Stellar (XLM) a little forgotten has some good news to report

Transaction processing company focused on Micropayment
SatoshiPay has announced that it has started managing its own cluster of
Validation nodes of the Stellar Lumens network.

As with everyone else
node on the network, these devices will be in charge of maintaining the database
all previous registry operations. The nodes will also have public access
historical archives and use the fastest API available to query the ledger,
explained the SatoshiPay announcement.

SatoshiPay explained how they understand the importance of
the validation network of the Stellar Consensus Protocol is diversified and reliable.
This configuration will increase the overall decentralization of the star network, improving XLM
adoption and positively influences the safety and the immutability of the Stellar
Ledger.

While previously they had "light" knots, typical for the most part
of the Stellar network, the company has now expanded its line with "full",
Stellar verification nodes of 700 GB. Each knot will have the whole Stellar
ledger stored on itself, which represents the complete chronological archive of XLM
transactions.

The company will run these devices from locations in Iowa
(United States), Frankfurt (DE) and Singapore (SG). The nodes were intentionally widespread
out through various continents:

"Most of the developers
the creation of Stellar-based applications is based on Stellar.org's Horizon API servers
interact with the ledger. These servers are hosted in the United States, in the sense
response times from other parts of the world are relatively slow. Adding
servers in Europe and Asia, SatoshiPay now offers faster alternatives,
resulting in dramatically increased performance, " explains SatoshiPay.

• IOTA IRI
  Version 1.6.0 introduces local snapshots and other important improvements

Continuing his heavy ad-week, IOTA communicated it
at the end they will arrive with the function of long-awaited local snapshots. The
the launch of the function was announced through the official average blog of the project in a
succinct post written by Jakub Cech, Product Owner @IOTA. The function is set to
be introduced with IRI (IOTA node software) 1.6.0 and has been meticulously
tested during the previous several months.

Local snapshots are expected to take "faster
synchronization, fewer system resource requirements and no more waiting
global snapshots to prune the database "to owners of IOTA nodes." The feature is
thought to address the problems with the scalability that IOTA blockchain inevitably
he began to deal with his rise in popularity.

As more developers and users get on board the Tangle, the
the size of the database becomes exponentially larger, thus limiting the nodes they have
limited hardware resources (ie storage / processing capacity). IOTA previously
global snapshots used to empty the node database; such snapshots have become
always less practical as for one, the network had to stop
the coordinator, generates a snapshot state, gives the community time to verify
generated the data and restart the coordinator. It is easy to understand why this process
it would become slower while the tangle of IOTA gets bigger.

To verify the transactions and take part in IOTA's consent, it does so
it is only necessary to know the recent history of pending transactions and the
current status (sales) of the ledger. Thanks to the introduction of the room
snapshots, node operators will be able to synchronize the Tangle much faster,
without having to restart the entire chain. Storage space required to run a
even the complete knot will decrease significantly and the knots will become much simpler
to maintain.

The function will not solve only space problems
born with the growing adoption of IOTA, but will also simplify the configuration of new ones
nodes and allow organizations and community members to operate perma-node. Long last,
IOTA expects the local will help Tangle grow into a network that will be able
support hundreds of thousands of transactions per second in a safe and
scalable way.

IRI 1.6.0 will bring other improvements to IOTA, including a lot
improved performance on a synchronization node, list of default remote API limits, list
of functionality now recoverable on the node, better synchronization for TCP
neighbors, configurable PearlDiver threads and additional code cleanup,
refactoring and documentation. Developers will not be sitting on their laurels like us
can expect to provide solidification improvements, database level
refactoring, API redesign and refactoring, configuration / other bug fixes in
near future. Check the complete IOTA announcement here.

• TRON
  Accelerator $ 1 million development contest is a scam?

Several months ago, TRON announced a $ 1 million dollar
competition for developers of TRX dll. Aiming to "empower developers and support
innovation within the blockchain industry ", the program promised a bit of profit
payments for the final winners, with the best project that tries to pocket a lot
sum of $ 200,000. However, a recent community report has exposed the TRON
Accelerator as if it were not respecting the initial promises.

Reddit user u / 9hil brought this information to light, explaining
that TRON Accelerator was ready to choose the winners of this competition
January 10th^th. However, the community has noticed that there is something strange
going forward 10 times^th past and no one has received any notification
if they have won something or not. The e-mails were sent once the concern
started to get stronger, but the community noticed an important "addendum" a
the competition: TRON apparently "adapted" the award structure due to a "high"
volume of competitive projects "and decided to share the awarding fund between 100+
competitors, rather than originally planned 56.

