The Ethereum 2.0 or ETH 2.0 journey continues with the Spadina Testnet launch. This is part of the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap to improve scalability, security and programmability. Spadina will run in parallel alongside the Medalla Testnet. Developers can use both networks to test Ethereum 2.0 features. This paves the way to ETH 2.0 which is expected to launch later this year, but this is not always certain. Many factors (e.g. bugs, divergence in viewpoint, etc.) can arise that could lead to delays, as often happens with the development community.
The genesis for the Spadina testnet has been set to September 29, 2020 (“dress rehearsal”v0.12.2 Ethereum 2.0 multi-client testnet “Spadina v0.12”) with a genesis time of 1601380800 (12 PM UTC). Once the testnet is up, developers can begin testing deposits and beacon nodes on the network. The testnet uses only 1,024 validators which is far less than what would be required on the mainnet (16,384 validators).
The purpose for Spadina is further test the crucial features for ETH 2.0 Serenity Phase 0. This includes deploying smart contracts for making deposits and generating the genesis block on the network. Depending on how successful and confident developers are during the testing, it can very well continue into 2021 or lead to the release of ETH 2.0 much sooner. This requires more understanding and participation from the community to determine if the upgrade can be implemented on the Ethereum mainnet.
ETH 2.0 introduces the Beacon Chain with sharding and the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. These are upgrades that address scalability problems in the Ethereum protocol. The target is 100,000 transaction per second (TPS). The challenge is to scale without sacrificing too much security and decentralization. With PoS, mining will be replaced by staking, introducing a new incentive system to reward nodes that contribute to the security and efficiency of the Ethereum blockchain.
The DeFi space is notorious for copycat blockchain projects which don’t really deliver anything useful other than a quick pump and dump. Those who get in first benefit, dumping on those who come much later in the anticipation of ginormous returns. It just is not going to happen, unless you aren’t the “fool” (e.g. Greater Fool Theory). The problem is due to human nature. Many are looking at these DeFi projects as “get rich quick” schemes as they try to get in early and exit early with profits while leaving those who followed nothing.
It all started when developers followed the success of projects like Uniswap and Yearn.Finance. Since the code is open source, and there are plenty of resources available from GitHub among other places, developers can just copy and paste the code and create their own fork of the software. It has worked well in fact that we have Uniswap clones with catchy names like SushiSwap and HotDogSwap. They may sound like the next big thing in the crypto space, but that is not the case.
These copycat projects offer high yield products, that just seem out of this world. You must be in another dimension to expect 1,000,000x (1 million times) returns on a token. This reminds me of scamcoins like Bitconnect, but only more technical and neatly packaged for those who think they are on to quick gains in the crypto space. None of these tokens are sustainable if every holder ahead of you dumps and there is no further liquidity to maintain the liquidity pool. They were illiquid to begin with and have no other purpose other than speculation.
A developer who goes by the name of “Chef Nomi” has become well known for the SushiSwap token. It is another clone of Uniswap that issues its own token for Liquidity Providers to lock their digital assets. Despite its relatively short existence, it suddenly surged after August 30, 2020 with huge gains for those who hold the token. All they did was launch a new liquidity pool provider using “vampire mining” methods to siphon off tokens from Uniswap. At this point some holders were thinking things were going well, until SushiSwap dumped and Chef Nomi exited the project taking $14M (which he would later return). Later Chef Nomi apologized, stating the reason for exiting the project was more due to turning it over to the community. It was just that the way he left was not in a genuine way to assure the community that things will be all right. Actually, what does Chef Nomi care since no one should be in control of the platform. It is a decentralized protocol that no one, not even its developer should be able to control.
SushiSwap was eventually saved by Sam Bankman-Fried, head of startup Alameda Research and trading platform FTX. Perhaps SushiSwap was worth saving. If you look at the code, it was not just a clone of Uniswap. The project also added governance features for the community. At least things ended well with SushiSwap but not for the Yam project. Yam, a clone of YFI or Yearn.Finance token, became one of the hottest “Yield Farming” projects in DeFi in August 2020. Many people fell for the hype and soon many were putting their tokens to gain huge yields. However, the code was never subjected to an audit and it had a serious bug that would affect its operation. The bug has permanently affected the platform with $750,000 worth of Curve tokens locked. Perhaps this should be the DeFi example of who not to follow when launching a new project.
