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Derivatives exchange dYdX to become '100% decentralized by EOY'
dYdX said that it is looking at full decentralization to offer its users advantages of DeFi that centralized services can’t.
Ethereum Layer 2-based crypto derivatives trading platform dYdX has vowed to become “100% decentralized by EOY” via the protocol's V4 update.
dYdX primarily offers perpetual contracts, which are derivatives products that borrow elements from both spot margin trading and futures trading but do not have an expiry date.
At present only certain components of dYdX are decentralized, including its Ethereum smart contracts, governance, and staking. However its “orderbook and matching engine” are managed by dYdX Trading Inc. — the team that developed the platform.
dYdX announced the V4 update on Twitter yesterday with a new roadmap outlining that: “You are not ready.” Read More
Blockchain games are leading the DApp industry, says latest DappRadar report
DappRadar and the Blockchain Game Alliance produce the Q1 numbers behind the top play-to-earn and GameFi DApps.
Market tracker DappRadar and the Blockchain Game Alliance, or BGA, published the Blockchain Games Report for Q1 2022 on Wednesday. After citing that $720 million was invested into blockchain games and infrastructures in February in a previous report, the latest number for total Q1 investment is $2.5 billion. Venture capitalists and other investors raised $4 billion in 2021.
The biggest deals listed in the report include Animoca Brands raising $360 million, bringing its valuation to $5 billion, and becoming a leading Web3 brand. Sequoia Capital led a $450 million investment in Polygon (MATIC), while Yuga Labs, the studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible tokens (NFTs), received a $450 million investment led by Animoca Brands, with The Sandbox, FTX, and Coinbase to launch its Otherside metaverse with play-to-earn (P2E) games.
According to DappRadar, Blockchain games attracted 1.22 million unique active wallets (UAW) in March, and more than half of the industry’s activity came from game decentralized applications (DApps) or gaming applications with play-to-earn incentives. Splinterlands is named the number one play-to-earn DApp. And Polygon is the layer-2 (L2) sidechain with the top played P2E games, such as Crazy Defense Heroes, Pegaxy, Arc8, and Aavegotchi. Read More
Makerdao Plans to Integrate Ethereum L2 Solution Starknet to Lower DAI Transaction Costs
The decentralized finance (defi) project Makerdao has announced its plans to support the zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup solution Starknet in order to make DAI transactions faster and network costs cheaper. Starknet will be integrated into the defi protocol on April 28, 2022, as part of Makerdao’s multichain strategy expansion.
On Wednesday, the development team behind the Makerdao project revealed plans to integrate the Ethereum layer two (L2) scaling solution Starknet. The protocol Starknet is a product developed by the startup Starkware and it offers an L2 scaling solution with ZK-based computations that utilize validity proofs.
Makerdao is the issuer of the stablecoin DAI, and after Starknet is supported the team believes it will make DAI “minting, trading and liquidation significantly faster.” Starknet’s Makerdao integration follows the project’s bridge deployments on Arbitrum and Optimism. A project contributor from Starknet Core Unit at Makerdao detailed that cross-chain bridge technology has swelled because of expensive gas fees.
“As we see unsustainable gas fees drive more activity and users to a wider variety of blockchains, security challenges that come with bridging will continue to grow,” the Starknet Core Unit contributor said in a statement sent to Bitcoin.com News. Projects must move on to Layer-2 to continue to serve users, and Makerdao is partnering with Starknet to do exactly that.” Read More
Crypto Exchange Coinbase Launches Beta Version of Highly-Anticipated New NFT Marketplace
Top US crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that it is launching a beta version of its much-anticipated non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.
According to a new company blog post, the exchange says that starting today, beta testers will be able to create a Coinbase NFT profile to buy, sell, and trade NFTs minted on Ethereum (ETH) using a crypto wallet.
“Our beta is live today! We’re taking the first step on that journey by releasing our beta. Starting today, anyone can check out the first version of Coinbase NFT at nft.coinbase.com and explore the vast collection of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.”
