(Blockchain Weekly Recap)

News

Security Alert!!!

Update Parity Ethereum nodes when new releases are out; node attack vector discovered.

World news

• Fidelity Is Said to Plan March Launch of Bitcoin Custody Service. Service may help institutional investors ease into crypto.
• A new Harry Potter–themed cryptocurrency is like a more private version of Bitcoin
• GERMANY’S SECOND-LARGEST EXCHANGE LAUNCHES REGULATED CRYPTOCURRENCY-TRADING APP
• Iran Has Launched a Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency ‘Peyman’ in Effort to Avoid US Sanctions. Bitcoin (BTC) ban lifted as Iran’s Central Bank issues new draft rules on cryptocurrency
• Rate 3 introduces cross-chain swaps between Stellar and Ethereum on testnet.
• A Bitcoin-Backed Stablecoin Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) Has Launched on the Ethereum Blockchain. WBTC delivers the power of Bitcoin with the flexibility of an ERC20 token.
• CoinGate introduced DAI stablecoin payments for merchants.
• Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX loses access to its wallets.
• Cryptos Would Only Have Value in ‘Dystopian’ Economy: JPMorgan
• A Hacker (20-year-old college student) Who Stole $5 Million By SIM Swapping Gets 10 Years in Prison.

Ethereum News

Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #54 [2019-02-01]

• Video
• Agenda

Görli Testnet Launched: The Görli testnet is the first cross-client proof-of-authority network for Ethereum. It is based on the Clique PoA protocol. It was launched on 31 January 2019 at the GörliCon. The development is led by Chainsafe Systems + Afri Schoedon from Parity but there are dozens of more contributors that helped in making this a reality. Getting started with Görli Testnet.

Introducing Plasma Group - TLDR: They’ve built a suite of tools to enable you to easily deploy your own plasma chains. Plasma Group released easy-to-install plasma chains (alpha).

ProgPoW

• Hudson Jameson - ProgPoW update after Core Dev Call
• Alexey Akhunov - My take on ProgPOW — looking for a reasonable answer to a reasonable question
• Afri Schoedon suggested "releases are agnostic to upgrades now. if we cannot make a decision on progpow before May, then it will not be part of the next scheduled hardfork."
• Reddit User concern  - ProgPow decision still delayed and removed from next Core Devs call agenda.
• GPU Blended Analysis

Vlad Zamfir’s Against Szabo’s Law, For A New Crypto Legal System. Discussion on Vlad Zamfir’s Dilemma: Autonomous Software vs. Crypto Law.

Lane Rettig's view on How much should I care about the price of ETH?

Other blockchain News

Ethereum Classic (ETC) AMA with Bob Summerwill,the new Executive Director of the ETC Cooperative

Ripple CEO Sends XRP Soaring, Boosting Bitcoin And Ethereum--Here's Why

Technology

Ethereum 1.0

• Ethereum 1x Stanford Meetings Live Streams

Ethereum 2.0

• Eth2.0 Implementers Call #11 (2019/1/31)
• What’s New in Eth2: The "January Release" Edition 1 February 2019
• Ethereum 2.0 Development Update #21 — Prysmatic Labs

Release

• Ethereum 2.0-specs  : The January pre-Release™️
• The Beacon Spec for Eth 2.0 is getting closer to completion everyday
• Parity Ethereum 2.2.8-stable/2.3.1-beta: Constantinople + "St. Petersfork"
• Geth Can'tstantinople (v1.8.22) - Update now before Constantinople and Petersburg take effect!
• Pantheon 0.9.1 released - ConstantinopleFix and Goerli ready
• Drizzle 1.3 - Tests, React Native Support & More.

