Cloud computing and virtualization firm VMware said Tuesday that it has developed an open-source blockchain infrastructure designed to be both scalable and energy efficient.

Dubbed Project Concord, VMware’s blockchain aims to provide a base for blockchain implementations which can solve certain scaling issues by modifying the Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus algorithm commonly found in blockchain networks.

Senior researcher Guy Golan Gueta wrote in a company blog post that the project’s algorithm uses a different communication procedure than existing consensus protocols that “exploits optimism to provide a common case fast-path execution” and utilizes new cryptographic algorithms.

These upgrades from current protocols allow for a higher network throughput, he said.

VMware, a Dell subsidiary, has been working on Project Concord for roughly two years, and while some of its research has been published over the last few months, this week’s release marks the first time the company has publicly acknowledged how much work has gone into developing a blockchain infrastructure.

“Project Concord’s foundations stem from years of academic and industrial research on Byzantine Fault Tolerant replication, cryptography and distributed computing,” Gueta said, adding:

“The cryptocurrency revolution and, in particular, bitcoin and ethereum have also tremendously influenced our understanding of this emerging field of trust decentralization. The Project Concord library is designed to be used as a core building block for replicated distributed data stores and is thus especially suited to serve as the basis for highly scalable, permissioned enterprise blockchain systems.”

The team’s source code has already been posted to Github, with Gueta noting that the company intends to add a number of other features going forward.

Among these, he wrote, is an execution engine for ethereum virtual machine-based smart contracts. Other additions include support for Windows, Apple’s OSX and some Linux distributions, as listed by Project Concord’s Github.

The Github page adds that the team “welcomes contributions from the community,” though contributors will be required to sign a license agreement.

VMWare image via Shutterstock

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Ripple’s efforts to consolidate the lawsuits filed against it are proceeding successfully.

As previously reported by CoinDesk, Ripple Labs, which has been sued by a number of parties claiming that the XRP token is a security for the company, has been pushing to have the various class action lawsuits against it combined, or at least coordinated, to limit the number of cases it fights at once.

And Wednesday, a California Superior Court suit filed by investor David Oconer was formally designated as “complex litigation” – meaning it will now be coordinated with the remaining suits.

According to public filings, this follows another California case, filed by investor Vladi Zakinov, which has already been deemed complex as of June 2018.

Under California court rules, one of the requirements for a complex designation is that a case involves “securities claims or investment losses involving many parties.” With the new designation, a single judge should oversee actions relating to the case to prevent duplicated efforts and potentially different results due to different cases.

However, one result of the Oconer action is the case is now assigned to Judge Marie Weiner, who Ripple successfully moved to disqualify from presiding over the Zakinov case. It is unclear whether Ripple will again move to have the judge disqualified from the new preceding.

Ripple filed to coordinate the Zakinov and Oconer lawsuits earlier this month, claiming that the two class actions concern “‘all or a material part of the same subject matter’ and involve ‘all or substantially all of the same parties.'”

Another related class-action lawsuit, filed by investor Ryan Coffey, was voluntarily dismissed by the investor last week. That case was moved to the District Court of the Northern District of California by Ripple, though Coffey tried to move it back to a lower court. His voluntary dismissal comes after that effort was rejected.

Legal counsel for Coffey and Ripple did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

XRP token on bullseye image via Shutterstock

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Initial coin offering advisory firm Satis Group believes bitcoin’s price might jump to $96,000 over the next five years, according to a new report.

Satis Group published the latest report in its five-part analysis of the cryptocurrency ecosystem Friday, this time examining how the cryptocurrency market is valued and whether this valuation matches the actual assets underlying token prices. The report, written by researchers Sherwin Dowlat and Michael Hodapp, also created predictions for how the market might look over the next few years.

Notably, the report attempted to predict how different cryptocurrency prices might look over the next five years if valued based on the underlying assets rather than speculation, saying that coins like bitcoin, monero and decred should see their prices spike as they are “cryptoassets which apply unique value propositions within deep and viral markets.”

On the other hand, the researchers believe that coins like bitcoin cash and other “cryptoassets which attempt to inherit brand recognition and provide minimal technological advantage to incumbents” will drop. Coins like XRP received the harshest predictions, with the Satis Group saying the token would drop to $0.01.

The report explained:

“Within the currency networks, we continue to see upside in networks that have cultivated relatively organic growth and community (such as LTC), meaningful downside from networks that have inherited brand recognition and potentially short-lived adoption during hiccups from their fork-parent (such as BCH), and very little value in networks that are misleadingly marketed and not even required for use within their own network (such as XRP).”

The paper also addressed “platform networks” like ethereum, predicting that over the next 10 years, a smaller percent of token projects will be built on top of ethereum rather than other networks when compared to the present (a previous Satis Group report noted that ethereum has roughly 86 percent of the market share for projects being built on top of existing platforms).

That being said, “at current levels we still believe ETH to be undervalued relative to the share of the cryptoasset market’s TAM it targets,” citing the cryptocurrency’s liquidity and reputation as supporting the overall network.

Miniatures on bitcoin image via Shutterstock

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Ethereum wallet MyCrypto just raised $4 million in its ongoing effort to make its product more user-friendly, the startup announced Thursday.

Led by Polychain Capital, the Series A funding round also saw investments from Boost VC Fund 3 LP, ShapeShift, Ausum Blockchain Fund LP, Mainframe founder Mick Hagen, Coefficient Ventures partner Chance Du, early Dropbox employee Albert Ni and Earn co-founder Lily Liu, according to a press release.

The funds will go toward upgrading MyCrypto’s user experience to help new customers more easily purchase and transact with ethereum, said founder and CEO Taylor Monahan.

Monahan told CoinDesk that one of the biggest issues she sees in the space is the difficulty in actually buying or transacting with cryptocurrencies. To that end, MyCrypto intends to hire developers and designers to target consumers who are beginning to interact with cryptocurrencies for the first time.

She said:

“Right now our team is really all engineers and customer support people and I think we need to build out a team that just advocates for the user more and has a ton of experience in user interface and design. Specifically, I’m looking for experts that don’t have a cryptocurrency background to join the team because their strength is outside the space.”

And part of this push means changing MyCrypto’s target user base, according to Monahan.

“The example to this is the ICO [craze] that took off last year, our user was someone who had ether and wanted to participate in an ICO. That’s our market, that’s the type of person that we targeted back then, that’s the type of person we’re targeting right now and our experience is satisfactory for that user,” she explained.

Going forward, she intends to ask different questions about users.

“When a brand new person comes to our site, what happens, what does the flow look like, what do we recommend they do and how do we really build their confidence up, whether it’s buying cryptocurrency or sending someone some ETH or whatever it is,” she said.

MyCrypto does not have a firm timeline for its development goals yet, but Monahan plans to be ready for the next time interest in cryptocurrency spikes. She pointed at the late 2017 bull run as an example of what that interest might look like, but added that the relatively quiet period in the market has helped in terms of developing a product.

“Right now we’re just building … I think that huge pendulum swing [last year] is why we’re in such a bear market right now, we went way too far … I think that at some point the market is going to realize or see the value that’s being created by all these different products in the space,” she said.

“We are in the perfect position to build this super robust product, we’re large enough that we can build things quickly but we’re small enough that we can pivot quickly, adjust to things quickly,” she concluded.

Ethereum wallet image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.