You can head back to our homepage, or check out some great posts.Erik Voorhees launched ShapeShift in March of 2015, and secured over US$2 million in venture capital funding from prominent digital currency firms and investors including Roger Ver, Digital Currency Group and leading bitcoin exchange BitFinex.BitFinex Director of Community and Product Development, Zane Tackett, explained that the secret to their rapid growth is a revolutionary design and model, which enables fast and secure trading of cryptocurrencies.Supported by a simple user interface and efficient cryptocurrency processing technology, the platform has become one of the most popular and largest cryptocurrency trading platforms by volume.Following last year’s growth in monthly volume and newly registered users, the ShapeShift team and its CEO, Erik Voorhees, have focused on adding support for new and popular cryptocurrencies such as Factom, Emercoin, and Ethereum.Since January, the market cap of Ethereum has risen from US$70 million to US$777 million, recording a staggering 10x increase in the past two months.

The explosive demand for Ethereum resulted in surging daily volumes for ShapeShift, which allowed the ShapeShift team to continue the platforms growth.Daily volumes on ShapeShift have risen to a point where the platform couldn’t handle the spiking trade requests for trending cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Factom.The ShapeShift team announced on March 5 that the platform was struggling to support all of the surging requests from its users.The price of Ether, the underlying cryptocurrency the Ethereum network runs on, has increased 10 fold since the start of the year, from just under $1 to around $10.Due to the sudden surge in demand and volumes, members of the cryptocurrency community have begun to suspect a pump and dump by financial institutions or cryptocurrency enthusiasts.However, some argue that the volume of Ethereum is simply too large for a single individual or a group to manipulate.Many still believe that the involvement of multi-billion dollar banks and financial institutions from the R3 consortium, a collaborative Ethereum blockchain-based financial project including some of the world’s largest financial establishments and corporations, triggered the spike in volumes and price of Ethereum.

On March 2, the R3 consortium announced that Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and 36 other banks completed a trial of five blockchain solutions developed using the Ethereum network.The 40 banks utilized blockchain solutions and infrastructure developed and structured by Chain, IBM, Eris Industries, Ethereum and Intel Corp.will bitcoin spike againto settle transactions and process traditional financial settlements using the Ethereum blockchain network.bitcoin pwc- Tim Grant, Managing Director and Global Head of R3’s Collaborative Lab Although it is still unknown if the R3 consortium will continue the development of Ethereum products, the demand for Ether and value of the Ethereum network will continue to rise as long as banks and developers persistently create decentralized applications on the Ethereum network, which rely on Ether for financial settlement.current litecoin blockchain size

Due to the increase in the number of Ethereum developers and members of the Ethereum community, the node count of the Ethereum network has reached over 4,400, approximately 65% of the Bitcoin network’s node count.Considering the explosive growth of the Ethereum network, Voorhees hinted that an Ethereum-focused customer service may be in the works, that will target BTC-Ether traders on the platform.hudson eatery bitcoinThe ShapeShift Ethereum service is most likely going to be introduced in the new ShapeShift user interface, that is currently on beta.gh/s bitcoin calculatorOn April 30, 2016, a brand new organizational structure was created: the decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO.bitcoin miner for xpThis organization, built entirely of smart contracts encoded into the ethereum​ blockchain​ has already raised over $41 million, making it the second most successful crowd-funded project to date.

What is the DAO and why is it revolutionary?The blockchain is a shared, decentralized, digital ledger that cryptologically seals and stores a permanent record of all transactions that occur on it.Bitcoin, the digital currency, is perhaps the most well-known and widely used application of blockchain technology.Ethereum is a different blockchain from Bitcoin and was created with the intention to allow self-executing smart contracts to be coded directly into it, permitting trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out among disparate, anonymous parties without the need for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement mechanism.(See also: Is Ethereum More Important Than Bitcoin?)The organizational theorist Arthur Stinchcombe once wrote that contracts are merely organizations in miniature, and by extension all organizations are just complexes of contracts.Firms are created using a series of contractual agreements, ranging from employment contracts and employee benefits, to deals with vendors and suppliers and obligations to its customers, to building leases and sales & purchases of equipment.

