The CyberNews.com Investigation team’s analysis of Ethereum smart contracts – essentially code that helps online services send and receive payments – from shows that nearly 3,800 smart contracts have severe weaknesses that can allow cybercriminals to quickly steal 1 million dollars.  One of the most famous Ethereum smart contract vulnerabilities is what’s known as a reentrancy attack, which in 2016 allowed a cybercriminal to steal $50 million. We scanned 6 months’ worth of blocks from Ethereum’s blockchain and found that 3,779 contracts have 13 different types of vulnerabilities, including 4 high-severity vulnerabilities. The total value of these vulnerable smart contracts is 2,088 ETH, which equals $964,172. One of these high-severity vulnerabilities is the integer underflow, which allows someone with no funds in their account to send out one token, and receive billions of tokens in return. Another is the unprotected selfdestruct, which would allow any attacker to kill the contract and withdraw all the funds to any address. These vulnerabilities, while specific and technical in nature, basically allow attackers to fiddle with the code and steal as much money as possible in a very short amount of time.  In order to undertake our analysis, we performed the following steps: Of the total blocks that were scanned, 3,779 contracts were shown to have the four following high-severity vulnerabilities: You can find a full list of the vulnerabilities in the table at the end of the article. Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency platform in the world, and it is also a cryptocurrency in and of itself. As a platform, 1,900 different cryptocurrencies and tokens are built on top of it. Smart contracts on Ethereum help people and organizations exchange money, or really anything of value, in a transparent way that doesn’t require any middlemen. Smart contracts are simply code that define the rules and penalties between two parties (the buyer and seller, for example).  These smart contracts also automatically enforce those obligations – again, since there are no middlemen. This means that online services and platforms can use smart contracts to send and receive payments on Ethereum without needing to involve any third parties. In order to understand an integer underflow attack, we need to cover a few basics (warning: there’s some math involved).  Ethereum smart contracts are built using 256 bits as its word size. Practically, this means that the allowed numbers on Ethereum contracts range from 0 all the way to 4,294,967,295 (or 2²⁵⁶), which is approximately 4.3 billion, and there are no negative numbers allowed.  Now, in an integer overflow, if you add 1 to the top of the range, it’ll cycle back down to zero (2²⁵⁶ + 1 = 0), kind of like an odometer in a really old car. In an integer underflow, it’s the opposite – if you subtract 1 from zero, you’ll cycle all the way to the top of the range (0–1= 2²⁵⁶). An integer underflow attack then involves a malicious user with zero balance sending just one token to a friend. Because of the vulnerability, the malicious user’s balance now goes from zero all the way to nearly 4.3 billion. To complete the attack, the malicious user withdraws all that free money to a wallet. Although the integer underflow and overflow attacks are caused by the same issue, the underflow attack is much more practical since it’s easier for a user to have a zero balance than a 4.3 billion balance of a given token. Lastly, there’s the unprotected selfdestruct and unprotected Ether withdrawal vulnerabilities. Both of these have to do with a common weakness known as “improper access control,” which essentially means that the contract didn’t have enough protections in place to stop an attacker accessing these critical functions. These are also the simplest attacks to understand. In terms of the unprotected Ether withdrawal vulnerability, any attacker can withdraw Ether tokens from the contract without needing to first send an equivalent amount of tokens to the contract.  For the unprotected selfdestruct vulnerability, the weakness allows any attacker to kill the contract and then withdraw any balance from the contract to any specified address.  For all the sophistication of smart contracts and Ethereum, there are some potentially huge vulnerabilities in the way that smart contracts work. The 2016 reentrancy attack, for example, affected the way that DAO tokens were traded. The DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization – was a sort of decentralized venture capital fund. Because of a fault in the smart contract code, an attacker was able to initiate multiple transfers without actually submitting them. The fault lay in the fact that the attacker was able to continuously withdraw funds, in a near-infinite loop, without actually completing the withdrawal on the contract. In simpler terms: if for example, you have 10 Ether in your contract, and your contract updates the balance only after withdrawing the funds, you can write a malicious contract that would continuously withdraw those funds without updating the balance. The DAO attack scored $50 million from that smart contract vulnerability. These types of vulnerability can certainly impact many users, depending on whether they’ve stored Ethereum-based cryptocurrency or tokens on an online platform that holds money.  These include crypto gambling sites, loan services, Ethereum banks, and other online services where users are likely to hold their coins or tokens. If the attacker creates a malicious smart contract and attacks those sites, users can stand to lose their money. This is similar to what happened in the 2016 DAO reentrancy attack. In effect, the $50 million that users had put into the DAO was essentially stolen. In any case, whenever money is stolen from any platform, the user will end up paying in one form or another. Luckily for users – the average person using these online services – it’s pretty easy to check if the platforms they’re on is using a smart contract with any of these vulnerabilities. They can review the smart contracts on Etherscan or a similar explorer to see if these contracts have been audited and verified.  If the smart contract has not been audited or verified, we’d recommend avoiding that particular platform or online service. For the developers that have created these smart contracts, there are SWC recommendations for each individual vulnerability (linked in the table below). However, in order to fix a vulnerable smart contract, these developers will have to redo them, fixing the code first to remove the vulnerability. In the table below, you will find the different types of vulnerabilities contained within the 3,779 smart contracts. This includes their severity, SWC ID and description, as well as how many times the specific vulnerability was observed (under Instances).

The Ethereum blockchain is currently one of the most favored for issuing digital tokens in the crypto industry. It promises optimal scalability and performance, more so than developers can get with many other blockchains. However, a new report has shed light on an inherent vulnerability in the blockchain that could affect thousands of tokens built on it.  This week, researchers from several educational institutions published a research paper highlighting a “fake deposit vulnerability” in Ethereum-based smart contracts. The researchers came from institutions such as Peking University, Zhejiang University, the University of Queensland, and the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. According to them, over $1 billion worth of Ethereum-based tokens is now at risk. Going deeper, the research paper explained that these tokens come with verification methods that are less secure than ERC20 contracts developed after 2017. Thus, hackers can use the fake deposit vulnerability to manipulate the contracts’ codebases and steal millions. The research paper added that vulnerable tokens are available on both centralized and decentralized exchanges. They allow coins to be swapped without any comprehensive verification, thus presenting an opportunity for skilled hackers to steal users’ tokens. To remedy the situation, the researchers developed a took known as “Deposafe.” With the tool, token developers can test their smart contracts for possible fake deposit vulnerabilities. The researchers added that they’d tested the product to a large number of smart contracts. The tests showed that about 7,735 tokens were susceptible to the fake deposit vulnerability using the “Type I” attack. A Type II attack could affect a further 7,716 tokens. Together, these tokens have a market cap of $1 billion. Security on the Ethereum blockchain is more prominent than ever, especially as its use in decentralized finance (DeFi) is growing. The DeFi boom has been quite noteworthy, with projects seeing record funding rounds and surging market value. The total value of capital locked in DeFi protocols has increased by at least 250 percent in less than two months. This month, DeFi protocols reached a record $7 billion in market cap. If this rate continues, the DeFi sector could hit a $25 billion market valuation before the year runs out. Aave, a lending protocol, is currently the largest DeFi project, according to data from DeFi Pulse. With $1.51 billion in assets locked, the project is followed by MakerDAO and its $1.42 billion. Curve Finance rounds out the top 3 with $1.15 billion in assets locked. Most of the top DeFi protocols were built on the Ethereum blockchain. While some might end up branching out to form their own networks, Ethereum is still the preferred choice. If there is a vulnerability in the platform’s underlying smart contracts, developers will want to be aware. 4.5/5 75% of retail investors lose money.eToro Reviews https://insidebitcoins.com/visit/etoro-newsCreate your account Hide eToro Reviews 4.5/5 80.5% of retail investors lose money.Plus500 Reviews https://insidebitcoins.com/visit/plus500-newsCreate your account Hide Plus500 Reviews Remember, all trading carries risk. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Article Info Author: Jimmy Aki Last Updated: 28 August 2020 Jimmy has been following the development of blockchain for several years, and he is optimistic about its potential to democratize the financial system.

