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Stablecoins arrive on the Bitcoin blockchain thanks to Taro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is Taro and what is it used for?

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

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

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

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

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Star Atlas preview, the play-to-earn available on Epic Games

Epic Games’ Star Atlas, try the new play-to-earn on Solana

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 the Epic Games platform.

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 Atlas Locket: 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.

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 systems to 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 were used.

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 the Magic 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!

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The NFT market in September: charts, record sales and trending collections

Latest news from the NFT market: RENGA, CryptoPunks, Solana

What happened to the NFT market in September 2022? The latest news, record sales for CryptoPunks, Solana and emerging collections across the industry!

To all those in ‘wake me up when bear market ends’ mode, you should sleep for a little while longer. The market continues to be bearish and the non-fungible token sector has slowed down too, but it’s not really hibernating! In this article you will find an overview of the NFT market of September 2022. We present data on sales volumes, emerging NFT collections and projects that have exploded (small spoiler: CryptoPunks and NFTs on Solana).

NFT market: volume declines but not the number of sales

An overview of the NFT market in September shows us that the volume of total NFT sales has dropped a lot since the beginning of the year: from 235.24 billion USD on the 30th of January 2022 to 67.93 billion USD on the 30th of September 2022. In short, sales have fallen in terms of volume, especially compared to the best periods for non-fungible tokens we have seen this year (February and May). On the other hand, the NFT market’s figures show growth in the number of new collections created: from 39.25 thousand in January to 176.21 thousand in September. The number of daily NFT sales on the 30th of September was 22.89 million (data from IntoTheBlock and Dune Analytics). These days, the NFT market is reacting to the activation of non-fungible tokens on Instagram. For US users, it will finally be possible to link wallets and share NFTs in their profiles, next to the symbol of photos, reels and tagged photos. The NFT section is recognisable by the hexagon symbol that has appeared. Will the reaction be positive?

Record sales in September: CryptoPunks and Solana

What is happening to the NFT market during this bear market? Albeit with low volumes, non-fungible tokens continue to be bought without dramatic collapses. On the contrary, some NFTs have seen record sales, such as the case of CryptoPunks #2924 which sold for 3,300 ETH (around $4.5 million) on the 28th of September 2022. This sale ranked 24th in terms of the most expensive NFTs ever, and 4th highest for sales of the CryptoPunks collection. This example of CryptoPunks is one of the rarest and most valuable in the entire collection, as it is an ‘ape’ character (i.e. a CryptoPunks with the appearance of a monkey) of which only 24 examples exist. Other notable NFT (single) sales this month are:

●     CryptoPunks #5944 for $1.28 million;

●     Bored Ape Yacht Club #8585 for $1.02 million;

●     Bowie by FEWOCiOUS (from the ‘Bowie on the Blockchain‘ collection) for $127,460.

As far as collections and entire NFT projects are concerned, this is the top performance ranking for the month of September 2022:

  1. Ethereum Name Service: blockchain domain service records $34.18 million in sales;
  2. Bored Ape Yacht Club: 27.96 million (down from the previous month);
  3. CryptoPunks: $22.3 million;
  4. RENGA NFT: the emerging collection on Ethereum sold its works for $19.77 million;
  5. Mutant Ape Yacht Club: BAYC’s sister collection closed the month with sales worth $17.45 million.

Although the ranking is dominated by ‘blue chip’ NFT collections, more recent collections such as y00ts on Solana, Azuki on Ethereum, Otherside’s LAND, and the Bored Ape metaverse also achieved good positions. Special mention must be made of the growth of NFTs from play-to-earn games on the Immutable X chain and the NFT passes from Tyler Hobbs‘ QQL project, all 900 of which were sold in half an hour for $17 million. An experiment in generative art that allows one pass to mine a unique and customised NFT.

According to this data (provided by DappRadar), the top blockchains for the NFT sector in the month of September were Ethereum and Solana. Sales on Solana rose 77 per cent over the previous month. As far as the sales ranking by NFT marketplace is concerned, in first place there’s OpenSea ($350 million in monthly sales), in second place Magic Eden on Solana ($128.22 million) and finally X2Y2 on Ethereum ($67.62 million).

