What’s new in the crypto World: part 3
The Synapse Network comes back with the third iteration of the only column on the internet that gives you a wide variety of information on everything crypto, all in bite-sized pieces for easier consumption!
Solana’s new State Compression Technology is set to significantly cut down costs.
Solana has unveiled a new technical solution that will drastically reduce the cost of storing data on the chain.
In a blog post published just last week Solana’s chief technology officer, Jon Wong, said that state compression technology will bring down the cost of storing 1 million non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the network to about 4 SOL, or just $110.
For comparison, currently, to maintain 1 million NFTs on Solana’s blockchain, the cost is 1,200 SOL (more than $24,000)
“After numerous development, adoption and deployment phases, compressed NFTs are now available on Solana’s mainnet-beta and will power the next wave of new experiences on the blockchain,” said Wong.
Wong called the new technology — state compression technology — a ‘cross-functional force for system improvement’, pointing out that it was created by developers at Solana Labs and Metaplex, with support from Phantom, Solflare and the Solana Foundation.
For the more technically minded readers ‘State compression’ exploits Merkle trees, a hash-based data structure. “This easy-to-compress data structure allows developers to store a small amount of data on the chain updates directly in Solana’s ledger, dramatically reducing the cost of data storage without sacrificing the security and decentralisation of Solana’s Layer 1.”
Wong added that some projects built on the Solana ecosystem are already using compression tech to reduce costs, including the blockchain-based messaging service Dialect and Crossmint, an NFT and API tooling company.
In addition, projects such as user-owned wireless network Helium, NFT distributor DRiP and on-chain publisher Wordcel are using the new solution to offer scalable services to blockchain users.
Meanwhile, Solana’s native token, SOL, is currently trading at $20, essentially stable over the past day. However, the coin is down more than 92 per cent from its all-time high of $259 recorded in November 2021.
Avalanche takes another step into mainstream finance.
Avalanche (AVAX), the well-known Layer 1 protocol, has announced the launch of its Evergreen subnet. This is a suite of blockchain implementations, personalisation services and tools dedicated to financial institutions.
Thanks to this new suite, financial services will be able to easily launch their own Evergreen subnets. According to Ava Labs, the Avalanche blockchain development team, this subnet will be used for research, development and production.
For everyone unfamiliar with the term, a subnet is a sovereign network that defines its own rules regarding membership and the economy of tokens. In this case, it consists of a dynamic subset of Avalanche validators working together to reach a consensus on the status of one or more blockchains.
Each blockchain is validated by exactly one Subnet, and one Subnet can have many blockchains. A validator can be a member of many Subnets.
The 3 integrated Avalanche blockchains: Platform Chain (P-Chain), Contract Chain (C-Chain) and Exchange Chain (X-Chain) are validated and protected by all Avalanche validators that make up a special subnet, called the Primary Network.
By definition, all validators in the subnet/subnet must also validate Avalanche’s Primary Network.
Subnets are independent, they specify their own execution logic, determine their own fee regime, maintain their own state, facilitate their own networking and provide their own security.
They do not share execution threads, storage1 or networking with other subnets, including the primary network, effectively allowing the network to scale easily and reduce latency, transactions per second (TPS) and transaction cost through Avalanche consensus, and
According to Ava Labs, the new Evergreen subnet will allow financial institutions to implement their blockchain strategies within private, authorised chains.
Evergreen subnets can communicate with other subnets using the native Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM) communication protocol.
In addition to providing communication, Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM) offers users the ability to perform data transfers and exchange assets without going through a third-party intermediary.
Ethereum staking pools are shrinking: Retail investors are moving to BTC while multiple whales accumulate their gains in the ETH staking pools.
The price of Ethereum (ETH) has risen more than 55% in the past four months, before the Shanghai update. However, the bullish momentum is likely to diminish in the coming weeks even though whales remain focused on the cryptocurrency enough to make waves in the market.
Although the world’s second cryptocurrency managed to break above $1,900 in the past week, the price of ETH is still up in the air. Furthermore, the weekly moving averages of 50 and 200 WMA is about to form a dreaded ‘death cross’.
