Blockchain technology is familiar to cryptocurrency users and national banks, and awareness of it is spreading fast to gamers. Applications in industry, particularly supply chain management, have been appearing as well. Through them, blockchain technology may improve domestic life in unseen ways, such as ensuring high-quality food, responsibly sourced seafood, or preventing the counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals. Nonetheless, the home may be blockchain’s final frontier. Blockchain penetration at the household level is so far quite low, but day-to-day utility was no afterthought for blockchain developers. Christoph Jentzsch, Simon Jentzsch and Stephan Tual, who in 2016 created The DAO — the short-lived …

An article in the Wall Street Journal has claimed sales of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are “flatlining” — in the same week that the top five collections alone accounted for more than $1 billion in primary and secondary sales. The article cited data from NFT market analysis platform Nonfungible suggesting the number of NFT sales has fallen by 92% since an all-time high in September 2021. Wallets active in the Ethereum NFT market were also said to have declined by 88% since a high in November 2021. “The NFT market is collapsing,” the article concluded. However, on-chain data from Dune Analytics’ …

Blockchain games are set to overtake decentralized finance (DeFi) as the number one contributor to decentralized application (DApp) activity in terms of uniquely active wallets. A new 18-page report by DappRadar surveys the nascent ecosystem behind this rise. Although still dwarfed by the traditional gaming industry, blockchain games, sometimes dubbed GameFi, have seen an early spurt of exponential growth, according to the report’s data. “The evolution of blockchain games” report, which discusses play-to-earn (P2E) as a new paradigm for gaming, is available on the Cointelegraph Report Terminal to purchase. It details how the play-to-earn model gained traction in the COVID-19 …

In many ways, cryptocurrencies were designed to be an equalizer, a characteristic likened to the asset’s abilities to promote financial inclusion. Similarly, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) were designed to accomplish the same mission of equality, only across industries such as art, real estate and gaming. Unfortunately, despite these lofty goals, the early use of NFTs has unintentionally introduced new forms of inequality. Consider the gaming industry, for example. Conventional NFT games have introduced the concept of rewarding players as members of a community-built ecosystem. The intention of many developers was to allow gamers to earn fair compensation for their efforts and …

The appeal of blockchain-based gaming is clear: participate in activities you might have already been doing and make some money at the same time in a realm constructed by tokenized and tradable items. While attractive in theory, the reality is that these models cater to those with a familiarity with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and surrounding technologies. Consider that most of these games present a steep learning curve with some knowledge, costs and other setup required before a player can participate in the ecosystem. Emerging as a low barrier to entry, Bezoge, the first crypto game for non-crypto people, presents Legends …

STEPN (GMT) has rallied strongly against the United States dollar this week as it looks likely to form a classical bullish technical pattern called “the bull flag.” GMT eyes more upside GMT’s price rose 30% week-to-date, including a strong rally to establish an all-time high near $3.85 followed by a relatively modest correction to nearly $3.00. In particular, the correction phase occurred inside a descending parallel channel, raising possibilities that the price would eventually break out of it to the upside. That is precisely because traditional analysts consider strong run-ups, followed by range-trapped price corrections, as bullish continuation setups. And, …

Play-to-earn (P2E) games continue to dominate the crypto industry as more than half of the active wallets tracked by Dappradar have connected to blockchain-based games in the first quarter of 2022. Games like Axie Infinity — even with last month’s catastrophic Ronin Bridge hack — Pegaxy, Alien Worlds and others continue to put up millions of dollars in trading volume in the previous 30 days. Despite this, the unsustainability of some P2E games grows more evident in the performance of their tokens. An example is Axie Infinity, whose Smooth Love Potion (SLP) is still at depressing levels, causing further declines …

South Korean automobile manufacturer Hyundai announced on Monday that it has partnered with the “Meta Kongz” nonfungible token (NFT) project to create a limited collection of 30 NFTs launching sometime in May 2022. Hyundai also created a new Twitter handle, @Hyundai_NFT, for its NFT-related communications and posted a video showing an animated Meta Kong riding through space in a 1975 Hyundai PONY. Hyundai x Meta Kongz introduces Hyundai Metamobility universe. Check out this aweeeesome creature’s breathtaking adventure with Hyundai PONY.@Hyundai_Global @meta_kongz pic.twitter.com/w0iLPHxe5d — Hyundai_NFT (@Hyundai_NFT) April 17, 2022 Included in the announcement was a teaser for a further “Shooting Star …

Blockchain-based play-to-earn (P2E) games stole the show in 2021, exploding from a fringe hobby into a major part of the decentralized space. They even helped people in developing economies put food on the table, as these games’ economic models do not shun things like farming in-game currency and items to re-sell to other players, which many non-blockchain massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) frown on, to say the least. The mainstream gaming industry was taking notes as the P2E rocketship shot for the moon — and its flight has left the industry bitterly splintered. On the one hand, top executives from …

The United States Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list was updated Thursday to reflect the possibility that North Korean cyber-criminal Lazarus Group was behind last month's hack of the Ronin Bridge, in which over 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) was taken, Chainalysis announced by Twitter. The information was also confirmed by Ronin. The hack, which took place on March 23, was worth over $600 million at the time. Discovered several days after the fact, it is one of the biggest robberies of its kind in history. The …

The decentralized finance (DeFi) world saw another week of increased on-chain and developer activity even when the overall market cap took a slight dip amid overall market retrace. The creators of the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token (NFT) game Axie Infinity raised $150 million to reimburse hack victims of the Ronin bridge exploit. The decantralized application, o daily user count surged to 2.4 million in the first quarter of 2022, while SushiSwap (SUSHI) and Synthetix (SNX) were booted out of Grayscale’s popular Decentralized Finance Fund. The widely-popular DeFi protocol Yearn.finance announced its support for the newly-passed ERC-4626 tokenized vault standard. The …

Sky Mavis, the creator of the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token game Axie Infinity has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Binance. The fundraiser is aimed at reimbursing lost funds from the recent exploit on Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, resulting in losses of over $600 million. The funding round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel. As Cointelegraph reported earlier, the explorer behind the hack managed to drain out 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) in just two transactions using hacked private keys. At the time, the creators behind the …