Skip to main content

MLB Team Washington Nationals Partners With Terra Blockchain Community, Ballpark Plans to Accept UST

On February 9, the American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C., the Washington Nationals, announced the team has partnered with Terra, the open-source blockchain platform and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The Washington Nationals detail that the team is a “leading innovator” and is “consistently introducing new technologies to enhance the fan experience.” Washington Nationals Ink Long-Term Deal With Terra Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Washington Nationals has partnered with the blockchain platform and DAO Terra, according to an announcement published by the team on Wednesday. The deal with Terra follows a slew of sports-related deals with crypto firms, but the MLB team will be the first to partner with an open-source blockchain project. In addition to the partnership, the algorithmic stablecoin UST that’s issued on the Terra blockchain will be “accepted as a payment method at Nationals Park as early as next season.” “The Nationals continue t...
Post a Comment

BREAKING: The Bitcoin network welcomes Taproot soft fork upgrade

Taproot soft fork introduces the concept of Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) to improve the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network.

The Bitcoin (BTC) network successfully activated the Taproot soft fork following a 90% lock-in consensus from miners and mining pools between blocks 709,488 and 709,632. The milestone signifies the first major upgrade for Bitcoin since August 2017, which saw the launch of Bitcoin’s leading layer-two solution, the Lightning Network and Segregated Witness (SegWit).

The Taproot upgrade aims to improve the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network. To do this, the soft fork introduces the concept of Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST). According to a Taproot-dedicated website run by prominent Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg:

“[MAST] can help make smart contracts more efficient and private by only revealing the relevant parts of the contract when spending.”

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Sjöberg pointed out that Taproot activation shows that Bitcoin can do network upgrades again, which is extremely important for the longevity of the Bitcoin network. “I think that’s the greatest win,” he added.

Sjöberg, who is also a developer of a Bitcoin Lightning wallet Blixt Wallet, believes that the Taproot upgrade allows exploring off-chain capabilities, as to not put too much burden on the Bitcoin nodes of the network.

In addition, Sjöberg believes that MAST can also help improve the privacy of the older Lightning Network “if the Lightning implementations choose to adopt Taproot.” The developers of the various Lightning Network node implementations met in Zurich, Switzerland just a few weeks ago at the LN Summit 2021 to discuss possible upgrade paths:

“One of the things that were discussed in the meeting was whether it's best to upgrade Lightning in small iterations or do it as one big package.”

Moreover, Sjöberg explained how payment channels under normal circumstances can be made indistinguishable from normal transactions using Taproot for the Lightning Network:

“It's not possible to tell if a Taproot transaction is just a normal payment or if it belongs to a Lightning channel. This is important for the fungibility and thus the censorship resistance of Bitcoin.”

Taproot’s successful activation is attributed to Speedy Trial, a soft fork deployment method that requires 90% of the miners to signal the deployment of the upgrade. As explained by Sjöberg, “the signaling method works in periods of 2016 blocks, meaning that within a 2016 block period, 90%, or 1815 of the 2016 blocks have to signal for readiness.”

Back in June 2021, the Bitcoin miners achieved a 90% consensus for the first time and Sjöberg tweeted the announcement:

However, the Taproot upgrade also marks the end of Speedy Trial deployments and future upgrades to the Bitcoin network will require provision for new soft fork deployment methods. "Taproot opens a world of possibilities, but the first thing I personally would like to see is a "MuSig 2" transaction." Sharing advice for fellow Bitcoin developers, Sjöberg said:

“While we should not take anything for granted in Bitcoin, I personally would like to eventually see "Cross-Input Signature Aggregation" as a future soft fork for Bitcoin.”

Related: Bitcoin Lightning nodes and channels hit record highs

 In Bitcoin's near 13 years of existence, the Bitcoin network has undergone numerous community-driven hard and soft forks. While the Taproot upgrade is yet to prove its worth in time to come, the Lightning Network continues to attain new heights.

On Sept. 28, the Lightning Network witnessed a 160% increase in the number of nodes in the span of 12 months in addition to seeing a jump of 170% in the number of channels since January 2021.

As of Nov. 11, Bitcoin’s network capacity prior to Taproot soft fork was at an all-time high of 3,220 BTC, nearly worth $210 million. 

https://ift.tt/3Cck5ZV
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MLB Team Washington Nationals Partners With Terra Blockchain Community, Ballpark Plans to Accept UST

On February 9, the American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C., the Washington Nationals, announced the team has partnered with Terra, the open-source blockchain platform and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The Washington Nationals detail that the team is a “leading innovator” and is “consistently introducing new technologies to enhance the fan experience.” Washington Nationals Ink Long-Term Deal With Terra Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Washington Nationals has partnered with the blockchain platform and DAO Terra, according to an announcement published by the team on Wednesday. The deal with Terra follows a slew of sports-related deals with crypto firms, but the MLB team will be the first to partner with an open-source blockchain project. In addition to the partnership, the algorithmic stablecoin UST that’s issued on the Terra blockchain will be “accepted as a payment method at Nationals Park as early as next season.” “The Nationals continue t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Year of sponsorships: Celebrities who embraced crypto in 2021

From Matt Damon appearing in a TV spot for Crypto.com to Kim Kardashian shilling EthereumMax, 2021 saw celebrities with higher profiles getting into crypto. Though the crypto space has seemingly moved beyond the endorsements many minor celebrities bestowed on token projects during the 2018 initial coin offering boom, its growing popularity and acceptance now has professional sports players, Hollywood elites and politicians backing major companies dealing with digital assets. In June 2021, Kim Kardashian promoted EthereumMax (EMAX) via an Instagram story shared with  her more than 200 million followers . The token, which was used as payment for online ticket purchases for some pay-per-view events, gained 116,000% in just one week following the celebrity’s activity before falling more than 99% and leaving many investors in the red. Kim Kardashian promoting EthereumMax on Instagram Stories, June 2021. Source: Instagram Though EthereumMax is somewhat of a cautionary tale for cry...
Post a Comment
Read more

Top 3 Rebase Token Markets Shudder — Stats Show TIME, OHM, BTRFLY Lost Billions Since All-Time Highs

While the crypto economy has shed more than 3% in fiat value during the last 24 hours dropping to $2.09 trillion, the top rebase tokens by market capitalization have seen significant losses this week. At the time of writing, the rebase token economy is valued at over $3.2 billion but has lost more than 10% in value during the last 24 hours. The largest rebase token economies such as Wonderland, Olympus, and Redacted Cartel have shed between 36% to 55% over the last week. Top 3 Rebase Token Protocols Shed Billions in Value Over the Last Week, Wonderland Down 87% Since High On the first day of November 2021, Bitcoin.com News took a deep dive into the Olympus DAO and the reserve-backed asset called OHM . Olympus is a decentralized finance (defi) project that is described as a rebase token and since Olympus started, a myriad of Olympus forks have been born. Essentially, rebase token protocols adjust the token supply in a periodic fashion or when the price fluctuates. Olympus was once ...
Post a Comment
Read more