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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.

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Polkadot’s new roadmap explained in 5 points

Polkadot: 5 new features coming in 2022

On the 26th of September, Polkadot released its roadmap for the last quarter of 2022. Check out Gavin Wood’s 5 new features for the blockchain!

On Monday the 26th of September Polkadot, and its development company, Parity Technology, released a document outlining all the most important features the network is working on for the last quarter of 2022. The updates planned by Polkadot are mainly related to scalability, parachain development, governance and staking. Let’s take a look at 5 new features for Polkadot coming in 2022 and all the improvements planned for the network!

1.   Polkadot is becoming increasingly scalable

The first of five features coming to Polkadot in 2022 is called Asynchronous Backing and will be implemented to increase the scalability of the Polkadot network. Scalability is the ability of a network to process transactions quickly; the more scalable a blockchain is, the more transactions it can process in a given period of time. Thanks to the Asynchronous Backing functionality, the time per block on each parachain is expected to be reduced from 12 seconds to around 6 seconds. This will ensure that networks process transactions faster and with less latency: the time between when a transaction is sent and when it is actually processed.

Asynchronous Backing will make it possible to double the space available on each block, and to ‘reuse’ blocks when they are not validated on the first attempt. This upgrade is intended to increase the amount of work each parachain can do and to optimise the performance of the Relay Chain: the infrastructure on which all parachains are built. It will therefore be possible to register more parachains. Moreover, the TPS (transactions per second) capacity of the Polkadot network, i.e. that of all its parachains and parathreads, should increase significantly, to between 100,000 and 1 million.

2.   Parathreads: launch and enhancements

The second novelty for the Polkadot ecosystem concerns parathreads. Parathreads are parachains which are not permanently integrated on Polkadot due to winning one of the auctions, but who pay for the use of Polkadot’s infrastructure ‘on a consumption basis’. As opposed to parachains, parathreads can also be built by non-professional programmers since, in terms of code complexity, they can be compared to simple smart contracts. Both Polkadot parachains and parathreads do not have their own consensus algorithm, but make use of the Proof-of-Stake Relay Chain algorithm. The launch of parathreads was planned for this summer, but it has been postponed to early 2023. Regarding parathreads, Parity Technology is exploring a solution called Next-Generation Scheduling. This technology allows Polkadot parachains that have won auctions (and have thus been awarded the opportunity to participate in the network and in parathreads) to increase the amount of space on their blocks in order to save on the costs resulting from the consensus mechanism.

3.   Restructured governance

The third point in Polkadot’s roadmap for the last quarter of 2022 concerns governance. By governance within Web3, we mean the way in which community members can participate in decisions about the future moves of the project. The new system, called Overhaul, will eliminate the board and technical committees and introduce the Polkadot Fellowship. The Polkadot Fellowship has the Polkadot Fellowship Manifesto as its ‘constitution’.

The term fellowship, which is usually used to refer to a company of friends, was not attributed to Polkadot’s new governance system by chance. The system in fact aims to change the decision-making process by making it as similar as possible to what normally takes place in a group of friends. Polkadot’s new governance aims to decentralise the old system consisting of three chambers and a 13-member board elected by DOT holders. With the changes, all members of the community will have a say through periodic referendums and a proxy system that will speed up the decision-making process. Governance V2 is expected to be implemented on Kusama, the blockchain parallel to Polkadot that is being used to test the new features, at the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022.

4.   The New Staking Dashboard

The fourth new feature for the Polkadot ecosystem concerns staking. Since Polkadot is a blockchain that works thanks to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, staking is available and indispensable in order to guarantee the security of transactions. The challenge for the end of 2022 for Gavin Wood‘s blockchain is to make staking more accessible and easier for users who want to participate in the network’s consensus mechanism or obtain rewards. To this end, Parity Technologies has developed a Staking Dashboard, a platform for staking Polkadot’s crypto, DOT. The main focus of Parity Technologies’ development is to make the dashboard user-friendly and to lighten the infrastructure. In fact, staking on Polkadot works without a centralised external provider thanks to light-client technology. The latter allows validators to interact with a blockchain without having to store the entire network history, all the while maintaining the same level of security. The beta version of Polkadot’s dashboard for staking is already usable and the final version should be released soon!

 

5.   Parachain enhancement

Polkadot’s future in the coming months will obviously also involve parachains. Parachains are Polkadot’s core functionality and the reason why blockchain has gained so much popularity. They are the secondary blockchains that exploit Polkadot’s infrastructure. Their performance will be improved through a new mechanism called Weights V2. Weights V2 will make it easier to validate parachain blocks and consequently make it easier to ‘write’ and develop them. The update is the first in chronological order that will be implemented and is expected to arrive by mid-October 2022.

