Blockchain technology is claimed to be according to blockchain proponents to be one of the most impactfull discoveries in the recent history. It is promised to have a massive potential to change how we handle online transactions. Despite some skeptics, the majority of experts agree that blockchain has the potential to disrupt the banking and financial industry, and many other ones! To put it simply, blockchain enables decentralized transactions across a P2P network. There are applications where those propertied can be very useful, but there are many cases where blockchain migh not be the best solution even though it is hyped to be solution for very many application (remember to ask Do you need a blockchain? often).
This 16 Blockchain Disruptions (Infographic) by bitfortune.net tries to help you understand how the blockchain technology can and will improve 16 different industries, from music to government.
Infographic by bitfortune.net
1,206 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
HubSpot Data Breach Ripples Through Crytocurrency Industry https://threatpost.com/hubspot-data-breach-crytocurrency-industry/179086/
A rogue employee working at HubSpot used by more than 135, 000 (and
growing) customers to manage marketing campaigns and on-board new users has been fired over a breach that zeroed in on the company’s cryptocurrency customers, the company confirmed on Friday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Investigation of Cryptocurrency Scams and Schemes https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/22/c/an-investigation-of-cryptocurrency-scams-and-schemes.html
We provide an overview of the diverse range of NFT- and cryptocurrency-related scams that malicious actors use to steal assets worldwide. Lisäksi:
https://www.trendmicro.com/content/dam/trendmicro/global/en/research/22/c/an-investigation-of-cryptocurrency-scams-and-schemes/technical_brief_keeping_assets_safe_from_cryptocurrency_scams_and_schemes.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frosties NFT operators arrested over $1.1 million ‘rug pull’ scam https://www.zdnet.com/article/frosties-nft-operators-arrested-for-1-million-rug-pull-scheme/
Two alleged operators of the Frosties NFT rug pull have been arrested and charged by US law enforcement. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said on Thursday that Ethan Nguyen and Andre Llacuna have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scott Reyburn / New York Times:
Some museums across Europe, including the British Museum, are embracing NFTs as a fundraising tool, but most public galleries remain wary of cryptocurrencies
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/arts/design/museums-nfts.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
An analysis of 19.3M NFTs across ~8,400 collections: one in three have little or no trading activity, and another third trade below their original minting cost — For every Bored Ape and CryptoPunk there is a Baby Baller, one of the thousands of NFT projects that have faltered not long after celebrated debuts.
NFT Collection Failures Begin to Mount in Flashback to ICO Bust
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-26/nft-collection-failures-begin-to-mount-in-flashback-to-ico-bust
One in three NFT projects have little or no trading activity
Nansen analyzed collections comprised of 19.3 million NFTs
For every Bored Ape and CryptoPunk there is a Baby Baller, one of the thousands of NFT projects that have faltered not long after celebrated debuts.
On average, one in three NFT collections have essentially expired, with little or no trading activity, blockchain analytics firm Nansen found. Another third are trading below the amount it cost issuers to mint the tokens. Nansen analyzed about 8,400 collections comprised of 19.3 million individual NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
As failed projects pile up, long-time crypto observers are having flashbacks to the Initial Coin Offering bust of 2018, when thousands of digital token quickly become worthless after regulators warned they’re probably unregistered securities. Much like ICOs in their heyday, NFTs have become one of the hottest corners of the cryptocurrency world as speculators seek to take advantage of the surging interest and prices for the digital certificates of authenticity most commonly representing art or collectibles.
“The semblance is uncanny,” said the anonymous collector known as WhaleShark who is thought to be one of the largest NFT holders in the world. “Money is flowing too fast and too ignorant into the space.”
While purchases of Bored Apes by celebrities such as Madonna for more than $500,000 kept the collection in the headlines, overall NFT sales have ebbed recently. The 30-day sales volume is down 40% from the prior month, according to Nansen. Trading volume on OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, is down 67% in the last 30 days, DappRadar data show.
Industry participants say the decline is more a sign of frenzied demand cooling rather than a bubble bursting. NFTs are still being touted for use in everything from video gaming to commerce.
“We are at a stage of stabilization of the NFT market, after the crazy peaks of last year,” said Gauthier Zuppinger, co-founder of the NonFungible markets data platform.
The value of NFTs can also plummet if creators don’t get a marketing plan together or if the collection is supplanted by newer and shinier projects. Many NFTs that are simply digital images — so-called PFPs, or profile pictures — are particularly vulnerable to price drops.
“In the current market, it’s a pump-and-dump cycle among PFPs which is why this is leading to a decrease in the market,” WhaleShark said. “Not enough new money coming in to support PFP projects. Similar to a pyramid scheme.”
Demand also appears to be concentrated. The number of repeat buyers outweigh new entrants by a ratio of seven-to-one, according to Nansen. Overall, the number of total NFT buyers is up significantly from a year ago, though that number appears to have peaked in early February, the researcher found. On March 15, there were about 92,000 secondary sales and about 22,000 sales of newly minted NFTs, according to Nansen.
NFTs that have ceased to generate interest on trading platforms might still serve a broader purpose, much like the rest of the art and collectibles world.
“They are not dead,” said Javier Gonzalez, an engineer at Nansen. “You can still look at them. But some collections, they don’t trade, people are not interested — they are just memories from the past, and that’s it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Schickler / CoinDesk:
The EU Parliament votes to outlaw anonymous crypto payments, extending KYC rules to even the smallest transactions with unhosted or self-hosted wallets — Lawmakers are set to end even the smallest anonymous crypto transactions, and plan measures that could see unregulated exchanges cut off.
EU Parliament Passes Privacy-Busting Crypto Rules Despite Industry Criticism
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/31/eu-parliament-votes-on-privacy-busting-crypto-rules-industry-rails-against-proposals/
Lawmakers are set to end even the smallest anonymous crypto transactions, and plan measures that could see unregulated exchanges cut off.
European Union lawmakers voted today in favor of controversial measures to outlaw anonymous crypto transactions, a move the industry said would stifle innovation and invade privacy.
More than 90 lawmakers voted in favor of the proposal, according to documents seen by CoinDesk.
The proposals are intended to extend anti-money laundering (AML) requirements that apply to conventional payments over EUR 1,000 ($1,114) to the crypto sector. They also scrap the floor for crypto payments, so payers and recipients of even the smallest crypto transactions would need to be identified, including for transactions with unhosted or self-hosted wallets. Further measures under discussion could see unregulated crypto exchanges cut off from the conventional financial system.
National governments said in December they wanted to scrap the EUR 1,000 threshold for crypto, on the basis that digital payments can easily circumvent the limit, and to include private wallets that aren’t operated by regulated crypto asset providers.
Members of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) opposed many of the more controversial changes, condemning what they called a “de facto ban of self-hosted wallets.”
“Such proposals are neither warranted nor proportionate,” said EPP economic spokesperson, Markus Ferber, in an emailed statement Thursday. “With this approach of regulating new technologies, the European Union will fall further behind other, more open-minded jurisdictions.”
A separate legal proposal also discussed today would stop transfers being made to “non-compliant” crypto service providers, which includes those operating in the EU without authorization or that are not affiliated to or established in any jurisdiction.
The Thursday vote came in spite of objections from major industry participants, such as Coinbase, and from legal experts who warned that overly heavy handed privacy violations could face legal challenges in EU courts.
Under the new rules, Coinbase would have to report to the authorities any time a customer received over EUR 1,000 of crypto from a self-hosted wallet, the exchange’s CEO Brian Armstrong warned in a tweet posted Wednesday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Naureen S Malik / Bloomberg:
Texas starts requiring new large-scale cryptocurrency miners to seek permission to access its power grid, in anticipation of increasing demand for 2022 and 2023 — Texas has started requiring new large-scale cryptocurrency miners to seek permission to connect to the state’s power grid …
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-30/texas-crypto-miners-need-approval-to-energize-in-grid-hurdle
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tracy Wang / CoinDesk:
Avalanche is now the fourth largest blockchain for DeFi by “total value locked”, at $10B+, ahead of Solana; AVAX grew 2,800% in 2021 and is down ~18% in 2022
Can Avalanche Win Over Wall Street and ‘Degens’ Alike?
At the inaugural Avalanche Summit in Barcelona, Spain, the speedy Ethereum alternative looked to court users onto its subnets.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/30/can-avalanche-win-over-wall-street-and-degens-alike/
To the crypto-conscious, blockchain industry conferences have become annual pilgrimages of sorts, drawing each chain’s respective believers to multi-day extravaganzas in exotic locales around the world.
There’s the familiar Bitcoin conference (which appears to have found a home in Miami) and Ethereum’s long-running ETHDenver. Starting last autumn, new, billion-dollar base layers joined in, with Solana’s coming-out party, Breakpoint, held in Lisbon.
Now Avalanche has entered the fray, having just wrapped a six-day summit in Barcelona, Spain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://blog.mollywhite.net/axie-hack/
What is Axie Infinity?
