The Chinese University of Hong Kong has partnered with Ethereum developer ConsenSys to launch the Medoxie COVID-19 Digital Health Passport. Blockchain-based, this new product could help healthcare workers combat the pandemic. The passport utilizes blockchain technology to record a patient’s COVID-19-related events — including test results, temperature checks and vaccinations — to provide a safe pathway to full economic reopening post-pandemic. Information held on the passport is said to be stored securely and privately. Initially, the digital passport will be accessed by medical professionals and academics within Hong Kong’s healthcare industry, paving the way for a new mobile app that …

You might not know Dreesus, but if you’ve been following crypto the last few months you’re likely familiar with his work. Following the launch of his Simple Cool Automatic Money ($SCAM) token, the pseudonymous developer garnered coverage from a seemingly endless list of mainstream and cryptomedia publications, including Vice, The Wall Street Journal, Benzinga, Mic, The Verge, The Week, and CNBC, among others. Launched in early May at the peak of the memecoin bubble, SCAM was part experiment — Dreesus had never launched a token before — and part an effort to make fun of other, overhyped shitcoin. However, in …

One of the most fully decentralized blockchain projects under development right now is looking for a few good zk-SNARKS developers. Actually, more than a few. In its latest contest, the Free TON blockchain community has set aside $250,000 in TON Crystal token rewards in a contest aimed at attracting developers who can create Zcash privacy protocols for Free TON. Running through July 1, the “Groth16 zk-SNARK Proof Verification Use Cases” contest is the first stage in a series of contests aimed at bringing zero-knowledge proofs to the TON Virtual Machine. There will be 10 winners splitting 320,000 TON in amounts …

Popular crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has announced a $150,000 grant for Calvin Kim — a Korean-based Bitcoin scaling researcher. The grant provides a second instance of support in which BitMEX has backed Kim’s research, with the exchange donating $30,000 to Kim in August 2020. For his current research, Kim plans to implement Utreexo into Bitcoin deployments, using the Go and Rust programming languages respectively, while also working on “improving the initial block download time in Bitcoin.” Utreexo is a Bitcoin scaling solution and hash accumulator that Kim has been working on since mid-2019, with the protocol's design having first been …

A blockchain application platform has launched a refreshed website with substantial improvements and a new design — all as part of a quest to be more developer friendly. Lisk.com, which builds upon the project’s first online presence at Lisk.io, “delivers an optimal and enhanced user experience that more closely aligns with our core mission — to make blockchain accessible to everyone,” executives explained. The new interface follows on from extensive user testing sessions and feedback from Lisk’s core community, giving the project an understanding of what developers felt was missing. Now, Lisk.com is confident that it conveys an even clearer …

A Dogecoin (DOGE)-focused division of publicly traded over-the-counter software firm AppSwarm is looking to bring together global development teams to build off of the Dogecoin blockchain. DogeLabs — a newly launched division of AppSwarm’s blockchain research lab, TulsaLabs — announced Wednesday a new initiative calling on DevOps teams to unite their efforts in building a “sort of decentralized network” of DOGE developers across the globe. “These teams would share ideas and provide support for Doge based applications for both commercial and possible larger enterprises within their local jurisdictions under the DogeLabs network,” DogeLabs said in the announcement. “For now it …

Aleph.im, a blockchain-based storage and computing startup, has been selected to participate in the sixth season of Ubisoft’s Entrepreneurs Lab, offering further exposure to the emerging blockchain industry. The French video game developer has been running the Entrepreneurs Lab for the past six years, offering startups and entrepreneurs the ability to access company resources and expertise as they scale up and commercialize their products. This season’s focus is “blockchain and positive entertainment.” In addition to Aleph.im, 11 other startups from Canada, Europe and Australia have been selected to participate. “We are very proud to be welcoming all of these talented …

In a possible decentralized finance (DeFi) first, Inverse Finance’s governance has approved today a proposal to buyout Tonic Finance in a $1.6 million-dollar deal that will bring Tonic under Inverse’s umbrella. First floated after “weeks of negotiation” in early April, members of the Inverse Finance DAO began voting yesterday on a proposal to acquire Tonic and hire its solo developer, Tony Snark. The proposal quickly crossed the 4000 token approval mark and as of today is set to pass — notably without a single dissenting vote. That feeling when your DAO is completely aligned in vision. Imagine how much you …

For several years, one of the biggest hurdles to blockchain adoption has concerned the fact that it’s a rather technical space. Experienced developers find it daunting to build decentralized apps using this technology. Meanwhile, consumers unaccustomed to tokens and crypto wallets often struggle with user interfaces that are far clunkier than what mainstream platforms provide. With cryptocurrencies punching into the mainstream consciousness like never before, it has never been more important for blockchain platforms to seize the moment and offer the streamlined, easy-to-understand products and services that the masses can embrace with minimal hassle. As the old saying goes: “If …

Amid a bull market for decentralized finance that has teams developing new products at a breakneck pace, the demand for smart contract developers couldn’t be higher — but unfortunately, the amount of available talent couldn’t be lower. Team members from multiple projects have taken to Twitter in recent weeks to gripe about the shallow hiring pool, including representatives from high-profile mainstays like Yearn.finance and SushiSwap. The complaints come despite hefty incentive packages that include token allocations and generous salaries. But regardless of the carrots projects offer, there simply aren't enough developers to go around. Fuck, we've hit the "developer crunch" …

Blockchain infrastructure provider Bison Trails has announced another major industry partnership, this time with Crypto.com, a leading digital currency exchange looking to bring familiar transactional use cases to cryptocurrency markets. Bison Trails is providing key infrastructure to Crypto.org, Crypto.com’s public, open-source payments blockchain. As part of the mainnet launch, Bison Trails will provide reliable validator node infrastructure to optimize validation and governance participation. In terms of technical specifications, Bison Trails will support the mainnet launch with participate clusters, query & transact clusters and seed nodes, the company explained. As Cointelegraph recently explained, Bison’s participate clusters feature two components to enhance …

MoonCats, the long-dormant tokenized collectibles platform that was rediscovered earlier this month, now has a problem on its hands: trading bots. MoonCats collectibles depict 8-bit cats that live on the moon and can be traded or "adopted" by users. The project was launched on Aug. 9, 2017 by developer Ponderware, with a hard limit of 25,500 MoonCats set to be created through a process similar to Ethereum mining. MoonCats was rediscovered earlier this month amid the booming growth of the nonfungible token, or NFT, industry. When collectors recently became aware of the project, it was reported that MoonCats NFTs were …