One of the early major investors of Ethereum became active — in the last few months he withdrew almost 300 thousand ETN (more than $39 million at the rate at the time of writing).
According to Etherscan, 530 thousand ETH has been stored on the balance of an unknown investor since July 30, 2015 — the day of the launch of the Ethereum network — for a long time. However, in recent months he has withdrawn several hundred thousand coins.
The last major transaction took place four days ago — the investor sold 60.000 ЕТН.
According to Etherscan, 530 thousand ETH has been stored on the balance of an unknown investor since July 30, 2015 — the day of the launch of the Ethereum network — for a long time. However, in recent months he has withdrawn several hundred thousand coins.
The last major transaction took place four days ago — the investor sold 60.000 ЕТН.
The consequences of The plustoken pyramid will have a long impact on the market, Bitmain assets were frozen in China, The coinfloor exchange refuses Ethereum, the number of transactions in the bitcoin network fell, one of the "whales" got rid of 300,000 ETN, a former employee of Kraken told about the" dark Affairs " of the exchange, Riccardo Spagni will not lead Monero.
Zk-SNARK technology helps process cryptocurrency payments while maintaining the privacy of senders and recipients. This was told in an interview by the Director of marketing of Comodo Platform Audio Kovits.
"The ZK-SNARK zero-disclosure proof Protocol is the Foundation of all the privacy features of Smart Chain projects," he said.
"The ZK-SNARK zero-disclosure proof Protocol is the Foundation of all the privacy features of Smart Chain projects," he said.
In China, the police have arrested 72 people who are suspected of involvement in the cryptocurrency pyramid CloudToken.
"Scammers stole over $500 million from unsuspecting holders under the guise of a decentralized wallet that was supposed to reward users for storing coins. Payments were to be made in the company's utility token. The person who promised all the awards has disappeared, and 800,000 participants can only guess when and how they will be able to return the invested money, " said one of the victims of the Scam on the rights of anonymity.
"Scammers stole over $500 million from unsuspecting holders under the guise of a decentralized wallet that was supposed to reward users for storing coins. Payments were to be made in the company's utility token. The person who promised all the awards has disappeared, and 800,000 participants can only guess when and how they will be able to return the invested money, " said one of the victims of the Scam on the rights of anonymity.
The U.S. trademark protection system is based on the right of market priority. This was told by the lawyer and partner of JSC "Arzinger" Ekaterina Oleynik.
"Disney, as a Corporation whose success is built on the commercialization of its products, and which values the reputation of its brands, uses all the mechanisms of intellectual property rights protection in order to prevent cases of illegal use of its brands and their associated reputation," she commented on TRON's unsuccessful attempt to patent its name.
"Disney, as a Corporation whose success is built on the commercialization of its products, and which values the reputation of its brands, uses all the mechanisms of intellectual property rights protection in order to prevent cases of illegal use of its brands and their associated reputation," she commented on TRON's unsuccessful attempt to patent its name.
The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry has experienced a rather difficult year. High volatility of the main coins, uncertainty in regulation led to a decrease in the interest of venture investors and a reduction in the inflow of large capital.
Nevertheless, several projects managed to attract attention and make very profitable deals.
Nevertheless, several projects managed to attract attention and make very profitable deals.
US Crypto Lender BlockFi to Launch Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card.
Major crypto lender BlockFi aims to develop a Bitcoin (BTC) rewards credit card, with a view to rolling out this year.
In an official announcement, co-founders Zac Prince and Flori Marquez stated that the new card would allow customers to earn “an industry-leading, BTC cash-back rate on every transaction” they make, in place of conventional rewards such as air miles or cashback.
The company made no mention of the exact scale of the “industry-leading rate” in question, however.
The co-founders wrote,
“We see the credit card as a way to add value to crypto OGs, as well as a novel way to introduce crypto to non-owners in an easy, familiar way.”
The company also says that it intends to make a major overhaul of its portfolio in 2020 – with stablecoin and altcoin products in the pipelines.
