P2P.org, a blockchain infrastructure firm, announced on Thursday that it had raised $23 million in a round led by Jump Crypto, Bybit, and Sygnum.

Dmitry Argunov, P2P.orgs chief product officer, declined to provide the implied valuation of the company, whose only physical office is in Cyprus. A company spokesperson also declined to make public other participants in the funding round.

P2P.orgs business piggybacks on proof of stake, an increasingly common method blockchains use to secure their network, or prevent bad actors from hijacking a public database to, for example, falsely deduct a users funds.

As opposed to Bitcoins proof of work, which requires a large amount of electricity to verify transactions, blockchains like Ethereum require those whod like to secure the networkthe validatorsto put in escrow a certain amount of Ether, Ethereums native cryptocurrency. For validators, its a direct financial incentive to help protect the network.

In return, validators receive interest on the amount of cryptocurrency they stake, or put into escrow. They also receive rewards for directly validating transactions on the blockchain.

For a crypto-naive institution that wants to reap the rewards of stakings high yields, the process can be quite complicated. Anyone who would like to be a validator needs to follow a complicated protocol for depositing cryptocurrency and then offer up a computer to validate the transactions.

This is where companies like P2P.org come in, which simplify the process for staking on a wide set of protocols, including Ethereum.

Investors can send companies like P2P.org the amount of cryptocurrency theyd like to stake, and the firm then pools customer funds to stake the cryptocurrency, offering up its own computers to validate transactions. In return, P2P.org takes a cut of the yield.

Originally proof of work, Ethereum switched to proof of stake in 2022 and recently implemented two upgrades to its staking system in April, separately named Shanghai and Capella.

The recent Shanghai upgrade is opening up the possibility for further institutional interest in the direct staking of ETH, Konstantin Lomashuk, founder of P2P.org, said in a statement.

As Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain next to Bitcoin, continues to upgrade its proof-of-stake system and the energy-intensive proof-of-work method continues to draw criticism for its environmental impact, companies that facilitate staking, like P2P.org, are positioned to continue attracting both venture and institutional capital.

The third iteration of the internet was born with the promise of decentralization and democratization of finance, Bill Xing, Bybits head of financial product, said in a statement. It is vital that we fortify the nodes that connect the users of Web3 and harness the power of network effect.

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Staking infrastructure firm P2P.org raises $23 million shortly after upgrade to Ethereum - Fortune

The commissioners of Llano County, Texas, have already spent more than $100,000 on legal costs in the fight over whether the local library will have to keep books that some deem objectionable. The commissioners even voted to close the library recently rather than keep certain books in it, but a federal judge overruled the decision, ordering that the library stay open with the controversial books.

After the decision, one resident told NBC, We need to fight it in the court system and get this salacious material removed. We have God on our side, and we expect he will get the glory when this is said and done. Another said, Thats a victory for free speech!

Much of the controversy over so-called banned books has been focused on the books themselves. Heaven knows there is a spate of wholly inappropriate books being published these days and parents are right to say that some dont belong in a childrens section or a school classroom. One aimed at 4-to-8-year-olds is called Mamas Love Their Babies and includes portrayals of women who fly airplanes, mop floors and dance at strip clubs. It is useful to note that just because a book is not in the childrens department of a library, or a school classroom, does not mean it has been banned.

Nevertheless, towns all over this country are mired in battles like the one in Texas. It was not supposed to be this way. One of the advantages of our decentralized system of government, of local control over schools and libraries, was that people who live in a community together would be more likely to share a common sensibility than people who did not.

Of course, small-town politics can be bitter. And fights over schools and libraries have been around since the beginning of schools and libraries. Madame Librarian Marian was battling Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn, the wife of the mayor, when The Music Man musical was first staged in 1957. Her concern was about smut in the library like Balzac. If only.

But things have gotten worse. One reason is that our sensibilities are now much more influenced by media we get from other places. Whether you live in a rural town in Texas or a suburb of San Francisco, you will likely be consuming the same things on your social media feed as those living in different parts of the country. There are large political and cultural divides but they are not just geographic. One of the most popular videos from the Libs of TikTok Twitter feed showed a teacher in Kentucky offering children explicit lessons about sex toys and gender ideology. This is not the first thing people think of when asked about local community sensibilities in Kentucky.

But there is also the training that teachers and librarians receive. Graduate schools of education and library science are awash with progressive ideology. At the University of Texas, for instance, students in the School of Information Science take classes like Fake News and Facts in the Misinformation Age or Introduction to Social Justice Informatics or Misinformation, Justice, and Design. The University of Wisconsin offers a joint degree in Library Sciences and Womens & Gender Studies.