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Young Monday: Apple and NFTs, Christie’s, the play-to-earn game about Muhammad Ali

Buying NFTs with Apple and Christie's, a play-to-earn game about Muhammad Ali

Apple will allow NFT purchases on its app store, Christie’s has a new NFT marketplace and a Muhammad Ali-inspired play-to-earn boxing game launches

The first Young Monday of October has good news in store, especially in the world of non-fungible tokens. Apple will enable NFT purchases via its app store. Christie’s, the world’s most famous auction house, launches its own NFT marketplace. On the 1st of October 2022, the occasion of the anniversary of the historic Thrilla fight in Manila, the NFT drop of the boxing-themed play-to-earn game ‘Muhammed Ali – The Next Legends’ took place. The news for this week doesn’t end there though. Mastercard has announced that it will be possible to personalise payment cards with their own NFTs from ‘blue chip’ collections: the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Moonbirds and CryptoPunks. Speaking of CryptoPunks, on the 28th of September 2022, CryptoPunks number 2924 was sold for a record 3,300 ETH, approximately $4.5 million! This is the fourth largest sale ever for CryptoPunks, what a record!

 

NFTs will soon be available for purchase in the Apple Store

Apple recently announced that it will allow NFTs to be bought and sold through its app store. However, the company has not yet fully explained the details of how this will come to be. Apple’s initiative is aimed at apps and games in the app store, in particular those that intend to sell game components in the form of NFTs. The debate surrounding this news has mainly focused on the commission that Apple plans to charge on the purchase of each NFT. It is expected to be around 30 per cent, the same percentage that is still applied today for components of traditional mobile games that can be purchased through Apple’s app store. Apple has been criticised on social networks, especially in crypto Twitter echo-chambers, for charging such high fees on the sale and purchase of NFTs. However, there have also been positive opinions for this: according to them the Cupertino based tech giant’s initiative would be an important building block for mass adoption.

Christie’s 3.0, the world’s most famous auction house is now a step further to embracing Web3

Christie’s, the world’s most famous auction house, recently launched its NFT marketplace on Ethereum. Christie’s 3.0. Among the works of art that have passed through the London auction house is the highest-price auctioned work ever: the painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ by Leonardo Da Vinci. It was bought by the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism for 450 million dollars. However, Christie’s venture into the world of Web3 had already begun some time ago. They hosted the auction of digital artist Beeple’s artwork ‘Everydays: The First 5,000 Days’, which sold for $69.3 million in March 2021. The recent Christie’s 3.0 initiative represents a further technological step forward for the auction house. But how can you buy NFTs on Christie’s 3.0? It is a real NFT marketplace, but sales will only be possible via auctions. The platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain, and to date it is not yet clear whether a secondary marketplace will be available on this platform in the future or whether those who want to sell digital works of art purchased on Christie’s 3.0 will have to rely on external NFT marketplaces.

Christie’s 3.0 was created in collaboration with two well-known companies in the world of Web3. One is Manifold, a startup that develops smart contracts. The other is Chainalysis, a Web3 company that produces software for the analysis of on-chain data with a particular focus on security. Christie’s 3.0 made its debut on the 28th of September 2022 with the PHASES collection: a collection of photo and video artworks by New York-based digital artist Diana Sinclair who is listed by Forbes as one of the 50 most influential people in the world of NFTs. Auctions for PHASES artworks will be available until the 11th of October 2022, and the starting price for the pieces is 4 ETH (approx. $5,300) for static digital artworks, and 5 ETH (approx. $6,660) for NFT videos.

 

Muhammad Ali – The Next Legends, the play-to-earn game about boxing

The 1st of October 2022 saw the launch of the Muhammad Ali – The Next Legends Pro Pack, the first NFTs of the blockchain-based game created in honour of Muhammad Ali. The NFTs cost 0.11 ETH, about $150, and are now available for purchase on OpenSea for a minimum price of 0.11 ETH. The 1st of October is no ordinary day: on this exact day in 1975, the bout nicknamed ‘Thrilla in Manila’ took place. This fight was the third and final bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraizer, which took place in Quezon City in the metropolitan area of Manila (capital of the Philippines). It is considered one of the most important fights in boxing history.

The upcoming play-to-earn game, Muhammad Ali – The Next Legends will use NFT and artificial intelligence based technologies. The play-to-earn is being produced by the start-up Non-Fungible Labs in collaboration with the leading artificial intelligence company for the Web3, Altered State Machine. To play The Next Legends you have to match two NFTs: an ASM Brain, the ‘boxer’s brain’ which is an NFT equipped with artificial intelligence that allows it to evolve, and a boxer NFT. Then by using ‘Artificial Intelligence Gyms’, users will be able to train their ‘brains’ by acquiring the boxing skills necessary to defeat opponents. Acquirable skills will be agility, stamina, stance, sparring, jabs, hooks and uppercuts. The goal of the game will be to train one’s boxer and win fights against other players to become The Next Legend!

