts to secure congressional endorsements for Trump and assisting members of Congress with policy outreach to the Transition Team.

The number of lobbies working on blockchain technology issues in Washington D.C. tripled in 2018, reaching 33 projects in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to 12 in the same period of 2017.

According to lobbyist Dina Ellis Rochkind, blockchain firms were still in the early stages of winning allies in Congress as of mid-March. Izzy Klein from Ripple-backed Klein/Johnson Group, which lobbies for the Securing America’s Internet of Value Coalition, said at the time:

“I think that when you have a new technology and new platforms in older and heavily regulated spaces, you need as many legitimate voices and boots on the ground that you can get.”

As for Coinbase’s political action committee (PAC) founded in July of last year, the company filed to close the organization in late April. Per a filing with the Federal Election Commission, the PAC received no funds nor made any disbursements, and was seeking to terminate.

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If you’re selling Bitcoin, the U.S. Treasury would like a word from you. New guidelines from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) have labelled all Bitcoin ATMs as money transmitters, meaning that if you want to buy crypto from a machine, you’ll need to show some ID.

But one company is making it easier for ATM operators to comply with the new FinCEN rules. In collaboration with leading ATM providers,  CipherTrace has announced the Clean Crypto Kiosks Initiative, which seeks to make it easier for vendors and ATM entrepreneurs to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.

“Currently, most Bitcoin ATM manufacturers include software that streamlines the steps toward compliance,” CipherTrace said. However, “those systems will not meet the newer stricter crypto AML requirements.”

The new CipherTrace solution makes it relatively painless to verify customer transactions, by putting FinCEN-approved AML procedures on a simple web interface.

It “takes less than 5 minutes to set the necessary parameters to start AML risk scoring,” explained CipherTrace COO Steve Ryan. The company hopes to see several thousand ATM’s enable CipherTrace’s AML services.

Marketing documents revealed to Crypto Briefing reveal some of the features which CipherTrace will provide to ATM operators.

Vendors will be able to choose their own risk settings, and decide which transactions to allow and which ones to flag for manual review.  For example, vendors could decide to accept transactions from Exchanges and Enterprises, but to flag transactions from High-Risk Exchanges, or Ransomware.

There are similar options for Faucets, Gambling Sites, Miners, and Mixers, allowing vendors to determine which risks they’re willing to accept. According to the integration instructions, CipherTrace recommends most ATM operators to start with a “less aggressive” risk posture.

A more aggressive risk posture is also available, which checks transaction addresses two hops out from the subject transaction.


The new FinCEN guidelines are part of a long string of efforts by financial regulators to limit the flow of cryptocurrencies to trusted actors and transactions. Although these rules are unlikely to get any friendlier to frequent users, the latest service from CipherTrace could make things easier for ATM vendors.

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By CCN Markets: Zcoin (XZC) gained 85% over the past 48 hours as cryptocurrency traders speculated on the build-up to the launch of Sigma – a technical upgrade on the Zerocoin privacy protocol.

Created in 2013 by a Johns Hopkins University professor, the Zerocoin protocol influenced an entire generation of privacy coins. Those include well-known cryptocurrencies like Zcash (ZEC), PivX (PIVX), and up until now, Zcoin.

Zcoin Takes Moonshot on Sigma Launch

From Monday’s low of $7.67, the value of XZC soared to $14.19 by Wednesday afternoon, marking 85% gains over 48 hours. The majority of that growth came in the past day, as a rapid 48% surge coincided with the official release of Sigma.

The Zcoin cryptocurrency soared as much as 85% in just 48 hours. | Source: TradingView

The build-up wasn’t exactly sudden for Zcoin, with 117% growth being recorded in the past week alone. CoinMarketCal – a website which collects data on upcoming blockchain calendar events, listed the Sigma release as imminent. However, according to a community poll, just two-thirds of voters expected it to go ahead on the proposed June 11th launch date.

The first uploads to GitHub were made late on Tuesday night, and by Wednesday the Zcoin team posted the following tweet.


The main trading hub for XZC coins on the day was Binance – where $8.6 million of the day’s $23 million turnover originated.

What Is Sigma and What Does It Replace?

According to Zcoin’s own team, the Zerocoin protocol it had used up until now suffered from being a “trusted setup.” As per this recent blog post, Zcoin’s architecture was such that the prospect of catastrophe was extremely low – but present nonetheless.

“Although this (Zerocoin) is a decent implementation with a low chance of it being compromised, we believe the whole purpose of blockchain is to build systems that do not require trust, and that same principle applies to our privacy system as well.”

