Ethereum whales are still increasing their holdings. Over 43 percent of all Ether (ETH) in circulation is held by whale addresses, according to recent data from crypto analytics platform Santiment.
Additionally, ETH balance on exchanges has been dropping significantly, which suggests most investors are HODLing.
Whales Are Still Buying ETH
There has been renewed interest in Ether since the Beacon chain went live last year. This is evident as the ETH accumulation rate has been on an upward trajectory, especially for the whale investors.
As of August 2, Santiment reported that 39.2 percent of ETH supply was accumulated by Ethereum’s millionaire addresses that hold at least 1,000 to 100,000 ETH. As recently as August 13, the addresses holding 100,000 ETH accounted for 43.7 percent of all ETH in circulation. According to Santiment, this represents a 7.9 percent increase from the previous record of 35.8 percent in 2018.
đł #Ethereum whale addresses aren't stopping their accumulation as prices hover above $3,100. 3 years ago to the day, addresses with 10k+ $ETH owned 35.8%. Today, they own 7.9% of the #2 market cap asset's total supply. There are 1,338 of such addresses. https://t.co/wVVPHCDmI9pic.twitter.com/SGTaXXYhjI
Ethereum whale simply refers to an address holding a large amount of ETH – at least 1,000 ETH, equating to US$3.149 million on today’s price. Whale addresses can be owned either by individuals or an organisation. Whale accumulation is usually seen as a bullish indication for continuous price growth.
Besides the increase in ETH supply held by whales, data also shows that retail investors are buying, which confirms the presence of demand for ETH. Glassnode tweeted on August 19 that addresses holding 0.1+ ETH had reached an ATH of 5,471,300.
Additionally, there’s a spike in the number of new addresses created on the Ethereum network, which Santiment has termed to be bullish.
đ #Ethereum is hovering at the $3,000 level right now, and behind the curtains, we're seeing that network growth has been steadily rising this month. New addresses being created on the $ETH network is a nice leading indication of where prices move next. https://t.co/u78GKHGbe9pic.twitter.com/oBgy9zxBCw
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is a blockchain-based form of finance that does not rely on central financial intermediaries (such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks) to offer traditional financial instruments: instead, DeFi utilises smart contracts on blockchains, Ethereum being the most commonly used.
Recently, new chains have emerged to offer users an alternative to Ethereum, which has become notoriously expensive to use, especially in times when the network becomes heavily congested, resulting in gas wars and extraordinarily high transaction fees.
These new decentralised applications (known as ” DApps”) run on a distributed computing system. DApps have been popularised by distributed ledger technologies to allow easy transfer and swapping of crypto assets.
Here is a list of the Top 10 DeFi Swap Token Apps:
UniSwap
Pink unicorn-branded UniSwap is perhaps the most popular DeFi protocol used to exchange cryptocurrencies. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts. Uniswap empowers developers, liquidity providers and traders to participate in a financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all. UniSwap V3 was released in May and boasts the most flexible and efficient automated market maker (AMM) ever designed. $UNI is the native token of the Uniswap protocol. Holders of UNI are entitled to governance rights and voting privileges on changes to the protocol, while liquidity providers can receive UNI tokens for their contributions. With its user-friendly interface, UniSwap makes it easy to swap DeFi tokens.
SushiSwap
SushiSwap (SUSHI) is a fork of UniSwap. Unlike Uniswap, which follows Automated Market Makers (AMM), SushiSwap is a user-oriented platform where users provide liquidity in lieu of rewards. It is an auditedDecentralised Exchange (DEX) and DeFi protocol described as “Uniswap meets Yield Farming” with SUSHI tokenomics. The protocol’s native token SUSHI is used to govern the platform. SUSHI holders also receive a portion of SushiSwap’s trading fees. SushiSwap is funded by an anonymous group that goes by the name Chef Nomi.
QuickSwap
QuickSwap is a fork of Uniswap that runs on the Polygon network (formerly Matic Network), a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. Polygon has lower transaction fees compared to the Ethereum mainnet, enabling QuickSwap to facilitate token swaps at a lower cost relative to exchanges like Uniswap.
