Today, if you are signed up to a Club, you will receive a voucher to redeem a credit on Unstoppable Domains. Go Web3!
Today, the 31st of October, starting at 17:30 (UTC), the distribution of Unstoppable Domains vouchers via email will begin to those who are already signed up to the Clubs.
Please note: vouchers will take between 48 and 72 hours to be sent to both subscribed and new subscribers.
If you are not yet in any Clubs, you have until 11.30 a.m. (UTC) on 28th of November to sign up and automatically receive your voucher within 48 hours. Find out more about the Clubs.
Below are the voucher amounts according to your Club level:
Bronze: $60
Silver: $70
Gold: $90
Platinum: $110
If you’re in a Club but can’t find the voucher email, check your spam folders and see if Young Platform addresses are blocked from your inbox: [email protected] and [email protected]
Don’t know what we are talking about? We announced this new advantage for clubs in this article.
What should I do now that I have a voucher?
The first thing to do is to create an Unstoppable account and redeem the voucher for credit.
It is important to do this now because all vouchers expire on the 29th of November.
After redeeming the voucher, the credit must also be used as soon as possible.
The credit will expire 90 days after you redeem it.
To purchase a Web3 Domain using the credit applied to the account, follow this guide.
The story of the million-dollar sale of the Crypto.com internet domain tells of the importance of having a recognisable name on the web!
To those of us who use the Internet on a daily basis, the decisive role of Internet domains may escape your attention. Between the late 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, domains were the subject of real speculation. In even more recent times, the sale of certain addresses has reached astronomical figures. Such is the case of the Crypto.com domain, registered in the 1990s and resold for millions of dollars in 2018. The story of the million-dollar sale of the Internet domain Crypto.com providesmuch food for thought on the importance of identity on the Web!
‘Crypto.com’ is not the real name of the exchange
You may not know that ‘Crypto.com’ is not the original name of the well-known centralised cryptocurrency exchange. The company was founded in Hong Kong in 2016 by Bobby Bao, Gary Or, Kris Marszalek and Rafael Melo. Itwas created under the name ‘Monaco’. Only a few years later, in 2018, the exchange was renamed ‘Crypto.com’, thanks to the purchase of the rights to the internet domain of the same name. The company spent a huge amount of money to obtain this domain, fighting with the previous owner who for many years refused any offer. How much was Crypto.com bought for? The negotiation has always remained secret, but the estimated figure is between 5 and 10 million dollars.
Who was the owner of the Internet domain Crypto.com?
The first owner of the Crypto.com domain was Matt Blaze, a professor and cryptography researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, who registered it in 1993 atthe beginning of his academic career. Blaze had deposited the domain for free at thetime, because it was not until 1995 that the organisation that managed the Domain Name System (DNS) decided to monetise domain registration. Blaze used the domain Crypto.com as the address of his personal cryptography-themed blog in which he shared resources and tried to dispel the myth that cryptography is a business for criminals. As early as 2000, a company called ‘Crypto.Com, Inc’, which dealt in encrypted communication services, made the first proposal to buy the domain owned by Blaze. But it was only with the cryptocurrency boom, around 2016, that Blaze was inundated with offers for Crypto.com. However, the professor never intended to give up his valuable domain, stating repeatedly and publicly that Crypto.com was not for sale.
Crypto.com,a valuable internet domain (for many reasons)
Throughout its history, Crypto.com has proved to be a valuable domain because it is unique and capable of communicating a precise identity, that of the cryptocurrency world. Anyone who uses it will immediately be associated with the sector it represents.
The Crypto.com domain was so coveted that a potential buyer came to Blaze’s office at the university, begging the professor to accept his offer.
For anyone else trying to contact me for this reason, don't bother. Not for sale. https://t.co/S8yKT4J5IF
But why did Blaze so strongly oppose the sale of the Crypto.com domain? Again, the question of identity returns. In a nutshell Blaze argued that the domain should refer to a cryptography project and not a cryptocurrency project, since the original meaning of ‘crypto’ relates to the former semantic field. Blaze criticised the use of the term ‘crypto’ to refer to cryptocurrencies; ‘crypto’ originated as an abbreviation of ‘cryptography’ and not ‘cryptocurrency’. The professor did not want to fuel the association of cryptography with cryptocurrencies, which he personally has always viewed with suspicion and little connection to cryptography.
In support of this thesis, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist with expertise in hacking and cybersecurity, also spoke out in 2017. Franceschi-Bicchierai showed how on Google News or according to vocabulary, ‘crypto’ referred to cryptography. “Think, for example, of the term ‘crypto wars’ (‘Crypto Wars’), which refers to government (originally the US) efforts to undermine and slow down the adoption of unbreakable communication systems”. The journalist’s contribution also includes a statement by Emin Gün Sirer (who had not yet founded Avalanche) in which he explained that cryptography in cryptocurrencies is an ‘ancillary’ element and that the real innovation is the use of blockchains as consensus mechanisms and distributed systems.
