Polymath hopes to do for traditional securities what Ethereum has done for ICO based fundraising
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Stellar (XLM) Price Analysis: Waiting for a Descending Triangle Break
Stellar formed lower highs and found support at 0.3000 to create a descending triangle on its 1-hour time frame. Price is on its way to test support and a bounce could take it back to the top around 0.3200.
However, the 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to suggest that the path of least resistance is to the downside. This means that support is more likely to break than to hold. The chart pattern is around 0.1000 tall so the resulting selloff could last by the same height.
The 200 SMA lines up with the top of the triangle to add to its strength as resistance while the 100 SMA is just nearby and could keep gains in check also.
RSI is pulling up from oversold levels, though, so buyers could still have the upper hand. Similarly, stochastic has dipped into oversold territory and turned higher to signal a return in bullish pressure.
The US dollar is coming off a strong week but could see these gains unwind as the FOMC minutes will be released. Some policymakers have been expressing concerns about labor market slack and these could be echoed in the transcript of their latest meeting.
Doubts that two or three more hikes are in the cards for this year could lead to dollar selling while hawkish remarks could mean more gains. For now, the dollar is drawing support also from the trade truce between the US and China as Mnuchin announced that actions are put “on hold”.
Stellar is seen to challenge Ripple this year as IBM will join Veridium Labs to allow for carbon credits to be traded as a token by means of the blockchain technology. This might also mark first of the many projects that IBM has lined up for Stellar.
On the flip side, Ripple is being sued by investors who believe that it is a security but is not being marketed as such.
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bitcoin exchange and hosted wallet provider (formerly BitX) is developing a bitcoin scaling solution called . Unlike the lightning network, Moonbeam does not require SegWit’s transaction malleability fix and would be able to operate on the bitcoin network as it is today.
Moonbeam aims to provide a way for multi-user bitcoin platforms — such as exchanges, hosted wallets, and payment processors — to easily open standardized one-way payment channels with each other, and thereby offload the bitcoin network from a growing number of transactions.
How Does it Work?
Moonbeam aims to take advantage of the fact that many bitcoin transactions occur among multi-user platforms. Using Moonbeam, these platforms can open standardized one-way payment channel contracts with one another to facilitate payments. By taking these transactions off-chain, Moonbeam can reduce transaction fees for those who use it and benefit bitcoin users generally by reducing congestion in the mempool.
These channels are simple smart contracts in which one party locks up a certain amount of bitcoins for a specified period of time (with the end point referred to as the “timeout”) for the purpose of sending payments to the other party. Before the timeout, the party that has locked up funds can send an unlimited number of off-chain transactions using those locked up bitcoins (until the channel runs out of bitcoins). Each channel involves only two on-chain transactions: one to open the channel and one to close it.
Because these intermediate transactions are off-chain, they are nearly instant. Without the need for a blockchain confirmation, the transactions only take as long as it takes to route an http request (think: loading a simple web page). These transactions would also be cheap. Only two transactions per channel require miner fees, and the rest are essentially free to the platform, though the platform could charge fees to its users.
The one-way payment channels used by Moonbeam are not a new invention. bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto embedded preliminary code for payment channels in the very first release of bitcoin, and more recent protocol upgrades like CheckLockTimeVerify have further enabled this usecase. bitcoin platforms could negotiate and implement these smart contracts on the blockchain today.
What Moonbeam aims to do is facilitate the creation of these channels between major payment platforms by using the Domain Name System (DNS) to route communications related to creating and using these channels. This way, high volume platforms can easily discover one another and enter into a payment channel smart contact using the standardized Moonbeam terms. Using the Moonbeam protocol, this process can happen automatically when it is more efficient to open a channel than sending payments on-chain.
Trust
The Moonbeam project overview indicates that it is “semi-decentralized.” It is labeled as such because while the Moonbeam network does not require platforms to trust one another, it does require users to trust their platforms. A hosted wallet with a Moonbeam address is a custodial account, where the platform is managing the funds, and credits and debits user accounts accordingly as users send and receive transactions. Exchanges such as Coinbase operate in this manner; users do not directly control their private keys. Moonbeam can be a useful tool for these services, but it will likely not be a suitable scaling solution for users who prefer to manage their own private keys.
Other Downsides
The Moonbeam specification document also mentions several other potential downsides. Among them is the cost of capital. In order to open these channels, sending platforms must commit capital in the form of bitcoin for a period of time. If the receiver does not use the channel, the sending platform must wait until timeout to regain control of the funds, entailing potentially large financing costs.
Another risk involves the use of DNS. DNS hijacking is an attack that involves rerouting domain name requests to an attacker’s server. These attacks could be used to receive payments over new channels that were meant for the authentic server.
While Moonbeam does not offer the level of decentralization of the lightning network, the fact that it does not require any fork to the network may may make it an attractive solution to bitcoin’s scaling troubles in the short term. It could be implemented by hosted wallet providers as soon as the project is production ready.
The current state of Moonbeam can be found on the project’s.
Luno was not available for comment for this article.
