Israel-based StarkWare announced on Nov 16 via Twitter that it had raised $50 million in a Series C funding round, and that the firm’s valuation is now at $2 billion. Sequoia Capital was the lead investor, among other contributors. Seven months ago, StarkWare raised $75 million in a Series B funding led by Paradigm. We are excited to announce our Series C of $50M at $2B. A big thanks to our lead investor, @sequoia, our wonderful follow-on investors, and the dozens of ecosystem partners and collaborators who participated in this round, for their vote of confidence in our products and …

KuCoin Labs, the company behind the world's sixth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume with more than 500 crypto assets listed, announced on Wednesday that it would be launching a $100 million metaverse fund for early-stage projects. The money is also available for entities that develop blockchain-based games, nonfungible tokens, and decentralized applications. In addition, Kucoin will also provide business incubation services, branding, incentives, and business partnerships for developers selected into the fund. Johnny Lyu, CEO of Kucoin, said the following in a prepared statement obtained by Cointelegraph: "KuCoin Metaverse Fund will be launched to accelerate the evolution of the Internet …

Polygon, a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum compatible blockchains, stated in a press release provided to Cointelegraph that it has launched its zk-STARK powered Miden Virtual Machine for the development of decentralized applications, also known as DApps. 1/7 We are proud to reveal the newest member of the Polygon family - Polygon Miden, an upcoming STARK-based, EVM-compatible Rollup! The project is led by @bobbinth, former Facebook's lead ZK researcher who led the development of Winterfell. A on why this is exciting... pic.twitter.com/5RqAJgnZlP — Polygon | $MATIC - We're hiring! (@0xPolygon) November 16, 2021 zk-STARK stands for zero-knowledge Scalable Transparent …

As new technology becomes available to more and more end-users, our world is only becoming more interconnected. However, as the spread of such technology progresses, so does the reach of big tech. Many of these companies now hold vast amounts of personal user data — information that includes a user’s location, their activity on third-party websites and even the contents of users’ emails — this is astonishing for those in a liberal democracy where concepts of freedom and social responsibility were both built upon expectations of privacy in one’s own communications. As a result, your personal data may be subject …

The top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization keep changing over time as the industry matures. Solana (SOL) has seen its value skyrocket so far this year and has been consistently processing over 2,500 transactions per second. The cryptocurrency’s price, according to TradingView data, is up nearly 13,000% year-to-date as the year started with SOL trading slightly below $2. Solana is now changing hands-on exchanges for around $240. Solana is a blockchain platform that aims to achieve high transaction speeds at a low cost without sacrificing decentralization. To do so, it relies on a number of unique features, including a “proof-of-history” mechanism. …

On Tuesday, pSTAKE, a liquid staking protocol from decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Persistence, announced in a statement provided to Cointelegraph that it had closed a $10 million strategic funding round from venture capital firms. Tendermint, the core developer behind the Cosmos network, powers Persistence blockchain with its consensus engine. Liquid staking is the practice of users “double-dipping” with their crypto assets — i.e., allowing them to stake their crypto in one pool and use their staked assets to farm yields in a liquidity provider pool, or vice versa. The process enables higher compounded yields, as assets generate returns in two …

News that two teams of Chinese scientists have achieved quantum advantage — a technical term for when a computer can perform functions beyond that of a classical computer — may be the signal that we have truly entered a new era. While Google’s 54-qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, became the first widely known example of early-stage quantum computing, the latest news out of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei is the best proof yet that we have crossed the information rubicon. But despite many reasons to be excited by these developments, there are reasons to be concerned, …

Blockchain is a core technology that differentiates itself from other technologies by having solved the double expense with the emergence of the Bitcoin blockchain in 2008. Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, were driven by blockchain technology which brought scarcity and interoperability to nonfungible tokens. But, what do blockchain technology and NFTs have to do with Metaverse? Why are large companies experimenting with NFTs in Metaverse? The Metaverse The term “metaverse” first appeared in 1992 when Neal Stephenson released his science fiction novel Snow Crash. In this book, humans interact with each other and with software agents such as avatars in a …

We have seen a steep adoption of crypto-based systems this year, including decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) such as digital art, crypto-centric gaming, and increased adoption of cryptocurrencies as investment and payment tools. One of the more recent developments is the emergence of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs have existed since 2016, when The DAO organization, a new form of investment vehicle that attracted a sizable portion of Ethereum (ETH) tokens, raised more than $150 million at the time. Many saw The DAO as the ultimate form of human coordination. Yet, due to a reentrancy exploit, hackers stole …

Stablecoins are the cornerstone of the digital asset marketplace with a market cap of over $100 billion. Governments are already putting considerable resources in being up to speed with the trends. A November 2021 report published by the United States President’s Working Group on Financial Markets details the various measures to ensure stablecoin regulation is implemented within government guidelines. A global central bank survey by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) shows 86% of central banks are now actively engaged in some way with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), a government-backed form of a stablecoin. Of this cohort of central …

Crypto has seen a rise in novel uses of liquidity mining and rewards through protocols like Uniswap, Aave and Compound. More recently, a new crop of DeFi 2.0 protocols such as OlympusDAO, Alchemix and Abracadabra are exploring new ways of operating without giving up token rewards. For all the innovations happening with decentralized systems in crypto, they are still failing to open new pathways for economic prosperity for the most marginalized. In its current form, DeFi remains open only to people who already have access to the financial system and live in countries with strong financial markets. This is evident …

The story of Shiba Inu (SHIB), crypto’s best-performer of the year, still boggles the mind — even after multiple retellings. Just 12 months ago, the price of one SHIB token had ten zeros in front of it: $0.000000000063 on volume of $682.58, according to CoinGecko. By late October of this year, six of those zeros had gone and Shiba Inu had flippened Dogecoin to become the largest dog-themed token in the world, a top-ten cryptocurrency worth around $47 billion. Despite dropping almost 40% from that all-time high, SHIB still sits at a market cap of almost $29 billion — making …