Following the heels of SushiSwap is another project called HotDogSwap. Once again the hype brought in a huge pump in its initial release in September 2. The token was valued at $5,000 at some point before crashing to less than $1.00. The value has since plummeted further below $1.00 as of this posting and it may not recover again, unless it has real liquidity and actual use cases. That cannot be stressed enough. Utility is what makes a token a GPT (General Purpose Technology). One of the failures of HotDogSwap is a lack of community governance that could have prevented large dumps through improvement proposal protocols (e.g. like EIP or Ethereum Improvement Proposal). Otherwise, there is no way to stop “Degenerate Farmers” who pump to push prices up and then cash in when the FOMO begins.
Perhaps the DeFi space needs to keep an eye out for regulators. With all the money being generated in this space, it will begin to catch the attention of regulators like the US SEC and tax authorities like the IRS. Compliance can be circumvented because these platforms are decentralized, but we shall see just how decentralized a platform is. If they use a form of on-ramp with fiat or digital exchanges, it could lead to requirements for users to submit personal KYC data. The use of CeFi (Centralized Finance) exchanges like Binance can provide the compliance requirements to some of these DeFi projects using a CeDeFi bridge.
Between Yam and HotDogSwap, users have lost plenty of money. These copycat projects are burning those who FOMO into the project with the expectation of high yield returns. The failed DeFi projects can serve as a cautionary tale to those who dare get into this space. These projects are digital ponzi schemes, and even much worse. With ponzi schemes you have a chance to recover your funds. With smart contracts and the blockchain, the problem is the immutability of data means there is no backdoor or master key that can unlock these funds. It is locked in the blockchain forever, thanks to reckless developers.
Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. There are threats from bad actors, who can affect the operation of digital exchanges that also affects users. When an exchange gets hacked, holders of coins who have left funds on the exchange usually have no way of getting their digital assets back. This is why a form of mitigation to be able to recover funds is becoming important. The Mt. Gox hack wiped out that digital exchange of 850,000 BTC (Bitcoin). To this date there has been no formal settlement with former coin holders.
Binance provides its own security measure to address this problem. It is called the SAFU (Security Asset Fund for Users). It is an emergency insurance fund announced back in July 3, 2018.
According to Binance:
“To protect the future interests of all users, Binance will create a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). Starting from 2018/07/14, we will allocate 10% of all trading fees received into SAFU to offer protection to our users and their funds in extreme cases. This fund will be stored in a separate cold wallet.”
The story of SAFU goes back to a time Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao tweeted “funds are safe”. It became a regular message from CZ to assure exchange users on their status. Later a content creator named “Bizonacci” uploaded a video called “Funds Are Safu” on YouTube. It went viral and the term “Safu” instead of safe has stuck ever since.
This insurance fund collects a percentage of fees from transactions on the exchange. This would be used in the event of a serious breach that compromised the funds stored by the system. It is also stored in secure hard wallets away from online access to hackers. The fund is released in the event of an emergency only, so it continues to accumulate unless otherwise.
These are good measures to provide customers if you are a digital exchange. However, if you are the customer you might consider not storing your coins or tokens on an exchange because of the risk. Since exchanges do not guarantee the safety of your funds, if anything should happen like a software glitch or hack, your funds should they get stolen cannot be fully reimbursed by exchanges. Depending on jurisdiction, you can only pursue a lawsuit if there is any responsibility on the part of the digital exchange to reimburse you based on the policy agreement. Most of the time there is no obligation by the exchange, so storing funds in their custodial wallet is at your own risk.
The best solution is to have your own SAFU to store your funds. That means a hardware wallet that is offline in your own possession. This also gives you control of your own private key, something that digital exchanges don’t provide. Using online wallets (e.g. Exodus, Metamask, MEW, etc.) are also options, but since they are online they are still at risk from being attacked. Whichever wallet a user chooses, what is important is to keep the private key and seed phrase secure.
