Category: News

Immutable X is a layer-2 solution built on Ethereum, specialised for crypto gaming and NFTs. Find out all about the future of gaming!

Do you dream of playing video games like Skyrim or Fortnite but on the blockchain? Your dreams may soon become reality. Immutable X is a layer-2 blockchain built on Ethereum with low fees and no gas fees for NFT minting. Near-instant transactions and a marketplace with eye-catching graphics complete this ambitious project. The goal? To be the pioneers of crypto gaming and enable the development of games that rival the most renowned development houses. Find out what Immutable X is and how it works, and which video games are being developed on the crypto gaming blockchain!

What Immutable X is and how it works, the crypto gaming blockchain

Immutable X is a blockchain developed by gaming studio Immutable. Founded in 2018, the company released Gods Unchained, one of the first collectible card crypto games to achieve success. The video game was initially based on Ethereum, but Immutable soon realised that Buterin’s blockchain was not ideal for a crypto game. Gods Unchained is based on the continuous exchange of cards between players. Therefore, an efficient and low-commission blockchain was needed to incentivise players to buy and sell cards in the form of NFTs.

The solution? Immutable X, a layer-2 solution that employs the latest technological innovations to guarantee instant and cheap transactions. Unlike Ethereum, Immutable X uses a zero-knowledge rollup system. In short, transactions are not executed one at a time but in batches, which are approved by a smart contract. This system can support up to 9,000 transactions per second. The technology is easy to apply even for budding game developers, so it is popular with developers approaching blockchain. Immutable X’s ZKs allow NFT and crypto to be exchanged at lightning speed, and players can focus on having fun!

IMX is Immutable X’s utility token, an ERC-20 with various uses within the blockchain. There are 2 billion IMX, and they are used both to pay fees and to give incentives to developers and creators. IMX is also a governance token, and gives the right to vote on decisions affecting the blockchain for crypto gaming. The beta staking of IMX started on 1 July 2022 and will last until 30 July. In September there will be a second test of self-custodial staking (i.e. staking without intermediaries). Immutable X chose this approach as a consequence of recent events in which some CeFi platforms blocked their users’ withdrawals. According to the Immutable X team, with IMX self-custodial staking, no one can ever block withdrawals, because Immutable X tokens always remain in the user’s possession.

Immutable X and the NFT marketplace

NFT or non-fungible tokens is the technology that has made crypto gaming a reality. In fact, thanks to them, it is possible to guarantee the uniqueness of certain objects in a user’s possession and consequently their value.

To make the user experience as simple as possible, Immutable has decided to focus on an NFT marketplace integrated on the blockchain. Unlike Ethereum, NFTs on Immutable X do not require gas fees to be mined, incentivising players and developers to use the GameFi ecosystem. Transactions are immediate and without the long wait times that Vitalik Buterin’s blockchain has accustomed us to, and they also consume very little energy. Mining the 8 million NFT cards for Gods Unchained on Ethereum would have required 490,000 mWh of energy, while only 1,030 kWh were needed on Immutable X!

In addition, Immutable X aims to simplify the buying and selling of NFTs with a simple and attractive proprietary wallet. At the moment, the wallet of choice is the popular MetaMask, but the Australian crypto gaming blockchain company plans to create a wallet designed specifically for gamers and integrated with major credit cards and Immutable X’s NFT marketplace. This will allow you to get into the thick of the game in the blink of an eye, even if you are not an expert in crypto and blockchain. Simplicity is a key factor in making the crypto games of the future mainstream!

AAA crypto games to hit the blockchain

Immutable X’s commitment to creating an easy-to-use, player-centric ecosystem can be seen in the growing number of crypto games that choose it as their blockchain of choice. Illuvium and Ember Sword, two video games that promise to be a hit in the industry, have chosen Immutable X to support their game economy.

The company behind the crypto gaming blockchain has also decided to launch a $500 million fund for game developers. This money aims to support all those who want to help build the Web3 and increasingly affordable NFT platforms. Robbie Ferguson, CEO of Immutable, noted that the total value of the crypto gaming market is approaching $1 trillion! “This is just the tip of the iceberg in an industry with enormous potential,” said the company president.