This was the case in 2017, but now the situation is definitely reversed. Language has evolved and searching for ‘crypto’ on Google means coming across content and information exclusively related to the world of Bitcoin&Co. Today in dictionaries, the first meaning is ‘abbreviation for cryptocurrency’, only the second is ‘relating to crypto’.
I think calling cryptocurrencies "crypto" is a poor choice, with bad consequences for both cryptography and cryptocurrencies. That doesn't mean I'm some kind of language prescriptivist, and your saying that "language evolves" or other such prattle doesn't invalidate my concerns.
Suddenly, however, in 2018 Blaze writes on his blog: ‘over the past few years I have received a growing series of offers, many of them obviously not serious, but some of them frankly attention-grabbing, for the Crypto.com domain. I ignored most of them, but it became increasingly clear that keeping the domain made less and less sense for me. Earlier this year, I entered into confidential discussions with some serious potential buyers. Last month, I reached an agreement to sell the domain.
The cryptographer Blaze had actually sold the Crypto.com domain to cryptocurrency exchange Monaco for a few million dollars. After the purchase, the former company ‘Monaco’ implemented the rebranding operation to become ‘Crypto.com’ as we know it now. The case of Crypto.com is just one of many examples of how important a domain name can be in the identity of a brand. Being recognisable on the Internet, with the most appropriate name, becomes a (million-dollar) business matter. The Hong Kong exchange’s operation has ensured that its brand is directly identified with its product, crypto.
Many other crypto-themed domains have had asimilar history to Crypto.com and have passed into the hands of companies in the industry. Among these Internet domains are Tokens.com sold for $500,000, Cryptoworld.com for $195,000, Eth.com for $2 million and Bitcoinwallet.com for $250,000.
Many benefits are coming to the Young Platform Clubs. Today, we reveal the first one: Unstoppable Domains
Unstoppable Domains is a solution for Web3 domains, also called NFT domains. If you don’t know what it is about, it is a very interesting trend and we have touched on the topic in recent Academy articles:
Learn about NFT Domains, what they are for and how to use them
If you too are now all about Web3 domains; the good news is that from today, you will also have access to this technology on Young Platform thanks to two new features.
New feature on Young Platform Web for Unstoppable Domains
Thanks to a dedicated integration, it is now possible to search and purchase Web3 domains from Unstoppable Domains directly from the desktop version of Young Platform.
How does it work? As of today, the 26th October, you can explore Unstoppable’s offer directly from the Home section on the web version of the exchange. In addition, crypto withdrawals to Unstoppable domains have been activated, as they function exactly like wallet addresses.
The search and purchase functionality of your Web3 domain is only available on desktop, because it is certainly more convenient to make such a purchase while sitting at your computer rather than on a small mobile device. Read the guide.
But don’t be in a hurry to buy your first domain on blockchain, because in a few days, unmissable promotions will be underway!
New benefit for Clubs
This will be a temporary, one-time benefit. By joining (or remaining) in a Club from the 31st of October to the 28th of November you will receive a free Unstoppable Domains voucher by email. You can apply this voucher to your Unstoppable account to purchase a Web3 domain at a bargain price.
Naturally, the higher your Club level, the greater the credit given to you by the voucher will be.
If you are already in a Club and are interested in a coveted domain, you may want to increase your Club membership level for higher credit. The Club you joined on the 31st of October will count.
On the other hand, those joining clubs for the first time will receive credit according to the first club they join between the 31st of October and 28th of November.
Once you have your voucher, stay in the Club to get access to all the other benefits. We have great news in store!
How to prepare for a voucher
1) First of all, make sure that you have a working email address and that you receive emails from Young Platform correctly, as this is how you will receive your voucher. To do this, check that the addresses [email protected] and [email protected] are accepted in your mailbox, and that they do not end up in spam or get blocked. Contact support in case of problems.
2) If you are not yet a Club member, you can start purchasing the YNGs required for membership.
If you are already part of a Club, you have less than a week to make a deposit and purchase the YNGs needed to increase your benefits level by the 31st of October. We always remind you that these YNG are not spent, but locked until you decide to unsubscribe. Find out more about Clubs.
3) Inform yourself with the articles dedicated to NFT domains and Web3 on the Academy and Blog, to discover all the opportunities you will have access to by participating in this advantageous event.
The golden rule: everyone is only entitled to one voucher.
This is a unique opportunity and we can’t wait to get started!
Which latest projects won Polkadot’s parachain auction? There are four of them and they will be active in the Relay Chain from October 2022. Find out what they are all about!
