The Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO) is an essential part of Flare Network, providing decentralized and reliable price feeds for smart contracts and dApps on the platform. FTSO acts as a backbone to ensure that all transactions are accurate, secure, and efficient. For smart contracts to function, the FTSO (Federated Trustless Source of Data) is crucial. It is decentralized and trustless and delivers external data to the network, such as asset values, lowering the possibility of abuse and maintaining network security.

Decentralized oracles, additionally referred to as Signal Providers, are used by the FTSO to send price feeds, and they are paid with $FLR tokens for providing precise data, which encourages them to do so. Token users can assign their $FLR tokens to the Signal Providers of their choosing to guarantee that the price reports on the FTSO network are based on group intelligence. Holders of tokens can directly contribute to network upkeep through this method.

Holders of $FLR are incentivized to take part in the sharing procedure by the FTSO system. They can benefit from rewards for providing accurate data by delegating their ballots to trustworthy oracles, and they can participate in those rewards. A delegation method and a decentralized network of oracles have been applied by FTSO to build a highly secure price feed system. To maintain the stability of the Flare Network, this helps guard against malicious players manipulating rates.

For smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) to operate safely and effectively on the Flare Network platform, the Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO) is a crucial part of the ecosystem. It offers precise and decentralized external data.

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Liquidity pool (LP) Safemoon lost $8.9 million worth of tokens on March 29 after hackers were able to manipulate a faulty smart contract feature, CoinDesk reported. According to blockchain data, a number of tokens were swapped early Wednesday morning in a single transaction. The hackers stole a huge volume of Safemoons native SFM tokens.

Safemoons tokens lost more than 40% immediately after the attack, then made a slight recovery. Pool developers tweeted that the liquidity pair SFM:BNB had been compromised. They added they were taking rapid action to try and solve the problem as soon as possible.

Soon thereafter, Safemoon CEO John Karony tweeted that the attack only involved one LP on BNB Chain:

A liquidity pool is a collection of crypto assets locked in a smart contract. These pools enable decentralized lending, borrowing, and trading directly between users without needing to use intermediaries.

Safemoon was one of the biggest winners in 2021s spectacular crypto bull market. This is partly thanks to the DeFi tokens four features, which can be observed during each trade: LP acquisition, fee reflection, fund growth, and token burn.

However, it was precisely the last feature that turned out to be faulty according to experts. Dappd CEO DeFi Mark tweeted:

He added that the hacker or hackers had manipulated this function to move SFM tokens out of the Safemoon-WBNB LP, which resulted in an artificial increase of SFMs price. In his opinion, many smart contracts have suffered this exploit despite it being extremely elementary.

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Safemoon LP Drained of $9M in Smart Contract Attack - BanklessTimes

Welcome to Future of Finance, where Fortune asks prominent people at major companies about their jobs, how their firm fits into the crypto ecosystem, and what this all means for how we use money.

The following is from a recent conversation with Paul Brody, the global blockchain leader at EY and author of the upcoming Ethereum for Business: A plain-English guide to doing business on the worlds largest blockchain.

Brody is a member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, a CoinDesk contributor, and has done stints at IBM and McKinsey. He also has a soft spot for Swedish Fish.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

So youre writing an Ethereum book?

Im getting there. I started in December. I wrote like 10 chapters, and it was really, really tough. And now, theres, like, six chapters left? The format of the book is how Ethereum works and whywhy public blockchains are so important for businessspecifically why theyre more important than private blockchainsbusiness use cases, procurement, supply chain management, tokenization, carbon footprint, and why it takes so long for enterprises to adopt technology.

When you were at IBM you did some Internet of Things stuff, and some other projects that were cutting edge. Is this sort of a pattern for you, where you want to do the cool new thing? Is that just whats most appealing to you?

The thing is, I am very driven by intellectual curiosity. I dont necessarily go after every single new thing, but when I find a thing thats really, really important, I go after it. When I was in collegeIm dating myself hereI was like, Wireless! Wireless is the thing! I went to work as a summer job at the first mobile network operator in Africa, in Nigeria, and I took an entire year off to work for them before I came back and went to work at McKinsey, where I can remember just telling colleagues, Mobile data, youve got to invest in mobile data.

