Israel-based StarkWare announced on Nov 16 via Twitter that it had raised $50 million in a Series C funding round, and that the firm’s valuation is now at $2 billion. Sequoia Capital was the lead investor, among other contributors. Seven months ago, StarkWare raised $75 million in a Series B funding led by Paradigm. We are excited to announce our Series C of $50M at $2B. A big thanks to our lead investor, @sequoia, our wonderful follow-on investors, and the dozens of ecosystem partners and collaborators who participated in this round, for their vote of confidence in our products and …

Decentralized exchange, or DEX, and self-custody wallet platform, Portal, has announced a strategic partnership agreement with layer-2 blockchain network, Polygon to advance Bitcoin functionality in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, market. Portal currently offers fully decentralized on-chain spot and options trading, as well as peer-to-peer lending and borrowing. This partnership is expected to expand these user capabilities through the enablement of zero-knowledge swap functionalities for wBTC/BTC as well as POS/WBTC to BTC, in addition to Polygon operating a liquidity-supporting node on Portal DEX. Portal's principle objective is to cultivate a self-governing, anonymous and uncensored ecosystem for Bitcoin on DeFi. The …

Miami is quickly becoming the crypto capital of the United States. In August of this year, the Magic City was the first state in the U.S. to launch MiamiCoin (MIA), its very own cryptocurrency used for civic engagement. A few months later, Mayor Francis Suarez announced that every Miami resident with a digital wallet will be eligible to receive a Bitcoin dividend. While such a proposal would make Miami the first city in America to provide a Bitcoin (BTC) yield to its residents, Mayor Suarez told Cointelegraph that the City of Miami does not actually own or hold MiamiCoin, or …

Metaverse gaming tokens Ethverse (ETHV), The Sandbox (SAND), GameSwap (GSWAP), Yield Guild Games (YGG), Axie Infinity (AXS) are the few cryptocurrencies seeing gains on Nov. 17 with Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and most of the market in the red. Best-performing crypto sector The emerging division of the blockchain universe saw its market cap swell by more than 9% in the previous 24 hours and almost 8% in the last seven days to reach $17.42 billion. Its gains came on the back of volatile upside moves in Ethverse, The Sandbox, GameSwap, Yield Guild Games, Axie Infinity, and other markets. Meanwhile, about …

Polygon, a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum compatible blockchains, stated in a press release provided to Cointelegraph that it has launched its zk-STARK powered Miden Virtual Machine for the development of decentralized applications, also known as DApps. 1/7 We are proud to reveal the newest member of the Polygon family - Polygon Miden, an upcoming STARK-based, EVM-compatible Rollup! The project is led by @bobbinth, former Facebook's lead ZK researcher who led the development of Winterfell. A on why this is exciting... pic.twitter.com/5RqAJgnZlP — Polygon | $MATIC - We're hiring! (@0xPolygon) November 16, 2021 zk-STARK stands for zero-knowledge Scalable Transparent …

As new technology becomes available to more and more end-users, our world is only becoming more interconnected. However, as the spread of such technology progresses, so does the reach of big tech. Many of these companies now hold vast amounts of personal user data — information that includes a user’s location, their activity on third-party websites and even the contents of users’ emails — this is astonishing for those in a liberal democracy where concepts of freedom and social responsibility were both built upon expectations of privacy in one’s own communications. As a result, your personal data may be subject …

The IOTA Foundation has announced the upcoming launch of a staging network, Shimmer, in a bid to advance the IOTA roadmap towards fully functional decentralization. The layer-1 network will act as an innovation testbed for developers and builders in the community seeking to evaluate decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) applications. This sandbox model will allow them to establish the efficiency and compatibility of applications prior to launching on the IOTA mainnet, ensuring smooth deployment. The first major network upgrades hosted on the Shimmer network are programmable multi-asset ledger, smart contracts, full decentralization, and sharding. The IOTA Foundation is …

News that two teams of Chinese scientists have achieved quantum advantage — a technical term for when a computer can perform functions beyond that of a classical computer — may be the signal that we have truly entered a new era. While Google’s 54-qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, became the first widely known example of early-stage quantum computing, the latest news out of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei is the best proof yet that we have crossed the information rubicon. But despite many reasons to be excited by these developments, there are reasons to be concerned, …

Blockchain is a core technology that differentiates itself from other technologies by having solved the double expense with the emergence of the Bitcoin blockchain in 2008. Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, were driven by blockchain technology which brought scarcity and interoperability to nonfungible tokens. But, what do blockchain technology and NFTs have to do with Metaverse? Why are large companies experimenting with NFTs in Metaverse? The Metaverse The term “metaverse” first appeared in 1992 when Neal Stephenson released his science fiction novel Snow Crash. In this book, humans interact with each other and with software agents such as avatars in a …

We have seen a steep adoption of crypto-based systems this year, including decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) such as digital art, crypto-centric gaming, and increased adoption of cryptocurrencies as investment and payment tools. One of the more recent developments is the emergence of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs have existed since 2016, when The DAO organization, a new form of investment vehicle that attracted a sizable portion of Ethereum (ETH) tokens, raised more than $150 million at the time. Many saw The DAO as the ultimate form of human coordination. Yet, due to a reentrancy exploit, hackers stole …

To understand the complexity of digital rights management, or DRM, one must first understand the DRM challenges of current systems and then the challenges (and opportunities) presented by blockchain technology that prides itself on transparency, data linkage and immutability as some of the main characteristics that lends itself to the trust systems. With Web 2.0, content creation and dissemination are via a platform that acts as an intermediary and, like any intermediary, has developed business models that monetize the avenues of content distribution, resulting data and metadata. Digital content (movies, images, music, etc.) can be replicated easily, and the platforms …

As decentralized exchanges (DEXs) evolve, their functionalities become more and more advanced, often matching those of centralized exchanges (CEXs). One such functionality is the ability to place limit orders, which offers more flexibility and efficiency to DEX traders. This article looks at the existing limit order features and their prospective implementations. Unlike a market order, which is executed immediately at the last market price with potential slippage, a limit order is executed at a predefined price as soon as it is reached. Market orders are used by default in all automated market maker-based DEXs. They are simple and straightforward for …