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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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Working on a European CBDC, the ECB is also getting Amazon involved

Digital Euro: the ECB working with Amazon for its CBDC

Is the Digital Euro on the way? The European Central Bank is collaborating with five tech companies to study its CBDC

In a statement dated from the 16th of September 2022, the European Central Bank announced its collaboration with five tech companies to test and develop a possible Central Bank Digital Currency. CBDCs are digital currencies that differ from cryptocurrencies in that they are issued by central banks and are therefore not decentralised like Bitcoin is. For the ECB, the main advantage of the digital euro would be its ease and accessibility, since all it would take is a simple internet connection to use CBDC-related banking services. In 2021, the European Union prompted an investigation phase for the development of a CBDC that was supposed to last two years. By mid-2023, the ECB will deliver its final verdict: digital euro yes or no?

Companies selected to develop prototypes and use cases for the CBDC

Before taking a decision on the digital euro, the ECB involved five companies to develop prototypes and use cases in which the CBDC could be used. To choose these companies, a call for applications was made in April 2022. 54 companies interested in working on the digital euro answered the call. On the 16th of September, the selected companies were announced, each with an area of relevance:

  1. CaixaBank: peer-to-peer online payments;
  2. Worldline: offline peer-to-peer payments;
  3. EPI: payments at the point of sale arranged by the payer;
  4. Nexi: payments at the point of sale arranged by the payee;
  5. Amazon: e-commerce payments.

The ECB is therefore working with Amazon and Co. to develop its CBDC. It is time for the prototype operation! These tech companies are called upon to develop front-end service interfaces for the digital euro. The aim is to test transactions with the digital euro, peer-to-peer payment systems, in e-commerce but also at the point of sale. The work on the prototypes will last until the first quarter of 2023 and will then be presented in a report.

Why is the ECB interested in the digital euro?

For the ECB, the digital euro could be a functional supplement to cash. In what sense? The digital euro is not envisaged as a replacement for the euro as we know and use it, but as an additional choice available for payments: ‘it could foster financial innovation and improve the overall efficiency of the payments system’. The CBDC would be an electronic currency issued by the ECB and national central banks, accessible to all citizens and businesses. According to the ECB, the digital euro can only be successful if it is used by European citizens in their daily lives, so it must add value and be genuinely useful. The ongoing tests are verifying precisely these aspects. The ECB continues to test the ground while the White House seems more determined than ever to launch its digital dollar!

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NFTs: David Bowie’s collection coming soon on OpenSea

NFTs: David Bowie’s collection is coming to OpenSea

The icon of pop is celebrated with an NFT collection: discover nine Web3 artists’ tribute to David Bowie!

David Bowie, the timeless artist who helped define the pop genre in the 1980s, is now appearing on OpenSea with the ‘Bowie on the Blockchain‘ collection.

The project involves the launch of a series of NFTs entirely dedicated to the White Duke. NFTs, or non fungible tokens, are digital products whose uniqueness and value are guaranteed thanks to blockchain. The NFT trend, which took off in 2021, often involves traditional artists such as singers, performers and painters. It opens the door to new horizons of digital art.

Continue reading this article to discover details about NFT’s new collection dedicated to David Bowie!

Bowie on the Blockchain: details of the collection

The ‘Bowie on the Blockchain’ project was conceived by the David Bowie Estate, an association that manages the artistic heritage inherited by the White Duke. The initiative came about thanks to a collaboration with OpenSea, one of the most important marketplaces for NFT purchases, and the We Love the Arts project, founded by Andrew Keller, artist manager and founder of the We Few Group company operating in the art consultancy sector, and filmmaker Joaquin Acrich. We Love the Arts is entirely dedicated to the digital works of Web3.

The proceeds of the initiative will be donated to Bowie’s widow, Iman Abdulmajid, and her charity CARE, a humanitarian organisation that has been working against poverty and gender inequality worldwide for almost 80 years.

The NFTs were developed on the Ethereum blockchain and will be available for purchase through Opensea’s marketplace. The launch of the collection, initially scheduled for the 13th of September, was postponed until a later date due to the sudden death of Queen Elizabeth II. This decision has been criticised by many David Bowie fans: in 2003, the artist refused the title of Knight of the Order of the British Empire, offered by Buckingham Palace.

This NFT project dedicated to David Bowie involves numerous artists already established in the world of crypto art. The peculiarity of the initiative is the heterogeneity of the digital works, created by artists with very different styles. There are specifically nine NFT artists who contributed to the project. FEWOCiOUS, Defaced, Glam Beckett, JAKE, Jonathan Wolfe, Lirona, Nadya Tolokonnikova of PussyRiot, Osinachi and Young & Sick.