“The first order of business in January will be expanding our services. In the first few weeks, we will be adding support for USD Coin (USDC) and Litecoin (LTC) with some of the most competitive interest rates in the market.”
BlockFi also spoke of launching a mobile app and “adding fiat on and off ramps” in the months ahead.
Major crypto lender BlockFi aims to develop a Bitcoin (BTC) rewards credit card, with a view to rolling out this year.
In an official announcement, co-founders Zac Prince and Flori Marquez stated that the new card would allow customers to earn “an industry-leading, BTC cash-back rate on every transaction” they make, in place of conventional rewards such as air miles or cashback.
The company made no mention of the exact scale of the “industry-leading rate” in question, however.
The co-founders wrote,
“We see the credit card as a way to add value to crypto OGs, as well as a novel way to introduce crypto to non-owners in an easy, familiar way.”
The company also says that it intends to make a major overhaul of its portfolio in 2020 – with stablecoin and altcoin products in the pipelines.
“The first order of business in January will be expanding our services. In the first few weeks, we will be adding support for USD Coin (USDC) and Litecoin (LTC) with some of the most competitive interest rates in the market.”
BlockFi also spoke of launching a mobile app and “adding fiat on and off ramps” in the months ahead.
Proof of Bitcoin's Birthday: The Power of an Individual Action in Crypto.
It would certainly be strange to draw all money from a bank like people are taking their crypto off the exchanges today. And it would be unthinkable for the banks to support their customers taking their money out en masse. Yet, that's what we see in the Cryptoworld. What’s more, this approach seems to be either solving some problems, or bringing them up to the surface for consideration.
Happy Bitcoin Birthday! It’s January 3rd – the eleventh anniversary of the first block in the Bitcoin blockchain mined, also known as the Genesis block. It’s also the second Proof of Keys Day (PoK), meant to display that the owners control their funds, and it’s led by the famous ‘not your keys, not your coins’ adage. Since last year, people in the crypto community have been adding Jan/3 [key emoji] to their Twitter handles to show support for the event and the meaning behind it.
And this is the point of the blockchain and Bitcoin, and it's the point of the PoK event too – to give the people privacy and control over their funds and remind the other players in the industry, exchanges and those wallets that hold users’ keys, where that control truly lies. “It’s about strengthening the ecosystem as a whole,” said the event initiator Trace Mayer. “Satoshi gave us this wonderful gift for monetary sovereignty,” and individual action by all of us is one of the things that’ll maintain it.
It would certainly be strange to draw all money from a bank like people are taking their crypto off the exchanges today. And it would be unthinkable for the banks to support their customers taking their money out en masse. Yet, that's what we see in the Cryptoworld. What’s more, this approach seems to be either solving some problems, or bringing them up to the surface for consideration.
Happy Bitcoin Birthday! It’s January 3rd – the eleventh anniversary of the first block in the Bitcoin blockchain mined, also known as the Genesis block. It’s also the second Proof of Keys Day (PoK), meant to display that the owners control their funds, and it’s led by the famous ‘not your keys, not your coins’ adage. Since last year, people in the crypto community have been adding Jan/3 [key emoji] to their Twitter handles to show support for the event and the meaning behind it.
And this is the point of the blockchain and Bitcoin, and it's the point of the PoK event too – to give the people privacy and control over their funds and remind the other players in the industry, exchanges and those wallets that hold users’ keys, where that control truly lies. “It’s about strengthening the ecosystem as a whole,” said the event initiator Trace Mayer. “Satoshi gave us this wonderful gift for monetary sovereignty,” and individual action by all of us is one of the things that’ll maintain it.
Collaboration to Intensify in the Blockchain Industry - WEF.
As the focus on blockchain shifted from hype to quality last year, in 2020, the technology is facing an opportunity to have an increased social impact, says Sheila Warren, the head of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology at the World Economic Forum, the organizer of the Davos meeting. However, the business-driven projects that are likely to succeed this year will be the ones that demonstrate adequate governance and a collaborative approach, she added.
