Opensea’s dominance begins to waiver Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea has seen its competitors chomping at its ankles this year as they gain market share — turning the market from a “monopoly” into an “oligopoly," a new report states. Binance Market Pulse released on Oct. 20 says there has been a slow and steady change in market leadership, noting that while OpenSea is still the dominant marketplace in terms of users and volume, Ethereum (ETH)-based exchanges X2Y2 and Looksrare have been gaining their share of the market over 2022. The report also pointed out that OpenSea is facing stiff competition …

Modern decentralized exchanges (DEXs) mainly rely on liquidity providers (LP) to provide the tokens that are being traded. These liquidity providers are rewarded by receiving a portion of the trading fees generated on the DEX. Unfortunately, while liquidity providers earn an income via fees, they’re exposed to impermanent loss if the price of their deposited assets changes. Directional liquidity pooling is a new method that is different from the traditional system used by DEXs and aims to reduce the risk of impermanent loss for liquidity providers. What is directional liquidity pooling? Directional liquidity pooling is a system developed by Maverick …

The millions oF UNI tokens delegated by Binance were a "misunderstood situation", said Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao on a Twitter's post, in response to questions about 13.2 million UNI tokens delegated on Oct. 18 that made Binance the second-largest entity by voting power in the Uniswap DAO. According to CZ, a UNI transfer between internal wallets caused the automatic delegation, denying allegations about the crypto exchange using user's tokens to vote. UNI transferred between internal Binance wallets, causing the UNI to be automatically delegated. This is part of their protocol, not "we intended". Binance don't vote with user’s tokens. …

The take-off of digital gold has the potential to disrupt the industry to an unprecedented degree. Historically, gold has been used as a global currency as a hedge against inflation. It has also been serving as an investment venue (commodities), often preferred over other asset classes like equities or foreign exchange, particularly in conventional markets. However, there are certain disadvantages to owning physical gold, such as inconvenience in transport and storage, as well as the risk of theft. Gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) might come across as an alternative option, but it cannot be forgotten that the traders don’t actually own …

Over the years, several cryptocurrency companies have claimed that deposits with them were insured by the United States Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as if they were regular savings accounts. While so far, no crypto firm has been able to offer depositors this type of insurance, some speculate it could be the key to mass adoption. The most notable case is that of bankrupt lender Voyager Digital, which saw regulators instruct it to remove “false and misleading statements” regarding FDIC insurance. Crypto exchange FTX has been a beacon of hope looking to backstop contagion in the …

Institutions have begun to take crypto seriously and have entered the space in numerous ways. As noted in a previous analysis, this has resulted in banks and fintechs looking at custody products and services for their clients. However, as custodians of clients’ assets, banks must also ensure they are clean assets and stay compliant. This is where on-chain analytics solutions have a huge role to play in understanding patterns in transactions to identify money laundering and other spurious activities within the cryptocurrency and digital assets space. According to a report by Chainalysis, over $14 billion of illicit transactions took place …

GameFi is one of the hottest buzzwords in crypto right now — but winning over players has proven to be a bit challenging. Today, most GameFi projects use the play-to-earn (P2E) model, which focuses primarily on earnings and doesn't pay attention to what matters most: fun features that attract and retain gamers. Some projects have been criticized for offering low-quality gameplay, punctuated by janky graphics and difficult-to-understand controls. But this project says it has the answers — and has the potential to deliver an immersive product that the crypto community has been waiting for. Artyfact is the first Web3 gaming …

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 …

Nubank, a fintech bank in Brazil, announced the creation of the Nucoin token on the Polygon blockchain on Oct. 19, paving the way for a rewards program for its 70 million clients across Latin America. The company said that the token will be available in the first half of 2023, and will recognize customer loyalty and engagement with the bank products without cost or fees for its users. The tokens can be redeemed for perks, discounts in selected products. Fernando Czapski, General Manager for Nucoin at Nubank, stated: "This project is another step ahead in our belief in the transformative …

United States prosecutors have opposed a motion by a former employee of nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea to remove “insider trading” references from his charges. Prosecutors said the phrase accurately describes the crimes the former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain is accused of in a memo filed on Oct. 14. It was responding to a motion by Chastain to stop referring to the phrase on Oct. 3, according to Law360. Chastain was charged in June for allegedly buying 45 NFTs from June to September 2021 through anonymous wallets and selling them for a profit. He allegedly used his position at …

Dormant Punks Nonfungible token (NFT) sleuths have dug up an old wallet from 2017 that minted 141 CryptoPunks for 0.02 ETH, which was around $7 at the time when the project launched. According to the Twitter user Nansen Intern from the analytics platform the wallet is now valued at 11,300 ETH, or around $14.7 million at current prices. The wallet has shown no activity since then leading to speculation the owner lost the seed phrase. The wallet is placed in the top ten in terms of CryptoPunks holders and many collectors are reportedly monitoring it in hopes of snapping up …

An attacker has returned just over 93% of the more than $9 million worth of cryptocurrencies they exploited from the Celo (CELO) blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Moola Market. At around 6PM UTC on Oct. 18 the Moola Market team tweeted it was investigating an incident and had paused all activity, adding it had contacted authorities and offered a bug bounty to the exploiter if funds were returned within 24 hours. Analysis of the exploit by Web3 security company Hacken shows the attacker manipulated the price of the protocols’ low-liquidity native MOO token by initially purchasing around $45,000 worth …