Bitcoin ICO Review

The Waves Association announced on Wednesday a new grant program for cross-chain interoperability development.

The pool consists of 1 million Waves tokens, worth approximately $3 million as of press time. Projects will be eligible for grants of up to 300,000 Waves to develop solutions for interoperability and cross-chain communication.

There will be three separate types of grants: open grants, grants distributed through hackathons and Waves-focused grants. Sten Laureyssens, strategic advisor at the Waves Association, explained to Cointelegraph that open grants will have a wide scope:

"For the open grant category, the grants are open to a wide variety of interoperability projects, that don't necessarily have to be connected to Waves. We're looking for creative solutions to connect existing blockchains and dApps."
The latter two types of grants will have to adhere to certain requirements, which makes it likely that the Waves blockchain will be involved in some form. Nevertheless, Laureyssens said that the association is planning to sponsor blockchain-agnostic solutions as well.

Sasha Ivanov, president of the Waves Association, threw a subtle jab at certain types of interoperability solutions offered today:

"Waves Association aims to support independent developers working on interoperability solutions — especially those thinking outside the box. Solving interoperability by adding a dedicated blockchain and native token as an additional layer would only lead to more complexity, undercutting the potential of the proposed solution."
Grants will be stipulated and decided on by members of the Waves Association, though the disbursement of funds will be automated through a decentralized application.

Waves is a smart contract-enabled blockchain platform competing with the likes of Ethereum and EOS. Its developers have often criticized the mainstream approaches to certain tenets of blockchain technology, notably misleading claims of transactional capacity.

The Waves blockchain was recently used with apparent success in a Russian local election, following a disappointing performance by a similar system developed by BitFury.

Joint work will be focused on developing a broader DeFi ecosystem using the Gravity cross-chain communication protocol.
We are excited to announce a collaboration between Waves and Fantom. Waves and Fantom are committed to building an open ecosystem between different chains, based on the Gravity protocol, which is essential to the DeFi industry's wider success.

Under the collaboration deal, WAVES, the native utility token of the Waves ecosystem, will join Fantom's DeFi ecosystem as collateral for minting synthetic assets, including fUSD, Fantom's stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
WAVES holders will be able to use fMint to access fUSD and other synthetic assets, which can be used with other Fantom DeFi products. Specifically, fLend allows users to lend and borrow assets, while fTrade allows users to trade them.

For instance, If you want to go long BTC (without losing exposure to your WAVES collateral), mint fUSD against your WAVES in fMint and use the fUSD to buy fBTC (synthetic BTC) in fTrade. Sell the fBTC for fUSD later to repay the minted debt. Once you've repaid any outstanding minted debt, you can unlock your collateral to withdraw.

About Gravity
Gravity is a decentralized cross-chain and oracle network based on a truly blockchain-agnostic protocol for communication between blockchains and with the outside world, working with the native token economies.
Gravity provides multi-purpose cross-chain interaction without introducing a native token. The true blockchain agnostic no-token approach creates a more inclusive, open ecosystem, while addressing future scaling/stability issues.

About Fantom
The Fantom Foundation is committed to building technology that is open-source, decentralized, DAG-based distributed ledgers with aBFT consensus. Fantom aims to create fast, secure and scalable technologies across various industries, allowing organizations, businesses, and individuals to develop decentralized and secure applications, solving real-world problems.

Cross border payment remittance company Ripple has been part-granted a motion to dismiss some of the claims brought against it by investors, as the firm battles an ongoing class-action lawsuit over alleged securities fraud.

Investors claim Ripple and the company's CEO Brad Garlinghouse failed to register XRP with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and then went on to make misleading statements about the token, leading to the eventual class action suit.

In the U.S. District Court of Northern California last Friday, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted two legs of Ripple's motion for dismissal, with 10 claims total outstanding against the firm.

The judge said that plaintiff Bradley Sostack had provided insufficient evidence to support two of the claims, which relate in particular to purportedly false statements made by the firm back in 2017.

However, for the most part, the judge refused to dismiss the claims against the company, including over misleading advertisements for XRP and allegations of an illegal securities issue.

One particular claim found that Garlinghouse had misrepresented his personal investments in XRP to investors, telling prospective customers that he was personally "very, very long XRP as a percentage of my personal balance sheet." In reality, Garlinghouse had sold off substantial parts of his investment in XRP, adding up to millions of dollars.

