As with many things in life, events are not siloed. When any type of event or action occurs, planned or unplanned, it causes changes and reactions to surrounding components. Think of a stone thrown into a pond creating ripples in the water while also altering the aquatic environment below the surface. This school of thought can also be applied to the Ethereum Merge. The Ethereum blockchain, with its native coin Ether (ETH), is a pillar of the crypto asset industry — an industry that has become increasingly mainstream with each passing year. Ether is the second most popular altcoin, with …

Snap Inc's CEO Evan Speigel announced in a note on Friday that the company had made the difficult decision to reduce the size of its workforce by approximately 20%. The note said that this round of layoffs comes after the company experienced slow revenue growth, a slump in stock prices, and a general lag behind its financial targets. Speigel shared: “Our forward-looking revenue visibility remains limited, and our current year-over-year QTD revenue growth of 8% is well below what we were expecting earlier this year.” Snap Inc. will now undertake the task of restructuring in an attempt to ensure the …

While mainstream coverage of cryptocurrency has been overwhelmingly negative in the wake of the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, the bankruptcy of Celsius and the fall of Three Arrows Capital, these events ultimately show why more of the financial system should operate on-chain, bringing more transparency and information to market participants. In all three cases, the damage was caused and exacerbated by opaque, off-chain entities. And while the reason for the trio of events is important, it has also caused considerable damage to the overall reputation of the industry. These events have made it clear that the industry is in …

In the lead-up to the 33rd edition of the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) set to commence on June 6, tech giant Apple has unveiled plans to showcase the developments of four new devices and software models: iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey and watchOS 8. Alongside this, fanatical forums such as MacRumours, which center their coverage around supporting and debating Apple’s progress, discovered that by clicking on the Memoji characters, an augmented reality mode is revealed with three trading card characters available to be claimed. The Memoji characters have become a consistent fixture in Apple’s consumer branding strategy over …

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has launched a $600 million fund dedicated to gaming startups with a focus on Web3, saying it believes “Games infrastructure and technologies will be key building blocks of the Metaverse.” Dubbed Games Fund One, the fund will invest in three main areas: game studios, consumer applications — which support player communities, with Discord used as an example — and gaming infrastructure providers. The a16z team said “The coming Metaverse will be built by games companies, using games technologies” and that the industry has already “solved many of the problems that need to be solved …

Cardano (ADA) pared a big portion of the weekly losses incurred during this week's crypto market rout. ADA's price reached an intraday high of $0.60 on May 13, a day after rebounding from its week-to-date low of $0.38 — a 58% rally. The huge upside retracement appeared in the wake of similar price action in the crypto market with top cryptos Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) rebounding by 23% and 25.75% since yesterday's lows. But the sharp ADA recovery does not promise an extended upward continuation, at least according to the three factors discussed below. Stock market crash far from …

Ethereum has proven to be a formidable force. While its major issues have spawned other coins aimed at addressing them, Ethereum looks to shed its old skin with the release of Ethereum 2.0. Despite the fact that Ethereum was created six years after Bitcoin (BTC) and the introduction of blockchain technology, the digital asset Ether (ETH) has grown to be the second most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, surpassing coins such as Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Dash (DASH) and Monero (XMR), which were launched before it. The technology behind the Ethereum blockchain is the primary reason for its …

Data is now a trillion-dollar industry, where most of it is harvested, siloed and monetized by large tech companies, leaving the user out of the value equation. While data privacy is an increasing concern, partly due to the way data is held (and occasionally lost) by centralized corporations, data is undoubtedly the asset of the future as the world continues to become increasingly digital. And that’s why data-powered digital advertising still powers the internet. Michael Luckhoo, co-founder of the Cirus Foundation, shares their view on how data should be protected, why the ownership economy is gaining momentum, and what Cirus …

PlatON Network is an internet infrastructure protocol focused on preserving privacy. The network uses cryptographic algorithms, which include Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC), Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP), Verifiable Computation (VC), Secret Sharing (SS) and homomorphic Encryption (HE). The decentralized platform uses the technology to ensure the free circulation of data assets around the world. James QU, chief technology officer at PlatON Network, talks about the issues the platform is tackling, its current focus and future plans, and the company’s vision in a conversation with Cointelegraph. 1. The PlatON Network is largely focused on the concept of trustless computing. Can you explain what …

Hong Kong tech company Meitu has taken a $17.3-million hit on its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings — but on the upside, its Ether (ETH) holdings have gained $14.7 million. The developer of popular Photoshop-style apps spent a total of $100 million on BTC and ETH between March and April this year, acquiring a total of 940.89 BTC for $49.5 million and 31,000 ETH for $50.5 million. According to a Tuesday voluntary announcement from Meitu, the fair value of its BTC and ETH holdings is based on the market prices as of June 30, which is the final day of the firm’s …

Brave, the privacy-centric web browser built on Basic Attention Token (BAT), more than doubled the size of its user base over the course of 2020. The browser’s monthly active users increased from 11.6 million to 25.4 million, according to a recent press release. Brave blocks ads and stops websites from tracking users’ movements around the internet while rewarding them with BAT tokens for the attention they do choose to give to advertisers. These tokens can be used to reward content creators and publishers via the browser’s in-built wallet or can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies. The browser’s daily active user …