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Young Monday: Bored Ape with Adidas and Beeple, CryptoPunks on display at the museum

Bored Ape Yacht Club in the Adidas World Cup 2022 commercial

Bored Ape Yacht Club in the Adidas commercial for the 2022 World Cup, Beeple becomes an advisor for Yuga Labs and CryptoPunks arrive in museums!

The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar has finally started and it’s not missing out on getting NFTs involved! After the collaboration between Algorand and the FIFA World Cup in September, the World Cup 2022 also welcomes the Bored Ape Yacht Club, thanks to Adidas. Adidas has been the main sponsor of the World Cup since 1930, and in this year’s commercial they have also involved the Bored Apes. The Adidas-owned Bored Ape, number #8774, appears in the commercial in the company of champions Karim Benzema and Lionel Messi.

Let’s stay on the NFT theme and talk about the star of the week: Yuga Labs, the Web3 company that created the Bored Apes. Yuga Labs teamed up last week with Beeple, one of the most famous NFT artists in the industry, and launched a plan to donate some NFT CryptoPunks to contemporary art museums around the world, starting with the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami.

The Adidas Bored Ape in the 2022 World Cup commercial

In the Adidas commercial for the 2022 World Cup, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is also present. In the advertisement, ‘Catch our family reunion all World Cup long’, the Bored Ape of Adidas, Indigo Hertz, can be seen on a cereal box in the shape of footballs. This cereal was named ‘Indigoool’, in honour of the ‘bored monkey’. In the commercial, the cereal is eaten by French footballer Karim Benzema.

Adidas bought its Bored Ape in September 2021 for 46 Ether, about $156,000, and subsequently dubbed it Indigo Hertz, creating a Twitter profile for the occasion. Starring in the Adidas and Bored Ape Yacht Club advert are some famous footballers, including Lionel Messi, Heung-min Son and Serge Gnabry immortalised as they prepare, to the tune of Opus’ ‘Life is life’, to set off as one big family for Qatar. The commercial is narrated by English rapper Stormzy, who is also the driver of the ‘hippie’ style bus on which the footballers board at the end of the commercial.

The Adidas commercial in collaboration with the Bored Ape Yacht Club is not the German brand’s first NFT and Web3-themed initiative! Almost a year ago, on the 17th of December 2021, Adidas launched the ‘Into the Metaverse‘ initiative with the aim of bringing the sports brand into the metaverse. Adidas also recently released a capsule collection of NFT clothing. The collection is called ‘Adidas Virtual Gear – Genesis Collection’ and consists of cyberpunk-style digital clothes, which can now be purchased on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. These clothes, which will also be released in a physical version in the near future, are designed using state-of-the-art technology like 3D printing.

Beeple becomes advisor of Yuga Labs

Beeple, the digital artist who produced one of the most expensive NFTs ever, the Everydays NFT, has become an advisor to Yuga Labs. The relationship between the digital artist and the Web3 company came about through Yuga Labs’ acquisition of WENEW Labs. WENEW Labs is Beeple’s NFT fashion startup and has already established important partnerships with industry giants such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

Yuga Labs seems particularly interested in 10KFT, the NFT marketplace built on Ethereum by WENEW Labs. 10KTF is a shop set in the fictional city of New Tokyo and allows users to create and purchase NFT clothing that will, in the future, be able to be worn as their PFPs within metaverses. The 10KTF NFT marketplace is run by Wagmi-San, a garment designer who describes himself as a ‘digital artisan’.

Greg Solano, co-founder of Yuga Labs, said in a comment about the acquisition: “Beeple and the WENEW team have found a way to tell the Web3 story, while at the same time harnessing people’s passion for digital avatars and desire to personalise them. WENEW co-founder Figge, who co-founded the start-up with Beeple, will join Yuga’s management team as CCO (chief content officer), while Beeple, who’s real name is Mike Winkelmann, will act as consultant.

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CryptoPunks come to the museum!

Yuga Labs is unstoppable! It has also devised a plan to donate CryptoPunks to modern art museums around the world. They are starting with CryptoPunks #305, which was given to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. CryptoPunks are one of the most expensive and iconic NFT collections ever, created in 2017 by Larva Labs, a startup by Matt Hall and John Watkinson. This NFT collection is inspired by London punk culture and are true ideological and philosophical icons of the Web3. CryptoPunks #305 was not chosen at random by Yuga Labs, this number is actually the area code of the City of Miami, one of the main hubs of the NFT industry.

A few months ago, in March 2022, the intellectual property of CryptoPunks and Meebits (another Larva Labs collection) was bought by Yuga Labs together with most of the Crypto Punks and Meebits NFTs owned by the founders. Since then, Yuga Labs has been in charge of project development, planning initiatives to make CryptoPunks and NFTs in general more mainstream.

The Punks Legacy Project initiative, which started with the donation of CryptoPunks #305, aims to donate and create ad-hoc installations for more CryptoPunks in contemporary art museums around the world. The aim of the initiative is to promote NFTs and reinforce the idea that identifies these digital artworks as works of art in their own right. “Just as Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol led the renaissance of contemporary art, I hope that CryptoPunks can lead the charge for NFTs,” said Noah Davis, CryptoPunks brand manager.

Number 305 is not the only CryptoPunks in the possession of the ICA Miami, the museum in fact already holds Crypto Punk #5293, nicknamed “Priscilla” which was donated by a private collector named Eduardo Burillio in July 2021. Punk #305 will be “installed” inside the ICA in Miami on the 2nd of December 2022 and the installation will remain in the Florida museum until the end of the year.

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Young Monday: Subway, Messi, Polkadot reach agreement with SEC

Subway accepts Bitcoin Lightning Network payments and Messi on Sorare

At Subway, you can pay with Bitcoin using the Lightning Network, Messi collaborates with the NFT Sorare card game, and Polkadot makes a deal with the SEC!

