Dash Core announced the news in an official blog post on Aug. 15. According to the announcement, Dash was hit with either an external stress test or attack on Wednesday and Thursday this week.
The post said that “the upgrade is strongly recommended for all Masternodes and is also recommended for all users, exchanges, partners and full node operators.”
Dash has released Dash Core v0.14.0.3, a new version of the wallet and P2P client for its cryptocurrency DASH in light of recent transaction spikes on its mainnet.
Security upgrade
The developer subsequently discovered issues including mempools not being emptied, a 1MB cap on blocks, masternode crashes, masternodes banning other masternodes and delayed listing of transactions on some blocks. Dash Core version 0.14.0.3 is reportedly designed to address some of these issues and includes changes such as improvements to database space use and various signing failures.
Dine and dash
Near the end of 2018, a United States-based fast food chain restaurant called Church’s Chicken began to accept payments in DASH at its South American branches in Venezuela. There are reportedly 10 Church’s Chicken restaurants in Venezuela, and all of them decided to accept DASH. At the time of their decision, the restaurant reportedly claimed that it was the first global, fast food restaurant to take crypto payments.
In a less-than-savory turn of events, a man in Israel allegedly stole over $9 million in DASH from his roommate. Afek Zard allegedly stole 74,990.74 DASH from Alexei Yaromenko, who apparently is an early cryptocurrency investor that taught his roommate about crypto. Zard has been indicted, standing accused of stealing the assets in Yarkomenko’s wallets and transferring them to his own addresses. In addition to the theft, he has been additionally accused of money laundering and “penetration of a computer to commit an offense.”
DBS Bank Partners with Singapore Government to Launch Blockchain Trade Platform
Asian banking giant DBS and multinational commodity trading firm Trafigura Group are tapping blockchain to facilitate global trade.
Alongside the Singapore government and the International Chamber of Commerce, these firms are looking to reduce the number of paper-based processes involved in global trade. Distributed ledger technology firm Perlin is providing the blockchain background to build the open-source platform, dubbed ICC TradeFlow.
DBS claims the new platform will connect partners from different countries, reducing end-to-end document transit time from 45 days to just 20. A $20 million trade in iron ore from Africa to China is expected to be the first transaction processed, according to a press release.
The ICC TradeFlow Platform is based on the Trade Trust network infrastructure provided by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), which is a statutory board under the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information.
The partners plan to add more enhancements to the platform as more countries join the new trade finance system. According to the release, the participants claim they can build a more trusted relationship between counterparties, adding more background information such as credit ratings on trade participants, vessels and couriers.
The partnership could foster new innovations that can reinforce Singapore’s position as a leading commodity trading hub, said Satvinder Singh, assistant CEO of Enterprise Singapore, an agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the country.
Trade finance has been one of the frontiers for enterprise blockchain adoption. The trade finance blockchain Marco Polo has partnered with over 20 global banks, including Bank of America, ING and BNP Paribas. It has piloted its first trading arrangement between Germany and Russia in October.
A slew of Chinese state-owned banks have also launched their own blockchain trade finance platform to facilitate short-term financing between export companies and financial institutions, and the Construction Bank, one of four major commercial banks in the country, has revamped its blockchain platform with new factoring abilities as the platform’s trading volume surpasses $53 billion overall since its April 2018 launch.
Trafigura itself has been involved in the blockchain space since 2017, when it participated in the development of a crude oil trade finance platform alongside IBM, Natixis and Hyperledger.