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7 changes happening to Ethereum following The Merge

Ethereum 2.0: new features after The Merge explained in 7 points

The Ethereum 2.0 update has been successfully activated! Find out what’s new after The Merge in 7 points

The Merge was a major achievement in the field of computing. The update went live on Thursday, the 15th of September 2022 without any hiccups. The Ethereum blockchain started validating transactions through the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm smoothly starting from block number 15537393. As is usually the case with big events, the general euphoria passes and many questions begin to circulate about the aftermath. Will Ethereum become more centralised? What happened to the price of Ethereum? If you want to know more, read the news after The Merge explained in 7 points!

1.   Why did the price of Ethereum plummet after The Merge?

On the day of the activation of The Merge, ETH lost about 10 percentage points by drawing a red candle on the chart. But why did Ethereum collapse after the success of The Merge? Two main reasons can be identified, one is closely linked to The Merge and the other is inherent to the macro-economic situation we find ourselves in at the moment. In the current economic context, we are witnessing a raise of interest rates by the FED (the US central bank), and an increase of supply in the markets. This is certainly to the detriment of assets considered risky, such as cryptocurrencies. The price of Ether therefore fell by more than 20% after The Merge.

The second reason is precisely due to the activation of The Merge. Miners, who in the previous version of Ethereum Proof-of-Work were in charge of validating transactions, reportedly sold around 20,000 ETH in the hours following The Merge (according to OKlink‘s data). This helped to drive Ethereum’s price down.

2.   Is Ethereum more centralised after The Merge?

Someone pointed out that after The Merge, Ethereum would be more centralised than before. This is because there are currently fewer nodes involved in validating transactions on the Proof-of-Stake blockchain than on the Proof-of-Work network.

In a blockchain that works via the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, transactions are validated by staking. The validator nodes of the Ethereum network, i.e. those with at least 32 ETH, are responsible for approving all transactions and are rewarded by the network through Ether rewards. Most of these nodes are organisations called staking pools that pool users’ Ether who want to delegate their crypto to participate in the consensus mechanism.

Criticism regarding centralisation has been raised because these staking pools are few in number and hold large amounts of Ether on behalf of users. One of the risks of this situation could be the centralisation of decisions and processes in the Ethereum network. However, this criticism contrasts with the idea that providers would earn money in relation to the amount of Ether they possess and consequently the number of users who choose to use them. According to this hypothesis, they would have no incentive to censor transactions and thus risk losing users and revenue. What will be the next developments? Will other staking pools arise that will help to further decentralise the Ethereum network?

The second point that Ether’s detractors try to leverage is the geographical location of the validator nodes. In response to this, a report available on the official website of Lido, one of the most widely used staking pools, shows that Lido’s validator nodes are geographically distributed. No country has more than 15% of the total in terms of the presence of validators on its territory. Not only that: Lido itself is an organisation whose goal is to improve its decentralisation and whose staking protocols are already regulated by a DAO.

3.   Beware of fake news post The Merge

On Thursday,  the 15th of September 2022, some major Italian newspapers reported the news that the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, had hacked the Twitter profile of the Ministry for Ecological Transition, led by minister Roberto Cingolani. Obviously, none of this happened; Vitalik Buterin’s name that appeared as a profile handle was inserted by a fraudster. The Italian Web3 community was obviously very critical of the famous newspapers that raised the alarm. A series of very funny memes were born, which emphasised the misinformation and the tendency to instrumentalise information without verifying it.

4.   How do Ethereum’s tokenomics change after The Merge?

One of the 7 innovations after The Merge concerns Ethereum’s tokenomics. Tokenomics is the model that describes the economic characteristics of a token and contains all information related to the issuance and distribution of a blockchain token. The switch from the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm will result in lower ETH issuance, which will also affect the crypto’s inflation. In the period before The Merge, inflation was around 4%. Immediately following The Merge, Ether had a deflationary trend, in other words, more Ether were destroyed than issued.

Ethereum’s tokenomics will also undergo changes after the next scheduled update for Ethereum, called Shanghai. In the months following The Merge, until the activation of Shanghai, it will not be possible for stakers to withdraw their ETH. The update will regulate ETH withdrawals from staking, affecting the amount of cryptocurrency circulating.

5.   Has The Merge turned Ethereum into a zero-impact blockchain?

The Ethereum team hopes so. According to the Ethereum Foundation, thanks to the consensus algorithm change, the network will reduce energy consumption by 99.5 per cent. In Proof-of-Stake blockchains, transactions are validated through staking and not thanks to the computational power provided by the miners. It has been estimated that due to The Merge, worldwide energy consumption will be reduced by 0.2%. The Merge update could therefore change the entire industry’s narrative regarding potential climate damage.