The collapse of the FTX exchange has destabilised the crypto world, but during this delicate time there is also some positive news. Let’s see what happened with Young Monday! In the Subway restaurant chain, one of the largest restaurant franchises in the world, you can pay in Bitcoin using the Lightning Network. Polkadot on the other hand seems to have convinced the SEC that it is a software and not a security, i.e. a financial instrument. The latest news on this Young Monday is crypto football-themed and it concerns one of the greatest footballers ever: Lionel Messi, who has partnered with Sorare, the Web3’s most popular sports NFT card game.

Can you pay in Bitcoin at Subway?

Subway was one of the first shops in history to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. The owner, Daniel Hinze, is a big supporter of Bitcoin and had already allowed his customers to pay in BTC in 2013 at a store in Moscow. However, payments then were very slow. Customers who paid in Bitcoin at the time complained of waits of dozens of minutes for transactions to be processed. Recently, the situation has changed thanks to the possibility of paying in Bitcoin from Subway via the Lightning Network. The Lightning Network is a Layer 2 of Bitcoin, created in 2016 that is able to process transactions extremely quickly and cheaply. It is now possible to pay in Bitcoin from Subway at three shops in Germany, all located in Berlin.

During the first month since the introduction of the Lightning Network, a record number of Bitcoin transactions were processed: more than 120 within Subway stores. For the occasion, a special offer was proposed: a 50% discount to those paying in BTC at Subway. The new solution implemented by Subway was much appreciated by supporters of the first ever cryptocurrency, who shared pictures of tasty sandwiches on social media with the hashtag #usingBitcoin. Another fast food chain, after McDonald’s thus jumps on the bandwagon, for Bitcoin holders it is starting to become difficult to choose where to eat.

Polkadot gets vocal: I am not a security!

The Web3 Foundation, a foundation set up by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood, which aims to promote and protect the technologies behind the decentralised web, has recently concluded its debate with the SEC on the legal terms with which to refer to DOT: is Polkadot a security or software? Securities are exchangeable assets commonly referred to as financial instruments or securities. Various commissions oversee these assets to ensure their safety and compliance with current regulations. In the United States of America, the commission of reference is the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission). The dialogue between the Web3 Foundation and the SEC began in 2019. During the discussions, the Web3 Foundation stood in for Polkadot, with which it shares the founder, seeking to protect its interests.

The aim of this dialogue was to convince the US regulatory commission that Polkadot is neither a security nor a financial instrument but a software. The back-and-forth, which took the form of a real negotiation, ended a few days ago, exactly three years after it began. The verdict? Polkadot and its DOT crypto are not securities! Relations between the two parties do not end with this verdict but will continue with the aim of trying to define an unambiguous regulation for all blockchains.

After Chiliz, Lionel Messi arrives on Sorare

On Wednesday, the 9th of November 2022, Lionel Messi joined the Sorare team as an official ambassador. “The flea” will find himself in good company in this Web3 team built by Sorare, which includes such big-name sportspeople as tennis player Serena Williams and her ‘real world’ teammate Kilian Mbappè. The Argentinean Paris Saint-Germain player will help Sorare reach even more football fans, and get them onto the number one decentralised (dapp) application for crypto fantasy football. Sorare CEO Nicola Julia said that the collaboration with Lionel Messi represents a turning point for the Web3 platform.

Leo Messi is considered the world’s most powerful active player and is the third most followed sportsman on social networks, after his ‘colleagues’ Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr. This is not the first collaboration that Lionel Messi has signed with companies in the crypto sector, as in April 2022 he had already signed a partnership with Socios.com, the most important platform for fan tokens built on Chiliz, for USD 20 million. Fan tokens are a daily part of the Argentinean star’s life, with part of the player’s salary from Paris Saint Germain being paid to Messi in $PSG, the French team’s fan token. With Lionel Messi concluding deals with two competitors, will he keep one foot in two shoes (or boots) forever or will he sooner or later choose his favourite crypto team?

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Young Monday: Instagram, JP Morgan and Microsoft

Instagram NFT marketplace, JP Morgan gets involved with DeFi

Instagram and Game Stop’s NFT marketplace, JP Morgan and Microsoft get involved in Web3, the Premier League chooses Sorare

For this first Young Monday of November 2022, our protagonists are ‘traditional’ companies grappling with Web3 adventures. The first of these is Instagram, which plans a ‘leg-up’ entry into the non-fungible token market through the development of its NFT marketplace. Then we move on to JP Morgan, one of the most important banks in the United States. They debuted in the world of decentralised finance (DeFi) with their first transactions on Aave, while Microsoft invests in crypto gaming. Concluding with another news item on mass adoption, Young Monday unveils the plans of the English Premier League. The world’s top football league is in fact negotiating with Sorare for the production of an NFT collection.

Gamestop and Instagram launch their NFT marketplaces

Buying NFTs on Instagram? It’s almost a reality! On Wednesday, the 2nd of November 2022, Meta announced the integration of an NFT marketplace on Instagram. Meta’s plan to bring non-fungible tokens to the social network is proceeding step by step. Already in August 2022, in a test phase, some users started to post and display NFTs on their profiles. But soon, it will be possible to create and sell NFTs directly on the app.

Users who create NFTs on Instagram will do so thanks to Polygon’s blockchain. In Instagram’s NFT marketplace, it will also be possible to link their OpenSea account and transfer their tokens from one platform to another. This option will initially only be available for NFTs built on Polygon and Solana (thanks to the collaboration with Phantom).

Instagram’s marketplace will initially be tested by a few sectioned creators. And, according to the official announcement, the Instagram marketplace will not charge commissions in its initial phase. Following the important announcement, on Thursday 3rd of November 2022, the price of MATIC (the crypto on Polygon’s blockchain), drew a green candle on the chart with a price increase of more than 10%.

