Distributed Digest: Thursday, February 7, 2019

Your daily distillation of crypto news for Thursday, February 7, 2019:

Panvala Token Grants

To support Ethereum scaling efforts, Panvala today opened applications for the second wave of its token grants program. Teams working on scaling Ethereum’s core (what Panvala calls “Level 1”) or its second layer (“Level 2”) are eligible to apply. Applications must be submitted by April 5.

The first batch of token grants was distributed on Friday, February 1, to various teams, including Gnosis, Aragon One, and Status. With the second batch, 2,034,798 PAN tokens will be granted to selected projects.

Panvala believes that “[s]ystems with overlapping visions but separate tokens will ultimately divide our community.” The team’s token grants program is one way it aims to unite the Ethereum ecosystem.

A Leap Forward for Plasma

Johann Barbie of LeapDAO announced today that the organization has launched its first public Plasma deployment, testnet Zeta. The first Plasma block was anchored on the testnet this past Friday within the Rinkeby network.

The testnet runs the 0.5 Driftwood release of LeapDAO’s code. The code includes four primary features: a Tendermint-based More Viable Plasma network, a single Plasma operator run by LeapDAO’s community, the ability to transfer both ERC20 and ERC721 tokens, and contract upgrades through LeapDAO’s Minimal Viable Governance model. The release of Driftwood marks the first step on LeapDAO’s Plasma roadmap.

Beam and Litecoin: Bosom Buddies?

Beam posted on Medium today that the Litecoin Foundation “has approached Beam about possible cooperation to implement Mimblewimble,” the privacy-centric protocol underpinning the Beam network. The team said it would be glad to offer its support to Litecoin.

Beam has begun to explore on-chain conversion between LTC and its Mimblewimble variant and vice versa. Mimblewimble-based LTC would enable users to, according to Beam, transact “in complete confidentiality.”

Beam is one of two major implementations of the Mimblewimble protocol, the other being Grin, which launched its mainnet last month.

Dani is a full-time writer for ETHNews. He received his bachelor’s degree in English writing from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also studied journalism and queer theory. In his free time, he writes poetry, plays the piano, and fangirls over fictional characters. He lives with his partner, three dogs, and two cats in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.

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