Who is in, who is out?
Members of the FCAS 25 are reevaluated each month and must be ranked within the top 25 for at least 40 days to qualify. Today, the list is the same as last month, but the overall industry average has gone up significantly.
Ethereum 2.0 Goes Live on TestNet
Ethereum 2.0’s “final” and “official” public testnet, Medalla, is now live, according to the Ethereum Foundation. Eth 2.0 is expected to launch later this year and bring the platform from a Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake network.
As reported by CoinDesk, Medalla was one of many Eth 2.0 testnets over 2019 and 2020. Unlike the other testnets, however, Medalla is public – meaning network validators were not centrally coordinated by developer teams. Over 20,000 validators have joined the network with 650,000 ether (ETH) staked.
Zcash Further Decentralizes Governance
Zcash (ZEC) is a decentralized and open-source privacy-focused cryptocurrency that enables shielded, or private, transactions. Over the first quarter of 2020 the Zcash market value increased by 27%, according to a CoinMarketCap report, making it the fifth fastest growing cryptocurrency, behind Dash, another privacy preserving technology.
When Zcash was launched in 2016, it was agreed that 80% of all mining rewards would go to miners, 15% would go to investors and founders, and 5% would go towards development of the platform. This agreement is due to expire in November of this year. To replace it the community voted that 80% should keep going to miners, but the remaining 20% should be devoted to Zcash development funding. Importantly, a program was set up to focus on specifically funding independent, third-party developers.
Brave Brings Private Web Browsing to iOS
The updated Brave browser for iOS features a Firewall + VPN which encrypts device traffic and secures user data both on Brave and any other app on your phone. This prevents unauthorized data and location trackers, blocks ads, and ensures user anonymity on every app.
The Basic Attention Token (BAT), which is the cryptocurrency used to incentivize digital ad consumption on the Brave browser, was recently in the news due to Compound’s short lived reward mechanism. But our data shows that the overall increase in BAT’s FCAS in the past month is caused by a climb in Developer Behavior, up 77-point (10.36%), which measures protocol updates and improvements.
Horizen Enables Anyone to Fully Customize their own Blockchain
On July 15th the team announced that its sidechain solution, Zendoo, had just been released on Beta for testing. This sidechain model is completely decentralized and enables businesses and developers to affordably create private or public blockchains mapped onto the Horizen public mainchain. This opens the door for a wide array of use cases and real-world systems that can scale.
Horizen has also delivered on its commitment to providing tools that empower users, by launching the Developer Environment (HDE). This platform incentivizes open-source contributions to the ecosystem and cultivates collaboration among developers.