Tezos blockchain’s fourteenth update, “Nairobi,” has been released, increasing transaction speeds by up to eight times. The previous “Mumbai” upgrade, which could handle up to 1 million transactions per second, has been replaced by this one. Nairobi implements a new price scheme in which customers are charged depending on network usage rather than a fixed rate. Nairobi also enables Tezos Smart Rollups to be automatically upgraded as newer versions are delivered. In comparison to other blockchains, Tezos’ network utilization remains low, with only 68,000 transactions processed in the last 24 hours.
After legislators sought “prohibitive” restrictions to keep unbacked crypto out of the traditional financial system, the European Union has reached a political agreement on new bank-capital laws, including crypto-assets. The agreement, revealed in a tweet by the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs committee, contains controversial changes to how banks evaluate the risk of business and residential loans. To become law, the agreement must be approved by member states in the EU Council and by legislators, which might take months. The new regulations also change the risk weighting for banking assets such as corporate loans, aiming to “boost the strength and resilience of banks operating in the Union,” according to Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson. The statement from the Council stated the agreement contains a “transitional prudential regime for crypto assets,” but provided no additional specifics. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is finalizing a worldwide crypto banking code, but indications indicate that free-floating cryptocurrencies would be assigned a maximum risk weight of 1,250%. This would imply that banks would have to provide a euro of capital for every euro of bitcoin or ether they own, providing little incentive to enter the market. A solution presented confidentially by the European Commission late in the discussions would modify the EU government’s stance on regulated stablecoins.