Almost a year after the launch of the first parachain auctions on Polkadot, the Dotsama (Polkadot + Kusama) ecosystem is experiencing the peak of its technological development. According to GitHub data, more than 500 programmers per day were working on Polkadot’s infrastructure in September 2022. Polkadot’s developers, together with those of Ethereum and Cosmos, are the most active in the industry. At the end of September, the Polkadot team released an updated roadmap presenting upcoming features, including the launch of paratherads, i.e. blockchains that pay for the use of Polkadot’s Relay Chain without participating in auctions. In total, 30 auctions have taken place already and there are 27 active parachains on Polkadot (41 on Kusama). Let’s look at the four projects that won the auctions for Polkadot parachains between the end of August and the beginning of October 2022.
Polkadot still has the largest active developer ecosystem outside Ethereum, with almost 3x more weekly commits than the next largest ecosystem according to @MessariCrypto.
Shout out to the devs that actively contribute to making Polkadot's multichain vision for Web3 a reality. pic.twitter.com/r9lNDwZJk0
Parachain auctions on Polkadot are ‘sales’ of slots on the Relay Chain. Polkadot is a multichain ecosystem that offers its infrastructure to build blockchains with specific use cases. Projects that win one of the slots can develop their own blockchain idea using the core network for the consensus mechanism and security, becoming parachains for all intents and purposes. These are ‘candlestick’ auctions, i.e. auctions that end at a random time during a period of about a week. At the end of the auction, the project that has collected the most DOT, the Polkadot coin, wins. To participate in the auctions, various projects bid by locking in DOT (bonding) collected internally within the project or through crowdloans among the community. The slots on Polkadot last for a maximum of 2 years (96 weeks). After the end of the period, the DOTs in bonding are released and are made available again to the project that had initially blocked them.
1. Aventus Network
Aventus Network won the 26th auction for Polkadot parachains by raising 200,000 DOT (approximately $1.2 million). It is a blockchain founded in 2016 with the aim of making decentralised services on Polkadot and Ethereum accessible to companies that want to include them in their customer offerings. Aventus Network thus proposes the development of NFTs, video games, loyalty programmes, event tickets, and supply chain management. One of the projects already using Aventus Network to manage its tokenomics and blockchain transactions is FruitLabs, the social network for gamers. On FruitLabs, gamers get PIP token rewards when they share their gameplay.
For too long, the world of #eSports and content creation has favoured platforms, not gamers 🎮
We solve this problem with a play-to-earn model, making gaming more equitable by putting players first 💪
The winner of Polkadot’s 27th parachain auction was Watr, a blockchain that wants to introduce a method to market a ‘new class of ethical commodities’. By definition a ‘commodity’ is a raw material e.g. oil, coal, sugar. Watr was created to make commodity trading ethical and tracked via blockchain. The services this new parachain wants to offer are the tokenisation of non-digital assets (real world) and management of production chains. Watr’s project is still in its infancy: the whitepaper is in the works these days as well as the tokenomics of their WATR token. The mainnet is scheduled to launch in January 2023. To win its slot, Watr raised 125,224 DOT ($778,893) at auction.
3. OAK Network
OAK Network, with OAK standing for On-chain Autonomous Kernel, is the winning parachain of the 28th auction with 149,998 DOT in bonding ($932,990). OAK Network’s target sector is DeFi. Specifically, the project wants to build tools for ‘event driven’ automated payments and trading: ‘one of the great opportunities of blockchain technology is the concept of “programmable money”. The ability for entrepreneurs to create, trade and use digital assets globally will likely have the same impact as when people were able to create and consume information globally through the web’. According to the OAK team, this opportunity is not adequately exploited because “today most transactions on the blockchain are simple one-off events”. What OAK is aiming for is to create a DeFi hub to enable buying and selling transactions at certain prices or events as well as recurring transactions. In a nutshell, it is about creating tools for automated trading. Before offering itself as a parachain on Polkadot, OAK network tested its chain with the Turing Network project, a parachain on Kusama.
4. Bitgreen
The fourth new project that will be operational on Polkadot from October is Bitgreen. Already from its name, you can guess the distinct environmental vocation of this parachain. Bitgreen wants to offer itself to NGOs and Web3 projects to support important sustainability initiatives on topics such as renewable energy, forest conservation and the development and support of local communities. For example, Bitgreen enables the creation and trading of carbon credits.
Together with Sequester, another project that aims to provide tools to minimise the environmental impact of the Dotsama ecosystem, Bitgreen suggested to turn the parachains’ micro-fees into carbon credits. This initiative aims not only to make Polkadot’s ecosystem neutral but also positive in terms of its environmental footprint.
Bidding for the Polkadot No. 30 parachain auction is active from the 18th of October (17:53 UTC) for approximately five days. The winning project will win a slot on the Relay Chain usable from the 20th of November 2022 to the 25th of September 2024.
Do Kwon maintains that the charges against him are invalid and that LUNA was never a scam but only a failure
Following the collapse of the Terra blockchain, its crypto LUNA and its algorithmic stablecoin UST ; the founder of the entire ecosystem, Do Kwon was charged by the South Korean government for violating the Financial Services Commission’s Capital Markets Act. An international arrest warrant has been issued in this regard and Do Kwon’s whereabouts remain unknown at the moment. What happened to the Terra founder after these accusations? Complaining about the misinformation and over-politicisation of the case, Kwon gave crypto journalist Laura Shin an interview on the 18th October 2022. He recounts his defence against the charges and explains his reasons.