Ethereum is surging as DeFi is bringing in more liquidity into the decentralized platform. A vital part of this push includes Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network. Chainlink provides a solution for providing information to smart contracts, many of which run on the Ethereum platform. Blockchains are evolving to third and fourth generation networks that introduce new features that extend the capabilities of smart contracts. It is significant to the Ethereum blockchain when it comes to use case.
Decentralized Oracles
Chainlink provides an API for connecting smart contracts to real world data. This information can be processed form databases which feed the data to smart contracts in real time. What separates Chainlink from other oracles is its decentralized BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant) network architecture which is not under the control of any entity or organization. This prevents bias, data tampering, manipulation and single points of failure. Downtime can be costly when data is not received in time. This can affect business decisions like when to sell stocks or coins.
One of the main applications for Chainlink is connecting smart contracts to real time price feeds. By design, Chainlink was developed to bring off-chain data sources to on-chain smart contracts. The previous problem with smart contracts is they could not get data on their own. Chainlink provides a type of middleware to connect external data to the smart contract to execute on any blockchain.
LINK Token
To ensure that nodes on the Chainlink network are feeding accurate data to smart contracts, a token is used called LINK. It is an incentive to the oracles who provide data and help secure the network. Bad actors are removed from the system while those who are honest receive the incentives. There are consequences for dishonest nodes who try to tamper with the data. It is a type of reputation system so bad actors will be discouraged from malicious intents on the blockchain. This includes nodes that neglect providing data, falsifying data and attacking other nodes among other things. This provides an open market that is merit-based to provide reliable and trustworthy data.
Blockchain Agnostic
Although built using the Ethereum ERC20 token standard, Chainlink is actually blockchain agnostic. This means that Chainlink was meant to work with other blockchains like Icon and even Hyperledger. Although it is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum main network, it is not exclusive to it. Chainlink’s LINK token can survive on other blockchains through distribution. Blockchains that need real time data can use Chainlink through an API.
Benefits To Ethereum
Prior to Chainlink, oracles could not directly feed data to smart contracts in real time. The data from oracles can be coded by developers, but they could not do it automatically until the Chainlink API came along. A smart contract can get external data feeds from various data sources via Chainlink’s nodes that handle data requests. They also return the results back to the smart contract to fulfill the request.
The importance of Chainlink is the way it provides real world data. For practical application use cases, oracles like Chainlink can provide data as they occur and not from a previous time. Smart contracts that are able to get data in real time to process transactions are more accurate and reliable. This can improve systems that rely on constantly changing data like on monetary exchanges. This means a trader will get the actual value of their trade as it is happening in the market.
The potential is huge for Ethereum. It provides an actual service that has a use case to benefit users. It is also decentralized so there should be no point of failure or downtime. These oracles perform non-stop even if one node is down since there will be others to take its place. This can help extend smart contract capabilities on Ethereum to become truly reliable for business and finance.
Scalability is one of the main criticisms against Bitcoin(BTC), since the network is not capable of more than 7 TPS (Transactions Per Second). This is due to the “Scalability Trilemma” of blockchains, in which there is a tradeoff of scalability with security and decentralization. You cannot have all three things at once so it requires a balance of resources. If you value more decentralization, you will get more security as well but that will be at the expense of scalability. The blockchain cannot scale if there are too many nodes on the network. When compared to the VISA and Mastercard network, Bitcoin is not on the same level when processing transactions. The VISA network can process over 1,700 TPS or close to 150 million transations per day. In reality though, it doesn’t always reach these values but it gives some idea of the scale VISA is capable of.
While the developer community looks to the fundamentals of Bitcoin as its strength, others view ways to preserve the core architecture while introducing new features to enhance it. One way to improve scaling is through a Layer 2 solution called the Lightning Network (LN). This protocol moves the computational process from the blockchain main network to an off-chain layer. This puts less work on the nodes while using an off-chain layer as the solution to process direct peer-to-peer transactions using payment channels. The blockchain will then be used for settling the transaction and recording it. These can also be implemented as sidechains, which still have a Merkle Root for provability that they are a part of the blockchain. In theory the LN can process up to 1 million TPS and support other cryptocurrency (e.g. Litecoin).