Now you know what Immutable X is and how it works, get your joystick ready: crypto games that are no match for the likes of Skyrim or GTA are coming soon! Star Atlas, Illuvium, Ember Sword and many other games are in development and will be released soon. And if hunting for digital monsters is not enough for you, Immutable X’s NFT marketplace offers plenty of tokens for all tastes. The future of crypto gaming is already here!

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Ethereum mining comes to a stop with The Merge. Will miners be left unemployed by the switch to Proof-of-Stake?

ETH miners’ work to validate transactions and enable the blockchain to function will become irrelevant after The Merge – the upgrade that will lead to Ethereum becoming a Proof-of-Stake blockchain. The blockchain will function through the mechanism of staking. The change of consensus mechanism does not only have an impact on the performance and sustainability of the blockchain – putting a stop to Ethereum mining also means ending an industry worth $19 billion. What will ETH home-based or listed miners do? Here are the main likely scenarios.

The question of repurposing hardware for mining

The miners’ fate will depend mainly on whether they can convert the infrastructure and technical equipment that they used to mine Ethereum for new purposes. Ether miners can choose between two types of hardware, ASIC or GPU. 

ASIC (Application-specific Integrated Circuits) are designed to perform specific functions, in this case ETH mining , and are difficult to use for other activities or to mine other cryptos. 

GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), on the other hand, are more versatile processors used in other contexts, such as the classic graphics cards popular in the gaming industry, the field of artificial intelligence, and generally for any task that requires the processing of a large number of complex calculations. The market for GPUs has exploded and become very competitive since they are used to mine Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. The demand for this hardware has increased exponentially, and gaming or tech companies have been clashing and competing for GPUs with ETH miners. Last year, the crypto sector contributed about 14% of the total GPU turnover.

There is no certain data on how many people use GPUs vs how many use ASICs to mine Ethereum. According to one estimate, it’s about 90% vs 10%.

After The Merge, the ASICs that were previously used to mine Ethereum will only be able to mine Ethereum Classic – the blockchain that will continue the original 2015 Ethereum project. However, if this activity does not prove profitable, it is likely that all this hardware will be abandoned. On the other hand, however convertible they may be, the demand for GPUs will drop dramatically, reverting them back to their role of typical gaming devices. Let’s take a look at the four possible scenarios for ETH miners.

Mining alternative cryptocurrencies

One possible option for ETH miners is to continue mining, but only on other blockchains. This solution seems particularly attractive to smaller miners, who are sharing on Reddit their intention to continue mining by migrating elsewhere. According to WhatToMine, a site that indicates the most profitable cryptos to mine based on cost, the most attractive cryptos for ETH miners are Ravencoin (RVN) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). The problem is that these alternatives do not have as active and flourishing a market as Ethereum, and the risk is that mining will not be as profitable. Excluding Ethereum, the total market for GPU mining is $4.1 billion as of 9th June, which is about 2% of Ethereum’s market.

Potenza di calcolo: dal mining al cloud computing

For those engaged in large-scale Ethereum mining, The Merge could be a big loss considering the investment in mining hardware, power, and infrastructure such as warehouses and rooms to house the machines. With GPUs, these miners could choose to offer their computing power to cloud computing and data processing giants such as Amazon Web Service or the nascent Web3 realities, for blockchain infrastructure hosting, NFT storage or graphics rendering. After all, the demand for high-performance computing will increase more and more with the development and growth of video games, artificial intelligence and film animation. 

Laying the foundations for Web3

In a nutshell, Web3 refers to the new stage of the web in which the internet will be built on blockchain and decentralised. Web3 will require a basic structure capable of recreating the Internet as we know it now, but on open source protocols. This structure must enable activities such as video streaming, 2D and 3D object-rendering, and mass data storage. GPUs may come in use for this purpose – once Ethereum mining is over, will the miners devote themselves to building the Web3?

Goodbye Ethereum mining, hello staking

Lastly, one of the possible post-Merge options for ETH miners is to convert to staking ETH. Some miners might choose to continue validating blockchain transactions with a different consensus mechanism. Miners who have accumulated ETH over the years could decide to sell their GPUs and become network validators by staking at least 32 ETH or delegating their crypto to another node. In this way, the miners could continue to earn ETH while continuing to work in the second most important network in the entire crypto world. 