The last time a weekly death cross occurred on Ethereum’s chart was mid-2019 when Buterin’s crypto saw a drop of almost 50 per cent in just a few months. If history repeats itself, and should the weekly death cross materialise, we can expect Ethereum’s price to revisit the low touched last June at around $1,000.
Meanwhile, a recent study by on-chain analytics platform Glassnode shows that Ethereum staking activity has significantly decreased in the recent past due to global regulatory pressures and the upcoming Shanghai update.
According to reports, the liquid Lido DAO (LDO) staking programme has been the favourite of Ethereum investors.
“Deposit trends made by staking providers showed a clear shift over time with Kraken, Binance and Coinbase competing for deposit allocation in the early days of the Beacon Chain. When the novelty phase ended, it was Lido that emerged victorious and is now dominating deposit inflows,” Glassnode noted.
Ethereum’s staking activities have been affected by increasing regulatory scrutiny, particularly by the US SEC. For example, the SEC hit the exchange Kraken with a $30 million fine for providing a staking program, which was deemed by the authority to be an unregistered service. In addition, the SEC sent Coinbase Global a notice regarding its staking programme, which is likely to evolve as a court case.
On the other hand, whales support the bullish thesis and the accumulation pattern among Ethereum’s largest investors is clear. Data provided by Santiment show that whales holding between 1 million and 100 million ETH started to buy exactly when the retail investor’s Weighted Sentiment started to move negatively.
Polygon climbs the ranks of the Gaming podium, becoming the second-largest crypto in the industry.
Layer-2 scalability solution Polygon (MATIC) is making a name for itself in the gaming industry thanks to the impressive growth in daily unique active wallets (dUAW) recorded last month.
According to blockchain intelligence platform DappRadar, Polygon recorded 138,081 dUAW in March, marking a 53 per cent increase over the numbers recorded in February.
Polygon is now silver on the podium of gaming blockchains after Boomland’s Hunters On-Chain launched on its testnet last month. The action role-playing game has risen to become one of the top five blockchain games in terms of on-chain decentralised app (DApp) activity.
“Polygon, a blockchain previously known for DeFi [decentralised finance] DApps, overtook Hive this month and secured second place. This is a positive sign for Polygon, which is becoming known as a gaming blockchain.”
Meanwhile, the Wax Blockchain instead maintains its place as the leading gaming blockchain, with its dUAW far exceeding (over 228%) that of Polygon.
“Wax emerged as the most active gaming blockchain, averaging 314,976 unique daily active wallets in March. This represents a drop of 8.11 per cent from the previous month. The data also revealed that Alien Worlds dominated Wax’s activity by 66%.”
DappRadar says that while on-chain gaming slowed last month, games still make up a considerable slice of DApp activity.
“On-chain gaming activity decreased by 3.33% in March to 741,567 daily active unique wallets; however, games accounted for 45.6% of DApp industry activity in Q1 2023.”
Japan is already moving towards the adoption of NFTs in the sports sector.
News in the NFT sector: the Japanese government may encourage the adoption of non-fungible tokens in the sports sector as well.
The local Nikkei newspaper reported news of a government initiative to promote Web3 projects.
In particular, Tokyo is reportedly waiting for the publication of the white paper on the subject presented by the Liberal Democratic Party’s ‘Promotion of the Digital Society’ working group.
The white paper has not yet been published, but some details were revealed to the newspaper by sources close to the working group and the role of crypto games in the economic development of the project.
The white paper, Nikkei explains, will seek to clarify the regulatory framework for companies issuing NFTs and their potential sporting partners.
The Web3 working group pointed out that ‘fantasy sports’ are ‘gaining popularity abroad’ and wants to ‘encourage’ domestic ‘companies’ to ‘enter’ the sector.
Sports such as baseball and football have a huge following in Japan, and for this reason, a possible Japanese fantasy football league made possible by NFT technology would undoubtedly enjoy great popularity.
Japanese law prohibits most lucrative activities that involve raising capital from customers. This would be a strong limitation for fantasy sports operators wishing to use NFTs, which in some cases would involve the payment of entry fees, while collaboration with Western entities would also result problematic.
