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Understanding Currency Pairs and Exchange Rates

In a world defined by financial transactions, understanding the mechanics of exchange rates becomes crucially necessary. At the heart of these exchange rates are currency pairs, which form the cornerstones of the global forex trading system. What is a Currency Pair? A currency pair essentially involves two currencies. Without two currencies, we simply don't have enough information to establish an exchange rate. When you think about it, the exchange rate is nothing but a reflection of the price of one currency in terms of another. Each currency pair involves a

Hard Forks, Soft Forks, Defaults and Coercion

One of the important arguments in the blockchain space is that of whether hard forks or soft forks are the preferred protocol upgrade mechanism. The basic difference between the two is that soft forks change the rules of a protocol by strictly reducing the set of transactions that is valid, so nodes following the old rules will still get on the new chain (provided that the majority of miners/validators implements the fork), whereas hard forks allow previously invalid transactions and blocks to become valid, so clients must upgrade their clients

A Note On Charity Through Marginal Price Discrimination

Vitalik Buterin via the Vitalik Buterin Blog Updated 2018-07-28. See end note. The following is an interesting idea that I had two years ago that I personally believe has promise and could be easily implemented in the context of a blockchain ecosystem, though if desired it could certainly also be implemented with more traditional technologies (blockchains would help get the scheme network effects by putting the core logic on a more neutral platform). Suppose that you are a restaurant selling sandwiches, and you ordinarily sell sandwiches for $7.50. Why did

[Mirror] A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy

Vitalik Buterin via the Vitalik Buterin Blog This is a mirror of the post at https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-philosophy-506585978d51 Systems like Ethereum (and Bitcoin, and NXT, and Bitshares, etc) are a fundamentally new class of cryptoeconomic organisms — decentralized, jurisdictionless entities that exist entirely in cyberspace, maintained by a combination of cryptography, economics and social consensus. They are kind of like BitTorrent, but they are also not like BitTorrent, as BitTorrent has no concept of state — a distinction that turns out to be crucially important. They are sometimes described as decentralized autonomous

[Mirror] Quadratic Arithmetic Programs: from Zero to Hero

Vitalik Buterin via the Vitalik Buterin Blog This is a mirror of the post at https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/quadratic-arithmetic-programs-from-zero-to-hero-f6d558cea649 There has been a lot of interest lately in the technology behind zk-SNARKs, and people are increasingly trying to demystify something that many have come to call "moon math" due to its perceived sheer indecipherable complexity. zk-SNARKs are indeed quite challenging to grasp, especially due to the sheer number of moving parts that need to come together for the whole thing to work, but if we break the technology down piece by piece then

Coya Therapeutics Reports Additional Biomarker and Imaging Data Showing Decrease in Neuroinflammation with COYA 301 in Alzheimer’s Disease.

Highlights Coya reports new data illustrating that administration of COYA 301 (low dose Interleukin-2 (IL-2)) in an open- label study in 8 patients with mild to moderate AD (COYA 301 Trial) resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the expression of three well characterized proinflammatory cytokines -- Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-α), Interleukin 6 (IL-6), and Interleukin 1- Beta (IL-1β) -- which correlated with lack of cognitive decline of the patients over the course of the study. TNF-α is one of the main inflammatory cytokines involved in initiating and propagating