Payments processor Strike has announced the launch of a new feature that will allow users to convert their paychecks to bitcoin. This feature brings workers one step closer to collecting their paychecks in bitcoin. Instead of the employer paying out wages and salaries in BTC, employees can take the paychecks they receive and convert them to cryptocurrency in one easy step.
Receiving Paychecks In Bitcoin
Strike is enabling users to convert all or some of their paychecks into BTC. Instead of cashing into fiat and then having to change back to BTC, users can directly convert to BTC using the paycheck that they receive. The feature is known as “Pay Me in Bitcoin” was announced on Thursday and is one of Strike’s efforts to make BTC readily available to its users.
Related Reading | Why We Could See The First Approved U.S. Bitcoin ETF In October
Strike is best known for helping El Salvador in their journey to bitcoin adoption, but they are also a bitcoin-focused payments processor that allows users to receive and pay in BTC. And with the new feature, get paid in BTC with no hassles.
Strike completely bypasses the need for employers to adopt and start paying their employees in cryptocurrencies. Instead giving employees the power to decide if they would rather convert their paychecks to fiat currency or cryptocurrencies. This also means that employees are not limited by the payments options their employers use. It doesn’t matter the company individuals work for, they can choose to have their paychecks deposited in bitcoin.
BTC price trading above $61,300 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Following The Lead Of Coinbase
Strike’s announcement of the “Pay Me in Bitcoin” feature comes only a few weeks after Coinbase launched a similar feature. In the announcement post, Coinbase shared that customers were now able to deposit their paychecks directly to cryptocurrencies to ease their trading activities and just like Strike, streamline the process of users converting their money to cryptocurrencies.
The feature has been welcome in the crypto space as investors can now decide to deposit their full paycheck or a portion of it into their cryptocurrency tradings accounts. Customers could also choose to deposit their paychecks directly to U.S. dollars on Coinbase, which they can then use to carry out their trading activities on the platform.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Breaks $60,000 Ahead Of SEC ETF Approvals
Similar to Coinbase, Strike announced that the feature will initially be available to users in the United States. Roll-outs for other countries may be in the works but there has been no confirmation of these. Although users can only convert their paycheck to bitcoin on Strike, Coinbase offers users a wider variety as they can convert their paychecks to the over 100 cryptocurrencies currently listed on the exchange.
Featured image from Inc. Magazine, chart from TradingView.com
The overall price action in the cryptocurrency market during 2021 has been an extension of the bull-run witnessed over the last months of 2020. Cardano (ADA) has since picked up a strong bullish momentum and managed to steal the show among the altcoins sphere, setting its tone as a real competitor among the majors.
Nowadays, according to Coinmarketcap, ADA exchanges hands at $2.22, with a market capitalization of around $72.90 billion, standing at fourth place in the ranking of the largest cryptos by market cap.
The project founded by Charles Hoskinson has also seen some improvements on the blockchain that bolstered the confidence among the virtual currency during the first months of the year. Most recently, in September, Cardano deployed its Alonzo hard fork.
Now, after cracking the $2.00 threshold and consolidating its yearly gains above that neighborhood, crypto traders are eyeing the next year’s forecasts. AI-based forecast models like WalletInvestors are putting ADA at $4.587 as of press time from a yearly perspective, while its five-year forecast says that Cardano’s coin could skyrocket towards $14.05
So, what would be the future of the price after the ongoing consolidation around $2.00 in 2022?
ADA Technical Analysis for 2022
As the year-end period looms and Bitcoin (BTC) is finally cracking above $60,000, which is the latest critical hurdle ahead of its all-time highs, ADA has been trapped in some sort of rangebound that hasn’t been resolved since the lows tested during September 21 at $1.90.
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As a contraction has been developed across the board, the 200-period simple moving average (SMA) at the H4 chart is capping gains and limiting any further advance of ADA above $2.40.
ADA H4 Chart
That said, bulls need to crack above such an area in order to allow a golden crossover of the 50-period simple moving average with the 200 SMA and thus bolstering the bullish case. A golden crossover in the H4 chart is significant in the crypto markets, given that it’s a solid signal that could unleash a bullish force that can strengthen further. If that’s the case, ADA could prepare the ground for a bullish 2022 year that could take it to test levels around $5.00.
In fact, another forecast model, LongForecast, put the price of ADA at the Q4 2022 around $3.24, which is the average price that Cardano’s coin could aim in a possible bull-run.
Gene Simmons and ADA
But is this a too-optimistic view towards ADA? Ask Gene Simmons, rock legend and Kiss bassist who is a well-known ADA investor.