Other claims alleged to be misleading included that banks were using XRP for liquidity, and that token demand was being driven by its "value proposition."

Based on this and other of the claims still standing, Sostack now has leave to proceed with the action against Ripple and Garlinghouse.

While the decision by Judge Hamilton leaves Ripple in a marginally better position, the firm will now be expected to account for the remaining claims in the class action lawsuit.

A Technology Delivered
We're happy to announce that we've officially launched Lamden mainnet! Today marks a day of independence and new beginnings. Three years in the making, this milestone represents a culmination of intense efforts to deliver a novel blockchain with a revolutionary leap in performance, scalability and usability. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution to these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

What is Lamden Mainnet?
Lamden's engineers aimed to not only deliver on the original promises of blockchain but to revolutionize it. Lamden tackles the fundamental challenges of blockchain head-on, from high barriers to entry to poor performance and scalability.

Easy to Use
Lamden's open-source, Python-native platform empowers developers to focus on quickly building blockchain applications, instead of learning new programming languages and messing around with complex syntax and system architecture. This means easier development and faster revenue generation on Lamden.

Highly Performant and Scalable
Lamden uses an array of advanced algorithms to remain highly performant and scalable as demand increases for on-chain activity and large-scale applications. Lamden is engineered to achieve sub-second transaction finality and to scale linearly with additional CPU cores, as described here. There are no Ethereum-style "gas-wars" on Lamden because the system uses a first-in-first-out queuing algorithm which prevents people from paying more to get ahead of the line and further congest the network.

A Developer Incentives System
Lamden has a built-in rewards distribution system with voteable and configurable parameters. Developers who create applications on Lamden will be awarded a percentage of transaction fees processed through their smart contracts, thereby earning revenue automatically from their applications without relying on third-party payment services. Incentives are made with Lamden's native coin TAU and sent straight to the developer's wallet. Because revenue is tied to transaction volume, developers will earn more revenue as their DApps become more popular.
For an introductory period, developers will automatically earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contracts.

A Self-Regulating System
Lamden has a self-regulating governance system where the community nodes have direct voting rights on key decisions including rewards distribution, transaction rates, and platform functionality upgrades. The system naturally strives for an equilibrium where each network participant will act in their best interest to maximize their reward. No single party controls the Lamden network and no single party can monopolize it.

Mainnet Token Swap
Now that mainnet is live, a token swap from Ethereum ERC20 TAU to Lamden Mainnet TAU will commence. The swap period will be open for approximately 6 months and is mandatory. If you do not swap your ERC20 TAU tokens during the 6 month swap window, you will be unable to do so afterwards.

IMPORTANT: Do not send ERC20 tokens to the Lamden wallet or they will be lost forever! ERC20 tokens are not compatible with the Lamden network. The only way to get your ERC20 TAU onto the Lamden network is by following the wallet token swap process.

The swap process is built directly into the Lamden wallet, which you can download on the Lamden website..

Bloomberg News reporter Mathew Leising's new book, "Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist That Almost Destroyed It All", tells the story of the infamous DAO hack that almost brought down the world's second-largest blockchain.

In June 2016, a here-to-now unknown assailant (or assailants) began syphoning off funds from Ethereum's first decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, a bit of software that functions like a corporation. Weeks earlier the DAO went live, following a $150 million crowd sale.

"[T]he DAO had a huge part to play in the early history of Ethereum," Leising writes. "It's not overstating it to say that the DAO made Ethereum." That's because it was one of the earliest examples that Ethereum's network of computers was resilient enough to support complex applications.

While the attack never broke Ethereum's code – it merely exploited a loophole in The DAO's smart contract – it cast doubt over the viability of a blockchain-based "world computer." It was also the beginning of Ethereum's two Ethereums.

Leising, who has been covering the crypto industry for the better half of a decade, had called out sick from work the day a hacker absconded with $55 million in stolen ETH. But he didn't let the story die. Over the past four years he has been reporting out the story told in the book, examining blockchain data, following through on cryptic tips and ultimately tracing a path towards his leading suspect.

In the excerpt below, readers find themselves in eastern Germany along with Christoph Jentzsch, one of The DAO's principle architects, who woke up to realize the project he has spent months building is being robbed "at the rate of about $8 million an hour."

