Category: Blockchain

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Blockchain Crypto News IOTA

IOTA Launches a ‘DeFi Operator’s Wet Dream’, Smart Contracts with Zero Fees

The IOTA Foundation has recently launched its beta for smart contracts allowing developers to set their own execution fees, a feature expected to suppress fees to near-zero.

According to an announcement on the IOTA blog, the blockchain’s beta release will give builders “limitless possibilities to build decentralised applications [dApps] and other Web3 innovations”.

‘Near-Zero’ Execution Cost for Smart Contracts

The new layer aims to address some existing problems with fees, scalability, interoperability and limited composability, and introduce some innovations not yet seen in the space.

Thanks to IOTA’s feeless 1000 transaction-per-second base layer acting as a trustless atomic bridge for smart contracts, a smart contract chain can define its own incentives and fees (potentially even feeless), offering new possibilities to get mainstream adoption with dApps. Smart contract chains can be built on top of IOTA with their own specifications, allowing service providers such as governments to execute smart contracts with no fees.

This dynamic pricing creates an incentive to drive fees down, since different chains can now compete for the work of executing a smart contract. By allowing several chains to compete for work, it’s presumed it will lead to “near-zero or even zero-fees” to execute smart contracts on the platform.

The possibility for chains to compete for the ‘work’ of executing a smart contract creates an additional incentive to push execution fees to their absolute minimum – including zero. Non-zero fees are payable in whatever form the chain owner demands, giving additional flexibility. In a nutshell, it is a DeFi operator’s ‘wet dream’.

Dominik Schiener, co-founder and chairman, Iota Foundation

The smart contract service aims to foster interoperability and standardisation by integrating the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to write smart contracts, as well as an additional tool to help with the standardised portions of a smart contract. Developers will be able to write in various programming languages including Tiny Go, Rust, and Ethereum’s Solidity.

Smart contract chain developers have full flexibility to define their chain and tokenomics. In the future they could even set transaction fees to zero and instead reward validators with their native tokens, thus creating their own economies and massively reducing entry barriers for their dApps.

A Scaling Solution for Smart Contracts

IOTA smart contracts is a sharded smart contract network, where each smart contract chain is limited by its own scalability and is not hindered by the rest of the network. What IOTA does is spin different networks on top of its base layer so the smart contracts that run on those networks can talk to each other. This means they can transfer assets from one blockchain network to another.

A good way to think about it, Schiener says, is that “there might be one main open network where anybody can deploy a smart contract. But if you want to use another network with different characteristics, or even spin out your own, that’s also possible.”

IOTA smart contracts also enable the feeless transfer of assets across chains, which offers the IOTA ecosystem – and anyone else interested – unprecedented opportunities in terms of utility, composability, and scalability.

Dominik Schiener, co-founder and chairman, Iota Foundation
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Blockchain Crypto News Gaming NFTs

Galaxy Interactive Raises $325 Million for NFT and Blockchain Gaming Startups

Galaxy Interactive, a division of Galaxy Digital Holdings and a VC firm focused on gaming startups and interactive technology, has raised US$325 million to invest in blue chip NFTs.

Galaxy Digital announced the fundraising on October 19, stating that the capital will go to Galaxy Interactive’s second fund, combining a total of US$650 million in assets under management.

According to the statement, Galaxy Interactive has already allocated US$150 million to new companies, including 1047 games, Republic, Art Blocks, and Elodie.

Younger Generation Moving En Masse From Physical to Digital World

Galaxy Interactive was established in 2018 by general partners Sam Englebardt and Richard Kim. The fund, which is now more flexible for investors, aims to appeal to a wider demographic of investors, especially in the knowledge that younger generations are moving from the physical to the digital world as technology innovation grows exponentially.

What would you invest in if you believe that younger generations are moving en masse from the physical to the digital world? Today, the implications of that question present themselves everywhere, in so many fascinating ways and through the utilisation of revolutionary technologies.

Sam Englebardt, partner, Galaxy Interactive

More Capital Flocking to NFTs and the Metaverse

A lot of money is swirling around NFT projects and the Metaverse, which could host a new way of interaction and trade with people in a global virtual reality world.