He claimed in February to had bought ADA coins and confirmed recently in an interview that he’s still holding them, suggesting that his investment has doubled since then. Moreover, Simmons said that he plans to keep holding his cryptos for at least ‘a decade.’
Cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko has released its Q3 2021 report showing massive gains across several crypto market sectors.
Following the May market crash, Q3 began on a low ebb for the crypto space, with market capitalization even dipping further in late July below the $1.2 trillion, less than half of the $2.5 trillion all-time high recorded only two months prior.
However, market capitalization did recover in Q3, even rising as high as $2.3 trillion in early September.
According to the CoinGecko report, Bitcoin (BTC), gaming “coins,” and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) dominated the crypto market space in Q3.
Bitcoin recorded a 25% increase between Q2 and Q3 and has continued on this upward trajectory, even reaching $60,000 for the first time in five months.
The network’s hash rate also experienced a resurgence in Q3, indicating a recovery from China’s sweeping crackdown that forced miners to relocate overseas.
Gaming tokens like Axie Infinity (AXS), Illuvium (ILV), and Gala (GALA), as well as the NFT space in general, did record massive gains in Q3 as well.
AXS, in particular returned almost 1,000% quarter-on-quarter gains, with its 2021 performance topping 13,700%.
In terms of NFT trading volume, OpenSea continued its dominance of the market segment. Indeed, OpenSea and Rarible recorded a total trading volume of about $6.8 billion in Q3 according to the CoinGecko report.
Related: Crypto markets soar after Fed commits to printing and Evergrande plans to pay its debt
These significant market gains also came on the back of a storm of regulatory concerns regarding cryptocurrencies. Policymakers in the United States seemingly applied pressure with calls for stricter laws surrounding market segments like stablecoins.
Despite the steady gains recorded in Q3, the crypto market recovery is still some way off the activity levels seen before the May crash.
For one, CoinGecko reported that spot trading volume across the major centralized and decentralized exchanges declined over 42% in Q3.
Shiba Inu, one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency assets by market cap, has seen immense retail demand in the last few months. The meme coin started this year with a market cap of a few million dollars, now the digital asset has a market cap of approximately $10 billion.
SHIB (Coinmarketcap)
Dogecoin’s largest competitor developed a strong following in the last 8 months. While the biggest reason behind SHIB’s recent rally is its retail craze, institutional investors have started considering Shiba Inu as a good portfolio diversifier. Amid the latest price surge, large SHIB transactions have surged substantially, indicating that Shiba Inu whales are planning to hold the world’s 21st largest cryptocurrency for the next few years.
So, is it only FOMO (fear of missing out) or some serious investors have started adding Shiba Inu to their crypto portfolios? Finance Magnates asked crypto experts about their views on the latest SHIB rally and the importance of Shiba Inu as a portfolio diversifier.
Difficult to Ignore Shiba Inu
“6 months ago, if someone had asked me about “social awareness” tokens (meme coins) such as SHIB or DOGE, I would have NEVER considered them an investment. However, 6 months later, it is clear for me to see that you CANNOT ignore the social power of these tokens in terms of Return on Investment. So, there may be something to these tokens,” Johnny McCamley, Founder of CryptoClear, commented.
“The goal of SHIB was and still is to catch up to DOGE and ultimately surpass DOGE. It isn’t too far away at $10 Billion (SHIB), $30.8 Billion (DOGE). Again, this [is] illustrating that community is an extremely powerful catalyst- for tokens with close to zero utility,” he added.
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While Shiba Inu is the biggest competitor of Dogecoin, its dynamics are completely different from other digital assets like XRP, BTC or ETH. McCamley believes that a meme coin portfolio is a risky option but an option at least.
“So, I have decided to create a ‘meme coin’ portfolio alongside my DeFi, Smart Contract portfolios. I have chosen to allocate $5K to this Meme tokens portfolio-spread amongst the top meme coins. To me, this is a complete ‘gamble’ riding on the social power of the community behind the token to drive the price, unlike actual utility for other Crypto Assets in my Portfolio. To me, this meme coin portfolio is the riskiest investment portfolio I have made EVER, but it is clear to see now, for me, that I should allocate a very small amount of capital to these projects, don’t sleep on meme coins,” McCamley said.
FOMO?
Joaquim Matinero Tor, a Blockchain Associate at Roca Junyent, said that he is not sure about the scalability ambitions of the Shiba Inu project, but FOMO is playing a major role in the latest price rally.
“Shiba Inu is still part of the FOMO strategy of most crypto adopters waiting for a new DogeCoin and obtain more than 7400% in less than 5 months. I’m quite sure SHIBA will jump also into an NFT ecosystem, but I’m not sure about its project and scalability ambitions. I could be wrong but nowadays only crypto-fans are interested in this kind of token,” Tor commented.