GameStop also has some updates on its Web3 adventure. This adventure began a year ago now, in November 2021, with the purchase of an NFT domain (nft.gamestop.com). Subsequently, the video game store started building its NFT marketplace and developed its self-custodial crypto wallet. A few days ago, GameStop’s NFT marketplace finally concluded its beta phase, allowing the final version of the NFT marketplace to be activated on the ImmutableX blockchain. ImmutableX is an Ethereum sidechain dedicated to crypto gaming. The partnership between ImmutableX and the famous video game store started in February 2022. The beta version of Gamestop’s NFT marketplace went live 5 months later. To date, the platform provides access to Web3 games built on the blockchain, such as Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians and Illuvium.

JP Morgan and Microsoft take their first steps into the Web3

For our “institutions join web3” paragraph, this week, we take a look at JP Morgan. The world’s largest bank is part of the American Big Four in the financial sector, along with Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. In finance jargon, these kinds of giants are called institutional investors. By ‘institutional investors’ we mean organisations that are the benchmark for a certain sector and make periodic and systematic investments using large amounts of capital.

Last week, precisely on Wednesday the 2nd of November 2022, JP Morgan carried out its first transaction on a decentralised finance platform (DeFi). The transaction was processed with the help of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and is part of a pilot programme called ‘Project Guardian’, which was set up to explore the potential of decentralised finance in financial markets populated by large capital. This is the first case of a traditional bank using a DeFi platform in a public blockchain.

JPMorgan deposited Singapore dollars and Japanese yen tokens on the Aave liquidity protocol. These tokens were used for trading and the transactions were finalised using Polygon’s network (preferred to Ethereum for its low fees). According to Aave’s spokespersons, JP Morgan’s first DeFi transaction is a ‘milestone’ for the industry, as it ‘represents a huge step towards moving traditional financial assets to DeFi’.

Bill Gates‘ company Microsoft has also recently invested in Wemade, a Korean play-to-earn video game company. Wemade, which was founded in the early 2000s, recently received some USD 46 million from Microsoft and other companies to devote to the development of crypto games. This is not Microsoft’s first investment in Web3, in February 2022 the company had invested in the blockchain software company Consensys. In September, it participated in a funding round for the decentralised data platform Space and Time.

Sorare and Premier League: one step closer to collaboration

The English Premier League has decided to enter the NFT market through a partnership with Sorare. The partnership has not yet been made official, but if it goes through, it would be Sorare’s third international partnership in a few months. It would follow those with American sports leagues the National Basketball League (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB). According to rumours, the English football league’s collection could be similar to NBA Top Shot, and thus represent iconic moments of the world’s most popular and followed football league. A similar crypto football-themed collection already exists, it is the one between Algorand and FIFA dedicated to the World Cup.The uncertainty about the success of the deals is mainly related to the economic part of the question, will Sorare accept the Premier League’s current $34.7 million offer? The English football league, before knocking on Sorare’s door, sounded out the market through relations with some competitors such as Dapper Labs and Consensys. However, it seems that the proposals made by the Web3 companies did not take root. For Sorare, this could be an opportunity to improve on its already incredible performance in 2023.

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Young Monday: Udinese Calcio, the UK and L’Oréal Paris

Crypto in the UK: Rishi Sunak is bullish and open to stablecoins

The UK is increasingly bullish on crypto, Udinese launches its fan token on Socios, L’Oréal and Meta fund Web3 startups

Electrifying news for this Halloween edition of Young Monday, but fear not, nothing scary! The first item concerns fan tokens. Socios launched the Udinese Calcio crypto on Wednesday the 26th of October 2022. The UK introduces the Financial Service and Markets Bill to regulate cryptocurrencies and Meta is working with L’Oréal to fund Web3 startups.

Socios launches Udinese Calcio fan token

On the 26th of October 2022, Udinese Calcio, Friuli’s Serie A team, launched its UDI fan token on the Socios.com platform. Socios is the most popular fan token platform, built on the Chiliz blockchain. The Udinese Calcio UDI fan token will allow fans to participate in the team’s decisions through surveys, and access exclusive promotions for customised products and content. There are 25,000 UDI fan tokens and they were sold through three different stages, which ensured that most fans will own at least a few.

The first survey in which Udinese Calcio fan token holders were able to participate was launched by Socios at the same time as the first phase of the UDI crypto sale. Fans were able to choose the ‘motivational’ slogan to be printed on the shirts that the players will use for the pre-match warm-up. Voting participants will also take part in a draw, the prize of which will be an official jersey autographed by all members of the Friulian team. Udinese Calcio and Socios have been working together since February 2022 with the aim of involving fans more closely in the club’s decisions. In this regard, more than 500 surveys will be offered to fan token holders by the end of the year.

Growing adoption in the UK thanks to Rishi Sunak

On the 25th of October, the UK presented the ‘Financial Services and Markets Bill’, a bill aimed at strengthening the country’s position in the cryptocurrency sector. The aim of the bill is to turn the UK into a global hub for crypto and Web3 in general. What is the first step to achieve this? Expanding and amending existing regulations, especially those relating to stablecoins. The latter will be renamed to ‘Digital Settlement Assets’ within the document, and could be added to the list of accepted currencies for payments and thus become a widespread means of payment.

This openness of the UK on the subject of cryptocurrencies is not surprising, given the interest in the topic of the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Sunak replaced Liz Truss on Monday the 24th of October 2022, who resigned after only 40 days in office. Sunak, during his previous tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), had already demonstrated his interest in crypto and Web3 technologies. The idea of making the UK a global technology hub for crypto assets was conceived at that time, along with the even more ambitious proposal to create an NFT collection for the British royal mint. Rishi Sunak has also spoken out on a number of occasions about CBDCs. As far back in 2011, he proposed creating a UK Central Bank Digital Currency to be called ‘Britcoin’.