6.   Next steps after The Merge for a more scalable network?

Now that The Merge has been activated, what is the next step for Ethereum? Vitalik Buterin spoke about this at a conference on the 21st of July 2021. The main goal is the scalability of the network, as it has been since 2017 when the use of the network increased exponentially. Today, Ethereum’s network is able to process around 20 transactions per second. In the future, with the use of some scalability solutions, it will be possible to reach even 100,000 transactions per second. The next upgrade to The Merge will be The Surge. Two phases will coexist within The Surge, the first is called proto-Danksharding and should take place within a year. With this update, which will serve to increase the amount of data that can be stored on each block, it will be possible to make transactions on Ethereum Layer 2s even cheaper. The second phase of The Surge will be called Danksharding and will aim to scale the Ethereum network also on Layer 2s through the use of so-called rollups. Rollups deal with aggregating multiple ‘off-chain’ transactions that are then ‘presented’ to the Ethereum blockchain as unique transactions.

7.   Where will Ethereum miners go?

The last point of news after The Merge concerns the fate of ETH miners. They had to equip themselves to find new blockchains where they could move all their computational power. By analysing the hash power, and thus the computational power of some alternative blockchains to Ethereum, it became clear where the miners left without employment were headed. For instance, Ethereum Classic‘s hash power skyrocketed by 500% and Ravencoin’s by 800%. Are these the cryptos favoured by miners? Those who have not moved to these alternative coins are probably thinking about other options, such as offering their computing power to cloud computing or data processing players like Amazon Web Service or validating the Proof-of-Stake version of the network by creating nodes. Other former Ethereum miners decided to create hard forks to continue their activities. There have been two hard forks since The Merge: ETHW (Ethereum Proof-of-Work) and ETF (Ethereum Fair). The two hard forks have not been recognised by Ethereum and are therefore unrelated projects to the blockchain created by Vitalik Buterin. An interesting fact about the Ethereum Fair hard fork is that it was distributed to those who owned Dogecoin, Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin but not to those who owned ETHs. Both hard forks were subject to great volatility in the hours immediately following The Merge.

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Apecoin: a staking feature is coming for the crypto of the Bored Ape Yacht Club

Apecoin: staking for the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s crypto is arriving

From the 31st of October 2022, it will be possible to stake Apecoin, the Bored Apes Yacht Club’s crypto, thanks to a partnership with Horizen Labs!

The crypto of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Apecoin, continues to evolve and grow its use cases. In August 2022, the fashion brand Gucci began accepting the token of the Web 3’s most famous NFT monkeys, thus helping to enhance their reputation. On the 22nd of September 2022, the blockchain company Horizen Labs, which had already been involved in developing the Apecoin token, announced a (still tentative) date for the release of the APE staking platform. We will see if the Horizen Labs team will be able to accomplish the goals of their roadmap by the 31st of October. Will this be a Halloween-style prank or sweet news for the Web3 world?

Bored Ape Yacht Club and Horizen Labs

The staking platform for the Apecoin token will be called ApeStake and is entirely being developed by Horizen Labs. But let’s go in order, what is Apecoin (APE)? APE is the official crypto of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most popular NFT PFP collection ever! It is a governance token, i.e. it is used to give holders a say on decisions that affect the future of the BAYC ecosystem. APE is built on the Ethereum blockchain and was distributed to Yuga Labs’ NFT holders in March 2022. Besides being a governance token, Apecoin is also a utility token, and is used to purchase all products and services developed by Yuga Labs. The startup, which was founded at the same time as the first ever NFT collection, has evolved very quickly. It now deals with three different collections (BYAC, MAYC and Bored Ape Kennel Club) as well as a metaverse, Otherside, and the respective ‘lands’ of which it is composed.

On the other hand, Horizen Labs is a blockchain infrastructure focused on privacy and scalability. Their platform allows companies and developers to create decentralised applications on its network. Horizon Labs also offers the ability to use zero knowledge protocols to ensure fast, secure and cost-effective transactions with sidechains. The Horizen ecosystem and its ZEN cryptocurrency were launched in May 2017 under the name ZenCash. However, in 2018, ZenCash fell victim to a hack. This forced the team to relaunch the project under the new name Horizen. The Horizen Labs platform was chosen by the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) of the Bored Ape Yacht Club through a vote. The weight of the voters, as is usually the case in a DAO’s voting initiatives, was determined by the amount of Apecoin each of them possessed.

How will Apecoin and Yuga Labs’s NFTs staking work?

Thanks to some sneak peaks released by Horizen Labs, it is already possible to get a picture of how ApeStake works. Users will be able to choose between four different pools in which to deposit their APEs and block NFTs from the BAYC ecosystem in their possession.

