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The loss of privacy: Why we must fight for a decentralized future
As early blockchain adopters, we must bring decentralization to the masses and fight with the tech behemoths that are its natural enemies.
If you’re into cryptocurrency or blockchain, there’s a good chance I don’t have to spell out the benefits of decentralization. You’re a first-generation user of a technology that will increasingly define the future of the internet, and you have front-row seats to the world premiere of Web3.
The internet’s use and control were always as centralized as we see now. In the early days, under the stewardship of the United States Department of Defense, the network needed not to rely on one core computer. What if a terrorist attack or missile strike took down the principal node? Individual network parts had to communicate without relying on a single computer to reduce vulnerability.
Later, the unincorporated Internet Engineering Task Force, which facilitated the development of all internet protocols, worked ceaselessly to prevent private companies or particular countries from controlling the network.
Today, centralized app nodes are controlled and operated by the planet’s richest organizations, collecting and storing billions of people’s data. Private companies control the user experience on apps and can incentivize and manipulate behavior. From a reliability standpoint, billions lose their primary means of communication when centralized nodes go down — as in recent incidents with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger in October 2021. Read More
Decentralization ‘absolutely essential’ in building crypto capital markets
Sang Lee believes blockchain technology developments have already left traditional banks in the dust, but adoption remains relatively low due to several factors.
If crypto capital markets have a chance of becoming an institutional reality, decentralization will be one of the key aspects according to one industry insider.
Capital markets bring suppliers and those in need of capital together to initiate supposedly efficient transactions. Investments or savings are often funneled between suppliers of funds like banks and those who need capital like businesses, governments, and individuals.
Co-founder of crypto financial service provider VegaX Holdings Sang Lee told Cointelegraph on Monday that incumbent financial institutions have simply been left behind by the rapid pace of developments in the crypto industry.
VegaX Holdings is building a suite of crypto-based financial services. Its VegaX decentralized finance (DeFi) platform allows staking, while its Konstellation ecosystem is a DeFi ecosystem based on Cosmos. Read More
Latam Is a Hotbed of Opportunities for Crypto Companies, According to Ripple
Ripple, the cryptocurrency and payments company, has issued an article examining the opportunities that Latam brings for crypto companies as its regulated payments rails come to crypto. While the region faces some obstacles due to its economic traits and the dominance of centralized banks, the organization believes there is a lucrative opening for companies partnering with these banks to bring crypto to the masses.
Ripple, the banking payments, remittances, and cryptocurrency company, believes that Latam could be a hotspot of opportunities for crypto companies in the future. In a recent article, Ripple examines the current payments and the possible integration that crypto services may find in the region. According to the company, crypto companies might find these openings when banks start integrating cryptocurrency services into their platforms.
About this idea, the company stated:
There is a lucrative opening for traditional banks, fintechs and governments to increase adoption of crypto-forward technology to address this underbanked and fragmented market. Read More
Cirus Web 3.0 – Crypto, Decentralization, And The User-Controlled Internet Of The Future
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have empowered a new wave of applications and possibilities for digital products and services. Combined with the growing traction of Web 3.0 applications, we are entering a new dawn of a user-owned-and-controlled internet.
The Cirus Foundation is developing the Cirus Ecosystem, an accessible onramp designed to accelerate the adoption of Web 3.0 and the Ownership Economy. It consists of the Cirus suite of tools, which work together to give users true ownership over the data streams they generate, allowing them to leverage that value even further into DeFi and other Web 3.0 protocols.
We sat with Daniel Bland, Co-Founder of the Cirus Foundation, to discuss Web 3.0, what it means for internet users in the future, and how Cirus helps people regain control of and monetize their data. Read More
Because of Solana’s POH method, it can horizontally scale the rest of the blockchain, the same way that operating systems and databases scale their software. Each Solana team member has over a decade of experience working in operating systems GPU acceleration. Compilers, networks, etc., giving them extensive and deep experience optimizing software.
