Latest news with #HebrewUniversity
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Kaspa: The Israeli Answer To Scaling Bitcoin
Kaspa In the ever-evolving crypto landscape, a relatively quiet contender is making waves by rewriting the rules of Proof-of-Work - Kaspa. A project born from Israeli academic research - Kaspa is leveraging a novel protocol called GHOSTDAG to overcome Bitcoin's biggest limitation: speed. Invented by Hebrew University researchers Yonatan Sompolinsky, Shai Wyborski, and Aviv Zohar, GHOSTDAG transforms the traditional blockchain into a blockDAG (directed acyclic graph of blocks), allowing parallel blocks and sub-second confirmation times without sacrificing security. As of May 2025, Kaspa's KAS token trades around $0.10, giving the network a market capitalization near $2.7 billion - a top-50 crypto that sprang from a university idea into a growing ecosystem. Unlike Kaspa, Bitcoin's original blockchain protocol deliberately prioritizes security over speed. Satoshi Nakamoto's design requires blocks to propagate fully across the network before the next block is mined, which forces a long 10-minute block time and limits throughput. This conservative approach minimizes 'orphaned' blocks (stale blocks that get discarded), but it severely caps transaction speed and scalability. Litecoin improved on this somewhat – it reduced block time to 2.5 minutes and enjoys lower transaction fees, making it more suitable for everyday payments. But even 2.5 minutes per block is an eternity in the digital age, and both Bitcoin and Litecoin still follow a single-chain architecture that can only handle so many transactions. Blue blocks vs Red blocks. GHOSTDAG takes a fundamentally different route. Instead of insisting on one-block-at-a-time and orphaning any 'competing' blocks, GHOSTDAG allows multiple blocks to coexist and orders them in consensus. In traditional blockchains, if two miners produce blocks simultaneously, one block wins and the other is thrown away. Kaspa's protocol doesn't waste those blocks - it weaves all mined blocks into a structured DAG, picking an ordering such that the network eventually agrees on the same ledger. The protocol splits blocks into a 'blue set' versus 'red set,' essentially distinguishing the blocks mined by honest, cooperative nodes (blue) from those that conflict or might be malicious (red). By favoring the blue set when finalizing the ledger, Kaspa can include many parallel blocks while preserving security and consensus. Crucially, Kaspa remains a pure Proof-of-Work (PoW) system, meaning it retains the battle-tested security model of Bitcoin. Kaspa's consensus uses a custom hashing algorithm (kHeavyHash) and was launched with no premine, no ICO, and no central governance, much like Bitcoin's fair launch ethos. Every KAS coin has been mined into circulation by the community, which has cultivated a fiercely loyal base of miners and supporters. One of Kaspa's headline features is its fast block times. Blocks on Kaspa were initially targeting roughly 1 block per second, and thanks to a recent upgrade, that rate increased by an order of magnitude. In May 2025, Kaspa's network implemented the 'Crescendo' hard fork, boosting block production from 1 to 10 blocks per second (BPS). These sub-second blocks allow Kaspa to handle a high volume of transactions in parallel - far more than the 7 transactions per second often cited as Bitcoin's limit. In tests, the Kaspa network achieved first transaction confirmations in mere seconds, handling around 40 transactions per second – a throughput higher than what Bitcoin or even Ethereum have ever sustained. Litecoin and other first-generation PoW coins only modestly improved throughput by tweaking parameters (Litecoin's 4× faster blocks, slightly bigger block size, etc.), but they could not break the fundamental bottleneck: any significant speed-up in a single-chain PoW system tends to cause more forks and threaten consensus stability. Kaspa's multi-block DAG approach