“Web3” may be one of the biggest buzzwords of 2022, but the idea of creating an entirely decentralized platform to host decentralized applications has long been a vision of the crypto community. While it’s notable that some blockchain companies began building out Web3 applications four or five years ago, the Web3 space has only started gaining traction recently. The recent growth of Web3 was highlighted in a new report from Electric Capital, a venture capital firm that has been investing in Web3 companies since 2018. The “Electric Capital 2021 Developer Report” analyzed data from nearly 500,000 code repositories and 160 …

On Monday, the first cross-chain governance proposal passed on decentralized finance, or DeFi, borrowing and lending platform Aave. According to DeFi Llama, the amount of total value locked on Aave is approximately $12 billion. As told by its developers, an executed proposal on Aave, which is built on the Ethereum (ETH) network, was sent to the Polygon (MATIC) FxPortal. The mechanism then reads the Ethereum data and passes it for validation on the Polygon network. Afterward, the Aave cross-chain governance bridge contract receives this data, decodes it, and queues the action pending a timelock for finalization. The development team wrote: …

According to blockchain data from Nansen analytics on Tuesday, over $1.096 billion worth of Ethereum (ETH) has been burned in the past month. With the introduction of the EIP-1559 last August, a portion of fees is taken out of circulation for every transaction that occurs on the Ethereum blockchain. While sending and receiving ETH does not cost much, higher-level tasks, such as minting nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, via smart contracts, cost far more gas. In January, the total volume of NFT transactions on OpenSea hit an all-time high of $3.5 billion. It currently ranks No.1 on a burn leaderboard compiled …

In a new report published by CoinShares on Monday, the firm estimated that the Bitcoin (BTC) mining network emitted 42 megatons, or Mt, (1Mt = 1 million tons) of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in 2021. In context, the number amounts to less than 0.08% of the world's total emissions of 49,360 Mts of CO2 in the same year. CoinShares came to such figures using a variety of estimates regarding the efficiency of the Bitcoin network, its energy use, hardware, etc., on a global scale. As a result, it may not reflect the actual CO2 emission of the network. But the …

In a now-deleted deleted profile, an anonymous Reddit user allegedly lost close to $500k on Sunday after sending wrapped Ether (wETH) directly into a wETH wrapping smart contract. wETH came into existence as a way for Ether (ETH) to conform to the ERC-20 token standard so that it can be traded directly with altcoins minted on the Ethereum blockchain. To wrap Ether, users first send ETH to the wETH smart contract address and receive an equivalent token in return. However, to unwrap wETH, users must either swap for ETH on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap (UNI), or call the withdrawal …

NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, have created a wealth of opportunities over the last year. Data from market tracker DappRadar found that NFT sales reached $25 billion in 2021. Artwork NFTs in particular have seen impressive growth. Financial services firm FinancePR recently determined that 257 artists generated at least $1 million in the past 30 days from selling NFT artwork. It’s also notable that NFT transactions have continued to increase, despite recent slumps in the crypto market. Yet with so much revenue being generated over a short period of time, some may be wondering how NFT creators are applying these new …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind, written by Andrew Levine of Koinos Group. People use social applications daily, but despite all the hype around supposedly “next-gen” blockchains, none of those social applications are decentralized. Let’s unpack why, using two blockchains as a reference: Ethereum and Steem. Ethereum has far more developers than any other general purpose blockchain, and yet none of those developers have managed to build a social application with mainstream adoption. At one time, Steem was one the most widely …

Bitcoin (BTC) seems to be on everyone’s mind lately as the world recently witnessed the price of BTC take a rather unexpected bearish turn this month. On January 21, 2022, Bitcoin reached six-month lows, sinking below $40,000 for the first time in months. While some panicked, other industry experts pointed out that the Bitcoin network has become verifiably stronger than ever before. The growth of the Bitcoin network has become apparent, as hash rate figures for BTC continue to set new highs this month. For example, on Jan. 22, the BTC network recorded an all-time high of 26.643 trillion with …

Although the modern internet connects us like never before, one thing that younger generations have never truly experienced is the feeling of genuine privacy. Even older generations have forgotten what life was like before our every thought and action were tracked. Web3 envisions an open, trustless, permissionless internet where users can interact with each other peer-to-peer without giving up ownership control, privacy or relying on intermediaries. Underlying that vision, blockchains are one of the most important tools. They eliminate the need for trusted third parties and help to create a direct relationship between users and service providers, recording the rules …

As the two-year anniversary of the global COVID-19 pandemic begins to hurtle toward us, we are no closer to knowing when our social lives will return to normal or what will the new normal be. The effect this has had on businesses like nightclubs, music venues and musicians have been immeasurable. With crowded in-person events either made impossible — or far more difficult and laborious — at many points over the last two years, changes to the industry that were already set in motion have been accelerated. Namely, the music industry’s adoption of digital instruments, among others and, increasingly, the …

Etherscan is the most trusted tool for navigating through all the public data on the Ethereum blockchain and is sometimes called “Ethplorer.” This data includes transaction data, wallet addresses, smart contracts and much more. The application is self-contained and is neither sponsored nor administered by the Ethereum Foundation, which is a non-profit organization. The team behind Etherscan includes seasoned developers and industry professionals, who developed the Etherscan app to make the Ethereum blockchain more accessible to everyday users. Although Etherscan is a centralized platform, the app does make it easier for people to search through the Ethereum blockchain. Is Etherscan …

Cryptocurrencies and the food industry might not seem like the most intuitive pairing — one based in the digital realm and the other firmly rooted in the physical. But going back to the earliest days of crypto, the very first real-world use case for Bitcoin (BTC) was food-related. On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz enacted the first documented commercial BTC transaction, buying two Papa John’s pizzas for the princely sum of 10,000 BTC. That day is now enshrined in the crypto calendar as Bitcoin Pizza Day. By itself, the event has ended up becoming an annual celebration with restaurant chains …