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Cardano’s Development Team Highlights 3 Steps to Stake ADA 

Lele Jima
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Cardano’s Development Team Highlights 3 Steps to Stake ADA 

 

IOG educates the Cardano community on how to earn passive income through staking.


Following the massive decline in the value of crypto this year, many cryptocurrency investors have opted to hold their digital currencies in their wallets as they remain hopeful that prices will skyrocket again. 

For instance, Cardano’s native cryptocurrency, ADA, has plunged 89% since hitting an all-time high of $3.09. At the time of writing, the asset class is changing hands at $0.51, according to data on Coingecko. 

Many investors who bought ADA at its peak have no choice but to hold the cryptocurrency in their wallets, hoping that price will rally again. 

Interestingly, instead of holding ADA and waiting for the coin’s price to soar again, investors can deploy their assets to various staking pools to earn rewards. 

Cardano’s Staking

In a Twitter thread today, Input Output Global (IOG), the team behind Cardano’s development, shared insights about how Cardano’s staking works and how investors can benefit from the initiative. 

IOG noted that Cardano enables stake pool operators and ADA delegators to earn rewards via staking. The stake pool operators are responsible for running nodes that support the network.  

Staking on Cardano is a way investors contribute to the network by validating transactions on the blockchain using a non-custodial mechanism. 

The initiative adds security to Cardano, enabling the network to achieve complete decentralization. 

In three steps, the IOG highlights how Cardano investors can stake their ADA coins in anticipation of an imminent rally that will likely occur anytime soon. 

Delegating ADA to a Stake Pool 

Investors interested in staking their ADA are required to hold the asset class in a Cardano-compatible wallet. Some Cardano wallets supporting staking include Yoroi, Flint, Adalite, Eternl, etc. The user can find a dedicated pool to stake their assets to from the wallet’s platform using the “Staking” tab. 

Additionally, ADA investors can check various community websites, including cardanoscan.io, adatools.io, pooltool.io, and pool.pm.  

Stake Confirmation and Activation

Once you have selected a pool, you will need to delegate your ADA to be registered for staking five days (epoch) before the start of a block-producing epoch to earn rewards. 

It is noteworthy that staking rewards are distributed within 20 to 25 days if the pool you delegate your ADA to produces blocks. 

Earning Rewards for Contributing to the Cardano Network 

Cardano’s Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, Ouroboros, will calculate your contributions to the staking pool at every epoch. 

The calculation will focus on the amount of ADA staked and the Pool’s return on stake. As long as the pool you delegate your ADA to produces blocks; you will be rewarded automatically every five days. You can choose to withdraw the rewards at any time or do so at your convenience. 

IOG further guides users to keep on checking pools are generating blocks regularly; if not, the pool might be saturated and users might delegate to another pool.

 

Polygon Becomes Third Biggest Blockchain With Highest Number of Total Addresses

Mark Brennan
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Polygon Becomes Third Biggest Blockchain With Highest Number of Total Addresses

 

Polygon’s total addresses have reached 157 million during the current bear market.



Polygon Network has shown remarkable resiliency during the challenging time when the value of crypto assets keeps plummeting. Despite the ongoing bear market, the Ethereum scaling platform saw a consistent increase in the number of network addresses and the volume of transactions, as stated in the report covering the platform’s performance so far in the second quarter of 2022.

According to the stats provided by Coin98, Polygon has seen a surge of 22 percent in total addresses since the start of 2022. Polygon CEO Sandeep shared the numbers. Polygon is now the third biggest blockchain regarding the total number of addresses, only behind Ethereum and BNB.

As The Crypto Basic reports, Polygon’s Q2 report shows, “Polygon now has 5.34 Million unique addresses, an increase of 12% from Q1. According to the details released, Polygon’s total transaction volume in Q2 has spiked by 4% compared to Q1. The average transaction cost has also decreased by around 49%, a huge reduction especially considering that the entire crypto market has been on a downward move since the start of the year in Q1. The average transaction cost during Q2 was around $0.018.”

The growth of Polygon in the second quarter was especially noteworthy, with over 90 thousand developers publishing their first contract on the blockchain.