A new working group aims to create standards that will ensure secure Ethereum smart contracts are used by businesses and DeFi projects. 12868 Total views 48 Total shares Listen to article 0:00 Analysis Decentralized finance continues to make its impact on the crypto market, and with over $13 billion of total value of assets locked, DeFi projects are clearly resonating with eager crypto investors. Yet while the DeFi space has been progressing over the last year, a number of illegitimate projects have come to fruition, reminding some of the 2017 ICO boom and its subsequent bust. For example,. The attacker made away with $24 million from Harvest Finance pools. Most recently, Value DeFi, the decentralized finance protocol,. And of course, one of the biggest events of the year for DeFi involved SushiSwap, where the creator . It’s important to point out that the majority of DeFi projects are built on the Ethereum blockchain. According to the website DeFiPrime, there are currently over 200 DeFi projects on the Ethereum network. Yet while Ethereum appears to be the most suitable platform for DeFi projects, the network’s vulnerabilities have played a large role in hacks and fraudulent activities. Specifically speaking, the smart contracts that power Ethereum are known for being fraught with security issues, which, in turn, have greatly impacted DeFi projects. In addition, smart contracts being applied to DeFi projects worth billions of dollars are often not audited beforehand. Tom Lindeman, a previous veteran researcher at Microsoft and the former managing director of the Ethereum Trust Alliance — a group of blockchain companies working on a security system for smart contracts — told Cointelegraph that there is currently no good ways to identify whether a smart contract is secure before initiating a transaction: In an attempt to solve the security challenges related to smart contracts, Lindeman has joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s newly formed “EthTrust Security Levels Working Group” as its co-chair. According to Lindeman, the working group’s mission will be to continue the advances initially started by the Ethereum Trust Alliance, or ETA, which are aimed to set standards for secure, smart contract transactions conducted on the Ethereum blockchain. Lindeman explained that the ETA has been working on its EthTrust project for close to a year, even before the DeFi space started to expose the vulnerabilities of Ethereum smart contracts. Coincidentally, the EthTrust project joined forces with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance just as the DeFi space was gaining traction. Daniel Burnett, executive director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, told Cointelegraph that the timing for the new working group has been purely coincidental in regards to the rise of DeFi. According to Burnett, the new EthTrust project further demonstrates that the Ethereum network is maturing. “We want to help solve the problems many of our members have expressed in regards to Ethereum,” he said. Specifically, the new working group plans to address security vulnerabilities in smart contracts by creating a standard and registry system to help users gain greater awareness of how to differentiate which contracts have gone through rigorous security checks. While the project is still a work in progress, the goal is to define certain requirements that smart contracts must exhibit in order to be deemed secure. For example, Pierre-Alain Mouy, an Enterprise Ethereum Alliance member, former ETA product owner and managing director at NVISO Security in Germany, told Cointelegraph that there are three levels of validation that a smart contract can achieve to help individuals understand its level of trust: Mouy shared that in order for a smart contract to achieve a level one badge, an automated security scanning tool will be run against the contract. The AI-powered tool is designed to check for a specific set of requirements that the working group is currently defining. If a smart contract continues to level two, individuals will perform a security audit. “There will be definitions for audit companies, explaining how long they need to dig into these smart contracts,” said Mouy, adding further: “Eventually, an audit report will be created for the working group to manually review. We are not auditors, however. The working group serves as a router to verify that these steps are taken.” Finally, if a smart contract makes it to level three, additional specifications and test cases written to verify properties in the contract will be performed. According to Mouy, this is called the “formal verification process.” Once a smart contract has undergone this step-by-step verification process, the initiative’s registry system will enable exchanges, for example, to request a specific rating level before new tokens are listed. This system could also be applied to a multi-member consortium that relies on smart contracts for business purposes. According to Lindeman, the EthTrust project has already sparked interest from daily Ethereum users who want to see new things, such as . He further shared that Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has expressed interest in using this system to provide smart contract ratings for companies interested in the blockchain space. The growing interest in secure smart contracts is especially important as the Ethereum infrastructure progresses and the. Burnett believes the Ethereum ecosystem will see increased trust moving forward, which will be exhibited by new projects being used by businesses, such as the. While innovative, it’s important to point out that the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s new working group and the EthTrust project are not the first to tackle challenges related to the security of smart contracts. For example, blockchain security firm Quantstamp has been performing smart contract audits and security checks for blockchain companies since 2017. The firm’s clients include major players in the space such as Binance and eToro. Quantstamp recently announced that it will. In addition to security firms performing audits, companies are also finding ways to ensure secure smart contracts. For example, Vaiot, a blockchain company that uses artificial intelligence to create digital services for enterprises, leverages AI to provide software security and performance in smart contracts. Jakub Kobeldys, the lead developer at Vaiot, told Cointelegraph that while no amount of AI can fully protect against flaws in code, the technology can aid developers significantly:

The CyberNews.com Investigation team’s analysis of Ethereum smart contracts – essentially code that helps online services send and receive payments – from shows that nearly 3,800 smart contracts have severe weaknesses that can allow cybercriminals to quickly steal 1 million dollars.  One of the most famous Ethereum smart contract vulnerabilities is what’s known as a reentrancy attack, which in 2016 allowed a cybercriminal to steal $50 million. We scanned 6 months’ worth of blocks from Ethereum’s blockchain and found that 3,779 contracts have 13 different types of vulnerabilities, including 4 high-severity vulnerabilities. The total value of these vulnerable smart contracts is 2,088 ETH, which equals $964,172. One of these high-severity vulnerabilities is the integer underflow, which allows someone with no funds in their account to send out one token, and receive billions of tokens in return. Another is the unprotected selfdestruct, which would allow any attacker to kill the contract and withdraw all the funds to any address. These vulnerabilities, while specific and technical in nature, basically allow attackers to fiddle with the code and steal as much money as possible in a very short amount of time.  In order to undertake our analysis, we performed the following steps: Of the total blocks that were scanned, 3,779 contracts were shown to have the four following high-severity vulnerabilities: You can find a full list of the vulnerabilities in the table at the end of the article. Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency platform in the world, and it is also a cryptocurrency in and of itself. As a platform, 1,900 different cryptocurrencies and tokens are built on top of it. Smart contracts on Ethereum help people and organizations exchange money, or really anything of value, in a transparent way that doesn’t require any middlemen. Smart contracts are simply code that define the rules and penalties between two parties (the buyer and seller, for example).  These smart contracts also automatically enforce those obligations – again, since there are no middlemen. This means that online services and platforms can use smart contracts to send and receive payments on Ethereum without needing to involve any third parties. In order to understand an integer underflow attack, we need to cover a few basics (warning: there’s some math involved).  Ethereum smart contracts are built using 256 bits as its word size. Practically, this means that the allowed numbers on Ethereum contracts range from 0 all the way to 4,294,967,295 (or 2²⁵⁶), which is approximately 4.3 billion, and there are no negative numbers allowed.  Now, in an integer overflow, if you add 1 to the top of the range, it’ll cycle back down to zero (2²⁵⁶ + 1 = 0), kind of like an odometer in a really old car. In an integer underflow, it’s the opposite – if you subtract 1 from zero, you’ll cycle all the way to the top of the range (0–1= 2²⁵⁶). An integer underflow attack then involves a malicious user with zero balance sending just one token to a friend. Because of the vulnerability, the malicious user’s balance now goes from zero all the way to nearly 4.3 billion. To complete the attack, the malicious user withdraws all that free money to a wallet. Although the integer underflow and overflow attacks are caused by the same issue, the underflow attack is much more practical since it’s easier for a user to have a zero balance than a 4.3 billion balance of a given token. Lastly, there’s the unprotected selfdestruct and unprotected Ether withdrawal vulnerabilities. Both of these have to do with a common weakness known as “improper access control,” which essentially means that the contract didn’t have enough protections in place to stop an attacker accessing these critical functions. These are also the simplest attacks to understand. In terms of the unprotected Ether withdrawal vulnerability, any attacker can withdraw Ether tokens from the contract without needing to first send an equivalent amount of tokens to the contract.  For the unprotected selfdestruct vulnerability, the weakness allows any attacker to kill the contract and then withdraw any balance from the contract to any specified address.  For all the sophistication of smart contracts and Ethereum, there are some potentially huge vulnerabilities in the way that smart contracts work. The 2016 reentrancy attack, for example, affected the way that DAO tokens were traded. The DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization – was a sort of decentralized venture capital fund. Because of a fault in the smart contract code, an attacker was able to initiate multiple transfers without actually submitting them. The fault lay in the fact that the attacker was able to continuously withdraw funds, in a near-infinite loop, without actually completing the withdrawal on the contract. In simpler terms: if for example, you have 10 Ether in your contract, and your contract updates the balance only after withdrawing the funds, you can write a malicious contract that would continuously withdraw those funds without updating the balance. The DAO attack scored $50 million from that smart contract vulnerability. These types of vulnerability can certainly impact many users, depending on whether they’ve stored Ethereum-based cryptocurrency or tokens on an online platform that holds money.  These include crypto gambling sites, loan services, Ethereum banks, and other online services where users are likely to hold their coins or tokens. If the attacker creates a malicious smart contract and attacks those sites, users can stand to lose their money. This is similar to what happened in the 2016 DAO reentrancy attack. In effect, the $50 million that users had put into the DAO was essentially stolen. In any case, whenever money is stolen from any platform, the user will end up paying in one form or another. Luckily for users – the average person using these online services – it’s pretty easy to check if the platforms they’re on is using a smart contract with any of these vulnerabilities. They can review the smart contracts on Etherscan or a similar explorer to see if these contracts have been audited and verified.  If the smart contract has not been audited or verified, we’d recommend avoiding that particular platform or online service. For the developers that have created these smart contracts, there are SWC recommendations for each individual vulnerability (linked in the table below). However, in order to fix a vulnerable smart contract, these developers will have to redo them, fixing the code first to remove the vulnerability. In the table below, you will find the different types of vulnerabilities contained within the 3,779 smart contracts. This includes their severity, SWC ID and description, as well as how many times the specific vulnerability was observed (under Instances).

Moonbeam is launching on Parity’s Substrate framework. Designed as a smart contract chain for Polkadot, the platform works as a parachain, offering smart contract developers a way to run applications on the Polkadot network.  Moonbeam is also compatible with Ethereum smart contracts, meaning that builders will have the chance to potentially move their projects onto Polkadot.  Ethereum is known for its ingrained network effects, boasting one of the most robust developer communities in crypto. Unfortunately, scaling issues have hamstrung the network as of late, earning Ethereum criticism.  These scaling issues lead to high gas fees that make it expensive to use or run an application on the network. This summer, fees were so high that some companies had to shut down as they could not make up the costs. While it’s hoped that certain Layer 2 solutions and the pending Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will improve the network’s efficiency, a viable solution could be years away.  Moonbeam hopes to solve some of Ethereum’s issues by offering builders a platform to build on Polkadot conveniently. Moonbeam said that:  It’s also said to be interoperable with Bitcoin, meaning BTC holders can use the cryptocurrency on Moonbeam in the future.  While Moonbeam’s primary use case is running smart contracts, the chain could also bring other elements of DeFi such as oracles like Chainlink and Band Protocol over to Polkadot. The project recently received a grant from The Web3 foundation to continue funding development. 

    Ethereum is a decentralized computing system that was developed in order to feature smart contracts. Now you might be wondering what is the smart contract. An ethereum smart contract is a digitized version of the traditional contract system, which we use today to agree with some terms and conditions. Thus, a smart contract is a digital protocol which is utilized to approve and facilitate the performance and negotiation of a contract. As we have understood now that digital assets were introduced to eliminate the third parties, the smart contract of Ethereum allowed credible transactions without any involvement of third-party. This Ethereum platform is also used to generate several digital tokens which are called Ethereum tokens. Now, I will give you some information on Ethereum tokens.     In simple terms, an ethereum token is a digital asset which is created with the help of the Ethereum platform. All these tokens utilize the existing blockchain network of Ethereum for their operations. These digital assets act as a currency that could have different features and functionalities. Ethereum tokens could also be used to represent loyalty points, company shares, certificates of assets like gold, silver etc. There are many types of Ethereum tokens available today. ERC20(Ethereum Request For Comments) is the primary token, and it is considered as one among the top Ethereum tokens. The 20 number is defined for the proposal that would build a structure for these tokens. ERC20 acts as a series of guidelines for several of its tokens. Many tokens are available within the category of an ERC20 token. Below, I have provided a list of all these ERC20 tokens.