Some of these names represent the most important personalities linked to the NFT sector. FEWOCiOUS, at only 19 years old, has managed to earn almost 18 million dollars with his digital works. Growing up in an unfriendly family environment, he was able to express his emotions and communicate with others thanks to NFT. The artist himself has described himself as a big fan of David Bowie.

On the other hand, Osinachi is an artist who grew up in a country with a strong interest in NFTs : Nigeria. His style is distinguished by his collage-like, brightly coloured works.

On Twitter, some artists have decided to share small details about the NFTs they have developed. However, at the moment, it is not possible to view the entirety of the piece previews leaked by the artists and wait for the official launch of the collection.

One of the early pioneers of the Web? David Bowie’s interest in technology

The decision to create an NFT collection to honour David Bowie lies above all in the artist’s interest in the world of technology and the web. In the 1990s, when the Internet was beginning to make its way into everyday life, the singer not only launched his official website, but also his own Internet Service Provider. With this service, Bowie gave his fans the possibility to surf the net safely and quickly and to access exclusive content about his private life.

Bill Zysblat, the artist’s former manager, commented on the initiative in an interview with Billboard. He states David Bowie would certainly have been one of the first artists to exploit the potential of Web3.

Although the initiative is exclusively aimed at raising funds for charity, the news of the launch of the new NFT collection has turned quite a few noses within the David Bowie fanbase.

The announcement of the project was heavily criticised by some users on Twitter. Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s son, commented negatively on the initiative, criticising the use of NFTs as a fundraising tool.

More and more artists are getting involved in the NFT world

The NFT collection about David Bowie is certainly not the first crypto initiative launched by prominent figures in the music world or in honour of great personalities now deceased. The Non-Fungible-Tokens, in fact, are not exclusively drawings or graphic works, but can also be entire songs.

In May 2022, Snoop Dogg, the US based rapper and leading representative of the g-funk genre, and Steve Aoki, a US based DJ, launched an album available as NFT. The tracks can only be listened to by holders of the Snoop Stashbox or Aokiverse Passport NFT token, who were created by the artists to celebrate previous events.

Even Madonna, ‘The Queen of Pop’, decided to launch her own NFT collection in May 2022, consisting of three pieces of digital art.

The project, entitled ‘Mother of Nature’ and available for purchase on SuperRare, was created with the cooperation of Beeple, a well-known NFT artist. As with David Bowie’s collection, the proceeds from the sales of the works were donated to three charity organisations: The Voices of Children Foundation, The City of Joy and Black Mama’s Bail Out.

With ‘Space Oddity’ in our headphones, we can only await David Bowie’s arrival on the blockchain.

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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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The White House finally has a plan to regulate crypto and DeFi

Cryptocurrencies: US plan for regulations and CBDC

The US government has published the ‘first comprehensive framework for the responsible development of digital assets’. What new laws should we expect?

The United States has taken another step for the regulation of cryptocurrencies. On the 16th of September 2022, a document entitled ‘White House Releases First Ever Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets‘ was published on the White House website. It is a report summarising the investigations into the crypto sector carried out by nine federal agencies over the past six months, which will be used to implement a legislative plan. The work is the result of President Joe Biden’s executive order issued on the 9th of March of this year. It asked federal agencies to outline guidelines for regulating the industry based on six areas of focus such as consumer protection, promoting financial stability, and financial inclusion.

Over the past six months, agencies across the US government have worked together to develop guidelines and policy recommendations on these issues: from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department,. Let’s take a look at the highlights of the document!

What is the White House document about?

The document drawn up by the federal agencies is divided into seven sections. From their titles, you can already guess the content presented by the White House. A series of actions that will soon take the form of laws and guidelines:

  1. Protecting consumers, investors and businesses;
  2. Promoting access to safe and affordable financial services;
  3. Fostering financial stability;
  4. Advancing responsible innovation;
  5. Reinforcing our global financial leadership and competitiveness;
  6. Fighting illicit finance;
  7. Exploring a US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Which crypto laws are essential?

The paper starts with a significant figure: 16 percent of American adults have already purchased digital assets. This figure is accompanied by a stance: digital assets are defined by the US government as ‘potential opportunities to strengthen US leadership in the global financial system’, as well as in the field of technological innovation. Federal agency reports explicitly promote research and development in the area of next-generation cryptography, transaction programmability, cybersecurity, and privacy protection. The document expresses great confidence in cryptocurrencies as a resource, but at the same time calls for measures to counter the risks associated with digital assets.