Warren says that in 2019, the organization “saw less of established actors pitching competitors on unilateral projects. Instead, we saw either totally internal initiatives or creative attempts at consortium building (for example, Food Trust, TradeLens, INATBA, Libra), with varying degrees of success. Companies are waking up to the idea that to go far, they ought to go together.”
Building on that trend, last October, the organization launched a consortium, the Mining and Metals Blockchain Initiative, to explore the use of blockchain in the mining and metals industry. Its founding members include Antofagasta Minerals, Eurasian Resources Group, Glencore, Klöckner & Co, Minsur SA, Tata Steel Limited, and Anglo American/De Beers.
The designed blockchain platform is “to address transparency issues, the track and tracing of materials, the reporting of carbon emissions or to increase efficiency,” according to the official who recognizes that such “a collaborative approach would have been hard to imagine even a few years ago”.
“We expect to see a similar collaborative approach from the public sector as 2020 progresses, and in fact, the Forum has already seen an increased willingness on the part of public sector agencies to share learnings and challenges,” Warren says.
In response to the latter development, the Forum manages a Central Banks Digital Currency project which brings more than 45 central banks in a bid to explore parameters for successful deployment of central bank digital currencies. Under the plan, the organization is to launch its CBDC Policymaker Toolkit in Davos at the WEF’s forthcoming Annual Meeting on 21-24 January 2020.
Building on these observations, the WEF forecasts that this year will bring “increased experimentation with hybrid blockchain models, both in the financial sector”, such as decentralized finance and 'synthetic' CBDCs, and the public sector, for instance through an expanded use of smart contracts.
“We are not close to realizing the promise of truly decentralized systems, but the space continues to evolve in exciting new ways, and it’s just a matter of time before something huge gains traction,” according to Warren.
As the focus on blockchain shifted from hype to quality last year, in 2020, the technology is facing an opportunity to have an increased social impact, says Sheila Warren, the head of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology at the World Economic Forum, the organizer of the Davos meeting. However, the business-driven projects that are likely to succeed this year will be the ones that demonstrate adequate governance and a collaborative approach, she added.
Warren says that in 2019, the organization “saw less of established actors pitching competitors on unilateral projects. Instead, we saw either totally internal initiatives or creative attempts at consortium building (for example, Food Trust, TradeLens, INATBA, Libra), with varying degrees of success. Companies are waking up to the idea that to go far, they ought to go together.”
Building on that trend, last October, the organization launched a consortium, the Mining and Metals Blockchain Initiative, to explore the use of blockchain in the mining and metals industry. Its founding members include Antofagasta Minerals, Eurasian Resources Group, Glencore, Klöckner & Co, Minsur SA, Tata Steel Limited, and Anglo American/De Beers.
The designed blockchain platform is “to address transparency issues, the track and tracing of materials, the reporting of carbon emissions or to increase efficiency,” according to the official who recognizes that such “a collaborative approach would have been hard to imagine even a few years ago”.
“We expect to see a similar collaborative approach from the public sector as 2020 progresses, and in fact, the Forum has already seen an increased willingness on the part of public sector agencies to share learnings and challenges,” Warren says.
In response to the latter development, the Forum manages a Central Banks Digital Currency project which brings more than 45 central banks in a bid to explore parameters for successful deployment of central bank digital currencies. Under the plan, the organization is to launch its CBDC Policymaker Toolkit in Davos at the WEF’s forthcoming Annual Meeting on 21-24 January 2020.
Building on these observations, the WEF forecasts that this year will bring “increased experimentation with hybrid blockchain models, both in the financial sector”, such as decentralized finance and 'synthetic' CBDCs, and the public sector, for instance through an expanded use of smart contracts.
“We are not close to realizing the promise of truly decentralized systems, but the space continues to evolve in exciting new ways, and it’s just a matter of time before something huge gains traction,” according to Warren.
How Many Cryptos Died in 2019?