1inchNetwork
1inch is an Aggregation Protocol Network that unites decentralised protocols whose synergy enables the fastest, most lucrative and protected operations in the DeFi space. The platform has 540K+ users and a total volume of $70 billion+. It facilitates cost-efficient and secure atomic transactions by utilising a wide range of protocols and performing argument validation and execution verification. The governance and utility token for the platform is self-titled 1INCH. The 1inch Liquidity Protocol is a next-generation automated market maker that protects users from front-running attacks and offers capital efficiency to liquidity providers. The 1inch Limit Order Protocol is perhaps the best feature of this DApp, allowing users to enjoy the most innovative and flexible limit order functionality in DeFi. Its implementation of the Chi gastoken makes transactions on 1inch up to 42% cheaper than swapping tokens on Ethereum. Chi tokenised gas that is pegged to the Ethereum networkâs gas price, but the difference is that Chi is used on 1inch and Curve while GasToken is used across the entire Ethereum network.
AirSwap
AirSwap is a peer-to-peer network. A simple combination of web protocols and smart contracts powers its RFQ (request-for-quote) style protocol. There are two kinds of liquidity providers on AirSwap: those running their own HTTP servers to provide liquidity, and those managing on-chain delegates that swap on their behalf. Each swap is between two parties, a signer and a sender. The signer is the party that creates and cryptographically signs an order, and the sender is the party that sends the order to the Ethereum blockchain for settlement.
HoneySwap
HoneySwap is a permissionless decentralised exchange (DEX) based on Ethereum, built on xDai Layer 2 scalability infrastructure. The xDai Chain enables users to experience fast and secure transactions with incredibly low fees. By utilising xDai chain for transactions, Honeyswap allows users to trade any ERC20 token and experience fast and secure transactions with incredibly low fees.
BakerySwap
BakerySwap is an automated market maker and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that runs on the Binance Smart Chain. It is powered by BakeryToken (BAKE). BakerySwap is the all-in-one DeFi platform that provides both AMM and NFT Marketplace solutions in one place. Users can exchange tokens, provide liquidity, participate in liquidity farming, and also mint NFTs and trade them.
Balancer
Balancer is an automated portfolio manager and trading platform offering investors portfolios that generate yield and rebalance automatically. Balancer turns the concept of an index fund on its head: instead of paying fees to portfolio managers to rebalance your portfolio, you collect fees from traders who rebalance your portfolio by following arbitrage opportunities.
Aave
Aave is an open-source, non-custodial decentralised lending protocol that allows users to earn interest on deposits and borrow digital assets. Users can participate as depositors or borrowers. Depositors provide liquidity to the market to earn a passive income, while borrowers are able to borrow in an over collateralised (perpetually) or under collateralised (one-block liquidity) fashion. Aave offers simplified and decentralised access to a wide range of digital assets and interoperability with multiple DeFi platforms. The protocol features Flash Loans to users enabling them to borrow instantly and easily, no collateral needed, provided that the liquidity is returned to the pool within one transaction block. Stakeholders can actively contribute as part of the community to the Aave Protocol and its governance.
ShibaSwap
ShibaSwap was recently launched by the Shiba Inu team – SHIB, LEASH, and BONE – to create a decentralised cryptocurrency exchange platform, the next evolution in DeFi platforms. ShibaSwap gives users the ability to DIG (provide liquidity), BURY (stake), and SWAP tokens to gain WOOFReturns through a sophisticated and innovative passive income reward system. The ShibaSwap platform allows the ShibArmy to access upcoming NFTs and additional tools, such as portfolio trackers, to make navigating the crypto world simple and intuitive.
Pancake Swap
PancakeSwap is one of the leading decentralized exchanges on Binance Smart Chain, with some of the highest trading volumes in the market. Unlike centralized exchanges like Binance or Coinbase, PancakeSwap doesnât hold your funds when you trade. The pancake DAPP can run on mobile applications with integrations crypto wallets such as Trust Wallet allowing you to swap your tokens seamlessly.