The best perk of being a VP at IBM was you had access to IBM research. And I had a couple of amazing products, and before I did the one that got me into crypto, I did another one, which was immensely fun, around 3D printing. A lot of people do these corporate white papersthey just do a survey, they present it like its subjective data that nine out of 10 executives think that not burning down the planet is a good ideathey present it as if its factual data, and its not really. What I love to do is get a couple layers below that, and whats really fun is, for instance, wed ask, Okay, 3D printing will transform manufacturing, but how will it transform manufacturing?

What happened with thatthe 3D printing?

We picked three productsa smartphone, an electric razor, and a washing machineand we tore them down, literally one piece at a time, evaluated every single component, scanned them in 3D, and then tried to remanufacture as much of the product as possible using a 3D printer. And that was amazing. We came back with specific data on the carbon footprint of 3D printing, the cycle time with 3D printing, we built the economic model of what your manufacturing scalesits quite transformational. And the next project I did after that was IoT.

How did that lead you to Ethereum?

So Im out at Samsung, talking to the head of the multimedia solution center, and hes like, Paul, we are going to go broke, the cloud is going to bankrupt usyouve got to come up with a better plan. I thought to myself, this is really bizarre. Imagine a really smart light bulb with the brains of an iPhone, and its connected to WiFi. What is your iPhone processor doing? Like nothing, 99% of the time! So why on earth are we paying all this money to maintain massive cloud data centers, when your refrigerator could be providing cloud services, or your phone? So I called a bunch of guys and was like, We should be able to make a cloud of computing devices that manage themselves, right? The cloud should be in the devices.

Halfway through this project, colleagues were like, I want you to think about using this thing called Bitcoin, because its distributed computing. And weve had lots of debateson the one hand, its very computationally intensive, but then on the other hand, its not like these machines are doing anything else. So John Cohn, an IBM distinguished engineer, comes and says, Paul, Ive met this guy, I think youd really like him. His name is Vitalik [Buterin]. And he wants to do Bitcoin, but instead of for money, for computing. So we built this thing called ADEPTAutonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry, sort of this decentralized cloud infrastructurefor Samsung, with help from Vitalik. And we showed it at CES in January 2015. Thats how I got into Ethereum. Thats how I got into blockchain. And at that point, I was like, this is going to be absolutely revolutionary.

What important lessons or ideas from other projects or jobs have you applied to ones on the blockchain?

Were heading toward this world where the marginal cost of almost everything is zero. One of the most brilliant things that I heard when I worked at McKinsey was if you want to think about the future, try to imagine some important process or input is free. Just imagine, like, what if electricity was free? What if airfare was free? What if phone calls were free? Like 25 or 30 years ago, this idea that phone calls would be free, it was ridiculous. And yet, we sort of forget. One of the reasons we liked Ethereum was it comes with account payments and smart contracts. And we used to joke that we dont know what anybody will actually pay for in the Internet of Things, but, eventually, someone will figure out how to monetize it. And when they do, theyll be so glad this architecture has payments and contracts built in.

Has embracing the blockchain helped EY from a competitive standpoint?

In the world of audit, we only have three competitors. So my fair share of any sort of global audit market is 25%, but its actually been better than that because I dont think any of our peers have taken this space quite as seriously as we have.

So where is this leading? Can you tell me more about plans for the blockchain?

A lot of tech systems are natural monopolies. Thats just how they are in a world where the marginal cost is zero for products. And then with Metcalfes lawthe value of a network grows along with the number of participantsat a certain inflection point, your network becomes so valuable youre effectively a natural monopoly. And thats hugely shaped our strategy here because it led me down the path to believe there can be only one winning blockchain. There cant be 50, cant be 100, and it almost certainly will be a public blockchain. All paths lead to a dominant chain. And when you look at the history of computing platforms, that dominant chain usually becomes clearly visible within a decade of an ecosystem starting.

And Ethereums that winner?