“If a Japanese sports organisation provides a licence to a foreign commercial operator, and it is clear that this licence is used for gambling, it could be charged with aiding and abetting gambling.”
It is possible that the white paper will recommend that clubs circumvent the problem by asking sponsors to provide prizes and money.
The paper will also seek to ‘clarify the regulatory environment’ for NFT operators and sports teams in the Japanese regulatory landscape.
The team will also support the creation of an ‘industry group’ for NFT companies while also calling for the public and private sectors to ‘work together to formulate safe and secure guidelines for the users to follow.
The Web3 team works alongside an NFT-focused task force that was launched in 2022. About a year ago, the task force recommended that Tokyo establish a specific ministry for Web3.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly spoken of the idea of supporting the development of the blockchain, metaverse, NFT and even crypto sectors.
Just last year, the prime minister held a public speech in which he stressed the importance
of the development of commercial Web3 activities in the foreseeable future.
One Step Back, two forwards.
PostFinance, Switzerland’s fifth largest financial services company, said it will begin offering its users the ability to invest in cryptocurrencies through a partnership with regulated digital asset service provider Sygnum Bank.
The most interesting aspect of this news is that PostFinance is a bank wholly owned by the Swiss government, and will soon start providing its 2.5 million customers with services such as access to buying, staking and selling the main cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in the lead, to which other tokens will be added in due course.
Switzerland is therefore marching to the beat of its own drum and is openly opposed to countries such as the United States, which instead seem to be focusing all their efforts on the ultimate goal of eliminating cryptocurrencies.
Further underlining Switzerland’s stance is the banking licence that Sygnum obtained from Swiss regulators some four years ago, which allows it to target a range of institutions, including cantonal banks and private banks.
The Swiss want cryptocurrencies, and they want them from their trusted banks
PostFinance’s Chief Investment Officer Philipp Merkt said in a recent statement:
“Digital assets have become an integral part of the financial world and our customers want access to this market at PostFinance, their main bank of trust. A reliable and established partner like Sygnum Bank, with an excellent service offering, is more important than ever.”
According to Fritz Jost, Chief B2B Officer at Sygnum Bank, the reason for PostFinance’s decision to enter the cryptocurrency business was also the increased outflows from Swiss retail banks into the digital asset class in recent times.
Indeed, in an interview with CoinDesk, Jost stated:
“PostFinance has become aware of a considerable number of outflows to cryptocurrency exchanges and the like, in the order of hundreds of millions per year. So this is not just an opportunity to add a new revenue stream, but they realised that this has a lot to do with customer retention.”
Jost said that a diverse range of cryptocurrencies will certainly be available, but the full list has not yet been decided by PostFinance.
“We have already seen banks make cryptocurrencies available to their customers, and immediately afterwards they want to stake and so on,” Jost said. “I can certainly confirm that PostFinance has a roadmap, and it’s about starting with buying, holding and selling, just to start greasing the wheels within the organisation and customers.”
This news, coming in the wake of the collapse of multiple huge banking institutions, brings back faith in a possible future in which the mainstream market can collaborate with the DeFi sector to bring a revolution to the various economical hubs that have been holding the world economy since the beginning of the millennium.
Ralph Lauren takes another step towards NFTs integration.
American brand Ralph Lauren has kicked off crypto payments in its newly opened Miami shop.
The company has let customers know that different cryptos can be used for purchases, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and other emerging cryptocurrencies. The brand is collaborating with crypto payment specialist BitPay on the technical side.
The fashion giant is also collaborating with Poolsuite to launch its flagship store. This is a Web 3 community rooted in the Miami lifestyle aimed at developing the future of leisure on the Internet, meaning that the American giant has fully dipped its toes in the NFT market.
But the news doesn’t end there, because, in addition to allowing crypto payments, the company will allow all members of the Poolsuite community to participate in a special event with the Ralph Lauren x Poolsuite NFT.
Ralph Lauren is certainly not the only company using NFTs. In fact, other companies continue to enter this world, such as Starbucks, which unveiled on 10 March its first collection of 2,000 digital ‘stamps’, or limited edition non-fungible tokens, once more subscribing to the trend that many big companies have seemed to take in the last couple of years.
