Russia’s largest bank joins Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

Russia’s largest bank by assets, Sberbank, joins the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance after R3 rejection

20 October 2017 2474

A group of companies, technology startups, corporations and governments working to leverage open-source Ethereum technology for enterprise blockchain solutions, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), announces the addition of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, to a list of over 150 members from public and private sectors alike.

This is not the first Sberbank's attempt to enter the blockchain world. Thus, in 2015, Sberbank revealed the desire to join the international banking blockchain consortium led by New York startup R3 (however, R3 refused Sberbank’s membership to the consortium). Then, in September 2016, Sberbank joined the Linux Foundation-led open-source Hyperledger Project.

Now, according to the announcement, Sberbank becomes the first Russian bank to join the EEA and reveals its intent to further Ethereum blockchain solutions Russia.

Our entrance to the Alliance will help broaden cooperation between leading global companies in terms of developing the Ethereum platform. The Alliance is actively developing and I hope that the bank’s expertise will be of use to all of its members. In addition, the bank will be able to influence the enhancement of the platform and its growth in the corporate sector. I hope that our union will further strengthen our relationship with the Ethereum Foundation and serve as a significant step towards developing blockchain technology in Russia.

Igor Bulantsev
Sberbank senior vice president

It's also noteworhty that Sberbank chief executive Herman Gref, a noted blockchain advocate and a Bitcoiner, has speculated that the blockchain technology will lead to commercial applications in 2019.

Ethereum Blockchain

Istanbul Ethereum Hardfork to be Implemented

The 2nd part of the upgrade called Berlin is expected to happen before the end of June 2020

09 December 2019 60

The planned Istanbul hard fork on the Ethereum network has officially taken place. The update occurred on block # 9069000 at 00:25:09 GMT on Sunday, December 8th.

The block on which the hard fork took place found the Chinese mining pool SparkPool.

The upgrade was designed to ensure Ethereum compatibility with Zcash cryptocurrency, increase the scalability of solutions based on zero-disclosure proof technology (SNARKs and STARKs), change the cost of gas of various operating codes (opcodes) in order to complicate spam blocks and increase the network's resistance to DoS attacks.

These are Ethereum Improvement Proposals, included in the hardfork:

EIP-152 - this proposal introduces a new precompiled contract that implements the compression function F used in the Blake2 cryptographic algorithm. The goal is to create interoperability between the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) and Zcash or other cryptocurrencies based on the Equihash protocol.
EIP-1108 - is aimed at reducing the precompiled cost of gas (fees for the implementation of smart contracts), which in turn will favorably affect the development of a number of solutions in the field of privacy and network scaling.
EIP-1344 is a proposal to use a chain ID to prevent transaction replay attacks between different blockchains. Until now, there were no such clear specifications for setting the chain ID for a particular network, and everything was manually determined by the operators of the clients and communities of a particular network.
EIP-1884 - this proposal is aimed at increasing the cost of gas for certain opcodes, which against the background of the rapid growth of the Ethereum network began to consume more resources (CPU, memory, etc.). According to the developers, in this way it will be possible to achieve a better balance between gas consumption and resource consumption.
EIP-2028 - the proposal is aimed at reducing the cost of gas when calling on-chain data from the current 68 units per byte to 16 units. This will increase network bandwidth, as more data can be placed in one block.
IP-2200 - Offers a structured definition of gas metering changes for the SSTORE opcode. This will create additional opportunities for using contract storage systems, reducing unnecessary fees.

The second part of the upgrade (Berlin) is expected to happen before the end of June 2020. It should include proposals that require more time for testing, for example, EIP-1057, a controversial issue - a modified ProgPoW mining algorithm, aimed at reducing the influence of ASIC devices.