There is no shortage of visionary scenarios about how Web3 might unfold, but one of the latest, “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul” — a paper published in mid-May by E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver and Vitalik Buterin — is close to becoming one of the top 50 most downloaded papers on the SSRN scholarly research platform. The attention, one might suspect, has much to do with the participation of Buterin, blockchain’s wunderkind and the legendary co-founder of the Ethereum network. But it could also be a function of the paper’s ambition and scope, which includes asking questions like: What sort …

An NFT domain marketplace has announced that it's allowing a plethora of premium extensions to be minted — including .metaverse, .VR, and .chain. Quik.com says the arrival of these new domain names gives consumers and projects the chance to get their hands on highly desirable, memorable addresses. But while they may look like run-of-the-mill web URLs at first glance, the marketplace says they actually offer much, much more. Not only can they simplify crypto transactions by eliminating lengthy alphanumerical wallet addresses — long strings of letters and numbers that can be prone to typos — these domains can also be …

“The Metaverse” and “Web3” are the buzzwords of the moment, with their concepts permeating across the worlds of fintech, blockchain, and now even mainstream media. With decentralization thought to be at the core of the Web3 Metaverse, the promise of a better user experience, security and control for consumers is what’s driving its growth. But with users’ identities at the heart of the Metaverse, coupled with unprecedented amounts of data online, there are concerns over data security, privacy and interoperability. This has the potential to hinder the development of the Metaverse, but both regulated and self-sovereign identities could play an …

The Ethereum Name Service is having its best month on record for new registrations, account renewals and revenue thanks to community awareness and low gas fees. Lead developer at Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Nick Johnson tweeted on Monday the metrics for the Web3 domain service through May so far. He noted that numbers were poised to shatter existing records because they were already at all-time highs, “and there’s still a week of May left.” May is now an All Time High for every single ENS metric we track - registrations, renewals, revenue (ETH & USD) and income (ETH & USD). …

Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, .eth domains ranging from 0000 to 9999 have recently been causing a stir among nonfungible token (NFT) investors, speculators and enthusiasts alike. Even though three- and four-digit names have been around for years, the number of people registering for ENS domains and purchasing these digit number names on secondary markets over the past week has significantly affected the market’s trading volume. According to a Dune Analytics dashboard for ENS, the spike in sales began on April 21, and the number of eth. name registrations have since jumped from 2,721 to 21,188 by Thursday. Over the …

The capital of Argentina and an agglomeration with more than 12 million citizens, Buenos Aires will make blockchain a vital part of its digitalization drive. Specifically, the city will accept public financial transactions in crypto. As city Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta revealed in his Steve Jobs-styled presentation on April 25, the 12-step development plan titled “Buenos Aires +” envisions a significant increase in crypto and blockchain adoption. Con Buenos Aires + vamos a dar un paso más en el camino hacia un Estado facilitador que desburocratice y agilice los procesos. Un camino en el que el Estado sea el que …

Layer-two Ethereum scaling solution, Polygon has announced the establishment of Polygon ID, an identity platform designed to complement the decentralized finance and decentralized application (dApp) economies by providing users greater privacy and sovereignty within Web3. Professed to be the first identity platform of its kind to adopt cryptographic-based zero-knowledge technology, the platform will utilize Iden3’s Circom ZK toolkit, including zkSNARK cryptography for generation and the zkProof Request Language protocol to verify authenticity of the proposed claim. Users of the platform can provide proof of their identity when engaging in activities such as initial coin offerings, token airdrops, decentralized exchange, or …

Cryptocurrency bulls continued to face stiff headwinds headed into the week of March 14 that began with a vote in Europe about whether or not to outlaw proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, which was ultimately rejected. Despite these pressures, however, several cryptocurrency projects have managed to post gains in excess of 20% on Monday thanks to new partnerships and protocol updates. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Request Network (REQ), Hifi Finance (MFT) and Selfkey (KEY). Metaverse payments with Request Network Request Network (REQ) is an Ethereum-based decentralized payment system that allows …

Centre, an open-source technology project developed by Coinbase and Circle, has onboarded crypto exchange FTX and Alkemi Network as its latest partners to collaborate on Verite. Verite is a set of shared decentralized identity protocols — developed by Centre — to empower crypto-centric individuals and businesses by granting total control of personal information. Supporting Verite’s commitment to collaborate on shared decentralized identity standards, FTX and Alkemi have added to the list of 14 crypto companies, which include Coinbase, Circle, Hedera Hashgraph, Ledger, the Solana Foundation and more. Verite launch partners include @circlepay , @blocks, @Algorand, @coinbase, @compoundfinance, @ConsenSys, Espresso Systems, …

Opera announced a partnership with Yat, a platform that allows the creation of emoji-based web addresses (URL), for integrating the emoji system in Opera’s browsers across all operating systems. Celebrating the announcement, the duo launched an event to distribute seven nonfungible tokens (NFTs) from legendary NFT artist Fvckrender valued at a floor price of 2.89 Ether (ETH). Tech startup Yat's NFT project allows internet users to own personalized strings of emojis and use them as universal digital identifiers and wallet addresses. Recently, Opera released the beta version of its new Crypto Browser Project. The integration allows Opera users to surf …

American Internet media and entertainment company Buzzfeed has revealed the identities of two of the four original Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection founders “Gordon Goner” and “Gargamel” as being Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow in real life. Journalist Kate Notopoulos authored the Feb. 4 article, which was entitled “We Found The Real Names Of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Pseudonymous Founders.” Notopoulos was able to uncover the pair’s identities by search the publicly available records of Yuga Labs, the company behind the collection. Yuga was incorporated in Delaware with an address associated with Greg Solano, and other records pointing …

The Republic of Palau and blockchain development firm Cryptic Labs announced the launch of the Root Name System (RNS), a digital residency program on Tuesday. To inaugurate the partnership between Palau, Cryptic Labs and the sovereign-backed digital residency program, Palau’s President Surangel S. Whipps Jr. signed an agreement to grant “all global users” digital residency through the RNS under the country’s Digital Residency Act. The Republic of Palau is located in the western Pacific Ocean and consists of about 340 islands inhabited by 18,221 residents. President Whipps said: “Our Digital Residency Program will have capacity for internationally recognized standards of …