Aptos

2 months agoNews Editor

Aptos validators fell 40% in two years as annualized rewards dropped to 2.6%

ForesightNews reported on Sept. 21 that the number of Aptos validators has fallen 40% over the past two years, while validator nodes have become more concentrated in Europe and North America. The report also said annualized rewards declined from 7% to 2.6%. In dollar terms, validator income has fallen by 96%. The brief was tagged with payments, PoS, staking and Hong Kong. No additional details were provided in the source text beyond those figures and descriptors.

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Polygon

3 months agoNews Editor

Polygon Pushes Two Hard Forks to Patch PoS Flaws; POL Drops 6.8% Week

Polygon Labs has disclosed that it fixed a set of vulnerabilities on its proof-of-stake network through two hard forks, with the fixes privately deployed before public disclosure. In a Wednesday forum post, the team explained the patches were delivered via the Austin hard fork on the Bor client and the Kyoto hard fork on the Heimdall client, following the standard process for consensus-affecting upgrades: testing on Amoy testnet, then disclosure after mainnet activation and safety checks. Austin addressed two denial-of-service paths in block processing, including a bug allowing a malicious block producer to crash peers with oversized field data. Kyoto handled broader consensus hardening; the most serious flaw let an attacker force the entire validator set into expensive coordinated work with one cheap transaction. Polygon said no vulnerability had been observed exploited on mainnet and all issues were proactively addressed. Both upgrades are mandatory and live, with no state migration or resync needed. The disclosure comes as Polygon completes its MATIC-to-POL migration as part of a broader architecture overhaul. POL traded around $0.09983 on Sunday, down 2.3% in 24 hours, about 6.8% over the week and 60.8% over the past year, with a market cap near $1.07 billion, according to CoinGecko.

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Polygon

3 months agoNews Editor

Polygon disclosed PoS security fixes after privately deploying two hard forks

Polygon Labs said it repaired a batch of security flaws in its proof-of-stake network through two hard forks that were deployed before any public disclosure. In a forum post published Wednesday, the company said the fixes were included in the Austin hard fork for the Bor client and the Kyoto hard fork for the Heimdall client. Polygon said it followed its standard process for consensus-related fixes by rolling them out quietly, validating them on the Amoy testnet, activating them on mainnet, and only then disclosing the details publicly once the network was safe. According to Polygon, the Austin fork closed two denial-of-service paths tied to block processing, including one in which a malicious block producer could crash peer nodes by packing a block with an oversized data field. The Kyoto fork addressed a broader set of consensus-hardening issues, including a more serious flaw that could have allowed an attacker to trigger expensive coordinated work across the full validator set with a single crafted transaction. Polygon said none of the flaws were seen exploited on mainnet, and both upgrades are now mandatory, already active, and require no state migration or resync. The disclosure comes after Polygon completed its legacy MATIC-to-POL migration. CoinGecko data cited in the report showed POL trading near $0.09983 on Sunday, down 2.3% over 24 hours, about 6.8% over the past week, and roughly 60.8% over the past year, with a market capitalization near $1.07 billion.

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Polygon

3 months agoNews Editor

Polygon reveals PoS network flaws patched through recent hard forks

Polygon has disclosed a set of previously nonpublic security vulnerabilities affecting its proof-of-stake network after fixes were deployed through the Austin and Kyoto hard forks. According to a Thursday notice from Polygon Labs’ Validators Support Team, the issues involved the Bor and Heimdall clients and included denial-of-service risks, validator resource exhaustion, and flaws tied to checkpoint and milestone processing. The company said the updates were rolled out privately, tested, and only then activated on mainnet before the vulnerabilities were made public. Polygon added that it did not observe any of the flaws being exploited on mainnet. The most serious issue involved Heimdall, where a specially crafted transaction could have forced validators into excessive processing work. Austin also fixed two Bor denial-of-service bugs that could have slowed block handling or crashed nodes. Nodes still running old software past the hard fork activation heights have already fallen out of consensus and must upgrade to rejoin the canonical network. Bor v2.10.0 is required for all Polygon PoS nodes, while Heimdall v0.11.0 is required for validators and full nodes. CoinGecko data showed POL trading around $0.10 at the time of writing.