Starting today, BadgerDAO (BADGER) and Rarible (RARI) are available on Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now trade, send, receive, or store BADGER and RARI in most Coinbase-supported regions, with certain exceptions indicated in each asset page here. Trading for these assets is also supported on Coinbase Pro.
BADGER
BADGER is an Ethereum token that powers Badger DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on bringing Bitcoin into the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem on Ethereum and other blockchains. BADGER is primarily used to govern the direction of Badger DAO and its products. BADGER can also be deposited into a Badger vault to boost yield for other deposits.
RARI RARI is an Ethereum token that powers Rarible, a community-owned marketplace for creating, selling, or collecting NFTs. RARI can be earned by using the platform and can be used to curate content and vote on platform upgrades.
One of the most common requests we hear from customers is to be able to buy and sell more cryptocurrencies on Coinbase. We announced a process for listing assets, designed in part to accelerate the addition of more cryptocurrencies. We are also investing in new tools to help people understand and explore cryptocurrencies. We launched informational asset pages (see BADGER and RARI), as well as a new section of the Coinbase website to answer common questions about crypto.
Customers can sign up for a Coinbase account here to buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store e Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now trade, send, receive, or store BADGER and RARI today.
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Please note: Coinbase Ventures may be an investor in the crypto projects mentioned here, and additionally, Coinbase may hold such tokens on its balance sheet for operational purposes. A list of Coinbase Ventures investments is available at https://ventures.coinbase.com/. Coinbase intends to maintain its investment in these entities for the foreseeable future and maintains internal policies that address the timing of permissible disposition of any related digital assets, if applicable. All assets, regardless of whether Coinbase Ventures holds an investor or Coinbase holds for operational purposes, are subject to the same strict review guidelines and review process.
This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., and its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.
Crypto is a new type of asset. Besides potential day to day or hour to hour volatility, each crypto asset has unique features. Make sure you research and understand individual assets before you transact.
All images provided herein are by Coinbase.
BadgerDAO (BADGER) and Rarible (RARI) are now available on Coinbase was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Today, we’re pleased to introduce our new regulatory framework, entitled Digital Asset Policy Proposal: Safeguarding America’s Financial Leadership (dApp). We hope this document will animate an open and constructive discussion regarding the role of digital assets in our shared economic future. Our goal is to thoughtfully and respectfully engage in the debate, and to offer good-faith suggestions for how the U.S. financial regulatory framework should adapt to two critical developments:
1. The blockchain-driven and decentralized evolution of the internet
2. The emergence of a distinctive asset class that is digitally native and empowers unique economic use cases
We understand that high-level proposals don’t become law overnight — nor should they. But what they can do is evolve the debate in ways that are helpful for everyone, including members of Congress who are increasingly focusing on this area.
A number of us have been working diligently on this for some time, consulting with experts, crypto builders, opinion leaders, and policymakers from across the country. We’ve also studiously read the commentary produced by our peers and others who are pushing the debate forward in thought-provoking and creative ways. This process of investigation and discovery has been remarkably eye-opening and invaluable to help us think deeply about the potential of these new and uniquely democratizing financial innovations.
Here are three consistent themes that surfaced from the past few weeks of intensive meetings:
A broad awareness is emerging on blockchain and distributed ledger technology’s potential; one that recognizes crypto could be an important catalyst of innovation, economic growth and financial inclusion in an increasingly digital world
The adoption rate of crypto is growing rapidly, and regulation has a vital role to play in protecting the consumer and providing certainty to market participants
American geopolitical strength and leadership is inextricably tied to the United States maintaining its technological leadership
We’d like to personally thank everyone we met with for their feedback, their candor, and their willingness to engage on some of the most profound and complex economic and societal questions we face. Let’s dive in.
The Market Context
Digital assets like Bitcoin, Ether, stablecoins, and other cryptocurrencies are now a mainstream part of the financial market ecosystem. In 2013, the market cap for the entire cryptocurrency market was around $1.5 billion. In 2021, that market cap has grown to $2 trillion. Adoption rates have seen a similarly astounding rate of growth with an estimated 1 million crypto users in 2013 to an estimated 330 million users worldwide today, with tens of millions in the United States alone.
But like the early days of the internet, the use cases for crypto are still in a nascent stage of development and adoption. However, what we’re seeing is societally powerful. Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies have accelerated the democratization of finance that began with the emergence of mobile payments. Whether factors such as lack of wealth, inaccessible infrastructure, or a range of societal factors have historically contributed to the 1.7 billion adults who remain unbanked today, the evolution of decentralized protocols and peer-to-peer marketplaces have the potential to resolve deep disparities and inequities.
