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U.K. Law Commission Proposes To Legally Define Digital Assets As Personal Property
The Law Commission of England and Wales today published a proposal to reform the law relating to digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and has put forth the idea to legally define these assets as personal property. The proposal includes categorising cryptocurrencies and NFTs under the term “data objects.”
Various jurisdictions have been uncertain about how to regulate cryptocurrencies, but the U.K. government is seeking to circumvent this issue and has tasked its independent statutory body with laws to explore how property rules can apply to digital assets in Wales and England. In a proposal set forth by the U.K. Law Commission on Thursday, the government has proposed to legally define digital assets including cryptocurrencies and NFTs as personal property. According to a statement by the Commission, such personal property will be categorised under the term “data objects” so as to "accommodate the unique features of digital assets.” In addition, the independent body will also investigate options for how “data objects” can be optimised. Finally, the Commission has been tasked to clarify the law around ownership, control, transfers, and transactions around digital assets.
The Commission notes that emerging technologies are increasingly being used for a variety of purposes, including being valuable in themselves, used as a form of payment, or used to represent or be linked to objects or rights, such as equity or debt securities, and has therefor become imperative to regulate. Read More
How to build your first blockchain on Substrate?
Setting up your development environment is the first step in starting with Substrate. After this, developers can create a small network of validators by updating the runtime code for a node and then gradually scaling it up.
When Ethereum was launched in July 2015, the world was introduced to the concept of smart contracts that hoped to revolutionize the blockchain space and allowed anyone from developers to enthusiasts to deploy decentralized applications (DApps) on the Ethereum mainnet.
With various DApps currently in use across different blockchains like Ethereum, they offer many use cases including banking, gaming, finance, online shopping and social media, with an ever-expanding user base across the globe.
Having provided the infrastructure needed for developers to create innovative digital applications, Ethereum, however, has limitations such as limited scalability and high gas fees, factors that are now inhibiting developers from building specialized solutions that can rival popular centralized platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Netflix.
To overcome these challenges and explore the possibilities of blockchain technology, Ethereum co-founder and its first chief technology officer Gavin Wood left the Ethereum Foundation and founded Parity Technologies to build blockchain infrastructure that can help create the foundation of a decentralized web, or Web3 as it is known.
Armed with a vast industry experience and deep understanding of creating blockchains, he went ahead to build Substrate as an open-source and future-proof blockchain framework for developers to build on, enabling them to tweak their blockchain’s architecture in line with changing customer preferences.
Substrate-based blockchains can be integrated as parachains on networks such as Polkadot or Kusama and provide a high level of interoperability, helping to bring to market truly decentralized real-world solutions that are faster, cheaper and safer than ever before. Read More
Decentralized storage providers power the Web3 economy, but adoption still underway
Decentralized storage providers are proving to be the backbone of Web3, but what does this mean for centralized web service providers?
The promise of owning and managing one’s own data is revolutionary, creating increasing interest in Web3 platforms and applications. For instance, recent findings show that the Web3 market was estimated to be worth around $2.9 billion last year, yet this number is expected to reach $23.3 billion by 2028. Web3 is also capturing the interest of venture capitalists, as Cointelegraph Research found this sector to be the most sought-after investment deal in 2022.
The rise of Web3 has also resulted in the need for decentralized storage solutions, which will ultimately allow users to archive, retrieve and maintain their own data. Findings from Huobi Research Institute further show that increasing global storage data volume will elevate the cost of security and high power consumption, which will fuel the trend toward decentralized storage. The report states, “World storage system demand has progressed from remote storage to instant cloud storage, and now blockchain decentralized storage which we shall call Web3 storage.” Read More
ETH Developers Finalize Goerli Merge Details
ETH developers have been hard at work preparing for the final testnet merge, scheduled for early August. Developers recently announced the final details for the final testing phase of the Merge before the long-awaited official merge.
The Final Dress Rehearsal:
Ethereum is finally just one step away from the Merge, with the final testnet just a few days away. The deployment of the Georli/Prater testnet is set to take place as soon as next week, the Ethereum Foundation announced. The Georli/Prater testnet deployment is the final test before Ethereum’s highly anticipated move to Proof-of-Stake. Prior to this, we will see the Bellatrix upgrade, which is scheduled for August 4th. The upgrade will prepare Prater, the Georli version of the Beacon Chain, for the Merge with Georli.
Lead Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced the news on Twitter, stating,
“Prater will run through the Bellatrix upgrade on August 4th and merge with Goerli between August 6-12th: if you run a node or validator, this is your last chance to go through the process before mainnet.”
