Gadgets
Major Ethereum Upgrade Set to Alter Supply, Fix Transaction Fees
The scheduled coding revamp will go live on August 4.
The upgrade known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 is similar, analysts said, to a Bitcoin “halving” event in which periodic adjustments reduced the supply of Bitcoin. Each halving helped propel Bitcoin’s price to higher records. Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 29.5 lakhs as of 11:30am IST on July 30.
While Bitcoin is the preferred store of value in the digital ecosystem, Ethereum has emerged as the leading financial infrastructure, settling over $12 billion (roughly Rs. 89,240 crores) of daily transactions, according to a Grayscale report released in February this year. Ethereum price in India stood at Rs. 1.7 lakhs as of 11:30am IST on July 30.
Andrew Keys, managing partner at DARMA Capital, said Ether’s current price has yet to factor in the looming software upgrade.
He estimates that the expected software adjustment next week, coupled with another upgrade in the first quarter of 2022, should “easily quintuple the price of ether” by next year. On Thursday, ether was up 0.6 percent at $2,312 (roughly Rs. 1.7 lakhs).
What is EIP 1559?
EIP-1559 is a software upgrade that fundamentally changes the way transactions are processed on Ethereum by providing clear pricing on transaction fees in ether paid to miners to validate transactions and “burning” a small amount of those tokens. The burned tokens will be permanently taken out of circulation.
In token burning, miners would typically send the tokens to specialised addresses that have unobtainable private keys. Without access to a private key, no one can use the tokens, putting them outside the circulating supply. By reducing the number of tokens, the currencies that remain in circulation become rarer and more valuable.
What is the current practice on the Ethereum blockchain?
Currently, a person or entity trying to send a transaction on the Ethereum network must pay a so-called “gas fee” in ether to miners to process their transactions.
But the exact transaction fee is not clear and market participants say there is no way of knowing the price beforehand.
This creates two issues, said Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management.
“First, it introduces a major uncertainty around whether you’ll get your transaction processed in a timely fashion,” he said. “Second, people overpay because they don’t know the clearing price and they bid too much to make sure the transaction is processed.”
Will mining, buying, and selling Ether become easier?
EIP-1559 changes this mechanism by setting a “base fee” paid to miners for each transaction, part of which will be burned. Participants can also include an optional “tip” with their base fee to speed up the process, if desired.
Another adjustment, market players said, is doubling the amount of space available in each block. Blockchains like Ethereum settle transactions in batches or blocks. Each block can contain only a certain number of transactions.
Blocks are propagated on Ethereum every 17 seconds and EIP 1599 is going to be deployed on Block 12,965,000, which is estimated to happen on August 4, said DARMA’S Keys.
There was a bug bounty, which paid people if they found bugs. That has process has been completed.
What does it mean for Ether supply?
Bitwise’s Hougan cited estimates that EIP-1599 will reduce ether’s overall inflation rate from roughly 4 percent a year to 3 percent. That is about half as large a reduction proportionately seen in Bitcoin “halving” events, he said.
What does it mean for investors?
The change should make it easier for investors to understand the value of holding ether. Hougan said EIP 1559 should increase transactions on the Ethereum network and raise the use of Ether, which will likely help bring a wave of institutional investors into the market.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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