The Australian Border Force (ABF) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore have successfully completed a trial of blockchain technology to increase the effectiveness of trade flow between Australia and the island city-state.
According to the joint media release from the ABF, IMDA Singapore and Singapore Customs, the three institutions have been able to demonstrate trade documents can be issued and verified digitally across two independent systems.
As part of the Australia-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement, announced in November 2020, the project aimed to simplify cross-border trade. The trial successfully tested the interoperability of two digital verification systems â the ABFâs Intergovernmental Ledger (IGL) and IMDAâs TradeTrust reference implementation.
ABF commissioner Michael Outram said the positive results of the trial would help improve cross-border processes for the Australian trading community. Source: Joel Carrett/AAP
ABF is proud to pioneer cutting-edge digital verification projects in Australia. We understand this collaboration is among the first to involve multiple government agencies from two countries to achieve cross-border document interoperability.
Michael Outram, ABF commissioner
By using the blockchain-based, decentralised approach, transactions can become more cost-effective and offer scalability without the need for expensive data exchange infrastructure, lowering barriers to the adoption of paperless cross-border trade.
Digital Verification and Verifiable Documents Show Promise as a âCircuit-Breakerâ
The goal of the IGL platform is to progressively remove the need for paper documents and reduce cross-border transaction costs for Australian business, as mentioned in the Simplified Trade System reform agenda.
âDigital verification and verifiable documents show promise as a âcircuit-breakerâ to disrupt persistent paper-based evidence required by authorities,â Outram said.
A Successful First Test Case
The first test case for the project was issuing certificates of origin (COOs), which contained QR codes with unique blockchain-based proofs that verified the authenticity and integrity of the documents.
Certificates of origin are usually issued on paper and businesses usually wait days to receive the hard-copy document via courier before dispatching it to multiple parties, including customs agencies, brokers and banks. Paper trade documents are generally required by authorities to prove authenticity and integrity.
Ho Chee Pong, director-general of Singapore Customs, stated that the Covid-19 pandemic had accelerated trade digitalisation and demonstrated the importance of cross-border paperless trade.
With these systems in place, documents can be verified much faster, allowing for seamless administration and an improved flow of information.
The hacker who stole US$611 million from the Poly Network last week turned out to be a white hat hacker who returned the funds while exposing the protocolâs network security flaws. And whatâs even weirder, the Poly Network team offered the hacker a US$500k reward, and a role as chief security officer.
A Strange Turn of Events
As per an August 17 blog post, the Poly Network completed the second phase of the Mainnet Upgrade while keeping the hacker updated daily on its progress. Poly Network and the hacker had been interchanging encrypted messages in which the latter shared his concerns about the protocolâs network security and overall projects in the DeFi space.
We are also counting on more experts like Mr White Hat to be involved in the future development of Poly Network since we believe that we share the vision to build a secure and robust distributed system. Also, to extend our thanks and encourage Mr White Hat to continue contributing to security advancement in the blockchain world together with Poly Network, we cordially invite Mr White Hat to be the Chief Security Adviser of Poly Network.
Poly Network blog post
The protocol hopes that the hacker returns the private keys to restore full assets control to the community.
‘Mr White Hat’ Exploits Bug on Smart Contracts
As Crypto News Australiareported on August 12, the hacker – dubbed âMr White Hatâ – found a bug on the protocol’s smart contracts that allowed him to move assets between different blockchains, as per an analysis from blockchain forensic firm Chainalysis.
The hacker stole a total of US$611 million in Ethereum, BNB and Poly, making it the biggest theft in DeFi history. Yet things changed when the hacker started returning the funds progressively to the protocol through a multisig wallet.
$342 million (As of 12 Aug 08:18:29 AM +UTC) of assets had been returned: Ethereum: $4.6M BSC: $252M Polygon: $85M
He also tried to communicate with the Poly Network team through private messages embedded in an ETH transaction the hacker sent to himself. âItâs already a legend to win so much fortune. It will be an eternal legend to save the world. I made the decision, no more DAO,â reads one of the messages.