side-steps this issue by absorbing orphaned blocks into the ledger rather than fighting them. As a result, Kaspa can safely push the block time down to seconds or less - and the successful 10 BPS upgrade demonstrates the network's confidence in handling that scale. This suggests that the security and decentralization of Proof-of-Work don't inherently require the slowness and low throughput we see in Bitcoin. Scaling via blockDAG could allow PoW networks to compete with or exceed the speed of newer Proof-of-Stake chains, all while leveraging PoW's simplicity and robustness. Kaspa's journey from academic concept to a multi-billion-dollar network has been largely community-driven. There was no flashy VC-marketed token sale to kick it off; instead, early development was funded by an $8 million investment into DAGLabs, a startup co-founded by Sompolinsky to commercialize blockDAG research. After Kaspa's mainnet launch in November 2021, DAGLabs was dissolved and the project handed over to the open-source community. A bottom-up marketing approach has kept Kaspa in the conversation without the 'influencer pumps' or paid hype that many crypto projects rely on. The result is an authentic, technically literate following that genuinely believes in the tech. Fred Thiel, chairman and chief executive officer of Marathon Digital Holdings. Photographer: Valerie ... More Plesch/Bloomberg That ethos has attracted not just armchair supporters, but serious miners. In mid-2024, Marathon Digital Holdings, one of North America's largest Bitcoin miners, revealed it had mined $16 million worth of KAS to diversify its revenue. Even though Marathon emphasized it wasn't pivoting away from Bitcoin - Kaspa would be only a small fraction of its total hashpower - the move was telling. It signaled that Kaspa had entered the big leagues of Proof-of-Work. According to data from June 2024, Kaspa was already the fifth-largest PoW cryptocurrency by market cap, trailing only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dogecoin. Today, Kaspa's network security is secured by thousands of GPUs and ASICs around the world, and its community continues to push development forward. Recent upgrades have expanded Kaspa's functionality – for instance, the KRC-20 token standard (akin to Ethereum's ERC-20) was introduced to lay groundwork for future smart contracts. The project's roadmap hints at plans for DeFi and dApps, either through native smart contracts or layer-2 integrations. Kaspa's rise poses an intriguing question for the crypto world: Can Proof-of-Work be scaled up for the modern era? For years, the narrative has been that if you want fast, scalable blockchains, you abandon PoW (as Ethereum did) or compromise on decentralization. Kaspa offers a counterpoint - an existence proof that PoW networks can significantly increase throughput and remain decentralized. By inventing new consensus algorithms like GHOSTDAG, researchers in Jerusalem have opened a path to turbocharge Nakamoto's invention without breaking it. To be sure, Kaspa is still young and faces plenty of challenges. It must prove that its blockDAG can handle real-world usage at scale, fend off any potential exploits, and attract a broader user base beyond die-hard enthusiasts. Competition is also fierce, with many alternative Layer-1 blockchains trying to be the next big thing. For the broader crypto audience, the takeaway is clear. Kaspa's GHOSTDAG is a reminder that blockchain technology is far from done evolving, even in the Proof-of-Work arena. By blending academic theory with open-source execution, this Israeli-born project has cracked a piece of the scalability puzzle. Whether Kaspa becomes a dominant network or not, its approach will likely influence how future protocols are designed. It's a development worth watching - not just for what it is today, but for what it might enable tomorrow. P.S. This article is not investment advice. The author does not hold KAS tokens or have any financial interest in the Kaspa project.