cryptocurrency scaling debate continues with Ethereum remaining a viable contender after the recent deployment of the Raiden testnet and the upcoming Metropolis hardfork in spite of problems earlier this year with a clogged network caused by the popularity of the ICO's hosted on the Ethereum network. As the first popular platform for smart contracts these troubles highlight the ability for networks to scale as one of the important hurdles to mainsteam adoption faced by cryptocurrencies. To better understand the scaling debate we have to understand the different functions that cryptocurrencies can serve and why scaling plays such an important role in carrying out those functions. Why Do Cryptocurrencies Need To Scale? existed long enough for most people to assume that it serves some kind of important function, whether they understand it or not, and if Bitcoin and cryptocurrency has been important enough to have been around this long then people will eventually want to understand that function and how they might be able to use that function for their own purposes. At this point, the ability to use Bitcoin becomes less important than the ability to replicate Bitcoin and create your own cryptocurrency used for your own unique purpose. that exist today can be put into one of three categories based on their value to users: transactional, speculative, and developmental. Tokens like Tether and Steem Dollars with mechanisms that suppress volatility and attempt to maintain a consistent spot price have transactional value because users do not generally buy them thinking they will go up in value; they buy them because they provide useful, specific ways to exchange digital currencies. For example, high volatility in cryptocurrency markets often results in a lot of money flowing towards Tether and Steem Dollars until the craziness subsides because it's  faster and easier to transfer cryptocurrencies into other cryptocurrencies than cryptocurrencies into fiat probably the vast majority of tokens could be described as speculative. Individuals may use these tokens for transactions but they generally purchase speculative assets because they represent something useful that the buyer expects to gain in value over time. From this perspective, even the decision to continue holding dollars or whatever your native fiat currency may be over digital currencies amounts to a speculative decision. Do you believe that Bitcoin will gain more value than dollars over the next year? If so, then why continue to hold dollars for speculative reasons? The logical thing to do would be to hold enough dollars for day-to-day transactions and convert the rest. category of cryptocurrencies includes Ethereum, NEO, and other digital assets that act as platforms for the development of smart contracts, hence the name “developmental.” These tokens differ from the others by acting as platforms for the creation of other tokens. Smart contracts act just like legal contracts but instead of being enforced by lawyers and judges they do whatever their coding tells them to, allowing people to create digital assets backed by any form of sense for there to be multiple digital assets to serve transactional or speculative functions because they can serve different forms of value but the world does not need more than one good platform for smart contracts. Different smart contract platforms do not (currently, at least) serve different functions or create different kinds of value like transactional or speculative tokens. Scaling represents one of several major hurdles that smart contract platforms have to overcome before the community decides which platform will do the best job of accommodating transactional and speculative currencies. limitations facing speculative and transactional assets become tiny when you consider the amount of transactions handled by a developmental asset and while Ethereum has been considered the most viable platform so far the issue has been far from settled. For cryptocurrencies to become a viable alternative to Visa or Paypal in terms of payment processing their developers have to consider the number of transactions per second the network can handle. It may be possible to move digital assets across the globe at lightning speed right now but once those networks start handling the same volume as networks like Visa or Paypal the wait times for transaction settlement could be significantly longer. to Fred Ehrsam, the Ethereum network can process about seven transactions per second as of June 27, 2017 compared with Facebook going through 175,000 at 24,000  transactions per second. Ethereum may not have as many users as Visa or Facebook yet but it must find a way to adapt if it wants to have a chance at reaching that level of adoption. inventor Vitalik Buterin has blamed some of Ethereum's scaling problems on inefficiently-written smart contracts but has admitted that the larger picture will require an upgrade of the entire system. The next version of Ethereum will be called Ethereum Metropolis and it for implementation in September 2017. Metropolis will include important new functions for developers and security upgrades and has received a lot of attention from the cryptocurrency community but a lesser-known upgrade called Raiden will address the scaling situation specifically. consists of a payment channel that will be Ethereum's answer to the Lightning Network deployed on Litecoin and Bitcoin. The Raiden testnet recently deployed on September 5, 2017 and while the testnet should not be confused with the final version it will help work out the kinks as one of the final critical steps before its release. Ethereum developers have claimed that the Raiden upgrade will allow the network to process over a million transactions a second, leaving Facebook and Visa in the dust. may have been the first and most successful platform for smart contracts thusfar but a number of serious competitors have entered the field. Other projects experimenting with smart contract platforms include NEO, the platform famously backed by the Chinese government, IOTA, a company with a blockless Seattle-based company focused specifically on creating a scalable smart contract platform. Just because there does not need to be more than one final platform for smart contracts doesn't mean that will be the case; different platforms will likely come to serve various regions or jurisdictions but the political differences between those organizations will likely be greater than the differences in their smart contract technology. group to consider includes the individuals who refer to themselves as Bitcoin maximalists. These individuals believe that scaling technologies and all of the other important features being developed on other digital assets like Ethereum will be absorbed by Bitcoin and that Bitcoin's popularity will allow it to be “the one blockchain to rule them all.” Ethereum has been the clear standout among smart contract platforms to date, no single platform has yet proven itself in terms of being able to scale the network to accommodate a large enough population. Even if multiple smart contract platforms manage to scale, the one that does the best job of accommodating the most digital assets will likely outlive the other platforms as 1.     thereum-scaling-issues-popularity-asia-and-icos/ 2.     of-users-f37d9f487db1 3.     l rashes-after-status-ico-clogs-network

If you've scoured around for some information on blockchain technology, you are likely to have come across the name Ethereum. Like the experience of reading about Bitcoin for the first time, the abundance of technical terms and novel concepts may have left you more confused than when you first started reading. With this post, I aim to give a gentle introduction to the fundamental ideas behind Ethereum, explain what "smart contracts" are, and what we could potentially achieve with the technology. To avoid repeating myself from the previous post too much, I'll assume you have some understanding of Bitcoin and blockchains. For a detailed (non-technical) introduction to these you can check out my previous post here. Let's quickly recap Bitcoin and the blockchain before we look at how Ethereum extends from these concepts. Blockchain: a shared, public ledger of all the transactions that have already occurred. These transactions need not be financial (i.e. money) but anything of value - cars, property, insurance... Bitcoin: the first decentralized currency that runs on blockchain technology. Verified transactions are stored on a public ledger (a blockchain) that essentially says: Beginning of ledgerSarah 👩🏽‍🎓 → 👩🏻‍🌾 Jane 10 BitcoinsRaj👨🏼‍🍳 → 👩🏻‍🎓 Amy 2.5 BitcoinsVic 👩🏼‍🌾 → 👨🏽‍🍳 Ali 5 BitcoinsAmy 👩🏻‍🎓 → 👩🏼‍🌾 Vic 2 Bitcoins…  Bitcoin is a store of value, a "digital gold" that can be used as peer-to-peer cash. The decentralized nature of the blockchain removes the need for middlemen like banks, Visa, and PayPal to oversee and authorize a transaction between you and the receiver. Bitcoin is increasingly being used for remittances, micro-payments and e-commerce. Now that we have seen some of the problems that Bitcoin solves, it's reasonable to ask: what else can we do with blockchain technology? In the real world, we transact in more ways than just sending money back and forth. We buy cars, rent storage spaces, lease apartments... For these higher-complexity transactions, we often have to rely on middlemen, e.g. property agents and insurance agencies, who work to make sure that the transactions go through only IF certain conditions are met - that you have no criminal record and a sufficient credit score, for example. ... It turns out that these conditional transactions can also be achieved using the blockchain. Old capability: Sarah 👩🏽‍🎓 → 👩🏻‍🌾  Jane 10 Bitcoins New capability: Sarah 👩🏽‍🎓 → 👩🏻‍🌾  Jane 10 Bitcoins IF it's the first of the month and the year is $400 in June 2017, recording a 5000%+ price surge since the beginning of the year. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at ~$300. *This is essentially an elaborate version of my tweet storm from a few weeks ago Although we have made a lot of progress with blockchain technology over the past few years, it is still very early days. With Ethereum, we have a general-purpose blockchain on which anyone can deploy, download, and run decentralised applications.  It's important to note that blockchain technology still has a ways to go before its capabilities can match that of today's mainstream technologies. For example, while Bitcoin and Ethereum can only process a few transactions per second, whereas Visa can process 1000s/second, and stock exchanges can process 10000s/second. There is ongoing technical work to figure out pave the way forward to scale out blockchain technologies. While there is no shortage of genuine enthusiasm for the blockchain's potential, there is another motivator that is driving a huge surge of interest into the space - money. A tl;dr summary of most #trading Slack channels:  🚀 moon 🤑 💥 FUD 🤑 💸 moon 📈 fomo 💯 🚀  If you take a look at the stats of top performers post-ICO, it is understandable why people have been scrambling in to get a slice of the crypto pie. While I will be writing about specific tokens and trading in the future, my main goal is to advocate for education around blockchain technology and foster discussions about projects beyond token price. It's also important to note that this massive influx of cash has alleviated the funding pressure for blockchain projects, incentivising development teams across the globe to rapidly implement and iterate on their ideas. In the rough sea of speculations, we as a community are able to directly interact with the founding members of projects that we care about. To me, this is especially exciting beyond riding the wild price fluctuations. Imagine being in a small chatroom with Larry Page, his team, and other early adopters when primitive versions of the Google search engine were being developed! Today, there are plenty of channels where you can inquire about the product and its roadmap directly, as well as share ideas to help shape what it is to become. If we look beyond trading charts and take advantage of the countless resources at our fingertips, we can shape what the future holds through collaboration and idea-sharing, and hopefully enjoy investment returns along the way. Here is a presentation I gave for one of our weekly Lunch & Learn sessions at work. Each week, people can volunteer to share their knowledge about any topic of their choice - be it programming languages, new tools, or specialist hobbies. The information presented here is as of late October 2017. *Kudos to reddit user /u/ianjmeikle for the awesome background image I'd love to hear your thoughts and what applications of the blockchain you are most excited about. In future posts I will be writing about my thoughts, dive in to specific projects, and share various ways in which you can participate in the community. I hope this post was useful in helping you understand Ethereum a little better! 🔷 ETH - 0xdbF14da8949D157B57acb79f6EEE62412b210900  All opinions my own. Made with ♥︎ by Nichanan Kesonpat. 2017 We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Links to products contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking a link, we may receive a commission. This commission comes at no charge to you.

By:Sudhir Khatwani In:Ethereum Last Updated:29/06/2017 (5 Comments) The Bitcoin and Blockchain buzz is continuing! But have you noticed a new term “Smart Contracts” has joined the buzz mania? Well to understand this, we need to see who brought this concept of smart contracts to the table. The name “smart contracts” was coined by a cryptologist computer scientist, Nick Szabo, in the 90s. A smart contract is a computerized transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract. The general objectives are to satisfy common contractual conditions. To make it easier to understand, let’s fast forward to the 21st century. Consider a real life example where you are taking out a bag of potato chips mapped against the trigger number “B6” of a vending machine. You put a $10 note in a vending machine. This action triggers the next option for you to select a number (like B6) on the vending machine. And what happens when you select B6? A lever in the vending machine moves and pushes out the bag of chips. A smart contract self-executes the “if-this-then-that” conditions coded onto it in the same way that triggers are implemented in a vending machine. But why is everyone buzzing about the outdated technology in vending machines? The buzz is about the smarter contracts that are based on Ethereum technology. The Ethereum blockchain mechanism coupled with smart contract technology removes intermediaries and escrow services. Let’s dwell deeper into the concept of smart contracts so that even a non-techie can understand. But before that, you need to be familiar with Ethereum 101… To be even more familiar with Ethereum 101, see our guide on “Ethereum Cryptocurrency: Everything A Beginner Needs To Know”. A smart contract is a piece of software that contains rules and regulations for negotiating the terms of a contract. It automatically verifies the contract and then executes the agreed upon terms. And when this smart contract’s centralized code is made decentralized for execution purposes on the Ethereum blockchain, it becomes a smarter contract. Coding and executing smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain makes them immutable and independent from centralization. Smart Contract’s Characteristics on Ethereum A smart contract has the following characteristics: Developers write the code of smart contract using the native language of Ethereum called Solidity. These contract codes can be of many forms, such as the transaction of money when certain conditions are met, or the exchange of goods between parties. Once the code is written, it is uploaded on the EVM- Ethereum Virtual Machine, which you can say is a universal runtime compiler or browser to execute the smart contract’s code. Now once the code is on the EVM, it will be same across each Ethereum node. And each node will try to run and see whether the conditions are met or not. A contract of Ethereum will involve two or more parties which will be fueled by the digital asset (Ether). Once the contract is executed successfully, the digital asset will be distributed or re-distributed according to the logics defined in the code. To make it easier to understand, consider this example: Assume that Harry has given a contract of $1000 to Mary for web development. Harry has hard coded the requirements and conditions about the kind of website he needs onto the Ethereum blockchain. Now, this blockchain will act as the evaluator whenever Mary submits the website to Harry for approval after the project’s completion. Harry has already pre-coded his requirements (such as load time, server host, design specifics, etc.). Now, Mary submits the work on the blockchain for evaluation. If the conditions set by Harry are successfully evaluated, and the website is done as per his coded requirements, then the contract worth $1000 will be instantly self-executed, and payment in equivalent Ether (ETH) will be released to Mary. But let’s suppose Mary didn’t get her payment or Harry didn’t get his work. Then this conflict of interest is resolved by the blockchain’s smart contract, which enforces trust by default. As every transaction history and history of every executed code is stored on the blockchain, you can trust and verify everything when needed. Even in the case of Harry’s smart contract, Harry can’t cheat Mary. Because once Mary has done her work, it will be verified by the blockchain and recorded onto it. Anyone, including Harry, can inspect the blockchain, hence resolving the conflict or protecting against cheating. Moreover, Harry can’t stop or manipulate this contract as the execution of this contract is no longer dependent on one single party or node. As Harry’s contract is running on an EVM of the Ethereum blockchain, it is resistant to damage caused by a single point of failure. On the other hand, if these conditions are not met, then Mary will need to continue the work until the appropriate website is created. That’s why you can trust an Ethereum smart contract. Smart contracts are becoming an integral part of the blockchain economy. Some current applications of smart contracts: Bitcoin is merely the first application on the blockchain backed by the internet. But Ethereum and smart contracts are the next gen applications on the blockchain. And I think Ethereum smart contracts also answer the question of “why do you need Ethereum when you have Bitcoin?” Just like the invention of the internet has transformed human life, the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts have the power to change human life in incredible ways. Because the marathon has just started; Ethereum is only 3 years old, and many scholars are pursuing a lot of research on it. The floodgates of unparalleled innovation have been opened with the establishment of The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance connects Fortune 500 enterprises (like Accenture, Microsoft, Intel, JP Morgan, Wipro, etc.), startups, and academics with Ethereum subject matter experts. With this meeting of minds, it’s highly likely that Ethereum will be the next big cryptocurrency. What do you think about Ethereum and