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Swiss non-profit organization NEAR Foundation has launched Chain Signatures, enabling users to sign transactions on supported blockchains from a single NEAR account.

Chain Signatures enables accounts and smart contracts on NEAR to sign transactions for different chains. At launch, this will include Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cosmos network chains, as well as DogeCoin and XRP Ledger. It will soon support Solana, TON Network and Polkadot, according to the team.

By enabling Chain signatures, DeFi protocols can utilize assets from other chains without requiring a cross-chain bridge. This is possible because Chain Signatures are designed to be account-based rather than bridge-based.

Read more: NEAR Foundation applies for .near top-level domain

According to Kendall Cole, director of research and development company Proximity Labs which supports projects on NEAR and Aurora Chain Signatures can potentially unlock new use cases for DeFi protocols.

Users can use XRP as collateral to borrow USDC, or trade DOGE for SOL. This is particularly innovative for non-smart-contract chains like Bitcoin, DogeCoin and Ripple because none of the major bridges support these chains today, Cole said.

NEAR protocol documents show that Chain Signatures link NEAR account addresses to other blockchains using an Additive Key Derivation. This mechanism enables the single master key to be derived into multiple subkeys.

When a user wants to transact between different blockchains, a deployed multichain smart contract will make a signature request for the transaction on the target blockchain network, and a Multi-Party Computation (MPC) service will sign the transaction.

Read more: MPC wallets have a trade-off. Is it worth it?

Once the signature is obtained, the smart contract will return it to the user, allowing the user to send the signed transaction to execute it on the target blockchain.

Smart contracts on NEAR will be able to custody assets on any chain (since they can sign transactions on any chain via chain signatures), and maintain user balances similar to how single chain lending protocols or DEXs do now, Cole explained.

The Chain Signatures MPC network will be launched in partnership with EigenLayer, which will secure the network using its restaked ETH. At launch, there will be ten node providers, including a handful of Actively Validated Services (AVS) infrastructure providers.

Post-launch, EigenLayer will be used to provide economic security to the network and transition the MPC network to a permissionless version. To participate in the MPC network, prospective node operators will need to re-stake their ETH and will be penalized if they maliciously authorize any transactions that did not originate from a NEAR account, Cole explained.

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NEAR launches tool for signing transactions on Bitcoin, Ethereum and more - Blockworks

Bitcoindoes not use centralized accounts to keep track of information, and this is important. Instead, developers can build layered services that put users back at the center of everything, allowing them to choose who can access that information and when. This also needs to work across different applications. In his recent presentation at thesCrypt Hackathon 2024event in San Francisco, Project Babbage founderTy Everettsays theres a need to look at the first principles of contracts and trade.

The full afternoon session of Day One is available at thislink, and you can catch the entire two-day series of sCrypt Hackathon 2024 presentations on theCoinGeek YouTube channel. The presentations showcase blockchains basic features before going into more technical detail about how sCrypts TypeScript-based environment makes it easier for developers to turn their visions into working products.

Why digital smart contracts are so powerful

Were going to zoom all the way out and talk about why were here, Everett said.

He begins by explaining why digitizing contractsoften called smart contracts for convenienceis so useful. The much older concepts of people making an agreement they understand with others they can identify are still very relevant. Computers simply add value to the process.

Digitized,blockchain-recorded contractsare useful for keeping records of everything and automating certain steps (e.g.,payments). Bitcoin in 2009 made it possible to transfer a digital record from one owner to another, but without the sender retaining an exact copythis was much more of a breakthrough than it would appear to those who havent considered the problem before.

Identity is fragmented on theInternet, and communication is often private. There should be a way to own a unified ID across platforms, allowing other people and apps to tap into that information when needed. Theprivate keyyou use to sign digital records should link to that identity and others should be able toeasily verify it.

Bitcoin was the missing piece that made these ancient economic concepts possible in the digital world, Everett said, adding that it does so without the need for trusted/centralized third parties.