The P2E (Play-To-Earn) movement has generated massive profits in 2021, with titles such as Axie Infinity frontrunners in the space.

While most blockchain-based games are built on Ethereum, other projects have taken to Solana to compete in an alternate ecosystem. These include Star Atlas, Aurory, and Genopets – three titles gaining the attention of gamers and investors alike.

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Blockchain Crypto News Facebook Regulation Social media

US Lawmakers Ask Facebook to Terminate Crypto Pilot

Just hours after it had made the announcement of a pilot of its cryptocurrency wallet, Novi, Facebook was ordered by US lawmakers to cease the project in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In the letter, five Democratic Senators urged the company to halt the pilot, citing concerns over the handling of cryptos by the social media giant.

‘Facebook Cannot Be Trusted’

Many concerns have been raised surrounding Facebook in recent times regarding the company’s “relentless pursuit of profits at the expense of its users”. Joining the backlash the company has received, the senators’ letter stated that:

Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient.

Letter to Facebook signed by five Democratic US Senators

When Facebook first unveiled plans for its crypto project in mid-2019, it already faced a global regulatory backlash. Concerns were raised that the launch of private money by a company of Facebook’s magnitude and user base could destabilise the entire monetary system.

The backlash prompted several partners to leave the project, and the project underwent a rebranding from Diem to Libra.

Facebook responded by saying lawmakers misunderstood the relationship between Diem and Facebook. “Diem is not Facebook”, wrote the company, making it clear Diem is an independent organisation, and that Facebook’s Novi is only one of more than two dozen members of the Diem organisation.

Facebook has said that Novi, once it goes live, will make cross-border payments more efficient and reduce transaction costs.

Lawmakers Remain Critical of Facebook

In the letter issued to Zuckerberg, the senators wrote:

Facebook is once again pursuing digital currency plans on an aggressive timeline and has already launched a pilot for a payments infrastructure network, even though these plans are incompatible with the actual financial regulatory landscape.

This is certainly not the response Facebook was hoping for, though it is not entirely unexpected. Earlier this month, Facebook announced it would hire 10,000 new employees over the next five years to start building its metaverse. However, many are sceptical of this effort and are instead calling on the company to move toward creating a safer, more responsible, and ultimately more trustworthy social platform.

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Blockchain Crypto Art Crypto News Ethereum NFTs

Playboy is Launching 11,953 Rabbit NFT Avatars

In a follow-up to May’s ‘Liquid Summer‘ NFT series whose first drop sold out in under three minutes, American lifestyle brand Playboy is launching a new collection called ‘Playboy Rabbitars‘ that goes all the way back to its roots.

In a nod to its foundation year of 1953, Playboy will release 11,953 unique Rabbitars, 3D rabbit characters in NFT form serving as keys to a reimagined Playboy Club and giving owners access to benefits including members-only events, merchandise, artwork, and exclusive artist collaborations.

The Rabbitars have been created by Playboy’s Web3 Innovation team in partnership with Possible Studios and WENEW, the art studio and blockchain technology company co-founded by Michael ‘Beeple’ Winkelmann and Michael Figge.

In metaverse terms, Rabbitars are NFTs that live on the Ethereum blockchain as ERC-721 tokens hosted on IPFS (InterPlanetary File System, the metaverse’s decentralised file storage system).

Avatars Inspired by Brand Art and Editorial History

Each Rabbitar is generated from a pool of more than 175 traits, including fur, facial features, ears and headwear, apparel, accessories, occupation-related characteristics, and more. Some of the rarer examples are inspired by aspects of Playboy’s art and editorial history.

According to Jamal Dauda, Playboy’s vice-president of blockchain innovation, distributed ledger technology is revolutionising how fans and consumers interact with brands.

At Playboy, we’re committed to moving out of the era of merely acquiring followers and into an era of building thoughtful communities where each member has a voice. Our goal is to deliver meaningful opportunities for ownership and unique value.