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Learn how to stake cryptocurrencies; what staking is for, which service to use and which tokens can be locked up in staking

Staking is a common crypto mechanism that permits the functioning of Proof-of-Stake blockchains. In fact, to achieve network consensus – which is necessary to validate transactions – these particular blockchains do not use an external source such as electricity or computational power, but, instead, they make use of internal resources, i.e. user guarantees. In other words, staking is first and foremost the basis of a blockchain’s validation mechanism. However, staking can also refer to the process of locking up cryptos to obtain rewards, without necessarily becoming a network’s validator. In this article, we will look at how to stake and all the options available to obtain rewards from cryptos.

What is staking for? 

People who choose to stake might have different goals. Some people stake to become a validator, while others lock up their cryptos only to obtain a reward, delegating to other users the task of transaction validating. Let’s take a look at the different types of staking: 

1. Staking cryptos to become a blockchain validator

The validating nodes of a blockchain are responsible for finalising the network transactions. Contrary to what happens in Proof-of-Work chains, no special technical equipment is needed to validate transactions  in Proof-of-Stake chains – it is sufficient to simply stake your crypto. In most cases, it is people or entities that already have some experience in the blockchain field who become validators. After staking a certain amount of cryptocurrencies, you have to open a node. This type of staking requires downloading a wallet that enables staking in the chain you want to become a node of, and staying online 24/7. Some blockchains also stipulate a minimum share of crypto to be staked, for example on Tezos it is 8,000 XTZ, on Ethereum 2.0 it will be 32 ETH. 

2. Delegating your stake

If you do not want to manage a validator node yourself, you can opt to delegate your stake to an existing node. Delegation is a convenient alternative if you want to participate in the consensus mechanism of a blockchain with a lower investment of time and money. When you delegate a node, the amount of cryptocurrency you have staked joins the node’s stake. This way, the validating node will also use your cryptocurrencies to contribute to the functioning of the network. The rewards obtained for the validation work are then distributed proportionally between the node and those who have delegated. You can delegate a node through platforms (decentralised or otherwise) that offer this service. 

3. Staking cryptos to take part in a blockchain’s governance 

In some cases, staking is used to let users participate in the governance of a blockchain. Whoever stakes a certain amount of crypto earns the right to vote on updates, improvements and the direction of the blockchain’s roadmap. This way, staking increases the decentralisation of a project’s decisions.

4. Locking up cryptos to get rewards

Cryptocurrency staking can also mean simply locking up your cryptocurrencies for a period of time in order to obtain rewards, calculated on an annual basis and expressed in APY. These rewards are the equivalent of what in traditional finance is called an annual percentage return. Locked cryptocurrencies cannot be traded or sold, until the end of the staking period selected. How can I take part in this type of staking? This option is particularly suitable for people who are not particularly familiar with the crypto sector because it does not require any technical expertise, all you need to do is find out about the third-party service you choose. Now let’s see where you can stake! 

Where can you stake?

You can choose different third-party services for staking cryptocurrencies – there are decentralised platforms, dapp, exchanges (centralised and not), as well as offline options such as external hardware.  

1. Staking via hardware 

Offline staking is called cold staking. In this type of staking, cryptocurrencies are locked up and stored in cold wallets, i.e. wallets that are not connected to the internet. Cold wallets can be hardware, paper wallets or offline applications. Cold staking is often used when locking up large amounts of crypto, and to avoid the potential risk of cyber attacks. This type of staking is highly secure, but the staking is managed autonomously, without third parties mediating. For this reason, you need to be familiar with the mechanisms. Even if they are offline, cryptocurrencies in cold wallets are always connected to the blockchain and rewards are earned as in online staking. 

2. Staking via a CEX or DEX

Exchanges are one of the most widely used services for online staking. Whether they are centralised or decentralised, exchanges always provide step-by-step guides on how to stake. Each exchange has its own peculiarities and they differ in the range of cryptos supported for staking and APYs. You can choose the one that best suits your needs. On Young Platform, you can stake cryptocurrencies through the Earning Wallet feature. At the moment, you can lock up three different cryptos for a period of your choice and get a reward, which is calculated as a percentage of the amount you decide to stake. 