What happened after the LUNA collapse: charges and arrest warrants
After Terraform Labs and Do Kwon were accused of violating South Korea’s financial markets law, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office obtained an arrest warrant in September 2022 for Kwon, who had been living in Singapore since after the collapse of LUNA and UST. A few days later, the Singapore police stated that the crypto entrepreneur was no longer in the city-state and his whereabouts have since been untraceable. As a result, it was reported that Do Kwon was a fugitive. Subsequently, Kwon also received a ‘red notice’ from Interpol, i.e. an international arrest warrant asking local law enforcement agencies to locate and provisionally detain a person and make him available to the judicial authority that originally requested the arrest.
Do Kwon’s defence argues that the Financial Markets Act can only be applied to securities, and LUNA as a cryptocurrency is not legally a security. The accusation would therefore be unfounded, because Kwon and his company would not have done anything illegal. A spokesperson for Terraform Labs explained to the Wall Street Journal how South Korean prosecutors had broadened the definition of ‘security’ in response to public pressure over the bankruptcy of UST and LUNA, which has since been renamed ‘LUNA Classic‘: ‘We believe, as do most in the industry, that LUNA Classic is not, and never has been, a security, despite changes in interpretation that Korean financial officials may have adopted recently’.
What happened to Do Kwon, the founder of Terra?
To sum up, after the charges and various arrest warrants, Do Kwon:
Claims that the charges brought against him by South Korea are invalid since there is no real crypto regulation in the country;
Did not respond to the Interpol arrest warrant because he says he never received it in person;
Confirms that he is not a fugitive;
Reiterated that he had not set up any scam and that LUNA and UST were a failed market experiment;
Took full responsibility for thematter and apologised to the holders and supporters of the project.
Let’s look at these points specifically.
Where is Do Kwon?
In this delicate situation, Do Kwon unexpectedly gave an interview on the 18th of October with the aim of shedding light on the events and challenging some false information. This is the second time that Do Kwon has publicly exposed himself after the more than $40 billion collapse. The interviewer is Laura Shin, a crypto journalist who edits the podcast “Unchained” and recently published the book “The Cryptopians”, from which a TV series is to be made by producers Playground Entertainment.
The interview can be divided into two parts, the first focusing on the political and judicial events involving the founder of Terra, and the second on the technical aspects of the collapse of UST.
During the interview, Kwon reiterated the issue of ‘securities’, suggesting that the accusations by South Korea’s Financial Services Commission are not lawful and not even within their jurisdiction. In Kwon’s view, the case of the crypto LUNA is just a pretext to regulate the market by exploiting a moment of crisis. After all, he pointed out, there is no clarity among governments around the world on the issue: are cryptos securities?
Asked by Shin why he had not responded to the arrest warrant, Kwon explained that he had never personally seen this document and that news of his arrest warrant had only reached him through the media, and with contradictory reports. On the issue of ‘absconding’, Kwon repeated what he had already expressed in a tweet, namely that he is not hiding but does not want to reveal his whereabouts for security reasons. Since May 2022, Do Kwon received ‘visits’ and attempted break-ins at both his Singapore and Seoul residences from people embittered by the collapse of Terra. Therefore his whereabouts remain a mystery also to protect his family and associates. This is why Kwon has neither confirmed nor denied that he is in Singapore at the moment, while assuring that he is not a fugitive and is not making efforts to escape. Among other things, Kwon is not worried about losing his Singapore passport.
Shin led the discussion on the reasons behind the failure of the UST algorithmic stablecoin, asking whether the algorithm was in fact insufficient to maintain the peg to the dollar. Do Kwon replied that the algorithm was fully functional and that in designing UST, the Luna Foundation Guard had never taken on the role of ‘market maker‘ to defend the stablecoin peg. However, its intervention had only been necessary on a few occasions. At one point Bitcoin reserves were used to bridge the volatility of UST. Kwon pointed out that Bitcoin (and Avalanche) purchases prior to the collapse had the sole purpose of making UST backed by all the large and promising cryptocurrencies.
For Kwon, the algorithmic stablecoin failed not because of the algorithm but because the economic system that supported it was not sufficiently robust.
Between the 7th and 8th of May 2022, when UST slowly started to lose its peg, Kwon didn’t think it was a big problem because stablecoins develop through cycles, and time would solve the problem. In the following days, he decided to use LFG funds to buy UST (buy-back) but in the meantime the price of LUNA dropped dramatically because people started to panic sell.