Ethereum was really the only programmable smart contract chain out there that was really dominant. So I said, Okay, were making a play. Its a theory, a bit of the GE mentality where if I have a limited budget, am I going to spread it around, am I going to be okay with a bunch of different blockchains? Or am I going with the best?

What prevents the rest of the Big Four from just copying what youre doing at some point?

Obviously, in a decentralized system, you cant do that. And thats really tough. Ive long accepted that. Even if we win this race, there will be no moment where we can just put our feet up and say, Well, were a monopolist now. Great. We will have to keep running hard.

When clients come to EY, is it more often, Oh, hey, by the way, we hear you have this blockchain guy? or do they walk in like, Were here because of the blockchain guy?

It comes in both forms. All the time, Ill sit down with clients, and theyll come over, like, We had no idea you guys knew how to do this stuff. And thats great. I love that. And it makes me very happy. And, absolutely, you know, our senior people, its great when somebody writes to the chairman and says, I just had this guy, Paul Brody, come in and talk to my clientstotally blew their minds. Like now they think of UI differently.

So whats nextboth on your end, and more generally when it comes to the future of finance?

If you were to boil down all of our aspirations into a single sentence, it would be this: We believe that blockchain will do for networks and enterprises what ERP did for organizations. It was transformational. Before ERP, the left hand and the right hand didnt really know what was going on.

With smart contracts on the public blockchain, I can create tokens that represent all the assets, that connect the buyers and the sellersand that automatically enforce the processes. Like if you have a volume discount rule, when you achieve your targeted volumes, it automatically gives you a discount. This sounds like a small thing, but, actually, it just happens. No one has to remember. And think about an insurance contract, like in health care, and how after your deductible expires youll be referred to specialists, and then the logic just gets more complicated, more challenging. So my goal is to get to the point where we can take any arbitrarily complex business agreement and run it on the public blockchain.

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Future of Finance: EYs Brody on why tech history shows there can be only one winning blockchain - Fortune

Disclaimer: The datasets shared in the following article have been compiled from a set of online resources and do not reflect AMBCryptos own research on the subject.

Stellar Lumens (XLM) had been trading within a bearish range since mid-January, but has recently broken out of it. This shifted XLMs bias from bearish at range highs to strongly bullish. In the event of a pullback, bulls will have a good buying opportunity in the $0.096-$0.099 range. This was the unbroken resistance that had lasted since November. If XLMs pullback fell below $0.09, a drop below $0.096 would be required to shift the bias back towards bearish.

Early this month, Brazils central bank launched the pilot for its experimental central bank digital currency (CBDC). The test for Brazilian CBDC, Digital Real, is taking place on the Stellar blockchain network.

Soon thereafter, Pendulum announced the release of the Spacewalk bridge that connects the Polkadot infrastructure to Stellars blockchain so Polkadot can access fiat and stablecoin currencies. The Spacewalk bridge will allow Polkadot to access the entire infrastructure created by Stellar, especially that related to cross-border payments.

The trust of large institutions in the Stellar network is a primary reason for its strong market presence.

Read Price Prediction for Stellar (XLM)2023-24

Stellar is today one of the best platforms for facilitating faster and easier international financial transactions. It is based on a decentralized on-chain protocol. Stellar users trade in Lumens (XLM) which is the platforms native cryptocurrency.

Another important feature of Stellar is that individuals are more interested in Stellar than organizations, as it is a platform for small-amount payments. It is gaining popularity due to its simple user interface.

Stellar enables real-time transactions to occur anywhere in the world in as little as five seconds. A new smart contracts platform called Soroban has released its second preview. The upgrade intends to increase platform developer friendliness, scalability, and sensibility.

Last year, Ethereum transitioned from the proof-of-work (PoS) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism following the Merge. A major reason for this step was claimed to be the adoption of eco-friendly processes. In this regard, Stellar is very promising, as it has a smaller carbon footprint. Its authentication cycle is also fast, keeping energy use to a minimum.

Acting as a decentralized currency exchange, Stellar helps you track all of your assets with an order book. You can sell, buy and manage all of your assets here, with XLM acting as an intermediate currency for paying transaction fees. The currency is very useful for the users because it helps you reduce transaction costs.

