A Technology Delivered
We're happy to announce that we've officially launched Lamden mainnet! Today marks a day of independence and new beginnings. Three years in the making, this milestone represents a culmination of intense efforts to deliver a novel blockchain with a revolutionary leap in performance, scalability and usability. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution to these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

What is Lamden Mainnet?
Lamden's engineers aimed to not only deliver on the original promises of blockchain but to revolutionize it. Lamden tackles the fundamental challenges of blockchain head-on, from high barriers to entry to poor performance and scalability.

Easy to Use
Lamden's open-source, Python-native platform empowers developers to focus on quickly building blockchain applications, instead of learning new programming languages and messing around with complex syntax and system architecture. This means easier development and faster revenue generation on Lamden.

Highly Performant and Scalable
Lamden uses an array of advanced algorithms to remain highly performant and scalable as demand increases for on-chain activity and large-scale applications. Lamden is engineered to achieve sub-second transaction finality and to scale linearly with additional CPU cores, as described here. There are no Ethereum-style "gas-wars" on Lamden because the system uses a first-in-first-out queuing algorithm which prevents people from paying more to get ahead of the line and further congest the network.

A Developer Incentives System
Lamden has a built-in rewards distribution system with voteable and configurable parameters. Developers who create applications on Lamden will be awarded a percentage of transaction fees processed through their smart contracts, thereby earning revenue automatically from their applications without relying on third-party payment services. Incentives are made with Lamden's native coin TAU and sent straight to the developer's wallet. Because revenue is tied to transaction volume, developers will earn more revenue as their DApps become more popular.
For an introductory period, developers will automatically earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contracts.

A Self-Regulating System
Lamden has a self-regulating governance system where the community nodes have direct voting rights on key decisions including rewards distribution, transaction rates, and platform functionality upgrades. The system naturally strives for an equilibrium where each network participant will act in their best interest to maximize their reward. No single party controls the Lamden network and no single party can monopolize it.

Mainnet Token Swap
Now that mainnet is live, a token swap from Ethereum ERC20 TAU to Lamden Mainnet TAU will commence. The swap period will be open for approximately 6 months and is mandatory. If you do not swap your ERC20 TAU tokens during the 6 month swap window, you will be unable to do so afterwards.

IMPORTANT: Do not send ERC20 tokens to the Lamden wallet or they will be lost forever! ERC20 tokens are not compatible with the Lamden network. The only way to get your ERC20 TAU onto the Lamden network is by following the wallet token swap process.

The swap process is built directly into the Lamden wallet, which you can download on the Lamden website..

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), an organization of state financial regulators, will make it easier for financial technology payment firms and cryptocurrency exchanges to prove they're in compliance with U.S. state laws.

The CSBS announced a "One Company, One Exam" plan Tuesday whereby states will coordinate their supervisory exams for the nation's largest payment firms in an effort to reduce the costs on both state regulators and the companies they oversee. Essentially, the exam is how these regulators will make sure regulated entities are still in compliance.

What this means for cryptocurrency companies – such as Coinbase – is their compliance costs will drop. Rather than work with more than 50 different state and territory regulators, the exchanges only need to check in with the one group. The group of regulators includes every state but Montana, which doesn't have a money transmission license.

Crypto exchanges need money transmission licenses to legally operate within most states, with the state banking or financial services regulator overseeing this form of regulated activity.

"For the industry that means there's going to be a reduction in regulatory burden," said Matt Lambert, nonbank counsel for CSBS.

However, new exchanges will still have to apply for, and secure, a license for each state in which they hope to operate. While the CSBS is working on a potential standard for applications, there's still a long way to go.

At present the move also only applies to the 78 largest money transmitters in the U.S. – those operating in at least 40 states. While Lambert declined to identify which crypto businesses fit into this category, a search of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry database indicates this could include Coinbase, Circle Internet Financial and Square.

The list of firms that will benefit from CSBS' announcement could still grow. While there aren't any plans right now to add to the list of companies, Lambert said more could be added later on.

'Strictest standards'
The CSBS announced its effort to consolidate supervision at least partly as a result of soliciting feedback from the crypto industry, and finding that regulated entities believed "there is too much supervision that is accomplishing the same thing," Lambert said.

"Overall I think this process will lead to high standards, the strictest standards," he said. "This is not going to be a means of defaulting to the lowest standards, this is going to be a method of raising the bar for everyone."

Each exam will be conducted by a group of state regulators, and the makeup of the group will change on an exam-by-exam basis. This lets the regulators coordinate among themselves to find the best fit for each company's evaluation. 