One of the main talking points of the Lighting Network is reducing transaction fees. This means instant payments that only require a fraction as fees. The idea is to enable micropayments using BTC and make it much easier to pay for items like a cup of coffee. Prior to that, paying for coffee with BTC was impossible. Merchants do not accept BTC and the transaction fees were quite expensive. It made more sense to use BTC to move millions of dollars of currency than to transact $5.00 for a cup of coffee. Developers also promote the idea of using the Lightning Network for Atomic Swaps, which allow large amounts of BTC to be exchanged for other currency or cryptocurrency.
The LN has been in development since 2016. One of the requirements needed to support it was the activation of SegWit BIP 141 UASF. SegWit was activated on August 24, 2017 after the Bitcoin community agreed on BIP 91 (signals the support to activate BIP 141). While it has been steadily improving for production use, it is not without critics. The Bitcoin Cash community hard forked from Bitcoin because one of the reasons was that they did not support SegWit and the LN. The Bitcoin Cash supporters believe in larger block sizes and on-chain solutions as opposed to maintaining existing block size and off-chain solutions. Other critics have expressed concerns that the LN could become centralized with payment channels. Several channels could form one large channel and monopolize the network, in theory. Other views state that the channels could become like intermediaries, with the power to deny transactions and thus defeats the purpose of a decentralized system.
Users will choose whichever has smaller transaction fees. If the main network has lower fees, then there is no need for a Layer 2 solution. However, if the main network is slower then it makes an off-chain solution ideal. A faster LN can process transactions faster and more efficiently than the main network. Fees should eventually lower when there are more users.
Since LN nodes have to be online at all times, if a hacker knows the LN node’s IP address and network, they can attempt to attack it. They can attack the node to disrupt its service or even to try to steal BTC. When a node goes off-line, by accident or intentionally, it can also affect transactions. A Fraudulent Channel Close can occur if a channel closes before the transaction completes and pocket the BTC. Network outages can also bring the LN system down if the payment channels are too centralized.
While the LN is aimed to increase adoption of BTC as a form of payment (i.e. medium of exchange), it may not be able to keep up with the network effect. Bitcoin Cash claims to have solved the problem with micropayments since it has a faster network than Bitcoin. In order for LN to be more successful it must be used for making BTC payments. It appears though that more people are willing to hold on to BTC as a store of value rather than for making payments.
Whether LN will become an integral part of Bitcoin, is still up for debate. It presents an excellent idea but it may already be outdated. More Bitcoin maximalists are really just looking at BTC as a digital asset counterpart to gold, so it is a new store of value. As BTC becomes more valuable, people will not likely spend it for micropayment transactions. This is where the altcoins fit the bill for that purpose. Instead BTC will be like digital gold, stored safely by HODlers in their hardware wallets. This creates a dilemma for the LN, but it can still work out for the best. BTC can be divided into smaller denominations or units called Satoshis. The LN can prove its value by providing a safe and easy way to make micropayments using Satoshis. Proving its value will make it a better proposition for developers to incorporate the LN in their applications, and that could onboard users for greater adoption.
A coordinated attack against social media platform Twitter (around July 15-16, 2020) led to a hack that targeted popular accounts. These were not just any accounts, but influential public figures. Included in that list were former US president Barack Obama, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk. What makes this all the more interesting is that hackers used these accounts to solicit cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin (BTC). In the scheme, the hackers used the account to mention some feel good words about giving back to the community during the Covid-19 crisis and then requested people to send them BTC with a message of doubling whatever is sent to a given BTC address in the tweet.
These are your typical scams which many in the cryptoverse probably caught. Unfortunately not everybody did. The hackers made off with at least 12 BTC worth $100K+ in the initial stages after the attack was discovered. This sort of attack appears to have affected Twitter’s internal system, since only admin accounts have privileges to modify user accounts. Speculation is that a phishing attack or directed social engineering technique was used to gain access to Twitter’s backend system. This is definitely a cause for concern to everyone who has an account on Twitter because a repeat of this attack could compromise them. Once the hackers gained access to the backend, they targeted the accounts and began tweeting.
People who are caught up in the hype of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin will easily fall prey to scams like this. Noobs (newbies) who recently got in may not have enough education … meaning they don’t know any better what not to do. If someone, anyone, asks you to give them Bitcoin in order to double your holdings don’t be too quick to trust them. It really doesn’t make sense if you think about. Supposed you give 100 BTC, are you really expecting to get 200 BTC? This is a naive gambling mentality that can affect anyone’s logic if they are not aware of these schemes. Never give other people Bitcoin expecting more in return.