A green fuzzy creature with dizzy-looking eyes, a cactus on its forehead, and a pumpkin on its back
Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game with mechanics quite similar to Pokémon battles. Each player assembles a team of critters called “Axies”, which have different traits and strengths, and can be battled against other players’ teams. These Axies are somewhat pricey—the price fluctuates and depends quite a bit on which Axie you wish to buy, but the cheapest ones (prior to the hack) were around $25 each. During peak Axie popularity, the cheapest Axies cost more than $100.1 Given that a player needs at least three Axies to play, this is a substantial barrier to entry, and so “scholarship programs” have developed in which organizations buy the Axies and provide them to players, who in turn give the “scholarship” organization a cut of their earnings. This has resulted in many such organizations relying on players located where wages are low—more than half of Axie players were based in the Philippines as of November 2021. During May–August 2021, back when the game’s economy was fairly nascent and had not yet hit an inflection point with regards to its inevitable inflation, skilled players were able to make considerably more than the roughly $41/day average wage in the Philippines, even after accounting for the cut taken by the scholarship organizations. By November 2021, only the skilled players were making above even minimum wage—and only barely—despite the continuing narrative that Axie was changing lives in the Philippines by allowing people to play video games for a living.2
How does it work?
After assembling their team of “Axies”, bought with WETH, players battle against each other to earn “smooth love potions” (SLP). These SLP can then be spent to breed Axies, or cashed out into other forms of cryptocurrency and then, potentially, into real-world money. Axie Infinity also has a separate token, AXS, which is used both for governance and for breeding, and another token, RON, which is used to pay transaction fees. There are, of course, speculative markets for each of these. Ronin also supports USDC, a stablecoin that is pegged to the US dollar, for people who like to hedge against the volatility of the other supported tokens. And finally there are the NFTs—the Axie characters that are battled, bred, bought, and sold are each represented as an NFT. Are you keeping up?
Why doesn’t the game just use the Ethereum network, like so many other applications? Well, it does, sort of. The problem with the Ethereum network is that it’s quite slow and expensive to use. Depending on network congestion, transactions can take minutes or even days to be confirmed, and if you want your transactions to go through more quickly you have to pay more. Transaction fees cost between a few dollars and many tens of dollars. This is not exactly a hospitable environment in which to build a video game.
So, Sky Mavis (the company behind Axie Infinity) created what is called a sidechain. It’s based on the same protocol as Ethereum, but it operates independently from the Ethereum mainnet and uses a different consensus mechanism. Instead of the Ethereum miners that continuously grind away solving math problems in hopes of validating the next transaction (proof-of-work), the Ronin sidechain is based on proof-of-authority—that is, all of the validators are operated by known, trusted parties, and so don’t have to do all that expensive work to establish that they’re following the rules. It is more efficient than proof-of-work, but at the expense of decentralization.
So how does one get their crypto to Ronin, or cash out their Ronin crypto? And how does one “wrap” their Ether? This is where the Ronin Bridge comes in. Although Binance and two other (small) exchanges that support the Ronin network allow users to exchange some of the tokens from Ethereum to Ronin and back again, the safest and most common way people move their tokens around is via the Ronin Bridge. A bridge is really just two corresponding smart contracts on two networks—in this case, one on the Ethereum network, and one on the Ronin network. When someone sends a token like ETH to the Ronin Bridge, it is “locked” in the Ronin bridge—held so that it can’t be spent elsewhere on the Ethereum network. Simultaneously, the contract on the Ronin side creates an equivalent token—WETH—and deposits it into the user’s Ronin wallet. To the user it looks like their Ethereum moved from one network to the next, but the details of how this works are important.
Blockchain bridges work somewhat like a casino. When you go to a casino, you take your regular dollars and trade them for casino chips. You can do whatever you please with your casino chips inside the casino, but they’re not much use to you anywhere else. When you’re all finished, you go back to the desk and trade your casino chips back out for dollars. Although they’re just plastic, your stack of casino chips might represent quite a lot of money. But if something happened such that the person at the desk no longer had sufficient cash for you to cash out your casino chips, you might suddenly find your stack of chips aren’t worth very much.
The hack
As I mentioned earlier, the Ronin network relies on a number of trusted validators to process transactions in the network. As it turns out, there were only nine validators in total (Ethereum, by comparison, has thousands of miners). This increased the risk of what is known as a 51% attack—when a malicious actor is able to compromise more than half of the validators on the network—since the attacker only needed to compromise five of the nine validators. And sure enough, an attacker was able to compromise four of the validators run by Sky Mavis, plus a fifth validator run by Axie DAO (a community-run organization supporting the Axie Infinity project). They then forged withdrawals, used their five compromised validators to validate the transactions, and drained 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC that had been locked in the bridge. At today’s prices, assuming they were able to cash it out, this would be more than $625 million.
My thoughts
This is just a shocking amount of money. This appears to be the largest hack in the history of defi—at least in terms of the value of money at the time of theft. It’s second to the August 2021 Poly Network hack of $611 million, although in that case the majority of those stolen funds were later returned by the exploiter, who claimed to have been a white hat hacker demonstrating the vulnerability.4
I’m quite concerned for the Axie userbase, given the narrative that playing Axie Infinity can become someone’s job—particularly in developing countries.
Molly White:
An analysis of the Axie Infinity hack: Sky Mavis taking six days to disclose is irresponsible and users likely lost money they need to live, not just spare cash
The Axie Infinity hack, what happened, and why people keep talking about bridges
I was also startled by Sky Mavis’s claim that they were not aware of the hack (perpetrated on March 23) until March 29 when a user reported issues withdrawing funds. If we take them at their word, that means they were missing $625 million for six days without realizing it, which is jaw-dropping. The alternative explanation is that they were aware and didn’t publicly announce it, which would mean they left their bridge and exchange operational for days despite a huge vulnerability, and were allowing users to buy in and transact with tokens that were largely unbacked. Either they are handling money in a completely irresponsible way, or they acted irresponsibly toward their users, and neither is good.
As far as the attacker, they have transferred relatively little out of the wallet that is known to be associated with the hack. This is somewhat unusual—typically after big hacks like this we see the hackers try to launder the crypto as quickly as they can before exchanges start freezing wallets. Sky Mavis has spoken about trying to recover the stolen funds—I think only time will tell how that goes. It’s not an easy task, but $625 million is certainly a strong motivator both for Sky Mavis, their investors, and law enforcement.
If Sky Mavis doesn’t recover the funds, they’re in a tough spot. The various tokens that operate on the Ronin network are now majorly unbacked. They could go the Wormhole route, and come up with $625 million to restore backing.6 I would say this seems unlikely, but I would’ve said Wormhole coming up with $320 million was unlikely too, and I was shown to be wrong on that one. The company lists some pretty big names among its investors—they raised $152 million in Series B funding in October 2021 from firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Paradigm, valuing the company around $3 billion.
Sky Mavis has been continuing to make promises to reimburse their users regardless of whether the funds are recovered. However, even if they know they won’t be able to come up with that kind of money, they have a strong incentive to keep people believing that they can: the promise of a bailout is likely the only reason the various Axie tokens have any value left at all. The tokens have plummeted in value, but not to zero—we saw a similar thing happen in the aftermath of the Wormhole exploit, which seemed to be users holding out for good news.
https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=2021-08-11-0
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paljon muitakin lisäarvoa tuovia käyttötapauksia on. Kukin coini on esimerkki kyseisestä kryptovaluuttojen lajista:
– Helium HNT: edullinen tietoverkko. Muutamalla eurolla maksaa polkupyörän GPS-paikantimen koko eliniän dataliikenteen. USA:ssa jopa 5G-verkko!
– Uniswap, pancakeswap – DEX:t eli hajautetut kauppapaikat. Pörssinoteerausta ja kaupankäyntiä ilman keskushallintoa. Miten ne edes voivat toimia – nerokas idea!
– Filecoin ja Arweave: hajautettua tallennusta tärkeälle tiedolle. Tallennetaan salatusti täysin toisistaan riippumattomille tahoille. EU, USA , Kiina ja Venäjä eivät voi edes yhdessä päättää tuhota jotain tietoa.
– Ethereum: älysopimusten isoin alusta, joka mahdollistaa mm. dex’t.
Suosikkeja myös, mutta mielestäni eivät vielä lyöneet itseään läpi:
– Aave. Lainaus- ja korkopalvelu. Lupaava idea, DeFi eli decentralized finance, ei välttämättä tarvitse lainkaan pankkeja tulevaisuudessa. Perustajalla Suomi-yhteys.
– Chia. Bitcoinin kilpailija ilman lämpöä tuottavaa louhintaa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blockchains Have a Bridge’ Problem, and Hackers Know It https://www.wired.com/story/blockchain-network-bridge-hacks/
THIS WEEK, THE cryptocurrency network Ronin disclosed a breach in which attackers made off with $540 million worth of Ethereum and USDC stablecoin. The incident, which is one of the biggest heists in the history of cryptocurrency, specifically siphoned funds from a service known as the Ronin Bridge. Successful attacks on “blockchain bridges”
have become increasingly common over the past couple of years, and the situation with Ronin is a prominent reminder of the urgency of the problem. Blockchain bridges, also known as network bridges, are applications that allow people to move digital assets from one blockchain to another. Cryptocurrencies are typically siloed and can’t interoperateyou can’t do a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain using Dogecoinsso “bridges” have become a crucial mechanism, almost a missing link, in the cryptocurrency economy. Ronin discovered the breach that day, but the platform’s “validator nodes” had been compromised on March 23. Attackers stole 173, 600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC. Ronin Bridge has been down ever since, and users can’t carry out transactions on the platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Binance’s Changpeng Zhao went from zero to $65 billion in under five years, leaving Michael Dell, Charles Koch and 2,645 other world billionaires in the dust. #ForbesBillionaires
The Wealthiest Person In Crypto Climbs Into World’s 20 Richest
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2022/04/05/the-wealthiest-person-in-crypto-climbs-into-worlds-20-richest/?sh=4b426d6ddd19&utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB&utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_medium=social
Binance’s Changpeng Zhao went from zero to $65 billion in under five years, leaving Michael Dell, Charles Koch and 2,645 other world billionaires in the dust.