Kwon explained that, at the moment, the distribution of the LUNA 2.0 tokens is not proceeding as planned because the LFG is unable to dispose of its digital assets due to the ongoing process. He has no idea when the situation might be unblocked, Kwon is keen to emphasise that this is not a ‘refund’. Terra’s project has never been like a shop that provided goods in exchange for money and was ready to refund if it did not work out. Shin asked whether Kwon’s personal funds could help compensate for the losses and he replied that they would not be enough to make up the difference.
The intentions and regrets of Terra’s founder
Do Kwon, urged by his interviewer, took the opportunity to apologise to the people who lost money by believing in LUNA, saying that it is not at all easy to live with this responsibility. However, Kwon points out that LUNA was never a scam but only a market experiment gone wrong. He was the first to believe in the project and that he has always tried to build on the values of transparency and integrity. In short, failure does not necessarily mean scam. According to Kwon, it is his duty to provide a correct representation of the facts in order to put those who continue to work in the Terra ecosystem in the right light (he denies that he is still involved in the project).
Do Kwon concluded the interview by saying that his life is currently in a phase of reflection and that he will need a couple of years to humbly process and internalise what has happened: Terra, LUNA and UST ‘were never about money, fame, success’. Kwon continues to believe in the need for an algorithmic and decentralised stablecoin and is still keen to contribute being very young. Any regrets? Kwon would have liked to focus more on Terra’s technological development in the expansion phases rather than on the public relations part. He would also have liked to build a dialogue with people on social media instead of sounding a bit arrogant.
Paraphrasing, Kwon said ‘I think the hardest thing about the current situation is having to come to terms with an astronomical loss. It is difficult to put into words, but the magnitude of the financial, emotional and economic damage that has occurred is not easy to bear’.
The Binance Smart Chain was attacked by a hacker, what happened? Here are the causes and price collapse of the BNB crypto
On the night between Thursday the 6th and Friday the 7th of October 2022, the Binance Smart Chain was attacked by a hacker. The perpetrator managed to steal around $100 million in different cryptocurrencies. Following the attack, the Binance team took prompt action, suspending transactions on the blockchain and thus severely limiting the amount of money that could have been stolen. Find out what happened to the Binance Smart Chain during the attack on Friday the 7th October 2022 and how the exploit affected the price of the BNB crypto.
Due to irregular activity we're temporarily pausing BSC. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates here.
The Binance Smart Chain (BSC), is a blockchain created by Binance in 2019 that co-exists with the main Binance blockchain: the Binance Chain. What is the difference between the Binance Smart Chain and the Binance Chain? Unlike the Binance Chain, the BSC is compatible with Ethereum‘s virtual machine (EVM) and allows for the creation and use of smart contracts on its ecosystem ; hence the adjective smartwithin the name. Among the possibilities of an EVM-compatible blockchain is that of moving your tokens, fungible and non-fungible, to all blockchains of the same type almost instantaneously. A type of decentralised application (DApp) called a bridge is used for this purpose. Bridges have become very popular lately, mainly due to the tendency of Web3 projects to expand to other blockchains and thus become cross-chain. Friday’s attack took place on such a DApp, namely on the main bridge of the Binance Smart Chain: the Binance Bridge. Through this bridge, you can send your assets almost instantaneously to many other blockchains, including those of Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Cronos, and many others.
What happened to the Binance Smart Chain?
But what exactly happened to the Binance Smart Chain bridge? Someone managed to tamper with the smart contract that is responsible for calculating the amount of tokens that users possess. In doing so, he set his quantity of BNB, the Binance crypto, to 2 million units. Subsequently, the hacker sent the huge sum of money to his wallet in two transactions of 1 million BNB each, about 560 million dollars in total.
Once the hacker received the BNBs, he then moved some funds to different compatible EVM blockchains so that Binance could not block them and ‘borrowed’ stablecoins on Venus, a lending protocol on the Binance Smart Chain. Fortunately, Binance was very quick to intervene and ‘paused’ the Binance Smart Chain, freezing the hacker’s wallets. Tether, the company that created the USDT stablecoin also acted quickly by freezing the funds the hacker had borrowed on Venus. Thanks to the speed of action of the two companies, the hacker only managed to steal USDT 100 million (approximately), roughly five times less than he had initially managed to steal.
Five hours ago, an attacker stole 2 million BNB (~$566M USD) from the Binance Bridge. During that time, I've been working closely with multiple parties to triage and resolve this issue. Here's how it all went down. pic.twitter.com/E0885Dc3lW
Following the event, a debate broke out among the Web3 community, especially on the Twitter social network. The debate focused on the pros and cons of centralising Binance’s chains. The crypto company in fact limited the damage by blacklisting the hacker This is nothing more than an IT action aimed at blocking the possibility of transactions on a particular wallet. And this was possible thanks to the small number of validators that the Binance Smart Chain uses to approve transactions on its network. In a more decentralised network, it would not have been so easy to freeze a user’s wallet.