Data from various sites show that between 500 and a thousand coins have perished in 2019, and this number could in fact be higher. However, these sites disagree on whether 2019 saw fewer or more coin deaths than the year before.
It's not really possible to say how many dead coins are out there exactly, and this number changes practically every minute. It also depends on how one defines a dead coin. In general, dead projects are those that were scams or were connected to scams, never delivered a product, have a dead website, have been abandoned by their founders, or have extremely low or no trading volumes and adoption rates, etc.
DeadCoins.com is one of the websites that track failed cryptocurrency projects at it currently has 1,839 listed as dead for a number of reasons since 2017. The coins on this site are presented with a reason as to why they've died, including hacks, parodies, jokes which the tracker says couldn't have been taken seriously, like 'CuntCoin', but majority of them were scam projects.
The available data shows the following:
674 coins were added as dead in 2017
647 coins died in 2018
518 coins died in 2019
What this suggests is not only that there were fewer dead coins between 2017 and 2018, but that there was almost a 20% drop in the number of deaths in 2019.
Another aptly-titled site is Coinopsy, which shows 1,407 dead entries in total, for projects that ended from 2013 onward. The data shows, besides 85 coins whose death is marked as 'current':
2 dead projects in 2013
209 dead coins in 2014
235 dead coins in 2015
169 dead coins in 2016
223 dead coins in 2017
399 dead coins in 2018
85 dead coins in 2019
Finally, if we go by the definition of very low daily trading volumes as a sign of death or at least incoming death, we find quite a few such coins on Coinpaprika and CoinMarketCap. Many of these have (far) less than USD 1,000 daily trading volume. For example, in the last 24 hours, 2Give has had trading volume of USD 0.003121; 7ELEVEN had USD 0.041027; 808Coin had USD 50.46; 3DCoin had USD 73.39, etc. We've written previously about ten coins that are worth almost zero, some of which have already been declared dead.
Data from various sites show that between 500 and a thousand coins have perished in 2019, and this number could in fact be higher. However, these sites disagree on whether 2019 saw fewer or more coin deaths than the year before.
It's not really possible to say how many dead coins are out there exactly, and this number changes practically every minute. It also depends on how one defines a dead coin. In general, dead projects are those that were scams or were connected to scams, never delivered a product, have a dead website, have been abandoned by their founders, or have extremely low or no trading volumes and adoption rates, etc.
DeadCoins.com is one of the websites that track failed cryptocurrency projects at it currently has 1,839 listed as dead for a number of reasons since 2017. The coins on this site are presented with a reason as to why they've died, including hacks, parodies, jokes which the tracker says couldn't have been taken seriously, like 'CuntCoin', but majority of them were scam projects.
The available data shows the following:
674 coins were added as dead in 2017
647 coins died in 2018
518 coins died in 2019
What this suggests is not only that there were fewer dead coins between 2017 and 2018, but that there was almost a 20% drop in the number of deaths in 2019.
Another aptly-titled site is Coinopsy, which shows 1,407 dead entries in total, for projects that ended from 2013 onward. The data shows, besides 85 coins whose death is marked as 'current':
2 dead projects in 2013
209 dead coins in 2014
235 dead coins in 2015
169 dead coins in 2016
223 dead coins in 2017
399 dead coins in 2018
85 dead coins in 2019
Finally, if we go by the definition of very low daily trading volumes as a sign of death or at least incoming death, we find quite a few such coins on Coinpaprika and CoinMarketCap. Many of these have (far) less than USD 1,000 daily trading volume. For example, in the last 24 hours, 2Give has had trading volume of USD 0.003121; 7ELEVEN had USD 0.041027; 808Coin had USD 50.46; 3DCoin had USD 73.39, etc. We've written previously about ten coins that are worth almost zero, some of which have already been declared dead.
More Altcoin Mining to be Integrated by Mining Pools in 2020 - Report.
2020 will see the mining pools start to integrate more altcoin mining with huge market potential and risks, says token data and rating agency TokenInsight.
