[PoS Round-Up] Ethereum’s Medalla Testnet Launches, Cardano Releases Shelley Mainnet

PoS Round-Up is our focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem

stakefish

Aug 5, 2020 — 4 min read

PoS Round-Up is our focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem

Ethereum

With anticipation building for Ethereum 2.0, DeFi setting new records, and ether on a bull run, a lot has happened in the Ethereum world in the past two weeks. Here are some of the highlights.

Medalla Testnet & The eth2 Validator Launchpad

Medalla, the final public testnet before the launch of the Ethereum 2.0 network, went live today. Twenty thousand validators have joined the network so far.

Last week, the eth2 research team joined forces with ConsenSys and DeepWork Studio to release the eth2 validator launchpad, which guides users through the process of setting up an eth2 validator. If you want to run a validator on Medalla and help clear the way for the eth2 mainnet, get yourself some Görli testnet ether and get started!

If you need help or just want to talk shop with other hobbyists, check out the growing ethstaker community on Reddit and Discord.

Celebrating Five Years

Thursday marked five years since the first Ethereum block was mined on July 30, 2015. For a quick review, read through Consensys’ retrospective covering some of the most (in)famous events in the network’s history.

EDCON

EDCON (Community Ethereum Development Conference) will take place online from August 9 to August 11. Speakers include Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Foundation and Casper Labs researcher Vlad Zamfir, and stakefish’s own Head of Strategy & Operations Jun Soo (JK) Kim.

The Graph

The Graph, a project aiming to provide developers with easy access to blockchain data, has launched a testnet version of its service. Fifteen groups have signed up to participate as nodes in the decentralized network.

Note: stakefish is an official backer of The Graph.

Cardano

Cardano has taken a major step toward decentralizing the network with the mainnet release of Shelley. During the Shelley era, the network will shift from a centralized, federated model to a Proof of Stake system in which control of the network will be handed over to network participants.

We’ve created an infographic to help you keep track of the growing Cardano ecosystem.

Elrond

The Elrond Network mainnet went live on July 30. Soon after launch, the team announced a “major update and improvement” to the GLD token called Elrond Gold, Elrond’s first DeFi integration with Orion Protocol, and the integration of Band Protocol oracles.

Cosmos

On August 11, the CosmWasm team will release coralnet, a permissionless testnet developers can use to explore writing CosmWasm smart contracts. Once IBC and CosmWasm are live, developers will be able to use CosmWasm to write cross-chain smart contracts.

Solana

Solana and Arweave have funded a Gitcoin bounty for the development of a bridge between the two networks to allow Solana to use Arweave for data storage and lighten the load for Solana validators. You can read the full announcement on Solana’s blog.

Polkadot

The first governance vote on the newly permissionless Polkadot network has concluded, with an overwhelming 86% of participants approving a 100x split of the denomination of the network’s native DOT token. The change in denomination should take effect on August 21 (“Denomination Day”), about 72 hours after DOT transfers are set to be enabled.

Stake your DOT with us!

Edgeware

Edgeware has published an overview of its roadmap. The team’s ambitious list of goals includes building a bridge to Ethereum, bonding to Polkadot as a parachain, and implementing support for the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Stake your EDG with us!

Anchor

Terra, Cosmos, the Web3 Foundation, and Solana have announced a new DeFi platform called Anchor. Anchor offers savings accounts and a lending platform, the same ingredients that led to the explosion of Ethereum’s booming DeFi sector.

stakefish

We’ve published a beginner’s guide to Ethereum 2.0 for those just starting out. Stay tuned for a deeper dive in our follow-up blog post.

We post a new edition of our hey.fish news series every week. Follow us on Twitter for capsule news covering the biggest stories in crypto, and join us on Telegram for more in-depth explainers.