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Lawson

3 months agoNews Editor

Lawson tests in-store stablecoin payments again, adding USDT while Japan’s rules remain unresolved

Lawson and NetStars ran a second-stage stablecoin payment trial at a Lawson convenience store on Aug. 17, expanding an earlier proof of concept that had used only JPYC on Polygon. This round tested three stablecoins — USDC, USDT and JPYC — across Solana, Morph and Polygon, with MetaMask used on the customer side and NetStars’ Stablecoin Pay linked to Lawson’s existing POS system. According to the companies, the trial was designed to check whether stablecoin payments could be processed in a physical retail setting without disrupting normal store operations. NetStars said the payments confirmed during interviews were generally completed within five seconds, a key metric for busy convenience store checkout flows. Store settlement was still handled in Japanese yen, meaning customers paid in stablecoins while Lawson received yen, similar to conventional barcode payment rails. The most sensitive point is USDT. The report notes that USDT is not included in the latest list of assets that registered electronic payment instrument service providers in Japan may handle. NetStars COO Hisahiro Chofuku said the model relies on users paying from self-custodied wallets and that the company does not hold customer assets as a financial institution. Even so, NetStars is still consulting Japan’s Financial Services Agency on how USDT payments should be treated legally and how received USDT or USDC would be converted safely into yen. Lawson said commercialization timing has not been decided.

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ChainFeeds

3 months agoNews Editor

ChainFeeds PRO reviews Ethereum multi-dimensional gas design, PoS security models, and oracle silence

ChainFeeds Research’s PRO issue #154 pulls together several research threads across Bitcoin and Ethereum. The report highlights Fei Wu’s work on Ethereum’s post-Glamsterdam fee market, where EIP-8037 and EIP-7999 would shift gas pricing from a single-meter model to separate pricing for execution, data, and state creation. Using historical gas changes, the study models demand curves for each resource and finds different elasticities: execution is least sensitive to price, data sits in the middle, and state creation is the most sensitive. Under higher block capacity, state creation could become the new fee bottleneck. On Bitcoin, the report covers josh’s HTLC design aimed at removing reliance on mempool-based preimage monitoring and the free-relay assumption, as well as a staletip P2P message proposed by Ram and w0xlt to improve visibility into stale blocks. On Ethereum research, Hudu Yusuf questions whether stake weight truly reflects effective consensus weight and whether continuous oracle output is always safer than silence, proposing DW-BFT and a structured-silence model. The issue also includes Sidistr’s Arcanum, a compiler-layer approach for keeping source code hidden through a TEE-to-ZK roadmap, and a paper from Old Dominion University on what drives contentious Bitcoin soft forks toward orderly upgrades or lasting chain splits.

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Lawson

3 months agoNews Editor

Tokyo Lawson tests 322-yen JPYC stablecoin payment through a standard store register

A Lawson convenience store in Tokyo processed a 322-yen payment in the yen stablecoin JPYC on Aug. 6 during a live demonstration reported by CoinPost. The purchase was made by reporter Ritsuki Kumazawa, and the printed receipt listed the payment method as “stablecoin.” The trial was run by Tokyo-based HashPort, with the customer presenting a barcode in the non-custodial HashPort Wallet and the store’s regular point-of-sale register scanning it. On the merchant side, acceptance was handled through HashPort Wallet for Biz embedded in the POS, so Lawson did not have to open or manage its own wallet. CoinPost said payment data moved through Canal Payment Service’s PAYTREE gateway before settlement on Polygon. The test was limited to trial participants rather than the general public. A second phase is scheduled for Aug. 17 at Lawson Gate City Osaki Atrium using MetaMask and supporting USDC, USDT and JPYC, while Lawson plans additional stablecoin trials later in August.

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Lawson

3 months agoNews Editor

Lawson to test USDC, USDT and JPYC payments at two Tokyo stores

Japanese convenience store chain Lawson is set to run a proof-of-concept trial for stablecoin payments at two locations in Tokyo, using USDC, USDT and JPYC. The trial will work through the company’s existing point-of-sale system, with payments completed by scanning a digital wallet barcode rather than using dedicated terminal hardware. The first test is scheduled for Aug. 6 at the Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store and will use HashPort Wallet and JPYC. A second test is planned for Aug. 17 at Gate City Osaki Atrium, where MetaMask will be used to support payments in all three stablecoins. Settlement data will be processed through Canal Payment Services’ PAYTREE gateway. Lawson said the trial is intended to evaluate payment speed, system integration and day-to-day operational flow before deciding whether the model should be rolled out more broadly.

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