Category: Blockchain

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Australia Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Education Real Estate

Western Australia Real Estate Body Introduces Mandatory Blockchain Training

The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia (REIWA) is set to introduce mandatory blockchain training to WA real estate agents in an Australian-first move designed to help the sector adapt and evolve as cryptocurrency becomes more mainstream.

This week's property round-up | Business News https://www.businessnews.com.au/article/This-weeks-property-round-up-77
Real Estate Institute of WA (REIWA) to offer mandatory blockchain training.

Real Estate to Adopt Tokenisation and Smart Contracts

This training will allow the industry to broaden its service offerings and utilise blockchain applications such as tokenisation and smart contracts. Partnering with Perth-based blockchain consulting firm TecStack for the delivery of the training, REIWA will educate its industry on how crypto can affect sellers, buyers, tenants and property managers.

TecStack’s director, Abheeti Pass, has described crypto as “fast-moving technology”, noting that the first to adapt are most likely to have the best chance to capitalise on growth opportunities in the field:

https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-florence-presents-la-tecnologia-blockchain-e-limpatto-sulla-formazione-reinventing-the-future-w-tecstack/

We are seeing whole new DeFi markets and technology-enhanced property online services opening up, and it is vitally important that today’s real estate professionals know how to understand and cater to these emerging customers’ needs so they can build ongoing relationships based on trust and expertise.

Abheeti Pass, director, TecStack

With an influx of DeFi newcomers in the market who are not using traditional finance methods, there is an opportunity for real estate agents to take on new types of clients.

Crypto Pops in on Property

The real estate sector has been moving slowly but steadily in its adoption of crypto, with increments of progress such as this one cropping up across the globe. September 2021 saw multinational commercial real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL) make a deal with blockchain platform VeChain in a push to promote sustainable practices in the sector.

And January 2022 was a big month for blockchain tech in real estate as Propy, the real estate smart token, shot up by 227 percent following its Coinbase listing. Propy is one of the leaders in buying and selling homes via smart contracts.

In other related news, US fintech company Milo is now offering its customers zero deposit, Bitcoin-backed real estate loans. This is a world-first bitcoin mortgage offering, yet it will only be usable for US property.

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Australia Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto News

Australian University to Launch a ‘Green Cryptocurrency’ Research Lab

Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) has successfully launched its Green Cryptocurrency Laboratory. Co-founded with the CloudTech Group, a leader in FinTech and blockchain technology, the lab will focus on reducing the carbon footprint of crypto.

Magi and Sam: RMIT Swanston Academic Building, Melbourne https://magiandsam.blogspot.com/2013/06/rmit-swanston-academic-building.html
RMIT partners with CloudTech to create the Green Crypto Laboratory, launched on May 6.

Researching ‘Green Crypto’

The May 6 event was hosted by Professor Zahir Tari, who has been named the lab’s director. RMIT is the world’s No 2 leading blockchain university and home of the Blockchain Innovation Hub. The Hub’s partnership with CloudTech aims to find answers to the increasing carbon footprint crypto technology is developing.

https://www.rmit.edu.au/contact/staff-contacts/academic-staff/t/tari-zahir

You might be shocked to learn that [blockchain technology] consumes more electricity to maintain the Bitcoin network each year than a medium-sized European country like Finland.

Professor Zahir Tari, joint director, RMIT Green Crypto Lab

The first project for the lab will be to develop Green Bitcoin, which will be a blockchain network based on PoST as the “underlying consensus mechanism”.

RMIT Making Crypto Waves

RMIT’s Blockchain Innovation Hub has been at the forefront of crypto development in Australia. In April it submitted a proposal to help the Melbourne portside precinct recover from the pandemic via the Docklands DAO. And, in October 2021, the university urged the Australian government to reform capital gains tax on crypto, stating that “reform will offer clarity for taxpayers and confidence in the tax system as a whole”.