Polygon said:

“Over 90k developers published their first contract. This is more than 3x the pace of Q1 growth. On average, 1k new creators and 2.7k new contracts went live daily on the chain.”

Polygon’s growth is also accurately represented in its DeFi protocols, which have a propensity to attract users who are dissatisfied with the high gas prices in Ethereum. The resulting wave of migration from Ethereum to Polygon has benefited bridge aggregators and decentralized exchanges. Currently, Polygon has $1.85B in Total value locked, with AAVE dominating Polygon TVL by 23.44%.

The Polygon NFT market showed growth as well. OpenSea announced that 1.2 million new wallets came to Polygon, bringing the total number of unique active wallets up to 1.5 million, a 47 percent increase over the previous number. Although the number of NFT trades on Polygon has decreased by 64 percent on the open sea, the total amount of money transactions increased by 47 percent to 122 million dollars.

In related developments, the Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (also known as the Polygon zkEVM) was recently released by Polygon. The solution is said to be compatible with preexisting smart contracts, developer tools, and wallets. It aims to improve scalability, reduce costs, and maintain security without compromising any of these factors.

New Bipartisan US Bill Puts CFTC In Charge Of Regulating Bitcoin And Ethereum

Mark Brennan
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New Bipartisan US Bill Puts CFTC In Charge Of Regulating Bitcoin And Ethereum

 

Bitcoin and Ethereum are classified as commodities in the latest US crypto bill.


 

A new crypto bill authored by Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow and Republican Senator John Boozman identifies Bitcoin and Ethereum as commodities and places the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in charge of the supervision of both assets.

The bill, which received support from Senator Cory Booker and Senator John Thune, holds that supervision of the rest of the crypto market would be split between the CFTC and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) without clarifying how exactly it would happen. Additionally, exchanges facilitating the trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum in the US would have to be registered with the CFTC.

According to a report by the Washington Post, Senator Stabenow, head of the Senate Agriculture Committee, highlighting the need for transparency and accountability in the crypto markets, said:

“That’s why we are closing regulatory gaps and requiring that these markets operate under straightforward rules that protect customers and keep our financial system safe.”

The latest bill joins that proposed by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand in June to regulate the crypto markets. Notably, while the Lummis bill also gives substantial oversight of the crypto markets to the CFTC, as it classifies most crypto as commodities, it doesn’t make registering exchanges compulsory.

It is worth noting that the call for crypto regulations in the US has become more rampant following the Terra ecosystem debacle in May. Notably, the US Treasury has called for stablecoin regulation to take precedence, calling for stablecoin rules by year’s end.

As a result of the calls for crypto regulation, the classification of cryptocurrencies and the decision of which regulator should have superior oversight over the emerging markets have become major talking points. Notably, the SEC and the CFTC have argued why they should be the market’s dominant authority. However, the crypto industry continues to lean towards the CFTC, perceiving the SEC as unfriendly and power hungry.

Binance DeFi Staking Adds Support For Ripple’s XRP

Mark Brennan
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Binance DeFi Staking Adds Support For Ripple’s XRP

 

Ripple’s XRP scores another win as Binance DeFi staking starts supporting it with up to 1.4% APR.


 

For years since the inception of decentralized finance (DeFi) on exchanges like Binance, only a few tokens have earned support on the Binance Defi platform. Basically, the said tokens are often the most reliable in the market. Binance conducts due diligence on the tokens before adding DeFi support for them in order to prevent investors from rug pulls and scams.

Now, it appears that Ripple’s XRP is winning a place among the various crypto coins supported by Binance DeFi staking. Binance exchange took to Twitter to announce the good news. The company also took the liberty of updating its announcement page to that effect.  

What Is DeFi Staking?

DeFi staking involves users locking up their crypto holdings in a fashion similar to fixed deposits as termed in the traditional banking system. The catch behind the lock-up is earning more tokens as interest from the specific staking pool availed on the platform. Binance exchange operates stoke pools for various coins, with each having its own interest rate or APR percentage.