C
hangpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, is the wealthiest person in crypto, worth an estimated $65 billion, according to Forbes’ 2022 Billionaires rankings, published on Tuesday April 5.
That makes “CZ,” as he is commonly known, at age 44, the 19th richest person in the world, ahead of well-known U.S. billionaires like computer mogul Michael Dell and energy tycoon Charles Koch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The king of NFTs explains the future of Bored Ape Yacht Club and a whole lot more
Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, had one helluva month. Jimmy McNelis, a leader in the NFT space, breaks down what it all means.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90735768/bored-ape-yacht-club-jimmy-mcnelis-king-nft-kingship-future
It’s been a banner couple of weeks for the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most-valued NFT project on the market, Yuga Labs. It acquired Larva Labs’s blue chip NFT projects CryptoPunks and Meebits. Yuga also announced a $450 million funding round that values the company at $4 billion. As part of that announcement, Yuga unveiled Otherside, its metaverse project that aspires to bridge the worlds of the various characters under its aegis. If all that wasn’t enough, an ApeCoin token (APE), governed by its Ape DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), started trading on major crypto exchanges.
If there’s one person who can explain what all this means for Bored Apes as a cultural phenomenon, for the potential and perils of one company controlling 5 of the 20 most-coveted NFT collections, and for what all this means for NFTs and their role in popular culture, it’s Jimmy McNelis. He’s one of the most prominent NFT collectors, as well as CEO of the NFT brand-building platform NFT42.
All of that makes him the perfect person to give a state of the union on NFTs at this seminal moment: his take on Yuga’s game-changing acquisition, the problems plaguing the crypto space, Web3 going mainstream, and what NFT projects will be the next wave. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.
There was a lot of confusion around the IP rights for NFT holders. There was that fiasco with their version 1 CryptoPunks. I don’t want to call CryptoPunks a failure at all, but . . .
Oh, it wasn’t a failure! That’s the interesting thing. They just didn’t do it the exact way that they should have, which is really hard. When they created CryptoPunks, this was the first foray. They accidentally unlocked something that’s gonna change the world. So, they didn’t have the foresight or ability to know how big it could be at that time. So, they probably weren’t aptly prepared to handle the success, and that’s understandable.
Larva Labs copped to that in its announcement. Its leaders said, “Our personalities and skill sets aren’t well suited to community management, public relations, and the day-to-day management that these kinds of projects require and deserve.” How is the broader NFT community thinking about where CryptoPunks went wrong?
A lot of people are drawn to the idea that they can just do an NFT project, mint 800 to 2,000 ETH, and make millions of dollars. But a lot of people aren’t thinking about what happens after that, and how much responsibility you have to your community in order to maintain the project and continue to deliver on your promises. When CryptoPunks started, the ethos for them was: We launched this project. We launched this marketplace. Have at it. And that was actually a very valid approach back then. But, the community has decided that they want roadmaps. So, the space has definitely changed for the better in that regard over the last couple years.
Is there too much power shifting to one company? I know this is all in the name of decentralization, but you can’t ignore the vast amount of sway Yuga is holding in this space.
I’m actually not concerned about them taking on that IP. They were the right people to take hold of it right now. The space is still extremely nascent. There are not really many entities in the space that can handle something as important and of this breadth. There were a couple other suitors out there. I saw that Pixel Vault [creator of the crypto-native Punks comic] was trying to buy the IP. That would’ve been a pretty cool thing. I’m not sure if it would’ve had the same overall impact and benefit that it did with Yuga Labs purchasing [CryptoPunks and Meebits], even though I really like the Pixel Vault team.
Will the integrity of the Web3 ethos be maintained as it gets bigger and more mainstream?
Define integrity.
You do it for me in this context.
Okay, to put it simply first, I believe that as mainstream incumbents and the world comes into NFTs, the corporations and those paying to develop on top of it are gonna take the best bits of blockchain and use those and leave out the stuff they don’t like. So, I think we’re gonna end up in a world, at least over the next few years, where we’re more like Web 2.5 than 3.0. We’re gonna be incorporating elements of cloud computing and SaaS and everything else with this Web3 layer of the internet. But I believe that the integrity shall, by and large, remain in place, because that’s the benefit of Web3. There is a trustless ownership layer of the internet that now exists, and it’s on blockchain technology. So, there’s gonna be huge bumps in the road along the way, I’m sure. But overall, the integrity should stay intact as mainstream comes into the space. I think the foundations have been laid down correctly.
Yuga also launched ApeCoin. Did that seem inevitable to you?
No, actually. I would’ve expected like OpenSea or MetaMask to do a coin before I expected the Bored Apes to do a token.
What are your thoughts on ApeCoin so far?
The Ape token actually has a real chance to become one of the primary tokens that are used in the NFT ecosystem over the next couple years. It has all of the meme potential that Dogecoin and Shiba and all those tokens have, which, for some reason, the broader communities really like to rally around. But it’s also gonna provide direct utility in the Yuga ecosystem. We feel some ownership over this community and over the existence of this token, because we’re the holders that basically enabled this to happen by believing in the project.
Speaking of the Ape community and the DAO overseeing it, there’s been a lot debate around just how decentralized DAOs really are. In the Ape DAO, for example, there are 1 billion tokens: 15% of that goes to Bored and Mutant Ape holders, 16% to Yuga, 14% to launch contributors including VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and Animoca Brands, 8% to Bored Ape Yacht Club’s founders. But 47% of those tokens are locked up in the DAO treasury and will be released over the next three years. It seems like the people who “aped in” from the start will slowly lose their majority of the DAO?
What the community has identified is right now our voice is the loudest, and we have the most sway, because a lot of those tokens aren’t unlocked yet. We realize that the Bored Ape community itself, the current NFT holders, are gonna lose our sway over the community pretty quickly. So, we’re trying to lay down the groundwork now that allows us to have a say. Over the next six months, I think they’re gonna be electing new board members to the DAO, and I think the community has an opportunity to get some people on there to advocate on their behalf as well.
Shifting gears a bit, an area that can’t be ignored are the security concerns around NFTs. I feel like every day there’s a new story of a hack.
Did you see the Ronin story?
Yes! Where hackers stole over $625 million from Axie Infinity‘s network.
Oh my God! They didn’t even notice for five days.
This is what I’m saying. What do you think is needed to mitigate hacking?
It’s extremely scary. People have lost immense amounts of money that would’ve changed their lives if they hadn’t lost it. It’s daunting to get everything right and to not make mistakes. We’re in a world right now where all of our money is basically held custodially by institutions. We have banks. We have FDIC insurance. Those mechanisms don’t exist yet in crypto. However, this is an opportunity for all of those existing institutions who are solving those problems with fiat money and traditional banking today to provide products and tools that will help protect consumers as well. And the government clearly wants that as well. So, I think we’re gonna see crypto start to move in that direction a little bit more.
[On April, 1, after this conversation took place, the Discord servers for BAYC and other NFT projects were hacked.]
Tomi Engdahl says:
Luke Plunkett / Kotaku:
Racing game F1 Delta Time, where some users spent almost $300,000 on a single NFT transaction, shuts down after owner Animoca Brands didn’t renew its F1 license — Hello, and welcome to another episode of ‘dumb crypto stuff not working in the real world’ — F1 Delta Time …
Official Formula 1 NFT Game Shuts Down, Tokens Are Now Practically Worthless
Hello, and welcome to another episode of ‘dumb crypto stuff not working in the real world’
https://kotaku.com/f1-formula-1-one-delta-time-nft-crypto-cursed-shut-down-1848748953?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
F1 Delta Time, an official NFT and crypto-powered racing game that launched back in 2019, closed its doors last month. This leaves everyone who had spent money and invested in the project probably wishing they had done something else with their time.
The game—which was one of the first licensed NFT titles out there, years before other leagues and sports got into the scam—announced its closure on March 15, giving users…one day before the game shut down on March 16. If you’ve never seen F1 Delta Time before, and you’re thinking, “Wow, did I miss an exciting Formula 1 racing game?!?!”, you did not:
Games shut down all the time, but what’s notable about this one is that it was at one point a pretty big deal, at least in this cursed space! Example: the most expensive NFT sold in all of 2019 was a car for this game, which went for over $100,000. Add a combination of the official F1 license and a promised ability for players to “play to earn”, and you had an early test case for how NFT-powered games could work.
With owners Animoca unable to renew the F1 license, however, it is now also a test case for what happens when a licensed NFT game dies. All that money splashed out on cars and other items—some players would later spend almost $300,000 on a single transaction—is now ostensibly worthless. Sure, the tokens themselves live on, but without the game they were bought for there’s no actual value there.
Fully aware of this, the developers have promised the owners of those F1 NFTs that they can now have some generic replacement tokens for an entirely different racing game instead
Like I said, games shut down all the time, and many of them have had players who spent money on items, levels, weapons and other types of digital content. The difference here is that in a regular video games, those are part of the experience; this game’s items, like everything else crypto-related, were pitched as an investment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Sources: Meta has drawn up plans to add “social tokens”, lending services, and a non-blockchain virtual currency that employees dubbed “Zuck Bucks” to its apps — Meta has drawn up plans to introduce virtual coins, tokens and lending services to its apps …
Facebook owner Meta targets finance with ‘Zuck Bucks’ and creator coins
https://www.ft.com/content/50fbe9ba-32c8-4caf-a34e-234031019371
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:
OpenSea adds Solana NFT trading support in beta; a marketplace search shows 865K NFTs minted on Solana — At long last, Solana support is finally live on OpenSea—in beta mode. — In brief — Solana NFTs have been added to OpenSea, the largest overall NFT marketplace.