The Moment of Truth
The wait is almost over; Lamden's mainnet launch is fast approaching. September 16th, 2020 will be an inflection point, marking the transition from a technology promised to a technology delivered.

We at Lamden have been working nonstop to deliver on the unfulfilled promises of blockchain. Instead of modifying an existing technology, we decided to design and build a novel blockchain architecture from scratch. As a result, our Python-native modular blockchain delivers a revolutionary leap in performance, efficiency, and usability.

The moment of truth and the reveal is drawing near. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution upon these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective. One day, we will look back and remember September 16th, 2020 as a pivotal moment for blockchain and its revival.

The Road Traveled
We at Lamden took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. The imminent release of Lamden blockchain is the culmination of two and a half years of nonstop development and testing, and pushing the limits of what blockchain can do. We have worked hard to make life easier for developers by creating a Python-native platform that simplifies development and testing, and accelerates product deployment and monetization.

We have set our goals sky-high and refused to take a shortcut or compromise, and achieved results beyond our wildest expectations. We are deeply grateful to our amazing community for their unfailingly generous and enthusiastic support over the years. The mainnet would not have been possible without our team of developers and their unwavering commitment to deliver something extraordinary.

The Road Ahead
In the coming weeks, we will share more details on mainnet and exciting new plans with our community members. Our roadmap includes a developer on-boarding campaign, exciting new DeFi products, and a specification for Lamden version 2.0.

Lamden mainnet is just around the corner, but community members can start developing their ideas now using Lamden's Python-based smart contracting system. For an introductory period, developers will earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contract.

To our existing community members and those new to Lamden, we extend our warmest welcome to the Lamden Legion.

For more information, please visit:
https://lamden.io/  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLtqJQ5LRc  

Mitiga, an incident readiness and response company, has discovered that a product available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace contained Monero mining malware. Mitiga published their findings, noting that they discovered the malware when conducting a security audit for a financial services company.

"Mitiga's security research team has identified an AWS Community AMI containing malicious code running an unidentified Monero crypto miner," according to the Mitiga's blog post. "We have concerns this may be a phenomenon, rather than an isolated occurrence."

Malware on AWS Marketplace
Unfortunately, the AWS marketplace allows anyone to sell virtual services on its marketplace. Although the marketplace is full of verified vendors, it also contains offerings from unverified community members.

Mitiga discovered that one community member was selling a Windows 2008 virtual server that secretly used the computing power of anyone who downloaded it to mine Monero in the background. Although it may come as a surprise that Monero mining malware was present on Amazon's AWS Marketplace, Amazon's policy clearly states that:

"Amazon can't vouch for the integrity or security of AMIs shared by other Amazon EC2 users. Therefore, you should treat shared AMIs as you would any foreign code that you might consider deploying in your own data center and perform the appropriate due diligence. We recommend that you get an AMI from a trusted source."

Reducing the attack vector
To avoid falling victim to malware that might live within community offerings on the AWS marketplace, Mitiga recommends "verifying or terminating these instances [unverified offerings], and seeking AMIs from trusted sources"

"As AWS customer usage is obfuscated, we can't know how far and wide this phenomenon stretches without AWS's own investigation," said Mitiga. "We do however believe that the potential risk is high enough to issue a security advisory to all AWS customers using Community AMIs."

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has sent another batch of its infamous "crypto letter" to individuals suspected of owning digital currency, urging them to correctly report the details of their transactions.

The news emerged after users of digital currency tax service CoinTracker.io reported receiving letters from the IRS, one of which was subsequently published on the CoinTracker blog. In a blog post CoinTracker said "[i]t has come to our attention from CoinTracker users that the IRS has started sending out another wave of cryptocurrency tax warning letters to U.S. crypto users."

The mailout was also reported in Bloomberg, which confirmed with the IRS that the letters had indeed been sent to more suspected digital currency holders.

As first emerged in 2019 when the tax service began issuing digital currency letters, there are three different types of letters being published—each indicative of the degree to which the IRS thinks individuals are underreporting digital currency transactions.

One of the letters in particular, Letter 6173, is issued to those that could foreseeably be subject to a taxpayer audit, representing the highest degree of confidence of underreporting from the tax agency.

The IRS is known to be extending its focus on digital currency, and in particular on tax evasion around trading and speculation. A tax summit held back in March outlined much of the agency's thinking on digital currency, where it was suggested that the agency wanted to do more to tackle those currently underreporting their digital currency dealings.

The news will come as a concern to those trading in digital currency, indicating a heightened level of IRS oversight over individual actions in and around digital tokens.

It comes at a time of increasing efforts globally to bring more transparency to digital currency transactions, and to ensure those engaging in trading are discharging their tax liabilities honestly.