The agency's 2019 mining industry report claims that there are only 64 mineable coins including Bitcoin (BTC) with more than USD 100,000 trading volume in 24 hours, and these (with BTC) account for 82% of total crypto market capitalization. What we're seeing now is altcoin mining and staking entering the “main” stage, says the report. These will get more market attention, and an increasing number of mining pools will start to integrate them, wanting to differentiate their services, diversify revenue streams and compete with other mining pools.
Also, as the industry faces the issues of transparency and supervision, major mining pools are actively building brand credibility, and it’s likely that the future will bring inspection and reporting in cooperation with independent third parties and decentralized mining pool protocol.
This year, we might also see more cloud mining products launched targeting the broader market. However, the future of the cloud mining market is outside of China, particularly in Russia, TokenInsight finds, adding that the number of users in Russia is “staggering.” The country’s development and participation in BTC mining will increase in 2020 with the ease of policies on crypto, but also the weather advantages.
Also, the researchers claim that the whole mining industry is extremely concentrated, with the top four companies accounting for c. 95% of the market. The agency made 2020 predictions for SHA-256 ASIC mining hardware market shares, finding that Bitmain will continue its reign with 63%, Canaan will climb up, back to the 2nd place, with 18% of the market share. If Eband goes public in 2020, it will have a positive impact on its market share and will squeeze out other players. Whatsminer has more than 20% of the market share in 2019, but its founder Yang Zuoxing, was arrested in 2019.
2020 will see the mining pools start to integrate more altcoin mining with huge market potential and risks, says token data and rating agency TokenInsight.
The agency's 2019 mining industry report claims that there are only 64 mineable coins including Bitcoin (BTC) with more than USD 100,000 trading volume in 24 hours, and these (with BTC) account for 82% of total crypto market capitalization. What we're seeing now is altcoin mining and staking entering the “main” stage, says the report. These will get more market attention, and an increasing number of mining pools will start to integrate them, wanting to differentiate their services, diversify revenue streams and compete with other mining pools.
Also, as the industry faces the issues of transparency and supervision, major mining pools are actively building brand credibility, and it’s likely that the future will bring inspection and reporting in cooperation with independent third parties and decentralized mining pool protocol.
This year, we might also see more cloud mining products launched targeting the broader market. However, the future of the cloud mining market is outside of China, particularly in Russia, TokenInsight finds, adding that the number of users in Russia is “staggering.” The country’s development and participation in BTC mining will increase in 2020 with the ease of policies on crypto, but also the weather advantages.
Also, the researchers claim that the whole mining industry is extremely concentrated, with the top four companies accounting for c. 95% of the market. The agency made 2020 predictions for SHA-256 ASIC mining hardware market shares, finding that Bitmain will continue its reign with 63%, Canaan will climb up, back to the 2nd place, with 18% of the market share. If Eband goes public in 2020, it will have a positive impact on its market share and will squeeze out other players. Whatsminer has more than 20% of the market share in 2019, but its founder Yang Zuoxing, was arrested in 2019.
Will Ethereum Reach Serenity This Year?
Ethereum 2.0 will launch by the end of 2020, estimates Andrew Keys, a managing partner at investment firm Darma Capital and one of the first employees at Ethereum application developer ConsenSys. Meanwhile, the Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 that will be the base for the multi-client testnet is already out.
Ethereum's major network upgrade, Ethereum 2.0 (a.k.a. Serenity), should be rolled out in phases and will bring with it sharding, proof-of-stake (PoS), and a new virtual machine among other things
“Proof of Stake Ethereum exists. It’s alive! The roadmap to Serenity is in full effect. 2020 will see Ethereum move stridently beyond Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, onto Phase 1 and the launch of shard chains. Then, it’s game on,” writes Keys in his blog post.
