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Cryptopedia: Learn the concepts behind stablecoins and how they work
Cointelegraph breaks down stablecoins and how they give users a way to safely store their assets without worrying about depreciation.
Cointelegraph’s director of video production Jackson DuMont dissected stablecoins in the latest episode of Cryptopedia. DuMont also explored and explained algorithmic stablecoins and the recent incident involving the TerraUSD (UST) and why it was unable to maintain its dollar peg.
DuMont defined stablecoins as “a crypto whose value is tied to an outside asset such as the United States Dollar (USD).” According to DuMont, stablecoins are very vital to the crypto industry as they provide users with the ability to store their assets without worrying about the depreciation of the assets’ value. This function is useful in bear markets where there are a lot of uncertainties.
Using Tether as an example, DuMont noted that stablecoins are able to maintain their dollar pegs by having equal reserves. He explained that in order for Tether to create or mint any amount of USDT, the company should have an equal amount of USD in its reserves.
The existence of this collateral allows USDT users the ability to exchange their USDT for USD whenever they want. This shows that stablecoins may only be “copies” of the original currency. However, DuMont highlights one of the biggest differences — stablecoins exist on the blockchain. Read More
DeFi, DAOs and NFTs: Crypto is redefining how charities raise funds
Crypto donations are so much more than just peer-to-peer Bitcoin and Ether transactions.
Nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are redefining how charities raise donations and distribute funds to those most in need.
Through ever-evolving crypto and blockchain-related technology, crypto philanthropists told Cointelegraph that they’ve witnessed “new wealth distribution mechanisms” never seen before.
“Philanthropy has traditionally been seen as a high-cost-of-entry, individualistic activity, but with Web3, collective decision-making bodies like DAOs can use tools that streamline financial coordination and encourage more participation,” explained Omar Antila, Product Lead at Crypto for Charity.
“Crypto enables new innovative fundraising strategies, like charitable NFT-drop campaigns, or allowing people to pool their crypto funds in DeFi protocols that earn interest for a specific cause,” he added. Read More
Ushering in a new era of Web3 gaming by making Play-to-Earn sustainable
With the Web3 gaming sector often employing unsustainable play-to-earn economic designs, a service economy approachable gamers to earn without having to invest.
While 2021 will primarily be remembered for the explosive price appreciation seen across crypto assets and NFTs, blockchain gaming also saw a rapid expansion in user adoption and blossomed into taking up more than 50% of all activity across the blockchain industry.
Most of these Web3 games employ a play-to-earn (P2E) economic design where players are rewarded for their time, efforts, and in-game accomplishments. Combining the core gameplay with economic mechanics, most P2E Web3 games rely on rewarding gamers with in-game items in the form of NFTs or with the platform’s native tokens.
This model, however, has proven to be highly unsustainable in bear markets and has compelled Web3 gaming entrepreneurs to shift to a hybrid solution involving both NFTs and fungible tokens (FTs). Offering better liquidity on account of fungible economics, this generation of Web3 games is now being superseded by a revolutionary economic design that could power the P2E Web3 gaming sector toward achieving better sustainability. Read More
Did It Really Take Just 13 People To Hard Fork Polygon?
The manner in which Polygon's leadership handled a major upgrade has some questioning its commitment to decentralization.
Ethereum sidechain Polygon successfully completed a network hard fork Tuesday, effectively creating a new Polygon blockchain that developers hope will provide faster transactions and less frequent gas fee spikes.
While the software upgrade was hailed by advocates as a technical step forward, the manner in which the fork was pushed through the Polygon community and ratified left others questioning the network’s organizational structure and its commitment to decentralization.
In December, Polygon’s Governance Team—defined by a Polygon spokesperson as the group that "supports the governance and decentralization of the Polygon product suite"—set forth an initial proposal to implement a hard fork. Hard forks are events where a supermajority of a blockchain’s validators (typically, and in Polygon's case, at least 67%) agree to upgrade to new software, essentially creating a new blockchain in the process.
Hard forks are usually used to make major adjustments to one or multiple mechanisms undergirding a network. In this case, Polygon’s leadership advocated using a hard fork to reduce the sprint length of on-chain transactions—a move that would both lower transaction times and reduce the frequency of chain reorganizations, or “reorgs”—messy and occasionally risky events where multiple validators disagree about the network’s transaction history.
Polygon’s leadership also proposed using the opportunity of a fork to double the blockchain’s “BaseFeeChangeDenominator,” an adjustment intended to reduce volatile spikes in gas fees that have previously plagued the network. Read More
Innovations that will change the way we work and interact online.
The Markethive Social Market Broadcasting Network becomes more prominent daily as the blockchain-driven ecosystem for entrepreneurs with a non-adversarial, bi-partisan free speech ethic and the collaborative culture we rarely see on social media platforms today. Even the newer acclaimed, free speech platforms are partisan to the left or right and deal with de-platforming and boycotts from payment providers.
Unlike the social media giants, which only have one primary news feed algorithmically set by the central authorities, Markethive is integrating four news feeds to accommodate the multi-functional platform within the Markethive ecosystem.
