Amazing things are being built in Web3 — often by pseudonymous individuals who prefer to keep their real-world identity private. In some ways, this is liberating. It means that anyone can have a chance to get involved in a project and deliver value to the community — irrespective of their background. But as decentralized identities proliferate, there's one issue that cannot be ignored: Ensuring that there's an easy way for us to verify the reputation of others. This matters… for many reasons. If you're about to start using a DeFi project created by someone pseudonymous, you'd like a way to …

A new protocol has bold ambitions to become the feed of Web3. RSS3 is an open-sourced information syndication protocol — a search engine that delivers an aggregated human-readable feed about every crypto wallet in existence. The project has been built on three core ideologies: Transparency, decentralization and modularity. Founders say they're determined to ensure no single, authoritative figure controls everything — and want to encompass everything going on in this fast-moving space. RSS3 says its product is a convenient way to know everything addresses, with keywords to be added in the near future. Intuitive features allow you to keep track …

The DAO behind the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has accepted a proposal to reward members from Aave Companies with $16.28 million in retroactive funding for their role in the development of Aave Protocol V3. Voting for the proposal began on Sept. 6, and at the time of writing has already passed 667,000 votes in favor of the funding, more than doubling the 320,000 required. The vote is set to end on Sept. 8. According to the initial proposal, which was first pitched on Aug. 10, the Aave Request for Comment (ARC) seeked “retroactive funding” for work in developing the …

As Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains became more popular, the conversation has steered towards .eth domain pricing and what is considered to be a “fair” price to guarantee ownership for 100 years. In a Twitter thread, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin asked the community what price they think is appropriate for registering and keeping ownership of a 5-letter .eth domain for 100 years. Buterin gave four options: under $100, $100–$999, $1000–$9999, and $10,000 or more. Almost 50% of the 91,130 votes chose the most economical option of paying under $100 for 100-year ownership of an .eth domain. One respondent said that …

A new NFT and metaverse project is being built on the Ethereum blockchain — with a cutting-edge difference that could set it apart from rivals. Astral Pioneers says it will enable players to own their own land, mine it for resources, and start building across 30 different planets. But it's the in-game governance mechanism that sets this project apart, as it's going to use soulbound tokens to represent and ensure citizenship. SBTs are a new approach to cryptoassets that has been championed by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum. He was inspired by a feature found in World of Warcraft …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believe that a gradual mind shift and important community contributions led to their backing of Ethereum’s upcoming move from a proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. The two industry titans joined Coinbase protocol specialist Viktor Bunin on the Around the Block podcast for an enlightening discussion centered on The Merge, which is set to take place in mid-September 2022. Buterin reflected on his history of considering proof-of-stake as a potential consensus mechanism for the Ethereum blockchain, which was initially met with skepticism due to a number of unsolved problems that made …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggests the superiority of cryptocurrency for payments is often "underrated" compared to fiat, pointing to the convenience of international payments and payments to charities as key examples. Buterin made the comments in a Twitter thread on Aug. 24, explaining that it's not just resistance to censorship, but also convenience that makes cryptocurrencies "superior" when it comes to international business, charity, and even payments within countries. People continue to underrate how often cryptocurrency payments are superior not even because of censorship resistance but just because they're so much more convenient. Big boost to international business and charity, …

David Schwartz, the chief technical officer of Ripple, didn’t take Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s dig on XRP very kindly. In a discussion that started around the recent $30,000 limit imposed by the Ontario crypto exchange on altcoins purchases barring Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Buterin, in a quoted response to a tweet, lauded the Ethereum community’s pushback against regulations that privilege ETH over other legitimate cryptocurrencies. David Hoffman, the founder of decentralized media and education platform Bankless.eth responded to Buterin and said that he wouldn’t have minded if they had restricted XRP. XRP already lost their right …

In this week’s newsletter, read about Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s proposal for stealth NFT ownership. Check out how a CryptoPunk will be split into thousands of pieces to enable smaller investors to access it, and how the NFT play-to-earn game Axie Infinity plans to double down on South Korea despite regulatory hurdles. In other news, learn about how NFT storage works according to two NFT experts. Lastly, check out how a Redditor turned criticisms of the NFT space into NFTs. Vitalik Buterin proposes stealth addresses for anonymous NFT ownership Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, proposed what he dubs a “low-tech …

An Ethereum fork token that does not yet exist, dubbed ETHW, is trading under $100 across several crypto exchanges after debuting at $30. ETHW and ETHS begin trading ETHW is the native asset to the ETHPoW chain. ETHPoW, for now, is a possible new chain backed by proof-of-work (PoW) miners as the original chain switches to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus in September's "Merge" event. Meanwhile, the proof-of-stake version ETHS is trading at around $1,600, or the difference between the ETH price and the ETHW price. We promise there won't be any premining or additional token issuance. So there is nowhere to …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested there may be a “low-tech approach” to incorporating privacy features ito nonfungible token, or NFT, transactions. In a Monday post on the Ethereum research channel, Buterin implied Merkle trees and Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge, or ZK-SNARKs, were a more complicated method for stealth addresses for ERC-721 tokens, while proposing his own solution. The Ethereum co-founder suggested instead that smart contract wallets could include a method that would allow the sender to essentially mask their address to third parties. “You would be able to eg. send an NFT to vitalik.eth without anyone except …

The fifth annual Korea Blockchain Week kicked off on Aug. 8, with more than 7,000 people attending Asia's largest blockchain event of 2022. The Seoul-based event is set to run its main-stage sessions on Aug. 8 and 9, while side events such as music festivals and nonfungible token (NFT) art galleries will go through until Friday, Aug. 12. This year Korea Blockchain Week features presentations from more than 120 figures in the blockchain space, including prominent names such as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Animoca Brands chair Yat Siu and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. The event is …