3. Staking Pools: decentralised protocols and dapps

There are also many decentralised protocols and dapps that offer different staking opportunities. For example, you can lock cryptocurrencies up in Staking Pools, i.e. smart contracts or features that aggregate stakes of different users. Staking pools are usually used by blockchain nodes to increase the size of their stakes and thus the probability of being chosen as validators. Furthermore, DeFi protocols and platforms also offer options for Derivative Staking and Liquid Staking, in which rewards are earned through derivative products.  

Staking NFTs

Staking doesn’t end at coins or tokens – the latest frontier of decentralised finance also includes NFT staking. This works in a similar way to traditional staking – you lock up your non-fungible tokens on special platforms to obtain rewards in crypto. Not all NFTs are suitable for this practice. Moonbirds, by the startup Proof, is a collection that has implemented a staking feature. Staking NFTs allows people to maximise their digital artwork and in some cases participate in the governance of their projects. 

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Which 5 cryptocurrencies to stake in 2022? Find out the most used! 

Staking is a typical feature of the crypto industry that involves locking up some coins or tokens for a certain period of time to obtain a reward. The actual purpose of this process is to participate in the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism of a blockchain. In fact, staking helps achieve network consensus and validate all transactions in a decentralised and secure manner. Everyone can stake cryptocurrencies and there are indeed many ways to do it – you can read the guide here. But which cryptos can you lock up? Here are 5 cryptocurrencies to stake in 2022.

1. Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is the leading network in terms of staking volumes, and after the definitive switch to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, ETH staking will become an increasingly important and widespread practice. As is often the case, ETH can be staked in various ways and with various aims. You can stake your ETH in four different ways: ‘solo home staking’, ‘staking as a service’, ‘pooled staking’ and ‘centralised exchange’.

1. Solo home staking

You use your ETH to open a validator node yourself. This is the type of staking that requires more effort, some technical skills and full control of your own funds. It requires a minimum lockable amount of 32 ETH and a constant internet connection.

2. Staking as a Service

You have 32 ETH available but do not want to manage a node on your own? You can delegate them to an existing validator node. Your ETH remain yours (and thus you earn staking rewards) but at the same time they are used by a node as a stake needed for the validation mechanism. This type of staking is not available directly within the Ethereum protocol, you need to use third party services.

3. Pooled Staking

You can delegate your staked ETH to validator nodes also through dapps’ staking pools or protocols (decentralised or centralised). The difference with staking pools is that you can also delegate small amounts of crypto less than 32 ETH.

4. Staking in centralised exchanges

You can stake ETH on centralised exchanges. This is one of the easiest ways to do it, and it’s suitable for inexperienced people as well. On Young Platform, you can try staking ETH through the Earning Wallet feature. 

2. Polkadot (DOT)

Polkadot’s consensus mechanism is a variant of the standard PoS and is called Nominated Proof-of-Stake. On Polkadot, users who own DOT (called nominators) delegate their stakes to the nodes they deem most deserving and earn rewards based on the performance of the validator they have chosen. Validators and nominators receive equal rewards that are not proportional to the size of the stake, as in other protocols. On Polkadot, you can unlock your stake whenever you want, but your cryptos will be unlocked and return to your full possession after 28 days. This ‘nomination’ mechanism incentivises users and validators to behave honestly: users who behave well are rewarded, those who behave badly are turned away and the network remains secure.

3. Solana (SOL)

Among the top 5 cryptocurrencies to stake in 2022 is SOL, the Solana coin. This blockchain also makes use of a Proof-of-Stake mechanism – there are currently 1,746 validators on Solana to ensure the functioning and security of the network. If you want to stake SOL directly on the network, you can check out the rewards on their website. Rewards are calculated and distributed once per epoch (a period of about 2 days) and issued to all validators and delegators in the first block of the next epoch.

4. Avalanche (AVAX) 

As time goes by, Avalanche is seemingly proving to be a viable alternative to Ethereum. Over the past year it has received a lot of funding from VCs and has not been afraid to use it to expand its ecosystem and improve its structure. The rewards for staking on Avalanche average 9.23% per year. In contrast to other platforms, staked tokens are never subject to the risk of slashing, i. e. the loss of the stake as a result of unfair actions against the network. You can check the total amount of AVAX in staking, rewards, validators and delegators.