While overexposure to the crypto sector seems to be avoided, a lot of mainstream giants have at least a couple of divisions dedicated to the development and integration of Web3 technologies.
Crypto use cases keep piling up.
To enable crypto payments, BitPay had to enter into partnerships with over 250 companies and shops. A few names stand out in this list, such as the American theatre company AMC Theatres, the luxury goods shop Jomashop and the e-commerce retailer Newegg.
The company Zebedee also recently introduced its instant payment function using the Bitcoin Lightning network. Burger King, on the other hand, introduced its Instpower power bank rental service with crypto payment options at the fast food chain’s sites in Paris.
This was made possible by a collaboration with Alchemy Pay and Binance Pay, two crypto payment systems.
According to Tracxn’s January data, there are 615 crypto payment companies globally, with more and more looking into the adoption of multiple new services and payment options specifically geared towards Web3 users.
This seems to be the beginning of a worldwide movement, as every huge multinational corporation seems to be positive that crypto use cases will be added to their roster of services.
Upwork and Fiverr may have a challenge come up in the next decade.
DeeLance, the innovative Web3-based freelance recruitment platform, is poised to revolutionise the recruitment industry (a $761 billion business) and create a hub where freelancers can connect with employers to receive crypto rewards and payments.
The pre-sale of the native $DLANCE token generated a lot of interest and $38,770.07 of investment was raised. However, this unique crypto project is much more than just a recruitment platform.
DeeLance is a crypto project that integrates Web3 technology to create a platform that connects freelancers and recruiters and enhances a collective work model. The platform has three main functionalities: a marketplace of non-fungible tokens (NFT), a metaverse and a simplified recruitment process.
These functionalities are the pillars of the DeeLance project and provide numerous tools and services. The project opens up new possibilities for creators and freelancers, who will enjoy digital transparency and profit from the exponential growth of the metaverse.
Data shown by IBISWorld illustrates that the global recruitment industry is worth $761 billion in revenue and is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years, solidifying the importance that DeeLance may have in the following years for crypto-based B2B services.
The human resources (HR) industry is facing several challenges, including the need for more skilled workers, business disputes, lack of transparency and much more. All these issues have a significant impact on business objectives.
DeeLance, therefore, aims to offer new solutions to the industry through its decentralised, Web3-based platform, powered by NFT and the metaverse. These features will redefine the recruitment industry, currently dominated by players such as Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer.
The new DeeLance crypto project introduces avatars and a Metaverse with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This means that users who have no interest in games can still access the metaverse with NFT avatars and connect with the community in a work-focused environment.
In addition, freelancers and creators on the DeeLance platform can store and ‘mark’ their content via NFT, enabling easier verification of ownership by creators up to the agreed delivery date and payment. The project aims to create a transparent work and payment structure for freelancers and recruiters.
All transactions remain locked in escrow smart contracts. Escrow automatically disburses agreed business initiatives to freelancers when business objectives are completed and verified by employers.
This integration eliminates the need for third-party digital payment agencies and the time losses that often occur while employing such services.
DeeLance, employers and freelancers have certainty about the terms and conditions of the services they are respectively buying and selling, bringing a seemingly dark horse in the work industry.
In order to increase its presence in the metaverse, DeeLance provides users of the recruitment and freelancing platform with unique avatars to interact with other community members in the metaverse.
Clients and freelancers can thus collaborate, buy and sell services, create virtual offices and post job advertisements, ushering in a new era for the recruitment industry.
That’s everything for today!
What’s new in crypto is a long-form column that focuses on aggregating and displaying events of critical importance in the DeFi landscape. This article signs the third iteration of our series, and as always, we hope that the info you found here was both satisfactory and useful for your crypto journey.
About Synapse Network
Synapse Network is developing a cross-chain investment and start-up acceleration ecosystem based on blockchain technology to give everybody an equal chance to contribute to great upcoming projects and to do so early on. We are bridging the gap between the traditional & crypto market. The idea of the Synapse Network technology goes beyond the standard offer of launchpads available on the market, becoming a true technological brand providing tech solutions.
Website
Twitter
Telegram Announcement Channel
Telegram Global Group
Github
Youtube
Linkedin
