Author: Anna Galvez

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Crypto News

Ohio State Legally Recognized Blockchain Technology And Smart Contracts Utility

Ohio became one of the first territories to legally recognize blockchain for the storage and transmission of information throughout the United States after the state governor signed a bill on Monday that legalizes such technology applied to a wide range of industries.

Through Bill SB300, which directly amends Ohio’s Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, a group of legislators introduced in May the possibility of distributed accounting technology being legally recognized in Ohio’s private and public industries for information management.

The law was approved in the first instance by the state Senate in June, and this week it was approved by the governor of the territory, John Kasich, according to a public statement.

The new legislation states that all documents scanned, sent and signed through the blockchain are recognized as authentic and even digital signatures and smart contracts can be used for commerce and will have legal effect.

Ohio State adopts a new regulatory framework to recognize blockchain technology and smart contracts utility

The initiative is mainly focused on the financial industry. However, the communiqué also highlights that supply chain companies, government authorities, and health platforms could also benefit from technological advances in distributed ledger networks.

Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan said blockchain technology could help the local economy by securing the technological and economic leadership.

“For Ohio to compete for new investments and jobs, we must welcome innovation, and new technology,” he said.

Valentina Isakina, executive director of financial services for the Ohio Private Development Corporation (JobsOhio), also said this kind of action could help move the most innovative projects to realize their full potential, an approach that will allow Ohio to expand economically.

“In Ohio, blockchain technology innovators can thrive in their efforts to develop new products and applications for the financial industry and beyond,” said Valentina Isakina from JobsOhio.

The Ohio State is one of the largest economies in the United States, ranking fifth among the most economically and financially developed states in the nation. As if this were not enough, the territory has also presented an essential development of blockchain technology initiatives, which will directly benefit from the recently passed legislation.

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Crypto News

Zilliqa (ZIL) Mainnet Launch Postponed For January 2019, According To Its Co-Founder, Amrit Kumar

Zilliqa (ZIL) team just stated that its mainnet roll-out would be postponed until January 2019. Keeping in mind that the platform kept up with their work plan up to now, the announcement that the Zilliqa mainnet launch is delayed took the Zilliqa community by surprise.

Blockchain technology holds a lot of promise for a variety of sectors of activity, but scalability is still the most challenging issue this technology is facing, involving anything from the Bitcoin (BTC) legacy technology to the Ethereum (ETH) standard of the industry.

Zilliqa (ZIL) is the 30th cryptocurrency in the market with a market cap of over $331 million, while it is the second-largest cryptocurrency and blockchain coming from Singapore. Its primary purpose is to tackle the blockchain technology’s scalability issues.

Zilliqa’s objective is to reduce the scaling limitations of blockchain technologies on which cryptocurrencies are running by deploying sharding, which splits blockchain networks into pieces, enabling it to handle several simultaneous transactions, not only by enhancing the scalability but also by decreasing the vast amounts of computing power needed.

Zilliqa (ZIL) mainnet roll out postponed to the disappointment of the Zilliqa community

The Zilliqa community has long-awaited the deployment of the Zilliqa (ZIL) mainnet during Q3 2018. However, the devs team stated they had to postpone the mainnet launch. This announcement came as a huge shocker for the community and some Zilliqa community’s members showed their disappointment on social networks.

However, the Zilliqa (ZIL) mainnet would launch in January 2019.

“In recent weeks, we have had extensive discussions to revise the schedule in light of these improvements. Unfortunately, we will need more time to ensure that the code is properly tested by the core team, the community and last but not least, the established audit firms,” said Amrit Kumar, Zilliqa co-founder, trying to explain the reasons behind the postponing of the Zilliqa (ZIL) mainnet launch.

At the moment of this article, Zilliqa (ZIL) trades at $0.043, appreciating by a shallow 0.17% in the last 24 hours.

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Crypto News Tech

Microsoft Azure Launched A Platform Based On Proof Of Authority Protocol On The Ethereum (ETH) Network

Microsoft Azure announced on Tuesday in a blog post the launch of a licensed cloud computing platform based on Ethereum (ETH) network but having the Proof of Work protocol replaced with the Proof of Authority.

Proof of Work Vs. Proof of Authority

Cody Born, a software engineer at Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, explains in the release note that the Proof of Work (PoW) protocol, used by Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) blockchains, is based on computing costs for the self-regulation of those networks and to allow open participation.

Proof of Authority, on the other hand, does not require such costs and is more suitable for private blockchain networks.

The PoW works very well in open, anonymous networks, where competition for cryptocurrencies promotes network security. However, in private networks the underlying Ethereum (ETH) technology is worthless. An alternative protocol, Proof of Authority, is more suitable for permissible networks where all consensus participants are known. If there is no need to mine cryptos, Proof of Authority is more efficient, while maintaining fault tolerance.

Cody Born, Software Engineer at Microsoft Azure

Also noteworthy is that the Proof of Work is a consensus mechanism in which the miners compete in the resolution of a cryptographic task and when a miner finds the answer he or she diffuses it to all the participating nodes. For this, the miners obtain a certain amount of the respective crypto as a reward.