It is not even like investing because the public figures account tweets to just give them BTC and you get more in return. The problem with that should be obvious to the common person, but why would other people go along with it? This is why social media has such tremendous power when it comes to influence. The few people who gave their BTC away probably understood what they were doing, which is scary. They did it because they are firm believers of that person. Whether it was through charisma or just blind following, people probably acted subconsciously and just obeyed the tweet like it was an order. Greed is perhaps another motivator since it psychologically makes a person think about how easy it would be to get more crypto. It makes me wonder if the hackers had been more nefarious with the tweet, just think of how many people they could have put in danger or in harm’s path. It was good that it did not end up that way.
Bitcoin addresses are pseudonymous and cannot be directly linked to a person’s identity. That is the blockchain by design, so there would be no way to verify the Bitcoin address really belongs to the public figure. That is probably the biggest reason why not to fall for these scams. We don’t have any way of knowing if the address legitimately belongs to President Obama or Elon Musk. A Bitcoin address is just a hexadecimal string but it doesn’t link to the actual person like the way you can look up a person’s identity by their driver’s license number or social security number. That should have been the red flag that prevents people from giving their BTC.
The Bitcoin address the scammers used which begins with “bc1qxyp….” (I do not reveal the full address here, just a snippet) can be tracked on a blockchain explorer. It doesn’t specifically say the name of the owner of that account. What you can see though are the transactions in the account history, and it indicates the 12 BTC collected.
Note: The full Bitcoin address of the scammer/hacker is not revealed here.
In crypto the only way to really trace the identity of the account holder is if they cash out using a digital exchange. Users who use digital exchanges to convert crypto to fiat, require a KYC documents in order to comply with financial regulations (e.g. AML, Anti-terrorist funding, etc.). This is not revealed to the public, but if there were an investigation the digital exchange can release the personal information if they were required. Accounts created on digital exchanges are also linked to bank accounts which can be traced to a person’s identity. On the blockchain, the real way to prove identity would be with a digital signature using the private key from the user’s digital wallet. This is one way a person who claims to own a Bitcoin address can prove they are the true owner.
The lesson here is that scams are everywhere in our society. It even affects crypto. In fact there have already been 2 popular scams uncovered in the past – Bitconnect and OneCoin. They have not proven any legitimacy and quickly collapsed with their leadership no where to be found. These cryptocurrency promised people ridiculous returns, but many got into it anyway with the help of social influencers. Some of these influencers were just too convincing that it leads to a bandwagon or network effect of more people putting money in a system that is like a house of wax built on top of the sun. By the time it collapsed (no more money to give people) it was too late for many and they lost the money they put into the coin, perhaps never to be recovered.
To avoid scams ask yourself if the message you are getting is too good to be true. If it is do more research to verify it. Don’t just give your BTC to anyone and expect more in return. Those things just don’t really happen in the real world. If it does, then there is probably something you have to give back in return but it may not always have a good ending. It is like the car dealer telling you to give them your old car and you get a new car back. You do get your new car but then you end up with a mountain of costs you had not been expecting. It is always the unexpected things beyond our control. This is true with crypto as well, so be very careful next time you hear or see someone say “Hey, give me some BTC today and I’ll double it up for a good cause!”.
Note: This is not financial advice. Please do your own research to verify information.
There have been stories of people losing their digital asset, Bitcoin (BTC), for careless reasons. There is the story of a Welsh man who “accidentally” (we don’t know for sure) threw a hard drive away that contains approximately $80-$100M+ worth of BTC. The price actually will be worth plenty more or even less based on market value. The most common incident involves holders of BTC losing their private key to their digital wallet. Now think of it like losing your apartment key. It is different though because if you don’t have a duplicate you can always go to the apartment manager for a master key to open the door. In Bitcoin, unfortunately, there is no master key that unlocks all digital wallets. Other instances of unrecoverable BTC happens when the holder of a digital wallet dies and no one else has access to it. Unless there is a next of kin to claim the inheritance, it is as good as gone unless the private key can be provided to recover the coins.