5. Cardano (ADA)

Cardano has a constantly growing ecosystem and its native dapps are among the most innovative around. The network works thanks to ADA staking, through validator nodes and delegating users. Cardano’s Ouroboros protocol chooses a validator based on the size of the stake it holds. Therefore, nodes with more staked ADA will have more chances to add a new block to Cardano and obtain the rewards. You can work out your staking rewards. Remember, though, that the rewards depend on many factors such as the validators performance, the number of validated blocks and, in general, possible changes in the network. 

The most popular cryptos for staking in 2022

Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche and Polkadot are therefore the most widely used cryptocurrencies for staking in 2022. Specifically, Ethereum has a staking marketcap (i.e. the dollar value of all its staked tokens) of 22 billion USD, Cardano and Solana of 15 billion, Avalanche of 6 billion and Polkadot of 5 billion. This tells us about how widely these blockchains are used, but the most interesting data is the estimated percentage of rewards that can be received by staking directly on the relevant blockchain (the data is variable – these percentages are relevant to the time the article was written). Among these 5 cryptos, the highest percentage is achieved by Polkadot (13.98%), then Avalanche (8.8%), Cardano (4.98%), Solana (4.73%) and Ethereum (4.14%).  The list of the top 5 cryptocurrencies for staking in 2022 ends here, now find out about all the relevant opportunities on Young Platform!

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What are DOT and KSM used for? The second day of Polkadot Decoded focusses on Polkadot use cases in everyday life

The second and final day of the Dotsama ecosystem conference took place on 30 June. While the first day of Polkadot Decoded dealt with DeFi, gaming and Metaverse, the most talked about topics on the second day were the sustainability and usability of Web3. Let’s take a look at the most interesting speeches that attempted to answer the question: what is the network of DOT and KSM actually for?

Fighting climate change with Polkadot

One of the strands of the second day of Polkadot Decoded was sustainability. In particular, two speeches described the most interesting projects in the green efforts of the Dotsama ecosystem. Climate change is one of the hottest topics of these years and blockchain could be an important tool to combat it. Miroslav Polzer, speaker of the NFT Digital Art 4 Climate project, spoke about the potential of ‘digital innovation’ for a real and measurable impact on climate problems. This digital art project is an initiative to transform art into digital assets freely exchangeable on blockchain, directing the proceeds towards the sustainability goals identified by the United Nations. Digital Art 4 Climate chose to use NFT technology because blockchain has all the credentials to “improve inefficient supply chains, and give a new idea of communication to communities through decentralised technology”. 

Two other natives of this ecosystem expressed their mission to make Polkadot a leader in sustainable innovation. Bitgreen and Sequester together put forward the proposal to convert the micro-fees of parachains into carbon credits. Sequester’s Brendan Edelson explained that parachains are fee-optional. In a nutshell, the relay chain provides Polkadot parachains with its validators for at least 2 years, so theoretically to validate parachain transactions there is no need to pay fees. In reality, there are micro-fees that the parachains have implemented for security reasons. However, these small fees are not a cost to be covered, Sequester’s proposal is to use them to buy carbon credits through Bitgreen’s marketplace.

Adam Carver of Bitgreen cited Polygon as a virtuous example of combating emissions, even though Polkadot already has an advantage in this mission because its energy footprint is minimal, the intention is to make the ecosystem not only neutral but also positive, taking concrete action and becoming part of the solution to the environmental problem. In this project, Sequester will calculate micro fees, exchange them into carbon credits, and issue a certification in the form of NFTs.

The spread of the Web3 depends on its value in everyday life

What is the use of the DOT and KSM ecosystem? Another use case of the network concerns the facilitation of access to Web3, a decentralised reality, without the control of large technology industries. However, Web2 still has one major advantage over the decentralised web: usability. Although Web3 has many plus points, it is still difficult to use and it is reserved for a small niche of experts. However, according to Agyle, the anonymously-identified CEO of the Talisman Wallet Project, the Web3’s lack of usability is only a small part of its deployment problems. One of the main issues with Web3 is that many projects have no real use in real life. Indeed, a favourite argument of blockchain detractors is that ‘it is a technology that solves a problem that does not exist’.