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Gizmodo
Archaeological Dig Sheds New Light on the Other Great Wall of China
Practically everyone has heard about the Great Wall of China, but the iconic monument is not the only massive frontier in northern East Asia. An international team of researchers has surveyed a section belonging to the Medieval Wall System (MWS), a little-known and extremely remote network of walls, enclosures, and trenches across China, Mongolia, and Russia. Specifically, the researchers investigated a 252-mile-long (405-kilometer) section in Mongolia, called the Mongolian Arc, and conducted an excavation at one of its enclosures. Instead of a thick stone wall, the archaeologists uncovered a shallow ditch, suggesting the barrier didn't serve defensive purposes. 'We sought to determine the use of the enclosure and the Mongolian Arc,' Gideon Shelach-Lavi, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in an Antiquity statement. 'What was its function? Was it primarily a military system designed to defend against invading armies, or was it intended to control the empire's outermost regions by managing border crossings, addressing civilian unrest, and preventing small-scale raids?' Various dynasties worked on the 2,485-mile-long (4,000-km) MWS, such as the Jin dynasty (1115 to 1234 CE), whose empire included modern-day North China and regions of Inner Asia. While the enclosure was made of thick stone walls, archaeologists found that the wall itself was actually a shallow ditch along a pile of earth. A ditch certainly could not have defended against an invading army—but it may have helped guide people toward gates and served as a symbol of the Jin dynasty's power and control of the region. Forts built along this barrier would have allowed soldiers or guards to monitor who was coming and going. In other words, the researchers suggest that those in power used the Mongolian Arc to control the movement of civilians, animals, and goods rather than to defend the frontier. Led by Shelach-Lavi, the archaeologists also unearthed coins from the Song dynasty (960 to 1279 CE), iron artifacts, and a heated stone platform that would have been used as both a stove and a bed. Furthermore, 'considerable investment in the garrison's walls, as well as in the structures within them, suggests a year-round occupation,' explained Shelach-Lavi. He and his colleagues detailed their work in a study published today in the journal Antiquity. More specifically, this indicates that the dynasties who built the MWS greatly valued civilian infrastructure that could both symbolize their power and also enable trade. Moving forward, future research might shed light on the people who walked along this frigid frontier hundreds of years ago. 'Analysis of samples taken from this site will help us better understand the resources used by the people stationed at the garrison, their diet, and their way of life,' Shelach-Lavi concluded.
Reuters
25-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Bank of Israel MPC back to full strength after economist Heffetz approved
JERUSALEM, May 25 (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet approved the appointment of Ori Heffetz to the Bank of Israel's monetary policy committee, the central bank said on Sunday in a move that will bring the panel back to its full six members for the first time in two and a half years. Heffetz's tenure is effective immediately but he will not vote at Monday's interest rates decision since he was not present in all the rounds of discussions and monetary analysis in recent weeks. His first vote will be at the subsequent meeting on July 7. He specialises in macroeconomics and monetary policy, economic policy, and empirical, experimental and behavioural economics. Heffetz has served as an economics professor at the Hebrew University since 2022 as well as a professor at the School of Business Administration at Cornell University since 2024. Bank of Israel governor Amir Yaron said that Heffetz "has rich and relevant professional experience and I am sure he will contribute greatly to the work of the committee." By law, Israel's policy setting committee is meant to have six members - three from the Bank of Israel including the governor and deputy governor, and three from the public. In January 2023, Moshe Hazan, a Tel Aviv University economics professor, quit the MPC to fight the government's plan to overhaul the judiciary - which has since been shelved - and no one had been chosen to replace Hazan until Heffetz was nominated by a search committee earlier this year. Current voting members from the Bank of Israel include Yaron, his deputy Andrew Abir and research chief Adi Brender, along with non-central bank economists Naomi Feldman and Zvi Hercowitz. At the outset of Israel's war with Hamas, the central bank reduced its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points in January 2023 to 4.5%, having sharply raised it previously to battle inflation. It has kept the rate unchanged since then due to inflationary pressures stemming from the now 19-month old conflict, including labour and supply constraints. Inflation rose to 3.6% in April, well above the government's 1-3% annual target rate. Economic growth has been weak due to the war - only 0.9% in 2024 but increasing to an annualised 3.4% in the first quarter of this year.