You can still recover your BTC even if the private key is lost, provided you took the required measures. You must have the seed phrase generated during wallet creation. The problem is if you don’t have both then your BTC will not be recoverable based on the blockchain’s inherent design. That is because all private keys and wallets are unique, and since the blockchain is decentralized there is no master key or main administrator to support users. Incidents that involve hacking would not be considered lost BTC because the hackers will most likely send the stolen coins to another wallet and then try to lose anyone tracking the BTC by using various digital exchanges. In other words, that BTC would be considered stolen rather than lost, and it could end up back in circulation if it were sold to an exchange. This is why it is important to make backups of both the private key and seed phrase, but store it in a secure location and not just some random cloud drive. Consider using hardware wallets, removable hard drives, thumb drives and other storage devices that can be locked up in a vault (you get the idea).
Is it easy to lose your private key? The answer is yes, when considering the circumstances. If you store your private key on your local hard drive without a backup copy, if that hard drive should fail then it could mean game over. Your savior would be the seed phrase of the digital wallet or what is called the recovery phrase. This is provided to the user during the creation of the digital wallet, when the private key was generated. This contains 12 words in Bitcoin (also called the mnemonic) that must be provided when recovering the private key. Another way a user loses a private key is if it was stored online and never exported to an offline location. If the online service were to fail with no backup system, the private key will be gone as well.
Whatever the story is, lost BTC lead to less of the supply of the cryptocurrency. According to Chainalysis, an estimated $35,000,000,000 (price is volatile so this is not a fixed value) in Bitcoin (BTC) is likely to never be recovered. This was based on their report that 20% of Bitcoin’s total supply of 21M BTC has not moved for five years or longer. According to the report, that would be 3.72M BTC based on a market valuation of $9,408.60 (as of the market value when report was published). It is also assumed that 4M BTC in total, including the BTC in the report, may never ever be recovered unless there is protocol which will allow the lost coins to be released back into circulation. That is not likely unless the Bitcoin community in general come to a majority consensus. The Bitcoin blockchain does not support releasing lost BTC as of Bitcoin Core 0.20.0 (Released in 6/3/2020). When we deduct the 4M BTC, that means there will be only 17M BTC.
Holding a digital asset like BTC requires plenty of responsibility in return for financial independence. The question then is why would anyone even want to own Bitcoin if it cannot be easily recovered, has no customer support like a bank and no master key to unlock it if the private key is lost? That should make it all the more obvious why it is important to own Bitcoin. Only you can have control of your BTC. The government cannot freeze it and prevent you from storing value on the blockchain. You have freedom from bank policies which regulate finances (e.g. withdrawals, remittances, loans, etc.). The only thing a person must do to have this benefit is to secure their private key and seed phrase. Humans are not perfect and very prone to mistakes, so is it even possible to have a system like this?
We have to go back to the fundamentals of Bitcoin and why it was designed that way. Remember, its founder Satoshi Nakamoto developed a system of direct peer-to-peer payments without relying on a trusted third party. It is also decentralized so that it cannot be manipulated and controlled by a single entity. The way to do this is give full control of money to the users and establish a platform that is permissionless and trustless for exchanging value. The blockchain provides a cryptographically secure platform of trust among strangers who want to transact because it doesn’t require them to know each other or trust an arbiter to exchange value. Instead they use a private key to authorize transactions under their digital signature and verify that they are indeed the holder of the BTC. The reason lost BTC cannot be recovered is because it will require the unique private key that belongs to its owner. If that was lost, the BTC can still be recovered using the seed phrase. Until there is a chance at recovering BTC, users must be responsible for their digital assets. All it requires is keeping a digital wallet with a private key, in a safe and secure manner.
Never ever, and that means EVER, reveal your private key to anyone. That means it is better you take it with you to the grave or lock it up with a will rather than entrust it with a third party or anyone you know. There are plenty of stories of how careless people can get with their private keys. This has led to unrecoverable funds, digital identity theft and hacked digital wallets. If you were to give your private key to someone and they lose it, your only chance of recovery would be the seed phrase generated during the key creation for your digital wallet. If you lost those seed phrases, good luck because chances are there is no other way to recover your private key.