Goldman Sachs is seriously considering its own cryptocurrency, possibly a stablecoin, as it significantly expands its digital assets team and appoints a new head to spearhead efforts.

1. Matthew McDermott, Goldman's new digital asset global head, confirmed the U.S. investment bank was exploring whether to launch its own digital asset, CNBC reported Thursday.
2. "We are exploring the commercial viability of creating our own fiat digital token, but it's early days as we continue to work through the potential use cases," he said.
3. Last month McDermott hired Oli Harris as head of strategy. Harris was instrumental in JPMorgan's blockchain, Quroum, as well as its settlement coin, JPMCoin.
4. McDermott said he is already looking at how blockchain can make savings in the inefficient repurchase, or "repo", market used by banks to lend money to one another, as well as credit and mortgage markets.
5. He also said Goldman might consider collaborating with its rival, JPM, as well as Facebook on future digital asset initiatives.
6. McDermott said he plans to significantly expand Goldman's digital asset team, including doubling headcount in both Asia and Europe.

Previously on Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs held an investor call Wednesday to discuss current policies for bitcoin, gold and inflation in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The big takeaway? The stalwart investment bank is still no fan of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

A slideshow released before the call cited hacks and other losses related to cryptocurrencies as well as their use to "abet illicit activities" as some potential liabilities.  

Seven of Goldman's 35 slides mention bitcoin, but the people on the call only discussed bitcoin for roughly five minutes at the end, with no questions taken after.

In the call materials, Goldman notes that while cryptocurrencies like bitcoin "have received enormous attention," they "are not an asset class."

Why? The reasons include bitcoin's inherent lack of cash flow, unlike bonds, and its inability to generate earnings through exposure to global economic growth, according to the presentation. Goldman also notes bitcoin's volatility, citing the recent drop to 12-month lows in early March. The price spiked nearly 5% to $9,200 a few hours before the call.

Some professional cryptocurrency analysts were less than impressed by Goldman's analysis. "The criticisms were very cookie cutter, the type you'd expect if someone just read mainstream headlines," said Ryan Watkins, bitcoin analyst at Messari and former investment banking analyst at Moelis & Company. "It's like they didn't fully diligence the asset."

Goldman's cash flow argument was particularly odd to Tom Masojada, co-founder of OVEX Digital Asset Exchange.

"Many investments that Goldman labels as 'suitable for clients' do not generate cash flows and are primarily dependent on whether someone is willing to pay a higher price at a later date," he said on Twitter.

"One could argue bitcoin isn't backed by anything, but to liken it to a game of hot potato ignores the subjective value such a novel asset provides," said Kevin Kelly, former equity analyst at Bloomberg and co-founder of Delphi Digital, a cryptocurrency research firm that recently published a comprehensive report on bitcoin.

Bitcoin's current value, according to Kelly, is backed by "the demand for an apolitical speculative asset that may or may not turn out to be one of the world's most valuable safe havens."

The two Goldman speakers on the call, its head of research and a Harvard economics professor, said several bitcoin forks, which they refer to as "nearly identical clones," occupy three of the six largest cryptocurrencies by market value. With this, Goldman inferred that cryptocurrencies as a whole "are not a scarce resource," according to the presentation.

SIC hardware manufacturer Bitmain has delayed the shipping of its block reward miners. An announcement posted on WeChat by the Antminer Sales Team—allegedly under the control of Jihan Wu—confirmed that the Chinese company has delayed all shipments by roughly three months due to "external interference over the company's management."

To compensate for the shipping delays, Bitmain is offering its customers one of two compensation packages. Customers can send Bitmain a written request to expedite the delivery of their digital currency mining hardware. If the customer does not hear back within 60 days of submitting their written request, then they will be eligible to receive a refund on their purchase from Bitmain.

Alternatively, they can also wait for their mining equipment to be delivered to them, however long that may take. In addition, the customer will receive a 'coupon equivalent' that is equal to the amount of revenue that they theoretically would have received if their mining hardware shipment was not delayed and they had been mining all along. The Antminer Sales Team says that this coupon could then be used on the customer's future purchases with Bitmain.

Are lawyers involved?

The Antminer Sales Team's recent announcement indicates that the battle between Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan for control of Bitmain might be being resolved by lawyers. When it was rumored that Micree Zhan was blocking Antminer shipments to Bitmain customers, Jihan Wu's immediate response was that he would be solving the problems created by Zhan through "legal channels." With the Antminer team saying that there is currently external interference over the company's management, it may very well be the case that the battle for control is now being settled in court.

The confirmation of the delayed shipping is the latest development to take place in the on-going feud between Zhan and Wu.