Odyssey Makes Bitcoin Sassy

Polygon, a layer-2 blockchain, went down yesterday. Developers blamed a technical upgrade on the blockchain network for the network’s inability to produce new blocks for over 11 hours. The incident left users puzzled, especially because of its lengthiness. However,  the network is now functioning again after developers deployed a “temporary fix”. Polygon’s native token $MATIC.X lost 2% in today’s market, which wasn’t as bad as other coins.A message was posted on the Polygon network’s forum notifying users that maintenance would require downtime on one of the system’s three layers. The layer in question was the so-called  Heimdall node, which acts as a verifier layer that creates checkpoints. 

“We suspect there may have been a bug in the upgrade which affected consensus and caused different Heimdall validators to be on different versions of the chain, thereby not reaching 2/3 consensus,” it said.

It is believed that a recent upgrade prevented the network from achieving consensus. Heimdall may have been halted by the bug since validators were using different chain versions. The team also said that Heimdall’s downtime also caused Polygon’s Bor node to cease working since Bor acts as a block producer and is a “user-facing Proof-of-Stake chain.” 

Business as usual resumed after 11 hours of downtime. However, as if an 11-hour outage wasn’t confidence-inducing, the developers indicated their fix was only  “a temporary solution.” (What does that mean?!??!) 

Anyway, the team is reportedly working on a solution that will fix the problem in the long term. In a Twitter post, developers reassured users that their funds and data are safe, as the nodes only affect validator transactions, not data or transactions between users.

Even though the issue has been resolved, it has raised many questions because Polygon has been experiencing network outages frequently. Previously, the network experienced congestion due to high demand in January. There have been network problems with the blockchain platforms, such as Solana, which causes speculation that the field may not have matured enough to deliver the promised benefits.

Ethereum – among other EVM-powered chains – are the bedrock of almost all DeFi, NFT projects, dapps, and web3 developments. However, one company is hoping to change that by bringing  NFTs and dapps to the Bitcoin network.

Okcoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, is teaming up with the Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation to launch Bitcoin Odyssey, a grant program with $165 million in funding designed to introduce Web3 elements to Bitcoin. 

The Bitcoin Odyssey initiative is co-chaired by Kyle Ellicott, a partner at Stacks Accelerator, and Alex Chizhik, head of listings at Okcoin. The initiative will also receive assistance from other organizations in the blockchain industry – namely from investors such as Digital Currency Group, GSR, and White Star Capital, who are participating in the fund. They will allocate funds and resources to projects based on Stacks.

The capital will be used to develop solutions across web3, including metaverses, play-to-earn games, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Additionally, the fund will help create CityCoins such as MiamiCoins that use the Stacks protocol. 

Stacks, a blockchain network that brings smart contracts and DeFi to Bitcoin, caught the attention of investors last year when a 12-year-old boy sold out an NFT collection in less than an hour. This January, Stacks debuted its next-gen mainnet, a step towards developing new use cases for the Bitcoin network. 

Following the news about the Bitcoin Odyssey, the price of $STX.X jumped 70% to $1.89 but fell back to $1.42.

The funding will help open bitcoin-flavored doors in the world of DeFi and NFTs. However, it is hard to discern what impact these projects will have on an ecosystem already dominated by Ethereum and Ethereum alternatives. Furthermore, the initiative doesn’t elaborate on how it will resolve existing blockchain network problems such as congestion, gas fees, and environmental impacts.

Even though crypto has been in decline over the last few months, and investors are worried about a “Crypto Winter”,  tech giants such as Stripe and eBay are embracing crypto.

Stripe formally launched its crypto services yesterday, giving businesses the ability to accept cryptocurrency through Stripe. Among the services offered by the company are payouts for Web3 companies as well as know-your-customer (KYC) checks and fraud prevention services. The payment company announced that it has agreements with FTX, FTX U.S., Nifty Gateway, Just Mining, and Blockchain.com in order to enable Web3 services. Moreover, it also launched its own line of NFTs called CubeThingies.

With the latest announcement, Stripe is getting back into the crypto game after ceasing to accept payments in Bitcoin in 2018. The company expressed a new interest in crypto last year when it hired a team to develop Web3 payment services.

eCommerce platform eBay is also showing some interest in crypto. The online marketplace showed a “digital wallet” slide early in yesterday’s Investor Day presentation, adding to speculation about the company’s plans regarding cryptos. 

The rumor that eBay might accept cryptocurrency payments first emerged earlier this week when CEO Jamie Iannone stated in an interview that the company would be “going deeper on all these things, payments, advertising, our focus categories.” However, during its presentation, eBay did not make any specific announcements regarding cryptocurrency, aside from saying that it would have a digital wallet available sometime in the second quarter. 

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom has warned that crypto ATMs are illegal and must be shut down in the U.K.. Legal action will be taken against ATM operators if they fail to comply with the order, said the financial watchdog. 

According to the announcement, since the financial watchdog has not authorized any crypto firms to operate ATMs, all crypto ATMs in the country are illegal. 

“Crypto ATMs offering crypto-asset exchange services in the U.K. must be registered with us and comply with U.K. Money Laundering Regulations,” the regulator wrote. 

There are currently 81 cryptocurrency ATMs in the U.K., and more than 50 of them are located in London. In terms of the number of cryptocurrency ATMs, the U.K. is among the top 10 countries in the world. However, for comparison, there are over 32,000 ATMs in the U.S.

The warning by the FCA on cryptocurrency ATMs is just the latest in a series of sweeping actions against the broader crypto industry. The FCA issued a report last year in January with five concerns consumers should be aware of when it comes to cryptocurrencies, including consumer protection, volatility in prices, and misleading marketing.