During a regular video conference, Ethereum developers determined a date of Constantinople hardfork. It will take place in the main net of the second largest cryptocurrency (in terms of market capitalization).
According to ???????? ???????????????? from Parity, the hardfork will allegedly take place on January, 16th, next year. It will become known which block protocol implementation will take place on in two weeks (on November, 23rd).
First, it was planned to update the protocol in November, but it was delayed after the developers revealed several bugs within the framework of Ropsten network testing.
To recap, Ethereum developers published a draft of technical documentation for Casper solution a couple of days ago.

The so-called disturbing ?panic private key? was first presented to the public on Tuesday, July 3, by Satoshi Nakamoto to the signal system network bitcoin at the conference Building on Bitcoin 2018 in Lisbon.

He presented it during his speech on stage Brian Bishop of LedgerX.

Besides, he published signal keys in the mailing for all the bitcoin developers a couple of hours before the conference started.

According to his mail, signal keys look as follows:

The public key for the core network:
04fc9702847840aaf195de8442ebecedf5b095cdbb9bc716bda9110971b28a49e0ead8564ff0db22209e0374782c093bb899692d524e9d6a6956e7c5ecbcd68284

The private key for the core network:
30820113020101042053cdc1e0cfac07f7e1c312768886f4635f6bceebec0887f63a9d37a26a92e6b6a081a53081a2020101302c06072a8648ce3d0101022100fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffefffffc2f300604010004010704410479be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798483ada7726a3c4655da4fbfc0e1108a8fd17b448a68554199c47d08ffb10d4b8022100fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffebaaedce6af48a03bbfd25e8cd0364141020101a14403420004fc9702847840aaf195de8442ebecedf5b095cdbb9bc716bda9110971b28a49e0ead8564ff0db22209e0374782c093bb899692d524e9d6a6956e7c5ecbcd68284

The public key for the test network:
04302390343f91cc401d56d68b123028bf52e5fca1939df127f63c6467cdf9c8e2c14b61104cf817d0b780da337893ecc4aaff1309e536162dabbdb45200ca2b0a

The private key for the test network:
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

The signal network was implemented into 0.3.10 version and aimed to alert clients on attacks and vulnerabilities. The system was used up to November 2016 and was removed in 0.13.10 verison. However, the key was not known by the public up till today.

Previously it was clear that Satoshi Nakamoto had it as well as Gavin Andresen, the Bitcoin Core developer and Theymos, bitcointalk.org forum admin. Right now other network users can have it too.
Alarming key was implemented to the bitcoin core base by Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitoin, after the incident that took place in August 2010 but it was never used. The first time it actually was recorded in February 2012 and in 2013 to prevent the gcd of the unintended fork. In addition, it needed for sending a message about urgent update software to the latest version.

Developers had to abandon the key due to their fear that it can be used against the interests of the system. According to some rumors, the key could be also used by the police in Japan as a result of investigation on the exchange Mt.Gox and its owner Mark Karpeles.

Bryan Bishop said about his intention to make a key available to the public in mid-June.

Earlier, Craig Wright, the Australian programmer, repeatedly claimed to be the mysterious bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakomoto but he wasn’t able to prove it.

The developers will offer developing countries to use blockchain technology.

The introduction of blockchain allows to solve problems typical for many industries: the world’s largest corporations have already adopted the technology. Official authorities have also started to study the prospects of blockchain, hoping that the governance system could benefit.

Blockchain will also be useful for the agricultural sector. As it became known, the creators of the Cardano platform intend to offer its benefits to clients from Asia and Africa. In Ethiopia, for example, the technology will be useful for organizing the coffee supply chain. The Input Output HK startup plans to assist the authorities of this state in training young developers. It is assumed that these specialists will be able to produce blockchain solutions on Cardano’s basis independently.

In addition, the platform can help Rwandan people with land registration. There are applications from representatives of the RSA and Kenya that would also like to use Cardano in the agriculture. What’s more, the blockchain platform is also of interest to countries that are active in preserving wildlife diversity.

The Prover startup presented two products that could confirm authenticity of a recorded event using blockchain technology.

For example, the Prover Swype ID application works with videos taken on a smartphone’s camera, and Prover Clapperboard is able to guarantee reliability of a video recording from any external digital cameras that do not have the Internet connection. The MVP of both products can be found on the official website.

According to the developers, the solutions ensure reliability of a video by checking it for presence of cuts, montage and other forgeries. Moreover, the guarantee of authenticity of a video-evidence will allow to rely on it for legal, financial and management decisions.

The technology not only confirms the fact of video recording on a real camera, but also that the shooting was made in a strictly defined time period — all the timestamps are stored in the blockchain using the Prover technology and can be checked quickly.

If the system confirms authenticity of a file, it generates a certificate that can be used as an access key to the corresponding transaction blocks containing hash and Swype ID.

According to Ivan Pisarev, the co-founder of Prover, the new technology can be applied in all sectors where it is crucial to know the truth: insurance, security, medicine, law, certified agreements, micro-loans, the KYC, journalism, etc.