smart contracts? Have you used a smart contract before? Share your experience in the comments below! If you find this tutorial useful, do share it with your friends on Facebook & Twitter! How would a musician currently use a smart contract to enforce copyright? Is there any sort of protocol for this use case currently? Would the music have to be purchased with Ether? Currently, in Music distribution process a long queue of publishers, agencies, streaming services, etc., all of these takes their cut of profit when we subscribe or buy the music of an artist. And at the end of the queue is the actual creator-artist who receives the remaining small cut at the end that too after 6-12 months. Using smart contracts consumer and artist will establish a direct relationship. It will ensure the artist gets paid as soon as the consumer has paid for the art without any delay or intermediaries. One such B-a-a-S, Blockchain as a service platform is ready to be launched in 2017. Its name is Ujo Music -based on Ethereum Blockchain. And certainly, the artist would receive its cut in Ether (ETH). Check Ujo’s Co founder’s view on it here. Thanks for posting this article! It really covers all the basics of ethereum smart contracts work. If you would like to have more understanding on the techincal part – for example, how do smart contracts work – I would suggest reading this article: tract-for-ethereum/ This will cover some techical basis. Yeah deliberately kept this non-technical. Will go through the link you gave for inspiration. There’s nothing Smart in Ethereum Smart Contracts. There’s 2 things that people need to realize, you don’t need Ethereum to come out with a Smart Contract and there’s dozens of other platforms far superior than Ethereum. Ethereum is basically an expensive, congested mess that has massive scaling issues. Thank goodness EOS is coming out soon, the platform that redefines a true scalable platform that goes beyond Smart Contracts. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Welcome to the popular cryptocurrency blog CoinSutra. CoinSutra was started as a passion project, and now it’s empowering users around the globe to learn about popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and more. Here at CoinSutra, we write about Bitcoin, wallet management, online security, making money from Bitcoin & various aspects of cryptocurrencies. You can read more about CoinSutra on the “About” page. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Welcome to the popular cryptocurrency blog CoinSutra. CoinSutra was started as a passion project, and now it’s empowering users around the globe to learn about popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and more. Here at CoinSutra, we write about Bitcoin, wallet management, online security, making money from Bitcoin & various aspects of cryptocurrencies. You can read more about CoinSutra on the “About” page. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Using Hyperledger Fabric To Setup Ethereum Smart Contracts Statistics show that big business is increasingly moving to embrace enterprise blockchain. Some of these businesses require Ethereum smart contracts, but these are in the realm of public blockchain! How can small to medium sized companies code to Ethereum? Well, Hyperledger Fabric has recently come to the rescue! In this article, I will explain the process of using Hyperledger Fabric to setup Ethereum smart contracts. Why enterprise blockchain?Hyperledger Fabric: A key enterprise blockchainPros and cons of Hyperledger FabricThe popularity of Hyperledger FabricHyperledger Fabric tutorialEthereum smart contracts in FabricFabric embraces “Ethereum Virtual Machine” (EVM)How to set up Ethereum smart contracts on Fabric? Let’s take a step back and understand why Enterprises weren’t using Ethereum smart contracts so far. Ethereum is a public blockchain, and enterprises can’t quite use this. This is due to the following reasons: Unrestricted access: Public blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum are open for all to join. Enterprises can only allow trusted participants in their blockchain network. Lack of data privacy: Every participant in a public blockchain can view all transactions in it. Enterprises operate under stringent data privacy regulations, therefore, they need to ensure data privacy. Participants with legitimate requirements of viewing certain data alone should see it. Scalability challenges: Popular public blockchains like Bitcoin don’t scale well. Transaction throughput is low, moreover, transaction confirmation takes long. This is the result of their high decentralized security and the energy-hungry “Proof of Work” (POW) consensus algorithm. Read more about POW in “Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake comparison”. Big businesses need blockchain networks with the following characteristics: Permissioned access: Only trusted parties can join the network. Data privacy: Only the participants with appropriate roles should see sensitive corporate information. The network should offer high scalability and transaction throughput. Processes, methods, and tools (PM&T) to easily implement, maintain, operate, and enhance the network. This drives them to use enterprise blockchains like Hyperledger Fabric and R3 Corda. Read more about it in “Public vs private (permissioned) blockchain comparison”. The blockchain technology is new, and enterprise blockchains are even more recent additions. There are a few reputed enterprise blockchain platforms. Hyperledger Fabric, also called “Fabric” is a prominent one. Let’s review a few quick facts, as follows: Fabric is a permissioned blockchain, and this project is part of “Hyperledger Consortium”. Hyperledger Consortium is an institution that develops processes, methods, open-source tools, and frameworks to increase the adoption of enterprise blockchains. Technology giants like IBM, Cisco, Intel, SAP, Accenture, etc. contribute to the various. Hyperledger projects. Enterprises from various other verticals also contribute to these projects. American Express, Airbus, Deutsche Bank are just a few examples. View their “members” page for more details. Hyperledger Consortium has various projects like Indy, Sawtooth, etc. You can view their “Projects” page to know about these. Many observers consider Fabric as the most matured of them. Fabric is essentially an open-source framework, and you can use it to implement a permissioned blockchain in your enterprise. The first release of Fabric was in 2016. IBM and Digital Asset had together built the first version. A modular architecture: Building an enterprise blockchain isn’t easy. Developers and infrastructure architects need to devote significant efforts to build the infrastructure, protocol programs, etc. Fabric has a modular architecture. Pluggable components like consensus algorithm, identity management, etc. help developers to quickly implement the blockchain network. Ease of building a permissioned blockchain: Fabric makes it easy to implement permissioned blockchain with their “Membership Service Provider” (MSP) feature, which is also called a “Certificate Authority” (CA). Organizations implementing Fabric can assign different roles like “Client”, “Endorser”, etc. to nodes. Performance and scalability: Fabric doesn’t use POW, and the consensus algorithm incorporates the typical transaction workflow in an enterprise. This makes the blockchain scalable and performant. Fabric allows smart contracts. These are called “chaincodes”. Developers can code them in Java, “Golang”, and Node.js. Read more about chaincodes in “Hyperledger — Chapter 8 | What is Hyperledger Fabric Chaincode ?”. “Channels” for confidential data: Some transactions in enterprises are highly confidential. Fabric ensures greater security for these by using channels, which uses data-partitioning. “Hardware Security Model” (HSM): Fabric uses additional hardware-based security for digital signatures. Vibrant community: Technology giants, enterprises from different verticals, and a growing developer community is contributing to the growth of Fabric. Read about these advantages in “Pros and cons of Hyperledger Fabric for blockchain networks”. As Fabric is still new, there are a few challenges. These are as follows: Fabric is an increasingly popular enterprise blockchain platform. Read more about its’ popularity in “10 most popular & promising blockchain platforms”. Cloud computing giants are making it easier for businesses to adopt it. They offer their blockchain platforms, using which businesses can adopt Fabric. A few examples are as follows: Read more about this in “How much does it cost to build a blockchain project?”. As the demand for Fabric developers grow, new learning resources are emerging. Developers can use the following resources: Upgrading your network components to a later version of Fabric; Programmers can also use this Blockgeeks Hyperledger Fabric tutorial. So long, Fabric allowed developers to code chaincodes, but not Ethereum smart contracts. Ethereum smart contracts are important in the history of blockchain technology. This is due to the following reasons: Bitcoin has always been a “Peer-to-Peer”(P2P) network for transferring Bitcoin without the intervention of 3rd parties like banks. It didn’t cater to any other use case. Ethereum introduced smart contracts, i.e., open-source code with “If-Then-Else” statements that transferred cryptographic assets based on fulfillment of predetermined conditions. These smart contracts execute autonomously, and they are stored transparently in the Ethereum blockchain. No one can tamper with them after deployment. I have explained this in “How to Deploy Smart Contract on Ethereum?”