The Proof of Authority, on the other hand, is based on a set of Trusted Nodes, known as “authorities,” which are given the ability to secure the blockchain through transaction verification and to create new blocks. The validation of the transactions in the new blocks is done similarly as in the cases of Proof of Work, but without mining.

Microsoft Azure launched a platform based on Ethereum (ETH) blockchain that runs with Proof of Authority protocol

Microsoft, which focuses its decentralized solutions proposal on private blockchains, will use a development platform for Ethereum (ETH), Parity, which allows smart contracts to be programmed in widely used languages such as C, C++, and Rust.

Although there are projects within Microsoft using the language created for Ethereum (ETH), Solidity, Cody Born,  Software Engineer at Microsoft Azure, says that corporate clients find this language very difficult to handle.

Microsoft Azure has previously served to develop innovative applications with blockchain for different companies. One of them was Renault, which used it to create a vehicle maintenance application.

On the other hand, several financial institutions have also used Microsoft Azure to improve their operations processes.

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Crypto News

NEM (XEM) Employed In New Blockchain-Based Voting Tests Conducted By The Electoral Commission of Ukraine

The Electoral Commission of Ukraine is working on mechanisms to improve local and national electoral processes in Ukraine through a blockchain-based voting system. In this sense, they are carrying out voting tests using NEM (XEM) main chain.

Oleksandr Stelmakh, the head of the state’s voter registry, said through his Facebook account that he is continuing a series of experiments with blockchain technology applied to elections. The start of the tests was announced by Stelmakh himself in a July 10th publication on the social network, where he made a public invitation to participate in the voting tests.

One of the basic useful properties of blockchain is the inability to make changes to the saved information (…) These are the properties we intend to use to save voting session information.

Oleksandr Stelmakh, Head of the State Voters’ Register, The Electoral Commission of Ukraine

The official highlighted that the tests are being conducted using 28 nodes of the NEM (XEM) network. He also said that the NEM Foundation of Ukraine “kindly” provides the test crypto assets required to validate the transactions. These test votes are still open for participation of any Ukrainian citizen.

NEM (XEM) network tested for a blockchain-based voting system in Ukraine

According to Oleksandr Stelmakh’s calculations, the implementation of the project would cost an estimated $1,227 per polling station. In his opinion, this is “a small fee for the lifetime preservation of these socially important data.”

Ukraine is considering the incorporation of distributed ledger technology into its electoral processes since 2016 when an agreement was signed to develop an electronic voting platform. A group of technology firms participated, including the Bitcoin Foundation of Ukraine.

Back then, the signatories committed themselves to create a decentralized, transparent, and accessible system of electronic voting, using instruments based on blockchain technology.

Many other blockchain-based voting systems initiatives are being developed around the world, as this technology is perceived to have the potential to build reliable electoral systems. Among these global initiatives are the trials conducted in Zug, in Switzerland, and in the United States.

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Crypto News Tech

Opera Browser With A Built-In Crypto Wallet Launched For Computers

The new version of the Opera browser for computers will include a crypto wallet, a feature they had already added in their release for mobile devices. Users of this browser will be able to synchronize their existing portfolio with this new update by merely scanning a QR code.

Users will be able to link their desktop wallet to their mobile devices so that private keys and passwords can be stored on the phone. The user will be able to sign transactions with “his fingerprints instead of using long phrases” to improve security, according to the statement. The new version is available since yesterday.

The Opera browser sums up more than 320 million users worldwide and is one of the most widely appreciated and secure Internet browsers out there. Opera even added a feature to prevent cryptojacking.

With its implementation on both supports, Opera becomes the first of the primary providers of this type of service to adopt cryptocurrency. Also, Opera crypto wallet could provide an impetus for other companies in the industry to make similar decisions.

Opera browser with a built-in crypto wallet tries to keep the things as decentralized as possible

By adding a crypto wallet directly in the browser, we eliminate the need for complex extensions or separate applications. Open the PC browser to encrypt the second step of Opera towards the creation of cryptocurrency and mainstream Web 3.0.

Charles Hamel, Product Manager for the new Opera browser with built-in crypto wallet

The sync between the desktop version of the new crypto-related Opera and the mobile version would permit users to keep their private keys locked securely. The storage of private keys and other sensitive information, however, remains the responsibility of the user, as Opera will not work with a centralized server to manage this kind of data.

As with the mobile application, the desktop client will support Ethereum (ETH) tokens, as well as digital collectible items created on this network, including CryptoKitties and collectible MLB tokens. Also, the crypto tokens generated in Initial Currency Offers (ICOs) can be stored using the Opera crypto wallet.

“Today’s web will be the interface to the decentralized network of the future. That’s why we have chosen to use our browser to close the gap,” said Hamel during the press conference that announced the launch of the mobile version of the Opera browser with the built-in crypto wallet.

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