In doing so, users can obtain rewards by staking their tokens. Each pool and each combination of amounts of Apecoin and NFTs will provide specific rewards and benefits. Let’s take a look at the four staking pools of ApeStake:

  1. Apecoin Pool – Within the first staking pool, people will be able to stake their APE tokens without necessarily owning an NFT from Yuga Labs’ collection. The total allocation of APE, to be divided among all those who will use the staking in proportionally to the blocked amount available for this pool, is 30 million APE;
  1. Bored Ape Pool – The pool dedicated to Bored Ape owners is the one with the most rewards. The Bored Ape Pool provides users with 47 million Apecoins that will be divided among those who block a maximum of 10,094 APE tokens during the first year for each BAYC owned;
  1. Mutant Pool – The Mutant Pool will allow users to block around 2,000 APE and their own MAYC to share the 19 million APE reward during the first year;
  1. Paired Pool – In the Paired Pool you can participate by pairing two NFTs created by Yuga Labs according to set combinations. For example, a BAKC (the Bored Apes’ collection of dogs) must be paired with an ape , so you will not be able to stake your APEs in the pool by blocking two dogs. The rewards in it will be about 4 million APE.

The other features of the platform developed by Horizen Labs have yet to be announced. In the video preview, you can see the Market Tools section. The way it works is still being kept a secret.

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Algorand and Chiliz grow through crypto-football

FIFA and Algorand’s NFTs released, new features for Chiliz

Algorand and FIFA successfully completed the Genesis Drop of the first FIFA + Collect collection and the Chiliz Chain 2.0  is coming by 2023

More and more interesting news is coming from the world of crypto-football. The first NFTs of Algorand and FIFA are now out. Chiliz, the crypto of the Socios platform, has important news in store for the release of their Mainnet.

Exactly two months before the start of the World Cup 2022, FIFA and Algorand have released the first NFTs on the FIFA + Collect platform. The first NFT drop of the collaboration is called Genesis Drop and has been available for purchase since the 22nd of September 2022.  The price of Chiliz has seen an increase of more than 40 per cent since early September and the Chiliz Chain 2.0 is expected to arrive by the end of 2022. Check out Algorand and FIFA’s NFTs and what’s new in the Chiliz ecosystem!

It’s all about the FIFA+ Collect Genesis Drop, in collaboration with Algorand

Algorand and FIFA have been collaborating since May 2022 when the green blockchain became an official sponsor of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association. The first creation born from this collaboration is the NFT Genesis Drop collection that was launched on the 22nd of September 2022 on the FIFA+ Collect platform. Collect is the section of the FIFA+ web application dedicated to Web3 initiatives. The collection consists of 532,980 ‘packages’ each containing three NFT videos of iconic highlights from the history of the men’s and women’s World Cup. The highlights comprise the best actions from matches, such as acrobatic saves, defence piercing through-balls and incredible goals. The idea is reminiscent of NBA Top Shot, an initiative by Dapper Labs dedicated to the world of American basketball. On the FIFA+ Collect platform, it is already possible to preview the NFTs that can be found within each package. The FIFA+ Collect NFTs are divided by rarity, just like most other NFT collections . The platform’s first drop contains 18 common highlights, 13 rare, 5 epic and 2 iconic.

The iconic NFTs in the first collection are Ronaldo the Phenomeno’s goal in the 2002 World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan and US footballer Carli LLoyd‘s goal from midfield in the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Canada. The NFT packs, similar to classic sticker packs, cost $4.99 each. They can be purchased either in dollars, through credit or debit cards, or with the USDC stablecoin in the version found on Algorand’s blockchain. To make the crypto payment, you need a wallet compatible with the Algorand network and at least 0.001 ALGO to pay the fees. What effect did Algorand and FIFA’s NFTs have on the price of ALGO?

Are Algorand and Chiliz two bear market-proof cryptos?

Algorand and its crypto ALGO seem to be only partially affected by the current bear market. In fact, the crypto has increased by more than 30 per cent against both the dollar and Bitcoin since the beginning of September 2022. The amount of wallets that hold more than one per cent of the global supply of crypto ALGO are also growing strongly. According to an on-chain analysis by The Block, the total held by so-called ‘whales’ has increased by more than $280 million since August 2022. Who knows if this bullish movement came about thanks to the announcement of Algorand and FIFA’s NFT collection?

The blockchain Chiliz and its crypto CHZ are also rising above others. Chiliz and the popular platform built on its blockchain, Socios.com, have long dominated the market for fan tokens. They allow fans to participate closely in decisions involving their favourite teams. Fan tokens also grant their owners access to exclusive experiences such as VIP tickets to matches and guided tours of the teams’ museums or stadiums. Chiliz’s crypto has been growing very similarly to Algorand’s in the last period.