Note that, from 31 January to 30 March 2018, the project has conducted the ICO, which has attracted investments in the amount of $7.25 million. Currently, the company is looking for clients to implement pilot projects.

In February, the Russian TVzavr company, as a part of the 68th annual Berlin International Film Festival, presented the platform of decentralized distribution of the movie content MoviesChain.

The role of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies in the development of the world economy is discussed in Kazakhstan: leading experts and analysts of the EAEU have come to the capital of the country. The reason for the meeting is the opening of the international financial center “Astana”.

Astana seeks to become a gateway to the Eurasian Economic Union, so today the most pressing issues of the EAEU are discussed here. According to the plan, the financial center will open European and Asian markets to billions of people.

The future of the Eurasian Economic Union is the subject of many panel discussions. The most heated one is devoted to the impact of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies on the formation of the common financial market of the EAEU. According to experts, the lack of a consistent approach to virtual money will have a negative impact on the integration of the Union.

The members of the UNECE believe that it is necessary to develop a common approach to blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies now. There is an experience of successful legalization of mining and tokens, for example, in Belarus. The first step has already been made: a recommendation document defining a common terminology in the digital economy for the EAEU countries was developed.

We should add that, according to the forecasts of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, the total economic impact of the international financial center “Astana” will be about 40 billion dollars.

A sub-company of the technology giant Microsoft Taiwan has announced a blockchain cooperation with Chinese companies Digital China and Hot Cool.

The alliance will be engaged in the introduction of distributed ledger technology in finance, e-commerce and entertainment.

The companies plan to create new solutions in Microsoft Azure Blockchain Workbench and MPS (by Hot Cool) cloud services. According to the general manager of Microsoft Taiwan Sun Jikang, these platforms will improve the computing power and security of blockchain products that will be supplied by Digital China.

CEO of Digital China Sana Yutao believes that Azure Blockchain Workbench service will reduce the time needed for creating a blockchain infrastructure in China.

In the context of cooperation, Hot Cool will act as an intermediary between state and corporate cloud providers.
We remind that in June, Microsoft Corporation and developer of solutions for tracking pharmaceutical products Adents presented a joint blockchain platform Adents NovaTrack to combat counterfeit medicines.

Agustín Carstens, the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), forecasts a bad end to cryptocurrencies and claims that they shouldn’t be issued any longer. His speech is published on BIS official website.

In his interview to Swiss press Mr. Carstens called cryptocurrencies an environmental disaster.
Mr. Carstens also mentioned that cryptocurrencies can’t perform the same functions as fiat currencies.

Agustín Carstens is a well known cryptocurrency skeptic. Earlier, he also criticized Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies cause a big talk due to successful blockchain orientation and re-orientation. One of these digital coins is NEM (XEM).

Yesterday NEM (Malaysia) presented the largest blockchain center in Asia and announced that it set aside roughly RMS 500,000 (around $120,000) for blockchain projects in the country.

The center is going to be the foundation for startups creation and development of firms who needs information and expertise on blockchain technology and NEM integration in this region.

According to Malaysia Reserved Fund representative who spoke with Stephen Chia, the country director, it was stated that people in the country don’t really understand the way blockchain works and let alone of the world.

Malaysia should be ready for Blockchain

The country official believes that there is no adequate knowledge of blockchain technology in universities and other schools where young people can have detailed understanding of the trend.

Over RM2,000,000 was invested into the center, it consists of 12 offices where companies can come to learn about Blockchain.

Today NEM continues positive tendency, increasing by 2.28% according to coinmarketcap and has a market capitalization of $1,752,696,000. XEM price is $0.194744. The coin is ranked 16th in the market along with coins like VeCHain, Omisego, Qtum and many others.

IBM Corporation will become a technology partner of the Australian government in the sphere of blockchain application. The parties signed five-year cooperation agreement for 1 billion Australian dollars ($740 million).

The technology giant will provide automation services to government departments and help with implementing blockchain technology in government services.

IBM will also create platforms for protecting and storing Australian citizens’ data. The authorities of the country believe that the future solution of the company will save taxpayers’ money in the amount of about 100 million Australian dollars ($73 million).

According to the head of IBM Asia Pacific Harriet Green, Australian specialists will get involved in the implementation and development of new projects.

In June, IBM launched a free educational course on blockchain in India.

Uncontrolled miners

Since June 25th the pool has been using BetterHash, the protocol that aims to offer mining pool users to use their own block patterns and not those which are prescribed by the owners of the pool.
The setup is different from the main Bitcoin pools such as Bitmain and Antpool, which use Stratum, the most widely used protocol among miners.

51% of the Bitmain spectrum

The concern in the bitcoin community continues to grow due to the growing presence of large mining pools, in particular Bitmain, which currently controls about 42% of the hashrate, which continues to rise to new record highs.

While it is still below the 50% threshold, essential for causing harmful effects, users also fear the involvement of the Bitmain fund in ViaBTC, a pool, which, if controlled, will offer additional 9% of hashrate.
Although Bitmain has been the lead investor in a recent round of financing ViaBTC, the latter states that it is independent. For Corallo, decentralization has become the main incentive for developing an alternative.