Transactions on the Stellar platform are performed swiftly due to the ease of Lumens. The currency not only makes transactions seamless for the sender and the recipient but also ensures that transactions are secure.

Jed McCaleb, Co-founder, and CTO of Stellar said in an interview with CoinMarketCap that XLM is used in a fundamental way for the network.

Maybe that affects the price, maybe price is a secondary indicator of how useful the underlying protocol is in some way But I think that the trend is there: that where price and utility can come into play.

XLM is listed on a number of crypto exchanges including Binance, eToro, Huobi Global, CoinTiger, FTX, and OKEx. This shows that the currency is an increasingly accepted choice of investors now.

A total of 100 billion XLMs were issued when the Stellar network was launched in 2015. In 2019, the group announced that it was burning over half of the cryptocurrencys supply. Stellar mentions on its website that currently, there are around 50 billion XLMs in existence; 20 billion XLMs are in circulation and 30 billion XLMs are retained by the Stellar Development Foundation for project development. Nothing more will be created.

Where Stellar trumps other financial platforms is its low transaction fees, which have drawn a huge number of cryptocurrency users to it. It is one of the few blockchain networks that has been successful in collaborating with large tech corporations, such as Deloitte and IBM. Stellar, in partnership with IBM, launched a project that enables FinTech to engage in financial transactions using assets such as stablecoins.

It must be noted that Stellar is one of the large corporations that are operating in the cryptocurrency market. It is one of the most centralized cryptocurrency networks active on the internet. While the Stellar network uses decentralized nodes, it doesnt have that many validators. Such an infrastructure gives the group a lot of control over the operations and price movement of XLM.

In 2016, Deloitte announced a partnership with Stellar, along with four other blockchain networks, to provide new technological capabilities to its global financial institution client base.

In June 2018, Fortune reported that New York financial regulators approved Stellar Lumens to trade on the Bit exchange, the first time the states authorities have given it the green light.

In October 2021, IBM partnered with Stellar to facilitate cross-border payments by banks. The system uses XLM as a bridge currency for transactions and it has been successful in the South Pacific region.

The same year, Moneygram announced a partnership with Stellar. Its integration with Stellar facilitates the conversion of the USDC stablecoin into cash and vice versa. The facility aims to encourage the liquidity of cryptocurrencies and the integration of traditional and cryptocurrency markets.

In October 2021, Flutterwave, a global payments technology company, also announced two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network. The step is a major step in Stellars expansion in the global market.

It also succeeded in receiving certification from the Islamic scholars of Bahrain in 2018, aiming to integrate the technology into the field of sharia-compliant financial products, reported Reuters.

We have been looking to work with companies that facilitate remittances, including in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Its a huge market, said Lisa Nestor, the then-director of partnerships at Stellar. Since the Middle East and South Asian regions are key areas of growth for the group, where a lot of countries are run on a sharia-compliant system, this is a major success for Stellar.

Developing economies are the focus of the Stellar network in the areas of remittances and loans. It primarily aims to target those who are still not part of the traditional banking system.

In June 2022, the global platform for modern money movement, Nium, and Stellar announced a partnership to enable payouts to 190 countries. This integration truly drives home the value that blockchain-powered cross-border payment solutions bring to the current financial system, said Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation. At SDF, we are always working to fill up the map and connect the network to more of the globe. Together with Nium, we are thrilled to expand the reach of the Stellar network so significantly.

Another prominent feature of Stellar is that it gives power to the community to decide what project(s) the blockchain should focus on.

We will now briefly give an overview of the key performance indicators of XLM, such as price and market capitalization. We will then summarize what the worlds leading crypto-analysts have to say about the future of this currency, along with its Fear & Greed Index.

XLMs price has hiked significantly over the last few years. Back in 2018-2019, it kept falling below its previous ATH of around $0.93 (recorded in early January 2018). It was only in 2021 that its price again rose, hitting a price level of over $0.7 around mid-May. However, as the cryptocurrency market collapsed in the second quarter of 2022, XLM went into a bearish dive.

At press time, XLM was changing hands at $0.1090, with a market cap of $2,933,706,618.