Why is it so hard? This is probably the reason mainstream finance is turned off by cryptocurrency. Digital wallets are mostly not user friendly and there is no technical support to help users recover their funds or private keys. The apps provided for cryptocurrency are open source, and available to the public but there is no one supporting it directly. It is decentralized, so the best resources to contact are members of the community who are knowledgable about the subject. Unfortunately, not even the top tier engineers and developers of the cryptocurrency can help you recover or generate a new private key unless it is for a new digital wallet.
What many people don’t understand is that private keys were not meant to be recovered. Only one unique private key is created for a digital wallet, and that means there is no master key that can open a backdoor to help anyone recover their funds. That was by design due to the open source and decentralized nature of the blockchain. This sounds like a bank is still the best place to store your wealth because they provide full customer support. Now I am going to explain the difference between a bank and the blockchain, in the context of cryptocurrency and private keys.
Banks are highly centralized and they are pretty much in control of your wealth. No matter how much money you have deposited in a bank, policies still dictate how much you can withdraw, where you can send your money and what you can do with it. If a bank were to go bankrupt, your funds go along with it. Banks won’t voluntarily give you all their money if they are closing. You lose all your wealth in the worst case scenario. In times of financial crisis, banks can also stop withdrawals to prevent bank runs. You are mostly at the mercy of your bank when it comes to money, and they will gladly take what you deposit while giving you permission to withdraw your own money. It doesn’t really make sense, but that has been the mainstream banking system for decades now.
Compare that to cryptocurrency and the blockchain, you have financial independence. You control your own wealth through your private key, which is why it is so important not to lose it or let others access it. A private key is not even a tangible object, it is a digital code consisting of numbers that have been cryptographically generated and stored as a file. From your private key you get a public address which is created from your public key. The public key is derived from the private key to generate the public address. This is like your account number that is allowed to be exposed on the network. Funds deposited or withdrawn are recorded on the blockchain. The private key also authorizes you to send and receive funds using a digital signature. The digital wallet is basically where you store the private key. To keep the private key safe, store the file away from your computer or online drive. The best recommendation from experts is to use a hardware wallet, which is an offline device that secures private keys. That would prevent hackers from accessing it online since the only way to access it is from the device.
The lesson here is that if you want financial independence and control of your own wealth, it requires plenty of responsibility. That includes managing your private key by keeping it in a safe storage location like a hardware wallet. Make a backup, but store it wisely and not somewhere it can be accessed publicly (e.g. file sharing site). You can copy it to a thumb drive to be stored in a vault or a secure enclave in a smartphone if supported. There will be more robust solutions for key recovery systems for digital wallets, but until that time comes, users should always be alert regarding their private key. If anyone asks for your private key so they can send you funds, ignore that request. There is never any reason to reveal your private key to anyone. It is not like a driver’s license number or SS number which you do need to provide sometimes. A private key should only be known by its holder and never shared or revealed to anyone. You have the right to protect your privacy and it is secured through cryptography on a blockchain.
Not all cryptocurrency or digital currency are based on Bitcoin. In fact, some of them don’t even use a blockchain. They are graph-based networks (e.g. DAG, Hashgraph) which arrive at consensus much differently. The notion of a blockchain has become the most synonymous with cryptocurrency, but that is not applicable to all. IoTA, Hedera, Nano and Byteball are examples of graph-based networks. The most common type used is a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), which is more scalable network solution than blockchain based distributed systems. A DAG is not a blockchain but both use decentralized cryptographic databases in a sense that a Ferrari is not a lamborghini but are both cars.
A blockchain connects blocks by hashes which can be traced back to a primordial block or “Genesis Block” which is the root of all hashes. It uses a tree topology of nodes called a Merkle Tree, which has leaf nodes that contain the cryptographic hash from child nodes. When these hashes are concatenated, they can be traced back to the Genesis Block in the network. Blockchains use a consensus mechanism to validate the blocks, with PoW (Proof-of-Work) being one example that is used on the Bitcoin network. Consensus is what secures the network by way of validating a block and adding it to the blockchain where it becomes immutable so it is no longer subject to change. This prevents tampering and data manipulation. The consensus requires nodes called miners who must compete with one another by solving a cryptographic puzzle using a probabilistic zero-sum game approach. The miner who solves the puzzle first becomes the block validator and is rewarded with Bitcoin (BTC) for their contribution.