Solana NFTs Can Now Be Traded on OpenSea
At long last, Solana support is finally live on OpenSea—in beta mode.
https://decrypt.co/97139/solana-nfts-opensea-trading-live
In brief
Solana NFTs have been added to OpenSea, the largest overall NFT marketplace.
The launch comes amid recent Solana network issues, particularly today.
OpenSea is primarily based around Ethereum and currently dominates the NFT trading space by a large margin. With the addition of Solana, OpenSea now accommodates collectibles from the second-largest NFT ecosystem outside of Ethereum and its sidechain/layer-2 scaling solutions.
According to the marketplace, Solana support has been added in beta with “limited collection coverage.” OpenSea says that it currently supports 165 collections, although if you search the marketplace by chain, it shows more than 865,000 total NFTs minted on Solana.
Popular Solana NFT collections like Solana Monkey Business, DeGods, Degenerate Ape Academy, Aurory, and Shadowy Super Coder are currently listed on OpenSea. Solana offers significantly lower transaction fees than Ethereum, and is a more energy-efficient blockchain network that can handle larger numbers of transactions at a time.
Solana’s arrival on OpenSea was long anticipated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
How Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, and others are pushing women to invest in NFTs, which critics see as a form of self-serving feminism centered on white women — Gwyneth Paltrow and Mila Kunis joined a Zoom in January to encourage 5,000 women in the audience to break into the male-dominated world of crypto.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/06/women-crypto-nft/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Goldman Sachs joins other investors in $88M round for web3 and blockchain security firm CertiK
Jacquelyn Melinek
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/07/goldman-sachs-joins-other-investors-in-88m-round-for-web3-and-blockchain-security-firm-certik/
CertiK, a Web3 and blockchain security company, has raised $88 million in its latest round, bringing its valuation to $2 billion.
The oversubscribed Series B3 financing round has doubled the company’s valuation in three months. The company has raised a total of $230 million, to date.
“We have raised four rounds in the past nine months and the valuation has grown more than 10 times,” Ronghui Gu, founder and CEO of CertiK, told TechCrunch. “We haven’t touched any money in the past four rounds. The money is in the bank and the reason is because CertiK is a profitable business.”
However, Gu said that the funds will be used to build new products and “a one-stop security platform for the entire web3 world.”
The capital raise was led by Insight Partners, Tiger Global and Advent International. Goldman Sachs also participated alongside existing investors like Sequoia and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Senator Patrick Toomey introduces a bill to regulate stablecoins, including defining a “payment stablecoin”, creating a license for issuers, and more — The Stablecoin TRUST Act would give stablecoin issuers a variety of regulatory regimes to abide by, but enforce disclosure and redemption requirements.
Top US Lawmaker Proposes Sweeping Stablecoin Regulation Framework
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/04/06/top-us-lawmaker-proposes-sweeping-stablecoin-regulation-framework/
The Stablecoin TRUST Act would give stablecoin issuers a variety of regulatory regimes to abide by, but enforce disclosure and redemption requirements.
A leading member of the Senate Banking Committee introduced a bill Wednesday to create a three-pronged regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers in the U.S.
As written, the discussion draft of the bill would define a “payment stablecoin,” authorize the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to create a new license specific to stablecoin issuers, allow insured depository banks to issue payment stablecoins and address state regulatory oversight of this segment of the crypto industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
Crypto payments startup Strike announces Shopify integration for bitcoin’s Lightning Network, letting Shopify merchants in the US opt-in to the payment option — The bitcoiner instrumental to El Salvador’s announcement at last year’s conference waxed philosophical on Bitcoin’s role as a payments network.
Jack Mallers’ Strike Announces Shopify Integration for Bitcoin Lightning Payments
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/07/jack-mallers-strike-announces-shopify-integration-for-bitcoin-lightning-payments/
The bitcoiner instrumental to El Salvador’s announcement at last year’s conference waxed philosophical on Bitcoin’s role as a payments network.
Strike CEO Jack Mallers unveiled a litany of high-powered partnerships for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami on Thursday – including an integration with ecommerce giant Shopify.
“You’re gonna be able to walk into” millions of American storefronts that plug into the payments stalwarts and pay across the Lightning Network.
Mallers said Strike partnered with NCR (NCR), the world’s largest point-of-sale (POS) supplier, and payments firm Blackhawk.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The definition of the metaverse varies widely, but it’s generally considered to be the next evolution of the Internet: a network of virtual spaces that opens up new ways for users to interact with brands, services and each other online. Previously, Sweeney said he envisions the metaverse as a sort of online playground, a communal space where people mingle with both brands and other users while hopping seamlessly between multiplayer games, streaming entertainment platforms and other digital experiences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/04/07/lego-epic-metaverse-fortnite/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ryan Broderick / Fast Company:
Inside the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, which felt confusing and disjointed, as the cultural spotlight on Ethereum leaves Bitcoin feeling a little stale
https://www.fastcompany.com/90739505/bitcoin-struggles-to-find-its-star-power-in-miami
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.securityweek.com/blockchain-security-firm-certik-raises-88-million-2-billion-valuation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Ethereum developers launch the so-called mainnet shadow fork, a key stress test ahead of the proof-of-stake Merge upgrade, expected to reduce energy use by ~99% — Ethereum’s network is inching closer toward its much-anticipated software upgrade known as the Merge, having just entered a key testing step.
Ethereum Undergoes Another Stress Test Ahead of Software Change
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-11/ethereum-undergoes-another-stress-test-ahead-of-software-change
The shadow fork is designed to find more bugs ahead of launch
The test detected one bug, and has been deemed a success
Ethereum’s network is inching closer toward its much-anticipated software upgrade known as the Merge, having just entered a key testing step.
Earlier Monday, Ethereum developers launched a so-called mainnet shadow fork, stress-testing the new upcoming software. The test uncovered at least one bug, but the deployment has mostly gone smoothly, and was “a huge success,” Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden said in a Tweet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Colin Kirkland / MediaPost:
Forbes launches its first NFT collection, featuring 100 fictional billionaire investors with theoretical portfolios and virtual net worths based on NYSE pricing
Forbes Launches ‘Virtual Billionaires’ NFT Collection, Expands Into Metaverse
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/372868/forbes-launches-virtual-billionaires-nft-collect.html
Forbes, famous for its “Richest People In The World” list, is now offering anyone the chance to become a billionaire –– a virtual billionaire, that is.
Today the business-centric media company is unveiling its first collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs): 100 fictional billionaire investors with theoretical portfolios and virtual net worths based on real-time New York Stock Exchange pricing.
The NFT collection and Ethereum-based token –– developed in partnership with cryptocurrency exchange FTX –– will officially launch on April 13, but early access is available to Forbes subscribers today.
Along with specific financial assets, Forbes Virtual NFT Billionaires come with distinct hobbies and accessories featured on their own personal Forbes.com profile page.
“The launch of this collection is an important step as Forbes embraces Web3 and digital assets, and it provides an opportunity for our audience to better engage in this space too,” says Vadim Supitskiy, Forbes’ Chief Technology Officer.
Barcelona-based illustrators Goodog and ItsACat have created custom 3D headshots for each NFT, but user-interaction is just as important as collecting virtual art.
After purchasing one of these NFTs, owners will have their public crypto wallet address featured alongside their virtual billionaire –– all of whom will be ranked on Forbes’ designated Virtual NFT Billionaires List.
This isn’t Forbes’ first foray into crypto or Web3. Last year, Forbes took a page from Time’s book by selling one of its magazine covers – –a photo of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss –– as an NFT for $333,333. All proceeds were donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).
“In the future we’ll continue to experiment and tie in other parts of the metaverse,” says Supitskiy, who believes companies in the publishing industry failing to adopt Web3 strategies will likely fall behind.
Tomi Engdahl says:
According to this research, crypto attracts ‘dark’ personality types.
“Impulsive Psychopaths Like Crypto”: Research Shows How “Dark” Personality Traits Affect Bitcoin Enthusiasm
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/impulsive-psychopaths-like-crypto-research-shows-how-dark-personality-traits-affect-bitcoin-enthusiasm/
Since the invention of Bitcoin in 2009 the global cryptocurrency market has grown from nothing to a value of around US$2 trillion. From a price of US$1 in 2011, Bitcoin rose to an all-time high of more than US$63,000 in April 2021, and now hovers around the US$42,000 mark.
Large fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices are common, which makes them a highly speculative investment. What kind of people are willing to take the risk, and what motivates them?
WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO BUY CRYPTO? IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT MAKING MONEY
A common reason to invest in crypto is the hope of earning high returns. Beyond the desire to build wealth, our research shows dark personality traits also drive crypto buying.
Machiavellianism is named after the Italian political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli. People who rate highly on this trait are good at deception and interpersonal manipulation.
Machiavellians take a calculated approach to achieving goals, and avoid impulsive decisions. They are less likely to engage in problem gambling.
Machiavellians also tend to believe strongly in government conspiracies. For example, they often believe politicians usually do not reveal their true motives, and that government agencies closely monitor all citizens.
We found Machiavellians like crypto primarily because they distrust politicians and government agencies. Many crypto supporters believe governments are corrupt, and crypto avoids government corruption.