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Blockchain Cosmos Crypto News Tokens

Typo Sees $36 Million in Seized Whale JUNO Tokens Sent to Wrong Wallet

Typographical errors or a misplaced cut-and-paste are the stuff of nightmares in the journalistic profession, so imagine the horror for the Juno community when US$36 million worth of its tokens were sent to the wrong wallet address thanks to a programming mishap.

The community last week voted to seize the tokens from the wallet of a whale investor accused of gaming an airdrop. But instead of sending the funds to an address controlled by the Juno community, as originally intended, they were misdirected to another wallet because of a faulty software upgrade:

Juno Proposal 20, passed almost unanimously by the Juno community, was supposed to automatically run code to move funds “gamed” by Japanese whale Takumi Asano from his wallet into a “Unity” address controlled by the community.

Funds Wind Up in Blockchain Limbo

When the code was executed on May 4, a programming error moved three million revoked JUNO tokens to an erroneous address on the Cosmos-based blockchain to which neither Asano nor the Juno community had access.

Andrea Di Michele, a member of Juno’s developer team, attributed the glitch to a copy-paste error. “When I gave the [Proposal 20] developers the address of the [Unity] smart contract, I pasted the address of the smart contract and just underneath it put the transaction hash,” Di Michele said.

Developers then accidentally copied the transaction hash – which looked similar to the wallet address – rather than the address itself. As a result, the seized funds were moved to an unreachable sector of the Juno/Cosmos blockchain.

Of Juno’s more than 120 validators, none appeared to notice that the Unity address had been pasted incorrectly. One of them stated the obvious on behalf of the many: “We f..ked up big time.”

Asano Foreshadows Possible Legal Action

Asano has since indicated he may pursue legal action against the validators unless the confiscated funds are returned to his investors.

As mistakes go, this one is not quite in the league of the DeFi protocol bug that accidentally rewarded Compound users with US$80 million worth of COMP tokens last October. But it’s way bigger than the Mutant Ape NFT that sold for 17 USDC rather than 17 ETH in August 2021, the result of another unfortunate if equally amusing typo that in this case cost a mere US$54,000.

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Blockchain Ethereum Ethereum Name Service Gas

Vitalik Buterin: ETH L2 Fees Must Be Under $0.05 to be ‘Truly Acceptable’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes gas fees on Ethereum layer-2s should be less than 10 cents in order to be “truly acceptable”.

The comment came as a response to a Twitter post from “Bankless” podcast host Ryan Sean Adams, who shared a screenshot of eight layer-2 protocols and their average transaction gas fees:

Layer-2s are protocols built on top of an existing blockchain. Since L2s are connected to a main chain – in this case, Ethereum – they inherit its security properties. So far, most layer-2s are designed to aid the Ethereum network with certain setbacks, such as scalability and throughput.

A layer-2 solution takes transactions out of the Ethereum network to process them in a secondary chain, in what is known as off-chain activity. This secondary chain provides high throughput and cheaper transaction fees while the mainchain provides security.

Currently, the cheapest ETH L2 solution is Metis Network, which has gas fees of US$0.02. However, swapping tokens costs $0.15, and bigger fees may be applied depending on the order.

‘Danksharding’ the Ethereum Network

With his mention of danksharding (aka EIP-4844), Buterin was referring to a new sharding model proposed for Ethereum that seeks to simplify previous sharding designs. This proposal will theoretically scale the Ethereum network by adding a new type of transaction dubbed the “blob-carrying transaction”, which carries an additional 125KB worth of data.

Most members of crypto Twitter agreed with the idea that the biggest stepping stone for Ethereum is transaction costs. While danksharding can help scale the network, ETH 2.0 has been delayed again – this time, the sharding might occur somewhere between the end of 2022 or early 2023.

Recently, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) hit a milestone by surpassing one million domain names created, causing the ENS token to surge 86 percent in value shortly after the announcement.

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Blockchain Crypto News Markets Tokens

New Move-to-Earn Token ‘FITFI’ Explodes Over 243% in Just Seven Days

The move-to-earn project Step App ($FITFI) has bucked the downward trend of crypto markets over the past week, posting gains in excess of 250 percent in the week since April 28. 

