This week has been another very eventful week in the Dash community with more network news, integrations, and general happenings. Continue reading to get a summary of the week.

Dash Network News of the Week:

Dash Core Group CEO – Dash Eyeing Block Propagation Techniques from Bitcoin Scaling: The ability of all nodes on the network to efficiently receive and view a block full of transactions (block propagation) is a major bottleneck for cryptocurrency scaling. Previous research from Arizona State University has shown that Dash can currently scale to handle 10MB blocks, which is equivalent to 40MB on the Bitcoin network due to Dash’s faster block times and also equivalent to over half that which PayPal currently processes. However, Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core Group, has said in a recent interview that they are looking into borrowing from Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash scaling research to further improve Dash’s efficiencies.

eToro Analysis – Dash Mining Looks Strong While Bitcoin Cash, SV, Litecoin “Don’t Look Good”: The cryptocurrency exchange, eToro, has done some recent research into mining economics of different coins and found that Dash’s mining profitability and outlook appears strong when compared to competitors such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and Litecoin. They specifically mentioned that “in terms of mining profitability, Dash mining remains strong despite an ecosystem-wide drop”. Another highlight was that all the coins in the comparisons were proof-of-work, whereas Dash combines proof-of-work with proof-of-stake to enable the network to be more robust against price declines and reward decreases that happen over time.

Ryan Taylor – Dash Backporting Bitcoin, Rejects Lightning, Segwit, Replace-By-Fee: On the Abra Money 3.0 podcast with CEO Bill Barhydt, Dash Core CEO, Ryan Taylor, has said that Dash has been committed with backporting Bitcoin’s codebase improvements while not including updates such as Replace-By-Fee and Segwit. The reasons that these are not included is because Dash solve transaction speed and scaling issues through other methods that make these updates unnecessary.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

Travala and Booking.com Partner Adding 28 Million Travel Listings for Dash Users: Travala has been a travel site and proponent of cryptocurrency adoption by accepting a wide selection of cryptocurrencies, including Dash and has recently partnered with the mainstream travel website, Booking.com. The partnership will enable potential travelers wanting to pay with cryptocurrency to get access to Booking.com’s 28 million reported accommodation listings available across 230 countries and 90,000 destinations worldwide, which is a large increase over Travala’s previous 2 million plus accommodation listings. The partnership also adds to the multitude of other travel sites that have been accepting cryptocurrencies, including CheapAir.com, Destinia, Xceltrip, Travelbybit, and Alternative Airlines.

Dace Core Group Project Updates of the Week:

Here’s an update from Liz Robuck, Chief Product Owner, of what’s going on at Dash Core Group this week.

🚀 Released DashCore v0.14.0.4 with improvements to maximize InstantSend stability 🌑 Added a dark theme for the DashQT wallet and made some related optimizations to improve the appearance of the UI when in dark mode ✉️ Made some tweaks to the ‘Send’ popup message in DashQT Wallet, including highlighting when not all recipients of a transaction are displayed, clarified text explaining fee rounding in PrivateSend, display of transaction size and actual fee rate, and the number of inputs a PrivateSend transaction is going to consume with a warning if it exceeds 10 to let users know that it may reduce privacy by making it easier to track these funds back to the original wallet via c clustering analysis take more time 👤 Defined the transaction structure for Identities in Dash Platform and introduced the transaction that will enable identity registration in Dash Platform Protocol (DPP) 🌲 Added sparse Merkle tree proof verification to DashWallet iOS

General News of the Week:

BitBay Delists Monero Among Growing Privacy Concerns: BitBay, a Polish cryptocurrency exchange with around $20.7 million in daily trading volume, has recently announced its plans to delist Monero due to its privacy features, an issue that has befallen Dash in the past. Much of the pressure from regulators arises from the Financial Action Task Force, a multinational task force charged with combating money laundering and financing of terrorism, and their “travel rule” that “recommends that exchanges be able to collect relevant information such as the name and address of the sender and recipient of the virtual asset”. Dash has been able to reverse and pause some of these delisting by having the Dash Core Group meet with exchanges and regulators to explain the finer details of Dash’s privacy attributes.

Report – Crypto Crimes Up in 2019 to $4.4 Billion As Privacy Coins Face Regulation: CypherTrace, a cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering, bitcoin forensics, and blockchain threat intelligence solutions company, has found that all cryptocurrency-related frauds and thefts totaled $4.4 billion USD in 2019 so far, which is up from $1.7 billion a year ago. However, most of the money is due to two higher profile scams, QuadrigaCX (US$192 million) and PlusToken (US$2.9 billion), and thus Q3 is actually the smallest amount in years.

New Research Challenges Bitcoin Mining’s Impact on the Environment: A new paper in The New Scientist challenges previous research by arguing that Bitcoin mining has a smaller carbon footprint than previously thought. The authors show that carbon emissions from electricity generation and mining fractions are not uniform across China, which the previous research assumed. Instead, 12.3% of Bitcoin mining comes from Inner Mongolia, which relies on coal for energy production, which contributes 26.2% to Bitcoin’s overall carbon footprint, but this is counterbalanced by mining contributions coming from Sichuan that is able to generate significant electrical supply via hydropower. The authors also point out that while cryptocurrency energy consumption is on the rise, the energy usage has to be kept in perspective.

UPbit Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacked, $52.8 Million of Ethereum Lost: The major South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange is considered one of the top three exchanges by the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) and is among the BTI’s “verified exchanges”, but has fallen victim to a hack that sole $52.8 million USD of Ethereum. The exchange is now suspending all deposits and withdrawals on the platform for the next two weeks and has reportedly moved all funds to cold storage.

Binance CEO Threatens Suing The Block Cryptocurrency Media Outlet After False Raid Reports: Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Binance CEO, is considering suing the The Block after they published a false article claiming that Binance’s Shanghai office was recently shut down after a police raid. However, Zhao pointed out that they haven’t had Shanghai office for two years and The Block only made small adjustments to their article rather than a full admission of false reporting. Emerging from fallout, there was a plan to launch “FUD fighting fund” that could be potential come to be worth more than $1 million USD after vows from Zhao and Justin Sun, CEO of blockchain platform Tron. Dash, however, has been able to fund various news outlets via the DAO Treasury to be able to focus on correct reporting and not having to result to “click-bait” type articles.

Dash Media of the Week:

BlackRock & Fidelity Invest in Neptune Dash, Dash Wins DAO Award, Dash Evo Event Announced & More!: If you missed the past two weeks of amazing Dash news, then make sure to check out Heidi’s latest recap video to get all caught up!

Dash Podcast 132 Feat. Kodaxx (Spencer Kuzara) Dash Investment Foundation Supervisor: This week, the guys welcome Kodaxx, Dash Investment Foundation Supervisor, to talk about how he came to become a DIF Supervisor when the two directors chose to only remain directors and not accept their Supervisor positions. The guys went on to discuss what skills Kodaxx brings to the DIF Supervisors team, various operational details of the DIF, ways the DIF will help aid Dash innovation, having decentralization balanced with organizational efficiencies, and more! Make sure to tune in to get this valuable knowledge.

Dash might still be having lackluster exchange price performance, as is the norm in the cryptocurrency market right now, but Dash continues to pioneer and innovate working towards achieving real world adoption. Make sure to continue following Dash News to stay up to date with the latest news!