Its going to bring down the cost of doing business digitally, its going to give people the power to exchange, and its going to put people at the center of those equations. Its going to move across platforms without needing to update their accounts on many different systems because Bitcoin isnt an account-based system. The users themselves transact and track their own information. Every app that uses Bitcoin is going to plug into the user at the center.

What is Project Babbage and sCrypts role in all this?

Put simply,Project Babbagestask is to make these processes easier and user-friendly for everyone. Like sCrypt, its job is to provide the key tools and foundational pieces the underlying layer that other apps can tap into in a way thats accessible to developers. Everetts presentation also features a Q&A and technical demonstrations of Project Babbagesapps/services.

The layered approach to technology is important, Everett added, since tech companies and the platforms they build tend to come and go. Users need to have protocols that still work even if a particular service is superseded or goes out of business and maintain access to their data.

He describes thecurrent Internet and digital economy as a dystopia of sticky apps and deliberately addictive platforms. Everett added that we may only have about three to five years to find ways to make it work properly.

How does Project Babbage work with sCrypt? If sCrypt is the smart contracting platform, then Project Babbage is the pens and paper. It puts the user back in control at the center of things by defining a standardized wallet containing identity, keys, and assets and creating the interface and mechanisms for external apps to access it all.

And sCrypt is the best way for creating smart contracts, by far, he said.

If youre a developer and all this sounds interesting, check out the other Hackathon presentations or take a look atsCrypts body of work. If you miss out on participating in the 2024 Hackathon, sCryptswebsiteis open any time as a resource for people to find out more.

Watch: Bringing applications to the new world of blockchain

New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeeks Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.

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sCrypt Hackathon 2024: Project Babbage on why users should be at the center of digital economy - CoinGeek

In the dynamic world of blockchain technology, Cardano (ADA) has maintained its innovative edge. Gaining recognition as a forward-thinking pioneer, this proof-of-stake blockchain platform is now teetering on the precipice of significant expansion, all thanks to extensive technological development steered by Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the frontrunner engineering firm managing the Cardano blockchain.

A recent statement from IOHK gives us a tantalizing glimpse into fresh enhancements across many key facets of the platforman underpinning promise of continued expansion and evolution for Cardano.

Lets look first at the essential realm of smart contract optimization. Sources reveal that substantial progress has been made within the ledger team, especially concerning the test frameworks and data quality in the Newconstraints phase3. This was accomplished by the introduction of constraints and size-related types including Size, SizeSpec, and Sized.

Moreover, IOHK has reported advancements in wallets and services. The much-anticipated release of Lace v.1.9 from the Lace team is now brewing excitement among Cardano enthusiasts, promising new features and enhancements.

In the intricate sphere of smart contracts, the astute minds of the Plutus team have unraveled a guide in the documentation. This new guide aims to demystify the method of utilizing the AsData functionality to streamline scripts. This isnt all. The team has brought to life a UPLC optimization pass to shrink the number of forces and delays in the scripta significant stride indeed.

The Mithril team has also been extraordinarily instrumental, rolling out a major update, namely, the Mithril distribution 2412.0. This update encompasses critical enhancements and upgrades. Some noteworthy points include the support for the Prometheus metrics endpoint in signer, deprecation of the snapshot command in the client CLI, and compatibility with the Cardano node v.8.9.0.

Updates extend to token trading volume where ADA has been drawing attention. Data from DeFiLlama shows Cardanos total value locked (TVL) at a staggering $422 million, boasting a market capitalization of $23.3 million in terms of stablecoin.

Break down of data from the Token Terminal reveals key market signals for Cardano, including a fully diluted market cap of $29.20 billion, reflecting a commendable 4.9% increase over the past month. Simultaneously, active circulating market cap stands robustly at $22.88 billion, borne on a 5.2% growth rate.

Now lets consider the long-term outlook for ADAit remains bullish as ever. Depicting the pulse of the crypto market, Trend Rider, a seasoned crypto analyst, recently shared an assessment of ADAs current price action.

