ConsenSys has announced the upcoming release of its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollup to a public testnet on March 28, allowing for stress testing of the layer-2 scaling technology. ConsenSys’ research and development team has been working on its zkEVM rollup over the past four years. The zkEVM is touted to offer fast finality, high throughput and security of settlements on the Ethereum blockchain. A private beta launched in Q4 of 2022 gave early access to limited users, which processed over 350,000 transactions and onboarded various decentralized applications (DApps). The testnet allowed Solidity developers to build, test and launch …

Ethereum developers have pushed back the highly-anticipated Shanghai hard fork by approximately two weeks. Initially estimated for late March, the Shanghai upgrade will now likely be deployed sometime within the first two weeks of April. The delay was announced at an Ethereum developer meeting on Mar. 2. During the meeting, core developers came to the consensus that the hard fork would occur about a fortnight after the Goerli testnet launch, which has been slated for Mar. 14. The Goerli testnet will be the final dress rehearsal for the Shanghai hard fork before it is rolled out on the mainnet. So …

The price of Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), shows a growing conflict among traders about the market direction for March. This uncertainty has resulted in ETH price consolidating inside a narrow sideways range between $1,600 and $1,700 since Feb. 15. 25% ETH price correction on the table in March The uncertainty stems from Ethereum's long-awaited Shanghai upgrade going live some time in March. Several analysts predict Shanghai's token unlock feature, which will enable stakers to withdraw their vested tokens from Ethereum's proof-of-stake smart contract, will trigger a short-term selloff event. The Ethereum PoS smart contract has attracted more than 17.4 …

Trading platform Robinhood has launched its Web3 wallet on Apple’s App Store, becoming available to iOS users in over 130 countries. Robinhood shared the news in a Mar. 1 post, stating that users would no longer need to sit on a waitlist to access the new multi-chain, self-custody wallet. It added that it will be supported on Android “later this year.” #RobinhoodWallet is now available to everyone with iOS: https://t.co/yUdL8jCgJN pic.twitter.com/q7RIWBJUIT — Johann Kerbrat (@JohannKerbrat) March 1, 2023 Since the beta launch of the Robinhood Wallet in September, the trading platform integrated Ethereum — in addition to already supporting Polygon …

Polygon, a layer-2 scaling protocol for Ethereum has launched a zero-knowledge decentralized identity solution, Polygon ID to the public nearly a year after announcing its development. The service uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) that use cryptographic techniques to allow users to verify their identity online without having their sensitive information passed, or potentially stored with a third party. The public release of Polygon ID by Polygon Labs on Mar. 1 comes almost 12 months after it was officially launched in a closed-source environment in late March 2022, which the Polygon team says was built to “solve the issue of digital …

The price of Ether (ETH) declined 9.8% between Feb. 19 and Feb. 25 after the price resistance at $1,725 proved stronger than expected. Still, the correction was insufficient to break the 6-week-long ascending channel and did not cause Ether derivatives metrics to turn bearish. Ether's price resilience can be partially explained by the operational failure of some of its smart contract blockchain competitors. For instance, Solana (SOL) faced a 20-hour-long outage on Feb. 25, which was only resolved after a network upgrade coordinated by validators. The network restart also involved purging some of the latest slots, although Solana developers said …

Repeated outages of one of the most popular blockchains believed to have the potential to dethrone the Ethereum network sparked a conversation among community members about the future of those carrying the burden of being called an “Ethereum killer.” A member of the cryptocurrency forum on Reddit opened a conversation on Ethereum killers and questioned their ability to succeed in the current crypto space. According to the community member, those dubbed as Ethereum killers are not likely to succeed because they do not get the same adoption that Ethereum does. In addition, the community member argued that even if a …

Interoperability remains a persistent issue in the world of gazillion blockchains and interesting protocols and projects. The need for interoperability leads to many practical problems, one of which comes down to token liquidity and crypto swapping between blockchains. Bridges are vulnerable Moving tokens from one blockchain to another has become a crucial part of the DeFi sector. It allows users to use these tokens on different chains than their native ecosystem. However, most blockchains are closed systems and thus aren’t directly compatible with each other. The problem can be compared to using a European power plug in the United States …

In a new blog post published on Feb. 28, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin documented the continued need to improve the namesake network to better facilitate ETH as a means of payment. In one instance, Buterin shared how he tried to pay for tea for himself and friends at a coffee shop in Argentina in 2021, but had to pay 0.01 ETH (around $40 at the time) as that was the minimum deposit for the owner's exchange account. "I did not mind the 3x overpayment and treated it as a tip," the co-founder wrote. In another instance, Buterin explained how …

Universities in the United Kingdom have started offering cutting-edge research programs, courses and practical experience in various aspects of blockchain technology, including cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, privacy, security and scalability. Students who graduate from these programs will be well-equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to become leaders in the field of blockchain technology and drive innovation and adoption in various industries. Here are top five universities to study blockchain in the United Kingdom. University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, and its Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) is a leading research …

The Ethereum blockchain's Sepolia testnet has undergone a successful upgrade that simulates the upcoming Shanghai hard fork that is expected to take place in March on the network's mainnet. The "Shapella" upgrade, which combines the names of the upcoming Shanghai and Capella hard forks, was successfully implemented on the testnet on Feb. 28. Sepolia testnet has successfully upgraded to Shapella! Some of the Prsym validators are offline due to the old geth version. They will come online in the next 10 mins! Next stop: Goerli pic.twitter.com/pb43Gq7w9C — terence.eth (@terencechain) February 28, 2023 Shanghai is the fork’s name on the execution …

Smart accounts, enabled by the launch of the new ERC-4337 standard, are now available on Ethereum and are expected to help mainstream adoption by finally making crypto user friendly. Ethereum Foundation security researcher Yoav Weiss made the surprise announcement at WalletCon in Denver that the core contracts for ERC-4337 — known by blockchain developers as “account abstraction” — have passed an audit by Open Zeppelin and will be made available on every Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible network including Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, BNB Smart Chain, Avalanche and Gnosis Chain. New users will no longer need to learn about complicated seed …