As people all over the globe have become increasingly aware of their privacy rights and how they are constantly being violated by various prominent social media platforms, the need for tangible, decentralized alternatives has continued to grow rapidly. For perspective, in 2019, Facebook was ordered to pay a mind-boggling $5-billion fine by the United States Federal Trade Commission for improperly acquiring private data of up to 87 million of its users. Just a year later, the social media giant had to shell out another $550 million to settle a privacy lawsuit that suggested that the firm had illegally accrued customer …

NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, have created a wealth of opportunities over the last year. Data from market tracker DappRadar found that NFT sales reached $25 billion in 2021. Artwork NFTs in particular have seen impressive growth. Financial services firm FinancePR recently determined that 257 artists generated at least $1 million in the past 30 days from selling NFT artwork. It’s also notable that NFT transactions have continued to increase, despite recent slumps in the crypto market. Yet with so much revenue being generated over a short period of time, some may be wondering how NFT creators are applying these new …

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, written by Andrew Levine of Koinos Group. People use social applications daily, but despite all the hype around supposedly “next-gen” blockchains, none of those social applications are decentralized. Let’s unpack why, using two blockchains as a reference: Ethereum and Steem. Ethereum has far more developers than any other general purpose blockchain, and yet none of those developers have managed to build a social application with mainstream adoption. At one time, Steem was one the most widely …

As the two-year anniversary of the global COVID-19 pandemic begins to hurtle toward us, we are no closer to knowing when our social lives will return to normal or what will the new normal be. The effect this has had on businesses like nightclubs, music venues and musicians have been immeasurable. With crowded in-person events either made impossible — or far more difficult and laborious — at many points over the last two years, changes to the industry that were already set in motion have been accelerated. Namely, the music industry’s adoption of digital instruments, among others and, increasingly, the …

Cryptocurrencies and the wider blockchain ecosystem are helping change the status quo of how we conduct our day-to-day lives. With these emerging technologies, Web3 is being ushered in as a permissionless and open innovation using middleware blockchain protocols. By doing so, they’re replacing middlemen software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies by capturing value at a greater level. Middleware protocols are by no means new. After all, Web2 is supported by middleware applications, the main one being HTTP. Middleware is what enables users to interact with each other and with applications in a computing environment. And with Web3, there are a variety of protocols …

In a Tweet posted by user @cryptotutor Friday, a screenshot appears to show a 27% spread between stablecoin Magic Internet Money (MIM) and USD Coin (USDC) trading pair on decentralized exchange, or DEX, Uniswap (UNI). Both have a theoretical peg of 1:1 against the U.S. Dollar. "Magic Internet Money," joked cryptotutor, as he attempted to swap approximately $1 million in MIM but received a quote for only 728.6k USDC. Others quickly took to social media to complain as well. In another screenshot, user @DeFiDownsin allegedly received a quote to swap $984k worth of MIM for just 4,173 in USDT on …

Crypto.com raised a few eyebrows this past week when it announced cryptocurrency users worldwide could reach 1 billion by the end of 2022. The timing was curious, given that Bitcoin (BTC) and many other cryptos are entwined in one of the largest drawdowns in their (albeit short) history and with the prospect of United States Federal Reserve interest-rate tightening edging ever nearer. But the cryptocurrency exchange, which in November gave its name to the arena where the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team plays in a 20-year deal, was obviously taking the long view. Also, its prediction was contingent on two …

On Thursday, Sky Mavis, the creator of monster-battle game Axie Infinity, released its much-anticipated RON governance token. The token is based on its Ethereum (ETH) sidechain Ronin Network. Its purpose includes paying for transactions on Ronin, staking, and participating in community proposals. According to its developers, Ronin has over 250,000 unique daily active addresses. When ranked by the number of weekly active users, Katana, Ronin's decentralized exchange (DEX), is the No. 2 largest DEX. In addition, the blockchain surpassed $5 billion in deposited value, with 15% of all NFT transactions occurring on the network in 2021. In total, there have …

On Thursday, a proposal to fund decentralized autonomous organization zkDAO passed via treasury protocol BitDAO with close to 200 million votes cast. The proposal was authored by Matter Labs — the organization behind Ethereum scaling protocol zkSync — and Mirana Ventures. Utilizing zk-Rollups, zkSync and its family of technologies will build layer-2 infrastructure capable of returning succinct proofs to the Ethereum network without sending the entire data. The result, if implemented, would mean a vastly speedier network. Zero-knowledge-based solutions have attracted much attention in recent months due to recurrently high levels of congestion on Ethereum, as well as exuberant gas …

The institutional arm of the Consensys-owned MetaMask has integrated its first multi-chain digital asset custody solution called Cactus Custody. MetaMask Institutional (MMI) initially partnered with Cactus Custody owned by crypto financial service platform Matrixport in October last year to incorporate its “DeFi Connector” feature into MMI’s suite of services. The full integration with MMI was announced on Jan. 26, and Cactus Custody’s feature will now provide institutional customers with multi-chain connectivity to all Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, sidechains and Layer 2s supported by MetaMask such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Celo and Polygon. MMI product lead Johann Bornman …

Even though the digital asset market seems to be witnessing a bit of a lull at the moment, the adoption of crypto-centric tech has continued to move forward with a full head of steam globally. Africa, in particular, is a continent where a growing list of mainstream financial entities have continued to make their presence felt, as they have begun to realize that the economic opportunities presented by the region are immense. To put things into perspective, a recent report released by Singapore-based crypto data provider Triple A shows that the North African country of Morocco currently boasts one of …

DeFi (decentralized finance) lending has proven its case. Eliminating the middleman in this type of financial transaction can be done, and done in a way that benefits both transacting parties. In practice, this means lenders can bypass the bank and increase their earnings, and borrowers can gain access to the funds they need, even if they don’t meet the criteria of the middleman. However, the industry is still young and requires additional applications before it is entirely competitive with traditional offerings available to the consumer today. The fact is that the world is becoming increasingly overcome with tokenization, and the …