According to various reports, a small cohort of Ethereum developers are clandestinely working on short-term scalability upgrades to the protocol. The upgrade which is still under consideration was brought up as part of private discussions during the recently concluded Devcon 4 in Prague and could possibly be rolled out as early as June 2019. Speculated as part of the upgrade include replacing the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and levying storage costs on smart contracts to deter the growth in the size of the blockchain, which currently stands at around 1 TB. This ballooning of the Ethereum blockchain is widely viewed as detrimental as it increases the cost of running a full node, as anyone that runs a node is expected to download a copy of the entire blockchain. Other solutions aimed at reducing the growth of the blockchain are also being discussed, but might require massive, structural overhaul.

However, there is a fair bit criticism being meted out by other stakeholders in various internal developer chat forums over the close-knit and secretive nature of the project. Private working groups are completely acceptable, but these groups should be more forthcoming about the transparency of planned upgrades and a public announce is probably warranted in situations such as these with critical downstream impact. Click here to look at the minutes of those meetings.

At a time when blockchain and crypto needs all the support that they can get from various quarters, such behaviour, though fundamentally driven by good intentions, could have unforeseen downstream effects. Among other things, this will also provide ammunition to crypto skeptics who have been crying hoarse over the perceived centralisation of various blockchains.

The government of Uganda is reportedly set to regulate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as crypto-related schemes are seemingly on the rise in the country. Several of the country’s policymakers have called on regulations to protect the public. Uganda’s Minister of State for Finance David Bahati revealed the government is set to introduce a new bill regulating cryptocurrencies while responding to concerns raised by Members of Parliament (MPs) over the ongoing rise of unregulated pyramid schemes.

Edward Snowden has weighed in on the conversation surrounding bitcoin, stating that while Bitcoin may fade away, the use of cryptocurrencies will not end with bitcoin. Snowden said that the belief which supports bitcoin acting as a global currency will merely transfer itself to other cryptocurrencies instead of dissipating completely.

The Supreme Court of India has set a new date - 15th January 2019 - to hear the petitions against the crypto banking ban by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The central bank issued a circular in April banning all regulated financial institutions from providing services to crypto businesses. The court originally scheduled to hear the case on September 11 but has continually postponed it since. It later directed the government to submit a counter affidavit within two weeks, detailing its crypto regulatory progress.

The U.K.’s financial regulator has doubled the number of cryptocurrency-related businesses it is inspecting over unlicensed operations. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it was currently eyeing 50 entities which it “suspected” were offering financial services without its permission. The number is more than twice that which the FCA reported in May this year, and comes at a time when the U.K. is seeking to adopt a more orderly approach to its domestic cryptocurrency industry.

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