As per the given analysis, after achieving a yearly high of $0.811 on March 14, ADAs price dipped and is now oscillating between the parabolic red line of resistance and the rider band of support. While some see this as a sign of ADA taking a breather before its next major rally, others perceive it as a slowdown in the upward momentum, which could lead to a period of consolidation or sideways trading.

Nonetheless, ADA appears resilient, with the current prediction indicating sustained long-term bullish momentum, potentially laying the groundwork for a bright panorama ahead for ADA. The token trades at $0.652, displaying sideways price action. Regardless, ADA has proven its mettle, pulling through previous losses over the last week and posting a 5.4% gainan undeniably promising sight for its community.

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Cardano Gains Momentum: Innovative Developments Promise Continued Expansion and Evolution - West Island Blog

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Stellar is a blockchain that is trying to beat Ethereum. And so the Stellar Development Foundation will invest $100 million to get developers to make apps for its platform.

The foundation is launching the Soroban Smart Contracts Platform, which gives Stellar a better footing to compete with Ethereum. In the past, it handled just payments in cryptocurrency. But now it has a smart contracts platform that developers including game makers can use to create blockchain apps such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), games and decentralized finance (DeFi) apps.

The $100 million fund to kickstart those apps comes as an important time, as funding for blockchain games dried up in the last few quarters.

Soroban is the Stellar Development Foundations long-awaited smart contracts platform. With Soroban now live on the networks mainnet, Stellar enters a new era, enabling developers worldwide to create, deploy, and interact with decentralized applications (dApps) on its blockchain.

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The release of Soroban represents the most substantial upgrade to the Stellar network in its decade-long history. Stellar, known primarily for its prowess in crypto payments, expands its capabilities to support decentralized finance (DeFi) and various applications with this major development, the company said.

During Sorobans two-year testing phase, which concluded in January 2024, it garnered significant attention from developers globally. Over 190 projects spanning diverse sectors such as gaming, lending, insurance, and more participated in testing Sorobans capabilities. Stellar says that the advantages are speed and scalability.

With $100 million allocated to the Soroban Adoption Fund, the Stellar Development Foundation aims to incentivize and support projects leveraging the smart contract capabilities of the network. This investment underscores SDFs commitment to fostering innovation and growth within the Stellar ecosystem.

Tomer Weller, VP of product at The Stellar Development Foundation, said in a statement, SDF aims to deliver the tools and technology necessary to power a next-generation financial system one that is both decentralized and real-world ready. Soroban opens the doors for decentralized applications to easily plug into the existing global financial market, without compromising speed or scalability. We look forward to seeing a variety of world-changing dApps built on Stellar.

Soroban, engineered to address industry demands and democratize financial services, offers a faster, cost-effective, and secure alternative to existing smart contract platforms. By streamlining transactions and reducing computing power requirements, Soroban minimizes smart contract fees while ensuring accessibility and ease of use for developers.

The launch of Soroban signals Stellars commitment to advancing blockchain technologys real-world applications, promoting financial inclusivity, and driving global economic empowerment. Developers interested in exploring Soroban can find more information at stellar.org/soroban.

Stellar, a decentralized and sustainable network for financial products and services, connects the worlds financial infrastructure, facilitating cross-currency transactions and digital asset issuance. Over six million accounts are active on the Stellar network, which serves as a platform for financial institutions worldwide.

The Stellar Development Foundation, established in 2014, supports the growth and development of the Stellar network. As a non-profit organization, SDF maintains Stellars codebase, fosters community engagement, and advocates for equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology.

But it wont be easy to beat Ethereum, the king of decentralized applications for the past decade. Three of the five largest blockchain games are on Ethereum and $57 billion in locked in the network, or about 58% of the decentralized finance market share.

But Ethereum also has notorious scalability issues, both in cost and speed. Stellar has mastered scale thats why the UN uses it for crypto disbursements, and MoneyGram uses it for its global cash-to-crypto service.