OVERCONFIDENCE AND POSITIVITY
Narcissism is a self-centred personality trait, characterised by feelings of privilege and predominance over others. Narcissists are overconfident and are more willing to do things like make risky investments in the stock market and gamble.
Narcissists tend to focus on the positive side of life. We found narcissists like crypto because of their great faith in the future, and because of their confidence their own lives will improve.
IMPULSIVE PSYCHOPATHS LIKE CRYPTO
Psychopathy is a callous, impulsive antisocial personality trait. Psychopathic people often find it difficult to perceive, understand, or address emotions due to a lack of emotional intelligence and empathy.
The reckless nature of psychopaths makes them more resistant to stress and anxiety. As a result, psychopaths like stimulation-seeking and risk-taking. They are prone to gambling and gambling addiction.
We found that impulsive psychopaths like crypto, because they fear missing out on investing rewards that others are experiencing.
HOW IS SADISM INVOLVED?
Everyday sadism relates to a personality enjoying another’s suffering. Sadists often display aggression and cruel behaviours. For example, sadists troll others on the Internet for enjoyment.
At first glance, buying crypto is unlikely to harm others. However, we found sadists like crypto because they do not want to miss out on investment rewards either. To them, perhaps both the pleasure from seeing another’s pain and the fear of missing out are related to selfishness.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL LENS
Studying cryptocurrency through the psychological lens of the dark tetrad offers insight into why people want to buy crypto. We are not suggesting that everyone interested in crypto displays dark tetrad traits.
We studied only a subset of people interested in crypto who do have these traits. If you happen to be a Bitcoin or other crypto holder, you may or may not exhibit them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Crypto is a lawless wasteland with charlatans and scammers. NFTs are literally just .jpegs with artificial scarcity built in. This doesn’t surprise me at all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bored Apes Go Hollywood With Coinbase-Produced Movie Trilogy
The trio of films will tie into the launch of Coinbase’s long-awaited NFT marketplace.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/11/bored-apes-go-hollywood-with-coinbase-produced-movie-trilogy/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sandali Handagama / CoinDesk:
An NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet, which sold for $2.9M last year, has been up for sale since last week and has so far garnered a maximum bid of ~$2.1K — Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million last year.
‘Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet’ NFT Went on Sale for $48M. It Ended With a Top Bid of Just $280
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/13/jack-dorseys-first-tweet-nft-went-on-sale-for-48m-it-ended-with-a-top-bid-of-just-280/
Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million last year. He listed the NFT for sale again at $48 million last week.
A non-fungible token (NFT) of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet could sell for just under $280. The current owner of the NFT listed it for $48 million last week.
Iranian-born crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi purchased the NFT for $2.9 million in March 2021. Last Thursday, he announced on Twitter that he wished to sell the NFT, and pledged 50% of its proceeds (which he thought would exceed $25 million) to charity. The auction closed Wednesday, with just seven total offers ranging from 0.09 ETH ($277 at current prices) to 0.0019 ETH (almost $6).
“The deadline I set was over, but if I get a good offer, I might accept it, I might never sell it,” Estavi told CoinDesk via a WhatsApp message on Wednesday.
Estavi has two days to accept the bid, or it will expire.
“I decided to sell this NFT ( the world’s first ever tweet ) and donate 50% of the proceeds ( $25 million or more ) to the charity @GiveDirectly”
Estavi, whose crypto ventures Bridge Oracle and CryptoLand collapsed following his arrest in Iran last year, is in the middle of relaunching his Bridge Oracle tokens (BRG), which were originally on the Tron blockchain, to the Binance Smart Chain.
BRG investors are waiting for Estavi to exchange their old tokens for the new ones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Wikipedia editors vote 232 to 94 to request the Wikimedia Foundation stop accepting crypto donations; the foundation is not legally bound by the proposal — Critics argue the bitcoin and ethereum networks consume too much energy. — More than 200 long-time Wikipedia editors have requested …
Wikipedia community votes to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations [Updated]
Critics argue the bitcoin and ethereum networks consume too much energy.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/wikipedia-community-votes-to-stop-accepting-cryptocurrency-donations/
More than 200 long-time Wikipedia editors have requested that the Wikimedia Foundation stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The foundation received crypto donations worth about $130,000 in the most recent fiscal year—less than 0.1 percent of the foundation’s revenue, which topped $150 million last year.
Debate on the proposal has raged over the last three months.
“Cryptocurrencies are extremely risky investments that have only been gaining popularity among retail investors,” wrote Wikipedia user GorillaWarfare, the original author of the proposal, back in January. “I do not think we should be endorsing their use in this way.”
GorillaWarfare is Molly White, a Wikipedian who has become something of an anti-cryptocurrency activist. She also runs the Twitter account “web3 is going just great,” which highlights “some of the many disasters happening in crypto, defi, NFTs, and other web3 projects,” the account profile says.
In her proposal for the Wikimedia Foundation, GorillaWarfare added that “Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two most highly used cryptocurrencies, and are both proof-of-work, using an enormous amount of energy.”
According to one widely cited estimate, the bitcoin network consumes around 200 TWh of energy per year. That’s about as much energy as is consumed by 70 million people in Thailand. And it works out to around 2,000 kWh per bitcoin transaction.
Bitcoin defenders countered that bitcoin’s energy usage is driven by its mining process, which consumes about the same amount of energy regardless of the number of transactions. So accepting any given bitcoin donation won’t necessarily lead to more carbon emissions.
But cryptocurrency critics argued that Wikimedia’s de facto endorsement of cryptocurrencies may help to push up their price. And the more expensive bitcoin is, the more energy miners will devote to creating new ones.
Crypto skeptics pointed out that people can easily convert their bitcoins to dollars before donating. But US tax law gives advantages to those who donate an asset directly to a charity.
Cryptocurrency defenders also pointed out that some people can’t easily access conventional banking services.
“Bank transfers, credit cards, and Paypal are inaccessible for millions of people who don’t have government ID and therefore can’t open an account,” wrote Wikipedia user AnarkioC. “They don’t allow anonymous or pseudonymous donations (could be risky depending on your personal situation); and they can easily be surveilled and censored.”
Growing controversy over cryptocurrency
If the foundation complies with the community’s request, it wouldn’t be the first organization to stop using cryptocurrencies due to environmental concerns. Earlier this month, the Mozilla Foundation announced it would stop accepting cryptocurrencies that use the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus process. These include bitcoin and ether—though the latter is expected to convert to a proof-of-stake model in the future.
Last year, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin payments to buy Tesla vehicles. The announcement came just two months after Tesla started accepting bitcoins for Teslas.
Gaming company Steam stopped accepting bitcoin in 2017, citing the network’s transaction fees, which were then near record highs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jialiang David Pan / Bloomberg:
Ethereum’s long-awaited proof-of-stake Merge upgrade “won’t be June, but likely in the few months after”, according to a lead developer on the project — One of the leading Ethereum software developers said the blockchain network’s much-anticipated technical upgrade known …
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/ethereum-developer-says-upgrade-will-be-later-than-june
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/12/blue-chip-nft-owners-explore-alternative-uses-as-sales-decline/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simple Photoshop Scams User Out Of $550,000 Bored Ape NFTs
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/simple-photoshop-scams-user-out-of-550000-bored-ape-nfts/
A scammer stole around $550,000 worth of Bored Ape NFTs in a ridiculously simple way, according to an NFT market expert. By simply photoshopping a verification mark used by an NFT marketplace onto a JPEG of the NFT, the scammer tricked a user called s27 into trading their legitimate NFTs away – and with no support structure in place, the user will likely not be getting any compensation for the costly mistake.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Coinbase launches its NFT marketplace in beta with Ethereum-based NFTs and ETH payments; 1.5M+ joined the waitlist after the service’s unveiling in October 2021
Coinbase NFT marketplace goes live in beta for select customers
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/142684/coinbase-nft-marketplace-beta-launch
Quick Take
Coinbase NFT has gone live in beta form. It currently supports Ethereum-based NFTs and payments in ETH.
Coinbase’s VP of product Sanchan Saxena told The Block that “full fiat on-ramps will be coming soon.”
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Crypto exchange Coinbase’s long-awaited NFT marketplace has launched in beta form for select customers after the exchange first unveiled plans for it in October.
The beta NFT marketplace is accessible to everyone to view from today, but initially only select users will be able to buy or sell. “Coinbase will be onboarding a small number of users into the beta for Coinbase NFT,” Sanchan Saxena, VP of product at Coinbase, told The Block.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Andreessen Horowitz launches a16z Crypto Research, a lab focused on Web3 breakthroughs that can contribute to deployable code, led by academic Tim Roughgarden — Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is diving deeper into the crypto market with the launch of a new academic lab dedicated …
a16z Crypto is launching an academic research lab focused on web3
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/142869/a16z-crypto-is-launching-an-academic-research-lab-focused-on-web3
Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is diving deeper into the crypto market with the launch of a new academic lab dedicated to tackling research problems facing the fast-growing digital asset industry.
Dubbed a16z Crypto Research, the new unit will be led by Tim Roughgarden, a prominent academic expert in game theory who has been a professor at both Stanford and Columbia. He joined a16z as a research advisor last year and will now take the title of head of research.
Roughgarden’s goal is to create a university-like effort within the firm akin to Bell Labs or DeepMind, the artificial intelligence research subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet.
“It is clear that web3 is a new scientific breakthrough that brings together ideas from computer sience, finance, economics and the humanities,” noted Ali Yahya, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in an interview with The Block.