According to CoinGecko, the token was trading at US$0.24 on April 28 before starting its upward climb, recording its recent peak of US$0.67 on May 5 – a seven-day increase of approximately 275 percent. At the time of writing FITFI had retraced some of those gains but was still up significantly, trading at US$0.63.

Step App Lets Users Earn From Exercise

Step App allows users to monetise their fitness, compete with other users, collect NFTs and socialise with other crypto-minded exercise enthusiasts. According to the Step App website, it achieves this functionality by taking advantage of “the leading technology in metaverse, augmented reality and blockchain”.

Step App has a somewhat complicated economy, using three separate tokens – FITFI, KCAL and SNEAK: 

  • FITFI is the app’s governance token, which can be used for a variety of purposes including staking, conferring DAO voting rights and providing liquidity incentives; 
  • KCAL is the in-game currency users earn through exercise; and 
  • SNEAK are NFTs users can mint or buy using using either KCAL or FITFI tokens.

Move-To-Earn Is Latest Crypto Investing Trend

Step App is a part of the fitness finance (FitFi) trend to have recently emerged in crypto, where users can earn crypto rewards by exercising. It seems to be following a similar trajectory to the DeFi and GameFi trends before it: a few innovative projects create a new market segment, and then many similar projects emerge to iterate on the theme and capitalise on the hype.

The current leader in the FitFi space is the Australian-based move-to-earn project StepN, whose GMT token has increased in value more than 200x since the start of 2022.

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Algorand Blockchain Markets Sports

ALGO Rallies Amid Blockchain Deal with FIFA for 2022 World Cup

The native cryptocurrency of the US-based proof-of-stake blockchain Algorand (ALGO) has spiked following the announcement of a sponsorship and technical partnership deal with global football governing body FIFA.

According to CoinGecko, in the 24 hours since the announcement the price of ALGO increased from US$0.58 to $0.73, a gain of 25 percent. At the time of writing, ALGO was trading at $0.64, around 10 percent above its pre-announcement price – it’s currently the 31st largest crypto by market capitalisation.

Algorand is Now FIFA’s Official Blockchain Platform

As the official blockchain platform of FIFA, Algorand will provide the body with a “blockchain-supported” wallet, help FIFA implement blockchain technology, and develop its digital assets, including NFTs.

Romy Gai, FIFA’s chief business officer, cited transparency and sustainability as important factors in its decision to partner with Algorand:

At FIFA, we must constantly strive to identify and explore the most cutting-edge, sustainable and transparent means of increasing revenues to continue to support global football development. Algorand is clearly a forward-looking, innovative partner that can help us achieve these goals. 

Romy Gai, chief business officer, FIFA

Deal Provides Valuable Exposure

As part of the sponsorship agreement, Algorand becomes a FIFA World Cup 2022 Regional Supporter in North America and Europe and a FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023 Official Sponsor, providing the blockchain network with valuable exposure and promotional opportunities.

Algorand was founded in 2017 by the Turing Award-winning scientist Silvio Micali, who this week said he was excited about the opportunity this new partnership represents to showcase the capabilities of the blockchain network:

“This partnership with FIFA, the most globally recognised and distinguished organisation in sports, will showcase the potential that the Algorand blockchain has to transform the way we all experience the world’s game.”

Silvio Micali, Founder of Algorand

Algorand is regarded as one of the most efficient and environmentally sustainable blockchains and has been used by over 2000 organisations worldwide, including Blockchain Solutions Australia, who partnered with Algorand in late 2020.

Algorand isn’t the first crypto-related organisation to become a FIFA 2022 World Cup sponsor – in March, leading exchange Crypto.com became an official sponsor for the event.