As a result, the lowest premium was set from $ 5k to
$ 1k. The user has revealed several other problems with the competition:

• "They
  changed the prizes after the end of the competition
• They
  allowed the clones to win but not the original clone on TRX
• They
  allowed competitors to win those who did not meet the criteria (being on mainnet)
• They
  has allowed projects that are not open source to win

• The great
  Winner is a mysterious project with little information available
• They
  havent has published a public list of winners
• Some
  obvious ponzi games have won awards "

The community reaction came immediately, when people started to claim
dirty game. Some have suggested that the project intentionally lied about the prize
structure to attract developers away from other projects with monetary incentives.
Others believe that TRON never intended to pay the full prize. TRON themselves
they did not answer the accusations; we'll probably know more on January 18th^th,
when they presumably will have a prize
Award ceremony for the TRON Accelerator winners. The discussion is still
in progress and you can participate here
or in the official team
Discord developer. The news comes on the heels of a former Bit-Torrent
employee exposing
Justin Sun as someone who "does not have a technical bone in his body".

• v0.13.0
  the update of mainnet looms over the fear of DASH which suffers a re-emergence of a 51% attack

Dash Core Group, the legal entity for the development of Dash
team, published a major development update yesterday. According to them, Dash
Core v0.13.0 will be started on mainnet on Monday, January 14th^th.

The update v.13.0 will focus on providing different consents
improvements to this masternode-based cryptocurrency:

• Automatic InstantSend, which will improve the file
  speed of most transactions without additional costs;
• A deterministic masternode list to provide a
  the only source of truth for clients that validate transactions;
• Special transactions to host
  non-financial transactions on the blockchain;
• A third key masternode to enable delegation of
  vote masternode; is
• Several improvements to private transactions.

The update of mainnet was initially publicly confirmed as "tested,
finalized and ready for release "in a average
to send dates back to January 4th^th. This post has seen Jon Kindel (Head
of Business Developments at Dash) details the things the team has done to prepare
the v0.13.0.

New information emerged a day ago when Elizabeth Robuck
(Chief Product Owner at Dash) confirmed
the launch date of the update. His post also reminded partners, node operators and
interested parties to finalize the preparation for the update and fill in a
community survey. As noted above, it is expected that the activation of 0.13.0 will be activated
January 14th^thand will become fully operational once 80% of the
the network confirms that they have updated their software (expected within a week from the update)
Activation).

While this update should serve as a basis for Dash
Evolution (a new decentralized payment platform built on Dash's blockchain
technology), suspicions emerged on the decentralization of Dash extraction
Network. The user of Reddit u / Flenst took a deep dive into Dash's "sympathy",
alias its susceptibility to a 51% attack from Nicehash (a market where
Random individuals can buy hash power).

The research performed by this user showed that 70% of the DASH hash rate
it was controlled by the Nicehash miners, an alarmingly higher number than this one
the market usually has more than other PoW coins (10-20%). He also discovered more
over two thirds of that 70% belonged to unknown mining tanks. Dig further
found that three mining addresses – which were controlled by a single entity –
collected over 53% of DASH extraction prizes. You can follow the entire DASH hash
vote controversy here.

• Escobar
  launches a cryptocurrency to finance the Trump impeachment

Roberto Escobar, less known but equally shady brother of
the late Colombian drug boss Pablo, launched a cryptocurrency project
who is trying to dethrone the current president of the United States of America,
Donald Trump.

The currency is called ESCOBAR and will be an ERC-20
the stablecoin is pegged to the US dollar, Roberto explained on the site
escobartrump.org (we do not recommend visiting this site as it is
reported as potential danger to your data / your privacy). The announcement of this
the cryptocurrency came only a few days after GoFundMe, also launched by Escobar, had the same theme
the campaign was closed by the aforementioned crowdfunding platform.

TMZ previously reported
that Escobar has launched a GoFundMe campaign entitled "ByeByeTrump" which it has managed to
collect more than $ 10 million before the website downed it. The campaign was
canceled well before it reached its original goal of $ 50 million, citing questions concerning
how the funds will end up being spent as the main reason for the removal.

Roberto explained that the funds raised would help to finance
"Search for intelligence, lobby companies and lawyers" who would do it
they eventually lead to Trump's takedown. GoFundMe apparently did not tell too much
kindly to these funds going directly to Escobar Inc., Roberto's company, e
they refused to restore the campaign.

The brother and former accountant of the late "king of
cocaine "has not been discouraged and has quickly diverted its efforts towards the world of
cryptocurrency. The CEO of Escobar Inc., Olaf Gustafsson, explained that his company will not
give in to the pressure and tyranny of the United States & # 39; 45^th:

"After raising
$ 10 million in just 10 hours we were turned off by GoFundMe and in 24 hours
has launched ESCOBAR's cryptocurrency stoverecoin to prevent anyone from censoring us
yet. We believe that the Trump administration [sic] or President Trump has closed us
down."

The company launched an ICO for its stablecoin, trying to
sell 200 million tokens until May 10th^th of this year. These tokens
will be redeemable for USD via a company operating from Belize, claims the
white paper of the project.

So far, there is little evidence that the original GoFundMe campaign ever existed. TMZ has posted a screenshot (provided by people from Escobar) that apparently shows the campaign page and the $ 10 million donated for the cause, but this is proof that there is out there. Older readers may remember us covering the first escapade of Escobar's cryptocurrencies, DietBitcoin, which ended up being pumped and discharged quite spectacularly. There appears to be little or no evidence to suggest that ESCOBAR will not suffer the exact same faith.