Jamal Dauda, vice-president of blockchain innovation, Playboy

Liz Suman, Playboy’s vice-president of art curation and editorial, points out how the brand’s 68-year history began with the rabbit logo:

When it came to visualising the Rabbitar world, our goal was to pay homage to our legacy in the arts, while tapping into the spirit of innovation to create something entirely new for the NFT community.

Liz Suman, vice-president of art curation and editorial, Playboy

Available Across Three Separate Sales

Playboy Rabbitars will be available for purchase for 0.1953 ETH (US$813) on the official Rabbitar site using crypto or USD in three separate sales:

  • presale for whitelisted ETH-paying collectors from October 24-26;
  • public sale for Fiat/USD-paying collectors on October 26 following the whitelist sale; and
  • public sale for ETH-paying collectors on October 27.

All collectors will need an Ethereum wallet whether paying with Ethereum or USD. 

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Blockchain Crypto News Tokens

Privacy Token NuCypher Surges 760% in a Week Following Protocol Merger News

The native cryptocurrency of Ethereum cryptographic services provider NuCypher outperformed the majority of altcoins last week, including Ether (ETH) and Binance Coin (BNB). NuCypher (NU) more than doubled its market value and capitalisation on its anniversary day, following the announcement of the network’s upcoming merger with Keep Network.

NU Soared 8x Last Week

NuCypher operates several nodes optimised for threshold cryptography to enable decentralised application developers to secure their data on the blockchain. The NU token began trading on October 15, 2020.

The community seems to be positive about future prospects and its upcoming merger with the Keep Network to have incited a spike in the market value of NU. During the first anniversary celebration on October 15, the token soared from as low as US$0.300165 to an all-time high of US$2.61 within that same day. 

This represents a +760 percent increase in a daily candle, and although the price of NU has shrunk from the ATH, the token is still up by 323 percent at US$1.27 at the time of writing.

NuCypher is Merging With Keep 

The major driver of the rally in NU last week could be traced to the upcoming merger with Keep Network, also a privacy-focused blockchain network. The merger was first hinted at in June, and although it’s still unknown when it will be finalised, NuCypher and Keep are believed to be nearing completion of the first-ever crypto merger into a single network called Threshold.

Both communities unanimously voted in support of the merger, and it’s expected that both KEEP and NU holders will receive the new “T” token from Threshold Network.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Ethereum Gaming NFTs

DeFi Total Value Locked Has Exploded This Year, Up 10x Since January

The DeFi (decentralised finance) sector has been one of the hottest topics in the crypto community this year, mainly because of its fast-paced growth in a relatively short time. The TVL (Total Value Locked) across DeFi protocols is now at US$218 billion – a rise of over 850 percent from US$21.4 billion on January 1.

Ethereum Blockchain Takes the Lead with 69% Dominance in DeFi Market

DeFi TLV has exploded 10 times higher since the beginning of the year, surpassing the US$200 billion mark. According to data from DefiLlama, Ethereum is the blockchain that currently leads the market, with a TVL of US$151.15 billion.

Meanwhile, Curve – an exchange liquidity pool on Ethereum – is by far the largest TVL protocol with a dominance of 7.84 percent (7-day change) across various blockchains, including Avalanche, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain.

Source: DefiLlama

What’s Behind the Exponential Growth?

DeFi’s exponential growth can be attributed to numerous features and innovations within the sector. But there are two main drivers of the industry: the rise of blockchain video games with Play-2-Earn (P2E) mechanisms, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

P2E games have attracted numerous users across the globe, especially since the pandemic struck down economies worldwide and forced people to look for alternative means to make ends meet. Such was the case with Axie Infinity, a Pokemon-inspired, blockchain-based video game that allows users to play and earn SLP, the game’s native currency that can be traded for fiat money.

Axie hit a milestone by surpassing US$2 billion in trading volume by September, making it the first DApp to reach such a figure. There are other video-game DApps on other blockchains besides Ethereum, integrating P2E mechanisms and NFTs trading. Some of them are set to blow up in popularity in the future and take a slice of Ethereum’s dominance. One such example is Star Atlas, a metaverse real-time grand strategy game currently developing on the Solana blockchain.

