Numerous events are continuously taking place in the blockchain industry, affecting the value of individual assets and the market as a whole. In the near future, several events will take place at once that could seriously change the situation on the cryptocurrency market.

The main ones are in our review.

The implementation of the Lightning Network in the Stellar network. The roadmap for implementing the Lightning Network in the Stellar network was published on March 19, 2018, and beta testing began on October 1. The developers use the C++ language to write the code, which makes it possible to speed up and simplify the process of developing the system. This implementation may affect the value of the cryptocurrency Stellar.

The value of the cryptocurrency Stellar (XLM) may also be affected by the Stellar Activity hard fork. It is assumed that all holders of Stellar (XLM) will receive a new coin, Stellar Activity (XLA), on December 9 at a ratio of 1:2. The project's plans are quite extensive: from implementing the Lightning Network and atomic swaps to developing a decentralized exchange and a platform for holding ICOs. At the same time, there is currently no information about the project's developers, on which exact block a snapshot of the original Stellar blockchain will be taken, and how the further distribution of the new coins will take place.

The value of the cryptocurrency TRON may be affected by a contest for the development of a decentralized project from the TRON team. The TRON Foundation announced a large-scale TRON Accelerator — a contest for the development of decentralized application projects on the altcoin's blockchain. Project registration will take place from December 1 to January 4, 2019. The prize fund will be $1,000,000, and the Grand Prix winner will receive $550,000, the opportunity to attend the niTROn Summit completely free of charge (including travel and accommodation), as well as financial support from the company. The awards ceremony for the winners will be held on January 18 during the summit in San Francisco.

The HYCON hard fork. A timer has been launched on the project's website, counting down the time to the hard fork aimed at reducing the volume of mining by 90%. The asset's mining will decrease tenfold — from 8 to 0.8 HYC per second. The token's issuance will also change from 10 to 5 billion. The update is aimed at adjusting the difficulty model. This hard fork may also affect the value of the HYCON cryptocurrency itself.

The ZCoin hard fork will also be carried out in the near future. This hard fork is aimed at countering ASIC mining. The development team will implement the Merkle Tree Proof (MTP) algorithm instead of Lyra2z, which is designed to increase the security and speed of the system. It was developed by cryptographers from the University of Luxembourg, Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich. These researchers previously devised the Equihash algorithm, which is used, for example, in ZCash (ZEC) and Komodo (KMD). The upcoming hard fork may also affect the value of the ZCoin cryptocurrency itself.

The deadline for completing the EximChain token migration. The project, which raised $20 million in its ICO, will complete the exchange of ERC-20 standard tokens on December 15. EXC holders need to pass verification on the EximChain project website and link their wallet to their email; a certain number of tokens must be on the balance. The EximChain project aims to solve global problems related to Supply Chain Finance (SCF), or the financing of the supply chain.

The launch of the TokenPay payment platform should take place in the near future. On October 24, the project's official Twitter account announced the launch of a platform for trade payments. On November 28, representatives of the startup stated that they would process transactions for any legal business, regardless of the political situation. The company plans to compete with PayPal. The project aims to create an anonymous crypto bank and issue debit cards on which digital money will be stored for use in everyday life. The project's ICO ended in December 2017 and raised about $41 million.