Hacker Refuses Bounty, Offered Further Reward
After several messages and a dialogue made public, the hacker clarified his intentions and his vision of the DeFi space. While the hacker refused to accept the $500k bounty, the protocol still plans to reward him for his “contributions to blockchain security”.
We are grateful for Mr White Hatâs outstanding contribution to Poly Networkâs security enhancements. While there were certain misunderstandings in the beginning due to poor communication channels, we now understand Mr White Hatâs vision for DeFi and the crypto world, which is in line with Poly Networkâs ambitions from the very beginning – to provide interoperability for ledgers in Web 3.0.
Dogecoin, the meme-based crypto asset that started as a joke seven years ago and grew into a US$44.42 billion juggernaut, has risen in value more than 32 percent over the past week. And now, after a six-year silence, the Dogecoin Foundation is back from the dead with Vitalik Buterin as its chief adviser.
In an August 17 announcement, the foundation says it’s re-establishing itself to support the Dogecoin (DOGE) community and promote the future of the blockchain. It adds that new projects will be flagged in coming weeks to âincrease Dogecoin uptake at a grassroots levelâ.
Three-Year Budget Sought for New Foundation Team
The foundation aims to secure a three-year budget for onboard team members to support its goals. As well as Ethereum co-founder Buterin, the foundation’s nominated “blockchain and crypto adviser”, those team members include:
Jared Birchall, the head of Elon Musk’s Family Office, who will serve as the foundationâs legal and financial adviser and supposedly represent Musk’s interests;
Dogecoin core developer Max Keller, designated technical adviser;
Dogecoin co-founder Shibetoshi Nakamoto, community and memes adviser;
Board members Jens Wiechers (a foundation veteran), Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus, and core blockchain developers Michi Lumin and Ross Nicoll.
Originally launched in 2014, just months after Dogecoin founder, Australian Jackson Palmer, announced the project on Twitter as a joke, the foundation fronted charitable contributions in and out of the crypto space. However, after several of its co-founders – notably Ben Doernberg and Eric Nakagawa – left, the group dissolved into an extended media silence.
The revitalised foundation âwill be announcing new projects that will complement the current Core Wallet to enable faster integration and easier APIs [application programming interfaces] for financial, social and charitable projects wishing to use Dogecoin”.
It’s Been a Big Month For Dogecoin
After its 32 percent rise over the previous week, the DOGE price was US$0.44 at the time of writing. It’s been a big month all round for Dogecoin, with its value increasing 40 percent following news that Chainalysis will be providing “insight” on how the asset is used. On the same day, it was revealed that English football club Watford will wear the Dogecoin logo for the entirety of the EPL season.
That said, US billionaire Mark Cuban – one of Dogecoinâs highest-profile supporters – admitted on social media that he only owns US$494 worth of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency.
Perhaps it was a joke.
The Mavs have what we sold in merch. I personally own $494 worth of DOGE
Researchers from Microsoft, Alibaba group and Carnegie Mellon University have released a white paper outlining a new blockchain-based solution for piracy, said to be running on the Ethereum (ETH) public blockchain.
Built on Ethereum’s public blockchain, Argus is described as superior to existing solutions and is also thought to be the first public anti-piracy system which:
does not hinge on any âtrustedâ role;
treats every participant fairly (in particular, it is resilient to greed and abuse, and resolves conclusively every foreseeable conflict); and
is efficient and economically practical to run on a public blockchain.
The system achieves an impressive off-chain throughput, and incurs only a negligible on-chain cost equivalent to sending “14 ETH-transfer transactions per report on the public Ethereum network”.
Protecting Intellectual Property
Intellectual property (IP) is one of the most valuable assets for modern tech companies, especially in the software, film, gaming and digital publishing industries. Companies worldwide have become increasingly concerned with IP protection and the fight against digital piracy.
According to the team of researchers, “Anti-piracy is fundamentally a procedure that relies on collecting data from the open anonymous population, so how to incentivise credible reports is a question at the centre of the problem.”
Relying on the transparency of Ethereum, Argus aims to provide a trustless incentive mechanism while protecting data collected from the open anonymous population of piracy reporters. The system enables back-tracing of pirated content to the source with a corresponding watermark algorithm, which is detailed in the paper.