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Blockchain Crypto News Hackers Solana

Solana Suffers 7 Hours’ Downtime as Bots Attack NFT Minting Tool ‘Candy Machine’

The beginning of May has seen a nearly seven-hour Solana crash, believed to be the result of a bot attack that targeted the company’s NFT minting tool ‘Candy Machine’ and has left users questioning the competence of the blockchain:

Candy Machine Suffers Sugar Hit

A tidal wave of traffic slammed Solana’s ‘Candy Machine’ on April 30. The bots responsible caused four million transaction requests, totalling 100 gigabits of data per second and setting a record for the platform, which could not keep up.

Later that night, the validator operators performed a cluster restart of its Mainnet Beta network. However, it wasn’t fast enough to stop the criticism that echoed around social media from Solana users and onlookers:

Solana’s plans to combat these crashes involve a botting penalty that is soon set to deploy to the program. It will only be the beginning of a broader effort but should work to stabilise the network, hopefully preventing similar issues in the future and stopping Solana from, negatively, being the talk of the town:

Not Solana’s First Outage

Solana has quite the track record of network outages. Notably, on January 4 the network was temporarily down due to a DDoS attack, causing huge transaction delays. Shockingly, this was followed by a second crash within the same week, believed to be a knock-on effect of the first attack.

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Blockchain Crypto News Crypto Wallets Toncoin

Telegram’s 550 Million Users Can Now Send Crypto Via Chat

Users of the instant messaging app Telegram can now easily buy, send and receive crypto in-chat using the app’s newly released wallet bot:

The wallet bot, which runs on the Telegram-designed TON blockchain, simplifies crypto transfers between Telegram users. Initially, users will be limited to transferring Toncoin (TON) only, although they will be able to purchase both TON and Bitcoin (BTC):

TON’s price gained around 18 percent following the announcement, jumping from US$1.92 to US$2.28. At the time of writing TON was holding on to most of those gains, with the price sitting at US$2.25.

Toncoin to AUD chart. Source: CoinMarketCap.com

How Does the Wallet Bot Work?

The new wallet bot allows Telegram users to buy crypto (TON or BTC) in-app using a bank card and transfer TON to other users. Once users have added the wallet bot to their attachment menu, they can use the wallet button to send TON to any user they’re chatting to. 

While the bot only allows for user-to-user transfers for now, the TON Foundation expects its functionality will expand to include consumer-to-business payments in future.

The addition of crypto transfers to Telegram follows a recent trend by social media and messaging apps towards implementing crypto payments systems. Twitter has added support for Bitcoin and Ethereum tipping in the past few months and the Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp has been trialling crypto transfers using its new Novi wallet since December.

TON’s History with Telegram

The TON blockchain started life in 2018 as a Telegram project and was initially known as the Telegram Open Network. However, after a legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over the sale of unregistered securities, Telegram gave up control of the project in 2020 to the community driven, open-source TON Foundation. In 2022, TON changed its name to The Open Network to highlight its separation from Telegram and its open-source nature.

According to the TON Foundation, the TON blockchain is designed to be a fully decentralised, ultra-fast, low-fee and environmentally friendly blockchain that can meet the needs of large-scale apps such as Telegram, which currently boasts around 550 million users.

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Binance Blockchain Crypto News Markets Social media Steem

Social Blockchain Token STEEM Explodes 60% Following Major Exchange Listings

Steem (STEEM), the native cryptocurrency of the social media-focused Steem blockchain, has surged over 60 percent following an announcement from Binance that the exchange would start offering a STEEM/USDT trading pair from April 22.

Immediately following the announcement, before Binance even listed STEEM, its price went virtually vertical, surging from US$0.36 to $US0.56 in just a few hours. Once trading began on Binance, STEEM’s price increased further to $US0.61 – an overall gain of over 60 percent. 

What is the Steem Blockchain?

Steem blockchain was created in 2016 by Ned Scott, co-founder of BitShares, and Daniel Larimar, lead developer of the EOS blockchain. Steem aims to reward people who actively contribute content on social media. It incentivises constructive participation on social platforms by providing a non-censorable monetisation layer that rewards creators of digital content with cryptocurrency.  