The price of crypto BNB following the hacker attack
BNB is the native crypto of the Binance Smart Chain. BNB is used to pay fees for carrying out transactions and interacting with Binance’s EVM blockchain. Following the hacker, BNB lost about 5.5% of its value in just over two hours. The attack occurred just as BNB was approaching the $297 resistance. The event caused a dump for the Binance crypto, as was to be expected. This drop did not last just one day, but continued for several days, bringing BNB down to the lower end of the range in which it has beenmoving since early September 2022, around the $272 price area.
Stablecoins are arriving on Bitcoin thanks to the Taro protocol. What is it and how does it improve BTC’s blockchain?
Would you like to be able to take advantage of the security of the Bitcoin network to make and receive stablecoin payments? You will soon be able to do so, thanks to Taro! The 28th of September 2022 saw the release of the alpha version of Taro Daemon, an open source project developed by Lightning Labs that will allow digital assets to be created on the Bitcoin blockchain. What is Taro? An acronym for “Taproot Asset Representation Overlay”, Taro is a protocol built using Taproot, the most recent Bitcoin update, activated on the 14th of November 2021. The latest news about Bitcoin? Stablecoins are coming!
Today we're excited to announce the initial code for Taro 🍠, a new protocol to issue and transfer assets on #bitcoin and Lightning 🔜.
With this release, we're one step closer to bitcoinizing the dollar, and the global financial system! 🌍💱https://t.co/mRrLyttgXv
The problem to be solved: paying in Bitcoin must be cheap and fast
Bitcoin was created to enable peer-to-peer value exchanges in a fully decentralised system. The title of Bitcoin’s whitepaper is, ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’, i.e. a system with which to conduct transactions in a completely decentralised manner. With time, however, the so-called ‘digital gold’ has been less and less used as a trading currency and people have started to consider it a store of value. The reason for this lies in the intrinsic characteristics of the first cryptocurrency in history: Bitcoin’s core network is not very scalable.
When we talk about scalability within the Web3 world, we refer to increasing the speed of transactions and decreasing their cost. The more scalable a network is, the faster and cheaper transactions can be processed. In its early years, Bitcoin’s blockchain was quite scalable due to its low network congestion that did not slow down exchanges. This situation changed over time, and Bitcoin’s network became less and less efficient in these terms. This was due to the incredible popularity it has enjoyed in recent years, hence the increasing number of transactions to be handled and the resulting congestion of the network.
As is shown by the scalability trilemma, one of the most famous theorems for blockchain technologies, it is not possible for a network to be fully scalable, secure and decentralised at the same time. Each blockchain is driven to find a compromise to achieve all these qualities without sacrificing one specifically. Despite being a benchmark for security and decentralisation, Bitcoin has some weaknesses in guaranteeing the scalability of its network. However, the world of Web3 is constantly evolving: ecosystems and developers are always ready to offer innovative solutions. One of these is the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 of Bitcoin founded in 2016, which relies on the main blockchain and improves it in terms of scalability. The Lightning Network is able to process millions of transactions extremely cheaply, as opposed to Bitcoin’s main network, which only reaches a maximum of 7 transactions per second. In short, the Bitcoin Lightning Network groups a series of transactions into ‘packets’ that are then recorded on the Bitcoin network instead of processing each transaction one by one. For these reasons, using the Lightning Network has become advantageous for paying in Bitcoin. So far, nothing new! Lightning Labs has a new protocol instore to further improve the transfer of value on the BTC blockchain. Let’s talk about Taro!
What is Taro and what is it used for?
Despite the great innovation given by the Bitcoin Lightning Network, the issue of volatility remains to be solved. Indeed, the price of BTC does not remain stable over time but is subject to market fluctuations. This could create some headaches both for users who want to pay in Bitcoin and for companies that might use them for their employees’ salaries in the future. Or for shops that accept cryptocurrency payments. Taro comes into play to solve this problem. But what is Taro? It is an open source protocol built by Lightning Labs that will enable the creation and use of digital assets, specifically stablecoins, on the Bitcoin blockchain. These digital assets will be either fungible tokens, the equivalent of what ERC-20s are for Ethereum, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
But how will Taro be able to create assets on Bitcoin’s blockchain? The creation and exchange of assets will be possible thanks to the Taproot upgrade, activated in 2021, and the data structure called Merkle Trees. Merkle Trees are a type of data structure that can store a lot of information and therefore easily prove their existence and veracity.
Today, digital assets such as tokens only reside on other blockchains due to easier implementation, lower transaction costs or greater scalability. Taro aims to change the current status quo. Taro’s ultimate goal is to transform Bitcoin into a multi-asset network. These assets will be able to be transferred on the Bitcoin network through on-chain transactions. Furthermore, tokens built through Taro will be able to be transferred instantly, at low cost, onto the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Is this an early preview of Bitcoin’s opening up to DeFi? It is expected that most of these tokens will be transferred to the Lightning Network, especially the stablecoins to which Taro attaches the greatest importance. This is also evident from their communication on social networks.