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Stellar will invest $100M in Soroban smart contract apps in bid to beat Ethereum - VentureBeat

The Ethereum ecosystem is on the cusp of realizing advanced security features and transaction functionality through the advent of smart contract wallets and account abstraction, but adoption of the technology remains gradual.

Cointelegraph spoke to Safe co-founder Lukas Schor during ETHGlobal in London to unpack why smart contract accounts and account abstraction promise to unlock Ethereums full utility.

Vitalik Buterin recently put out this blog post with the three transitions we need to go through, and one of them is moving to smart accounts. Thats where we see our role, Schor said.

Safe, a smart wallet infrastructure provider in the Ethereum ecosystem, was initially developed as an in-house multisignature wallet by Ethereum sidechain Gnosisto manage a significant amount of Ether (ETH) raised during its initial coin offering.

They wanted to have multisig wallet, but there werent any battled-tested ones out there at the time, Schor said.

Gnosis founder Stefan George opted to build his own multisignature wallet and open-sourced it. Ethereum community members began to adopt it, and the wallet became the de facto standard for multisignature wallets.

Gnosis Safe was born, but the project eventually became a standalone offering, Safe, that now serves as the smart account infrastructure for Ethereum users, layer-2s like Optimism and Polygon, and exchanges like Bitfinex. Safe secures over $100 billion in value across more than 7.5 million smart account addresses.

Smart accounts fundamentally improve the security and user experience (UX) within the Ethereum ecosystem, enabling a broad set of functionalities that a conventional ETH wallet cannot perform.

As smart accounts are programmable accounts, they provide entirely new design spaces to solve long-lasting UX and security challenges of Ethereum, such as cross-chain interoperability and key management, fundamentally reducing the barriers of adoption, Schor elaborates.

Smart account features include the ability to batch transactions, which Schor says can create more seamless decentralized application (DApp) interactions that bundle multiple on-chain actions into one single transaction.

Security guarantees are another fundamental feature that makes smart accounts increasingly important. Aside from multisig functionality, the key rotation allows users to detach the signing key from an ETH wallet, enabling the exchange of the signer setup without migrating assets to a new account.

Smart accounts also allow for the automation of common Web2 or traditional finance concepts like subscriptions. They can enable on-chain security features, like allow and deny lists and the ability to block interactions with malicious contracts.

The functionality can also remove friction for non-Web3 natives without an ETH wallet. This means users can be onboarded using Web2 social accounts or email addresses with the option to migrate to a more trustless setup at a later point.

DApps, exchanges, layer-2 protocols and other chains are also able to sponsor gas fees, which Schor says could massively increase the user experience of Web3 interactions:

The adoption of smart accounts is something that Schor sees as being a first slowly then all at once kind of thing. The Safe co-founder highlights that their work on developing smart accounts has been ongoing for six years, which is indicative of a very gradual adoption curve.

One of the blockers of adoption is that most users still use EOA accounts[externally owned accounts], via wallets like MetaMask, so many applications and wallets optimize for this, Schor explains.

He adds that layer-2 protocols have an opportunity to start from scratch, and the recently proposed migration EIP-7377 could expedite adoption, as wallets and DApps dont have to optimize for legacy users anymore.

Schor says Safe intentionally focused on specific user groups would benefit the most from additional security and flexibility of smart accounts, including Ethereum ecosystem teams and DAOs.

Over time, hes witnessed adoption gradually shift more and more to less technical and lower-value use cases. Schor highlights Worldcoins deployment of six million smart accounts as evidence of this adoption and says that 2024 could be a breakout year:

New catalysts, like Coinbase leveraging smart accounts, the development of cross-chain smart accounts and EIP-7377, could drive the migration to smart accounts.

Magazine:Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a honeypot for hackers and governments: Trezor CEO

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How smart accounts and account abstraction can unlock Ethereum's full utility - Cointelegraph