The market capitalization of the cryptocurrency follows its price trends throughout. In early January 2018, it was nearly $9 billion, and it skyrocketed to as high as $16.5 billion (May 2021) during the crypto-boom of 2021. In fact, it was performing fairly well in 2022 too, until the market crashed during the years second quarter.

Stellar has seen many growth spurts over the past few years, such as when Mercado Bitcoin announced its use of the platform. In less than a year, Stellar housed almost 3 million user accounts. Since that time, however, Stellar has built a network of partners that includes Flutterwave and MoneyGram.

A Changelly blogpost says that many experts have observed the prices and fluctuations of Lumens over the years and concluded that the currency could hit as high as $0.309969 and as low as $0.259974 in 2025. Its average price will remain around $0.259974 in the said year.

Telegaon is very bullish in its assessment of XLMs performance. It writes that the average price of XLM can be around $2.96 by 2025 if current growth continues. Its maximum price could be up to $3.53, while its minimum price can go down up to $1.32.

As per DigitalCoinPrice, XLMs price could reach as high as $0.36 and as low as $0.31 in 2025. Its average price in the year is going to be $0.38.

The aforementioned Changelly blogpost predicts the maximum and minimum prices of XLM in 2030 to be $2.12 and $1.74 respectively. Its average price in the year will be $1.79.

Telegaon remains very bullish in its assessment for 2030 as well. It writes that the currency could reach as high as $31.02 and as low as $23.31. It predicts XLMs average price to be around $25.62.

As per DigitalCoinPrice, XLMs average price in 2030 is going to be $1.1, with its maximum and minimum prices being $1.11 and $1.04.

Stellar has, time and again, stressed its role in increasing financial inclusion across the globe. In particular, it focuses on working towards better microfinance management. Today, it operates in association with a number of financial institutions across the globe, shaping the future of a financial system that is welcoming to cryptocurrency.

Any financial institution can integrate with Stellar and avoid the hassle of building its own payment gateway. This integration connects these global players in such a way that interoperability and communication among different systems are seamless.

A significant accomplishment of Stellar is the integration of the global financial system while cutting fees. Stellar has a sizable user base, which is not surprising given that it has become a crucial tool for enabling economic empowerment.

The Stellar network is considered a rival to the Ripple network. While Ripple helps banks make fund transfers, Stellar helps individuals outside the banking system make fund transfers. Its simple, swift and economical process has made it very popular among users across several developed countries.

These developments are certain to boost Stellars credibility among the users and raise the price of Lumens. Besides, XLM is one of the most eco-friendly cryptocurrencies. Its consensus model is faster than both PoS and PoW, making it the preferred choice of many investors.

The unique features of Stellar such as strategic partnerships and convenience, make XLM one of the most reliable crypto investments. Its growth as a payments network will be the most important factor influencing the future of XLM.

Despite being embroiled in a legal dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Stellars Lumens coin is a major cryptocurrency to wager on.

In June 2022, the system upgraded Protocol 19, building payment channels and key recovery channels. Stellar is also working on the Project Jump Cannon to facilitate a robust execution environment for smart contracts.

In 2022 itself, many crypto exchanges such as WhiteBIT, CoinMe, and Mercado Bitcoin enabled USD-backed stablecoin transactions, increasing the access to USDC on Stellar.

Coinbase Wallet announced in November 2022 that it will no longer support the XLM token, along with BCH, ETC, XRP, effective 5 December. Coinbase cited low usage as a reason for delisting the four coins.

The SDF has also established a $100 million fund to encourage developers to create applications for the Soroban smart contract platform. Soroban adds Turing-complete smart contracts to the Stellar blockchain, allowing developers to create new financial services rails on the network.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) has announced that 21 projects will receive funds as part of its 11th round. The required funding for the winning projects will be given to them in XLM tokens. The grants total more than 13 million XLM for the entire round.

South Koreas leading cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, announced the temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals of the Stellar networks native token, XLM, and other assets on the network. Upbit stated that the event was caused by the need for maintenance of the Stellar network and the wallets in it.