. These transformative characteristics of smart contracts enabled entrepreneurs and developers to build decentralized business models using the Ethereum blockchain. This significantly improved the adoption of blockchain technology, as the wave of ICOs has shown. You see, blockchain skills are niche. This is true for Ethereum as well as for enterprise blockchains like Fabric. However, Ethereum enjoys considerable mindshare due to the popularity of smart contracts, written either in Solidity. There is also Vyper, a relatively new language to write Ethereum smart contracts. A perceived disadvantage of Fabric was that it didn’t offer the ability to write Ethereum smart contracts. That’s changing now, as Fabric is now allowing developers to do this. To enable development of Ethereum smart contracts on Fabric, the Fabric project has incorporated the following: Ethereum is a collection of protocols that allow developers to create “Decentralized Applications” (DApps). “Ethereum Virtual Machine” (EVM) assumes the central position in this collection of protocols. This executes the code the developers write as part of their DApps. Read more about EVM in “What is Ethereum?”. Fabric has incorporated Hyperledger Burrow. This is another Hyperledger project, which provides a blockchain client. It also provides a smart contractor interpreter, modeled after EVM. Read more about Hyperledger Burrow here. Developers can create chaincode on it. Read How We Helped a Marketing Company to Build a Back-Office Custom Ads Dashboard “Externally Owned Accounts” (EOAs): On the Ethereum blockchain network, these are the user accounts. These represent the public address of users and their Ether (ETH) balance. Users control these with their private keys. Read more about EOAs in “Blockchain basics 02: a complete view on Ethereum blockchain”. “Contract Accounts” (CAs): These are controlled by smart contracts. These contain the runtime EVM bytecode for a contract. At the time of writing, there is no known plan of any Hyperledger Fabric coin. Therefore, Fabric will generate EOAs on the fly. Fabric will store CAs on the chain. Ethereum developers use the “TestRPC” Ethereum client. Read more about it in their GitHub repository. Fabric EVM implementation uses the JSON RPC API partially. Ethereum developers also use “Web3.js”, i.e., a tool to communicate with the Ethereum blockchain. The Fabric EVM implementation uses Fab3, which allows partial implementation of the JSON RPC API. You can read more about Fab3 in this tutorial on GitHub. “Gas” is a kind of fee. Users need to pay enough gas to execute any operation on the Ethereum blockchain network. Transactions that require more computation requires higher gas than the ones with less computing requirements. A transaction won’t execute if users provide insufficient gas. Ethereum users pay for gas with Ether (ETH), i.e., the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Read this Ethereum stack exchange Q&A thread for more information. In case the Fabric EVM implementation, a large amount of gas is hardcoded. I will now explain the process to set up Ethereum smart contracts on Fabric, as follows: cURL: It’s a tool for transferring files from or to a server. Install it following the instructions here. Docker: Developers increasingly use “Docker” to create, deploy, and run applications using containers. Docker helps programmers to create a complete package for an app, including libraries and dependencies. They can then deploy it on their choice of platform. Read the installation instructions on the Docker website. The installation process includes “Docker Compose”, i.e., a tool to define and run multi-container apps. Programming languages: You are setting up Ethereum smart contracts on Fabric to use in your application. Developers typically write apps on Fabric using “Go” or Node.js. You need to install either of them. Check the Go programming language website for installation instructions. Fabric currently supports Node.js v8.9, and you can install it using their instructions. Step #2: Install binaries, samples, and Docker images Fabric documentation already includes sample applications, and developers can use these to expedite their project. Fabric also provides binaries and Docker images for these. You will find these useful to fast-track your projects. Read “Install Samples, Binaries and Docker Images” for more details. Now, you need to install the Hyperledger Burrow-based EVM chaincode. This will enable you to interact with the Ethereum smart contracts you will write, using Fabric. Follow the detailed instructions in this GitHub repository. Step #4: Use “Remix” IDE to write Solidity smart contracts Remix is a web-based “Integrated Development Environment” (IDE) for Ethereum smart contract development. You don’t need to install anything, just start writing Solidity smart contracts on Remix. Step #5: Initial configuration of Fabric EVM chaincode From this point onwards, I will use a guide that Rahul Bairathi, a Fabric expert has written. The article explains how to code Ethereum smart contracts using Fabric. You can read it in “Solidity smart contract on Hyperledger Fabric”. I will refer to it as “reference article”. After you have cloned the sample projects from GitHub as I have mentioned above, you need to do the following configurations: Navigate to the “first-network” folder, and modify the Docker compose “Command Line Interface” (CLI) file. This is to map the folder where you have stored the code you had cloned from GitHub. Navigate to the CLI Docker container and install the EVM chaincode. The next step involves writing Solidity smart contracts using the Remix IDE. If your team guidance, they can get check out this Remix documentation. Copy the Bytecode. You need it to deploy the smart contract. Read more about it in this Ethereum stack exchange Q&A thread. Paste the bytecode in any text editor. This will be in JSON format. Deploy the smart contract using the “peer chaincode invoke” process. Your team can find the syntax of this command in this Fabric documentation page. Planning to build blockchain solutions using Fabric and Ethereum smart contracts? Fabric and Ethereum have significant documentation. However, these are niche skills. Building blockchain solutions using Ethereum smart contract on Fabric is a complex project. Consider engaging a reputed software development partner. Read our guide “How to find the best software development company?” before you select a partner. About Latest Posts Aran DaviesBlockchain Expert | Developer | Writer | Photographer Latest posts by Aran Davies (see all) What To Plan for When Undertaking Blockchain Software Development? - March 1, 2019 Blockchain Software Development Using The Ethereum Network - February 27, 2019 Kotlin Vs. Swift Programming Language - February 24, 2019 Software development Software Development. permalink. Stop Wasting Money On Poorly Managed Web and Mobile Projects! Get our Agile Tools And Recommendations to help you boost your team’s performance Yes, send it to me! Kotlin vs Java: Which is the best choice?10 Great Tools For Node.Js Software Development Read How We Helped a Marketing Company to Build a Back-Office Custom Ads Dashboard Learn More Learn More Learn More Learn More

Block.one's $200,000 coding challenge to implement the capability is underwayTechnologyMike DaltonBlock.one has announced a contest that aims to integrate Ethereum smart contract code with its own EOS blockchain, according to a Devpost page published on Feb. 3.The challenge requires contestants to create an EOSIO smart contract that stores and invokes EVM (Solidity) Smart Contracts in a virtual Ethereum-like environment. Presumably, this would allow developers to port existing Ethereum DApps to EOS more easily.The contest ends in one year, giving contestants plenty of time to work on the project. Judging and testing will continue for several months after that. Block.one seems to be looking for a demonstration of compatibility, not a full-fledged, working solution.This means that it may be some time before Ethereum compatibility becomes a reality. Nevertheless, this is a long-awaited feature that has been under discussion since EOS went live in 2018.Performance Is Key As Block.one has noted, compatibility with Ethereum would allow developers from other blockchain projects to take advantage of EOSs speed. EOS can process smart contracts faster, reducing the impact of a significant roadblock for developers, the company explains.Right now, EOS primarily uses C++ and Web Assembly as the basis of its smart contract code, a choice that arguably offers better performance than Ethereums Solidity language.However, the speed at which code can be executed is just one part of its performance. EOS has experienced ongoing transaction capacity issues in recent months. That congestion has caused RAM and CPU prices to surge, which has in turn put high costs on DApp developers.Attracting Developers to EOS If EOS manages to attract DApp developers away from other blockchains, the accomplishment would help it close in on Ethereums app count. According to live data from DAppReview, EOS currently has just 675 DApps, while Ethereum has 2,190 DApps.Cross-platform compatibility seems to have benefited TRON, which narrowly overtook EOSs DApp count this January. Though that growth may be due to other factors, TRON has offered compatibility with Ethereums Solidity code since it launched TRON VM (TVM) in 2018, which is likely part of its success.Several other projects are also working to bridge as many platforms as possible. Loom Network, LiquidApps, and MyWish allow developers to build DApps on multiple blockchains at once.As such, third-party efforts may bring about code interoperability on EOS before EOS itself does.

