Ethereum developers announce hard fork delay

Summary:

• Decentralized applications (dApps), built based on 4 mainstream blockchains, had 1.5 million users in 2018
• Ethereum developers postpone hard fork
• Malaysia to start regulating cryptocurrency trading and ICOs

Investors have started Wednesday’s trading in rather upbeat moods as major cryptocurrencies have experienced some rises after yesterday’s losses. According to CoinMarketCap, the capitalization of the whole market stands around the $122 billion mark whereas the largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin accounts for roughly 52.5% of this value.

dApps, built based on 4 mainstream blockchains, had 1.5 million users in the previous year

Dapp.com published its annual report concerning dApps, built based on 4 mainstream blockchains, including Ethereum, EOS and TRON. The report shows that these dApps gathered around 1.5 million users in the previous year. When we take a look at concrete blockchains, we could observe that Ethereum dominated market in terms of a number of dApps as around 800 thousands of users used Ethereum dApps. On the other side, blockchain gaming dApps led in a market dominance in terms of a number of decentralized applications by their category (35%).

Bitcoin (BITCOIN on xStation5) moved back from $3600 yesterday, but today the cryptocurrency has recouped some of these losses. Source: xStation5

Ethereum developers delay Constantinople hard fork

The Ethereum Core Developers and the Ethereum Security Community released an announcement concerning the planned Ethereum upgrade. In a document, they explained that the long-awaited Constantinople hard fork would be postponed due to a critical vulnerability discovered by ChainSecurity (a blockchain audit company) in a software upgrade. The message concerning a postponement was released just hours before the planned upgrade called Constantinople. Let us remind that hard fork was planned to take place at block 7,080,000 ( approximately January 16, 2019). Ethereum developers did not reveal an alternative date of the mentioned Ethereum hard fork.

Dash (DASH on xStation5) has performed well thus far today, but the gains have been moderate. The cryptocurrency is trading in the vicinity of the $70 handle at press time. Source: xStation5

Malaysia to start regulating ICOs and cryptocurrency trading

Lim Guan Eng, the Malaysia’s Minister of Finance, announced on Monday that his country would regulate ICOs and cryptocurrency trading, as Reuters reported. Lim Guan Eng said that an order concerning recognition digital currencies and digital tokens as securities was to enter into force on January 15, 2019 (yesterday). Moreover, it is expected that the Securities Commision Malaysia to publish a framework, which will set up requirements for the issuances of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and crypto trading, by the end of the current quarter.