NFTs Boosting the DeFi Market

NFTs are undoubtedly one of the hottest trends in the DeFi market, dragging artists, musicians and content creators across the globe to a digital ecosystem full of opportunities. Q3 saw a massive explosion for NFTs with a US$10 billion trading volume in August and September alone, inflating ETH’s price 20 percent amid a thriving NFT market.

DeFi is also taking off in Australia, which ranked 12th out of 154 nations to embrace and adopt DeFi and its numerous innovative DApps, most of them built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Some analysts even believe that NFTs and blockchain games will be future key foundations of the industry. Others like WallStreetBets (WSB) plan to “take over” traditional financial markets. As Crypto News Australia reported last month, the popular subreddit WSB has launched a DeFi protocol that allows trading of synthetic stocks backed by blockchain technology.

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Blockchain CBDCs Crypto Art Crypto News Ethereum NFTs

New Visa NFT Program Aims To ‘Help Creators Reach New Audiences’

Financial services giant Visa has partnered with former major league baseballer Micah Johnson to launch an initiative to help digital creators learn about using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies, the company announced in a media statement.

In August, Visa sprang across the NFT board by purchasing a CryptoPunks NFT avatar for US$150,000 worth of Ethereum. The company now aims to bring more NFT awareness to a larger audience, in a new initiative it has launched jointly with Johnson.  

Bringing Blockchain to a Wider Audience

Johnson, a former MLB player turned crypto artist and creator of the NFT series character Aku, has launched along with Visa a program aiming to assist digital creators and small-business owners to better understand how NFTs work, and how blockchain can be used to create and mint digital art.

The initiative will select a group of creators, sponsor them and consult with them on NFTs and using blockchain to enter the digital art scene.

Johnson came onto the digital art scene in 2020 when he launched Aku, an animated astronaut character that became the first NFT to be optioned for a feature film.

Visa also aims to build connections between NFT creators and its current network of payment partners. Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, explained that Visa will help participants “navigate both crypto and traditional payment infrastructure”:

Visa Aims to Operate as a Universal Payment Channel

The financial services powerhouse is very active in the blockchain and crypto space. Earlier this month, Visa announced plans for the development of a protocol to make cross-border payments with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins from any blockchain connected to its network.

Visa is developing the protocol to allow customers to send digital currencies between blockchains so as to operate as a “universal payment channel” (UPC). The payment channel will connect CBDC networks between countries and will link CBDCs with private stablecoins.

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Blockchain Crypto News

Polkadot Soars 18% Overnight Amid Hotly Anticipated Parachain Auctions

Polkadot’s price has enjoyed an 18 percent pump in the lead-up to the project’s announcement that parachains are officially ready to launch on the mainnet. This is a massive milestone for the multichain network, led by creator Gavin James Wood (and also Ethereum co-founder), since the release of Polkadot’s whitepaper five years ago.

Auction Dates Proposed for Polkadot Parachains Launch

Polkadot has released its Proposal for First Parachain Auctions. Motion 118 will be a schedule of the first set of parachain auctions on Polkadot and Council buy-in to a recommended strategy for auction rounds on a three-to-six-month basis. Once passed, there will be two batches of auctions: the first will consist of five auctions starting on November 11, with the second lot of six auctions to begin on December 23.

Parachains have already been successfully deployed running on Kusama – Polkadot’s Canary Network – since June this year. In 2019 Polkadot launched Kusama, built with the same code as Polkadot, to attract blockchain contributors and allow developers to build their own custom blockchains, or parachains, offering new projects low barriers to entry – ideal for startups looking to move fast and develop their own dApps at low cost.

What Are the Polkadot Parachains and What Does It Mean?

Parachains are individual layer-1 blockchains that run in parallel on Polkadot, connected to the Polkadot Relay Chain and secured by its validator set. A parachain slot is a scarce resource on Polkadot and only a limited number will be available. To become a parachain on Polkadot a project has to win a Slot Auction, with two years the maximum duration for lease. A full slot is divided into eight lease periods, making the minimum duration that a project can lease three months. A Reddit user has posted an in-depth explanation.

