Decentralized yield protocol Yearn.finance said in a Jan. 9 tweet that all users can now create sophisticated Permissionless Vault Factories on its platform. The current version of Vault Factory works with stablecoin-swapping platform Curve Finance and its liquidity provider (LP) tokens and features three premade yield strategies. “Our new Permissionless Vault Factory lets anyone deploy an auto-compounding yVault for any Curve pool with an active liquidity gauge. Yes, anyone. Factory-deployed vaults have no management fees and a flat 10% performance fee. Nice!” As told by Yearn.finance, the first, dubbed “Boosted Factory,” uses Yearn’s vote-escrowed CRV balance of 45.1 million to …

The Easy Company, a startup focusing on building a consumer layer for the decentralized web, has raised $14.2 million in a seed round for its “social” crypto wallet, which seeks to help onboard more mainstream audiences into the Web3 ecosystem. As reported by TechCrunch, the seed funding round was supported by a diverse group of investors, including venture capital firms Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures and 6th Man Ventures, as well as Tapestry, Upside and Scribble. Additionally, the round featured angel investors with backgrounds in traditional social media and Web3, including former executives from Instagram, Novi, Airbnb, Twitter, Uber, OpenTable and …

As the global economy continues to reel from the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is increasing data suggesting that more and more people are now favoring a remote work-based lifestyle. In this regard, a survey sample of working United States citizens shows that Millennial and Generation Z workers prefer joining a remote workforce and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as opposed to going to an office. As part of the study, more than 1,100 U.S. citizens were asked to provide their preferences regarding remote work and the emergence of DAOs in recent years. Using research pertaining to DAOs published …

According to a post on January 9, e-Money — a stablecoin project in the Cosmos ecosystem — said it would discontinue the issuance of its euro stablecoin EURR effective March 6, 2023. In explaining the decision, e-Money wrote: "The lack of real-world applications for blockchain has led to low demand for non-USD stablecoins. The upcoming European MiCA legislation is expected to hinder the scalability of Euro-backed stablecoins and limit business opportunities in the sector. European MiCA legislation in its current form favors commercial banks as future issuers of Euro stablecoins, hurting innovation in the European Union." Until the deadline, users …

The retail industry is one of the most important sectors of the United States economy. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has left the trillion-dollar retail sector vulnerable to in-store theft. Findings from the National Retail Federation’s 2022 Retail Security Survey show that retail losses from stolen goods increased to $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020. Some retailers also have to lock away certain products to prevent theft, which may lead to decreased sales due to consumers’ inability to access goods. Retailers look toward blockchain to solve retail theft Given these extreme measures, many innovative retailers have started …

The creation of smart contracts and Web3 interfaces has led to an entirely new play-to-earn or nonfungible token (NFT) genre of video games. But during the 2021 crypto bull market and subsequent crash of 2022, many of the games in this niche went through incredible ups and downs in terms of player count and transaction volume. Despite this volatility, one Web3 gaming executive who spoke to Cointelegraph says that new innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) will make the genre better than it has ever been. Alex Connelly is the chief technology officer of Immutable, developer of the Gods Unchained digital …

Global payments giant Mastercard is ramping up its exposure blockchain tech yet again, after announcing a Polygon-based accelerator program to help musicians build their careers via Web3. The firm announced the "Mastercard Artist Accelerator" program via a Jan. 7 blog post, outlining that from this spring, it will connect five emerging musicians from across the globe with mentors that will help them set up their brand in the Web3 music space. "The artists will gain exclusive access to special events, music releases and more. A first-of-its-kind curriculum will teach the artists how to build (and own) their brand through Web3 …

Cryptocurrency adoption has been on the rise in El Salvador in recent years, with the country becoming the first in the world to adopt Bitcoin (BTC) as a legal tender. This landmark decision has attracted the attention of the global cryptocurrency community and has sparked discussions on the potential benefits and challenges of widespread adoption. El Salvador’s controversial move with its cryptocurrency adoption would not have been possible if it was not due to President Nayib Bukele, who garnered international attention after announcing the Bitcoin adoption plan and passed it into law. The legislation required all businesses within the country …

One of the largest Bitcoin mining operations in North America, Marathon Digital Holdings, has shared in an update that it has been experimenting with overclocking to increase its competitive advantage in the Bitcoin mining industry. Overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock speed of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU) beyond the manufacturer’s rated maximum speed, potentially leading to improved performance in certain tasks. According to the company's press release, it produced 475 BTC in December 2022, bringing its total mined Bitcoins in the fiscal year of 2022 to 4,144 BTC, a 30% increase …

The cryptocurrency ecosystem underwent a turbulent year in 2022. Criticism inside and outside of the crypto industry was fueled following the collapse of FTX, Celsius, Three Arrows Capital and the Terra ecosystem. A number of losses have been recorded from these events. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis released a report in December of last year, which noted that the depegging of Terra’s stablecoin, Terra USD Classic (USTC), saw weekly-realized losses peak at $20.5 billion. Findings further show that the subsequent collapse of Three Arrows Capital and Celsius in June 2022 saw weekly-realized losses reach $33 billion. While these events may have …

According to a Jan. 5 report published by Chinese blockchain security firm LianAn Technology, decentralized finance, or DeFi, exploits across blockchains worldwide totaled $3.64 billion in 2022. This represented a rise of 47.4% compared to the loss of $2.44 billion in 2021. The incidents increased in quantity despite a steep 80% loss in DeFi total value locked during the year. Out of the 2022 amount, funds lost during cross-chain bridge hacks amounted to $1.89 billion across 12 incidents — the highest in the category. Overall, attacks on the Ethereum, BNB, and Solana chains accounted for the majority of exploits. Out …

According to a recent paper, Chinese researchers claimed to have discovered a novel method to break the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman 2048 bit (RSA-2048) signing algorithm present in blockchains and other security protocols. RSA is a cryptographic technique that utilizes a public key to encrypt information and a private key to decrypt them. Breaching the RSA-2048 algorithm requires, similar to other algorithms in the RSA numbers family, finding the prime factors of a number with 617 decimal digits and 2048 binary digits. Experts estimate that it would take ordinary computers 300 trillion years to break an RSA-2048 encryption key. However, Chinese researchers said …