Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have taken the world by storm over the last year. Digital collectibles that were characterized solely as CryptoKitties in 2017 have since evolved into famous pieces of art, digitized music, high-end fashion for the Metaverse and a way for communities to connect with others across the globe. Even with the current crypto bear market, recent findings from the research firm Security.org found that NFT ownership has doubled over the last year, rising from an estimated 4.6 million people to 9.3 million people. The report also discovered that while the vast majority of Americans are not ready to …

By far, the innovation with the most impact in the Web3 world this year is the sidechain. The highest-volume blockchain providers in the world — Binance, Polygon, Ankr and Avalanche — have all recently released sidechain functionality. They are investing hundreds of millions into these new implementations — and with good reason. Sidechains are the most likely multichain solution to crypto’s scalability problem. Multiple projects have failed or stalled once they hit a certain level of traffic. Ethereum gas fees are notoriously expensive, while Solana is continually congested to the point where it needs to be turned off. Needless to …

Ether (ETH) price is up 16% since July 1 and has outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) in the last seven days. The move could be partially driven by investors clinging to their hopes that the Ethereum network transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) consen will be a bullish catalyst. The next steps for this smart contract involve the Merge, which was previously known as Eth2. The final trial on the Goerli test network is expected in July before the Ethereum mainnet gets the green light for its upgrade. Since Terra’s ecosystem collapsed in mid-May, Ethereum’s total value locked (TVL) has increased and the flight-to-quality …

Much to the chagrin of cryptocurrency investors across the ecosystem, the bear market has officially set in and brought with it devastating price collapses that have left relatively few unscathed. As the popular topic of conversation now centers on bearish predictions of how low Bitcoin (BTC) will go and how long this iteration of the crypto winter will last, those with more experience on the matter know that it’s virtually impossible to predict the bottom and it would be wise to apply those energies elsewhere. Instead of focusing on the when of the end, perhaps it’s more constructive to explore …

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied to the 200-week moving average on July 8, a level that could act as a battleground between the bulls and the bears. Several analysts are watching this level because a break and close above it could be the first sign that the bear market may be ending. Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone said that Bitcoin’s 50-week and 100-week moving averages are showing similar signs as made before the 2018 bear market bottom. Therefore, McGlone expects Bitcoin to give a strong rebound in the second half of 2022. Another positive sign is that Bitcoin rose above $22,000 …

Content aggregation, ranking and discussion website Reddit announced a new blockchain-backed avatar system on Thursday. Though no official date was revealed, the company suggested that the avatars will be available to the general public in the next few weeks. For now, Reddit is providing first-look early access to a limited number of people who join the r/CollectibleAvatars community. Collectible Avatars are a set of limited-edition artwork created by independent artists who are also users of the Reddit website. The new avatars can be purchased with local currencies. However, the announcement stated the artwork is stored on the Polygon blockchain. In …

When you are looking for information about certain transactions or tokens on the Solana blockchain, SolScan is the tool to use for this purpose. This tool is trusted by many venture capitalists, such as Solana Ventures and Alameda Research. In addition, there are over 2 million monthly users, totaling over 180 million data requests. Related: What is Solana, and how does it work? Most crypto enthusiasts know Etherscan, the Ethereum blockchain explorer, where you can, for example, find all tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. In addition to Ethereum, there are several blockchain protocols that are experiencing tremendous growth in adoption, …

Ethereum investors who staked millions of dollars worth of Ether (ETH) tokens to become validators on its soon-to-launch proof-of-stake (PoS) network are now facing heavy paper losses. Ether spot traders outperform stakers by 36.5% In detail, investors have locked a little over 13 million ETH into the so-called Ethereum 2.0 smart contract since it went live in December 2020. However, there is no date when these investors can redeem their tokens alongside the 10% yield. Interestingly, around 62% of Ether tokens were deposited before the price peaked at around $4,930 in November 2021. Meanwhile, the other 38% were deposited after …

Ethereum has now completed its second-to-last major Merge trial on the public test network Sepolia, paving the way for its transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. While it's been judged mostly a success, it was not incident free. The final trial of the Merge is set to occur on the Goerli network over the next few weeks before the official Merge on the Ethereum mainnet can be given the go-ahead. Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano, who hosted the Sepolia Merge livestream on YouTube on Wednesday, confirmed on Twitter that the Merge transition went through “successfully” and added that the testnet …

DappRader's "Dapp Industry Report for Q2" 2022 raised, among many points, the idea that an upcoming non-fungible token (NFT) platform war could be on the horizon. The report, which was provided to Cointelegraph, spoke of how UniSwap had recently acquired Genie and OpenSea purchased Gem in an effort to expand their respective services to include NFT aggregation tools, which “accumulate NFT offers from various trading platforms.” Meanwhile, newer platforms such as Magic Eden and X2Y2 continue to take from OpenSea’s current 75% NFT marketplace dominance. DappRadar stated, “These acquisitions will most likely pit OpenSea and UniSwap in direct competition with …

Ethereum domains showed an increase in demand as Ethereum Name Service (ENS) registration totaled 126,141 registrations in just one week. The ENS Dashboard, a data tracker created by developer Nick Johnson, shows that registrations went from 11,042 to 29,727, increasing over 200% during the weekend. This happened amid the second-largest .eth domain sale when “000.eth” was bought on Sunday at 300 Ether (ETH), which was worth around $320,000 at the time of sale. Because of the purchase, ENS’s daily revenue jumped up to $684,174 when the sale was completed. Following this, the registrations for .eth domains peaked at 34,357 on …

Despite some touting crypto as a hedge against traditional markets, digital assets today share a similar risk profile to commodities such as oil and gas, and tech and pharmaceutical stocks, according to an analysis from Coinbase’s chief economist. The observation comes from a blog post from Coinbase chief economist Cesare Fracassi on Wednesday, noting that the “correlation between the stock and crypto-asset prices has risen significantly” since the 2020 pandemic. “While for the first decade of its existence, Bitcoin returns were on average uncorrelated with the performance of the stock market, the relationship increased quickly since the COVID pandemic started,” …