The main risks identified by the federal agencies are volatility and the danger of scams: “outright fraud, scams and theft in the digital asset markets are on the rise: according to FBI statistics, reported monetary losses from digital asset scams were nearly 600% higher in 2021 compared to the year before.” In this context, reference is also made to the lack of crypto regulation that has led to huge losses for consumers following the collapse of the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem. In addition to volatility and the danger of scams, there are also the risks of possible money laundering and the use of funds for illicit activities. According to the White House document, all this must be monitored to ensure the safe use of digital assets. In short, we need laws that promote innovation and at the same time contain the risks.

Proposals such as instructing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to ‘aggressively pursue investigations and enforcement actions against illegal practices in the digital asset sector’ have been made in this regard. Also, a call for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to redouble its efforts to monitor consumer complaints and to enforce against unfair, deceptive or abusive practices has been made. Finally, proposals were also made for a series of initiatives for financial education and literacy, to raise awareness of the use of cryptocurrencies and to learn how to spot fraudulent practices.

The US is preparing a plan to be ready for any eventuality, and the document published on the 16th September presents all the issues that the legislation will then target.

The digital economy is an asset for all

One interesting aspect that emerged from the White House document is the realisation that the digital economy is a real opportunity for Americans: ‘Today, traditional finance leaves too many people behind. Roughly 7 million Americans have no bank account. Another 24 million rely on expensive nonbank services, such as cheque cashing and money orders, for everyday needs. And for those who do use banks, paying with traditional financial infrastructures can be costly and slow, particularly for cross-border payments’. To encourage the spread of digital services, the US plans to develop instant payment systems and networks for digital assets that are usable, inclusive, fair, and accessible to all.

The CBDC of the United States, a work in progress!

The report also features a section entitled ‘Exploring a US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)’. The US is therefore considering a digital form of the US dollar that ‘has the potential to offer significant benefits’. In what sense? A Central Bank Digital Currency “could enable a payment system that is more efficient, provide a foundation for further technological innovation, facilitate faster cross-border transactions, and be environmentally sustainable. It could promote financial inclusion and equity by providing access to a wide range of consumers.” The project for the CBDC appears to be on track, although the federal agencies believe that further research and considerations should be carried out, especially on the technological level.

Criticism of the Biden administration report

The White House’s publication has prompted criticism and objections from some crypto industry members and opposition politicians. They called the document drafted by federal agencies ‘outdated and unbalanced’ and unsuitable for building a legislative framework. The Blockchain Association, which works to raise awareness and improve policy in the crypto world, believes the report lacks “substantive recommendations”. Blockchain Association Executive Director Kristin Smith explained that the federal agencies’ reports are “a missed opportunity to consolidate US leadership in cryptocurrency,” and criticised them for focusing too much on the risks of cryptocurrency. Sheila Warren of the Crypto Council for Innovation, another crypto promotion organisation, said the report does not provide clear policy guidelines. Patrick McHenry, a Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee, offered a criticism in the same vein. He claims that the document is too vague: ‘with clear rules, this innovative technology [cryptocurrencies] can revolutionise our financial markets, modernise our payments system infrastructure, and provide new opportunities for consumers’. Regarding the US CBDC project McHenry explained that ‘Republicans have always said that the benefits of a potential US CBDC must outweigh the risks: these reports fail to demonstrate this’.

A benchmark for international crypto regulation?

The White House document and the framework that will follow could be the inspiration and guide for many other countries. This is certainly Biden’s aim. In the text, you can read that the US explicitly intends to be an example for the regulation of digital assets: ‘US agencies will leverage US positions in international organisations to communicate US values related to digital assets. U.S. agencies will continue and expand their leadership role in digital asset work at international organisations and standard-setting bodies, such as the G7, G20, OECD, FSB, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and the International Organisation for Standardisation.” All while trying to convey the US values of privacy, free markets, financial stability, consumer protection, and environmental sustainability.

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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.

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The Merge is live! The first hours of Ethereum 2.0 and the crypto community’s reactions

The Merge is live! Ethereum 2.0's first moments and reactions

The Merge was activated on the 15th of September 2022. What happened during the first hours of Ethereum 2.0? How did the crypto sector react?

The activation of The Merge update has been called a ‘milestone’, a ‘historic moment‘ and a ‘revolution’. In recent months, The Merge has been narrated in a few different ways. It has been interpreted as the engine change of a running car, or as a spaceship not yet ready for interstellar travel according to the Ethereum Foundation’s comparison. Any narrative has tried to do justice to the scale of this update, one of the largest open-source software projects in history, which required the coordination of dozens of teams, researchers, developers and volunteers.