Meta and L’Oréal, working together to finance Web3

Meta and L’Oréal have decided to join forces, assisted by the French business school HEC Paris, to launch a Web3 startup accelerator to promote creativity in the metaverse. Startup accelerators, or incubators, build growth pathways to help young companies with innovative ideas make a name for themselves in an industry. Meta, L’Oréal and HEC will help start-ups that want to specialise in the production of Web3 technologies, in particular augmented reality (AR) virtual reality (VR), 3D production, user experience portability and the token economy.

The collaboration, which will run from January to June 2023, will be entirely hosted by Meta, within its startup campus in Paris, Station F. Applications to participate are open until the 20th of November 2022, and will be judged by a jury composed not only of Meta, L’Oréal and HEC employees, but also of entrepreneurs and investors with experience in the sector. Meta’s Vice President for Southern Europe, Laurent Solly, said, “We are proud to partner with L’Oréal on this ambitious project, which aims to support the French startup ecosystem and will play a key role in building a shared, creative and inclusive metaverse.”

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Young Monday: Ethereum Shanghai update, Guinness World Record and Jack Dorsey

Ethereum: next Shanghai update arrives

The next Ethereum update arrives, Bitcoin is awarded a Guinness World Record and Jack Dorsey unveils his new social network

Ethereum never stops updating! A little over a month after the activation of The Merge, the next update: Shanghai is coming on the Ethereum testnet. Shanghai will be instrumental in setting up the new Ethereum 2.0 set-up. From the largest Proof-of-Stake network, we move to the largest Proof-of-Work network. Bitcoin has entered the Guinness Book of World Records with three different records, and the record committee is not the only one who has paid tribute to BTC. A few days ago Kanye West was spotted wearing a hat with the inscription ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.

Some pointed out that this fashion choice comes just after the rapper was forced to withdraw money from his JPMorgan bank account. The photo of West and his baseball cap sent social media into a frenzy. Speaking of social media, the latest Young Monday news reveals the latest details on Bluesky, Jack Dorsey‘s new decentralised social network.

The next Ethereum update: Shanghai is coming!

News about Ethereum is back, in particular about updates to its blockchain. As of the 14th of October 2022, the testnet dedicated to the next Shanghai update went live. The testnet is called Shandong and should remain active until September 2023. At that point, Shanghai should be activated on the main network. It is the follow-up update to Ethereum’s Merge, which was successfully activated on the 15th September 2022, changing the consensus algorithm of the blockchain created by Vitalik Buterin. From Proof-of-Work, the network successfully shifted to Proof-of-Stake.

The main new feature to be introduced with the Shanghai update is the possibility of staking ETHs at any time (but with certain limitations). Staking has become the mechanism behind the operation of Ethereum 2.0. Since it was implemented on the Beacon Chain, more than 13.4 million ETHs have been blocked on the network. That is almost 18 billion USD which corresponds to 11% of the total ETH supply in circulation. After Shanghai, users will be able to unlock their staked cryptocurrencies for a maximum of 43,200 ETH per day. This limit was imposed to avoid mass withdrawals that would make Ethereum’s network vulnerable.

Shanghai will also introduce a beta version of a rollup mechanism to process transactions on Layer 2s, which some say could lower Ethereum’s gas fees.

Bitcoin enters the Guinness Book of World Records

Bitcoin has entered the Guinness Book of World Records, and was awarded three different records! The first prize BTC won is for the ‘first ever decentralised cryptocurrency‘. Bitcoin did not win the record for the first crypto ever, but only the record for the first decentralised crypto, because digital currencies had already been created by a number of companies in the 1990s. These included Bit God, Wei Dai and Hash Cash.

Bitcoin was also reported as the ‘oldest cryptocurrency’, created on the 3rd of January 2009, and the ‘cryptocurrency with the largest value’. At the time the prize was awarded, Bitcoin was worth around $43,000, and its market cap was over $800 billion. These prizes were awarded in March 2022, and will now be included in the 2023 Guiness World Record volume in the ‘cryptomania’ section. Here you can also find the record for the most expensive NFT (the CryptoPunks #5822 sold for $23.7 million in February 2022) and the ‘most valuable fan token’ (i.e. CITY, the Manchester City fan token with a market cap of $25 million).

Jack Dorsey talks about his new idea for social networking

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, announced on the 18th of October 2022 that his new social network, Bluesky Social, is in beta stage for some users and will soon be launched. In 2019, Dorsey had already expressed his desire to create a new ‘decentralised’ social network to enhance the user experience, to allow for more  personalisation and to manage their own data.

Furthermore, Bluesky wants to be open to developers who want to build and innovate in complete freedom. The vision of the former Twitter CEO is certainly very ambitious and if it is realised, it will lay the foundations for a new class of social network. So far what we know is that Bluesky will be interoperable with other social platforms and that it will be based on the decentralised AT Protocol.

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Young Monday: crypto-themed G20, Dapper Labs and Avalanche on Opensea

OpenSea news: you can buy NFTs on Avalanche (AVAX)

NFTs available with Avalanche (AVAX) on OpenSea, G20 overhauls crypto framework and Russian accounts restricted by Dapper Labs

We start off this Young Monday with news coming from OpenSea: from Tuesday the 11th October, it will be possible to buy NFTs with AVAX, Avalanche’s crypto. On the 13th October 2022, a review of the CARF (Crypto Asset Reforming Framework, the international regulation in place regarding cryptocurrencies) took place at the G20 meeting in Washington, and Dapper Labs decided to restrict the use of its platform to Russian users. After creating a countdown dedicated to The Merge, Google now allows users to see the balance of Ethereum contained within a wallet through its search engine!