A religious family man, Jentzsch takes this extemporaneous moment to reflect on the challenges that faced the DAO's creation – from securities worries that still plague token projects to the critical opinions of the early Ethereum community – before taking action. – Dan Kuhn

Chapter 7
The town of Mittweida in the state of Saxony in Germany escaped being bombed in the Second World War. In the middle of town, old stone streets divide rows of brightly colored buildings. If you leave the town square and walk for about 10 minutes you'll come to a quiet street with a police station; next door is a mint-green house with brown trim and shutters. On Friday, June 17, 2016, just after 8 a.m., Christoph Jentzsch lay on the beige carpet of the first-floor office inside. He tried to still his breathing, to take deep breaths, to not let the world get away from him. Thieves were inside the DAO, his creation, robbing it at the rate of about $8 million an hour.

One of the first things Christoph felt was relief: finally the DAO saga would come to an end. It had overtaken his life for the past six months.

He'd battled anxiety and depression and exhaustion; he'd neglected his wife and five kids. There had been moments when he froze at the thought of releasing the DAO code, because once it was out in the world it couldn't be changed. There could be a bug in the software, or maybe terrorists could figure out how to use it to fund an attack he'd be power- less to stop. The pressure made him physically ill several times. He'd puked under the strain. God, please, let this be the end of all that.

But Christoph also felt a strong sense of responsibility. It shook him that he'd messed up so badly and that people were losing money because of it. He believed in the ideas underpinning DAOs. (The language gets a bit confusing here as there were other DAOs around at this point, MakerDAO among them. DAO is a generic term for the structure that smart contracts fit into, but because of its eventual size and high profile, Jentzsch's DAO became the DAO.)

THERE WERE SO MANY FEARS," GRIFF SAID."DOES THIS DESTROY ETHEREUM? DOES THIS DESTROY DAOS? WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ALL THIS MONEY?

A DAO is what got him into Ethereum in the first place, the moment he realized its potential. Vitalik's white paper had outlined a vision for how DAOs could democratize corporate structures to replace owners, employees, and investors with users who directly managed the firm's affairs with smart contracts encoded on the blockchain. That breakthrough is what made Christoph pause his PhD studies and start working for Ethereum in 2015. And then, improbably, he built one: the biggest DAO ever built, in fact, which made it a fat target. After all the security checks, Christoph couldn't understand why no one had found the right bug in time.

He got up from the floor of the office and went back to his IBM ThinkPad laptop. Christoph knew the cops next door couldn't help him. No, this was his mess and he'd have to clean it up.

In one sense, if toasters and door locks were allowed to have bank accounts the DAO never would have happened.

The Moment of Truth
The wait is almost over; Lamden's mainnet launch is fast approaching. September 16th, 2020 will be an inflection point, marking the transition from a technology promised to a technology delivered.

We at Lamden have been working nonstop to deliver on the unfulfilled promises of blockchain. Instead of modifying an existing technology, we decided to design and build a novel blockchain architecture from scratch. As a result, our Python-native modular blockchain delivers a revolutionary leap in performance, efficiency, and usability.

The moment of truth and the reveal is drawing near. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution upon these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective. One day, we will look back and remember September 16th, 2020 as a pivotal moment for blockchain and its revival.

The Road Traveled
We at Lamden took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. The imminent release of Lamden blockchain is the culmination of two and a half years of nonstop development and testing, and pushing the limits of what blockchain can do. We have worked hard to make life easier for developers by creating a Python-native platform that simplifies development and testing, and accelerates product deployment and monetization.

We have set our goals sky-high and refused to take a shortcut or compromise, and achieved results beyond our wildest expectations. We are deeply grateful to our amazing community for their unfailingly generous and enthusiastic support over the years. The mainnet would not have been possible without our team of developers and their unwavering commitment to deliver something extraordinary.

The Road Ahead
In the coming weeks, we will share more details on mainnet and exciting new plans with our community members. Our roadmap includes a developer on-boarding campaign, exciting new DeFi products, and a specification for Lamden version 2.0.

Lamden mainnet is just around the corner, but community members can start developing their ideas now using Lamden's Python-based smart contracting system. For an introductory period, developers will earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contract.

To our existing community members and those new to Lamden, we extend our warmest welcome to the Lamden Legion.

For more information, please visit:
https://lamden.io/  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLtqJQ5LRc