When staking, the user chooses how long they want to lock up their holdings. After that, they have no direct access to the funds until the said period is over. Meanwhile, the staking rewards are remitted to their spot account on a daily basis.

DeFi Staking Plan For XRP And LTC On Binance

According to a post by Binance announcing the addition of XRP and LTC to its staking pools, users who lock their tokens will earn 1.4% APR on their stakes. In the event that the user wants to unlock their stake, they can do so via the standard redemption procedure to free up their principal amount, which will then be credited to their spot account within 24-48 hours. 

Ripple Moves 100M XRP, In Total 224M XRP Moved Around Exchanges and Unknown Wallets in 24 Hours

Lele Jima
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0
Ripple Moves 100M XRP, In Total 224M XRP Moved Around Exchanges and Unknown Wallets in 24 Hours

Another set of XRP whale transactions has been recorded over the last 24 hours.  



Large movements of Ripple (XRP) between exchanges and unknown wallets have recently been recorded. Over the last 24 hours, a total of 224,877,206 XRP (224.87 million XRP coins) have flowed between cryptocurrency exchanges and unknown wallets and vice versa. 

Breakdown of the XRP Transactions

According to cryptocurrency whale data tracking service Whale Alert, the first transaction saw 80 million XRP coins worth around $30 million transferred from FTX exchange to an unknown wallet. 

Whale Alert reported that 40 million XRP coins, valued at $14.85 million, were moved from an unknown wallet to the Bitstamp cryptocurrency exchange. 

A few hours later, 44,877,206 XRP coins ($16.62 million) were transferred from the Bitstamp exchange to a different unknown wallet. 

Furthermore, Whale Alert shared transaction details of another large XRP movement that flowed from an unknown wallet to the Bitso exchange. 

Seeing large amounts of XRP flow between exchanges and unknown wallets is gradually becoming a daily routine. As reported by TheCryptoBasic, hundreds of millions of XRP tokens have been transferred from exchanges to unknown wallets and vice versa this week. 

Ripple Transfers 100 Million XRP to Unknown Wallet

Interestingly, the popular Silicon Valley tech company Ripple itself was also involved in the large flows of XRP coins. Whale Alert noted that the blockchain company transferred 100 million XRP ($37.18 million) to an unknown wallet. 

The transaction made by Ripple came a few days after the company unlocked 1 billion XRP from its escrow wallet. The move is part of the company’s monthly XRP unlock the program. 

In its bid to keep the price of XRP stable, Ripple locked back over 700 million XRP coins, while the remaining coins would be used to cater to the company’s daily expenses. 

It will not be surprising to know that the 100 million XRP moved by Ripple to an unknown wallet yesterday are part of the remaining unlocked coins. 

Terra (Luna) Mounting Legal Woes Continue As New York Attorney’s Office Urges Victims To File Reports

Mark Brennan
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Terra (Luna) Mounting Legal Woes Continue As New York Attorney’s Office Urges Victims To File Reports

 

Terra’s legal woes grow.


In a press release on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James urged victims of the Terra ecosystem collapse to file a report with the attorney’s office as it launches investigations into fraudulent activities in the crypto space.

“New Yorkers who have been affected by the dramatic devaluations of the Terra and Luna virtual currencies and the account freezes on cryptocurrency staking or earning programs, such as Anchor, Celsius, Voyager, and Stablegains, are strongly encouraged to contact OAG’s Investor Protection Bureau,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., in a press release on Sunday, reminded Terra investors that it had launched a class action suit against Terra. The shareholder rights law firm urged affected individuals to come forward and join the lawsuit.

TerraForm Labs and its founder, Do Kwon, are currently facing at least three separate class action suits. One from Scott+Scott Attorneys, one from Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., and one from the Rosen Law Firm.

FatMan, a well-known Terra whistleblower, recently revealed that he is joining the class action lawsuit filed by Scott+Scott and is encouraging others to do the same. FatMan, more than ever, appears convinced that the primary culprit responsible for the events leading up to the UST de-pegging and subsequent LUNA collapse is Terra founder Do Kwon.