On OpenSea you can buy NFT with Avalanche crypto (AVAX)

As of Tuesday, the 11th of October, it is possible to buy NFTs with Avalanche on OpenSea. The AVAX crypto joins the six others with which it is possible to buy NFTs on the Web3’s most widely used marketplace: Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, Solana, Optimist and Arbitrum.

To date, the NFT landscape on Avalanche is still in an embryonic stage. The first non-fungible tokens appeared on Emin Gün Sirer‘s blockchain in early 2022 and never really took off, unlike on other blockchains. The only NFTs from the Avalanche network that have enjoyed some success are from the ecosystem’s play-to-earn games, such as Crabada hermit crabs or Ragnarock avatars.

Compared to its main competitors, Ethereum and Solana, Avalanche’s NFT scene is still a long way from the volumes and number of sales generated by these ecosystems. In fact, if we look at Crypto Slam’s September 2022 data, we can see that Avalanche’s blockchain produced around $2.4 million in trading volume and generated 25,000 transactions. Meanwhile Solana had almost 130 million USD in volumes from almost 3 million transactions.

Will Avalanche be able to catch up thanks to the new stage offered by OpenSea or will it remain an outsider in the NFT sector?

Crypto Kitties startup restricts use to Russian accounts

Dapper Labs, the startup that created the CryptoKitties NFT collection and the NFT card game NBA Top Shot has decided that it will restrict the use of its services to users residing in Russia. The decision was made following sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia as of Thursday, the 6th October 2022.

Specifically, users residing in Russia will not be able to buy and sell NFTs and game items from Dapper Labs. In addition to not being able to interact with the Dapper Labs marketplace, which is built on the Flow blockchain, they will also not be able to withdraw funds from their accounts on the platform. The EU sanctions for Russian citizens participating in Web3 have tightened considerably compared to previous months. In fact, as of April 2022, regulations in this regard only restricted wallets holding more than EUR 10,000 in cryptocurrencies.

The G20 focusses on crypto for a common law plan

During the fourth G20 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which took place on the 13th of October 2022 in Washington, cryptocurrencies were also a topic of discussion. For what purpose? To update already drafted documents on the subject. The Annual Meetings are regularly attended by the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the G20 countries. The document that was the subject of discussion was the CARF (Crypto Asset Reporting Framework).

In April 2021, the G20 commissioned the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to draft a method that would automate and standardise tax reporting for cryptocurrencies across nations. Out of this came the CARF, which is also responsible for defining so-called ‘crypto assets’ and NFTs. But why was it necessary to revise this document? The review was necessary according to the OECD because cryptocurrencies and NFTs are currently not covered by the CRS, the plan in place to prevent international tax evasion. The second topic of discussion was CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), cryptos issued by states’ central banks.

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Binance Smart Chain hack, what happened?

Binance Smart Chain attacked by a hacker, what happened?

The Binance Smart Chain was attacked by a hacker, what happened? Here are the causes and price collapse of the BNB crypto

On the night between Thursday the 6th and Friday the 7th of October 2022, the Binance Smart Chain was attacked by a hacker. The perpetrator managed to steal around $100 million in different cryptocurrencies. Following the attack, the Binance team took prompt action, suspending transactions on the blockchain and thus severely limiting the amount of money that could have been stolen. Find out what happened to the Binance Smart Chain during the attack on Friday the 7th October 2022 and how the exploit affected the price of the BNB crypto.

What is the purpose of the Binance Smart Chain?

The Binance Smart Chain (BSC), is a blockchain created by Binance in 2019 that co-exists with the main Binance blockchain: the Binance Chain. What is the difference between the Binance Smart Chain and the Binance Chain? Unlike the Binance Chain, the BSC is compatible with Ethereum‘s virtual machine (EVM) and allows for the creation and use of smart contracts on its ecosystem ; hence the adjective smart within the name. Among the possibilities of an EVM-compatible blockchain is that of moving your tokens, fungible and non-fungible, to all blockchains of the same type almost instantaneously. A type of decentralised application (DApp) called a bridge is used for this purpose. Bridges have become very popular lately, mainly due to the tendency of Web3 projects to expand to other blockchains and thus become cross-chain. Friday’s attack took place on such a DApp, namely on the main bridge of the Binance Smart Chain: the Binance Bridge. Through this bridge, you can send your assets almost instantaneously to many other blockchains, including those of Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Cronos, and many others.

What happened to the Binance Smart Chain?

But what exactly happened to the Binance Smart Chain bridge? Someone managed to tamper with the smart contract that is responsible for calculating the amount of tokens that users possess. In doing so, he set his quantity of BNB, the Binance crypto, to 2 million units. Subsequently, the hacker sent the huge sum of money to his wallet in two transactions of 1 million BNB each, about 560 million dollars in total.

Once the hacker received the BNBs, he then moved some funds to different compatible EVM blockchains so that Binance could not block them and ‘borrowed’ stablecoins on Venus, a lending protocol on the Binance Smart Chain. Fortunately, Binance was very quick to intervene and ‘paused’ the Binance Smart Chain, freezing the hacker’s wallets. Tether, the company that created the USDT stablecoin also acted quickly by freezing the funds the hacker had borrowed on Venus. Thanks to the speed of action of the two companies, the hacker only managed to steal USDT 100 million (approximately), roughly five times less than he had initially managed to steal.

Following the event, a debate broke out among the Web3 community, especially on the Twitter social network. The debate focused on the pros and cons of centralising Binance’s chains. The crypto company in fact limited the damage by blacklisting the hacker This is nothing more than an IT action aimed at blocking the possibility of transactions on a particular wallet. And this was possible thanks to the small number of validators that the Binance Smart Chain uses to approve transactions on its network. In a more decentralised network, it would not have been so easy to freeze a user’s wallet.