Librarians and many teachers now see themselves as part of the resistance, and they see it as part of their job to undermine the backward values of the communities where they live. The libraries and schools are not supposed to reflect the sensibilities of the families who patronize them anymore.

Decentralization is still probably the best approach to these hot-button cultural issues. The further away your opponents are, the easier it is to caricature them. Compromise is easier on a local level, too. Maybe different parts of a library can be set up to suit the needs of different people. Not everything is easily codified into law.

Still the current state of these cultural battles is disappointing. Will our communities ever return to a point where decisions can be made without the input of Twitter or the intervention of federal courts? Sadly, it seems unlikely.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Deseret News contributor and the author of No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives,among other books.

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Book bans: Why is there so much controversy? | Opinion - Deseret News

The top 10 web3 impacts on traditional industries due to decentralization are enlisted in this article

The Top 10 Web3 Impacts on Traditional Industries Due to Decentralization, it can disrupt and alter sectors ranging from banking and art to healthcare and education. Web3 has had a tremendous influence on the financial industry. Blockchain-enabled Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols enable peer-to-peer lending, borrowing, and trading without the need for middlemen.

1. Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Web3 is revolutionizing the financial sector by introducing DeFi protocols that enable peer-to-peer lending, borrowing, and trading without the use of middlemen. This upends established banking and investing paradigms by giving customers greater control over their cash and allowing them to earn higher profits.

2. Digital Art: The introduction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain-based digital art markets has transformed the art business. This decentralized technique allows artists to monetize their work without the need for intermediaries while also ensuring the arts validity and provenance.

3. Supply Chain Management: Web3 is changing supply chain management by offering a transparent and decentralized ledger of all transactions, allowing for increased supply chain transparency and efficiency.

4. Cybersecurity: lockchain-based decentralized security protocols are more secure and less resistant to attack than centralized ones. This has the potential to disrupt existing cybersecurity approaches, providing people and companies with enhanced safety.

5. Education: Decentralized education systems increase access to education while also introducing new financial options for instructors. Peer-to-peer learning and credential verification can be facilitated via Web3-enabled applications, upsetting established education structures.

6. Healthcare: Decentralized healthcare solutions based on blockchain technology provide improved security and transparency in the exchange and management of medical data. This innovation has the potential to completely revolutionize the healthcare business by improving patient outcomes and lowering costs.

7. Digital Identity: Web3 enables self-sovereign identification, giving people authority over their digital identities and data. This has the potential to disrupt established identity verification approaches while also providing consumers with improved privacy and security.

8. Social Media: Decentralized social media platforms challenge established business models by giving users more control and ownership over their data. This can change the advertising business while also providing consumers with improved privacy and security.

9. Real Estate: Traditional real estate models are being disrupted by Web3-enabled platforms that enable peer-to-peer property transactions and eliminate the need for intermediaries. This disruption can completely revolutionize the real estate sector by making it more accessible and inexpensive to individuals.

10. Governance: Through the usage of DAOs, Web3 enables decentralized decision-making. (Decentralized autonomous organizations). This has the potential to upend existing governance paradigms by allowing for more participative and democratic decision-making processes.

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Top 10 Web3 Impacts on Traditional Industries Due to Decentralization - Analytics Insight

Decentralized trials (DCTs) are not a novel concept, but the disruption of nearly68 percent of clinical trials during the height of the pandemic led to more widespread interest in and adoption of hybrid and virtual trial models.Studies have shown that DCTs can lead to shorter development cycle times, lower clinical trial screen failure rates, and fewer protocol amendments. With wider DCT adoption, however, comes an increase in data sources (particularly external data sources), leading to a surge in data volume. Good data management is crucial to control this. From acquisition and analysis to data cleaning and statistical processes, data managers are the stewards responsible for guiding a modern data strategy amid the perfect storm of growing data complexity, digitization initiatives, and ever-increasing pressure to accelerate timelines.

In the past, data management was often siloed, focused on cleaning and querying listings of electronic data capture (EDC) data. However, non-EDC and external data sources now contribute significantly to overall data volume. The percentage of data coming from outside EDC continues to rise, while a rise in outsourced models has prompted the data management role to become more oversight focused.

As DCTs become more widely adopted and as the volume of disparate data continues to grow, data management processes will become even more complex. An Industry Standard Researchsurvey in 2019 revealed that 38 percent of pharma and contract research organizations anticipated DCTs to make up a large portion of their portfolios, and 48 percent expected trials to operate with the majority of activities taking place from the participants homes. When revisiting the same questions only one year later, all of the respondents anticipated decentralized trials would make up a significant portion of their research profiles.

