Ethereum

At 15:00 UTC on Wednesday, the much-anticipated Zhejiang testnet for staking withdrawal went live on Ethereum’s Beacon chain. Zhejiang will enable the testing of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4895 which allows for staking withdrawals. This is in preparation for the network’s next major update, the Shanghai hard fork slated to launch sometime in March. Users Can Make Simulated Withdrawals with Zhejiang In a tweet yesterday, DevOps engineer at Ethereum foundation Barnabas Busa gave details about the Zhejiang testnet slated…

Post-merge Ethereum users have been eagerly awaiting the commencement of the network’s next major upgrade, Shanghai. However, after over 3 months of prep time, it appears the Shanghai rollout isn’t going as smoothly as expected. What Exactly is the Shanghai Upgrade? In September last year, the much-publicized Ethereum Merge also known as the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade went live. Ethereum underwent some significant changes as its consensus mechanism transitioned from proof-of-work to a cost-efficient proof-of-stake system.  However, since the Beacon launch…

Per a report from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, the attacker behind the Nov 11 FTX exploit, is converting the stolen ETH to Bitcoin. There were muted fears the seemingly inexperienced perpetrator could dump all its ETH holdings. On Sunday, the attacker dumped 50k ETH on-chain, with ETH's price dipping by almost 7%.  https://twitter.com/chainalysis/status/1594349583416840199?s=20&t=pgvQHeVytI20eKQ1ls9bxw Hacker Moves 50,000 ETH to New Address Over the past week, the perpetrator had been steadily swapping the cryptocurrencies they had carted off for Ether tokens. This…

According to new data, over half of the blocks on the Ethereum network now reportedly comply with the US Treasury OFAC’s standards. This comes roughly a month after the platform’s monumental merge update. Phasing Out Tornado Cash The Office of Foreign Assets Control is the intelligence and enforcement agency of the US  Treasury Department. Indeed, the OFAC administers and enforces US  financial sanctions. A prime example of this is the recent, highly-publicized ban on crypto mixer Tornado Cash.  According to…

Crypto advocacy group Coin Center has slammed the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) with a lawsuit. The think tank cites the Treasury’s blacklist of privacy protocol Tornado Cash as the reason for the suit. According to the filing, Coin Center claims the ban was harmful to US-based users and stood in the way of private transactions on the Ethereum network.  Coin Center Shares Privacy Concerns On October 12, Coin Center filed a lawsuit against the Treasury…

Amidst a rise in DeFi breaches, yet another address from Ethereum vanity wallet address generator Profanity has fallen victim to an attack. A malicious actor was able to exploit a vulnerability in the tool and make off with almost $1M worth of ETH. This comes roughly a week after DEX aggregator 1Inch spotted and highlighted the weakness in Profanity-generated addresses.  Hacker Steals 732 ETH Blockchain security company Peckshield called attention to the latest attack early on Monday. The firm published…

After months of anticipation, September 15, 2022 finally saw the merger of the Ethereum mainnet execution layer and the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer. The Merge finally ushers in the days of Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. This renders defunct the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus for the Ethereum network. In his celebratory and congratulatory tweet, Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, said the Merge “is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem.” And the NFT community did not hesitate to prove this fact. https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1570306185391378434?s=20&t=Lqq0NpxNi6-KQDE65m5zMA…

With Ethereum’s long-anticipated Merge finally complete, the network’s miners may have already found a new home in Ethereum Classic. The original Ethereum chain saw its hash rate explode following Thursday’s monumental upgrade.  Inheriting Ethereum’s Miners According to data from 2Miners, Ethereum Classic’s hashrate is now up to 305.65 terrahashes per second (TH/s). On late Wednesday, it stood at just 80 TH/s.  For context, 1 terrahash is equal to 1 000 000 000 000 hashes. These are guess answers generated by…

With the Ethereum Merge only days away, crypto analysis company CoinGecko has looked into which countries are most interested in the imminent upgrade. According to CoinGecko reports, Singaporean crypto holders lead several others in terms of interest in Ethereum’s imminent historic milestone. Singapore’s "ETH Merge” Searches Eclipse US, Canada Ethereum’s dev team has confirmed that the network’s shift to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism will occur between September 13 and 15. As the upgrade has been in the works for years,…