One of the biggest failures of decentralized technologies taught developers about the importance of strengthening smart contracts and DeFi. — The biggest and most widely-known blockchain hack was the hack of The DAO: its rise and fall shook the decentralised community to its core. Yet, while it caused much distress among decentralisation enthusiasts, it ultimately led to much-needed improvements in the operation of DAOs and DeFi.

Every great invention has an Achilles heel; in the case of Bitcoin, it is the 51% attack. — While generally secure and stable, Bitcoin does not differ from other forms of technology and still experience occasional vulnerabilities: one type is implementation issues, such as code bugs and untested features. Luckily, these are generally fixable and can be improved upon. …

Thanks to its solid concept and vision, its strong foundation and its supportive community, the tests that bugs pose to Bitcoin can only help to strengthen the blockchain’s code in the long run. — Hacks are heard of all the time in the sphere of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. However, hacks are mostly due to problems with a centralized entity — usually either an exchange or a mining pool. Bitcoin’s and blockchains’ history is full of such troublesome issues since the early days, starting from…

Will the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 revolutionise the blockchain industry? — Third generation blockchains are solving the practical side of the scalability trilemma. While this might appear to be the way forward to make blockchains more mainstream and the primary solution for online transactions, there are more hurdles that need to be overcome in order for the technology to thrive. In…

Blockchains are not sustainable without finding a solution to the scalability trilemma. — Blockchains improve many applications and offer many possibilities. However, compared to other technologies, their use is at present still relatively limited. This is mainly because of the scalability trilemma (or what is known as the ‘blockchain trilemma’). The trilemma has been explained in a previous article as follows:

Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) would automate management and decision making. — Thanks to the introduction of Bitcoin, transaction bookkeeping became decentralized. As soon as Bitcoin gained traction and more and more users got involved, its governance and modifications were democratized, with miners and developers voting on modifications, new features and other issues through mailing lists and on forums. Ironically, there had…

The main theme around NFTs may be ambiguity, since NFTs is a concept and as a topic are still somewhat unclear and fuzzy to many people outside of dedicated circles. It does not help that many helpful details are often left out in mainstream discourse about NFTs. Probably the only fact about NFTs that many people are aware of is their name; Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). — NFTs are a type of crypto-tokens. What differentiates them from all other tokens is the uniqueness of each NFT. To clarify: you can think of crypto-tokens (or cryptocurrencies) as a form of money, with each of them kind of looking the same: BTC is often thought of as the gold…

DeFi (Decentralized Finance) brings financial services and independence to everyone, removing the need for banks and financial institutions and taking power out of the hands of those preventing others from exercising their financial rights. — Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies were developed to eliminate the need for a trusted third-party that authorizes transactions. However, financial services also include other activities, such as lending, borrowing or savings, for example. …

Blockchain technology introduces the second generation of decentralized applications. — When we use our computers, we constantly use applications — whether this is the word editor on which we compose our documents, or the anti-virus software that quietly operates in the background to keep our computer virus-free. There are also web applications that run over the internet, such as web…