The price of crypto BNB following the hacker attack

BNB is the native crypto of the Binance Smart Chain. BNB is used to pay fees for carrying out transactions and interacting with Binance’s EVM blockchain. Following the hacker, BNB lost about 5.5% of its value in just over two hours. The attack occurred just as BNB was approaching the $297 resistance. The event caused a dump for the Binance crypto, as was to be expected. This drop did not last just one day, but continued for several days, bringing BNB down to the lower end of the range in which it has been moving since early September 2022, around the $272 price area.

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Ethernity Chain: 5 NFT collections of sportsmen and film icons

ERN crypto: the 5 most interesting NFTs on Ethernity Chain

On the Ethernity Chain, Web3 is reaching for the stars. Discover the 5 most interesting NFT collections, all purchasable with the crypto ERN!

Ethernity Chain is an NFT marketplace built on Ethereum. It has been talked about quite a lot, mainly due to its NFT collections in collaboration with internationally renowned artists and sportsmen. Among the most famous personalities to whom NFT artworks have been dedicated are Lionel Messi, Bruce Lee and James Dean. The non-fungible tokens that can be purchased on Ethernity Chain come in many different types, from playing cards to digital collectibles to items that can be worn by your avatar in popular metaverses. The NFTs on Ethernity Chain are grouped into thematic categories, which can be easily found through hashtags. There are 22 categories in total, ranging from music and football to art, technology, journalism and martial arts.

On the Ethernity Chain, NFT collections built on different blockchains coexist. In fact, NFTs on the marketplace can be purchased through three cryptocurrencies: ETH, MATIC and with ERN, the platform’s native crypto. The project is gaining fame: thanks to the prestige of the iconic characters, it gives a new impulse to Web3. Let’s see the 5 most interesting NFTs on Ethernity Chain!

1.   The Messiverse, the NFT collection for Lionel Messi

The most famous character you can ‘meet’ while navigating the Etherenity Chain ecosystem is surely the Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi. Messi’s original NFTs were released in August 2021 on the occasion of the player’s transfer from his long-standing club F.C. Barcelona to the French team Paris Saint Germain.

The collection in collaboration with ‘the flea’ consists of four NFTs designed by Australian artist BossLogic, who has worked for Marvel and Disney in the past. The rarest NFT, of which only one copy exists, is titled ‘Lionel Messi: The Golden One’. This digital artwork depicts the Argentinian footballer on top of a meteorite fragment as he is about to kick a completely golden ball.

The NFT was sold at auction with a starting price of $50,000 in the ERN crypto. The auction lasted 72 hours and reached $1 million. ‘Lionel Messi: The Golden One’, however, is not the only NFT collection of the Argentinian player created on Ethernity Chain.

The other collections are ‘Man Of The Past’ and ‘Man From Tomorrow’ which were released at the same time and depict a ‘robot’ Lionel Messi in two versions: one in which the champion wears the Barcelona jersey with the number 10 on his shoulders and one in which the PSG jersey is number 30 (the one he still wears at the French club). The cost for these two NFTs was $10,000 in ERN crypto per piece and 75 NFTs were available per version. The last two collections, ‘The King Piece’ and ‘The Magician’ cost respectively $99 in ETH on the Ethereum network and $50 in WETH on the Polygon network.

2.   ‘Hollywood Icon’ the NFT collection in honour of James Dean

Among the five most interesting NFTs on Ethernity Chain that can be purchased via the ERN crypto are those created in honour of the late actor James Dean. The collection is called ‘Hollywood Icon’ and was created through a collaboration between digital agency Worldwide XR and augmented and virtual reality software company VueXR. There are five of the NFTs in question and they depict iconic objects and moments from the actor’s life. The first NFT to be launched is a 3D reproduction of the metallic silver Porsche TYP 550 Spyder owned by Dean. The Porsche is the most iconic object in the collection mainly because it is the vehicle in which the actor was involved in the fatal accident that led to his death. The Porsche was James Dean’s favourite car and he even found an ironic nickname for it: ‘Little B*stard’.

The other works in the collection that will launch on the 16th of December 2022 are: a 3D bust of the actor with a gold signature, a gold medallion, the star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the last photograph in which the legendary actor was immortalised.

3.   Bruce Lee, an icon, even in the digital arts

The third NFT collection is dedicated to the actor, director and martial arts expert Bruce Lee. The six NFTs in honour of Bruce Lee were designed by three different artists : Raf Grassetti, one of the most famous digital sculptors in the world, Anthony Francisco, Senior Visual Development Artist at Marvel Studio and the artist we already presented at the beginning of this article: BossLogic.

Each artist interpreted the subject in a highly personal manner. For example Raf Grassetti, in the work “The Dragon”, sculpted the karateka with a Chinese dragon twisted around his body. Anthony Francesco & Ryan Moore placed him within cosmic settings trying to convey to the viewer also the actor’s philosophical wisdom as well as power and strength. The artworks were sold through two types of auctions depending on the quantity of versions produced. Each artist produced a single NFT, a single copy, and a piece with multiple copies. The three single works all started from an auction floor price of $1 and were purchased in the Ethernity Chain crypto ERN.

The other three works, those produced in multiple copies, were sold in ETH at different prices. Raf Grassetti’s artwork, ‘Bruce Lee: Formless’, of which 60 copies were available, was sold at $2,000 apiece, Boss Logic’s 100 copies of the artwork ‘Bruce Lee: Vortex’ were sold at $100 each while Anthony Francisco & Ryan Moore’s NFTs, of which there were 200, were sold at $500 in ETH each.