The announcement of parachains on Polkdot has been hotly anticipated by those in the crypto space and breeds bullish sentiment for DOT:

Six months ago, Crypto News Australia reported that Facebook was working on an ecosystem for creators on the Polkadot blockchain to connect the regulated and the unregulated. It will be exciting to see what other projects Polkadot’s new parachains will attract in the coming months.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi

Fantom Token Up 64% in a Week After Announcing Aave Support

Fantom blockchain is continually gaining ground in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space, given more projects are launching on the network on account of its cheap and fast transaction processing time. This has sustained the market price of the native cryptocurrency FTM on the upside, even when the altcoin market seems to be in a lull. 

FTM Soared Over 64% After ATH

While Ether (ETH) and major altcoins lost out on Bitcoin price movements this past week, FTM soared over 64 percent to an all-time high of US$2.45 on October 8, a day after the announcement that analytics platform Nansen would include Fantom on its blockchain coverage.

After a brief correction from the ATH, FTM began soaring again as Fantom disclosed that one of the biggest Ethereum-based DeFi lending protocols, Aave, could launch on the network if it passes the governance proposal. The voting ended on October 11 and an overwhelming majority of voters (99.73 percent) supported the proposal.

Aave v2 will launch on Fantom Opera blockchain. In doing so, it extends its lending services to Fantom’s DeFi ecosystem and will, in turn, tap more TVL growth from the Fantom community.  

Fantom DeFi Now Worth +$5.7 Billion

In April, Fantom passed a milestone of three million transactions, with the daily record around 200,000. However, the numbers have grown to over 800,000 daily by dint of its inherent scalability property, which is drawing in more project launches on the network. Popular Ethereum protocols such as C.R.E.A.M., Curve, Yearn and SushiSwap have also launched on Fantom. 

As of October 13, the Fantom DeFi ecosystem had a combined TVL of US$5.06 billion. 

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Bitcoin Blockchain NFTs Tokens

Bitcoin NFTs Are Growing Fast, STX Token Up 57% in 24 Hours

The native cryptocurrency of Bitcoin-based smart contract blockchain Stacks (STX) exploded in market value this past week, following the growth in demand amid a booming NFT ecosystem. 

Giving the growing traction on the network, more from its NFTs marketplace, STX soared over 57 percent to $2.30 on October 10. At the time of writing, however, STX was down trading at $1.91 on CoinMarketCap, as Bitcoin (BTC) maintained its domination over major altcoins. Currently, the Stacks token is ranked the 58th-largest digital currency with a market capitalisation of around US$2.3 billion. 

LunarCRUSH had also confirmed STX as the top cryptocurrency with the highest social and market activity. 

Bitcoin NFTs Ecosystem is Booming 

The Bitcoin blockchain is mainly for facilitating transactions and doesn’t inherently support NFTs or smart contracts like Ethereum. While it is often criticised and downplayed for this, Stacks is looking to change the narrative. 

Based on Bitcoin, Stacks is poised to enable smart contracts on the BTC network, more like a “Layer 1.5” according to founder Muneeb Ali. More NFTs are now launching on the Bitcoin network through Stacks, which contributed to the demand in STX and overall traction on the network.

Bitcoin Birds was the latest Bitcoin NFT collection launched last week by 12-year-old Abraham Finley. The collection sold out within one hour, netting about US$8,000. Prior to the Bitcoin Birds, other NFTs have been released on the Stack marketplace, including Stacks Pops, Punks, Monks, and many others. Satoshibles NFTs are also planning on debuting on Bitcoin “where they truly belong”.

The NFT market has had a wide rally in the past few months and is starting to look lulled. SynFutures, a Singaporean decentralised derivatives exchange, is set to launch an NFT platform that will enable investors to short or bet against the price movements of NFTs. As the NFT world continues to advance, Twitter plans to integrate a verification tool for NFTs used as profile pictures.