Dubbed “proof of leakage”, each report of leaked content involves an information-hiding procedure. This way, no one but the informer can report the same watermarked copy without actually owning it, and it also prevents an informer from reporting the same leaked content under different names.
NFTs Also Used to Protect Against Piracy
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can also be used to prevent piracy through cryptography. Zero Contact, a new blockbuster film starring Anthony Hopkins, is set to premiere later this year on the NFT platform Vuele where it will be sold as an NFT.
The idea with Zero Contact is to make the movie an NFT, basically a digital asset that is placed on an encrypted blockchain with unique serial numbers. In doing so, it protects the film from piracy and adds fun extra content for the buyer, which can also be traded on the platform.
Audius, a music streaming platform based on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, has partnered with popular Chinese video-sharing and social media app TikTok to create TikTok Sounds.
đ˘ Announcing the Audius TikTok integration! đ˘
You can now share your tracks directly from Audius to TikTok!
Follow and tag us in your videos using an Audius track for a chance to win 50 $AUDIO.
Audius is the first streaming platform to allow direct sharing to TikTok, a coup for a music site that only recently crossed the five million users threshold.
The decentralised service is driven by the Ethereum-based $AUDIO token, which users can stake in the Audius platform to participate in governance decisions, as well as earn rewards for securing the network. $AUDIO is also given out as rewards for top artists and active users, and token staking unlocks advanced features too, such as displaying NFT collectibles on the site.
Within 24 hours of the announcement, the $AUDIO price spiked over 200 percent (see chart below).
AUDIO Token Price Surge – Source: Tradingview.com
The partnership aims to streamline TikTokâs current music upload and selection process. Audius users can simply upload tracks and share them to TikTok, a process said to take less than a minute.
Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning, the platformâs founders, say they followed up on personal contacts at TikTok to facilitate the integration.
Weâre proud to be one of the earliest launch partners for TikTok Sounds and to give the artists on Audius a chance to increase their exposure.
Forrest Browning, Audius co-founder
Founded in 2018, Audius is the largest decentralised consumer blockchain application and boasts a roster of over 100,000 music artists. Last month, it announced a partnership with the Solana Creator Fund to attract new artists to its platform.
TikTok Claims 750m of its US Users Find New Artists on the Platform
Like TikTok, Audius does not pay royalties to artists but provides them with a platform to engage with fans and attract new listeners. TikTok, with over 1 billion monthly users, claims that 75 percent of its US users find new artists via TikTok videos.
The partnership with Audius is a surprising move for TikTok given the appâs decision last month to ban cryptocurrency-based promotional content as well as âthe promotion of all financial services and productsâ.
For its part, Audius claims its integration with TikTok is more about the music rather than spreading the word on cryptocurrency or decentralised finance. According to Browning, roughly 95 percent of Audius users âhave no idea that blockchain is even involvedâ.
The TikTok sharing feature went live on August 16 for all Audius users.
Afghanistan is under siege by the Taliban and with the president fleeing the capital, the state has fallen to the self-proclaimed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
With many trying to flee the country, the frantic search for cash has led to banks and ATMs running empty.
According to reports by Al Jazeera and other news services, Taliban forces started capturing cities inside Afghanistan over the past week and have since taken Kabul, the nation’s capital.
Taliban fighters take control of the Afghan presidential palace after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country last week. Source: Zabi Karimi/AP/ Al Jazeera
More recent reports indicate that flights to Kabul have been re-routed and those to nearby provinces, Herat and Kandahar, have been cancelled.
This is, perhaps, one of the saddest images I've seen from #Afghanistan. A people who are desperate and abandoned. No aid agencies, no UN, no government. Nothing. pic.twitter.com/LCeDEOR3lR
When the news broke, Afghans and foreigners alike flocked to the airport seeking a way out, trying desperately to get their hands on money for supplies and flight tickets.