On July 3, at 536200 block, the Bitcoin Gold network was upgraded to a modified Equihash-BTG algorithm that isn’t supported by classic ASIC miners. This was reported by the developers of the cryptocurrency in the official blog.
Thus, the project promotes one of its main ideas, which is to move away from ASIC-mining.

According to the developers, the new algorithm includes personalization, which makes it difficult to redirect the mining power through the hash-power markets, and that guarantees greater network security.

As a part of the hard-fork, an improved difficulty correction algorithm (LWMA) was added, which will allow the BTG blockchain to work faster, providing a more stable flow of blocks.

We remind that in early June the team of Bitcoin Gold said that the network update would make the cryptocurrency less vulnerable to various hacker attacks. In May, an unknown miner used “attack 51%” on the BTG network and stole about 388 thousand coins from exchanges.

The Central Bank of Russia published a draft of amendments to Regulation 383-P “Funds transfer rules”, which will allow Russian financial organizations to use blockchain technology to make settlements from 2019. The implementation of blockchain will accelerate execution of operations and reduce the costs of credit organizations by 20%.

The Central Bank will enable the parties to the deal to use digital letters of credit and smart contracts. “FinTech” association explained that the tools will appear on the “Masterchane” blockchain-platform already this year, and next year the technology will be available for everyone.

According to the estimates of the Central Bank, switching to a digital letter of credit will reduce the average duration of transactions from 18 to 8 days, which will also affect the reduction of risks and costs. At the moment, banks use ordinary letters of credit for trade transactions. According to T. Ivashkova, head of the department of documentary operations and trade finance of Raiffeisenbank, this tool is complex and expensive as a safe trade transaction.

The usage of blockchain technology will significantly increase the speed of transaction, reduce the cost of provision and storage of paper documents, as well as reduce the risks of falsification and loss of documents, agrees VTB.

Little-known Chinese cryptocurrency exchnage FCoin is responsible for Ethereum network overload and unusually high gas fees recorded over the past few days.

FCoin, founded by Zhang Jian, former employee of Huobi, is accused of intentionally encouraging a rash of Sybil attacks in order to temporarily damage Ethereum blockchain and attract undeserved attention.
As earlier reported, the Square company has withdrawn its application to open a deposit-taking bank.

What happened to Ethereum network?

Over the past few days, Ethereum network transaction prices have reached all time highs, creating problems for DApps and users who cannot pay high transaction fees. The spike in network activity which became a reason of this has been traced by in FCoin activities which, apparently implemented a “cumulative deposit number ranking” voting protocol in order to list new coins on the exchange.

It means that in order to list a new coin on the platform, votes are cast by sending a desired number of coins to the exchange instead of using a standard “one-vote-per-user” voting structure. Once a voting campaign is over, a coin with the most deposits will be listed on the exchange. Nevertheless, this obviously creates a motivation to hold several voting campaigns using different account to send tokens to the exchange – this is Sybil attack.
Thus, a lot of coins, based on Ethereum technology, have entered the race to be listed on FCoin die to Sybil attack, and this significantly increased the amount of congestion, increasing the transaction fees and gas costs in this process as well. This is bad news for ordinary users of Ethereum which not only have to deal with high prices and constant fails, but also with increased wait time for transaction confirmation.

Why does FCoin need it?

In opinion of a number of cryptocurrency analysts, obviously imperfect voting format and consequences are deliberate, aimed at creation of an influx of publicity. The exchange hopes to ride the wave of rage and fame in order to gain more popularity.

Government of South Korea is drafting new industry classification standards for local blockchain industry.

It is believed that three Korean Ministries – the National Statistical Office, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Information and Communication – have been working on the final draft of a blockchain industry classification standards which will be announced in the end of July.

This scheme is said to be a base for policy making, first of all aimed at blockchain promotion and regulatory frameworks. It covers several areas, including creation of blockchain sustems and DApps, as well as cryptocurrency exchange and transactions.

It defines cryptocurrency exchange as “exchange of cryptocurrency assets and brokerage service”. This is an important definition which recognizes cryptoexchanges as “regulated financial institutions”, unlike their previous classification as “communication service provider”.

This is the first time when Korean government recognizes a developing sector as a legitimate industry.
43 government ministries and 17 regional municipalities, as well as enterprises and financial institutions are involved. Consultations needed for the first statistical survey of the sector will be held with more than 160 institutions.

The president of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a Decree on “On measures for the development of the digital economy in the Republic of Uzbekistan”, according to which any cryptocurrency operations become legal. They will not be taxed.

Activities in the cryptocurrency, blockchain and mining market are subject to licensing from Octobe, 1, 2018. National Agency of Project Management will become a regulator in the area of implementation and development of digital economy.

In December of 2017 the President of Belarus Alexandr Lukashenko signed a decree “On development of digital economy”, according to which individuals got a right to own and exchange tokens, as well as mine coins.