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Lightning Labs teases new Taproot protocol for Bitcoin-based assets
The Taproot Assets protocol leverages layer 2 technology to bring low-cost, scalable asset support to Bitcoin.
Lightning Labs announced that the latest version of the Bitcoin Taproot Assets protocol is currently in the testnet phase — enabling multi-asset support via the Lightning Network.
The company said the protocol had been a year in the making, initially launching under Taro. A firm date for mainnet release was not given, only that the final product will be “coming soon.”
The Taproot Assets protocol:
A Taproot Assets guide further detailed information on the protocol — which intends to foster greater Bitcoin use by adding quick, cheap, and scalable asset issuance capabilities to the network.
“Taproot Assets (formerly Taro) is a new Taproot-powered protocol for issuing assets on the bitcoin blockchain that can be transferred over the Lightning Network for instant, high volume, low fee transactions.” Read More
Uniswap will deploy on Polkadot parachain Moonbeam
The decentralized exchange gets a Polkadot version via the Moonbeam network.
The Uniswap crypto exchange will soon be available on Moonbeam, a parachain of Polkadot, according to a May 17 approved proposal on the exchange’s governance forum. The proposal was put forward by educational group Blockchain at Michigan. It passed with near-unanimous support, with only a single UNI token being used to vote against it.
The smart contracts for the exchange have already been deployed to Moonbeam (GLMR), and the only tasks left to fully launch it are “front-end integration updates and including Moonbeam to the auto-router,” the proposal stated.
Initial liquidity on the exchange may be low, as the proposal warns that “[d]ue to tumultuous market conditions, promises of liquidity bootstrapping have been temporarily excised.” However, it also states that Blockchain at Michigan is exploring the idea of applying for a Moonbeam grant to provide liquidity as soon as possible. If a grant is approved, it would be “on behalf of the DAO,” the proposal said, implying that funds would be held by Uniswap’s decentralized autonomous organization. Read More
Seizing Upon Ledger Stumble, Hardware Wallet Competitors Offer Discounts
BitBox, Cold Card, Trezor and Blockstream all announced sale prices on their cold storage devices.
After yesterday’s controversial update, competitors are capitalizing on Ledger's terrible, horrible, no-good-very-bad day by attempting to court its disillusioned customers with discounted prices on their offerings.
In a stroke of rapid strategic marketing, four of Ledger’s main rivals were quick to respond to the community’s pushback to the update, and slashed prices on their products.
Blockstream is offering a 10% discount on its flagship wallet Jade, Trezor is offering a 15% discount, Cold Card is showcasing a 15% discount, and BitBox has marked down their wallets by 10%.
The companies have also been touting their open-source code and refusal to entertain any compromise of self-custody. Read More
Tether Pledges to Plow 15% of Profits into Bitcoin
Bitcoin has ‘continually proven its resilience’ said Tether's CTO, as the stablecoin issuer adds to its $1.5 billion reserves of the cryptocurrency.
Tether is to start regular purchases of Bitcoin to bolster its excess reserves, the stablecoin issuer said in an announcement on Wednesday.
The company will allocate up to 15% of its net realized operating profits for buying up the world’s largest cryptocurrency, starting this month.
“Bitcoin has continually proven its resilience and has emerged as a long-term store of value with substantial growth potential,” said Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s CTO. “Its limited supply, decentralized nature, and widespread adoption have positioned Bitcoin as a favored choice among institutional and retail investors alike.”
Tether mints USDT—the third-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum and the industry’s biggest stablecoin. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies with prices pegged to “stable” assets, like the U.S. dollar. Read More
Markethive Leading The Way In Web 3 Social & Market Media
Web 3.0 is the next generation of the internet which people envision will be more decentralized and permissionless. One that's built on decentralized protocols, where users help with content creation and the governance of the web itself. They also have the ability to own a part of the network, so you can think of it as a Read-Write-Own Internet.
There are already several technologies that could serve as the backbone for a Web 3 world. Most point to blockchains like Elrond, Cardano, or Ethereum, for example, but other distributed technologies like IPFS can also be used to decentralize networks.
Thousands of dApps (decentralized applications) are already being built in the Web 3 environment. These often include native tokens to add value to the application to those who hold the tokens. These native crypto assets allow those who participate in the network to share in the value generated from it.