Marketplaces for digital assets have emerged to offer a platform that facilitates the demand from Americans to access certain innovations in the way financial assets are transferred and traded. Retail and institutional traders have direct access to platforms that execute transactions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Transactions settle in real time. A multitude of intermediaries is no longer needed as the digital asset market infrastructure has developed so that exchange and trading services, clearing, settlement, and custody can be provided effectively and more efficiently by the same entity.
We are seeing the beginning of more efficient, transparent, and cost-effective processes compared to those in traditional financial markets. These developments, in turn, will empower market participants with greater and more direct control over their trading decisions, increasing accessibility to financial services, reducing excess costs of the current system — costs too often borne by retail customers, and creating more transparency for regulators, who are already benefiting from new ways to engage in market surveillance and combat illicit finance.
Laws drafted in the 1930s to facilitate effective oversight of our financial system could not contemplate this technological revolution. Elements of those laws do not have room for the transformational potential that digital assets and crypto innovation make possible. They do not accommodate the efficiency, seamlessness, and transparency of digital asset markets, and thus risk serving as an unintended barrier to current innovations in the digital asset economy. For example, digital assets that are well established, broadly recognized, and fully decentralized, like Bitcoin and Ether, have technical characteristics that are well understood by the public. There is no information vacuum that immediately needs to be resolved. Not only are some of the financial rules of a paper-based system obsolete, but they are also an encumbrance to innovation, inclusion, and social welfare.
Forcing the full spectrum of digital assets into supervisory categories codified before the use of computers risks stifling the development of this transformational technology, thus pushing offshore the innovative center of gravity that currently sits in the United States. Doing this will have profoundly harmful economic implications and undermine the United States’ leadership at a time when technology is so critical to this country’s geopolitical strengths. We are seeing some legislatures at the state-level take important steps to give their residents access to these innovations, but there is still more work to be done.
Fostering this innovation is also critical because there are too many people in our society who do not see a place for themselves in our current financial system. According to the Federal Reserve, up to 22% of American households could be unbanked or underbanked. This could mean up to 55 million American adults don’t have access to key functions of our critical financial and societal architecture. Furthermore, even for those with a bank account and recognizing the dramatic advances in financial technologies, payments remain slow and cumbersome. Millions continue to pay too much and wait too long to transfer funds to loved ones overseas or to invest their money directly in projects and ideas they care about.
This exclusion of millions from the financial system is occurring as more and more Americans look for alternatives to traditional finance. Surveys show that a diverse group of Americans are availing of the unique and empowering financial opportunities that crypto affords. To help the public and the businesses that will provide the services for this new, thriving financial ecosystem, regulatory certainty for everyone is required.
Digital Asset Policy Proposal: Safeguarding America’s Financial Leadership (dApp)
Pillar One: Regulate Digital Assets Under a Separate Framework
As mentioned at the outset, the cryptoeconomy is defined by two concurrent innovations, both of which have manifold impacts on our financial system. The changes made possible by these two innovations are transformational, but do not easily fit within the existing financial system, which assumes that the structure of our financial markets will remain largely as they have been in the past. Our financial regulatory system is predicated on the ongoing existence of a series of separate financial market intermediaries — exchanges, transfer agents, clearing houses, custodians, and traditional brokers — because it never contemplated that distributed ledger and blockchain technology could exist. A new framework for how we regulate digital assets will ensure that innovation can occur in ways that are not hampered by the difficulty of transitioning from our legacy market structure.
Pillar Two: Designate One Regulator for Digital Asset Markets
To avoid fragmented and inconsistent regulatory oversight of these unique and concurrent innovations, responsibility over digital asset markets should be assigned to a single federal regulator. Its authority would include a new registration process established for entities that serve as marketplaces for digital assets (MDAs) and an appropriate disclosure regime to inform purchasers of digital assets. Platforms and services that do not custody or otherwise control the assets of a customer — including miners, stakers and developers — would need to be treated differently. Additionally, in the tradition of other markets, a dedicated self-regulatory organization (SRO) should be established to strengthen the oversight regime and provide more granular oversight of MDAs. Together, they should formulate new rules that permit the full range of digital asset services within a single entity: digital asset trading, transfer, custody, clearing, settlement, money payment, staking, borrowing and lending, and related incidental services. This two-tier regulatory structure will ensure efficient and streamlined regulation and oversight, and evolve elements of the existing frameworks to meet the requirements of our new technologically-driven financial system.
Pillar Three: Protect and Empower Holders of Digital Assets
This new framework should have three goals to ensure holders of digital assets are empowered and protected:
Enhance transparency through appropriate disclosure requirements,
Protect against fraud and market manipulation, and
Promote efficiency and strengthen market resiliency.
