Written by: MVP Workshop

This Month in Blockchain — August 2019


It’s summertime, and the living is easy. I guess people working in the blockchain and crypto industries also need to go on holiday every now and then. Nevertheless, we have had some pretty interesting pieces of news this month, so let’s take a brief overview of the hottest ones!

Celsius is the Fastest Growing Lender of Cryptocurrencies

Big news first! Celsius Network, a platform for borrowing and lending cryptocurrencies, has managed to top $300 million in deposits. Moreover, they completed more than $2 billion in originated crypto loans, according to an official press release.

The reason why this is big news is that MVP Workshop has been working on the platform development for two years. We cannot help but express excitement over such an achievement and are proud of the work we have managed to complete so far. Our fruitful partnership with Celsius Network has a bright future ahead of it, and we are always happy to contribute to its growth!

Crypto-Related Businesses in Germany Will Have to Obtain Licenses

Germany is updating AML (Anti-Money Laundering) regulations that will also affect many crypto businesses in this country. According to the Cointelegraph article, these new regulations will require businesses to obtain the so-called BaFin license. One of the main reasons for this change is that cryptos will be considered a financial instrument in Germany from January 2020.

Provable Launched Provable + OpenZeppelin Starter Kit

Provable and OpenZeppelin made an official announcement about launching a Starter Kit for all developers who want to make DApps which interact with oracles. They have joined forces to facilitate the development of blockchain technology.

Trail of Bits Introduces Crytic

Crytic is the newest security product introduced by Trail of Bits that provides smart contract continuous assurance. This platform will help its users by reporting build status on every commit. Furthermore, it is also designed to run a suite of analyses related to security, providing immediate feedback. According to the press release, the beta version of the platform will be open soon.

What’s New in Eth2–2 August 2019

Published in Ethereum.org notes, this text represents Ben Edington’s take on Eth2 specifications, also focusing on networking and testing.

Law of [Blockchain] Commons

Law of Blockchain Commons is a 5-part series that focuses on the analysis of common tragedies, tech & law stacks, law-as-commons, law commons methodologies, and future commons. It is an attempt by CleanApp to map all the blockchain-based commons projects that are in development out there and to somehow connect them into a logical whole, relying on the law.

AWS Supports a $100,000 Competition

Amazon Web Services wants to “change the face of blockchain” by giving things a little push. Now, Amazon is popular for pushing things by filling the pockets of the pushers, and this time is no exception. They supported a competition that was launched by VDF Alliance and its primary goal is to solve how to calculate the VDF (verifiable delay function) in the shortest time possible. If you think you can do it, you have an opportunity to earn $100,000.

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Smart Vault Is an Alternative for Storing Encrypted Files on IPFS

All blockchain-based projects have similar methods for protecting data that usually involve encrypting it and publicly storing it on IPFS. However, Coinmonks published a Medium blog post that discusses an alternative which is embodied in the so-called Smart Vault. It is a GDPR-compliant way of making encrypted data accessible only to the authorized parties.

ENS Launches Support for Tor .onion Address Resolution

Ethereum Name Service is now able to support .onion Tor addresses. They are actively working on encompassing things that are located outside of the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who uses the Tor browser knows that .onion addresses look much like Ethereum addresses — they don’t have names, only random string of characters in front of the .onion. People have been trying to solve this problem for a long time, and ENS believes that they could contribute to it.

New Money-Laundering Regulations to Affect Crypto Exchanges

Online cryptocurrency exchanges have been on the margin for a very long time, simply because they were not a part of the regulated mainstream finance industry. However, this could come to an end with the new regulations that could either help these platforms fully go mainstream or remain marginalized forever. This MIT Technology Review article pretty much sums up what lays ahead of the crypto exchanges in the future and how the Financial Action Task Force plans to change and improve things.

An Ethereum Report: 4x More Developers

According to the Blockchain Developer Analysis Report which was released by Electric Capital, Ethereum has four times more developers compared to any other crypto ecosystem. In fact, although the crypto market was going through ups and downs, the number of full-time developers was steadily increasing, with the 13% overall year-over-year increase. The report provides several other interesting figures about Ethereum developers that are neatly summarized in this Consensys article.

We prepared this blog post as an overview of the most engaging blockchain and crypto news and moments that marked the previous month.

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This Month in Blockchain — August 2019 was originally published in MVP Workshop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.


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