Web 3 promises a decentralized alternative where we are all users, owners, and developers. This quote from Fabric Ventures sums it up beautifully,
“Web 3.0 enables a future where distributed users and machines are able to interact with data, value, and other counterparties via a substrate of peer-to-peer networks without the need for third parties—the result: a composable human-centric & privacy-preserving computing fabric for the next wave of the web.” Read More
Blockchain developers launch $50M fund to increase Wormhole adoption
Wormhole is a cross-chain messaging protocol often used to transfer assets from one blockchain to another.
A $50 million fund has been launched to help startups that use the Wormhole cross-chain messaging protocol, according to a May 18 announcement. The new fund is being managed by venture capital fund Borderless Capital and is backed by over 20 other blockchain development teams and venture capital firms, including Circle, Polygon Ventures, Solana Foundation, Jump Crypto and others.
The fund will help startups that are “innovating cutting-edge apps, infrastructure, or tools that span multiple ecosystems,” according to its application page on the Wormhole website, which also describes the fund as “anti-maxi,” or promoting the idea that more than one blockchain is needed to solve users’ problems.
David Garcia, CEO and managing partner of Borderless Capital, stated that he thought the new fund would help to grow the Web3 economy and allow applications to attract new users:
“Our goal is to empower builders to transcend the limitations of individual ecosystems, paving the way for blockchain applications and protocols to realize their full potential." Read More
Texas proof-of-reserve bill passes through the Senate
The legislation would oblige exchanges to maintain reserves “in an amount sufficient to fulfil all obligations to customers.”
Legislation that could require exchanges to maintain reserves “in an amount sufficient to fulfil all obligations to customers” has made it one step closer to becoming law in Texas. On May 15, the bill passed a vote in the state Senate and now awaits only the governor’s signature.
Texas House Bill 1666, amending the Texan finance code, passed through the state’s House of Representatives earlier this year. After three readings in the Senate, the text of the bill hasn’t experienced any significant changes from the previous draft.
Under the amendments, digital asset providers serving more than 500 customers in the state, with at least $10 million of customer funds, would be restricted from comingling the customer funds with any other type of operational capital, and using customer funds for any further transactions besides the original transaction demanded by the customer. Read More
Web3 Reinvented: Polygon Labs, Sequence Join Forces To Transform Infrastructure
The Web3 industry offers a diverse range of services, creating a dynamic landscape for individuals. A notable development in this space is the recent partnership announcement by Horizon, the creator of Sequence, aimed at redefining Web3 infrastructure.
This collaboration has had a significant impact, particularly on Polygon’s governance token MATIC, which experienced a notable increase of nearly 3% within the past 24 hours. This bolstering of the infrastructure signifies a positive step forward for the Web3 ecosystem.
This development came a day after Polygon’s blog post detailing the release of the v0.9 Testnet for Polygon’s Supernets. Once the final release of Supernets is launched, this partnership will surely affect the dominance of Polygon in the Web3 space.
Web3: Scalability, Seamlessness For Developers On Polygon:
The seamless integration of Sequence’s smart wallet and infrastructure stack on Polygon Supernets will pull business enterprises into the ecosystem. Polygon Supernets are custom-built blockchains for specific apps. The most important of these customizations is a custom blockspace, ensuring that the user experience isn’t affected by bumps in activity on-chain. Read More
Users will decide if they can still trust Ledger with their seed phrases
Ledger’s decision to introduce a third party to your wallet seed phrase could appeal to both governments and hackers.
Self-custody is important in crypto, and security is essential to self-custody. Ledger, a notable hardware wallet manufacturer, has built its reputation on the secure storage of users’ private keys. Hardware wallets create a secure offline environment for storing keys and using keys to execute transactions.
The user’s private keys are generated and stored within the device and are supposed to never leave it. This “cold storage” provides an unrivalled level of security compared with “hot wallets” or online wallets. The problem is that lots of people lose their keys.
Ledger rolled out a seed phrase backup product this week called Ledger Recover. If you give the company your ID and personal information, you can pay for a service that takes your seed phrase within your device, encrypts it into three “shards” and then shares them with various custodians.
Introducing a third party inherently centralizes control, creating a single point of failure that could be exploited by hackers or be subject to regulatory actions. 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.