At Polkadot Decoded, Agyle explained that the user experience certainly needs to improve but the real challenge is to give Web3 value and usefulness in everyday life. Because if a tool is really useful, people will also make that extra effort to learn how to use it. If a service is both useless and difficult to understand, it is doomed to fail. What is Talisman’s contribution in terms of usefulness? Talisman aims to be a ‘universal login’ for Dotsama’s multichain system (which is called Paraverse). On Talisman you can manage all the passwords, keys, logins of your apps on the DOT and KSM network.

Web3 Google? On Polkadot!

A simple definition of Web3 is ‘an internet of blockchains’. If we think of everything we do on the internet, searching for information is one of the major activities. The blockchain, however, does not particularly lend itself to being ‘queried’: it records all the data on the Web3, but users would have to go through it block by block to find a specific piece of information. To overcome this problem, the blockchain is integrated with knowledge graphs, which organise all data (on chain and off chain) and make them available for consultation, guaranteeing their reliability. For example, knowledge graphs can be asked about NFTs or smart contracts. OriginTrail, from August on Polkadot, deals precisely with this combination of collecting information on blockchain and organising it with knowledge graphs.

The Web3 content landscape now looks like an iceberg, there is little afloat but in the future there will be more and more data and information to record. In this respect, a project must prepare itself to answer users’ questions. How does OriginTrail work? It has a layer 1 token composed of multiple blockchains (Ethereum, Gnosis, Polygon and soon Polkadot), on which are built layer 2 tokens, composed of knowledge graphs. On this latter structure, it will then be possible to build dapps, which exploit the features of both layers. One of the current applications of OriginTrail is in the field of pharmaceutical supply chains that follow the production and distribution of drugs in order to combat theft.

The PolkaOscars, the final event of Polkadot Decoded

Icing on the cake? At the end of the second day of Polkadot Decoded, a very special event took place: the Polkaoscars! During the ceremony held in Berlin, awards were presented to the content creators who contributed to raising awareness of Polkadot and Kusama’s vision and mission. The prize, a cute figurine, was created in the Metaverse and printed with a 3D printer.

Content creators, ambassadors and community leaders: active members on all social networks to build a solid community that shares the same vision as Polkadot and Kusama. Among the ambassadors is Irina Karagyaur, one of the minds behind the Digital Art 4 Climate project, who encouraged everyone to follow in their footsteps. “We need all of you to grow the ecosystem,” she said on stage.

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From the first day of Polkadot Decoded, the annual conference dedicated to Gavin Wood’s network, the latest news from the parachains for Web3!

The third edition of Polkadot Decoded is taking place these days (29-30 June 2022) in 4 locations around the world: Berlin, Buenos Aires, Hangzhou and New York. The event is dedicated to the presentation and discovery of the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems with talks by all those who are building on this network. The talks and topics were voted on by the community, in the full spirit of decentralisation! During the first day, some of the Polkadot and Kusama parachains (the Dotsama ecosystem, to use the affectionate name invented by the community) took the stage to address a topic of common interest: the decentralisation of the Internet. This is what happened at Polkadot Decoded, the Web3 event!

How does Polkadot work?

Before we get into Polkadot Decoded and go over what happened during the Web3 event, let’s review how Polkadot works and how its network is structured. Polkadot, considered one of the most interoperable blockchains in the crypto landscape, is a network composed of a collection of different blockchains. Polkadot’s aim is to make blockchain technology scalable by providing a large set of chains, each of them specific to an application. Polkadot’s network is highly scalable precisely because its chains finalise transactions simultaneously and in parallel. There are two types of blockchain: relay chains and parachains. The former is the heart of Polkadot, providing security and coordinating the entire network structure. Parachains, on the other hand, are the chains with specific applications, connected to the relay chain and customisable. In this system, DOT, Polkadot’s native cryptocurrency, serves to pay fees, participate in governance and connect the parachains to the relay chain according to the bonding mechanism. To become a Polkadot parachain, the various projects participate in auctions. Polkadot’s expansion and development increasingly depends on the wealth and innovation of its parachains. Kusama, on the other hand, is Polkadot’s so-called canary network, i.e. a testing and experimentation chain.

