- The University of Basel presented Vitalik Buterin with an Honorary Doctorate award. The university’s Faculty of Business and Economics gave the award to Buterin for his achievement in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. He is now known as Dr. Buterin.
- Amazon reveals blockchain solution void of decentralization. The Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB) and Amazon Managed Blockchain for Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. QLDB is a database record that is transparent, permanent, and verifiable which is supervised by a central and trusted authority. Eyal Shani, a software engineer and consultant, theorizes that decentralization has a not so favorable reputation and that it is just a marketing buzz.
Some believe that as much as Satoshi and some don’t want to hear about decentralization, possibly because of the bad reputation it had and the excessive amount of speculators… It’s a marketing buzz… That may continue to happen until creating a real decentralized blockchain is as easy as creating a database today.
Eyal Shani
- Japan reveals plans to jump-start regulations on ICO. The country’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) will also revise two of its laws that can be appropriate to the token trade. The agency requires cryptocurrency business operators to register their business.
- Three large crypto exchanges have new offerings. Binance demos Binance DEX, Huobi announced Huobi Derivatives Market (Huobi DM), and OKEx introduced Perpetual Swaps.
- Big names invested a total of $27.5 million in ErisX a crypto trading platform. Among the participants of the Series B funding round was ConsenSys, Bitmain, Nasdaq Ventures, Fidelity Investments, Monex Group, Pantera Capital, and CTC Group Investments.
- Ethereum Classic Development (ETCDEV) ceased current activities due to funding difficulties. According to the development team’s founder, the funding struggles was connected to the market crash and a company cash crunch. They were unsuccessful in obtaining short-term funding through crowdfunding.
- ConsenSys further strategized for its future. CEO Joseph Lubin sent employees a letter defining the strengthening and streamlining of the company. ConsenSys 2.0 is for an increase in accountability, productivity, and revenue awareness.