Article Topper: Horizontal Lynne Carty Connectivity Ethereums smart contracts are full of holes Blockchain-powered computer programs promise to revolutionize the digital economy, but new research suggests theyre far from secure. by Mike Orcutt March 1, 2018 Computer programs that run on blockchains are shaking up the financial system. But much of the hype around what are called smart contracts is just that. Its a brand-new field. Technologists are just beginning to figure out how to design them so they can be relied on not to lose peoples money, andas a new survey of Ethereum smart contracts illustratessecurity researchers are only now coming to terms with what a smart-contract vulnerability even looks like. Recommended for You AI experts salaries are topping $1 millioneven at nonprofits Alibaba is developing its own AI chips, too The US-China tech trade war is getting dialed up a notch Bill Gates and Masayoshi Son are backing a plan to have video cameras watch every inch of Earth from space Robots are about as good as you at assembling IKEA furniture This piece appears in our twice-weekly newsletter Chain Letter, which covers the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.Sign up hereits free! Digital vending machines: The term smart contract comes from digital currency pioneer Nick Szabo, who coined it more than 20 years ago (and who may or may not be Satoshi Nakamoto). The basic idea, he wrote, is that many kinds of contractual clauses (such as collateral, bonding, delineation of property rights, etc.) can be embedded in the hardware and software we deal with, in such a way as to make a breach of contract expensive (if desired, sometimes prohibitively so) for the breacher. Szabo called physical vending machines a primitive ancestor of smart contracts, since they take coins and dispense a product and the correct change according to the displayed price. Enter the blockchain: Today, the most common conception of a smart contract is a computer program stored on a blockchain. A blockchain is essentially a shared accounting ledger that uses cryptography and a network of computers to track assets and secure the ledger from tampering. For Bitcoin, that gives two parties who dont know each other an ironclad guarantee that an agreed upon transfer of funds will happen as expectedthat is, no one will get cheated. Smart contracts are where things get interesting. Using a smart contract, two people could create a system that withdraws funds from one persons accounta parents, lets sayand deposits them into a childs account if and when the childs balance falls below a certain level. And thats just the simplest examplein theory, smart contracts can be used to program all kinds of financial agreements, from derivatives contracts to auctions to blockchain-powered escrow accounts. ICOs everywhere: One of the most popular applications of smart contracts has been to create new cryptocurrencies. A few of them have provided glimpses of a new kind of economy in which a purpose-made digital currency can be used for a decentralized service, like data storage or digital currency trading. Investor excitement over the promise of such applications has helped fuel the ICO craze, which has raised over $5 billion. (What the hell is an ICO? Heres a primer) But hold your horses: Technologists still dont have a full picture of what a security hole in a smart contract looks like, says Ilya Sergey, a computer scientist at University College London, who coauthored a study on the topicpublished last week. Users learned this the hard way in 2016 when a hacker stole $50 million from the so-called Decentralized Autonomous Organization, which was based on the Ethereum blockchain. And in November around $150 million suddenly became inaccessible to users of the wallet service Parity, which is also rooted in Ethereum. Sergey and colleagues used a novel tool to analyze a sample of nearly one million Ethereum smart contracts, flagging around 34,000 as vulnerableincluding the one that led to the Parity mishap. Sergey compares the teams work to interacting with a vending machine, as though the researchers randomly pushed buttons and recorded the conditions that made the machine act in unintended ways. I believe that a large number of vulnerabilities are still to be discovered and formally specified, Sergey says. Gain the insight you need on blockchain technologies at The Business of Blockchain. Learn more and register

Cryptocurrency exchange giant, Binance, has revealed plans to release a high-performance blockchain called Binance Smart Chain (BSC) which will run as a parallel blockchain to the existing Binance Chain and will be compatible with the Ethereum mainnet.  In a whitepaper on Friday (April 17, 2020) by the Binance Chain Community, the new BSC, although parallel to Binance Chain, will act as an independent blockchain. The BSC is also an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible smart contract blockchain with Binance’s token, BNB, acting as the native token for the BSC platform.  An from Binance’s blog site reads:  Also, holders of BNB can stake the native token to earn rewards and also contribute to the development of the BSC blockchain. Furthermore, the Proof of Staked Authority, a consensus technique that is a blend of the Delegated Proof of Stake Authority (DPoS) and Proof-of-Authority (PoA) will be more efficient and signal increased community involvement. In addition, there will be a set of 21 validators who produce blocks, with a new set elected every 24 hours. There will also be a slashing logic that serves to punish validators who engage in malicious activities such as “double signing or instability”. According to the whitepaper, any current set of validators on the smart contract blockchain will receive gas fees in BNB token gotten from BSC’s block transactions. Furthermore, the document states that the BSC will support most of Ethereum’s toolings, dApps, and components with little or no alterations.  The proposal to launch a new blockchain joins the latest developments carried out by Binance. As reported by recently, crypto exchange behemoth acquired the crypto data platform, CoinmarketCap.  Also, Binance announced intentions to into the digital currency mining space, with plans to launch its first bitcoin mining pool. The virtual currency exchange platform further the Binance Card, a crypto credit card issued by Visa that enables users to make purchases and settle bills, in a bid to facilitate greater crypto adoption.