On Thursday, the Helium Foundation announced that it would be moving its mainnet to the Solana blockchain following a community vote. According to the proposal, proof-of-coverage and Data transfer mechanisms will be moved to Helium Oracles. It’s official! The HIP 70 vote has ended. #Helium will be moving to the @Solana blockchain! pic.twitter.com/V2WIajou7R — Helium (@helium) September 22, 2022 Meanwhile, Helium's tokens and governance will relocate to that of the Solana blockchain. As told by developers, the benefits of the move would include more of its native token HNT available to subDAO reward pools, more consistent mining, more reliable data …

On the first day after the Merge, the decentralized finance (DeFi) community is settling into the seemingly uneventful transition of the Ethereum network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). However, it has yet to be seen the benefits that hard forks will bring to PoW supporters. So far, the most important contending networks in favor of the mining community, EthereumPoW and Ethereum Classic, have shown different outcomes post-Merge. A stumbling start The fledgling EthereumPoW started its debut with Twitter users reporting issues with accessing the network. The issues were confirmed to be the result of a hack to the network …

Some may argue that the Metaverse has been around for years, as demonstrated by early gaming platforms, yet virtual ecosystems are now being embraced by almost every industry. A recent report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company believes that the Metaverse has the potential to generate at least $5 billion in value by 2030. McKinsey also found that investments exceeding $120 billion have been put toward Metaverse platforms this year, indicating that major growth is underway. While notable, there is still the perception that most metaverse platforms are lacking when it comes to graphic quality. For example, Mark Zuckerberg was …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) may be the biggest driver of crypto adoption in Central, Southern Asia, and Oceania (CSAO), a new report has found. According to a Sept. 21, Chainalysis post titled “Crypto Adoption Steadies in South Asia, Soars in the Southeast,” NFT-related actions accounted for 58% of all web traffic going to cryptocurrency services from this region in the second quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, another 21% of traffic in the quarter went to websites of play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain games, with majortitles including Axie Infinity, STEPN and Battle Infinity. Chainalysis noted that P2E blockchain games are “intimately related” to NFTs, as …

Despite the current struggle in the global economy, the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and crypto seems to be closing with each passing day. For example, earlier this month, Vienna-based fintech unicorn Bitpanda announced that it was adding commodities to its list of investment options, thus allowing investors to rake in profits from short-term price fluctuations related to traditional instruments such as oil, natural gas and wheat. In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, the company’s CEO, Eric Demuth, noted that the bear market had had no major impact on investor demand. He claims that more people are now looking for …

The sanctions imposed by the United States government on Tornado Cash have reignited a public debate on privacy. For many in the relatively young crypto community, such an intervention by the federal government seems groundbreaking. However, tussles between the private sector and the state on the issue of privacy are far from new and can provide compelling insights on what we might expect next for privacy in the crypto industry. In the 1990s, Phil Zimmermann released Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first openly available public-key cryptography applications that featured end-to-end (E2E) encryption. Zimmerman’s creation prompted a criminal investigation …

For all the hype around the metaverse, it is easy to forget it is still in its infancy. While the term has only recently entered the broad public consciousness, its impact on how we interact with technology is already expected to be deeply consequential. McKinsey & Company estimates that annual global spending within the metaverse could reach $5 trillion by 2030 across domains as broad as gaming, social, fitness, commerce and remote learning. The question of how to define and build technology with such broad capabilities is in flux. While a number of games — such as Roblox, Fortnite and …

Insurance is key for financially securing important assets. Yet, the cryptocurrency sector — which is predicted to reach a global market size of $4.94 billion by 2030 — may be lagging behind when it comes to insuring digital assets. For instance, it’s been noted that less than 1% of all crypto investments are currently insured. This statistic is alarming, considering the rapid growth and high-risk profile associated with today’s cryptocurrency market. Ben Davis, team lead for digital assets at Superscript — a British startup and Lloyd’s of London-licensed insurance broker — told Cointelegraph that crypto has been marginalized when it …

Decentralized blockchain-based metaverse The Sandbox has held its first hybrid digital and real-life wedding on its Metaverse. The bride and groom, Singaporean couple Joanne Tham and Clarence Chan, CEO of music company Bandwagon, celebrated their matrimony on Sept. 17 in a “70s disco glam” themed wedding, which took place in a digital replica of Singapore's famous Alkaff Mansion. ❤️ A @TheSandboxGame wedding just happened a few hours ago. Congratulations @clarcrypto ! A special thank you to @borgetsebastien . A feature video dropping today. @thecobbleland #wedding #metaverse pic.twitter.com/141o915Hew — Smobler Studios (@smoblerstudios) September 17, 2022 While the couple was physically present …

A recent report from technology research and advisory firm Technavio predicts that the Metaverse will hit a market share value of $50.37 billion by the year 2026. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the trillion-dollar fashion industry has started taking a major interest in the Metaverse. While most luxury labels and brands remain focused on creating nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to replicate physical items, a handful of projects have started bringing their communities into the Metaverse. For example, on Sept. 5, Vogue Singapore launched a fashion-first Web3 community known as “Vogue Singapore’s New World.” While Vogue Singapore has previously …

Last week’s Merge was the “most significant development in the history of the Ethereum network,” according to Fidelity Digital. And from a purely technical standpoint, the blockchain network’s transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism was a marvel. Widely compared to changing a jet engine mid-flight, the software upgrade proceeded with nary a glitch on Sept. 15. Overnight, too, Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain platform, reduced its energy usage by 99.95% from a rate as high as 94 TWh per year in May — roughly equivalent to the nation-state Chile — to an almost negligible 0.01 …

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have been heralded as the future of governance, unlocking a more egalitarian approach to decision-making. However, decentralizing leadership isn’t a magical solution that instantly leads to better results. To truly get the most out of a decentralized organization, steps must be taken to regulate weighted voting and tokenomics. If not carefully balanced, DAOs can implode — and some already have. Decentralized governance explained DAOs offer a model for managing a project or company that distributes voting rights across all members. There is usually no central authority, only the will of the collective. While this sounds equitable …