The new lab will aim to pinpoint and address the fundamental research problems facing the pursuit of mainstream crypto adoption. In some instances, the group may develop new tools that can help a16z portfolio companies grow their business. The investment firm Paradigm has pursued a similar strategy. For instance, Paradigm recently worked with Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland on a new mechanism for non-fungible token (NFT) sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Argentina is embracing cryptocurrency
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789
In Argentina, there are traces everywhere of distrust and even trauma related to the economy.
For Jerónimo Ferrer, a formative memory is of Argentina’s crushing financial crisis at the end of the 1990 – when bank accounts were frozen and, almost overnight, people’s savings evaporated.
He’s not alone. One engineering student I spoke to keeps all his savings, in US dollars, at home because he fears that the banks will again devalue holdings overnight.
While many Argentinians are, by necessity, experts on the state of the economy – from the sky-high level of inflation to the current unofficial rate of exchange between the peso and the US dollar – Mr Ferrer has gone further than most.
Since 2019, he’s run a walking tour called “Our local crazy economy & Bitcoin tour of Buenos Aires”, where he explains to tourists the level of restrictions Argentines face, such as limits on foreign currency transactions, or bans on payments in instalments for international flights.
“When you have restrictions, you need tools for freedom,” Mr Ferrer says.
For many crypto enthusiasts around the world, decentralised and digital currency is primarily about ideology or profit. But for many Argentines, it fills more basic needs.
“I trust more mathematics and software than I trust politicians,” Mr Ferrer explains. “I think that Bitcoin for Argentinians should be a no-brainer.”
There are other ways that the strong government intervention in the economy has helped cryptocurrency gain a footing in Argentina. For example, it’s relatively cheap to run an energy-guzzling Bitcoin mining operation, because the cost of electricity is kept relatively low.
Bitcoin mining is the process that creates new Bitcoin. It involves computers solving complicated maths problems. Solve the problem and you are awarded Bitcoin. It sounds simple but involves elaborate computer systems, requiring lots of electricity to run and cool them.
The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance estimates that globally, the electricity used in Bitcoin mining to be around 137 terawatt hours per year. That’s about the same as the annual use of some countries, like Norway or Poland.
Producing that electricity will be contributing to global carbon dioxide emissions, but it is difficult to estimate how much.
However, in Argentina such environmental issues are often eclipsed by financial concerns.
For some early adopters of cryptocurrency in Argentina, even a relatively young and unpredictable currency is preferable to the extremely changeable peso.
Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, may also help to buffer against high inflation, since there’s a finite amount of the currency that can be created.
Inflation, which measure how the cost of living changes over time, is an ever-present concern in Argentina. The year-on-year rate of inflation is staggering, at over 50%.
“In the pandemic, people noticed this situation, and to protect their money they chose to look for an asset that was limited,” says María Mercedes Etchegoyen.
However, the Central Bank has been issuing warnings about crypto-based scams.
It has acknowledged that the level of crypto use isn’t high yet, but is growing rapidly and merits concern.
Ms Etchegoyen is concerned about the uneven access to cryptocurrencies.
So far it is the preserve of a minority – largely a young, male, tech-savvy, and relatively affluent population. It’s tech workers, not farmers, who are being paid in Bitcoin.
“Today it’s not a technology that everyone can access,” acknowledges blockchain consultant Lucia Lizardo.
Yet efforts are underway to expand the reach of crypto – partly through financial products that offer a stepping stone between traditional and cryptocurrency.
Three Argentine start-ups now offer debit cards for crypto-based transactions. One of these companies, Lemon, was founded in a Patagonian town where 40% of shops accept Bitcoin.
Some people in Argentina are also turning to “stablecoins”, which are pegged to the US dollar and are therefore less prone to fluctuations in value.
Of course, crypto will not provide a one-stop solution for Argentina’s economic woes. And it brings its own problems of currency speculation, fraud, and its environmental impact.
Overall, though, “I think this is like a revolution for young people,” c
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ronin Network: What a $600m hack says about the state of crypto
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60933174
Thousands, if not millions, of people could have lost money in the second largest crypto hack in history.
Ronin Network, a key platform powering the popular mobile game Axie Infinity, has had $615m (£467m) stolen.
A 20-year-old from Wiltshire, Dan Rean, is one of those affected. He told the BBC: “I have lost 0.15 Ethereum, about $500. It’s bad but I have friends in a worse position.”
Jack Kenny is one of those friends, and said: “I’m down about $10,000.”
The 23-year-old from Ireland added: “I don’t think people fully understand the significance of this hack – $600m is a very big portion of all the assets in this network.”
Another man from the US east coast says he has lost $8,000, but adds there are people who may have lost their “life savings” after saving up digital coins from playing Axie Infinity.
In the game, players fight cartoon pets called Axies to earn cryptocurrency.
The game is hugely popular with millions of players around the world hoping to win cryptocurrency and collect the game’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Its particularly big in the Philippines, where playing has become a full-time and potentially lucrative job.
Ronin Network, which is also owned by Vietnamese parent company Sky Mavis, allows players to exchange the digital coins they earn in Axie Infinity with other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.
It says a hacker transferred $540m worth of cryptocurrency to themselves six days ago, but the company only noticed on Tuesday when a customer was unable to withdraw their funds.
The stolen stash has since risen in value with the price of cryptocurrencies to be worth about $615m.
It’s just the latest in a string of mass crypto heists in the last year totalling well over $2bn.
The sequence of events around the hack tells us a lot about the perils of cryptocurrency and decentralised finance.
Will customers get their money back?
Ronin Network says it is “working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers, and our investors to make sure all funds are recovered or reimbursed”.
Initially, it put out one statement on its substack – a newsletter service – and taken its website offline.
It has also disabled comments on its company posts on social media.
Later the company replied to the BBC’s requests for comment saying it was “committed” to reimbursing customers but would not give a guarantee.
Ronin Network has not yet told customers what’s happening with their funds or when they will get their money back.
In most cases of mass crypto hacks, customers are reimbursed in some way, but it can take months or years.
Cryptocurrency writer David Canellis, from Protos, says direct communication with cryptocurrency companies is notoriously poor.
“When you’re dealing with entities that are handling more than half a billion dollars you’d expect a little bit more avenues and openness to communication – especially when there has been such a lapse in security around this hack.
“But then again, one primary tenet of the ecosystem is that anyone at all can launch their own projects, and there should be no barriers to this.”
How it happened
Ronin Network says that the hack started in November 2021, when Axie Infinity’s user base swelled to an unsustainable size.
The company said the influx of players caused “immense user load”, which forced it to loosen security procedures to cope with the increased demand.
It says that things calmed down in December, but that it forgot to retighten its security, and the hackers took advantage of the backdoor left open.
Economist and author Frances Coppola says: “This is pretty typical of crypto companies.
“We’ve seen so many hacks and exploits caused by – to be blunt – frank carelessness and lack of concern for the safety of people’s funds.
“Crypto companies are sometimes so anxious to make ‘loadsamoney’, or simply accommodate high demand, that they put out badly designed and tested code, compromise security, or place too much reliance on infrastructure.”
The five largest-ever cryptocurrency hacks
Figures from cryptocurrency analysis company Elliptic, based on the dollar value at time of hack:
$325m – Wormhole, February 2022
$470m – Mt Gox, February 2014.
$532m – Coincheck, January 2018
$540m – Ronin Bridge, March 2022.
$611m – Poly Network, August 2021
Why does this keep happening?
Experts say cryptocurrency is increasingly being seen as low hanging fruit by hackers.
Cryptocurrency companies are “huge honeypots for hackers”, says Tom Robinson, of Elliptic.
“Crypto transactions are irreversible, so if a hacker can get their hands on it, it’s very difficult for anyone to retrieve it,” he says.
Mr Robinson said it is also attractive because huge pay days are possible without the extra hassle of cybercrime like ransomware, where criminals have to negotiate with hacked companies.
It’s not known who is behind this latest hack, but it is not necessarily cyber-criminals out to make money for themselves. For example, state-sponsored hackers have been identified as the culprits behind some crypto heists.
According to cryptocurrency researchers at Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole almost $400m (£291m) worth of digital assets in at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms last year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Stripe will let companies pay users in cryptocurrency via USDC, starting with Twitter, which will pay some Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows creators in crypto — – Online payments firm Stripe says it will start offering merchants the ability to pay their users in cryptocurrency through the stablecoin USDC.
Fintech giant Stripe jumps into crypto with a feature that lets Twitter users get paid in stablecoin
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/22/stripe-launches-crypto-payments-feature-with-twitter-as-first-client.html
Online payments firm Stripe says it will start offering merchants the ability to pay their users in cryptocurrency through the stablecoin USDC.
Starting Friday, Twitter will let a certain number of creators receive their earnings from its paid Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows features in crypto.
It’s Stripe’s first significant push into crypto since dropping support for bitcoin four years ago.
tripe will allow businesses to pay their users via cryptocurrencies, starting with Twitter, in the latest sign of how large financial firms are warming to digital assets.
The $95 billion online payments company said Friday it will start offering merchants the ability to make payouts in crypto through the stablecoin USDC, which is issued by crypto firm Circle. Stablecoins are tokens that are pegged to fiat currencies to maintain a stable price. In USDC’s case, as the name suggests, the cryptocurrency is backed by the U.S. dollar.
Twitter will be the first company to integrate the new payment method. Starting Friday, the social media platform — which has been the subject of much talk lately over a potential takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk — will let a certain number of creators receive their earnings from its paid Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows features in USDC.
