A new DApp offers an escrow service for transactions involving cryptocurrencies, as well as a decentralized arbitration service that delivers resolutions quickly and inexpensively — irrespective of how complicated the dispute is. PayrLink says its solution is vital because we’re increasingly living in a world where everything happens online, meaning that it’s hard to trust anyone. As the project’s whitepaper explains: “The days of meeting people, shaking their hands, doing a deal is long gone. We need to feel safe and private when doing transactions online.” Although blockchain technology serves as a powerful tool because of how it delivers transparency, …

Decentralized finance is far and away the hottest topic in crypto, touted as a way to make a fortune by backing the right token, but also a tool for taking the crypto you were hodling in a cold wallet and set it to work earning interest at extraordinary rates. There’s a reason DeFi has grown so large so quickly that it has slowed the Ethereum blockchain where most of the projects live to a crawl, and sent gas prices for transactions soaring to $10, $50, even $100 at times. DeFi is mostly talked about in terms of taking over the …

It’s fun to talk about nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, because they are the perfect example of how the impact of blockchain technology in people’s lives goes way beyond the financial market. As we could see in hundreds of headlines in the past few months, they have gripped the world’s attention because they are a new manner of interacting with culture, music, sports and the media. This article will clarify what NFTs are, how they work, how the NFT boom started, and why blockchain technology has made it possible for NFTs to create a new economy. Related: A cure for copyright …

From QR code payments to mobile banking apps, consumers worldwide are increasingly reliant on digital payment solutions, especially as mobile technology becomes more ubiquitous. Government-led efforts in driving cashless economies have been a key factor, with countries such as Singapore or the Philippines seeing their central banks driving the adoption of contactless payments during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, usage rates for digital payments platforms have recorded promising growth, even as high as 5,000% in the Philippines alone. Related: Digitized Europe: The shift to a cashless world This unprecedented rise in cashless payments is also paving …

Decentralized finance came to life with the inception of Ethereum in 2013. However, it truly hit the ground running in 2016–2017 with the backing of Ethereum developers and some entrepreneurs and experts in the financial investment sphere. To get our facts right and clear all misconceptions, DeFi encapsulates a variety of financial applications in cryptocurrency or blockchain that are geared toward removing intermediaries between parties in financial transactions. Related: The great unbanking: How DeFi is completing the job Bitcoin started A large majority of DeFi applications are built on top of Ethereum. The first major, and the largest, DeFi application …

A privacy-enabled blockchain platform says its goal is to build a responsible data economy and usher in a new era for this technology. Oasis Protocol says it brings privacy and scalability to DeFi — ensuring that this new approach to finance can expand beyond early adopters to reach the mass market. Controlling privacy Support for confidential smart contracts is a key differentiator of the Oasis Network. The contracts play an important role in preserving privacy by allowing a trustless decentralized blockchain without having to make that smart contract’s data public. This leaves the network able to solve emerging problems in …

The network onboarding a large number of decentralized applications aims to hit one million users through 0x’s decentralized exchange liquidity aggregator API. In an announcement today, Polygon and 0x Labs said they would be committing $10.5 million via the 0xDAO towards securing decentralized finance infrastructure on the network through the support of developers and projects. The project said it anticipated “an influx of new DeFi projects onboarding into the 0x ecosystem” with initial support offered for Matchaxyz, Dexguru, Dexkit, MyCrypto, Set Protocol, Zapper.fi and Zerion. Last month, 0x released a Polygon version API for its decentralized exchange liquidity aggregator, opening …

Dubbed as “the largest Bitcoin event in history,” Bitcoin 2021 consisted of 12,000 attendees from across the globe. Undoubtedly, Bitcoin (BTC) adoption is growing at an impressive rate. Yet judging by the attendance at Bitcoin 2021, men still appear to be the primary audience for Bitcoin. While the lines to the bathroom made it obvious that there were nowhere near as many female attendees as there were males, there were also fewer women speakers than men at Bitcoin 2021. For example, only 27 women are featured on the Bitcoin 2021 website, which consists of over 150 speakers in total. Although …

The time has come to fight against the dominance of the internet giants. In Europe, various regulations have been announced that aim to force these giants to respect more healthy rules of the game and to be more protective of users' rights and of competition. Some even brandish the threat of dismantling some of the tech giants, a weapon of mass destruction rarely used in history. Is an alternative path of a truly decentralized internet possible? Hyperpower A handful of companies hold a virtual monopoly within the internet in critical areas of services (search engines, email, etc.), infrastructures (global transit, …

Ripple's developers have been engaging with feedback and suggestions that they expand the XRP Ledger, or XRPL, to integrate functionalities such as smart contracts. The latter have become a major feature of the booming decentralized finance space, but Ripple's creators claim that a different solution is better for the payments-focused XRPL. This solution comes in the form of what they term “federated sidechains” i.e. parallel ledgers that can support developers' experimentation and specialized interests, whether for DeFi or other use cases. Using sidechains can leave the main XRPL streamlined and efficient while expanding the functionality of the wider XRP ecosystem …

The crypto payment solutions provider that introduced blockchain-based subscription billing to credit card-harried merchants is moving to the Binance Smart Chain. PumaPay pioneered cryptocurrency-funded payments with its PullPayment Protocol, a series of smart contracts that opens up the use of flexible billing tools like recurring subscriptions and automated account balance top-ups that actively “pull” payments from clients. By doing away with the need to ask customers to actively “push” out crypto payment every month, it gives online merchants an alternative to the high fees and restrictive rules of fiat credit card companies that were previously the only source of “set …

Many years ago, I ran hedge funds on Wall Street. With a long pause for philanthropic and government work, I eventually found my way to blockchain, and now, I spend my days writing about decentralized finance versus centralized finance. Some of my old Wall Street friends still run a lot of money in hedge funds, and back in 2018, they would tease me and ask if I was still “doing my crypto thing.” Even today, some of them still think that Bitcoin (BTC) is a Ponzi scheme. One of my dearest friends from my past days in finance recently sent …