The price of Chiliz has in fact increased by more than 40% since the beginning of September 2022. The increase in the price of Chiliz could be related to several factors, some concerning the world of crypto-football, others related to the technological innovation of the blockchain itself. The first important piece of news concerns Chiliz’s acquisition of 24.5% of Barça Studios, the communication and entertainment arm of Barcelona FC, on Monday 1st of August 2022. The acquisition, which cost the blockchain company around $100 million, aims to create Web3 content that will reach more and more fans around the world by guaranteeing interaction with their favourite teams through new ways. In addition, Chiliz recently renewed its partnership with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The partnership, which started in 2021, will continue during the 2022/23 football season and will allow us to see the Socios logo in association with all UEFA events, for example during UEFA Champions League matches.

Regarding technological innovation of the Chiliz blockchain, the launch of Scoville, the public testnet for Chiliz 2.0, was announced on the 31st of March 2021. Today, the Chiliz main blockchain is still in the first phase of development. The mainnet should be activated by the beginning of 2023. Itwill be named, as is traditional for the blockchain company, after a species of chilli: Habanero. The Chiliz Chain 2.0 (CC2) will be a Layer-1 blockchain created specifically for the sports and entertainment industries. It will enable the construction of decentralised applications that can make 100 per cent use of fan tokens. Following this update, the CHZ token will also expand its use cases. It will not only be used to buy in Fan Tokens on the Socios platform, but will become the native asset of the CC2 blockchain and will be unavailable to process all transactions taking place on the network.

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Young Monday: more BTC for Michael Saylor, DC Comics NFTs, Colorado opens up to crypto

Michael Saylor buys more Bitcoin, DC Comics NFTs and Colorado

How much Bitcoin does Michael Saylor hold after his September 2022 buys? DC Comics Funko Pop NFTs arrive and in Colorado, you can pay your taxes in crypto!

What happened this week in the world of crypto? Let’s take a look at the three most interesting news stories of the week in this edition of Young Monday! We talk about shopping in style, the next NFT obsession and crypto adoption. Michael Saylor, the founder of US company MicroStrategy, is back to buying Bitcoin after his summer ‘hiatus’. MicroStrategy now has a nice haul: 130,000 Bitcoins! Comic book publisher DC Comics is set to release a collection of NFT comics in collaboration with Funko Pop and WalMart, and in the US state of Colorado it is finally possible to pay taxes in cryptocurrency.

Michael Saylor gets back from holiday and buys 301 Bitcoins!

How is Michael Saylor doing during the bear market? As we can read from the 20th of September 2022 report of the SEC (the US government agency in charge of regulating the market), Saylor bought about $6 million in Bitcoin between the 2nd of August and the 19th of September 2022. This is his first real purchase since June 2022, when the company had bought 480 Bitcoins worth about $10 million.

Given the large amount of purchases made by MicroStrategy in recent years, a question arises. How many Bitcoins does Michael Saylor hold? To date, about 130,000, for a current value of $2.5 billion. However, the bear market spares no one, and even Michael Saylor seems to be losing. MicroStrategy’s average purchase price for each Bitcoin it owns is $30,639. The US company spent about $3.9 billion to buy its holdings of 130,000 BTC, about $1.4 billion less than they are worth today.

However, Saylor doesn’t seem to care about this figure. As we can see in this tweet, the founder of MicroStrategy doesn’t reason in terms of dollar price. 130,000 Bitcoins is 130,000 Bitcoins. Well what can we say Michael, we can’t blame you!

Official DC Comics NFTs? Yes, thanks to WalMart and Funko Pop!

If you are a fan of the genre, you absolutely cannot miss DC Comics’ NFT comic in collaboration with Funko Pop! The two brands have already started a Web3 collaboration by jointly creating NFT collector cards on the WAX blockchain. These NFTs are already available for purchase on the main NFT marketplaces on the WAX blockchain such as NFTHive or AtomicMarket. A new collaboration between DC Comics and Funko Pop will open on the 7th of October 2022, with the entry of another well-known brand: US retail giant WalMart. Limited-edition covers of ‘The Brave and the Bold’ comics will be produced and can be purchased in WalMart stores.

The comic will be sold in a box featuring Funko Pop versions of the superhero protagonists engaged in a battle with an octopus-like monster.

The comics for sale will be available as 30,000 pieces, and the lucky ones who manage to grab a copy will later be able to redeem the NFT version. There will also be 30,000 NFT versions, and  they will be redeemable on the WAX blockchain. The WAX blockchain (an acronym that stands for World Asset eXchange) is one of the most widely used networks in gaming and digital collectibles. The most popular Web3 games that make use of the WAX blockchain are Animal World, Castles NFT and Real Magnate. Among the video game brands it collaborates with are Atari, Topps and the action figure company Funko, who have been keen for some time to develop digital collectibles initiatives using Web3 technologies.