As a reminder, the network went through Istanbul as its last upgrade as Ethereum 1.0, with the unplanned addition of the Muir Glacier update. Istanbul itself changed the underlying Ethereum protocol and created new rules to improve the system, with six relevant Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) chosen to be implemented. Ethereum is expected to launch phase zero of Serenity, which will trigger the switch from the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, used also by Bitcoin (BTC), to PoS (e.g., used by Tezos). Phase zero will bring forth Beacon Chain, followed by Shard Chains and State Execution in the subsequent phases.
That said, though we know that Istanbul was the last step to phase zero, the date for this next phase is not clear and has been postponed from the end of 2019 already, at least according to the roadmap provided by ConsenSys. In October, Buterin said it was months away. In December, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake suggested the fifth anniversary of Ethereum as the date (July of 2020), but the comments were not in favor of that suggestion, with people expecting other details to be worked out before setting a date, and others not wanting to delay the upgrade for an anniversary of any sorts.
Ethereum 2.0 will launch by the end of 2020, estimates Andrew Keys, a managing partner at investment firm Darma Capital and one of the first employees at Ethereum application developer ConsenSys. Meanwhile, the Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 that will be the base for the multi-client testnet is already out.
Ethereum's major network upgrade, Ethereum 2.0 (a.k.a. Serenity), should be rolled out in phases and will bring with it sharding, proof-of-stake (PoS), and a new virtual machine among other things
“Proof of Stake Ethereum exists. It’s alive! The roadmap to Serenity is in full effect. 2020 will see Ethereum move stridently beyond Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, onto Phase 1 and the launch of shard chains. Then, it’s game on,” writes Keys in his blog post.
As a reminder, the network went through Istanbul as its last upgrade as Ethereum 1.0, with the unplanned addition of the Muir Glacier update. Istanbul itself changed the underlying Ethereum protocol and created new rules to improve the system, with six relevant Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) chosen to be implemented. Ethereum is expected to launch phase zero of Serenity, which will trigger the switch from the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, used also by Bitcoin (BTC), to PoS (e.g., used by Tezos). Phase zero will bring forth Beacon Chain, followed by Shard Chains and State Execution in the subsequent phases.
That said, though we know that Istanbul was the last step to phase zero, the date for this next phase is not clear and has been postponed from the end of 2019 already, at least according to the roadmap provided by ConsenSys. In October, Buterin said it was months away. In December, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake suggested the fifth anniversary of Ethereum as the date (July of 2020), but the comments were not in favor of that suggestion, with people expecting other details to be worked out before setting a date, and others not wanting to delay the upgrade for an anniversary of any sorts.
Bitcoin SV Rally Cools Off as Craig Wright Opens 'Pandora's Box'.
While Craig Wright news prompted bitcoin SV (BSV) rally is still based on speculations, rather than clear answers, the price of now the 4th largest coin has already dropped from its heights reached earlier today.
At pixel time (11:15 UTC), BSV trades at c. USD 362 and is down 17% from its peak of USD 436. The price even touched USD 327 earlier today. So far, this is the biggest correction during the recent rally. In either case, it's still up 77% in a day, increasing its weekly gains to 212%.
The price rise is not all that has prompted an uproar in the crypto community, as we've seen BSV flip bitcoin cash (BCH) - that is, BSV's total market capitalization surpassed that of BCH. The token landed in fourth place with the market capitalization of USD 6.5 billion, compared to now 5th-placed BCH's USD 6.2 billion. The market capitalization of the 3rd largest coin, XRP, stands at USD 10 billion.
While Craig Wright news prompted bitcoin SV (BSV) rally is still based on speculations, rather than clear answers, the price of now the 4th largest coin has already dropped from its heights reached earlier today.
At pixel time (11:15 UTC), BSV trades at c. USD 362 and is down 17% from its peak of USD 436. The price even touched USD 327 earlier today. So far, this is the biggest correction during the recent rally. In either case, it's still up 77% in a day, increasing its weekly gains to 212%.