Some people on the night of 14th – 15th of September followed the crucial moments of The Merge minute by minute as if they were watching the launch of a space mission. As the TTD approached, watch parties and streams began to follow the precise moment the Merge was completed. Everyone gathered together from all over the world. Those who watched the Ethereum Foundation’s live broadcast also received a celebratory POAP, an NFT that will forever prove attendance at the pivotal event of the blockchain conceived by Vitalik Buterin. Check out the first hours of Ethereum 2.0 and the crypto community’s reactions to the activation of The Merge!

Ethereum is now Proof-of-Stake!

With Proof-of-Stake, Ethereum is now ready for interstellar travel. On Thursday the 15th of September at 06:42:42 UTC, the Total Terminal Difficulty 58750000000000000 was reached and the Beacon Chain was finally integrated with Ethereum’s mainnet. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, commented on the activation of The Merge with this statement: “And we have finalised! Happy merge everyone, this is a great moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel really proud today.”

The first epoch, i.e. the first packet of 32 blocks, of Ethereum 2.0 was finalised at 06:59. This was the litmus test that kept everyone in suspense. The finalisation of the first epoch confirmed that Ethereum 2.0 was working properly. The last block of Ethereum Proof-of-Work, number 15537393, was mined by the F2Pool mining pool, one of the first pools to deal with Bitcoin mining. The gas paid by the pool for the transaction was 29,991,429 gwei, which is the smallest unit of Ether (1 ETH consists of one billion gwei). The miner of the last PoW block included a message in Mandarin in the block itself: “七彩神仙鱼F!”, which translates to “Colourful Angelfish F!”. From then on, the miners were no longer responsible for the validation of Ethereum transactions. An NFT was created from ethereum’s last mined block and created for sale on OpenSea under the name ‘The Last POW Block’.

Celebrations for The Merge and the first NFT on Ethereum PoS

A few hours after the activation of The Merge, someone paid 36 ETH (the equivalent of $57,600) to ‘mine’ the first NFT on Ethereum 2.0. The non-fungible token represents a panda and some details of the state of the blockchain at the time it was created.

Why a panda? The animal became the symbol of The Merge because it was pictured as a combination of a white bear and a black bear. A few days ago, Sam Padilla, Google’s Web3 engineer, introduced a small easter egg in the search engine screens. When a user would search for ‘The Merge Ethereum’ or similar terms, the countdown for the update appeared alongside two little bears, one white and one black. As the countdown elapsed, they moved ever closer to each other. The timer was directly connected to the blockchain and updated in real time. From now on after the successful completion of the merge, a panda appears clutching the ETH symbol between its paws.

Beeple, the famous NFT artist, also paid homage to The Merge by posting his latest work depicting a giant Ethereum symbol on Twitter.

The crypto community’s reactions to The Merge

The crypto community exploded in comments and celebrations after the activation of The Merge. Here are some of them!

1. Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs, the founders of Bored Ape Yacht Club, the leading NFT collection built on Ethereum, wrote: “Congratulations to the entire Ethereum team on a successful merge. This is a historic moment for us and a big step in scaling Ethereum to its first billion users.” For Yuga Labs, it is crucial that Ethereum becomes a blockchain capable of handling a large volume of transactions simultaneously. Especially now that it is building Otherside, its Metaverse.

2. Tim Beiko, the spokesman for the developers of The Merge

‘We are done. It’s done. We merged. Holy s**t. Amazing work everyone!” was how Tim Beiko, one of the developers most involved in The Merge, commented on the success of the update.

https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1570307466075992064?s=20&t=cA8QX-T2r-DJp3y9dPCkgg

3.    Justin Sun, Charles Hoskinson, Emin Gun Sirer

Congratulations on the successful upgrade of Ethereum also came from competitors. Among them, congratulations came from the founders of Tron, Avalanche and Cardano.

         Charles Hoskinson, who was part of the core founders of Ethereum, recorded a video in which he explained that he wanted to take a moment to praise the hard work of the people who brought about this ‘historic moment’. According to Hoskinson, The Merge is the most complex thing ever achieved in the crypto sector. An example of scientific progress and a victory for all!

On the same wavelength, Emin Gün Sirer of Avalanche wrote that the Merge was: ‘a moment and a milestone to remember. Congratulations to the developers who navigated enormous technical complexity. You should be incredibly proud’.

What happened to the price of ETH after The Merge

In the minutes immediately following the activation of the update, the value of the cryptocurrency dropped slightly (by 0.4 per cent compared to the previous 24 hours). However, the price of ETH after The Merge remained essentially unchanged, hovering around $1,600.