Tomi Engdahl says:
European Country Launches Official Digital Coin
After years of research and development,
the Swedish central bank has finally created and established eKrona – a world’s first state-backed decentralized currency >>
https://digitaledutoday.xyz/1/2/?cep=HAOxpVlafkqNTXpgbQYTysIeHWgZjKbNk9cRSuXRyTuPhn2CXx7sL7CmmlsSls4KE1S1yrb32QMzVhEGxsw2tt95kS05JXMuUJpSqtFocOb06NynHbZd6yzitfhujNZwrLtP-8pZYEU-8zgdRhDWMP7SOCw5BCFAV4cvT6nT2HGF8UGaS5IazYPQ4ygvfGPzH1G4z57kEAmX8wVisvjlEomv2nHegmtBwjhqQXhfW-gbd_bgjHjsLkK5wA03cp4ahDU_H1CxS24sLW82xOW0UwImshOOmBNvbzomT53NZ9Ja2oeUb_d_ziLbgwaRfPVOmjQB74FYqOck-_lxSslN2J0oCgLjAUozBTsZSYOYJXYI0bGHysHPRCYLA3nF27fxp9ER0epkL-VdnBrahzax5nqBRtg5N3ZlHtN3-STeN5gny7g4__tcsKXxmJUEqK7ni8din98pEwtIPW3V7zLfBu7Uh13u7GEZJfV2xkJ9La0&lptoken=162350068729991203d9&key1=marl-es&campaign_id=23850762682100065&adset_name=43-65Men-Fiswsl+%E2%80%93A&ad_name=27-34-Men-ios-Ad001&fbclid=IwAR39pCnpAhFbIzTtPldFVcG7jdfPB8_B7_7wt1k47QuuH31gmrSxXaeGnkY
After years of research and development, the Swedish central bank has finally created and established eKrona – a world’s first state-backed decentralized currency.
The tokens and the currency are available for immediate purchase, sale and use through the official eKrona’s website. The sole purpose of the official website is to market, distribute and enable safe trading of the newly established digital coin.
At the time of writing, the price of one eKrona equals €0.2. It’s considerably less expensive than any of its rivals. At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $45,586.24 and Ethereum at $2,823.19.
https://digitaledutoday.xyz/2/11/en.html?ai=2958173&altid=uKFSf0HFL6nB&gi=140&oi=29&ci=49&s2=dnu23jjjkt88h1nfioj9bdc8&MPC_1=dnu23jjjkt88h1nfioj9bdc8&key1=marl-es&fbclid=IwAR39pCnpAhFbIzTtPldFVcG7jdfPB8_B7_7wt1k47QuuH31gmrSxXaeGnkY&lptoken=162350068729991203d9&adset_name=43-65Men-Fiswsl%20%E2%80%93A&ad_name=27-34-Men-ios-Ad001&campaign_id=23850762682100065
Tomi Engdahl says:
Osato Avan-Nomayo / The Block:
A hacker stole millions of dollars’ worth of NFTs via a phishing attack compromising Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram and promoting a malicious “mint” link — Quick Take — Bored Ape Yacht Club’s official Instagram account was hacked. — A hacker stole 91 NFTs from users …
Bored Ape Instagram account hacked: NFTs worth $2.8 million stolen
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/143328/bored-ape-instagram-account-hacked-nfts-worth-2-8-million-stolen
Quick Take
Bored Ape Yacht Club’s official Instagram account was hacked.
A hacker stole 91 NFTs from users who connected their wallet to receive the fake airdrop.
A hacker has stolen 91 NFTs worth at least $2.8 million through a phishing attack targeting Bored Ape Yacht Club owners today. It was carried out through the official Bored Ape Instagram account.
“There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything,” tweeted Bored Ape Yacht Club.
When the Instagram account was accessed, it was used to post a fake update claiming there was a LAND airdrop and users had to connect their wallets to claim the airdrop. This was taking advantage of the Bored Ape roadmap, which includes a metaverse game that will contain virtual land. When users connected to their wallets — and likely approved a transaction — the website stole their NFTs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Copeland / The Block:
OpenSea acquires NFT aggregator Gem, which helps users buy and sell NFTs across marketplaces, for an undisclosed sum; Gem will operate as a standalone brand
OpenSea acquires NFT aggregator Gem
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/143297/opensea-acquires-nft-aggregator-gem
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mengqi Sun / Wall Street Journal:
Crypto exchanges and companies are poaching more legal talent, as the industry faces increased regulatory pressure; law firms are also building crypto practices
Crypto Industry Can’t Hire Enough Lawyers
https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-industry-cant-hire-enough-lawyers-11650879002?mod=djemalertNEWS
Crypto exchanges and companies are poaching attorneys to help them navigate an evolving regulatory landscape and to cut down legal costs
The cryptocurrency industry is ramping up efforts to recruit more legal talent as it faces increased regulatory pressure while looking to be accepted by and become part of mainstream finance.
Crypto exchanges and companies are poaching attorneys left and right, from both law firms and other crypto companies, bringing them in-house to help navigate an evolving regulatory landscape while helping to curb outside legal expenses, industry participants said. Law firms, which are sometimes losing their partners to in-house positions, are also building up their crypto practices to maintain that valuable expertise.
The increased demand for lawyers also marks a turning point for crypto, whose early supporters often expressed skepticism of regulation. The industry has been expanding rapidly with hopes of attracting more mainstream investment opportunities and many are embracing the stance that they want regulatory clarity.
“In [the crypto] space, the consensus is you need to have someone in-house early,” said John Wolf Konstant, a senior consultant at technology-focused legal recruiting firm Whistler Partners. “Especially since investors are going to require that, you need to have someone there to help chaperone the process and to make sure everything is buttoned up from the start.”
Competition is also driving up salaries in the crypto space at a faster rate than in the larger in-house legal market, particularly for senior-level positions, Mr. Konstant said. Total annual packages, including tokens and equity, can run into seven figures at the very top of the market, he added.
“The market is hot,”
“Everybody is looking for talent,” he said, adding that for HBAR, even the simple grants it makes require help, given the nuances of cryptocurrency and the regulatory scrutiny around the industry.
Recruiter Whistler Partners said about 10% to 15% of all recent placements have been in the crypto or financial technology sectors, with firms hiring for both in-house counsel and law firm positions, according to Mr. Konstant, who himself was a lawyer before moving to the recruiting field. He said the firm was working on six to 10 in-house legal jobs in the blockchain or fintech space over the past year at any given time.
As with most other jobs, firms operating in the crypto sector would prefer to hire someone with some relevant direct experience, but most expect to train new legal staff on the job as they learn about the specific projects each firm does.
“You really get a chance to write the script and to engage with companies at an early stage,”
The increasingly competitive job market also demands more lawyers who are “very commercial,” Ms. Yoon said, since crypto companies want to bring in attorneys early on to brainstorm with tech teams on what problems their products are meant to solve. “There has been a shift from lawyers being seen as ‘keeping us out of trouble,’ to becoming important members of the management team,” she said.
Law firms, some already struggling with a shortage of talent, are beefing up their crypto services as well, sometimes looking to acquire a whole team from other firms.
Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP is looking to build “a complete offering” of services for blockchain firms, from helping with entity formation to advising on regulatory issues
Facing increasing competition for legal talent, Mr. Forester said Orrick continues to focus on retaining employees, including those at the associate level. “There are more positions than people,” he said of the legal industry as a whole. “The key to long-term success is retention.
Tomi Engdahl says:
On Thursday, global regulators issued a new warning of the growing risks of money laundering and fraud in NFTs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2022/04/28/irs-and-foreign-tax-enforcers-warn-nfts-pose-growing-money-laundering-risks/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB&sh=63ae906560d9
Tomi Engdahl says:
Edward Snowden says he’s the mystery man involved in the creation of leading privacy cryptocurrency Zcash
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/edward-snowden-says-mystery-man-200312597.html
Back in 2016, six people played a key role in the creation of a cryptocurrency called Zcash. One of the six participants, who operated online under the pseudonym John Dobbertin, remained unknown—until now.
Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency consultant and notable whistleblower, revealed himself to be Dobbertin in a leaked video from Zcash Media, a group making educational videos about Zcash.
“I saw [Zcash] being worked on by a number of trusted academic cryptographers and I thought it was a very interesting project,” Snowden said in the video, which was first reported by Forbes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The second country to do so.
The Central Africa Republic is one of the world’s poorest countries, and is a close Russian ally.
Bitcoin becomes official currency in Central African Republic
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61248809
The Central African Republic (CAR) has approved Bitcoin as legal tender – just the second country to do so.
CAR is one of the world’s poorest countries, but is rich in diamonds, gold and uranium.
It has been wracked by conflict for decades and is a close Russian ally, with mercenaries from the Wagner Group helping fight rebel forces.
Lawmakers voted unanimously to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, said a statement from the CAR presidency.
The move puts CAR “on the map of the world’s boldest and most visionary countries”, it said.
El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as an official currency in September 2021 – a move criticised by many economists, including the International Monetary Fund, which said it increased the risk of financial instability.
Others have raised fears that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin could make it easier for criminals to launder money, and that they are environmentally damaging because they use so much electricity to generate.
