Polygon (MATIC), a layer-two network designed for scaling and application infrastructure development on Ethereum (ETH), has been making rounds among blockchain enthusiasts as of late. From its $1 billion investment into zero-knowledge technology to co-launching a $200 million Web 3.0 social media initiative and up to integrating with Opera's web browser to make its decentralized apps accessible to 80 million Android mobile users, the network's momentum is going strong. But partnerships and business aside, the technological capacities of the network, especially when compared to Ethereum, are also attracting the attention of many blockchain developers. In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, …

Yat Siu of Animoca Brands Yat is the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, which delivers digital property rights to the world’s gamers and internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open Metaverse. “2021 was the year of NFTs, and in the second half of the year, we saw a growing emphasis on GameFi. This trend will continue well into 2022. Real mass adoption of DeFi will happen via GameFi, which will explode in growth during 2022 as the potential for mass financial inclusion …

Yaniv Tal of The Graph Yaniv is a co-founder and CEO at Edge & Node, and co-founder of The Graph, a decentralized indexing protocol used by blockchains such as Ethereum. “Many people and institutions got started with DeFi in 2021, but we haven’t even started mass adoption yet. As more and more retail and payment systems start integrating with crypto, people will be able to keep their money in crypto, bypassing the traditional banking system, and benefit from high interest rates made possible by the productive use of protocol tokens.” These quotes have been edited and condensed. The views, thoughts …

Solana (SOL) has become a top contender in the smart contract industry and in the past year the network's total value locked (TVL) grew by $660 million and stretches across more than 40 decentralized applications to hit an all-time high above $11 billion. Even with this growth, investors have reason to question whether the current $56 billion market capitalization is justified and how it compares to competing networks like binance smart chain (BNB), Avalanche (AVAX) and Polygon (MATIC). By analyzing the past 6-month price performance, there's an apparent decoupling from Terra (LUNA), Solana and Avalanche when compared to other smart …

On Wednesday, crypto-fiat gateway payments provider Ramp announced it had raised a $52.7 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital, NFX, Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, Firstminute Capital, and angel investors. Ramp allows its partner brands to offer crypto-enabled services, claiming that it takes mere hours for developers to integrate their decentralized applications, or dApps, with its software. It has over 400 partners, including Axie Infinity, Mozilla, Opera Browser, Dapper Labs, Aave, Argent, Trust Wallet, and Zerion. The firm has regulatory approval in the U.S., U.K., and Poland. Current uses of Ramp include purchasing cryptocurrencies for storage in wallets directly …

Last month, Cointelegraph interviewed Reserve CEO Nevin Freeman and the payment decentralized application’s community manager Yens Michiels about the company’s mission to provide access to stable currencies. More recently, Cointelegraph spoke to a couple of users based out of Venezuela and Colombia who shared their positive experiences with Reserve. Reserve is a tool to exchange fiat currency like Venezuelan bolivares for U.S. dollars via the Reserve (RSV) stablecoin. From everyday purchases to family remittances, Reserve has said that its use cases are increasingly growing in Latin America. After one year on the market in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Argentina, there …

Nearly every segment of the crypto sector underwent explosive growth in 2021. The steady inflow of institutional funds could possibly be interpreted as a signal that the best is yet to come. For new users, figuring out how to obtain cryptocurrency can be a tedious task, and the challenge of securing the assets off exchanges is another hurdle some investors find difficult to overcome. Here’s a rundown of some of the most used cryptocurrency soft wallets that support a wide swath of tokens and offer users access to decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs), staking opportunities and airdrops. MetaMask MetaMask …

Four blockchain-based Metaverse projects generated more than $100 million worth of virtual land NFT sales last week according to data from DappRadar. A Nov. 30 post from the decentralized application (DApp) analytics firm reported that between Nov. 22 and Nov. 28 activity was “booming” on The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space with a combined $105.8 million worth of trading volume between them from more than 6,000 traders: “Undoubtedly, Metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space. Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space.” …

DappRadar, a popular platform that provides analytics and portfolio tracking for the decentralized application (dApp) and nonfungible token (NFT) markets, has announced an upcoming company restructuring to a decentralized business model, in addition to releasing a native governance token, RADAR. Founded in 2018, the site currently boasts over 4 million global users, 600,000 of which are uniquely active on a monthly basis, as well as playing host to over 8,300 dapps and 27 protocols. The news was announced during a metaverse event in Somnium Space on Thursday. The purpose behind the evolution is to expand DappRadar's ecosystem to a global …

Social media giant Twitter is expanding further into the crypto space by setting up a team to look into decentralized applications, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain. According to a Nov. 10 tweet, Interchain Foundation council member Tess Rinearson will be leading a team at the social media company aimed at cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and decentralized technology. Rinearson said her team would be working with Twitter’s Bluesky project on a decentralized social media platform, as well “exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership and more.” I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined …

Cronos has announced the launch of its mainnet beta in a bid to facilitate greater interoperability between the Cosmos and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystems. The release will enable developers to port decentralized applications (dApps), and smart contracts from Ethereum and EMV-compatible chains to the Cronos network at a low-cost and fast speed due to its Inter-Blockchain Communications (IBC) protocol integration. This will offer accessibility to Crypto.com's 10 million-strong customer base. Built upon the Cosmos blockchain and powered by Ethermint — a proof-of-authority consensus mechanism — Cronos operates adjacent to the Crypto.org chain. Epic Day 1 at @cronos_chain ✅ Mainnet …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability, and governance. Blockchain testnets are an interesting subject because they come in all shapes and sizes. So, in this post, my goal is to leverage my inside experience as the CEO of Koinos Group (developers of …