The flagship platform running on Steem is Steemit, a Reddit-like social blogging platform that offers users crypto rewards based on participation. There are currently more than 400 social media applications actively using the Steem blockchain.

STEEM Price Action Since Binance Listing

In the days since its Binance listing, STEEM retraced most of its gains, bottoming out at around US$0.40 before again surging in the past two days. At the time of writing the price of STEEM was sitting at US$0.56, around 54 percent higher than its pre-listing price – making it the 254th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.

According to data from CoinGecko, STEEM’s price is still down 93.1 percent from its all-time high of US$8.19, which it hit on January 3, 2018, at the height of the 2017-18 bull run, indicating there may still be considerable room for price growth in the medium to long term.

STEEM’s price surge on the back of a major exchange listing is a familiar story. For example, in December Measurable Data Token (MDT) gained 90 percent in a single day after its Coinbase Pro listing; similarly, IDEX surged over 85 percent in December after it was listed on Huobi.

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Blockchain DeFi Stablecoins TRON

Tron to Launch an Algorithmic Stablecoin Backed by $10 Billion in Crypto

Tron CEO Justin Sun has announced his plan to launch a decentralised algorithmic stablecoin known as Decentralised USD (USDD) on the Tron blockchain, scheduled for May 5.

Tron CEO Justin Sun. Source: azcoinnews.com

Unlike traditional stablecoins such as Tether (USDT), which already runs on Tron, USDD will supposedly be “fully decentralised” – it won’t be backed by centralised assets held in traditional financial institutions such as banks, but will depend on algorithms to keep its peg to the US dollar.

Tron’s ‘Self-Imposed Revolution’ 

Sun characterised the plan as a “self-imposed revolution”, going on to describe USDD as “a fully decentralised stablecoin underpinned by mathematics and algorithms, bringing the development of stablecoins to the next level”.

He explained how he envisions USDD maintaining its peg to the US dollar even in the face of extreme market conditions:

USDD will be pegged to the underlying asset, TRX, and issued in a decentralised manner. When USDD’s price is lower than 1 USD, users and arbitrageurs can send 1 USDD to the system and receive 1 USD worth of TRX. When USDD’s price is higher than 1 USD, users and arbitrageurs can send 1 USD worth of TRX to the decentralised system and receive 1 USDD. Regardless of market volatility, the USDD protocol will keep USDD stable at 1:1 against the US dollar via proper algorithms in a decentralised manner.

Justin Sun, CEO, Tron

Tron DAO to Establish US$10 Billion Reserve, Offer 30% Interest Rate

In a related announcement, Sun explained that Tron DAO, the decentralised autonomous organisation created to manage USDD, will establish the Tron DAO Reserve, which aims to raise US$10 billion from unnamed “prominent blockchain industry players”. This plan closely mirrors a recent announcement from Terra founder Do Kwon, who outlined his intention to acquire US$10 billion in BTC to act as a reserve for Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin, UST.

Sun said that the purpose of the Tron DAO Reserve would be to “safeguard the overall blockchain industry and crypto market, prevent panic trading caused by financial crises, and mitigate severe and long-term economic downturns”.

Sun added that Tron DAO Reserve would offer a “basic risk-free” interest rate of 30 percent, which surprised some Twitter users who considered it unrealistically high and unsustainable:

Announcement Sparks Gains and Scepticism

According to CoinGecko, TRON’s native token TRX gained about 18 percent following the announcement, hitting a high of US$0.074. TRX has since lost about half those gains and sits at US$0.067 at the time of writing.

While the announcement sparked investor interest, not everyone was convinced. Several Twitter users pointed out that the Tron blockchain itself isn’t exactly leading the way on decentralisation. Others pointed out that the plan resembled a poor man’s version of Terra’s UST being run by a guy with a less than stellar reputation:

Terra’s UST is the most popular algorithmic stablecoin in current circulation: UST flipped Binance USD to become the third-largest stablecoin by market cap earlier this week.