The internet is needed to use any cryptocurrency but in 2019, just 4% of people in CAR had access to the web, according to the WorldData website.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yuga Labs raises ~$320M by selling 55K virtual land plots in its Otherside metaverse, causing Ethereum blockchain ripple effects and skyrocketing gas fees — Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collection of NFTs, launched a sale Saturday of virtual land related …
Bored Ape Metaverse Frenzy Raises Millions, Crashes Ethereum
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-01/bored-ape-metaverse-frenzy-raises-millions-disrupts-ethereum
Users scramble for NFT deeds to 55,000 plots of virtual land
Prices soar in secondary market, Ethereum gas fees jump
Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collection of NFTs, launched a sale Saturday of virtual land related to its highly anticipated metaverse project, raising about $320 million worth of cryptocurrency in the largest offering of its kind. Demand was so strong that activity related to the event caused ripple effects across the entire Ethereum blockchain, disrupting activity and sending transaction fees soaring.
Holders of the ApeCoin token who verified their identities jockeyed to buy deeds for 55,000 parcels of virtual land in Otherside, the project’s planned metaverse game and the latest extension of the Bored Ape franchise. Anticipation that interest would be strong for the plots — Ethereum-based NFTs called Otherdeeds — had pushed up the price of ApeCoin last week ahead of the sale.
Each plot cost a buyer around $5,800 based on ApeCoin’s price of $19 as of Saturday, plus transaction costs, or “gas fees,” in Ether, which skyrocketed after the sale went live at 9 p.m. New York time as the land grab attracted heavy demand. Transaction costs just to mint Otherdeed NFTs after the launch reached $123 million, with each Otherdeed requiring about $6,000, or 2 Ether, in transaction fees to mint, according to data from Etherscan — or more than the price of the deed itself.
“Yuga Labs’ virtual land sale has triggered one of the highest spikes in transaction fees on Ethereum,” said Jason Wu, founder of decentralized lending protocol DeFiner. “I have seen other NFT launches causing high gas fees, but this is definitely one of the highest.”
Minting a token or making a transaction on Ethereum requires token creators or traders to pay a fee to those that order transactions on the network. Transaction fees go higher when the network becomes congested
The ApeCoins raised in the sale will be locked up — meaning that they can’t be sold, thus reducing coins in circulation — for one year, according to Otherside’s Twitter account. A Yuga Labs spokesperson declined on Friday to say whom the raised money would go to, or whether large holders of ApeCoin, including Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca Brands and others planned to participate in the land sale.
Besides the 55,000 Otherdeeds sold Saturday, another 45,000 were allocated to holders of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape NFTs, as well as Yuga Labs and other project developers, with another 100,000 of the tokens expected to be awarded later to certain Otherdeed holders, according to the Otherside website.
ApeCoin is striving to become widely used in a variety of so-called web3 apps, using digital coins and blockchains. The idea is for owners to be able to access a variety of events, services, merchandise and games. It’s also the governance token of ApeCoin DAO, whose board includes Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian, FTX’s Amy Wu and Animoca’s Siu. Ahead of the Otherdeed sale Saturday evening, OpenSea said it would accept ApeCoin.
Venture capital investors that helped with ApeCoin’s March launch, including Andreessen Horowitz and Animoca, were some of the biggest recipients of ApeCoin, which was created as an “airdrop,” in which certain groups of crypto holders automatically received 1 billion tokens as a reward. They and other launch partners received 14%, or 140 million tokens. ApeCoin’s price has nearly tripled since the coin’s release, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The frenzy around the land is in sharp contrast to much of the crypto market, which has been trading sideways in recent months, with bellwether Bitcoin down about 18% since the beginning of the year. Monthly sales volume on OpenSea, the world’s biggest NFT marketplace, were higher in April than in March, but still down from an all-time-high in January, according to data tracker Dune.
While many apps have sold virtual land for cryptocurrency before, most have seen only a small number of users and transactions. On Decentraland, for example, the number of transactions is down 35% in the last 30 days, according to data tracker DappRadar.
Otherside’s release date hasn’t been disclosed yet, according to the Yuga Labs spokesperson.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CoinDesk:
The Wikimedia Foundation decides to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations following community feedback, citing Mozilla’s similar move in January 2022 — The announcement follows a vote by the Wikimedia community in which 71.2% voted in favor of a proposal to stop accepting cryptocurrency.
Wikipedia to Stop Accepting Crypto Donations on Environmental, Other Grounds
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/01/wikipedia-to-stop-accepting-crypto-donations-on-environmental-other-grounds/
The announcement follows a vote by the Wikimedia community in which 71.2% voted in favor of a proposal to stop accepting cryptocurrency.
Wikimedia, the non-profit foundation that runs Wikipedia, has decided to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations following a three-month debate in which the environmental impact of bitcoin was a major discussion point.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
Solana’s network suffered another outage on Saturday, lasting seven hours, when NFT minting tool Candy Machine was hit with bots, leading to ~4M requests/second — It wasn’t immediately clear how the bot traffic overcame network safeguards. — Solana stakeholders rushed to right …
Solana Goes Dark for 7 Hours as Bots Swarm ‘Candy Machine’ NFT Minting Tool
It wasn’t immediately clear how the bot traffic overcame network safeguards.
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/05/01/solana-goes-dark-for-7-hours-as-bots-swarm-candy-machine-nft-minting-tool/
Solana stakeholders rushed to right the network Saturday night after what one insider called “insane amount of data” flooded the proof-of-stake chain, knocking validators out of consensus and grinding still block production.
Bots had swarmed the popular NFT minting tool known as Candy Machine earlier Saturday with an unprecedented tsunami of inbound traffic: four million transaction requests and 100 gigabits of data every second – a record for the network, one source at the Solana Foundation said.
For reasons not yet clear, this swarm pushed validators out of consensus. Block production became impossible and the network went dark at 4:32 p.m. EST. By 11:00 p.m. EST, validators (coordinating through Solana’s Discord channels and a Google doc created by one of the validators) restarted the cluster at slot 131973970.
Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, who said he was traveling during much of the fracas, credited the validator community for spearheading mainnet recovery.
Unlike last September’s 17-hour outage, Saturday’s hard fork restart did not resolve with new-and-improved code populating across the validators. They simply picked up where the network flopped seven hours prior.
In preparing for the restart validators mulled whether to implement code that would temporarily block Candy Machine transactions. Some debated in the Discord whether such a move constituted censorship. Regardless, it would only be effective if two-thirds of validators opted in. Few appeared to do so on Saturday night.
The outage contributed to a bloody albeit brief drawdown in SOL markets. Solana’s native token crashed to a 24-hour low of $83.13 about three hours into the outage before climbing back toward $89, according to CoinGecko.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Vigna / Wall Street Journal:
NonFungible: NFT sales fell 92% to a ~19K daily average this week from a ~225K peak in September 2021; active wallets fell 88% to ~14K from a November 2021 high
NFT Sales Are Flatlining
Is this the beginning of the end of NFTs?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nft-sales-are-flatlining-11651552616?mod=djemalertNEWS
The NFT market is collapsing.
The sale of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, fell to a daily average of about 19,000 this week, a 92% decline from a peak of about 225,000 in September, according to the data website NonFungible.
The number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% to about 14,000 last week from a high of 119,000 in November. NFTs are bitcoin-like digital tokens that act like a certificate of ownership that live on a blockchain.
Rising interest rates have crushed risky bets across the financial markets—and NFTs are among the most speculative.
Since hitting highs in November, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has fallen 23% and bitcoin has fallen by 43%. The Federal Reserve is slated to raise rates this week and next month. As the central bank’s easy money policies wind down, investors have turned to more defensive stocks like consumer staples.
Many NFT owners are finding their investments are worth significantly less than when they bought them.
An NFT of the first tweet from Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey sold in March 2021 for $2.9 million to Sina Estavi, the chief executive of Malaysia-based blockchain company Bridge Oracle.
Earlier this year, Mr. Estavi put the NFT up for auction. He didn’t receive any bids above $14,000, which he didn’t accept.
Mr. Estavi said failure of the auction wasn’t a sign that the market is deteriorating, but was just a normal fluctuation that could occur in any market. The NFT market is one that is still developing, he said, and it is impossible to predict how it will look in a few years.
“I will never regret buying it because this NFT is my capital,” he said.
Another NFT buyer purchased a Snoop Dog curated NFT, titled “Doggy #4292,” in early April for about $32,000 worth of the cryptocurrency ether. The NFT, an image of a green-skinned astronaut standing on what looks like a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, is now up for auction, with an asking price of $25.5 million. The highest current bid is for 0.0743 ether—about $210.
That lack of interest isn’t unique. Interest in NFTs measured by the number of searches for the term peaked in January, according to Google Trends, and has fallen roughly 80% since then.
The imbalance between supply and demand is also hurting the NFT market. There are about five NFTs for every buyer, according to data from analytics firm Chainalysis. As of the end of April, there have been 9.2 million NFTs sold, which were bought by 1.8 million people, the firm said.
The largest U.S. crypto exchange is still betting on NFTs. Coinbase launched a beta site last month and four million people signed up. It will allow users to connect existing wallets to the site and buy and sell NFTs, initially without trading fees, and to create NFTs through the site.
The profile of NFTs as part of the zeitgeist surged in 2021 as musicians, artists, celebrities, and companies jumped on the bandwagon
Tomi Engdahl says:
The same day Yuga Labs raised $285 million selling 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs the broader market bottomed out at 90% below its all-time high.
NFT Growing Pains: ‘Blue Chip’ Success Exposes Ethereum Weaknesses And Market Strengths
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2022/05/03/nft-growing-pains-blue-chip-success-exposes-ethereum-weaknesses-and-market-strengths/?utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB&utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_medium=social&sh=2402ae4e675f