Although remote participation is pleasing for patients, it results in even greater data source volume and variety, which is difficult for clinical trial teams to manage.Research from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development in 2019 found 75 percent of life sciences organizations still using SAS and Excel to integrate and analyze data. Over 80 percent of respondents reported data management activities as time consuming and labor intensive.

The same study also found that over two-thirds of clinical trial sponsors were using or piloting at least four types of data. The number of sources has nearly doubled since then and will continue to rise as DCT models are widely operationalized. A 40 percent increase in last patient, last visit (LPLV) to database lock cycle times for companies with five or more data sources was reported; the study concluded that contending with disparate data sources was contributing to longer database lock cycle times. In our services organization, trials frequently average eight or more data sources but many include over 15!

The trends that contributed to the Tufts study findings have only accelerated since the onset of the pandemic, which means one thing: data chaos. If the industry doesnt adopt new approaches, data management will only get more challenging.

Identifying and creating a data strategy roadmap in the midst of these growing pains can present a challenge, but it is essential, if you want your organization to be ready to face the future. The increased adoption of virtual and DCT approaches to clinical trials necessitates a balance between the use of advanced solutions that connect trials with a greater number of patients, and maintaining efficient, high-quality data review and analysis. Improving the overall patient experience is a motivating factor for DCTs, as is easing the burden of traveling to and from sponsor sites. The problem is that many organizations lack the infrastructure to accommodate the shift.

Operational leaders plagued by oversight and monitoring challenges in DCTs need methods to streamline and standardize data from increasingly non-traditional sources. However, there are now a number of data solutions available in the industry that can help. Below are just two examples of how companies are using data management platforms to help manage more external data streams.

With an increasing volume of external data streams, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) sought out a data management platform that would integrate with and support its current EDC platform, while also supporting data curation and aggregation. Implementing the platform streamlined clinical data flow, providing quicker access to clean data, streamlined data acquisition, and mapping and standardization all of which resulted in faster access to data by downstream teams. The platform alleviated pain points experienced with BMS previous infrastructure by compiling all data into a unified source, giving the company the ability to create cross-study analytics reports for deeper insights.

A second example:Karyopharm Therapeutics worked on randomized clinical trials with hospital patients suffering from severe COVID-19 it was the first study of an XP01 inhibitor in patients with viral infections. To support rapid data collection, cleaning, and review for this program, Karyopharm partnered with a data management platform, working closely to build a fully validated database to collect data from physicians and patients in just 15 days. This accelerated timeline enabled Karyopharm to meet the first patient milestone in its critical research initiative.

Cloud-based centralized data management platforms allow clinical trial teams to manage their data more efficiently, mitigate costs, minimize timeline delays, and improve cycle timelines. Put simply, cloud-based platforms modernize data infrastructure by compiling data sources into a unified source of truth. By implementing a cloud-based platform with expert data configuration, management, and statistical analysis, some companies have seen up to a50 percent decrease in cycle time was experienced from LPLV to database lock in 2021.

In short, the right data management tools facilitate data transformation, delivering consistent real-time updates and allowing researchers to analyze data faster and uncover insights needed for critical decision making. Moreover, identifying areas and opportunities to pivot earlier in the trial process can help prevent avoidable delays. To keep up with the evolving clinical trial landscape, companies must employ a modern strategy, which requires three core elements: an interoperable approach to DCTs and other non-traditional trial models, investment in resources to ease the data management burden, and the ability to generate meaningful insights from a good data platform.

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Pharma Clinical Trials: Decentralization and Digital Trends - The Medicine Maker

As of February 2023, over 44.15 million unique addresses have a non-zero balance of Bitcoin (BTC). While this may seem impressive, lets face it blockchain technology has come a long way since Bitcoins inception in 2009.

Bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance. Source: Glassnode

However, as the technology continues to evolve and gain mainstream adoption, scalability remains one of the biggest challenges facing the industry. Bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the largest blockchain networks, are highly decentralized, with thousands of nodes operating on each network (17,553 nodes for Bitcoin and 7,099 nodes for Ethereum as of April 14, 2023).

Ethereum mainnet statistics. Source: Ethernodes

While this decentralization provides greater security, it also results in slower transaction speeds and scalability issues due to the significant computational resources required to maintain the continuously growing sum of nodes.

Hence, the blockchain trilemma, coined by Vitalik Buterin, suggests that blockchains can only have two out of three properties: scalability, security and decentralization. As a result, this fundamental trade-off represents a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of blockchain technology.

