DOGE-1, the first crypto-funded mission to the moon, is set to launch early next year following a new partnership between two blockchain companies and manufacturer Geometric Energy Corporation, also known as GEC. Smart exchange ecosystem Unizen and DeFi incubator ZenX announced Wednesday that they are in the process of building and launching DOGE-1, a 40-kilogram — roughly 88 pounds — cubesat that will provide a new use case for cryptocurrencies. The cubesat will travel to a “stable lunar orbit” in order to obtain lunar-spatial intelligence from sensors and cameras that will be sent back to GEC for analysis. The cubesat …

During a virtual video session at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies' 30th Anniversary Conference, People's Bank of China governor Gang Yi discussed recent developments regarding the country's central bank digital currency, or CBDC, known as the digital yuan (e-CNY). Gang specifically addressed the issue of privacy surrounding the Digital Yuan in the following statement, as translated by Cointelegraph: We are taking a high degree of focus on issues surrounding the security of personal information and the digital yuan and have made relevant regulatory and technological adjustments to meet this objective. We have adopted a principle of anonymity …

It’s only been two years since its founding, but decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol 1inch Network has already surpassed $85.8 billion in cumulative trading volume. At a May 2019 hackathon in New York City, 1inch co-founders Anton Bukov and Sergej Kunz developed a prototype DEX aggregator that became the basis of the network. DEX aggregators are platforms that source liquidity from multiple DEXs, thereby providing better token swap rates with less slippage. The network has a 57.40% market share in the DEX aggregator industry and well over 820,000 users. According to CoinMarketCap, 1inch Exchange is the eighth-largest DEX in the world, …

Digitalization keeps on coming to one of the oldest games in the world as FIDE, the International Chess Federation, announces its plans for an NFT marketplace. The group said that the marketplace, which launches at the end of November, will be called ChessNFT. FIDE is the first global sports federation to create its own NFT ecosystem and it does so ahead of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2021. The event is set to take place at the Expo 2020 Dubai from Nov. 24 to Dec. 16. Just last month, the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen, won an NFT trophy in …

In an announcement to Reuters News on Thursday morning, Brazillian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin said it has signed an agreement with Comerc, one of the main retail energy providers in Brazil, to develop renewable energy tokens. Mercado Bitcoin and Comerc seek to implement two types of tokens. The first, set to launch in 2022, will be tied to a cashback scheme for solar energy generation. Currently, Comerc customers receive up to 15% to 20% of their electricity bills' value in cashbacks should they choose to switch to solar energy. The second token will be linked to certificates that document energy …

As global leaders discuss what needs to be done to address the concerns surrounding climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, businesses throughout the world are looking to achieve carbon neutrality. Environmental impact has been a hot topic in the crypto sector with renaming it as being a top priority. Earlier this year, electric car maker Tesla started accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments and invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency, only to drop BTC payments a few months later over concerns surrounding the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal.” Tesla & Bitcoin …

The Watr Foundation, in partnership with blockchain platform Algorand, recently launched a project to provide ESG scoring for different commodities with a special focus on climate change. While the project has a clear environmental focus, the platform will also include labeling for everything from how a company treats its workers to the number of people participating in an asset's ecosystem by gender. Watr Foundation council president Maryam Ayati said in a statement: “We believe this next iteration on resource models should be co-created in mutually-owned profit models. It is a privilege and comfort to be collaborating with the pioneers of …

During Solana's Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, Portugal, executives at Brave and Solana Labs announced that the Brave browser would integrate with the Solana (SOL) blockchain and feature Solana decentralized applications, or dApps, on its browser. Simultaneously, Solana will promote the adoption of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), the native digital currency of the Brave Browser, among its dApp users. We've partnered with @solana to integrate it into the browser and make it the default for DApp support. We will soon bring best-in-class wallet features for the Solana blockchain into our desktop & mobile browsers. #BreakpointLisbon https://t.co/tTB7NXKWjI — Brave Software (@brave) November …

Decentralized finance protocol Acala announced Monday that they have raised 8.5 million DOT (worth $451.8 million USD at time of publication) from over 53,000 participants. The protocol is also set to win the first parachain auction on Polkadot. Unlike typical crowdfunding rounds, Acala's financing mechanism is a crowdloan, which means it will eventually need to pay back the "crypto debt" it has solicited from investors. On Nov. 5, Polkadot developers added the first parachain onto its network. Parachains are custom, project-specific blockchains that can be integrated into a main blockchain. The distinguishing feature of Polkadot is its Cross-Consensus Message Format. …

Neal Stephenson, a popular sci-fi writer coined the phrase “metaverse” in his first best-selling and breakthrough 1992 novel, Snow Crash. Now that concept is becoming a reality, and what’s more, you can invest in the metaverses. In Ready Player One, The OASIS is another example of an advanced virtual reality. Numerous other sci-fi authors, such as Ian M Banks, have created and used similar concepts within their novels. Back in September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was clearly interested in advancing the metaverse. In a recent earnings call, Facebook made it clear that they want to unify communities, creators and eCommerce …

DAG vs. Blockchain Blockchains and DAGs both record transactions on a distributed ledger, albeit through different means. Below is a quick comparison of the two in terms of benefits and drawbacks: Pros of DAG Suited for microtransactions and high volumes of transactions Eliminates the need for mining equipment Fees may be reduced significantly Lower energy consumption Cons of DAG Vulnerable to attacks due to low volume of transactions Still in its infancy; has not yet sustained high levels of decentralization Pros of blockchain Well-established and widely-used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum Transparent and unalterable, highly-secure Cost-effective for high-value transactions …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a natural product made possible by blockchain technology and has the right and ready infrastructure to propel the technology to a bigger playing field. The space has grown by leaps and bounds since the Ethereum network went live in July 2015, with Ethereum network transactions growing by 33x to 1.2 million per day currently, and blockchain transactions would exceed millions per day if other chains were included. Most of these transactions originated from the DeFi services such as Uniswap, which facilitates over $1 billion swaps each day, as well as lending and borrowing protocols such as …