Calling all bitcoin and Lightning⚡️developers to check out the code, test it, and start building on Taro. 🏗 https://t.co/TT76ISmS81
The slogan that appeared on Taro’s Twitter profile is ‘bitcoinising the dollar’. In other words? Let’s bring the practicality of fiat currencies to the Bitcoin blockchain! This mission could help make the fundamental point of Bitcoin’s white paper come true: to allow exchanges of value without intermediaries in a fully decentralised system. With the activation of the Taro protocol, users will be able to hold both stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to the dollar, and BTC on their wallets as well as being able to use both to make payments. The Lightning Labs team has not yet announced when the Taro update will be activated, but the entire Web3 world is buzzing. Who knows if one day Taro will also allow the creation of DeFi ecosystems or play-to-earn games on the most famous and long-lived blockchain ever.
Star Atlas on Epic Games, the play-to-earn on Solana’s blockchain, will soon be available for preview testing!
Big news for fans of the world of Web3 video games! The wait is over: Star Atlas, the next-generation play-to-earn video game based on Solana‘s blockchain, has finally opened the doors of its universe. The game is currently in the Pre-Alpha phase and therefore not yet in its final version. It will soon be available on theEpic Games platform.
Explorers, it’s finally time for your fleets to leave the realm of digital immutability to expand into the beautiful living world of Unreal Engine 5.https://t.co/gQPgeAgSs7
The Star Atlas roadmap is going as planned: just recently in July, the developers of the play-to-earn video game announced the launch of the official Star Atlas DAO, laying the foundation for the creation of shared governance. Its DAO was recently implemented with a staking function called Star AtlasLocket: by staking Star Atlas, you can receive POLIS tokens in return.
Try the demo version of Star Atlas on Epic Games
The news of the arrival of Star Atlas on Epic Games was made public during the second edition of the 426Live conference: the event organised by the developers of Star Atlas on the Twitch platform, held on the 29th of September 2022.
Users can finally get their hands on the first demo version of the video game, called Pre-Alpha Showroom. The prototype can be downloaded exclusively on the Epic Store Games marketplace, a company specialising in the development of software and video games (including, for example, Fortnite).
To access it, you will need to download the demo and connect your wallet to the platform. As it is not yet a final version, users will be able to download it for free.
In the downloadable demo version, players will experience the world of Star Atlas in the guise of Asha, commander of the ‘Council of Peace Forces’ and flight instructor of the Academy: the institution responsible for training the galaxy’s most promising youngsters.
GAME ON 🚀 → @StarAtlas teams up with @EpicGames Store as their launch partner for their highly anticipated, AAA Space Exploration Game!
Epic Games Store is doubling-down on Web3 gaming and continues to work with innovative gaming studios!
In order to create the most realistic and immersive game environment possible, the Pre-Alpha demo version will combine various technologies offered by its development engine: Unreal Engine 5. Specifically, the prototype will make use of Nanite systems for the realisation of hyper-realistic, cinematic-style graphics, and Lumen systemsto provide the game environment with real-time lighting (thus representing light effects in a natural way). For the physical support of the game, on the other hand, Chaos and Niagara wereused.
The Star Atlas roadmap, however, has not yet come to an end: until December 2022, Showroom will add new features to the gaming experience, such as the possibility of playing other characters besides Asha.
Star Atlas CORE: the graphic novel about the video game universe
Star Atlas is not just a play-to-earn video game. During the 426Live conference, the Star Atlas CORE project was presented. It is a graphic novel that introduces the community to the history of Star Atlas, its main characters and their customs and traditions.
At the moment, all that is known is that Star Atlas CORE will be divided into 18 episodes and will follow the adventures of Gyun, the protagonist of the series, and his crew.
The realisation of the initiative was entrusted to Tim McBurnie, graphic designer and artist of ATMTA, the main developer of the Star Atlas project.
The releases will follow the developments and storyline of the main game and will be published on both the official Star Atlas CORE website and the Showroom.
The graphic novel episodes will also be available as NFTs, Non-fungible Tokens, and available for purchase on theMagic Eden and Star Atlas Galactic Marketplace, introduced in the latest platform update.
The integration of blockchain technology with the world of storytelling is certainly not new.
Jenkins the Valet is a project involving the creation of a collective storyline based on the adventures of Jenkins, an avatar from NFT’s famous Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.
Another initiative that sees the active participation of the community in the storytelling is RENGA NFT, a collection launched by artist DirtyRobot that topped the sales charts in various marketplaces in September.
The release date for Star Atlas has not yet been disclosed, we will just have to wait for further updates!
On the 26th of September, Polkadot released its roadmap for the last quarter of 2022. Check out Gavin Wood’s 5 new features for the blockchain!
On Monday the 26th of September Polkadot, and its development company, Parity Technology, released a document outlining all the most important features the network is working on for the last quarter of 2022. The updates planned by Polkadot are mainly related to scalability, parachain development, governance and staking. Let’s take a look at 5 new features for Polkadot coming in 2022 and all the improvements planned for the network!