Traditionally, these contractual obligations are quite costly because they need to be enforced externally by society in the form of a trusted legal system and through legal enforcement.Courts, lawyers, judges and investigators all form this system of contract enforcement.With a blockchain-based smart contract, however, much of these costs are greatly reduced or eliminated.This promises to make blockchain-based organizations more efficient, cost-effective, and competitive compared to traditional firms in the marketplace.(For more, see: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: IoT Today.)"The DAO" is not the very first DAO to be constructed on ethereum; that honor goes to Digix, a blockchain-based organization designed for P2P gold bullion receipts trading.The DAO, however, is the first attempt to create a truly decentralized autonomous organization that does something more than function as a digital currency or asset system.The DAO is meant to democratize ownership of the organization, with 100% of the ownership distributed among its tokenholders (akin to shareholders).

The DAO itself is self-governing; it cannot be influenced by outside forces such as politics, government, or corporate lobby.Its software operates in the cloud, so it exists both nowhere and everywhere at the same time, and thus circumvents jurisdiction.Its smart contracts are indelibly etched into the Ethereum blockchain.Its identity is formed through consensus.Its authority is defined through voluntary endorsement and, ultimately, network effects.(See also: How Will Bitcoin 2.0 Change The World?)The current DAO has a creation phase from April 30, 2016 that runs for 30 days.During the creation phase, anybody is eligible to purchase DAO tokens, or ownership stakes in the new organization.For the first fourteen days, 100 DAO tokens can be purchased for 1 ETH (ETH is the symbol for ether, the internal digital currency of the ethereum blockchain), with 1 ETH worth approximately $9.50 currently.After that period, DAO tokens will cost increasingly more until ultimately 100 DAO tokens will cost 1.5 ETH before the creation round closes.

Once it closes, no new DAO tokens will be created, but they can still be bought and sold on secondary exchanges.In other words, the DAO creation phase is quite similar to an initial public offering (IPO), but without a syndicate of investment banks, lawyers, or a stock exchange.So far, the DAO has raised over 4.2 million ETH, or $41 million.DAO token holders have voter rights (1 token = 1 vote) and are entitled to their pro-rata share of dividend income from the organization's profits.The organization itself, however, is just software.The DAO must hire contractors to engage in economic activity, and these contractors are hired by democratic vote from tokenholders.Their work enforced by smart contract.Contractors are paid out in ETH raised from the creation phase.Tokenholders can also issue proposals to be voted on for projects to be undertaken.From the DAO's website, here is an excerpt of its governing principles: Inclusion: The DAO leverages smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain so that anyone, anywhere in the world can be empowered to participate.

In exchange for their early help, participants receive DAO tokens which hold many benefits.Flexibility: The DAO backs Proposals which it selects for their innovative nature, to be delivered by Contractors.Some of these Proposals could hold no promise of return whatsoever (in the case of a charity for example), others could involve the building of products or services which The DAO could then use for its own purposes.Profitability and Growth: The DAO charges for the use of its the products or services.This revenue is then sent directly to The DAO in the form of ETH.The DAO then has the option to accumulate this ETH to support its growth, or redistribute it to the DAO Token Holders as a reward.Autonomous Governance: The ETH held by The DAO will never be centrally managed.DAO Token Holders are able to vote on important decisions relating to the management of The DAO, including the power to redistribute its ETH amongst themselves.The DAO, represented by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain at address 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413, intends to back a series of Proposals to create products or services.

The DAO Token Holders will then leverage these product or services, or charge others for using them.One of the current proposals for the DAO to fund is a marriage of the internet of things (IoT) with blockchain: slock.it.This German start-up aims to allow people that want to borrow something (anything from renting an apartment or storage locker to a bicycle or lawnmower) directly from a lender in a truly decentralized, secure, P2P fashion.Another is to fund Mobotiq, which plans to create smart driverless electric cars that can be rented P2P and could enable the development of fully autonomous, self-renting vehicles.With millions of dollars at its disposal, the DAO will surely see many new and exciting proposals that tokenholders will advocate for and fund.The DAO is now a reality.Blockchain based organizations founded on smart contracts and digital currency transactions have been manifested on ethereum.The DAO, now midway through its creation phase, has already raised over $41 million, making it the second most successful crowdfunding project ever to date.