NDTV
23-05-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
Yaron Lischinsky And Sarah Milgrim: Israeli Embassy Staff Shot Dead In US
Washington: Before they were killed by a gunman outside a Washington Jewish museum, Yaron Lischinsky had planned to make a formal proposal of marriage to Sarah Milgrim in Jerusalem next week. As their deaths late Wednesday intensify the international spotlight on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, here is what we know about the two Israeli embassy staffers shot dead after attending a networking event for young professionals. Yaron Lischinsky The 30-year-old had worked as a researcher at the Israeli embassy in Washington since 2022. He was born in Nuremburg, Germany and moved to Israel at the age of 16 and had dual nationality. Lischinsky studied at Reichman University in Tel Aviv and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador in Berlin, described Lischinsky as a "brilliant" and "curious" student when he taught him at Reichman. Nissim Otmazgin, a humanities professor at Hebrew University, said Yaron had dreamed of becoming a diplomat. Lischinsky spoke fluent German, according to the German-Israeli Friendship Society. Volker Beck, the society president, said Lischinsky's "interest in German-Israeli relations and ways to achieve peaceful coexistence in the Middle East brightened the environment around him." He met Sarah Milgrim when she started working at the Israeli mission. According to Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador in Washington, Lischinsky had bought a ring. The couple planned to fly to Jerusalem on Sunday to meet his family and Lischinsky was to propose there next week. Sarah Milgrim The LinkedIn photo of 26-year-old Sarah Milgrim showed a smiling woman with curly red hair standing between Israeli and US flags. She had worked in the public diplomacy section at the embassy in Washington since 2023. Milgrim was a leading choir member at her school near Kansas City and earned a degree in environmental science from the University of Kansas. She also attended a American University in Washington and a UN University for Peace program. She had a master's degree in international studies and sustainable global development, according to her father Robert. The Milgrim family were not aware of the upcoming proposal. Her father said the Israeli ambassador told them about it when he telephoned Wednesday night to inform them of the young couple's death. Milgrim's mother Nancy told The New York Times she had been planning to fly to Washington on Sunday to look after her daughter's dog. She had seen alerts on her phone about the shooting in Washington, and tracked her daughter to the Capital Jewish Museum before the ambassador's call. "I pretty much already knew," the father told The New York Times. After university Milgrim spent a year in Israel working with the Tech2Peace group aimed at bringing together young Israelis and Palestinians for seminars on peacemaking and tech training. On LinkedIn, she said she had carried out a study "on the role of friendships in the Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding process." "She was doing what she loved, she was doing good," her father told US media.
France 24
23-05-2025
- France 24
Israel embassy staffers slain in Washington had planned to marry
As their deaths late Wednesday intensify the international spotlight on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, here is what we know about the two Israeli embassy staffers shot dead after attending a networking event for young professionals. Yaron Lischinsky The 30-year-old had worked as a researcher at the Israeli embassy in Washington since 2022. He was born in Nuremburg, Germany and moved to Israel at the age of 16 and had dual nationality. Lischinsky studied at Reichman University in Tel Aviv and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador in Berlin, described Lischinsky as a "brilliant" and "curious" student when he taught him at Reichman. Nissim Otmazgin, a humanities professor at Hebrew University, said the slain man had dreamed of becoming a diplomat. Lischinsky spoke fluent German, according to the German-Israeli Friendship Society. Volker Beck, the society president, said Lischinsky's "interest in German-Israeli relations and ways to achieve peaceful coexistence in the Middle East brightened the environment around him." He met Sarah Milgrim when she started working at the Israeli mission. According to Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador in Washington, Lischinsky had bought a ring. The couple planned to fly to Jerusalem on Sunday to meet his family and Lischinsky was to propose there next week. Sarah Milgrim The LinkedIn photo of 26-year-old Sarah Milgrim showed a smiling woman with curly red hair standing between Israeli and US flags. She had worked in the public diplomacy section at the embassy in Washington since 2023. Milgrim was a leading choir member at her school near Kansas City and earned a degree in environmental science from the University of Kansas. She also attended a American University in Washington and a UN University for Peace program. She had a master's degree in international studies and sustainable global development, according to her father Robert. The Milgrim family were not aware of the upcoming proposal. Her father said the Israeli ambassador told them about it when he telephoned Wednesday night to inform them of the young couple's death. Milgrim's mother Nancy told The New York Times she had been planning to fly to Washington on Sunday to look after her daughter's dog. She had seen alerts on her phone about the shooting in Washington, and tracked her daughter to the Capital Jewish Museum before the ambassador's call. "I pretty much already knew," the father told The New York Times. After university Milgrim spent a year in Israel working with the Tech2Peace group aimed at bringing together young Israelis and Palestinians for seminars on peacemaking and tech training. On LinkedIn, she said she had carried out a study "on the role of friendships in the Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding process."