Solana is based on scaling software with hardware, with the vision of building the world's largest decentralized, single chart blockchain. The only way to do that is by scaling all the core technologies with hardware.
Scaling the Blockchain in this way delivers a cheap cryptographic base for financial transfers and, more importantly, outside of finance. It is a way for Solana to build a better web experience for social media communities regarding micropayments.
Also, advertising-based revenues can be relinquished for social networks, leading communities to generate value by self-expression, creating their own content, and growing the network and the connections within the community, creating a better world for all. Read More
Crypto lender Maple Finance expands support to Solana
After expanding beyond Ethereum to Solana, Maple Finance expects its Solana app to control $300 million worth of liquidity by the end of 2022.
Crypto capital markets platform Maple Finance has expanded support to the Solana blockchain and has deployed a $45 million fund to spur ecosystem growth.
Maple provides undercollateralized loans for institutional borrowers on Ethereum and now Solana from several pool delegates. The project stated in a Monday blog post that it has already “originated over $1.2 billion in loans and currently count over $900 million in TVL to the platform.”
The ecosystem fund was launched in partnership with decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform X-Margin, with capital being provided by USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle, digital asset manager CoinShares, and several unnamed projects native to Solana. Read More
Decentralized Twitter Project Bluesky Says It's Unaffected by Elon Musk Purchase
Bluesky is a Twitter-backed project to "develop an open and decentralized standard for social media." But it's independent of the company.
Back in late 2019, when Jack Dorsey was still CEO of Twitter, he set in motion a plan to "develop an open and decentralized standard for social media" that would explore elements of crypto and Web3.
That effort, which came to be called "bluesky," gained steam in 2021 with a January "ecosystem review" of decentralized social apps and the August appointment of Zcash veteran developer Jay Graber as its lead.
Today, bluesky took to Twitter—the platform soon to be privately owned by mega-billionaire Elon Musk—to clarify that it's independent of the social media site and has been a public benefit limited liability company since February.
"The 'public benefit' part of our structure gives us the freedom to put our resources towards our mission without an obligation to return money to shareholders," it tweeted. "The company is owned by the team itself, without any controlling stake held by Twitter." Read More
African Crypto Adoption At Record Heights Despite Lacking Regulation And Government Support
Africa, the second-largest continent globally, with more than 1.5 billion people, is gradually reinventing itself. Following decades of neglect, socioeconomic problems, civil wars, and poor governance, the majority of the people residing in African countries have continuously suffered from a lack of access to financial services.
The lack of proper banking and financial services isn’t just limited to one or two African countries. Instead, it is a continent-wide problem that has led to more than 57% of the general population remaining unbanked.
As a result, many Africans are choosing cryptocurrencies as a means to assure greater financial stability. Even though governments and regulators haven’t yet opened up to this emerging asset class, the growth of crypto adoption across the African region is staggering. Per a dated report issued by Chainalysis, crypto users within African nations drove a staggering 1,200% growth in transaction volumes between July 2020 and 2021. Read More
DeFi partnership aims to tokenize shares of pre-IPO companies
Chandra Duggirala, Portal’s executive chairman, explained that the tokenization of traditional assets sparks the merging of the Bitcoin ecosystem with mainstream finance.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Portal has partnered with the asset marketplace HighCircleX (HCX) to tokenize stocks of pre-initial public offering (IPO) companies, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Monday.
The collaboration aims to make investing in private equity easier by building on top of the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. Through this, HighCircleX is looking to solve problems such as the lack of liquidity and value uncertainty for traditional assets.
According to the announcement, HCX will create and manage a limited liability company (LLC) for the investments. While the investors will not own the shares of the LLC, they will own tokens that "represent ownership" of the LLC. Such tokens can be traded on the HCX marketplace.
Furthermore, the funds gained by the LLC will be used to purchase a pre-IPO investment. The pre-IPO companies that can be tokenized and traded include SpaceX, Epic Games, Klarna, Automation Anywhere, and Cross River Bank. 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.