In March 2022, Stellar stated in its blog that it will launch Project Jump Cannon, an E&D venture to introduce native smart contracts for its blockchain. The same month, it also introduced the Starbridge project that would create bridges between Stellar and other blockchains, enabling interoperability.

Since December 2022, the Stellar network has been working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide its blockchain payment solutions to those affected by the war in Ukraine.

In January 2023, Stellar (XLM) announced its decision to join the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC). It is important to note that the committee is composed of a diverse group of members with backgrounds in both traditional finance and cryptocurrency. As a result, Stellars (XLM) unique perspective on Layer 1 protocols may not carry the same weight as that of more established players in the space.

If Stellar continues to adopt more of such innovations and succeeds in building a larger community, it can prove to be a significant player in the crypto market.

The latest Fear & Greed Index projects a neutral market sentiment for XLM.

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Stellar (XLM) Price Prediction 2025-30: Will XLM shake off its bearish ways? - AMBCrypto News

The Ethereum network is a decentralized, open-source blockchain network that is widely used for the development of decentralized applications (DApps). These DApps are powered by smart contracts that have plenty of use cases in industries like real estate, automotive, supply chain, education, art, music, and more.But how about Ethereum account abstraction?

The Ethereum network has seen tremendous growth over the years and the number of DApps on the network continues to increase. Today, developers are constantly looking for ways to improve the networks performance and scalability. Account abstraction is one of the most notable updates on the Ethereum network recently. This guide will clarify the concept and its importance to the crypto space in detail.

An average trader does not necessarily need to know the technical details of account abstraction. But we will try to explain everything in laymans terms. Previously, smart contracts on the Ethereum network were executable via a model known as the account model. In this model, a smart contract gets associated with a user account, which contains some balance. To interact with the smart contract, the user needs to send a transaction containing a payment to the contracts address.

Ethereum account abstraction aims to separate the execution logic of a smart contract from the users account balance. There are two main ways in which account abstraction can be achieved, these are EIP-4337 and EIP-2938. Out of these, EIP-4337 has already been implemented and its entry point was deployed to the mainnet on the 1st of March, 2023. That is because it does not change the Ethereum protocol.

However, EIP-2938 is not active at the moment because it requires changing the protocol, which is quite difficult to achieve. There is a high chance that EIP-2938 will ever get implemented, especially if EIP-4337s outcomes are good enough. Anyway, account abstraction allows developers to significantly improve the user experience and security of wallets. For instance, it will remove the need to sign multiple transactions for a swap and reduce gas fees.

Ethereum account abstraction allows developers to create new types of smart contracts that were previously not possible on the network. Since the industry for smart contracts is still rapidly growing, there can be an endless number of potential uses of account abstraction.

Some of the potential use cases of Ethereum account abstraction include:

Ethereum account abstraction has had a significant impact on the Ethereum network. From improved scalability to increased adoption, let us take a look at some of the positives.

EIP-4337 is a rather well-researched proposal that did not require any protocol changes. This made its implementation easy. Hence, its entry point was deployed at the start of March 2023.

However, EIP-2938 is still in the research phase, and it may take a couple of years until its implementation. But note that if EIP-4337 turns out to be sufficient, then there may be no need to implement EIP-2938 anymore.

Still, account abstraction is already here, and as an Ethereum trader, you should take steps to prepare yourself. That is because a single announcement or confirmation of an update can result in sudden price movements.

Some of the steps that you can take to prepare yourself for Ethereum account abstraction include:

It is a general consensus among expert traders that Ethereum will succeed in the long term. One of the reasons for this belief is that it has a huge ecosystem, global recognition, and plenty of real-world use cases.

Developers are always looking for new ways to increase Ethereum adoption. Hence, making the Ethereum network more user-friendly and secure is the top priority. Account abstraction helps with that. It can also potentially reduce gas fees, and make the network more scalable.

Experts also believe that account abstraction can become a catalyst for adoption and an increase in prices. However, what the future holds for Ethereums price is based on pure speculation. If youre interested in how Ethereum may perform in the long term, consider reading our Ethereum price prediction.

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How Can Ethereum Account Abstraction Improve the Network's ... - Cryptopolitan