Which NFTs explode in September?

Among the up-and-coming NFT collections is RENGA, the project of cartoonist DirtyRobot which, as we have seen, achieved excellent sales results in September. RENGA’s most expensive NFT was No. 26, which sold for 20 ETH ($26,000). This month also saw the “birth” of RENGA’s first NFT whale, which has 80 pieces in the collection worth around $235,000 (calculated on a floor price basis).

Also noteworthy is Critters Cult, a collection of NFT pixel art on Solana influenced by 80s and 90s aesthetics. Critters Cult was launched on 25 September and has since recorded sales of nearly $3 million. The collection consists of 4,444 PFPs representing animals and protagonists from the Critters Cult universe, populated by bizarre and mysterious events and featuring atmospheres worthy of Stephen King, David Lynch and Steven Spielberg.

NFT collections coming soon: A.C. Milan and Hugo Boss

On the 6th of October 2022, through an auction on the Magic Eden marketplace, a special edition of the MonkeyLeague collection dedicated to A.C. Milan players will be sold. MonkeyLeague is a play-to-earn game on Solana that can be classified as a sports-themed strategy video game in which you build a MonkeyPlayer team. The aim of the game is to train your team and win challenges and tournaments to obtain the MSB token as a reward. At the auction on the 6th of October, 16 NFTs inspired by the AC Milan team of the 1993/94 and 1995/96 seasons will be auctioned off.

‘Embrace Your Emotion’ is the title of Hugo Boss’ new NFT collection. The brand’s first experiment in the industry dates back to 2021, when a digital clothing collection inspired by American baseball was released. On the 4th October 2022, Hugo Boss announced its rebranding plan towards digital with a ‘holistic, 360° experience in the Metaverse‘. Concretely, Hugo Boss has created digital artworks together with Imaginary Ones NFT, a project of 8,888 colourful animated characters created on Ethereum. Embrace Your Emotion will go on sale in early November and will consist of 1,001 3D NFTs in video format. Aesthetically, the non-fungible tokens will represent human emotions with different shades and more or less rare characteristics. Owners of these will also get benefits such as discounts in Hugo Boss shops, merchandise and other digital experiences.

The proceeds from the sales of Hugo Boss’ NFT collection will be donated to the Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) association. The press release states that ‘the aim of the collection is to encourage everyone to get in touch with their emotions and share the message that all feelings, positive and negative, are valid and should be embraced, as the freedom to feel and express can significantly improve mental health and overall well-being’.

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

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

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

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

The most classic of hard forks, Ethereum Classic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Polkadot’s new roadmap explained in 5 points

Polkadot: 5 new features coming in 2022

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

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

1.   Polkadot is becoming increasingly scalable

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

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

2.   Parathreads: launch and enhancements

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

3.   Restructured governance

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

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

4.   The New Staking Dashboard

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

 

5.   Parachain enhancement

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

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Bitcoin ETFs and Bitcoin ETPs, what’s the difference? 

Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs: what are they and how are they different?

Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs are becoming increasingly popular. But what are these financial instruments in short? What are their differences?

Before we look at what a Bitcoin ETF is and the difference with an ETP, let’s understand what a classic ETF or Exchange Traded Fund is. In short, it’s a financial product that closely replicates the performance of an index (called a benchmark); they are ‘packages’ containing stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate securities or derivative contracts of these instruments, in order to replicate their performance. ETFs are sold and bought like ordinary securities and are therefore considered more accessible and less expensive financial instruments than classic investment funds. Like all instruments listed on financial markets, their price can go down as well as up. In short, they can be considered as baskets of securities of different companies or entities that refer to a common ‘theme’, which can be the market of a geographical area or a sector. 

What is a Bitcoin ETF

According to this definition of ETFs, Bitcoin’s Exchange Traded Funds replicate the performance of BTC and assets related to Satoshi Nakamoto‘s crypto. In essence, they allow exposure to BTC without actually buying any cryptocurrency, which is why in most cases they appeal to those not used to dealing with cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and private keys. 