Testnets such as Georli are rehearsals for the final Merge, which move the entire Ethereum mainnet to a test network environment. Georli is the final test run. Earlier, the Sepolia testnet and the Ropsten testnet both transitioned to Proof-of-Stake. 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
Solana Spaces store to bring 100K people to Solana per month, says CEO
The new shop entertained about 400 crypto-curious guests on opening day and hopes to host even more as other stores are opened across the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Solana Spaces CEO Vibhu Norby said the new physical Solana stores will introduce up to 100,000 people per month to the Solana ecosystem while also signalling plans to open a virtual storefront in the near future.
Utilizing a grant from the Solana Foundation, the first Solana Spaces shop opened in the swanky Hudson Yards New York shopping centre on Thursday.
Addressing the community in an impromptu Twitter AMA on launch day, Norby explained the store is meant to teach new users about how to use decentralized applications (DApps) and noted that it would be introducing thousands of people into the Solana blockchain:
“I don’t think people realize this but we’re going to bring 50 to 100,000 people into Solana every month through these stores — and that’s just this year.”
Speaking to Cointelegraph in a phone interview following the AMA, Norby said the shop had 400 visitors, hinting also that new United States-based physical stores were in the works, and that “the store was designed for people who are brand new to blockchain.”
Solana is home to over a thousand DApps, ranging from trading platforms, gaming and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to social media. Read More
Unstoppable Domains Reaches Unicorn Valuation With $65M Series A Round
The Web3 startup behind NFT-based domain names is now valued at $1 billion as it expands its online identity push into reputation.
Web3 startup Unstoppable Domains has raised $65 million at a $1 billion valuation.
The firm sells NFT-based domains that can be assigned to crypto wallets and websites, and is building Web3 identity and reputation solutions.
Unstoppable Domains, a Web3 service that provides NFT-based domain names for crypto wallets and websites, today announced that it’s reached a “unicorn” valuation of $1 billion after a $65 million Series A funding round.
The raise was led by new investor Pantera Capital and includes funding from Mayfield, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures, Polygon, CoinGecko, OKG Investments, and others. Previous backers Draper Associates and Boost VC also took part.
Matthew Gould, founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains, told Decrypt that “everyone’s excited” at the firm about reaching unicorn status, and that it built through the so-called crypto winter in 2018 and 2019 to eventually reach this point. But he also told his team that bringing in this kind of investment is a serious matter.
“When you take on funding, you take on a lot of responsibility,” he said. “You have one day to celebrate and take the victory lap, and have a glass of champagne—and then the next day, you get right back to work.” Read More
Defi Cross-chain Interoperability Protocol Nomad Raises $22.4m from Crypto Leaders
Defi cross-chain interoperability protocol Nomad has secured a $22.4 million seed round from the crypto industry leader.
Crypto investment firm Polychain led the round. Crypto.com Capital, Wintermute, Gnosis, Algaé and Polygon participated. Other participants include newcomers Coinbase Ventures, OpenSea,
This financing round will be used to expand Nomad to other blockchains, helping it create a more secure cross-chain bridge encryption ecosystem, where different blockchains can communicate more securely and cost-effectively, avoiding hackers - such as The $625 million attack on Axie Infinity's Ronin network in March.
Anurag Arjun, the co-founder of Polygon, said, "Because Nomad provides a trust-minimized protocol for cross-chain messaging, there are potential applications that go well beyond just token bridging. We look forward to seeing some exciting new use cases come to life on-chain.”
Nomad is a cross-chain communication protocol that uses an Optimistic fraud-proof mechanism to ensure network security. Optimistic verification allows observers to challenge messages through on-chain fraud proofs without relying on custodians or validators. Read More
What does the upcoming ‘Merge’ mean for Ethereum?
Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has earned an overwhelmingly positive reputation as a blockchain for everything crypto-related, thanks to its robust infrastructure and longevity within the industry.
Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), sits second in terms of market capitalisation with a valuation of over $170 billion and over $50 billion in assets secured across its expansive Decentralised Finance (DeFi) space.
Now, Ethereum is making the next step in its evolution with ‘The Merge’ - a transition from a proof-of-work (POW) blockchain to proof-of-stake (POS).
‘The Merge’ could see Ethereum move to a proof-of-stake model, making Ethereum mining obsolete and opening the door for a drastic decline in energy usage across the crypto industry. It also introduces yields for Ethereum holders via ‘ETH2.0’ staking.
Ethereum currently uses an energy-intensive proof-of-work model, which means miners have to use specialised equipment to ‘mine’ blocks on the network. Mining blocks involve using graphics cards and specialised equipment to solve a complex cryptographic puzzle.
Currently, these new blocks have to be mined to complete transactions and verify them on the blockchain, meaning that the function is imperative for the blockchain to operate smoothly. Through the transition to a proof-of-stake model, ‘The Merge’ will remove the need to mine Ethereum - which is both time and energy-intensive - to validate transactions and bring more scalability and efficiency to the network. 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.