The State of Colorado allows for taxes to be paid in crypto

In the US state of Colorado, taxes can now be paid in crypto! The ‘Digital Token Act’ that was passed by the state of Colorado in 2019 finally came into force, three years later. Payments for taxes will only be accepted through PayPal, a US company founded in 1999 by Confinity offering digital payment and money transfer services. The announcement of the law’s entry into force was made on Thursday, the 15th of September 2022 by Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who said: “The state of Colorado has always been at the forefront of digital innovation, whether it’s applying blockchain technologies as a new financial model, or being consumer-centric in enabling businesses and government agencies to innovate to make processes faster and more efficient. To date, Paypal accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin as payment methods.

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The Merge as seen by NFT artists, fan art from Beeple to Vanity Blocks

The Merge: NFTs dedicated to Ethereum 2.0

Beeple and other digital artists celebrate The Merge, discover the NFTs created in honour of the Ethereum update!

The Merge has finally been activated and the Web3 world is in full celebration. Digital artwork and NFTs dedicated to Ethereum 2.0 were not late to the party either! The launch of The Merge officially took place on Thursday the 15th of September at 06:42:42 UTC, activated from block number 15537393. The update marked Ethereum’s final transition to the Proof-Of-Stake consensus algorithm. Given the importance of the event, many wondered how to celebrate The Merge on the blockchain in an immutable manner. In short, with its symbols and mascots, The Merge has become the topic of many NFTs!

Ethereum blockchain blocks become NFTs

The last block of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work blockchain and the first block of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake blockchain have both become NFTs. Blockchains are immutable records of information grouped into blocks, which usually contain different numbers of transactions. Bitcoin’s blocks for example contain around 2000 transactions, whereas Ethereum’s blocks usually contain fewer, around 300 to 500.

The emerging NFT brand Vanity Blocks created the NFT of Ethereum’s latest blockchain Proof of Work.

The VanityBlocks project was created to allow users to fill a block on the Ethereum blockchain with a single transaction and turn it into an NFT. The NFT block then becomes the property of the person who processed the transaction. How much did it cost to turn the last block on Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work blockchain into an NFT? 30.5 ETH, about $45,000. Now the NFT can be purchased on the OpenSea marketplace. The current offer is 20 ETH, about $27,000. Within this NFT, the Vanity Blocks team decided to write a quote by US writer Terence McKenna: ‘Make a commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not crush you, but lift you up. That is the trick’. Probably a thought to emphasise the commitment and the enormous amount of innovation that went into the creation of The Merge!

Not only did the last block on Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work blockchain become an NFT but the same thing happened to the first block on the Proof-of-Stake blockchain. One user managed to make a transaction on the first Proof-of-Stake blockchain by paying as much as 36.8 Ethereum in gas fees. The latter are the fees each user pays to process transactions on a blockchain. Gas fees are generally not that expensive, on this occasion the figure was high because the blockchain was particularly congested, in other words very active. The NFT in question depicts a black page entitled ‘The Transition’ on which there is some information such as the chain ID, the blockchain number, the timestamp, i.e. all information and data related to the transaction itself, and on the right-hand side of the page a drawing of a panda.

The panda has become the symbol animal of The Merge on social networks. Even the search engine Google, within the widget for the countdown of The Merge, has inserted two teddy bears, one white and one black, running towards each other with the aim of becoming a panda once the update has taken place. The panda became a popular animal to narrate The Merge following the custom of representing ‘fusion’ through gestures in the Japanese cartoon Dragon Ball Z. Rather than Goku and Vegeta, all the memes depicting The Merge were represented by two bears, one white and one black. They would later fuse and give birth to the panda. The peculiarity of the NFT of the first Proof-of-Stake block is definitely the block number, 15537394 the one with which The Merge was activated!

Beeple’s digital artwork in honour of The Merge

All the most influential individuals and projects within the Web3 community paid tribute to The Merge. In addition to the so-called ‘insiders’, developers and founders of major crypto projects, digital artists also spoke out to celebrate this important event. Among the various works of art produced, those by Beeple certainly stand out. He is one of the first and most influential artists in the NFT field. Beeple has been creating at least one work of art a day for more than 10 years now. In 2020, he decided to turn his artwork into NFTs. The collection containing the first 5000 works, called Everydays, was sold in February 2021 for $69.4 million. There are two digital artworks related to The Merge that Beeple created to date. One is entitled ‘THE MERGE’ and depicts a huge reproduction of the Ethereum symbol under construction. The NFT of the Ethereum logo is constructed from a diamond-like material in purple. The symbol is located inside a kind of futuristic laboratory surrounded by two mechanical arms that appear to be in the process of completing it. This artwork probably represents the completion of the ‘merging’ process and the change of consensus algorithm.

The other digital artwork is called ‘PROOF OF STAKE’ and it depicts a large cyborg panda moving menacingly inside a mine populated by stones resembling the symbol of Ethereum. The two works maintain the classic characteristics of Beeple’s NFTs, so they are both set in a dystopian, psychedelic universe and give the viewer mixed emotions.