Each of these goals should be accomplished in recognition of the unique characteristics and risks of the underlying functionalities of digital assets.
Pillar Four: Promote Interoperability and Fair Competition
Innovation in decentralized protocol development and the peer-to-peer marketplace continues to produce novel approaches that allow greater financial access across all facets of society. To realize the full potential of digital assets, MDAs must be interoperable with products and services across the cryptoeconomy. If fully realized, this can enshrine fair competition, responsible innovation, and promote a thriving consumer and developer ecosystem.
What’s Next
We hope you take the time to evaluate our proposal. And if you do, consider sharing your thoughts. We’re also open-sourcing the framework through GitHub, so tell us what you think there, express your views directly to your elected officials, and be part of the conversation that will shape our shared financial future. We will also be convening a number of opportunities to hear from others who have made thoughtful contributions to the debate that we are hoping to advance today.
Thank you for reading.
Digital Asset Policy Proposal: Safeguarding America’s Financial Leadership was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Mozaic focuses on investing in innovative tech companies seeking to re-invent their industry ecosystems — across emerging, growth and mature markets.
London, United Kingdom — Oct 14th, 2021 — Community-focused DeFi platform MRHB DeFi has received a strategic investment from London-based investment platform Mozaic to support its transformative vision of bringing the value of the cryptoverse to financially excluded communities around the world. Mozaic is part of New World Group — a global diversified investment company with more than USD 2.5 Billion of group assets-under-management.
The UK presentsa key opportunity to nurture a financially inclusive cryptoverse and this investment is aimed at expanding the reach of MRHB DeFi beyond its core Asia and Middle East base to support the engagement of new UK users and communities who are seeking a more ethical and or faith-based approach to crypto market participation.
“With a current market capitalisation of USD 2 trillion and growing — the crypto asset space represents an exciting growth opportunity for us and MRHB DeFi’s focus on ethical and inclusive finance resonates strongly with Mozaic’s investment thesis,” says New World Group Partner Sonny Gupta.
“The strength and commitment of the MRHB team made them natural partners for our inaugural investment into the decentralised finance sector,” he adds.
“Mozaic’s investment focus on robust and scalable technology businesses with a mindset of long-term value creation, made them natural partners for us as we build the world’s first ethical DeFi platform” says MRHB DeFi CEO Naquib Mohammed.
“The UK represents a key strategic investor community for MRHB DeFi — and one which we hope to engage better with high quality institutional partners,” he also notes.
MRHB DeFi was founded with a vision of providing greater access to excluded and cautious communities to the growing opportunities and utilities of the cryptoverse, and has a particular focus on delivering faith-based DeFi services which adhere to the ethical investment and financing principles rooted in Islamic Finance, many of which align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Such business practices include those that avoid interest, usury, social exploitation and other acts deemed unethical as well as support sustainability, asset/utility backed financing, transparency and equitable risk/reward sharing.
With the Islamic Finance industry sized at around USD 3 trillion of assets, bringing even a small portion of Shariah-sensitive liquidity into DeFi will represent a major boost to the total value of the DeFi sector worldwide.
The investment from Mozaic follows investments from Contango Digital Assets, NewTribe Capital, Sheesha Finance, Acreditus Partners and other institutional investors.
About MRHB DeFi
MRHB DeFi is a decentralised finance platform built to bring ethics to the DeFi space with an approach that supports the inclusion of faith-based and other excluded communities in addition to existing crypto-natives so that everyone can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi to help build a true peer-to-peer financial and economic value system.
Based on the tenets of blockchain such as trust, transparency, and security, MRHB DeFi has encapsulated universally applicable principles of Islamic Finance into those tenets of blockchain to render a suite of offerings that are also ESG compliant.
The project is backed by a diverse and strong team with backgrounds spanning crypto, technology, faith-compliant investing, finance and seasoned institutional veterans of industry. The public sale offering will be in December. Register your interest and read more about MRHB DeFi’s Shariah Concept Paper, Lite and White Paper here.
New World Group is a global diversified investment company with offices in London and Kuala Lumpur. The firm builds, acquires, invests, and scales businesses focusing on long-term growth. New World Group adds value to its partners and portfolio companies through origination and execution to value realisation.
New World Group and its businesses, including Mozaic, take a global perspective across sectors in which they act as investors, operators and business builders with offices and partners across the world’s most exciting, high growth markets. The company has made 15+ investments to-date and manages more than USD 2.5 billion across 25 countries.
Learn more about New World Group by visiting its official website.
Ethereum started a fresh increase from the $3,400 support zone against the US Dollar. ETH price could accelerate higher once there is a clear break above $3,650.
