Here’s a quick breakdown of the biggest news stories and developments in the cryptocurrency sector for September 5, 2022.
1.Vasil hard fork date announced
Cardano’s next major upgrade, Vasil, is scheduled for September 22.According to Input Output, the lead technical developers of Cardano, Vasil is “the most significant Cardano upgrade to date”.The upgrade will improve the network’s capacity, lower the cost of transactions and expand Cardano’s Plutus smart contracts platform.
VASIL UPGRADE: DATE CONFIRMED ? — Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 2, 2022
Following the successful completion & extensive testing of all core components, plus confirmed community readiness, we along with @cardanostiftung can today announce 22nd September for the #Vasil upgrade on the #Cardano mainnet.?$ADA
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Vasil is technically a hard fork, but it most likely won’t be contentious.
To avoid misconceptions related to hard forks, projects like Cardano and Ethereum usually describe new software releases that require the chain to go through a hard fork as “upgrades”.
The upgrade is named after Vasil Dabov, an active Cardano ambassador and community member that passed away in 2021.
2.LG picks Hedera for LG Art Labs NFTs
South Korea-based electronics company LG has introduced a new NFT marketplace called LG Art Lab.
The marketplace is available on LG’s smart TVs and allows users to discover NFTs and trade them.Of course, the TV can then be used to showcase the user’s NFTs with a high image quality.
The platform is currently only available in the United States for owners of LG TVs running webOS 5.0 software or later.
LG Art Lab uses Hedera, a distributed ledger platform that uses a unique architecture called a hashgraph.This allows it to handle a large number of transactions while maintaining costs low—the project claims the network can handle more than 10,000 transactions per second at an average fee of $0.0001 per transaction.However, the Hedera network is currently permissioned, which means that only authorized entities can operate a node.
LG has been involved in the Hedera blockchain project since 2020, when the South Korean company joined Hedera’s governing council.
3.Mercado Bitcoin announces second round of layoffs
2TM, a company that owns the Brazil-based Mercado Bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange, has fired 15% of its employees in its second round of layoffs this “crypto winter”.About 100 employees lost their jobs.
The company cited adverse conditions in the global economy as the main factor that led to the decision.2TM also said that the competitive environment in Brazil is problematic because foreign crypto exchanges aren’t following the rules that local exchanges have to adhere to.
The company called for a legal framework for cryptocurrency-related activities to be established in Brazil.
The first round of layoffs at 2TM was announced in June.At the time, the company reduced its workforce by 12%.
2TM was valued at $2.1 billion after raising a $200 million investment in July 2021.
4.Binance identifies two suspects in KyberSwap frontend exploit
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao says that his exchange’s security team has identified two suspects in connection to last week’s KyberSwap frontend exploit.Per CZ, the information has been provided to the Kyber Network team, and Binance is also coordinating with law enforcement.
As we’ve covered previously, hackers managed to compromise the website hosting the user interface for the KyberSwap DEX aggregator.
This allowed them to trick users into approving malicious transactions.While $265,000 was stolen, only two wallets were affected in the exploit.
5.
Nigeria plans virtual free zone in partnership with Binance
The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) says it’s collaborating with Binance to establish a Virtual Free Zone in Nigeria.While NEPZA’s press release did not disclose many details, the project could be similar to the Dubai Virtual Free Zone.However, it would focus on blockchains and the digital economy to take advantage of the almost $1 trillion market enabled by the technology.Adesoji Adesugba, the chief executive of NEPZA, commented:
“Our goal is to engender a flourishing virtual free zones to take advantage of a near trillion dollar virtual economy in blockchains and digital economy.”
Free economic zones are usually areas that offer low taxes for companies in an effort to attract business and boost economic activity..