Notably, there have recently been allegations that Do Kwon has been withdrawing large sums from the project and new links attempting to connect him to a similar failed project called Basis Cash. Do Kwon continues to maintain that there was no wrongdoing on his part.

Terra and Do Kwon remain under investigation in the US and South Korea; investigators hope to uncover the events that led up to the collapse of the once promising ecosystem that wiped off over $40 billion of investor funds from the market in May.

Shiba Inu’s Lead Developer Urges SHIB Supporters to Help BONE Gets Listed On This Top Exchange

Lele Jima
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0
Shiba Inu’s Lead Developer Urges SHIB Supporters to Help BONE Gets Listed On This Top Exchange

 

The lead developer of Shiba Inu has encouraged the community to vote BONE in the ongoing Gate.io listing exercise. 


Shytoshi Kusama, SHIB’s lead developer, has urged members of the Shiba Inu community to vote for BONE, the native governance token of ShibaSwap, in the Gate.io listing exercise. 

Gate.io urged its users to vote on their favorite token to enable it to get listed for trading on the platform. The exchange listed a total of 10 cryptocurrencies in voting, including BONE, CatCoin Token (CATS), EverRise (RISE), A Hunters Dream (CAW), etc. Out of the ten cryptocurrencies, three with the largest number of votes will be selected to enter the “final Depositing Vote for Listing #2.” 

The tokens will also be required to have a minimum of 500 votes before they are selected to enter the final round of voting. 

According to Gate.io, the voting period will run from August 1, 2022, to August 9, 2022.  Following the announcement, Kusama called on Shiba Inu enthusiasts to cast their votes for BONE in the ongoing exercise. 

If BONE ranks among the top three tokens in the current voting activity, it will proceed to the final round directly and possibly get listed on Gate.io after meeting other criteria. 

Successfully Running MicroStrategy For 3 Decades, Saylor Steps Down As CEO After Firm Bears Huge Bitcoin Losses

Mark Brennan
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Successfully Running MicroStrategy For 3 Decades, Saylor Steps Down As CEO After Firm Bears Huge Bitcoin Losses

 

Microstrategy’s Michael Saylor is stepping down as CEO to concentrate on Bitcoin advocacy as company chairman.


 

Microstrategy is perhaps one of the largest crypto-buying companies in the world. The company started buying Bitcoin back in 2020 when founder and CEO Michael Saylor realized that cryptos like BTC are a viable hedge against inflation.

While the company was initially a software creator, Michael’s leadership saw it diversify its business to include crypto investments. It was one of the largest Bitcoin buyers; as of now, Microstrategy holds around 129,699.

Current Company President To Take Over CEO Role

Microstrategy is a business intelligence firm co-founded by Saylor in 1989; now, after three decades at the top helm of the company, Michael is leaving the CEO role to become chairman. Meanwhile, the current company president Phong Lee will take over as CEO. The company announced the news via its official website.

Lee said: “I’m honored and excited to continue leading this truly innovative organization, as President & CEO… I look forward to leading the organization for the long-term health and growth of our enterprise software and bitcoin acquisition strategies.”

Saylor To Increase Crypto Advocacy Efforts

After stepping down as CEO, Michael Saylor plans to ramp up his Bitcoin advocacy and focus on promoting the company’s efforts in accumulating Bitcoin. This move will create two separate centers of focus for the company. The chairman will handle the BTC field while the CEO will concentrate on the company’s original objective of building software products.

Michael said,

“I believe that splitting the roles of Chairman and CEO will enable us to better pursue our two corporate strategies of acquiring and holding bitcoin and growing our enterprise analytics software business.”

This change comes as the company releases its financial results for the second quarter of 2022, revealing that the company has incurred a loss of $1 billion due to the fall of Bitcoin’s price over the last few months.

According to Wu Blockchain: “As of June 30, 2022, the carrying value of MicroStrategy’s digital assets (129,699 bitcoins) was $1.988b, which reflects cumulative impairment losses of $1.989 billion since acquisition and an average carrying amount per bitcoin of approximately $15,326.”

However, it’s not clear whether the Q2 results influenced Michaels’s decision to leave the CEO post or not.