The price rise is not all that has prompted an uproar in the crypto community, as we've seen BSV flip bitcoin cash (BCH) - that is, BSV's total market capitalization surpassed that of BCH. The token landed in fourth place with the market capitalization of USD 6.5 billion, compared to now 5th-placed BCH's USD 6.2 billion. The market capitalization of the 3rd largest coin, XRP, stands at USD 10 billion.
Are Attacks Between Rival Blockchains About to Rise?
It's no secret that rival blockchain networks, or to be more precise, the people behind the projects, don't like each other. The Bitcoin community rags on Ethereum, while the EOS community rags on Tron, and so on, in a seemingly endless chain of barbs, criticisms and mockery.
But does the war of words between cryptos ever spill over into something more aggressive and destructive? Possibly, if previous attacks on the likes of Verge and IOTA were the responsibility of rival developers, rather than random hackers.
And according to some commentators within the wider crypto community, the future could bear witness to a rise in rival chains attacking each other in one way or another. In an already fractious climate, this is likely to only make relations between cryptos even colder, and could even damage the future viability of some projects.
However, developers working with specific blockchains believe that such a scenario is unlikely. Yes, hackers who think they can make some money by attacking a network might attempt to do so, but rivalry alone isn't enough to motivate developers into doing the same.
A very brief history
First, is there any evidence that one network has somehow attacked a rival? Well, back in July 2018, an Ethereum developer accused members of the EOS community of a Sybil attack, which in this case saw the Ethereum blockchain being spammed with airdrops of tokens with no value, thereby inflating the price of the gas needed to process transactions.
Obviously, no one associated with EOS accepted this charge, but the fact that around USD 2 million was spent to send the worthless tokens indicates that whoever was behind the attack had deeper pockets than the average user.
Other evidence of rival attacks is scarce, although numerous breaches of various networks have taken place over recent months and years. There was a series of attacks against Verge in 2018, the theft of IOTA tokens (also 2018), as well as an "intentional attack" Ethereum suffered this past New Year's Eve.
Nothing suggests that such attacks were the work of anyone other than one or two perpetrators. However, given that you'd probably have to already have experience with blockchain to pull off such crimes, you could potentially stretch the meaning of 'rival attack' to incorporate them, since they were likely committed by people 'aligned' with another project.
It's no secret that rival blockchain networks, or to be more precise, the people behind the projects, don't like each other. The Bitcoin community rags on Ethereum, while the EOS community rags on Tron, and so on, in a seemingly endless chain of barbs, criticisms and mockery.
But does the war of words between cryptos ever spill over into something more aggressive and destructive? Possibly, if previous attacks on the likes of Verge and IOTA were the responsibility of rival developers, rather than random hackers.
And according to some commentators within the wider crypto community, the future could bear witness to a rise in rival chains attacking each other in one way or another. In an already fractious climate, this is likely to only make relations between cryptos even colder, and could even damage the future viability of some projects.
However, developers working with specific blockchains believe that such a scenario is unlikely. Yes, hackers who think they can make some money by attacking a network might attempt to do so, but rivalry alone isn't enough to motivate developers into doing the same.
A very brief history
First, is there any evidence that one network has somehow attacked a rival? Well, back in July 2018, an Ethereum developer accused members of the EOS community of a Sybil attack, which in this case saw the Ethereum blockchain being spammed with airdrops of tokens with no value, thereby inflating the price of the gas needed to process transactions.
Obviously, no one associated with EOS accepted this charge, but the fact that around USD 2 million was spent to send the worthless tokens indicates that whoever was behind the attack had deeper pockets than the average user.
Other evidence of rival attacks is scarce, although numerous breaches of various networks have taken place over recent months and years. There was a series of attacks against Verge in 2018, the theft of IOTA tokens (also 2018), as well as an "intentional attack" Ethereum suffered this past New Year's Eve.
Nothing suggests that such attacks were the work of anyone other than one or two perpetrators. However, given that you'd probably have to already have experience with blockchain to pull off such crimes, you could potentially stretch the meaning of 'rival attack' to incorporate them, since they were likely committed by people 'aligned' with another project.