4.   Wearing Luka Modric’s shirt in The Sandbox

The list of the five most interesting NFT collections on Ethernity continues with another footballer, Luka Modric, the best Croatian footballer of all time. The collection was created by Visual Lab, an animation studio based in the Netherlands. As with the previous collection, there are six NFTs created on Ethernity Chain, of which three are digital artworks and three are wearable objects in the metaverse. All three virtual artworks have the Croatian footballer as their subject, either performing a perfect backhand underwater or dribbling through rubble in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

On the other hand, the three wearable items are two shirts, one of the Croatian national football team and one with the Ethernity logo and the iconic hair band that the Croatian champion can never do without when he takes to the pitch. These items will be wearable in the metaverse of The Sandbox, thanks to the implementation carried out by Ethernity, which has made it possible to bring its licensing library into the virtual world. In addition, the NFT marketplace has acquired some land in The Sandbox metaverse that will house a gallery and an NFT shop.

5.   Shaquille O’Neal and Justin Maller: NBA domination

15-time NBA All-Star Shaquille O’Neal is also among the most interesting NFT projects on the Ethernity chain. The basketball player collaborated with digital artist Justin Maller on the NFT ‘Eras of Dominance’ collection to commemorate his National Basketball Association (NBA) career. The NFT collection consists of five digital artworks depicting Shaquille O’Neal dunking and cheering. Each NFT relates a specific period of the player’s career to the three teams where he made his mark the most: the Los Angeles Lakers, the Orlando Magic and the Miami Heat.

The style of the NFTs, which appear dynamic and disruptive, is reminiscent of Shaq’s style of play. The ‘cracks’ with which the digital artwork is studded can be traced back to the NBA player’s tendency to break the ‘backboards’ of glass baskets due to the vehemence of his dunks. All the most interesting NFTs on Ethernity Chain featured in this article were sold differently. The unique work ‘Shaquille O’Neal: Peak Dominance’ was sold at auction, with a floor price of $20,000 in the crypto ERN.

Is it still possible to buy the 5 most interesting NFTs on the Ethernity Chain, and if so, where can you buy them? All the collections we have listed in this article can be bought either on Ethernity‘s platform or on the popular OpenSea marketplace. If you are wondering instead how much NFTs cost on Ethernity Chain, well, the answer is it depends. Some, like the wearables in the metaverse, are very cheap (even a few dozen dollars), others less so, like the digital artwork ‘Messi: The Golden One’.

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Stablecoins arrive on the Bitcoin blockchain thanks to Taro

Bitcoin: stablecoins are coming with Taro. What is it for?

Stablecoins are arriving on Bitcoin thanks to the Taro protocol. What is it and how does it improve BTC’s blockchain?

Would you like to be able to take advantage of the security of the Bitcoin network to make and receive stablecoin payments? You will soon be able to do so, thanks to Taro! The 28th of September 2022 saw the release of the alpha version of Taro Daemon, an open source project developed by Lightning Labs that will allow digital assets to be created on the Bitcoin blockchain. What is Taro? An acronym for “Taproot Asset Representation Overlay”, Taro is a protocol built using Taproot, the most recent Bitcoin update, activated on the 14th of November 2021. The latest news about Bitcoin? Stablecoins are coming!

The problem to be solved: paying in Bitcoin must be cheap and fast

Bitcoin was created to enable peer-to-peer value exchanges in a fully decentralised system. The title of Bitcoin’s whitepaper is, ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’, i.e. a system with which to conduct transactions in a completely decentralised manner. With time, however, the so-called ‘digital gold’ has been less and less used as a trading currency and people have started to consider it a store of value. The reason for this lies in the intrinsic characteristics of the first cryptocurrency in history: Bitcoin’s core network is not very scalable.

When we talk about scalability within the Web3 world, we refer to increasing the speed of transactions and decreasing their cost. The more scalable a network is, the faster and cheaper transactions can be processed. In its early years, Bitcoin’s blockchain was quite scalable due to its low network congestion that did not slow down exchanges. This situation changed over time, and Bitcoin’s network became less and less efficient in these terms. This was due to the incredible popularity it has enjoyed in recent years, hence the increasing number of transactions to be handled and the resulting congestion of the network.

As is shown by the scalability trilemma, one of the most famous theorems for blockchain technologies, it is not possible for a network to be fully scalable, secure and decentralised at the same time. Each blockchain is driven to find a compromise to achieve all these qualities without sacrificing one specifically. Despite being a benchmark for security and decentralisation, Bitcoin has some weaknesses in guaranteeing the scalability of its network. However, the world of Web3 is constantly evolving: ecosystems and developers are always ready to offer innovative solutions. One of these is the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 of Bitcoin founded in 2016, which relies on the main blockchain and improves it in terms of scalability. The Lightning Network is able to process millions of transactions extremely cheaply, as opposed to Bitcoin’s main network, which only reaches a maximum of 7 transactions per second. In short, the Bitcoin Lightning Network groups a series of transactions into ‘packets’ that are then recorded on the Bitcoin network  instead of processing each transaction one by one. For these reasons, using the Lightning Network has become advantageous for paying in Bitcoin. So far, nothing new! Lightning Labs has a new protocol in store to further improve the transfer of value on the BTC blockchain. Let’s talk about Taro!

What is Taro and what is it used for?

Despite the great innovation given by the Bitcoin Lightning Network, the issue of volatility remains to be solved. Indeed, the price of BTC does not remain stable over time but is subject to market fluctuations. This could create some headaches both for users who want to pay in Bitcoin and for companies that might use them for their employees’ salaries in the future. Or for shops that accept cryptocurrency payments. Taro comes into play to solve this problem. But what is Taro? It is an open source protocol built by Lightning Labs that will enable the creation and use of digital assets, specifically stablecoins, on the Bitcoin blockchain. These digital assets will be either fungible tokens, the equivalent of what ERC-20s are for Ethereum, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

But how will Taro be able to create assets on Bitcoin’s blockchain? The creation and exchange of assets will be possible thanks to the Taproot upgrade, activated in 2021, and the data structure called Merkle Trees. Merkle Trees are a type of data structure that can store a lot of information and therefore easily prove their existence and veracity.

