A Romanian cannabis cooperative focused on the production of cannabidiol turned to blockchain as a way to overcome the challenges of running a legal business in a grey area of the law. While the health benefits of cannabidiol — better known as CBD — are becoming more widely accepted and understood, the possession, production, and transportation of cannabis remains illegal in many parts of the eurozone. As a result, service providers ranging from banks to trucking companies shy away from what is still considered a “shady market” according to The Coop Network. “As a result, the industry is not able …

The crypto-friendly state of Wyoming has approved the first legally recognized decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) in the United States. BLOCKS was the first DAO Limited Liability Company (LLC) approved by Wyoming's blockchain legislation following an initial filing on June 17. BLOCKS aims to onboard businesses and industry onto the blockchain so that they can benefit from a DAO structured environment. It also has its own governance token of the same name. The American CryptoFed DAO also received notice from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office on Tuesday recognizing it as a legal entity after it filed on July 1, according …

In the whirl of excitement and debate over where cryptocurrencies are going and whether they are legitimate, sustainable and prudent investments, there is an overshadowed conversation of interest to those in marketing: Are Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Cardano’s ADA, Litecoin (LTC), XRP, Dogecoin (DOGE), etc., crypto brands? And, if so, how are those brands created, and what role do they play in each coin’s adoption? Or, for that matter, how does branding collectively contribute (or detract) from the legitimacy of a cryptocurrency as it seeks increased mainstream acceptance/use? Related: Decentralization vs. centralization: Where does the future lie? Experts answer To …

Due to the past nonfungible token (NFT) boom, the crypto and art communities have been collaborating closely — maybe for the first time in history. In both industries, there is a lot of skepticism and misunderstanding. As we make our way out of the NFT bubble, what is expected to come next? This deep dive describes a long-term vision of the NFT and art market development that could appeal to both worlds. Stereotypically, crypto people discuss deals on Twitter and Discord, communicate through memes or abbreviations and challenge old school models with agonistic antipathy (Okay, Boomers!). In contrast, the so-called …

After close to a month of consulting with industry experts and journalists within Cointelegraph and without, we’re proud to unveil a new segment for Finance Redefined, a.k.a. the premier DeFi industry newsletter: on-chain analysis. Reporters will often look to public records to bolster stories, and the blockchain is no different. Everything from analyzing the wallet of the fake Banksy NFT artist to following-up with exploiter wallets in the wake of hacks, the data is often used but arguably not to the extent that it could be. For instance, there is a wallet widely-known to be that of Mark Cuban, serial …

Curve Finance, a decentralized exchange for stablecoin trading, is one of the world’s largest decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), with $6.5 billion in deposits, but last week, one of its token holders made an unusual proposal: The Ethereum-based DAO should “engage competent counsel” — both in the United States and other relevant jurisdictions — to prevent other DAOs from the “wholesale copying” of its software code. Why is this unusual? In the open-source decentralized finance (DeFi) world, bringing legal action against another DAO for intellectual property (IP) infringement just isn’t done. In this case, Curve said it is “99% sure” that …

An OG cryptocurrency dating to 2014 is making an aggressive push towards interchain operability, following up the launch of a new privacy protocol and wrapped token bridge to Binance Smart Chain with the launch of yield farming last month. Aimed at allowing frictionless and extremely cheap cross-border transactions, the fully decentralized Navcoin protocol launched a wrapped version of its NAV coins— Wrapped NAV, or wNAV — in April, building a bridge to the Binance Smart Chain, and through it to the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). The Binance BEP-20 token wrap opens decentralized exchanges (DEX) to NAV and xNAV. Ultimately, …

Imagine a fantasy MMO role playing game in which every character is an NFT that can be equipped with other NFTs. A nonfungible token can be a suit of armor or a magic sword that can be put on the character to use in the game, stored in a backpack (itself an NFT), or sold at an auction house. The backpack holds other NFTs the player collects while in the game: Magic potions that give more strength or speed, food to keep the character moving at full speed, rope that can be used to climb a building. Even a curse …

It’s as miraculous as Aladdin taking off on a magic carpet: in a possible first, some of the users of a decentralized finance protocol were the ones to benefit today from an exploit, turning the concept of a ‘rugpull’ on its head. A colloquialism for when liquidity is drained from a project (often an unscrupulous founder or developer draining the funds themselves), depositors and DeFi users are most often the ones holding bad debt and/or worthless tokens — left to hope for compensation plans that can take months or even years to fully vest. In an exploit today, however, the …

Square peg, meet round hole: a decentralized autonomous organization is pondering taking a rival fork to court. Earlier today, a member of the Curve Finance community made a post in Curve’s governance forum titled “Enforce Curve’s IP Rights.” “Curve has proven incredibly popular, with over $10B deposited, hundreds of millions in daily volume, and around $1M/week in earnings to veCRV holders. This places it among the top of all exchanges in crypto today, even rivaling publicly-traded CEX’s,” the post reads. “[...] Those CEX’s protect their IP on behalf of their shareholders and there is no reason why Curve, just by …

BitDAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization, is launching after a $230 million funding round led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. BitDAO announced its DAO launch on Tuesday in conjunction with completing a private sale from initial partners led by Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Founders Fund. Other investors included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, among a total of more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry. Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, is a major initial proponent of BitDAO, pledging recurring …

With millions and even billions of dollars at stake, industrial-scale yield farming is leading to pockets of resistance as some projects refuse to be left with the chaff. In the past week, team members from no-loss lottery project PoolTogether and exchange liquidity pool provider Curve Finance have proposed ways to reduce the load Yearn.Finance strategies place on their protocols and governance tokens. In a Tweet on Sunday, PoolTogether co-founder Leighton Cusack noted that Yearn has become the primary beneficiary of many of the protocol’s DAI lotteries, as Yearn controls 57% of all DAI funds ($27 million of the $47 million …