“The ATMs were all out of money, [and] the banks were full of hundreds of people lining up trying to take out as much money as they could,” said Afghani citizen Abdul Wahab, who was in Mazar on a business trip. The liquidity crisis has had serious repercussions for people who need some form of money to survive.
A similar situation occurred in Lebanon in 2019 where ATMs ran out of cash and banks capped withdrawals.
Blockchain Solutions to Broken Infrastructure
During crises like these, the internet can be suspended in a country cut off from the rest of the world, or provided solely to critical institutions. In a case such as that unfolding in Afghanistan, the military can stop routing traffic outside the country, making it nearly impossible to enact a bank transfer or any kind of transaction.
Even without internet access, however, people inside the country can still use peer-to-peer infrastructure or other bandwidths to transact if they have wallets on their phones containing crypto. The actual bitcoin balances are stored on the blockchain “public ledger”, which is constantly being updated by the bitcoin network even when holders are offline.
According to Richard Myers, a decentralised applications engineer at Global Mesh Labs, “In many parts of the rural and developing world, internet connectivity is both expensive and intermittent. Bitcoin transactions can be made over alternative low-bandwidth transport layers like mesh radios and SMS.”
The deployment of mesh networks and long-range radios can act as a substitute for internet connectivity. Using SMS bridges or meshnets, users can broadcast transactions throughout the network, without requiring an internet connection.
As in the current situation in Afghanistan and other countries in the world with infrastructure problems, blockchain and cryptocurrency are a solution to transact when the internet goes down, but when the power goes out that’s a different story.
Cardano (ADA) and Ripple (XRP) have made headlines recently for the immense growth they have shown. Coupled with a bull market, news from both has led to impressive surges in price.
Ripple is a technology that acts as a cryptocurrency and a digital network for financial transactions. Being one of the fastest and most scalable digital assets, the technology allows real-time global payments to take place from anywhere in the world.
The RippleNet payment platform acts as a real-time gross settlements (RTGS) system to enable global monetary transactions to occur instantly. XRP is the cryptocurrency native to the XRP Ledger.
At the time of writing, XRP was trading at A$1.74 and had grown 56.8 percent in the previous seven days.
Amid an ongoing battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ripple has made headlines as its price continues to surge.
In the case brought forward by the SEC against Ripple Labs, the company has been asked to submit its Slack messaging history. According to the SEC, the slack messaging will yield critically important information to its case.
Ripple, however, remains steadfast in its defence, insisting that XRP is not a security.
Ripple Supports NFT Innovation
Earlier this month, Ripple CTO David Schwartz explained why XRP Ledger will be ideally suited to assist in the future growth of NFTs. Although the biggest use case of NFTs is collectibles, he suggests this is “only scratching the surface”.
Schwartz sees a future where NFTs are the foundation of all digital rights management, one in which consumers can, for example, move away from services provided by Kindle and Apple to directly owning the rights to purchased movies or books.
According to Schwartz, XRP Ledger provides a unique combination of low costs, high speed and an efficient payments feature that can streamline NFT creation at scale. He makes specific reference to the ledger’s ability to consistently maintain transaction fees, thereby benefiting both buyer and seller.
Federated sidechains (blockchains that operate alongside other blockchains) may be available for XRP Ledger in coming months, which will open up the possibility of limitless transaction scalability and expanded DeFi capabilities.
GME Remittance Joins RippleNet
South Korean remittance company Global Money Express (GME Remittance) is the latest Korean financial institution and money transfer company to join RippleNet. Through RippleNet, Rippleâs global financial network, GME Remittance has connected to Thai Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand’s largest bank in terms of market capital.
Financial institutions around the world are partnering with #RippleNet to deliver a better cross-border #payments experience. Take a look at their success stories here. https://t.co/kKYolQJYDy
The partnership was established through SBI Ripple Asia and will accelerate scale payments into Thailand for the 184,000 Thai nationals residing in South Korea.
Through partnerships such as this, GME Remittance aims to connect with existing RippleNet customers to expand into additional remittance corridors in the region and globally, including the US and Europe.
We chose Ripple as our partner because with RippleNet we can launch into new countries with new partners within one to two weeks. This has drastically reduced the time to market and provides us with an edge compared to our competitors.
