Layer 1 blockchain company, Aptos Foundation, announced on Oct 18 that it had rewarded its early network participants with free APT tokens. 1/ The Aptos Foundation has provided early network participants with APT tokens. If you are eligible to claim, you will receive an email from [email protected] in the next few hours. — Aptos (@AptosFoundation) October 18, 2022 The foundation shared that it had allocated an estimated 20 million APT tokens, representing 2% of its initial total supply of 1 billion APT, to about 110,235 eligible participants. The airdropped tokens had an estimated value of about $200-$260 million USD based …

Over the past few years, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have introduced a clear paradigm shift in blockchain governance. With their community decision-making and adherence to hardcoded rules, they have challenged the role of hierarchy and central authority that are present in modern organizations, especially as it pertains to business. Ideologically, DAOs have a lot in common with democracies: individuals holding an amount of a DAO’s specific token can allocate those tokens as votes on governance proposals. Once voting has concluded, the final outcome is executed autonomously by smart contracts. In functional democracies, however, citizens elect representatives to legislate laws and …

Anime-inspired nonfungible token (NFT) project Azuki has released a Physical Backed Token (PBT) — an open-source token standard that ties a physical item to a digital token on the Ethereum blockchain. Azuki shared on its Twitter account that the first implementation of the PBT will use the BEAN Chip; a physical cryptographic chip that self-generates an asymmetric key pair. The combination of the PBT and the BEAN Chip introduces a feature, which the project is calling “scan to own”. Introducing the Physical Backed Token (PBT): an open source token standard tying a physical item to a digital token on the …

It’s been a month since Ethereum said goodbye to an essential feature its blockchain shared with Bitcoin (BTC). Called the Ethereum Merge, the long-hyped upgrade was widely celebrated, with the blockchain ecosystem. However, for the mainstream audience or even for the average trader, it felt more like a Star Wars Day celebrated by sci-fi geeks than an early Christmas. As the Ethereum Merge occurred on Sept. 15, the most extensive blockchain ecosystem parted ways with the proof-of-work (PoW), the energy-hungry consensus mechanism that makes Bitcoin tick. The Ethereum blockchain now works on a more eco-friendly proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism that doesn’t …

The future of how we socialize online is being defined as we speak, and it’s far too important to leave things to the likes of Meta and other mega social companies. Just a surface-level look at Meta’s history is enough to understand its tendency to severely miss the mark. Some companies like to use Web3 principles to right the wrongs of Web2. And as a poster child for large, centralized organizations, Meta offers us some of the most useful examples of those wrongs. Let’s touch on three times that Meta fell short of building the future of online social experiences. …

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) first appeared in the cryptocurrency industry in 2014, allowing users to trade a wide number of assets peer-to-peer. However, the first iterations of these platforms could be difficult to use. But, since their inception, developers have worked to make them easier and more accessible for users. Decentralized exchanges work by using smart contracts to fulfill orders placed by traders, allowing users to trade directly with each other instead of relying on a centralized platform. Unlike a centralized exchange (CEX), when traders engage with a DEX, their funds are not stored on the exchange. Instead, users initiate trades …

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced its latest virtual reality (VR) headset at the Meta Connect 2022 event on Oct. 11. The company introduced new features to enhance digital avatars, which raised privacy concerns regarding data collection. The Quest Pro is the latest piece of VR technology released by Meta as it continues its push into the metaverse. It utilizes five cameras inside the headset, which are positioned to watch and track a person’s facial expressions and eye movements. In addition, it has five external cameras, which will be employed in the future to track other bodily …

According to data from programming repository GitHub, Polkadot recognized more than 500 contributions each day in September — an all-time high for the multichain protocol. Simultaneously, data from Polkadot's cross-consensus interoperability standard XCM show that a record 26,258 messages were sent between its parachains. In total, 14,930 developers' contributions were recorded on Polkadot's GitHub in the month of August. As told by project developers, 66 blockchains are now live on Polkadot and its parachain startup network Kusama. Since its inception, over 140,000 messages have been exchanged between chains via 135 messaging channels. Together, the Polkadot and Kusama Treasuries have cumulatively …

Over the past couple of years, games that use blockchain technology have increased their presence in the gaming industry. While there were early examples like CryptoKitties — launched in 2017 — the trend has truly gained steam, with major gaming studios even exploring the technology. At the beginning of 2022, the market capitalization of blockchain games was around $25 billion and it doesn’t seem to be decreasing anytime soon, even in the depths of a bear market. According to the analytical service DappRadar, the two most stable areas this year in the cryptocurrency market are blockchain games and nonfungible tokens …

Tailoring his argument to many of the companies that were market leaders at the time, his ideas eventually also applied to companies that either hadn’t fully defined their markets or didn’t even yet exist but would go on to generate billions in market share: Uber, Lyft, TikTok/ByteDance, Robinhood and Coinbase, among several others. If you were going to be a unicorn in the 21st century, software was probably going to be a key part of earning that horn. The hidden motor behind this complete disruption of modern economies and life was the emergence of true cloud computing and cloud giants, …

On Oct. 14, NFT Steez, a bi-weekly Twitter Spaces hosted by Alyssa Expósito and Ray Salmond, met with the founder of Cryptoys, Will Weinraub to discuss the current role of play and toys in regard to their integration with nonfungible tokens and Web3 as a whole. Weinraub believes that the act of play is "not restricted to children'' and believes that as adults, "we still crave the element of play throughout life." According to Weinraub, through the development of technology, "play has evolved." Nonfungible tokens, especially in gaming, have highlighted this layer of ownership through play. Technology will continue to …

A new insurance world is coming where smart contracts replace insurance documents, blockchain “oracles” supplant claim adjusters, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) take over traditional insurance carriers. Millions of poor farmers in Africa and Asia will be eligible for coverages like crop insurance too, whereas before, they were too poor and too dispersed to justify the cost of underwriting. That is the vision, anyway, on display in the recent Smartcon 2022, a two-day conference that sought to provide “exclusive insights into the next generation of Web3 innovation.” Subsistence farms, where families basically live off what they grow and almost nothing …