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Gala Games’ new platform: after video games, it’s time for decentralised music!

Gala Crypto: music NFTs in a new Web3 platform

Discover the Web3 platform dedicated to music and developed by Gala Games. With music NFTs, create your own playlists and get GALA crypto!

Gala Games is a game development platform created in 2019 by Eric Schiermeyer and Michael McCarthy. It aims to offer a dedicated crypto gaming ecosystem where developers can work with ease and where users can have full control (including economic control) of game resources. On the Gala Games web app, you can download Web3 games and exchange NFT game items. In just a few years, Gala’s crypto has climbed to fourth place in the ranking of the most capitalised tokens in the crypto gaming industry (compiled by the research platform Messari.io). In this ranking, the top three places are occupied by The Sandbox, Axie Infinity and Enjin, respectively.

Gala Games has recently broadened its horizons: after crypto video games, Gala is ready to make its mark in the field of music and film as well. Its expansion is aimed at the entire entertainment sector. In this regard, Gala Music and Gala Film were born. Read on to find out about these innovative dapps!

Gala Games, the crypto gaming paradise

Gala Games is a platform where creating and playing video games earns rewards in Gala crypto. The way Gala Games works is similar to the well-known web platform for digital content distribution: Steam. However, it is also possible to buy and sell items, skins and objects in the form of NFTs on Gala. These items can then be used within the crypto games available on Gala. The games available on Gala are not (and will not be) entirely developed by the platform, but can and may also be developed by third parties.

The two most anticipated titles still in development are Mirandus and Grit . Mirandus is a fantasy RPG in which players have absolute freedom of choice: they can explore the wilderness on their own, try their luck against forest monsters, or join one of the five monarchs who control the kingdom of Mirandus. Grit, on the other hand, is a battle royale game set in the Wild West and developed in collaboration with gaming giant Epic Games. This video game has been presented as a sort of fusion between Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption. Survivors of gunfights on horseback or chases after speeding trains are the only winners in this game. The partnership with Epic Games has drawn attention to Gala Games, who is meanwhile making waves for their cutting-edge proposals for music and film on blockchain.

How Gala Music works: decentralised streaming

“Web3 is the next evolution of the internet”, is the introduction of a blog post edited by the crypto platform Gala. When talking about the evolution of the internet, one cannot leave out one of the sectors for which the internet is most used: the entertainment sector. And Gala is not backing down! With this in mind, the Gala Games team is working on two more platforms: Gala Music and Gala Film. How do they work? Gala Music is a Web3 platform where music can be rented, shared and listened to. Gala Music is based on what is called a Music Node, which is a real node for creating a network of shared music. A ‘Node’ is a term widely used in the crypto world. It refers to devices that connect to the interface of a blockchain and contain all transactions that have been recorded on that network. More generally, a ‘node’ can mean a participant in a network. In this example, we are talking about devices connected to the Gala Music network, which do not contain transactions but do contain music NFTs. In a nutshell, Gala Music’s Music Nodes contain music recorded on the blockchain. You can think of them as a kind of jukebox that everyone can access.

When you decide to use Gala Music, you open your own Music Node, which you customise by purchasing music NFTs from the store. Users will get Gala crypto in proportion to the plays their node generates. If you do not want to buy your own node, you can purchase NFTs and rent them to Music Node operators in exchange for a portion of the rewards generated.

Rewards in GALA are not only distributed to music NFT owners and node owners, but also to the artist who created the song.

There are two types of music nodes: Player Nodes, the mechanism of which we have just described and Fan Nodes, dedicated to specific artists through which you can obtain a range of benefits such as exclusive NFTs. Among the artists on the platform are some big names, such as the rock group Kings of Leon and the Mount Westmore rap crew consisting of Snoop Dog, Ice Cube,Too Short and E-40. The first drop of 25,000 Player Nodes took place in February 2022, and the cost per node was around $1,200.

Gala Film functions in a similar way to Gala Music, but instead of Music Nodes, you will find Film Nodes. The first Gala Film nodes are still available for purchase, at a price of 106,000 Gala, so approximately 5,000 €.

Gala and Web3: power to the artists and content creators!

The system designed by Gala for both platforms, Gala Music and Gala Film, goes beyond rewarding NFT owners and Node operators. It also distributes most of the rewards directly to the artists. Keyword: creator economy!

The two systems, respectively renamed watch-to-earn and listen-to-earn, aim to overcome the current economic model for content creators and artists. The streaming platforms of Web2 no longer seem suited to rewarding content creators. Web3 is here for that: you can monetise everything you create and produce online! The Internet will be in the hands of those who actually create its value, all thanks to the decentralisation enabled by blockchain.

With Gala Music and Gala Film, new talent will also be involved. Thanks to these platforms, emerging artists will be facilitated to get in touch with new fans in an easier way.