The individual feeds are General, Video, Blogging, and Content Curation, and they are all accessible from the main page and can be algorithmically set by the individual user. The scope that Markethive has is enormous as it integrates all the vertical systems of the other platforms under one roof.
Social + Video + Blogging + Marketing + Curation + Broadcasting + Affiliate + Gamification + Cottage Businesses = Markethive: A Powerful Blockchain-driven Ecosystem
There is nothing out there like Markethive. We are an Inbound Marketing (automated marketing platform) like Marketo, Paragon, and even the wannabee MLM Onpassive platform. We are like Youtube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., but will be superior to these legacy Web 2 media when we release all the aspects and layout of Markethive 2.0.
We have a dynamic social media interface and growing community with a strong collaborative ethos, with SaaS and broadcasting capabilities already operational. We are not waiting for the launch to access the services; they are already there for you to use to help you facilitate your business and increase your reach and following.
Markethive is enhancing and bringing the platform into the future internet with our new technology and interfaces, but still in keeping with the human touch. Read More
Filecoin Foundation ventures into space with IPFS
Filecoin Foundation, responsible for facilitating the governance of the Filecoin Network, has announced its first-ever mission of deploying a decentralized filing system by leveraging the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) with the objective of improving communication among planets.
The mission will be held in space and hosted by Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 Technology Demonstrator spacecraft. It follows the May 2022 announcement of deploying IPFS with the aim of improving the speed at which data is transferred over long distances. Deploying IPFS into space with the spacecraft is the next step in the mission.
A need for the deployment arises because the centralized internet is not supported in space. Assuming it makes its way to space, a multi-second delay would end up being a huge problem, especially during a time when retrieving real-time data is an important aspect of all projects.
Marta Belcher, the Chair and President of the Filecoin Foundation, has echoed similar words to further explain how IPFS works. Marta has said that the system identifies data based on its unique Content ID. Users can retrieve the data with that ID from the server closest to their destination. The information travels the shortest distance instead of going through the lengthy process of several clicks. Read More
Polygon (MATIC) Braces for New Hard Fork Designed To Boost Performance and Scalability
Blockchain scaling solution Polygon (MATIC) is gearing up for a new hard fork that aims to boost the chain’s performance and make it more efficient.
In a new blog post, the Polygon team says that while the project has achieved many of its targets for scaling the Ethereum (ETH) network, more immediate goals now require the network’s approval before becoming a reality.
According to the team, the new hard fork boils down to two main points: to reduce the severity of gas fee spikes and to address chain reorganizations (reorgs) in order to decrease time to finality. The team says reorgs happen “when a validator node receives new information that shows a longer or higher version of the chain.” As a result, the old chain is discarded to make room for the new one.
The Polygon team says that after the fork, they expect to smooth out the volatile jumps in gas fees currently present on Ethereum. Read More
Polygon enlists Xternity to migrate multiplayer Web3 game from Solana
To help transfer Synergy Land’s resources onto the EVM chain, Xternity proposed a process — via its network migration tool — that can be used to migrate games or projects across chains.
Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon, joined hands with Xternity, a Web3 gaming development platform, to migrate and onboard a multiplayer Web3 game — Synergy Land — to the Polygon network from Solana.
As blockchain platforms, Solana focuses primarily on scalability and cost-cutting, while Polygon allows for seamless interaction with the Ethereum ecosystem. To help transfer Synergy Land’s resources onto the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain, Xternity proposed a process — via its network migration tool — that can be used to migrate games or projects across chains.
Speaking about Xternity’s goal to accelerate Web3 game development, co-founder and CEO Sagi Maman, stated that both players and developers should have the option to choose their own blockchain ecosystems.
For users, the migration process involves linking their Solana-compatible wallets, such as Phantom and MetaMask, burning their assets on Solana and recreating them on Polygon. With its migration to Polygon, Synergy Land aims to onboard Web2 users into Web3 without compromising the community hosted over the older blockchain.
Web3 projects that opt for EVM migration often seek a more extensive user base, greater functionality and credibility of the Ethereum blockchain. Read More
DeFi Project 1inch Network Launches Hardware Wallet
1inch's hardware wallet will support the same cryptocurrencies available on the firm's hot wallet and offers multi-seed phrase functionality.
Popular decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch Network is expanding its ecosystem of products and projects with the launch of its own multi-coin hardware wallet.
Supported by a grant from the 1inch Foundation, the crypto wallet is in its final stages of development, with sales expected to start later this year.
Hardware wallets, also known as cold storage, come as physical devices and are considered the best option for securing cryptocurrencies as they keep users’ private keys in a secure offline environment, safe from potential online attacks and intrusions.
As a DEX aggregator that identifies the best trade for a specific pair, 1inch Network provides a place to swap tokens on the Ethereum (ERC-20), BNB Chain (BEP-20), Avalanche, Fantom, and Polygon networks, among others.
Similar to what the existing 1inch Wallet offers, the hardware crypto wallet will support the same set of coins, with more chains to be gradually added in the future, the team behind the project told Decrypt. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