A DAG is a finite graph which is directed forward in one direction with a topological ordering. It consists of vertices that lead to other vertices, which are paths called edges. The vertices are like points in a network. The system uses an “Efficient Teacher Grading” method instead of miners doing PoW. A DAG uses peers to help validate transactions in the network. When a new transaction is made, a new vertice representing the transaction is created and must be validated by other peers on the network. It doesn’t require solving a puzzle, but relies on confirmations as the consensus using a gossip protocol mechanism. When other peers on the network can confirm the transaction as correct, it will be validated.
A DAG network is much faster than PoW since it doesn’t rely on compute intensive puzzles. This allows it to run on lighter devices in contrast to PoW systems that rely on power hungry ASIC devices that perform large numbers of calculations to solve the puzzle. This is rather inefficient, so it requires more energy to produce coins or tokens. A DAG is much faster and scalable since it doesn’t require the same overhead as a blockchain network when it comes to consensus. Costs are lower too because there is no need to purchase expensive equipment that use plenty of electricity. A DAG can utilize mobile devices like smartphones to help confirm transactions on their network. This also makes DAG more suitable for micro-transactions which require instant validation of transactions. DAG offer less barriers to entry because practically anyone can become a peer using their low-energy consuming smartphones while PoW requires more investment in hardware that require a consistent supply of electricity to operate.
Scalability has been the main reason for DAG over blockchains. A blockchain like Bitcoin has scaling issues because of the consensus mechanism it implements and the protocols used on the network. It was not developed for high throughput transactions like the VISA or Mastercard network. VISA claims it can process 1,700 TPS (Transactions Per Second) or 150 million transactions in single business day. Bitcoin’s blockchain can only process between 3 to 7 TPS only. Security has been a consistent strength of the Bitcoin blockchain, as it has never been successfully attacked (e.g. 51% attack) as of this posting since it started in January 3, 2009. DAG have not been in production for that long and have mostly been used on experimental and concept networks. A DAG is mainly used for DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) implementations while blockchains are used on trustless permissionless public networks.
“In an homage to Satoshi Nakamoto’s iconic “brink of a second bailout” message in the 2009 genesis block, f2pool, which mined the 629,999th block (the last before the halving), embedded a reference to the current financial crisis: “NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed’s Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue.”
The reward for miners is now at 6.25 BTC per validated block. This means that although the block subsidy incentive has been reduced, the price remains volatile. Either a miner can earn more due to the appreciation in price value or profit less due to operating inefficiencies (e.g. old ASIC miners, higher costs of electricity, etc.). Miners who stand more to lose than gain should reconsider their configuration to adjust to the difficulty target and network’s hash rate.
Within the next two weeks after the halving occurred, difficulty should adjust (every 2,016 blocks). Miners should keep an eye out for the hash rate as well to see whether it has fallen (takes more time to produce blocks) or increased (more competition). Factor in the market price, and it gives an indication of whether the rewards are better or much worse.
While the Feds have quantitative easing, Bitcoin has quantitative hardening, a principle that has yet to be fully explained. The understanding is that Bitcoin is sound money because it uses an anti-inflationary model that limits the total supply (21 Million Coins). The code does not mint new coins at all and no one can mint more coins on the Bitcoin network. It is fixed at the supply set in code, and it is never created out of thin air.
While that sounds good in theory, in reality it has not been a perfectly deflationary model. While the supply is not reduced over time (it is fixed), there are new BTC still put into the circulating supply. It is when the amount of new BTC in circulation hits zero that it becomes deflationary. At that point, there will be no more rewards to miners but they can still collect transaction fees for their participation.
Right now the current economic landscape will have more influence on the price of BTC post-halving. What investors would like to see are the Fed’s injections into the economy trickling into BTC through stimulus. There are different ways that can happen and have been made available through the largest digital exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. For now, Bitcoin has proven itself once again as a stable and mature blockchain built on sound principles.
Note: While no bugs have been reported at the moment, it seems the halving occurred successfully.
CoinGraph IQ 