Acala, Polkadot’s defi hub

Winner of the first Polkadot parachain auction, Acala has been online since 18 December 2021. Since its conception, Acala’s network has been conceived as a ‘dapp store of decentralised finance’, and after a few months of operation, its projects maintain this specialisation. Acala is a parachain designed for DeFi, a stablecoin, dapp and liquid staking services have been developed on it. Acala USD (aUSD) is Polkadot’s native stablecoin pegged to the dollar. It is decentralised and backed by cryptocurrencies such as DOT and KSM. aUSD is Acala’s flagship product and aims to become the stablecoin of choice for DeFi in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem. Dan Reecer, from the Acala team, explained during his speech at Polkadot Decoded how, in the future, Acala’s role will be the gateway to Web3 and DeFi for the masses and companies. To do this, dapp on Acala will have to respond to the needs and problems of the off-chain world. The network itself will offer decentralised and hybrid services for companies and institutions that want to evolve from Web2. Thus, services designed to meet KYC and AML needs as well. Among the interesting and developing projects mentioned by Reecer are Pike, Alluvial and Project Venkman.

Pike is a lending, yield farming and financial services platform for Polkadot-Kusama tokens. On the other hand, Alluvial provides liquid staking services for companies and institutions, while Project Venkman will enable loyalty programmes on blockchain, converting points into ERC-20 tokens. Project Venkman recently collaborated with actor Bill Murray to produce 1,000 collectible NFTs based on his career.

Astar: shaking up the Web3

On the main stage of Polkadot Decoded in Berlin, Hoon Kim, CTO of Astar, another of the parachains that won the first auction together with Acala, also spoke. Kim started his speech with the assumption that the entire Web3 today is stagnant and not growing for at least 6 reasons:

1. tribalism whereby each team believes that its blockchain will be the definitive one, capable of rendering the others obsolete;
2. People stay away from blockchain technologies because they are perceived as too difficult or incomprehensible;
3. Everyone works on the same things, there are no original, fresh ideas;
4. Web3 projects are based on often ineffective business models, such as token sales and ICOs, which, according to Kim, are only functional in the launch phase of a project but do not guarantee a constant incentive;
5. Little interoperability and communication;
6. Lack of safety standards.

Astar seeks to bring solutions to these Web3 difficulties, specifically in the aspects of interoperability and how to incentivise blockchain projects. In this regard, Astar offers dapp staking in which users can block their tokens on their favourite decentralised applications and earn tokens for developers. The mechanism is similar to the staking of validators in the Nominated Proof-of-Stake. In this way, it is the people who evaluate the best projects, encouraging the growth of useful dapps. According to Kim, usefulness is still not considered a parameter for measuring success. There are too many projects on the Web3 that are photocopies of something that already exists and do not fulfil a real need. With dapp staking, the most appreciated projects can be financially rewarded and continue their work supported by the community.

Web3 and gaming on Ajuna Network

Ajuna is a decentralised gaming platform developed on Polkadot and Kusama. As explained by Nicholas Douzinas, CBO and Co-Founder, Ajuna’s focus is on actively listening to players. If you want to build video games on the Web3, you cannot overlook the potential of the community, which is not made up of passive consumers (as is the case in most traditional video games) but of co-creators. Ajuna, by listening to the voice of users, realised that engagement is provided by a curated user experience and gameplay. The flagship game coming soon to Ajuna is Dotmog, set in the universe of the Mogwais, an ancient alien species.

Momentum: a practical Metaverse for workers

With its founder Chrisel Sieling, Polkadot Decoded was also presented with Momentum, a Metaverse on Dotsama active from the 24th of May 2022. For Sieling, the Metaverse must have a purpose and serve a purpose: ‘the metaverse is bullshit if you are not solving a problem’. The goal of Momentum is to create a digital space in which group work can be done in a simple and intuitive way.

What ‘gaming’ metaverses such as Decentraland or The Sandbox lack is the ability to work together remotely. Momentum offers office features such as video calling, chat and screen sharing. Sieling explained that metaverses exploded along with and after the Covid-19 pandemic, in response to the need to meet and collaborate in 3D from home, but not all of them actually met this second need. Momentum is perfect, however, for hosting hackathons and training programmes.

Polkadot Decoded continues tomorrow, stay tuned to the Young Platform blog for updates and news from Polkadot and Kusama’s Web3 event!

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