Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have been dominating the crypto market this year. With sales topping over $2.5 billion during the first half of 2021, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that both the crypto community and mainstream creators are launching NFTs in hopes of driving revenue and engagement. The rise of the Metaverse has also pushed the adoption of NFTs, demonstrating the value of nonfungibles for major brands and social media platforms alike. While NFT sales soar, the Ethereum blockchain continues to rule the space. For instance, a recent report from Cointelegraph Research found that Ethereum represented at least 97% …

Last week, Facebook rebranded to Meta and announced its plans to kickstart the development of the Metaverse — an entirely new way of interacting and navigating the internet. Now, the Metaverse landscape has a multi-billion dollar corporate behemoth vying for the helm, which has made its future all the more uncertain. Whether we like it or not, major corporations will likely play a major role in how the Metaverse develops and evolves. But will it be plagued by the same problems faced by today’s social media giants, or will decentralized platforms and services take center stage? Related: New industry, new …

American social media giant, Reddit, may soon convert users’ karma points into Ethereum-based (ERC-20) tokens and onboard 500 million new crypto users in the process, according to a newly hired Reddit engineer. A series of tweets made by Reddit engineer, Rahul, highlights Reddit’s efforts to improve user interaction through various cryptocurrency initiatives. As Cointelegraph reported in July 2021, the platform had launched its own layer-2 rollup using Arbitrum technology for its rewards points, named Community Points. According to the website: “Your Community Points exist on the blockchain, independently of Reddit, where they can only be controlled by you (just like …

Following Vitalik Buterin’s call for more social application use cases on Ethereum earlier this summer, multiple crypto companies voiced intentions to build decentralized versions of mainstream social networks like Twitter. However, to create and view crypto-centered social platforms as merely decentralized versions of Twitter is shortsighted. The moral and technical implications of creating truly decentralized social networks that abide by Web 3.0 principles extend far beyond what the idea of “decentralized Twitter” currently encompasses. Beyond mere decentralization, there are four key themes central to the idea of crypto social development: private communication and censorship resistance, moderation, decentralized governance, and secure …

Enegra Group, a commodities trading firm based in Malaysia with a net asset value of $28 billion, has migrated its equity-tied EGX security tokens from to the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain from Ethereum (ETH). In 2019, Energra tokenized 100% of its equity, enabling shareholders to digitally exercise their dividend, voting, and governance rights. Both the initial tokenization and token migration were facilitated by Tokeny, an asset tokenization and compliance infrastructure provider. Matthew Averay, managing director and CEO at Enegra, said: We tokenized our equity to improve liquidity. And, now that the technology is available for faster, cheaper, and compliant transactions on …

The team behind interoperable blockchain network Cosmos (ATOM) recently hosted the Cosmoverse Conference live from Lisbon, Portugal. ‍‍Cosmonauts, #Cosmoverse it’s LIVE! This event is 100% from the community to the community, and we are proud to have our Cosmos Hub Community Pool as the main sponsor! Tune now to the livestream and prepare yourself to dive into cosmos’s wonders https://t.co/OzyD3bSdqB pic.twitter.com/QFXHu5l3B6 — Cosmos - Internet of Blockchains ⚛️ (@cosmos) November 5, 2021 Kicking off the two-day event, Zaki Manian, co-founder of Decentralized finance, or DeFi, project Sommel and former lead developer at Cosmos and Tendermint (Cosmos network's core contributor), discussed …

THORChain hasn’t had an easy year. After three exploits in the space of a month during the summer the protocol’s native token (RUNE) took a beating, plummeting from all-time highs over $20.00 in May to a low of around $3.50 in late July. Billed as a way to exchange crypto assets across different blockchains without an intermediary, the protocol disabled swaps completely as it looked to harden the network against exploits. With the relaunch of Ethereum swaps in late October, however, THORChain’s recovery was virtually complete — and the price of RUNE was within striking distance of the $20.00 mark …

Mythical Games announced the conclusion of a $150 million fundraising round. The company conducted the raise at a $1.25 billion valuation on Thursday, which was led by global venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Mythical said it plans to use this new infusion of capital to help integrate NFTs into games. Andreessen General Partner Arianna Simpson said in a statement: “Co-Founders John, Jamie, and Rudy have a wealth of experience in the gaming world, and have built a world-class team to support their vision. We’re thrilled to partner with them to bring NFT gaming to an even larger stage.” Other investors …

As reported by Reuters Thursday morning, Tierra Viva ("Alive Earth"), a Colombian exporter of long-horned beetles based in Tunja, has been developing its own cryptocurrency to avoid high commission costs on international sales. According to the outlet, the Hercules, Neptunus, and elephant beetle species exported by Tierra Viva have a retail price of $300 a pair in Tokyo. The beetle species are popular among Japanese schoolchildren and collectors. Carmelo Campos, chief programmer of Tierra Viva, said the following in an interview with Reuters: It's an alternative to be able to export the beetles to Japan or any other part of …

Ethereum-based (ETH) decentralized finance, or DeFi, risk management marketplace Risk Harbor will soon take over control of Terra's Ozone Protocol, according to a press release published on Thursday. Ozone is a decentralized insurance mechanism that provides coverage in the event of technical failures on the Terra DeFi ecosystem. The latter is a dual-token platform that features its governance token LUNA and stablecoin Terra USD (UST), which has an exchange rate of 1:1 with the U.S. dollar. UST has no underlying USD reserves backing it. Instead, it's collateralized via an algorithm by LUNA, and users can earn rewards by using LUNA …

Congressmen Todd Emmer and Darren Soto sent a bipartisan letter to Securities & Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler on Wednesday, strongly questioning why the agency has denied approval for the creation of a Bitcoin spot ETF while allowing Bitcoin Futures ETFs to begin trading. In a spot ETF, the fund holds the actual commodity (in this case bitcoin) whereas in a futures ETF fund holds contracts to buy and sell the commodity at a future date at a specified price. In a press release announcing the letter, Minnesota Republican Emmer said: “The SEC’s approach to cryptocurrency regulation has been unacceptable. …

It's no secret that video-game streaming platforms, such as Twitch, have made it possible for players to earn money by broadcasting their gaming experience to an audience of gaming enthusiasts. But now, the tokenomics of blockchain-powered digital games like Axie Infinity have made it possible for users to make money by simply playing the game. At time of publication, Axie Infinity has over 360,000 concurrent players. Based on data from ActivePlayer.io, while the U.S. ranks third in terms of active Axie Infinity players, all other countries on the list are developing nations. An estimated 40% of players are based in …