Ethereum started a fresh increase above the $3,500 and $3,550 resistance levels.
The price is now trading above $3,550 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.
There was a break above a key bearish trend line with resistance near $3,500 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
The pair could start a fresh rally if there is a clear break above $3,650 and $3,660.
Ethereum Price Gains Pace
Ethereum remained well supported above the $3,400 zone. ETH started a fresh increase above the $3,500 resistance zone and the 100 hourly simple moving average, similar to bitcoin.
There was also a break above a key bearish trend line with resistance near $3,500 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. The pair is now trading above the $3,550 resistance zone. Ether price even surpassed the $3,600 resistance zone.
A high is formed near $3,656 and the price is now consolidating gains. It is well above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent upward move from the $3,413 swing low to $3,656 high. The price is now showing positive signs above the $3,630. An immediate resistance on the upside is near the $3,650 level.
Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
The next major resistance is near the $3,660 level, above which the price might start a fresh surge. In the stated case, the price could climb towards the $3,750 level. Any more gains could set the pace for a move towards the $4,000 level in the near term.
Dips Limited in ETH?
If ethereum fails to continue higher above the $3,650 and $3,660 resistance levels, it could start a fresh downside correction. An initial support on the downside is near the $3,600 level.
The first key support is now forming near the $3,550 level. It is near the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent upward move from the $3,413 swing low to $3,656 high. If there is a downside break below the $3,550 and $3,535 support levels, the price could decline further. The next key support is near $3,450.
Technical Indicators
Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is gaining pace in the bullish zone.
Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is now above the 60 level.
FROST is a round-optimal threshold Schnorr signature protocol. Here we introduce why Coinbase decided to use FROST, what FROST is, and what we discovered while evaluating FROST.
Why FROST?
In order to improve efficiency of Coinbase’s threshold-signing systems, we decided to explore the FROST threshold Schnorr signature protocol, which features the following advantages over other Schnorr-based threshold signature protocols [GJKR03, SS01]:
Low round complexity in both the distributed key-generation and signing phases. The distributed key generation phase can be completed in 2 rounds. The signing phase can be completed in less or equal to 3 rounds depending on whether we use a signature aggregator role and a preprocessing stage. That is,
1-round signing with a trusted signature aggregator and a preprocessing stage.
2-round signing with a trusted signature aggregator, but no preprocessing stage.
3-round signing without a trusted signature aggregator and no preprocessing stage.
Concurrent security. The signing phase is secure when performed concurrently. That is, an unlimited number of signature operations can be performed in parallel. In contrast with other threshold Schnorr signature protocols, there are existing Schnorr-based threshold signature protocols, such as [GJKR03, SS01], that have the same round complexity, but they suffer from limited concurrency to protect against the attack of Drijvers et al. [DEF19]. This attack was originally proposed in a Schnorr multi-signature n-out-of-n setting, but it also applies similarly in a threshold t-out-of-n setting with the same parameters for an adversary that controls up to t-1 participants. We refer readers to section 2.6 of the FROST draft for more details. To prevent this attack without limiting concurrency, FROST binds each participant’s response to a specific message as well as the set of participants and their set of elliptic curve (EC) points used for that particular signing operation. In doing so, combining responses over different messages or EC point pairs results in an invalid signature, thwarting attacks such as those of Drijvers, et al.
Secure against dishonest majority. FROST is secure against adversaries which control up to t-1 signers in the signing phase.
Simple cryptographic building blocks and assumptions. FROST is built upon the threshold Shamir secret sharing and Feldman verifiable secret sharing schemes and it relies only on the discrete logarithm assumption.
How does FROST work?
Before we introduce how FROST works, we first recall how the standalone Schnorr signature works.
A Schnorr digital signature algorithm is a triple of algorithms: (KeyGen, Sign, Verify).
Let G be a group generator of a cyclic group with prime order p, and let H be a cryptographic hash function mapping to the field Zₚ* . A Schnorr signature is generated over a message m by the following steps:
KeyGen -> (sk, vk)
Randomly sample the secret key sk <- Zₚ.
Return (sk, vk = sk * G).
Sign(sk, m) -> sig
Randomly sample a secret nonce k <- Zₚ.
R = k * G
c = H(m, R)
z = k + sk * c (mod p)
Return signature sig = (z, c)
Verify(vk, m, sig) -> true/false
Parse sig = (z’, c’)
R’ = z * G -c * vk
c’ = H(m, R’)
Return true if c = c’, otherwise return false.
We call (sk, vk) the secret and verification keys respectively. We call m the message being signed and sig the Schnorr digital signature.