1/ Keep in the loop of what's happening in the Polkadot ecosystem: check out this #PolkadotRoundup to learn about the new features, milestones, and the latest announcements from the parachain teams, ecosystem projects, and infrastructure providers.
The first of five features coming to Polkadot in 2022 is called Asynchronous Backing and will be implemented to increase the scalability of the Polkadot network. Scalability is the ability of a network to process transactions quickly; the more scalable a blockchain is, the more transactions it can process in a given period of time. Thanks to the Asynchronous Backing functionality, the time per block on each parachain is expected to be reduced from 12 seconds to around 6 seconds. This will ensure that networks process transactions faster and with less latency: the time between when a transaction is sent and when it is actually processed.
1. Asynchronous Backing
Asynchronous Backing is a set of major optimizations to parachain consensus, estimated to bring the aggregate TPS of the network up substantially.
Asynchronous Backing will make it possible to double the space available on each block, and to ‘reuse’ blocks when they are not validated on the first attempt. This upgrade is intended to increase the amount of work each parachain can do and to optimise the performance of the Relay Chain: the infrastructure on which all parachains are built. It will therefore be possible to register more parachains. Moreover, the TPS (transactions per second) capacity of the Polkadot network, i.e. that of all its parachains and parathreads, should increase significantly, to between 100,000 and 1 million.
2. Parathreads: launch and enhancements
The second novelty for the Polkadot ecosystem concerns parathreads. Parathreads are parachains which are not permanently integrated on Polkadot due to winning one of the auctions, but who pay for the use of Polkadot’s infrastructure ‘on a consumption basis’. As opposed to parachains, parathreads can also be built by non-professional programmers since, in terms of code complexity, they can be compared to simple smart contracts. Both Polkadot parachains and parathreads do not have their own consensus algorithm, but make use of the Proof-of-Stake Relay Chain algorithm. The launch of parathreads was planned for this summer, but it has been postponed to early 2023. Regarding parathreads, Parity Technology is exploring a solution called Next-Generation Scheduling. This technology allows Polkadot parachains that have won auctions (and have thus been awarded the opportunity to participate in the network and in parathreads) to increase the amount of space on their blocks in order to save on the costs resulting from the consensus mechanism.
3. Restructured governance
The third point in Polkadot’s roadmap for the last quarter of 2022 concerns governance. By governance within Web3, we mean the way in which community members can participate in decisions about the future moves of the project. The new system, called Overhaul, will eliminate the board and technical committees and introduce the Polkadot Fellowship. The Polkadot Fellowship has the Polkadot Fellowship Manifesto as its ‘constitution’.
The term fellowship, which is usually used to refer to a company of friends, was not attributed to Polkadot’s new governance system by chance. The system in fact aims to change the decision-making process by making it as similar as possible to what normally takes place in a group of friends. Polkadot’s new governance aims to decentralise the old system consisting of three chambers and a 13-member board elected by DOT holders. With the changes, all members of the community will have a say through periodic referendums and a proxy system that will speed up the decision-making process. Governance V2 is expected to be implemented on Kusama, the blockchain parallel to Polkadot that is being used to test the new features, at the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022.
4. The New Staking Dashboard
The fourth new feature for the Polkadot ecosystem concerns staking. Since Polkadot is a blockchain that works thanks to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, staking is available and indispensable in order to guarantee the security of transactions. The challenge for the end of 2022 for Gavin Wood‘s blockchain is to make staking more accessible and easier for users who want to participate in the network’s consensus mechanism or obtain rewards. To this end, Parity Technologies has developed a Staking Dashboard, a platform for staking Polkadot’s crypto, DOT. The main focus of Parity Technologies’ development is to make the dashboard user-friendly and to lighten the infrastructure. In fact, staking on Polkadot works without a centralised external provider thanks to light-client technology. The latter allows validators to interact with a blockchain without having to store the entire network history, all the while maintaining the same level of security. The beta version of Polkadot’s dashboard for staking is already usable and the final version should be released soon!
5. Parachain enhancement
Polkadot’s future in the coming months will obviously also involve parachains. Parachains are Polkadot’s core functionality and the reason why blockchain has gained so much popularity. They are the secondary blockchains that exploit Polkadot’s infrastructure. Their performance will be improved through a new mechanism called Weights V2. Weights V2 will make it easier to validate parachain blocks and consequently make it easier to ‘write’ and develop them. The update is the first in chronological order that will be implemented and is expected to arrive by mid-October 2022.
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 beenavailable 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.
FIFA+ Collect is the only place you’ll be able to own the greatest moments in football history. Made for fans. Made by FIFA. pic.twitter.com/IPXDLZSKpQ
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, thecommunication 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.
📢 We are delighted to announce that @LiveLikeInc is the first company to be on-boarded to Chiliz Chain 2.0!
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.