Today, digital assets such as tokens only reside on other blockchains due to easier implementation, lower transaction costs or greater scalability. Taro aims to change the current status quo. Taro’s ultimate goal is to transform Bitcoin into a multi-asset network. These assets will be able to be transferred on the Bitcoin network through on-chain transactions. Furthermore, tokens built through Taro will be able to be transferred instantly, at low cost, onto the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Is this an early preview of Bitcoin’s opening up  to DeFi? It is expected that most of these tokens will be transferred to the Lightning Network, especially the stablecoins to which Taro attaches the greatest importance. This is also evident from their communication on social networks.

The slogan that appeared on Taro’s Twitter profile is ‘bitcoinising the dollar’. In other words? Let’s bring the practicality of fiat currencies to the Bitcoin blockchain! This mission could help make the fundamental point of Bitcoin’s white paper come true: to allow exchanges of value without intermediaries in a fully decentralised system. With the activation of the Taro protocol, users will be able to hold both stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to the dollar, and BTC on their wallets as well as being able to use both to make payments. The Lightning Labs team has not yet announced when the Taro update will be activated, but the entire Web3 world is buzzing. Who knows if one day Taro will also allow the creation of DeFi ecosystems or play-to-earn games on the most famous and long-lived blockchain ever.

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The 3 main Ethereum hard forks: ETC, ETHW and ETHF

Ethereum 2.0: the 3 main forks after The Merge: ETHW, ETC, ETF

Ethereum Classic, Ethereum Proof-of-Work and Ethereum Fair. Everything you didn’t know about the 3 main Ethereum hard forks after The Merge!

On the 25th of September 2022, The Merge update that changed the consensus mechanism of the Ethereum blockchain was successfully activated. The Ethereum network went from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake without a hitch. For users,The Merge did not bring significant changes, but the same wasn’t true for miners. In the previous version of the blockchain, miners were in charge of validating transactions and consequently blocks on the blockchain, thus earning ETH rewards for each validated block. Therefore, many of them had to move to other blockchains out of necessity ; some of them already existed, others were specially created as hard forks of the main Ethereum blockchain. A hard fork, in cryptocurrency jargon, is when a project is updated in such a way that it is incompatible with the previous version, giving rise to something new. Let’s learn about the 3 main hard forks after The Merge: ETHW, ETC and ETHF.

The most classic of hard forks, Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic is perhaps the most famous hard fork in crypto history. ETC was born as a result of a hack on Ethereum’s DAO in July 2016. The hack targeted was an early form of a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation), a type of organisation that is very popular nowadays in the Web3 world. It allows users who own the crypto of an ecosystem to actively participate in the initiatives and politics of a project.

Ethereum’s The DAO was supposed to be a kind of Venture Capital, with the aim of financing projects within Web3, based on users’ Ether votes from the community. In the days immediately following its launch, the DAO managed to raise $150 million in ETH from more than 11,000 different users. However, in July 2016, one or more hackers breached The DAO’s smart contract. They managed to steal 3.6 million Ethereum, about 14% of the total supply at that time. Following this breach of the Ethereum blockchain, the community was called upon to take a vote on the future of the network. The solution that most people agreed on was the creation of a hard fork.

The main Ethereum blockchain became the Ethereum Classic blockchain, while the new fork that came about as a result of the hard fork became the Ethereum network we all know. But what does Ethereum Classic have to do with The Merge update? ETC is the best-known hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain and has been active since 2016. Although it has been the victim of a few attacks in the past, it continues to resist and process transactions without any particular problems. Precisely for this reason, a large number of miners, left ‘unemployed’ after The Merge, decided to use their computational power to validate ETC transactions instead.

The hashrate of the Ethereum Classic blockchain went from about 50 trillion hash functions per second (Th/s) to about 150 trillion today. It peaked on the day of The Merge, with a hash rate of 300 Th/s. The term indicates the total performance of the network, specifically the amount of hashing functions executed in one second. The increase in hashing functions that occurred simultaneously with the activation of The Merge update shows the amount of miners that migrated from Ethereum to Ethereum Classic.

The resilience of miners, Ethereum Proof-of-Work is born

ETHW was the main Ethereum hard fork after The Merge. Some Ethereum miners decided to copy Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work blockchain and thus create ETHW. The ETHW crypto was distributed to all those who owned Ethereum on both decentralised wallets and exchanges via a snapshot. The latter makes it possible to see the amount of crypto and the addresses that owned that amount at a given time.

Despite the great popularity of this crypto in the days immediately preceding The Merge, the launch was not the best. ETHW’s network suffered various problems allegedly caused by a hack that now seems to have been resolved. In the hours immediately following the launch, ETHW was subject to very high volatility. In fact, it peaked at $50 and then fell back to around $10 in the following hours.

The future direction of ETHW is still uncertain. The project’s white paper, a document in which the main information of a blockchain protocol and goals for the future are usually found, as of today consists of ten pages. The first five pages are devoted exclusively to the title of the whitepaper ‘The Original Ethereum Blockchain powered by Proof of Work’ in English and Chinese, the remaining five have the words ‘these pages have been left intentionally blank’. So the whitepaper is not very constructive. We will see whether ETHW plans to design something for the future or whether it will remain only the ‘second home’ of the now former Ethereum miners.

Ethereum’s third hard fork after The Merge: Ethereum Fair

The third Ethereum hard fork after The Merge is Ethereum Fair, which was created on the 15th of September 2022. The ETHF crypto, at first named ETF, was however not distributed to Ether holders, but to those who owned Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum Classic. ETHF, however, does not seem to have won over the miners, and the market in general. The crypto was launched at a starting price of about $15 and in a fortnight has lost more than 70 per cent of its value.