FROST is a threshold Schnorr signature protocol that contains two important components. First, n participants run a distributed key generation (DKG) protocol to generate a common verification key; at the end, each participant obtains a private secret key share and a public verification key share. Afterwards, any t-out-of-n participants can run a threshold signing protocol to collaboratively generate a valid Schnorr signature. The figure below gives a high-level sketch of how FROST works in the case of t = 3 and n = 5.
(3, 5) — FROST DKG + Threshold Signing Overview
In the following context, we introduce FROST distributed key generation and threshold signing in more technical details.
FROST — distributed key generation (DKG). The secret signing key in Schnorr signature is an element in the field Zₚ. The goal of this phase is to generate long-lived secret key shares and a joint verification key. This phase is run by n participants. FROST builds its own key generation phase upon Pedersen’s DKG [GJKR03], in which it uses both Shamir secret sharing and Feldman’s verifiable secret sharing schemes as subroutines. In addition, FROST also requires each participant to demonstrate knowledge of their own secret by sending to other participants a zero-knowledge proof, which itself is a Schnorr signature. This additional step protects against rogue-key attacks in the setting where t ≥ n/2.
At the end of the DKG protocol, a joint verification key vk is generated. Also, each participant Pᵢ holds a value (i, skᵢ) that is their long-lived secret share and a verification key share vkᵢ = skᵢ*G. Participant Pᵢ’s verification key share vkᵢis used by other participants to verify the correctness of Pᵢ’s signature shares in the signing phase, while the verification key vk is used by external parties to verify signatures issued by the group.
FROST — threshold signing. We now introduce the signing protocol for FROST. This phase builds upon known techniques that employ additive secret sharing and share conversion to non-interactively generate the nonce for each signature. This phase also leverages binding techniques to avoid known forgery attacks without limiting concurrency.
Our implementation is slightly adapted from the FROST draft. In our implementation, we opted to not use the signature aggregator role. Instead, each participant is a signature aggregator. This design is more secure: all the participants of the protocol verify what others have computed to achieve a higher level of security and reduce risk. In contrast with other open source libraries, as far as we know, we are the first to implement FROST without the signature aggregator role. Furthermore, we have chosen not to do the (one-time) preprocessing stage in order to speed up the implementation. In the preprocessing stage, each participant prepares a fixed number of EC point pairs for further use, which is run for a single time for multiple threshold signing phases. However, we take this stage as an additional round and only prepare a single pair of EC points, which means we run it every time for each threshold signing phase. In more detail, there are two major differences between our implementation and the original draft.
First, the signature aggregator, as described in the draft, validates messages that are broadcast by cosigners and computes the final signature. In our implementation, we do not use such a role. Instead, each participant simply performs a broadcast in place of a signature aggregator performing coordination. Note that FROST can be instantiated without such a signature aggregator as stressed in the draft. Also, implementing it in a decentralized way is more appropriate to Coinbase’s multiparty computation approach.
Second, the protocol in the draft uses a preprocessing stage prior to signing, where each participant Pᵢ samples a sequence number, say Q, of single-use nonces (dᵢⱼ, eᵢⱼ), computes and broadcasts pairs of public points (Dᵢⱼ = dᵢⱼ*G, Eᵢⱼ = eᵢⱼ*G) for further use in subsequent signing rounds, where j = 1….Q. This preprocessing stage is a once-for-all stage. That is, each participant can prepare a fixed number of EC point pairs, say Q, and broadcast them to the signature aggregator, then the signature aggregator distributes these EC point pairs to all participants for further use. Once these pairs of EC points are used up, then these participants should run another preprocessing stage. Since we opted to not use such a signature aggregator role in our implementation, we have chosen instead to let each participant generate a single pair of EC points (Dᵢ, Eᵢ). Therefore, there is no preprocessing stage in our implementation and thus there are 3 rounds in our threshold signing phase instead of 2. Also note that whether our implementation contains the preprocessing stage or not simply depends on how many EC point pairs are generated in signing round 1. If each participant generates a Q number of EC point pairs in the signing round 1, then this round can be viewed as the preprocessing stage and our implementation becomes a 2-round signing protocol.
We describe how these three signing rounds work and give some technical details.
Signing Round 1. Each participant Pᵢ begins by generating a single private nonce pair (dᵢ, eᵢ) and corresponding pair of EC points (Dᵢ, Eᵢ) and broadcasts this pair of points to all other participants. Each participant stores these pairs of EC points received for use later. Signing rounds 2 and 3 are the actual operations in which t-out-of-n participants cooperate to create a valid Schnorr signature.
