A recent report from the San Francisco recruitment firm Hired suggests that the average blockchain developer salary is as high as between $150,000 and a whopping $175,000 a year. Moreover, the Californian recruitment firm notes this means blockchain developers get a substantial payday premium when comparing to software engineers.

In fact, reports find that blockchain developer salaries are more comparable to those specializing in artificial intelligence (AI). AI and blockchain are often put into the same category, seeing as they’re both relatively new technologies displaying massive potential.

Moreover, one reason for the recent blockchain developer salary rise is the exploding demand. Numerous high-profile companies are already looking into blockchain technology and are trying to attract blockchain developer talent. One way to stay competitive is by offering a high blockchain developer salary.

Blockchain developer salaries are surging

However, this surge in blockchain...

Over the last year, the term “DeFi” has caused quite a stir in the decentralized community. Many in the community believe that DeFi, or decentralized finance, can completely turn the global economy on its head by making the finance sector transparent and more easily accessible.  The DeFi movement leverages decentralized networks to transform old financial products into trustless and transparent protocols that run without intermediaries:

• The pitfalls of traditional finance.
• What is DeFi, and why do we need it?
• DeFi use-cases and applications.

DeFi has a unique opportunity to craft a unique niche for itself in the space. There are currently 1.7 billion people around the world who don’t have access to essential financial services. However, with a simple internet connection, they will be able to access smart contracts and experience immense financial growth and security with DeFi. So before we look into the nitty-gritty of this revolutionary system, let’s...

The past few years have seen a dramatic uptick in the number of online blockchain academies. As such, it is worth taking a look at the most popular ones. Ivan on Tech Academy is, as you may know, one of the largest and most successful online blockchain academies. However, some smaller actors are also making names for themselves, such as e.g., Blockchain Training Alliance and Blockchain Council.

Online Blockchain Academies

Anyone keeping an eye on the corporate sector will know that blockchain is exploding in popularity right now. Businesses across industries are looking to integrate blockchain into their existing business solutions and are looking for the right talent.

However, that is easier said than done. Blockchain is still a relatively green field, and the demand for blockchain engineers and developers far outpaces the supply. For example, data from Upwork reveals that the surge in demand for consultants with blockchain-related skills continues to rise. As such, the blockchain...

Many have speculated that 2020 will be the year that Privacy Coins take the crypto markets by storm. Whether due to stricter KYC requirements, political censorship, or physical safety, the need for a blockchain privacy solution has never been more urgent.

There are now dozens of Privacy Coins worth millions in total market cap. What makes them unique? You could spend months studying the different governance structures, scalability features, development funding approaches - the list goes on. Luckily, there are only a handful of different technical approaches to mixing or hiding your data on a blockchain.

In this article, we’ll look at the ten most important privacy coins and protocols today. Moreover, we also dive into the various technologies that make them private.

Privacy Coins and Anonymity Set

This article is going to talk a lot about anonymity set. If Alice sends Bitcoin to Bob and uses a mixer, the anonymity set is the number of equally likely receivers of the...

The Byzantine Generals’ Problem is one of the most well-known and classic problems faced by decentralized networks. Solving this problem was one of the key developments in the creation of Bitcoin and, by extension, all other cryptocurrencies. In this article, we will see what the Byzantine Generals’ Problem is and how Bitcoin manages to solve this perplexing problem.

What is Byzantine Consensus?

The Byzantine generals’ problem was first theorized by the mathematicians Leslie Lamport, Marshall Pease, and Robert Shostak. The generals are a metaphor for nodes in a decentralized network. The core idea behind this thought experiment is this - How do you ensure that a peer-to-peer, distributed network with no central authority can make correct decisions, even if some of the nodes in it turn rogue? Can we make a distributed system that is “trustless” and doesn’t automatically assume that the participants are going to act ethically and work in the...

The blockchain was initially introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, as a time-chain concept. Bitcoin transactions would be created and validated in a decentralized, peer-to-peer network and stored in a public ledger, which was later called “the blockchain”. 

This distributed database where transactions get stored is what Satoshi referred to as time-chain or a chain of time-stamped blocks of transactions.

The most interesting features of blockchain technology are security and decentralization. Simply put, a blockchain allows users to send, receive, and store transactions in a time-stamped, public, open, and permissionless distributed database. These transactions are grouped together in blocks. Since blocks are hashed and linked together in chronological order, to alter the transactions in one block, an attacker would have to alter all subsequent blocks.

Therefore, blockchain technology seems to be an amazing and useful upgrade to distributed ledger...

Anyone keeping an eye on the cryptocurrency market will know that something big is about to happen. Specifically, Bitcoin is gearing up for its next Bitcoin halving event. This is something experts predict could set off a cryptocurrency rally - and will forever change the supply of Bitcoin.

What is the Bitcoin halving?

The Bitcoin halving, or more accurately the “Bitcoin block reward halving” cuts the mining reward for miners in half. As anyone familiar with Bitcoin and the blockchain will know, cryptocurrencies differ from fiat currencies. Particularly, there is no central authority that can “print” more Bitcoin.

Instead, miners “unlock” new Bitcoin through mining them, or by producing new blocks. There is a total Bitcoin supply of 21,000,000, which miners continually unlock. At the time of writing, a bit more than 18,360,000 Bitcoin are currently in circulation. However, Bitcoin halving events continually reduce the Bitcoin mining reward. ...

The venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as “A16z”, is now announcing a new crypto fund. This crypto fund will focus on investments relating to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology startups. 

DeFi is one of the hottest industries in crypto

Furthermore, this fund will also invest in crypto startups that explore payments applications, Web 3.0, and - perhaps most notably - decentralized finance (DeFi). Decentralized finance, or the DeFi field, is getting a lot of attention lately.  

Additionally, the two co-leaders of the A16z fund, Chris Dixon and Katie Haun, agree that the DeFi space is one of the most interesting developments in the blockchain industry lately. 

In fact, they believe that DeFi and practical blockchain applications could transform how everything from lending and insurance to derivatives and trading is done. “We think the next wave of internet business models will come from crypto,” Dixon and Haun...

The blockchain is often known as a “DLT” system. Specifically, DLT stands for distributed ledger technology, and is a digital decentralized system for verifying and recording asset transactions. This means that the system becomes more resilient, as it exists in various places at the same time.

DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology)

Anyone familiar with blockchain technology will likely recognize this definition of DLT. A previous Ivan on Tech Academy article, in which we answer “what is the blockchain”, demonstrates the advantages of distributed ledger technology in various industries. Moreover, this is primarily due to the unique and far-reaching application opportunities of DLTs.

Put simply, a distributed ledger consists of nodes that process and verify items. In doing so, DLTs generate records of various items and reach “consensus”, an agreement, on the items’ validity, or “veracity”. 

This means that a DLT ledger is...

Blockchain is on the lips of everyone, from individuals to institutions these days. Analysts are calling the advent of blockchain (together with other cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, internet of things and virtual reality) the fourth industrial revolution. However, exactly what is blockchain? This article breaks it all down in a comprehensive “what is the blockchain 101” report.

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies 

Blockchain is perhaps most well-known as the technology that underpins Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. One should note that blockchain technology has wide-reaching applications that extend far beyond cryptocurrencies. However, the advent of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies did help blockchain technology gain more widespread exposure.

All of these different terms can be somewhat confusing, so we’re going to break it down. Cryptocurrencies are a type of medium of exchange, or means of payment. As such,...