EthereumJS Recap January 2019

EIP / ERC

• zkERC20: Confidential Token Standard

Projects

New Projects and Protocols

• Groundhog Network : Introducing a suite of tools to power the crypto subscription economy. It is a recurring subscription payments on Ethereum.
• Introducing P4: Private Periodic Payment Protocol
• FRAME: AN OS-LEVEL ETHEREUM INTERFACE
• DEX.AG: Introducing DexIndex, an open-source tool to find prices on Ethereum DEX's in real time.
• EthArmbian: Ethereum on ARM. Geth and Parity clients update. Status.im, IPFS and Swarm packages. Raiden Network and Trinity client installers.
• Web3 Labs (formerly blk.io) have today announced web3j-libp2p a JVM friendly libp2p implementation in Kotlin

Project and Protocol updates

• Status: Founding a Company with the Stable Coin DAI. Announcing the Statusphere Ambassadors
• 2M ETH locked in MakerDAO
• Announcing TokenCard Visa® Debit Cards: Soon™ Step 2 Completed! ✅ TokenCard users convert tokens from their wallet to fiat (GBP/EUR) to load their debit card, which can then be used for standard transactions online or offline just as with any other debit or credit card anywhere Visa is accepted.
• Bounties Network is partnerning with UNICEF and ETHDenver to prototype a new “positive action token”.
• Kyber network WBTC Is Now Live On Ethereum.
• Aragon comes back to the desktop, launches a desktop app.

Miscellaneous

Print, Video, Podcast & Interviews

Coinbase Speaker Series: Eli Ben Sasson Co-founder & Chief Scientist (East) of StarkWare and Founding Scientist of ZCash. Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer of the Human Rights Foundation, and Alejandro Machado of the Open Money Initiative to talk Crypto and use cases in developing countries.

How blockchain can fight plastic pollution. Joe Lubin on CNN

Chris Dixon on Ethereum: "To me, Ethereum is the most important technology of the decade, for sure. I don’t even think it’s going to be questionable."

Peer to Peer funding platform built on Tezos. Interview with CEO of Viaz.io Peter Meronek

AraCon 2019 Videos

ATMarketplace App store walkthrough video series #1

Blockchain good reads

ÐΞVp2p Wire Protocol (Kademlia Distributed Hash Table)

Blockchains and Databases Aren’t the Same Thing. Yet. When the Ethereum mainnet reaches block 10 million, they will be. Here’s why. - Shahan Khatchadourian

EtherWorld's collection of Good Read on Blockchain & Cryptocurrency

Jobs and Vacancies

• (For Hire) Translating ETH2.0 Implementers Notes to Chinese. 15DAI for every set of notes that gets merged into the github depository: https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm

Hackathon, Conferences, Events & Developer programs (Event Calendar)

• February 6, 2019:
  PegaSys Pantheon De-Mystified (Webinar): Understanding and Contributing to an Ethereum Client’s Codebase. (1:00 PM - 1:45 PM EST)
• February 6, 2019: ETH Roadmap AMA Webinar at 8AM PST / 1700 UTC+1.
• February 7-8, 2019: M1 Asset Management 3.0 , Zug.
• February 15-17, 2019: ETH Denver.
• February 16-17, 2019: NEO DevCon 2019, Seattle
• March 4, 2019: Ethereum Magicians (Paris)
• March 5-7, 2019: Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) 2019
• March 8-10, 2019: ETHParis (ETHGlobal)
• March 27, 2019: Infura Legacy keys Support will officially stop.
• April 19-21, 2019: ETHCapetown, Cape Town, South Africa.
• April 23-24, 2019: Blockchain Revolution Global at Toronto
• April 23-24, 2019: Blockchain Life 2019 at Singapore.
• April 24-26, 2019: Truffle Blockchain Development Workshop, Dublin 2019
• May 10-11, 2019: ETHEREAL, NEW YORK
• May 13-15, 2019: Consensus by Coindesk. Register here.
• May 17, 2019: Hard deadline to accept proposals for “Istanbul”

Read previous weeks EtherWorld's Weekly.

This newsletter is an effort to bring updates of blockchain world. If you like it, please share with people of similar interest.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: This is not an investment advice and should NOT be viewed as project endorsement by EtherWorld. Readers are suggested to do their research before investing into any project.

Follow us at Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Medium and Steemit.____________________________________________________________________________________________________