Scalability, Speed Or Security? Nearly 8000 Wallets Drained In Solana Ecosystem Exploit

Mark Brennan
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Scalability, Speed Or Security? Nearly 8000 Wallets Drained In Solana Ecosystem Exploit

 

Do we need more Scalability, Speed rather than Security as the Solana Ecosystem is under attack again?



In a tweet earlier today, Magic Eden confirmed that there is an exploit draining wallets on the Solana ecosystem. At the time of writing, data from Dune shows that over 7,700 addresses have been affected, as pundits estimate that at least $5 million in crypto assets have been lost.

While the vulnerability causing the exploit remains unknown, Binance’s Changpeng Zhao and other pundits have confirmed that the exploit does not seem to be affecting cold wallets or central exchanges. Users have been advised that disabling permissions granted to suspicious links in their wallets may not be enough and have been instead encouraged to move their assets to cold wallets or central exchanges.

The information available shows that the attackers have somehow managed to gain access to the seed phrases of users. At the time of writing, the most popular theory is one suggested by Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer. According to Sirer, the exploit is likely a supply chain attack, as he suggests a JavaScript library may have been compromised.

Meanwhile, Adam Cochran reports that most victims appear to be IOS users, with most of their wallet interactions on mobile. Phantom and Slope wallets’ users also appear to be the most affected.

While there have been reports of a similar issue on Ethereum, these are very few, and it only appears to be the case when seed phrases are shared with Slope.

On-chain sleuth CIA Officer reports that the amount of stolen SOL per minute appears to be slowing down from 1K SOL per minute to less than 1 SOL per minute. Notably, not only SOL has been drained from the affected wallets but also stablecoins like USDC and USDT and assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Notably, a network validator has launched a DDOS attack on the network in an attempt to slow down the attacker.

Solana Status reports that engineers are currently working together to get to the root cause of the exploit as the community awaits further updates.

Solana, in recent years, has grown to become one of the most popular altcoins, sometimes even dubbed an “Ethereum killer.” However, in recent months, the network has been plagued by several outages and slowdowns. Consequently, it has attracted mockery from the likes of Cardano chief Charles Hoskinson.

Cardano Decentralized Application (dApp) Browser for iOS Launched

Albert Brown
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Cardano Decentralized Application (dApp) Browser for iOS Launched

The leading wallet has launched dApp browser support and other exciting features for iOS devices. 


The team behind Flint Wallet has rolled out a new upgrade that will enable iOS devices to run Cardano-based decentralized applications (dApp). 

Features of the Latest Upgrade

Per an announcement, there are two outstanding features of the latest Flint upgrade for iOS. 

“First, the two most important features in this update are the dApp browser, and you can now go directly to the Milkomeda wrap/unwrap transactions in the Bridge from the transaction’s link in Flint,” the crypto wallet provider stated. 

The new features will enable users to enjoy their foray into the world of decentralized finance. Flint shared a few images of the wallet’s new look and what iOS users will enjoy when they install the latest version of the wallet. 

Users can search for their favorite Cardano-based decentralized application directly from the application. At the moment, the latest Flint feature is only available for iOS devices, with plans being made to also roll out the offering to Android soon. 

“Did you know iOS now has a dApp browser? That’s right, a new version of Flint for iOS is here! Android is coming soon!” Flint said. 

dcSpark CTO and Cardano Founder Reactions

Cardano enthusiasts reacted positively to the development. The move would help lure more people to the Cardano ecosystem as people will be excited to run dApp browsers on their iOS devices. 

Sebastien Guillemot, the CTO and co-founder of dcSpark, also shared the development on Twitter, saying: 

“dApp browser now available for iOS. Compatible with every dApp on Cardano! No developer tweaks are required. Our new fast backend is also almost ready! Android is pending approval.” 

Meanwhile, Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder, retweeted Guillemot’s tweet to ensure that the information gets across to more Cardano enthusiasts. 

Launched in 2021, Flint Wallet describes itself as “Your friendly go-to wallet for DeFi and NFTs.” Users of the wallet can manage multiple cryptocurrency assets from different blockchains, including Cardano. 

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