There are two primary strategies that have been introduced to tackle the scalability challenge: layer-1 (L1) and layer-2 (L2) solutions. While L1 solutions seek to optimize the base layer of a blockchain, L2 solutions provide an additional layer on top of the base layer to facilitate faster and more affordable transactions. Needless to say, this has sparked an ongoing battle between the two approaches as each demonstrates unique strengths and weaknesses.

Layer-1 blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, are designed to optimize the foundational layer of a blockchain protocol to increase transaction throughput and reduce fees. Their maximum capacity is often limited by network congestion and other factors, so L1 scaling solutions directly extend the blockchain protocol to improve scalability.

A prominent example of this is the introduction of Ethereum 2.0 and the subsequent development of (dank) sharding. Sharding aims to increase Ethereums transaction processing speed and reduce fees by splitting the network into smaller, more manageable shards. Each shard can then process transactions in parallel, significantly increasing the networks overall speed.

Layer-2 blockchains, on the other hand, refer to a network or technology that operates on top of an underlying blockchain protocol with the aim to improve scalability too. The idea behind L2s is to shift transactions from the base layer blockchain to an adjacent system architecture that is able to process the majority of the data and then report back to the base blockchain to finalize the result.

For instance, Ethereum is a layer-1 network, and a number of layer-2 solutions have been built to improve transaction speeds on the Ethereum network, including Polygon (MATIC), Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum (ARB).

Undoubtedly, the scalability battle has come to the forefront with recent developments in L1 and L2 blockchains. While this may be the case, understanding the differences between L1 and L2 blockchain networks is crucial to gain insight and distinguish the primary differences between both layers.

Layer-1 blockchains and layer-2 scaling solutions differ not only in their purpose but also in their fundamental design and architecture. L1 blockchains are designed to be self-sufficient, meaning that all the necessary layers for data availability, consensus, and execution are integrated into a single system. This design is intended to provide the security, decentralization, and immutability, that are the hallmarks of blockchain technology.

In contrast, layer-2 scaling solutions are designed to enhance the performance of L1 blockchains rather than operate as independent blockchains. Layer-2 scaling solutions use off-chain techniques such as state channels, nested blockchains, rollups and sidechains to process transactions faster and more efficiently. In this way, layer-2 scaling solutions can increase the transaction throughput of L1 blockchains without compromising their security and decentralization.

Another significant difference between L1 and L2 scaling solutions lies in their scalability methods. L1 blockchains depend on various techniques such as consensus mechanism changes, chain forking and sharding to boost their transaction throughput. While these methods can improve transaction speeds, they can also lead to network congestion, security risks and fragmentation. L2 scaling solutions, on the other hand, process transactions off-chain, allowing for increased speed and efficiency while still relying on the primary network for security and decentralization. This approach reduces the risk of network congestion, minimizes fragmentation and enhances the overall performance of the blockchain ecosystem.

The Nakamoto coefficient is an important metric to consider when evaluating the level of decentralization in a blockchain network. It is crucial to consider the trade-off between scalability and decentralization when measuring up the difference between L1 and L2 solutions.

Often, L1 solutions such as Near protocol (NEAR) or Solana (SOL) have a higher coefficient because they offer a high degree of decentralization due to their reliance on a large number of validators. On the other hand, L2 solutions such as Opside or zkSync could offer improved scalability through the use of off-chain processing, but in turn, would be less decentralized due to their reliance on a smaller set of validators.

The ongoing battle between L1 and L2 solutions has its fair share of pros and cons. While L1 blockchains offer superior security and decentralization, they suffer from scalability issues. In contrast, L2 solutions offer scalability and lower fees, but may come at the cost of compromising the security and decentralization of the underlying blockchain.

Evidently, L2 solutions are not a one-size-fits-all solution to the scalability challenge. They rely on the base layers security and decentralization, and if the base is compromised, it could affect the very foundation of the layer-2 solutions in question.

Needless to say, as blockchain technology continues to mature, the outcome of this showdown will likely determine the path forward for scaling the technology to meet the demands of real-world applications. In the meantime, it is vital for both L1 and L2 solutions to work together to effectively address the scalability challenge.

Digi516 has been a crypto researcher and NFT enthusiast for almost a decade, with experience in educating and managing several crypto communities. Now, as head of community lead at XGo, Digi516 is on a mission to onboard the next 100 million users to Web3 and empower sovereign financial freedom.

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you with all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor can this article be considered as investment advice.

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Moving beyond the blockchain trilemma: L1 vs. L2 - Cointelegraph