As part of a three-year effort to expand its public services, Metaverse Seoul will allow users to take their avatars to tax offices, access youth counseling and read e-books. Source
South Korea Launches Metaverse Replica of Seoul
Month: January 2023
Solana Foundation, Ripple, GBBC and Others Form Partnership to Promote Crypto Solutions for Climate Change
Hwang, who works on building the infrastructure for the initiative, including carbon credit measurements, which calculates the reduced amount of greenhouse gases generated by human actions, said his team has been meeting every week for the last two and a half years hosting workshops and forums focused on education. The initiative looks to come up with principles of cooperation and best practices for climate-related blockchain efforts in different sectors, as well as business cases for climate-crypto projects. Source
Ethereum Startup Obol Labs Raises $12.5M to Decentralize Validators
In addition to providing software that can make outages and mishaps less likely for validators large and small, Obol thinks it will be able to ameliorate some of the issues with centralized control. “Today we think of validators as individuals or single entities,” Oisín Kyne, CTO at Obol Labs told CryptoX. “We think validators should actually be run by communities,” he continued. “Instead of only being able to run a validator alone, we want to enable you to run validators with a community of other stakers cooperatively.” Source 12.5MDecentralizeEthereumLabsObolRaisesStartupValidators CryptoX…
1 in 3 Members Got Cash From Crypto Exchange’s Bosses
Emmer, who is co-chairman of the Congressional Blockchain Congress, has argued that the FTX collapse was a “failure of character,” not of crypto, but added that the industry will keep growing. “You do not get growth without taking risk,” he told a cryptocurrency industry crowd in Washington, D.C., the week after FTX went down. Source
Crypto Lender Nexo Sues Cayman Island's Regulator for VASP Registration
Nexo has sued the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority to overturn its rejection of Nexo’s application to register as a virtual asset services provider. Source
Masa Finance launches soulbound Web3 identity protocol for Ethereum
Masa Finance has launched the first soulbound identity protocol for the Ethereum mainnet, according to a Jan. 17 press release shared with Cointelegraph. The protocol will allow for standardized soulbound tokens to be minted on Ethereum for Know Your Customer verification, credit scores and other use cases. Soulbound tokens are tokens that cannot be transferred from one wallet to another. The concept was popularized via a blog post from Vitalik Buterin, who argued that these tokens could be used to signify governance rights for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols or to…
Myth Buster: Ethereum Shanghai Hard Fork Won’t Create Major Selling Pressure
With the “Merge”, the Ethereum blockchain successfully mastered the biggest upgrade in its history on September 15 last year. Even before the switch to Proof of Stake (PoS), investors were able to stake ETH to receive rewards. However, the prerequisite was that a minimum of 32 ETH had to be staked and could not be accessed until the next upgrade, meaning the ETH could be unstaked. This changes with the Shanghai hard fork, which is tentatively scheduled for March this year. As NewsBTC reported, the upgrade is not only causing excitement,…
Decentraland’s MANA Token Outperforms Bitcoin With 88% Increase in One Week – Market Updates Bitcoin News
The cryptocurrency economy is doing well during the third week of the new year, compared to the end of 2022. It is currently valued at $993.17 billion, as many digital assets have seen double-digit gains during the last two weeks. While some of the top ten cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin and ethereum, are performing well, a few digital currencies have outperformed a number of the top ten coins in terms of gains this year. Top Cryptocurrency Performers of the Week: Decentraland’s MANA, Frax Share, and FTT Lead the Way Digital currency…
Africa Web3 games publisher Carry1st raises $27M
Mobile games publisher Carry1st has closed a $27 million funding round to advance its publishing and digital content creation platform in Africa — a region its backers say is ripe for Web3 adoption. The $27 million funding round was led by Bitkraft Ventures, with additional participation from Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. TTV Capital, Konvoy, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital and Kepple Ventures also participated in the funding round. The latest deal came a year after Carry1st secured $20 million in funding supported by a16z and Google parent company Alphabet.…
10 practices crypto can borrow from TradFi to better protect customers
Crypto pioneers and decentralized finance companies often talk about their commitment to opening up financial opportunities to underserved populations, but that’s only half the battle in achieving success for this fledgling industry. Global consumers must be confident that the funds they invest with crypto companies are safe, secure and accessible for withdrawal when desired. While traditional finance companies may not offer all the new and unique opportunities and potential of DeFi, what they do enjoy is a long history and established methods for protecting consumers’ investments — and maintaining their…