On 8 June 2022, the first Bitcoin ETF was listed on the Italian stock exchange. While the first one ever, made by ProShares, was approved in 2021 by the SEC in the US. The launch in the US was quite successful for both retail and institutional investors.

At the moment, all Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds are based on futures, i.e. forward contracts that allocate a certain amount of the underlying asset, based on a predetermined delivery price and maturity, to the two parties that subscribe to them. In this system, one of the parties ‘bets’ on the price going up and the other on the price going down.

Are there any spot Bitcoin ETFs?

Spot Bitcoin ETFs are traded for immediate delivery: the order to buy or sell is immediately followed by the actual exchange of the asset for cash (as fiat currency). This kind of fund has not yet been put on the market, currently the company Grayscale is carrying out negotiations with the SEC to approve one, converting a mutual fund it already manages. Spot Exchange Traded Funds are more difficult to set up, and in order to issue them one has to meet a number of technical and regulatory requirements, especially with regard to the underlying asset, which in this case is the entire Bitcoin spot market. Any company issuing an ETF on the spot market will in fact have to own the bitcoins directly and hold them securely. In addition, it must be demonstrated to regulators that Exchange Traded Funds do not give rise to price manipulation in the relevant market.

Advantages and disadvantages of a Bitcoin ETF

As anticipated, the main advantage of these funds is that they allow anyone to enter the cryptocurrency market in a ‘traditional’ manner. In fact, they are easy for those who already operate with financial intermediaries. ETFs of this type are regulated instruments and therefore instil confidence in institutional investors (and retailers) and are used to diversify their investments. 

As for the disadvantages, due to management costs, buying them is less convenient than buying BTC directly on exchanges. Moreover, derivative-based ones do not reflect price changes instantaneously, so they may not accurately track market trends. You should also consider that exchange-traded funds are indirectly managed, which means that you do not have direct control over your money. This is why they are considered by many in the industry as a method used by central banks and classical finance to somehow influence the evolution and development of a currency that was designed and created to be totally decentralised.

The difference between ETFs and ETPs

Have you also heard of ETPs? Exchange traded products are a macro-category that brings together a number of financial products that replicate stock indices or other assets by following their performance in the reference market. ETFs are thus a subset of ETPs, along with ETNs (Exchange Traded Notes) and ETCs (Exchange Traded Commodities). In a nutshell, ETNs and ETCs are not funds but debt notes, since by purchasing them one is in fact providing credit to a company. Furthermore, ETCs specifically track the price of physical commodities such as gold, silver, oil, sugar, or commodity derivatives. ETNs, on the other hand, reflect the performance of all other types of financial instruments. 

A new Bitcoin ETP on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange 

On 23 September 2022, a new Bitcoin-themed Exchange Traded Product was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The ETP, which by definition consists of ETFs and ETNs, is issued by Valour, a company that offers financial products related to the Web3 sector, and is called ‘Bitcoin Carbon Neutral’. What is the special feature of this ETP? When you buy Valour’s BTC Carbon Neutral ETP, all carbon dioxide emissions related to the product will be automatically offset. These emissions include, for example, those due to mining consumption. 

Concretely, the carbon-free plan will be implemented in cooperation with Patch, a platform offering solutions for companies that want to play their part in combating climate change. Patch at this juncture will select projects that prevent emissions and remove carbon dioxide related to BTC from the atmosphere. Valour also offers ETPs on Uniswap (UNI), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and many other crypto projects. 

Another recently launched BTC-themed product is the 21 Shares Bitcoin ETP listed on July 2022. 

Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs are thus proving to be increasingly popular financial instruments, chosen by those who want to approach cryptocurrencies in a gradual way. 

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

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

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

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

 

NFTs will soon be available for purchase in the Apple Store

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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7 changes happening to Ethereum following The Merge

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.   Is Ethereum more centralised after The Merge?

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

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

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

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

3.   Beware of fake news post The Merge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7.   Where will Ethereum miners go?

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

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

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

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

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

Bored Ape Yacht Club and Horizen Labs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Algorand and Chiliz grow through crypto-football

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are Algorand and Chiliz two bear market-proof cryptos?

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

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

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

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