Signing Round 2. To create a valid Schnorr signature, any t participants work together to execute this round. The core technique behind this round is t-out-of-t additive secret sharing. This technique creates the secret nonce k = SUM(kᵢ), which is the same value generated in the single-party Schnorr signing algorithm, and each kᵢ is the share computed by participant Pᵢ. To do this, each participant prepares the set of pairs of EC points B = (D₁, E₁)……(Dₜ, Eₜ) received in round 1, and then computes kᵢ = dᵢ+eᵢ*rᵢ , where rᵢ=H(i, m, B) and H is a hash function whose outputs are in the field Zₚ. Computing rᵢ is important since it works as a binding value for each participant to prevent the forgery attack. Then each participant computes the commitment Rᵢ=Dᵢ+Eᵢ*rᵢ such that it binds the message m, the set of signing participants and each participant’s EC points to each signature share, such that signature shares for one message cannot be used for another. This prevents the forgery attack because attackers cannot combine signature shares across distinct signing operations or permute the set of signers or published points for each signer. The commitment for the set of signers is then simply R = SUM(Rᵢ). As in single-party Schnorr signatures, each participant computes the challenge c = H(m, R).
Having computed the challenge c, each participant is able to compute the response zᵢ to the challenge using the single-use nonces (dᵢ, eᵢ) and the long-term secret shares skᵢ, which are t-out-of-n (degree t-1) Shamir secret shares of the group’s long-lived key sk. One main observation that FROST leverages is that if kᵢ are additive shares of k, then each kᵢ/Lᵢ are t-out-of-n Shamir shares of k, where Lᵢ is the Lagrange coefficient for participant Pᵢ. That is, Lᵢ = prod(i/(j-i)), where j = 1,…,t, j ≠i. This observation is due to the work by Benaloh and Leichter [BL88] and the work by Cramer, Damgaard and Ishai [CDI05]. They present a non-interactive mechanism for participants to locally convert additive shares generated via the Benaloh and Leichter t-out-of-n secret sharing construction to Shamir’s polynomial form. FROST uses the simplest t-out-of-t case of this transformation. Thus kᵢ/Lᵢ+skᵢ*c are degree t-1 Shamir secret shares of the correct response z = k+sk*c for a plain (single-party) Schnorr signature. Using share conversion again and the value each participant has computed (namely, kᵢ = dᵢ+eᵢ*rᵢ), we get that zᵢ=dᵢ+eᵢ*rᵢ+Lᵢ*skᵢ*c are t-out-of-t additive shares of z. At the end of signing round 2, each participant broadcasts zᵢ to other participants.
Signing Round 3. After receiving zᵢ from all other participants, each participant checks the consistency of these reported zᵢ, with their pair of EC points (Dᵢ, Eᵢ) and their verification key share vkᵢ. This can be done by checking the equation zᵢ*G = Rᵢ+c*Lᵢ*vkᵢ. Once all zᵢ are valid, then each participant computes z = SUM(zᵢ) and output (z, c) as the final Schnorr signature. This signature will verify properly to any party unaware that FROST was used to generate the signature, and can check it with the standard single-party Schnorr verification equation with vk as the verification key. As we have mentioned, we do not use the signature aggregator role in our implementation. Thus, each participant works as a signature aggregator. Therefore, we let each participant self-verify its own signature before outputting it.
Implementation Challenges
We referred to some known FROST implementations: two Rust implementations — one by ZCash foundation and another by frost-dalek — but they are not appropriate to our tech stack. One Golang implementation is from the Taurus group, but unfortunately this Go implementation is not ready for production use and has not been externally audited. As a result, we decided to implement the protocol in-house.
One feature of FROST signing is that each participant must know Lagrange coefficients for each participant in order to compute zᵢ. This is uncommon in other threshold signature protocols that use Feldman verifiable secret sharing as a sub-protocol, so there are few existing Go libraries to support THIS. Most existing libraries support generating secret shares, polynomials, and their interpolation, but do not support Lagrange coefficient computation. To fill in this technical gap, we implemented participants’ Lagrange coefficients given arbitraryt participant IDs as input. Before running the threshold signing protocol, it takes input IDs of the t participants and generates all Lagrange coefficients. As the FROST draft suggests, we assign these coefficients to each participant before signing to improve performance.
Summary
FROST is a flexible, round-optimized Schnorr threshold signature scheme that minimizes the network overhead of producing Schnorr signatures in a threshold setting while allowing for unrestricted parallelism of signing operations and only a threshold number of signing participants. We introduce FROST, highlight its features, and describe it in a fully decentralized approach (i.e., without any third-party signature aggregator). This post exposes what Coinbase discovered while evaluating and implementing the FROST protocol and we look forward to adding it to our suite of threshold signing services.
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FROST: Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