Subash Chandra Poudel, director and COO, GME Remittance
Launch Date Set For Cardano Smart Contracts
Cardano (ADA) has been a frequent flyer in the crypto news sphere since announcing last week it would add smart contract capability to its network. CEO and founder Charles Hoskinson confirmed the Alonzo hard fork would launch on Monday, September 12, and the ADA price has since skyrocketed.
Itâs happening.
Weâre targeting 12 September 2021 for the âAlonzoâ upgrade, bringing smart contracts to Cardano via a hard fork combinator (HFC) event.
Dubbed the “Ethereum killer” but lacking smart contract capability, the upgrade will soon remove this major drawback. It is part of a multistage upgrade that will allow developers to deploy smart contracts on the Cardano network. This will allow Cardano to incorporate more applications such as DeFi platforms, which would allow for automated crypto lending and trading.
Cardano is a decentralised proof-of-stake blockchain platform that facilitates complex programmable transfers of value in a scalable and secure way. Its stated goal is to allow “changemakers, innovators, and visionaries to bring positive change to the world”.
At the time of writing, ADA was trading at A$2.93 and had grown 43.3 percent in the previous seven days.
By Jana Serfontein, Crypto News Australia Guest Author
Reddit is making big plays in securing capital this year with another whopping round of funding driving up its value. The online community has announced a valuation of US$10 billion as it continues to expand its engagement in the crypto world.
Reddit has announced that it has raised US$410 million in a Series F round of funding led by Fidelity Management and Research LLC. Following this round, the valuation of Reddit goes up from US$6 billion, which it achieved six months ago, to an impressive US$10 billion. The company expects existing investors to take part in this round, bring the total amount raised to US$700 million.
Updated @Reddit chart with the companyâs latest Series F raise and valuation numbers, thanks to the speedy work of @DanielleAlberti â Valuation has more than quadrupled since 2017 & more than tripled since 2019 â When this raise closes, will have raised a little over $1.5B total pic.twitter.com/WhLiwxnWId
Steve Huffman, co-founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview that the funding was not planned, but âFidelity made us an offer that we could not refuseâ. He went on to say that the capital will offer it more time to decide how and when it would go public.
We want to build what is best for new users, because over time it will be best for everyone.
Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO
The discussion board platform said it intends to use the capital to improve product features and wants to make the platform easier for newcomers to explore and understand.
Reddit, which makes most of its money from selling advertising wishes to enhance video products. Advertisements appear in the feeds of users who browse the topic-based forums, known as âsubredditsâ.
The company, with 52 million daily users, operates in the shadows of digital giants such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitter, with a valuation of US$52 billion, and 206 million monetisable daily users, and Facebook with a value of US$1 trillion and two billion daily users, dwarf the site, making this round of funding crucial for Reddit.
The platform also intends to expand internationally as most of the site is US-centric.
Things are beginning to look up for Reddit. The company surpassed US$100 million in quarterly revenue for the first time in the second quarter of this year, up 192 percent from the same period in 2020.
Keeping Users Happy
Further enticing users on its platform, Reddit is expanding its Community Points crypto reward initiative. Reddit users will be rewarded with Community Points if they post quality content on the platform. The Ethereum-based token can then be used to unlock additional features on the site, or can be swapped for other cryptocurrencies on an exchange.
Community Points are currently offered on only two of the 100,000 subreddits. Moon tokens (RCP) are available on r/CryptoCurrency and Brick tokens are available on r/FortNiteBR. Moon tokens currently trade at US$0.28 and Brick tokens at US$0.05.
Reddit also recently announced it will be using layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum to scale Bricks and Moons. Arbitrum is just one of the many ârollupsâ currently being developed on Ethereum. The solution will take a large number of transactions first conducted on a different blockchain and will then roll them up into a single Ethereum block. This will reduce overall transaction fees massively.
The company has not yet announced when it will be expanding its Community Points into other subreddits.
The first priority on the product is just making Reddit awesome.
Steve Huffman
By Jana Serfontein, Crypto News Australia Guest Author