Apparently, Zcoin’s release in 2016 was postponed as founder Poramin Insom tried to address the problem then, and failed. The academic source for Sigma is One-Out-Of-Many-Proofs: Or How to Leak a Secret and Spend a Coin (Jens Groth and Markulf Kohlweiss) – a University College London research paper.

The update also reduces the transaction proof size from 25kB to 1.5kB. This has the benefit of clearing space for more private transactions in each block, and reducing costs in general.

Although the Zerocoin protocol influenced well-known privacy cryptocurrency Zcash, the zk-SNARKs used by ZEC come from a modification of Zerocoin, known as the Zerocash protocol.

Onwards and Upwards For This Privacy-Centric Cryptocurrency

Zcoin plans to continue to build on its privacy protocol, beginning with an upcoming update called Lelantus. | Source: Shutterstock

Yet as newsworthy as Sigma’s launch appears to have been for market speculators, the best could still be to come. According to the blog post linked above, Sigma is merely a precursor to the next major upgrade – Lelantus, which:

“…builds on Sigma and greatly expands its functionality and privacy features by removing the need for fixed denominations in minting and spending.”

The founder and CEO of Binance recently suggested India’s hardline stance on crypto holders could drive the masses towards privacy-focused coins instead. With Monero, Zcoin, Zcash, and even the memorably named Pirate Chain (ARRR) all offering distinct variations on privacy protocols, there’ll be plenty to choose from if that happens.

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Less than 5% of the code committed to the top 100 cryptocurrency projects on Github were contributed by women, according to a Medium article posted by journalist Corin Faife on June 10.

The author gathered more than 1,026,804 code commits for his research. While 691,134 were made by developers with a male name, just 47,678 were made by a female name. A further 287,992 were pseudonymous or produced by someone with a name that could be of either gender.

Faife found that Github users with a male name contributed two-thirds of all commits to these projects, and the remaining 28 percent were offered by developers where their gender could not be established.

The gender divide did not end here. On average, developers with male names made 13 times more code commits than their female counterparts. While acknowledging his data was “fuzzy,” Faife concluded:

“It paints a clear picture of a field that is dominated by male developers across almost every major project. It’s worth examining what the broader causes of such a gender imbalance are, and what steps the industry could take to encourage more women to take up blockchain programming.”

Back in January, a report revealed that 79% of attendees at crypto events are male.

Last September, a study by the finance company Circle warned that women are underrepresented when it comes to cryptocurrencies, investing at half the rate men do.

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A hacker who reportedly stole 23 million XRP worth roughly $9.2 million is shifting the stolen crypto and trying to cash out at every opportunity.

The XRP was stolen from the crypto wallet service GateHub early this month. According to big data analyst and Forbes contributor Thomas Silkjær, the hacker tried to cash out by sending large chunks of the XRP to a long list of crypto exchanges including Binance, Changelly, KuCoin, Huobi and HitBTC.

The crypto exchange service ChangeNow says 2.5 million XRP was sent to its platform. The team managed to stop a portion of the funds from being swapped into other cryptocurrencies.

“On the 9th of June, thanks to our team’s fast and coordinated actions, we have managed to stop a solid number of XRP exchanges that the hackers tried to make through us. The total amount of Ripple that was attempted to be transferred through us is 2.5 million. We managed to retain more than 500,000 XRP. Even though it is an impressive number, we think there could be more to be done on our part.”

GateHub says more than 18,000 XRP accounts were potentially affected by the hack.

“Altogether we detected 18,473 accounts that were potentially affected as a result of suspicious API calls. From these 18,473 accounts, 5,045 XRP Ledger wallets contained active balances. We promptly notified all GateHub customers who might have been affected through multiple channels, including emails, telephone messages, and calls.”

The company is calling on wallet holders to take action to protect their crypto assets.

“We have done our best to inform all of you about what we have learned and advise you on how to protect assets that you hold on the XRP ledger.

But we need your help. Our XRP Ledger Wallets are protected with secret keys kept in an encrypted state. GateHub does not have access to users’ native RCL wallets and we do not know your encrypted passwords. We cannot move or withdraw assets on your behalf. Only you can do this. Customers who previously received an individual warning e-mail from GateHub and thereafter did not move their funds to their hosted wallets are still at risk of having funds stolen by this thief.

We urge all customers individually notified by email to move their XRP into a GateHub hosted wallet immediately.”

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