However, the crypto exchange notes that only a handful of users who had previously signed up for the waitlist are eligible to be beta testers rather than just observers. 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
The many layers of crypto staking in the DeFi ecosystem
The term staking receives many meanings in crypto, each of them presents its own set of opportunities and challenges.
Staking has been used fluently to describe several actions within the world of crypto, from locking your tokens on a decentralized finance (DeFi) application or centralized exchange (CEX) to using tokens to run a validator node infrastructure on a proof-of-stake (PoS) network.
PoS is one of the most popular mechanisms that allows blockchains to validate transactions and it has become a credible consensus mechanism alternative to the original proof-of-work (PoW) used by Bitcoin.
Miners require a lot of computational power to carry out the energy-intensive PoW, while PoS requires staking coins as collateral to validate blocks and verify transactions, which is significantly more energy-efficient and presents less centralization risk. These are some of the reasons why companies like Mozilla changed their donation policies to only accept PoS crypto donations in line with its “climate commitments.”
The Ethereum protocol is expected to undergo a transition to a PoS consensus mechanism before the end of the year. On the roadmap to scale the network, the merge feels right around the corner. Ethereum miners will have to mine a different cryptocurrency or pivot to staking if they wish to continue securing the network. Read More
Digital Currency Ecosystems Company BTCS Inc. Adds Ethereum Layer 2 Sidechain Polygon
An early mover in the blockchain and digital currency ecosystems BTCS Inc. announced the addition of Layer 2 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) sidechain Polygon (“MATIC”) to its blockchain infrastructure operations.
BTCS Inc. ("BTCS") is the first "Pure Play" U.S. public company focused on blockchain technologies. The company secures the blockchain through its transaction verification services business and plans to build a broader ecosystem to capitalize on opportunities in this fast-growing multi-billion dollar industry.
At present, BTCS has become the technical work of running Polygon validator nodes and has pledged 456,445 MATIC, allowing users to entangle the corresponding annual percentage income in the pledged tokens.
Polygon occupies a very pivotal position in the Ethereum and Web3.0 ecosystems.
Matic Network provides scalable, secure, and instant Ethereum transactions designed to use Plasma side chains and a Proof-of-Stake network to solve the pain points of slow block confirmation and high gas fees. Read More
Medical Blockchain LEMONCHAIN Token to List on MEXC Crypto Exchange
On April 20, the native token LEMC of LEMONCHAIN Ltd., a project in the medical blockchain industry, announced its listing on the MEXC cryptocurrency platform.
LEMONCHAIN is an open data ecosystem that enhances the individual patients’ healthcare data authority through blockchain technology's decentralization of EMR (electronic medical record).
The trading of LEMC/USDT has been opened officially. This is the first additional token listing on the MEXC virtual currency exchange to the general public within a month, following ProBitGlobal’s global listing on March 18.
Kwon Ki-Uk, CEO of Lemon Chain, Co. Ltd., shared about the development and stated that one of their goals is to reduce information asymmetry between individual patients and medical institutions. Read More
BlockApps raises £31m to expand traceability enterprise platform
BlockApps has raised $41 million (£31.4m) in funding for the expansion of its blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, STRATO.
STRATO is an Ethereum-compatible blockchain solution that helps enterprises bring more transparency and traceability to their operations.
The oversubscribed funding round was led by Liberty City Ventures, with participation from new investors Morgan Creek Digital, Eidetic Ventures, and Givic. Combined with a prior $9 million (£6.9m) financing round, BlockApps has raised a total of $50 million (£38.3m) to date.
“[BlockApps is] solving some of the world’s biggest challenges and causing industries to rethink what’s possible with blockchain technology – especially when it comes to navigating the complexities of today’s sustainability challenges and supply chain issues,” Murtaza Akbar, founding partner at Liberty City Ventures, said in a press release.
Incubated out of Consensys in 2015, BlockApps became the first blockchain company to partner with the Big Three hyperscaler cloud providers – AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
BlockApps uses STRATO for an ever-expanding portfolio of use cases that range from tracking the lifecycle of agriculture products to carbon data management to financial compliance. 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.
