The Ethereum community appears to have taken a bullish view of Coinbase’s newly announced layer-2 network, Base, which has been described as a “massive confidence vote” and a “watershed moment” for the blockchain network. Secured on Ethereum and powered by layer-2 network Optimism, Base aims to eventually become a network for building decentralized applications (DApps)
Cryptocurrency
Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments. Hong Kong moves bullish On Feb. 20, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong launched a consultation on its proposed regulatory requirements for digital asset trading platforms. The SFC requires the licensing by June of all cryptocurrency exchanges operating
The original manuscript of Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the book that coined the term “metaverse,” will be auctioned by Sotheby’s, according to a page on its official website. The auction is part of a Feb. 23 series called “Infocalypse” that includes six physical and six digital items related to the famous book. The original manuscript is
The price action of Optimism (OP) and Fantom (FTM) tokens have been quite identical since the last quarter of 2022. The difference is, volatility is slightly higher for OP, which surged 240% year-to-date, compared to the 180% gains seen in FTM. The Fantom Foundation has made several improvements since Q4 2022, which have catalyzed an
An anonymous Ethereum investor has lost more than $2 million trading Ether (ETH) since Sep. 9, 2022, on-chain data shows. Buying Ethereum high, selling low Spotted by on-chain monitoring resource Lookonchain, the “stupid money” trader spent $12.5 million in stablecoins to buy 7,135 ETH after it rallied 10% to $1,790 in September 2022. But a
On Feb 23, crypto exchange Coinbase announced the launch of Base — an Ethereum layer-2 network. The company claimed that this new network will offer a low-cost, secure, developer-friendly environment for building decentralized apps (DApps) on the blockchain. According to Coinbase, Base is designed to be a bridge for users into the crypto economy, offering
In this episode of Hashing It Out, Pacman, the founder and core contributor of the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Blur, joins Elisha Owusu Akyaw to discuss how Blur has captured the attention of the NFT market. The tides in the NFT ecosystem changed in December 2022 when the newly launched NFT marketplace overtook OpenSea as
USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle plans to increase its workforce by 15–25% in 2023 amid a sea of layoffs across the industry, reported The Wall Street Journal. When a significant chunk of industry-wide firms is laying off staff to mitigate their financial woes, Circle has gone against the tide to hire more people. 41% of all layoffs
Blockchain Association’s chief legal officer says “it would be absurd” for a United States court to rule that digital assets on private blockchains are securities, following a federal judge’s decision to allow a lawsuit against Dapper Labs’s NBA Top Shots NFTs to play out. U.S. attorney Jake Chervinsky made the comment after federal judge Victor
The founders behind the alleged $340 million “global Ponzi” scheme Forsage have been indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Oregon. The four Russian founders — Vladimir Okhotnikov, Olena Oblamska, Mikhail Sergeev, and Sergey Maslakov — have been formally accused of having key roles in the scheme which raised approximately $340 million from
The Ethereum ecosystem has seen only 226 validators slashed since the launch of the Beacon Chain on Dec. 1, 2020 — amounting to just 0.04% of 524,060 validators, according to an Ethereum core developer. Slashing is a process where a validator breaches the proof-of-stake consensus rules, which often results in the removal of that validator from
The United States equities markets saw their worst performance of 2023 as concerned investors dumped stocks on Feb. 21, fearing continued rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Although the cryptocurrency markets also gave back some of the gains, the fall was comparatively muted. UTXO Management senior analyst Dylan LeClair said that Bitcoin’s (BTC) correlation
Artist name: Grant Riven Yun Location: Milwaukee Date minted first NFT: Feb. 3, 2021Which blockchains? Ethereum, Counterparty (Bitcoin) Who is he? Grant Yun has always been an artist at heart with an early aspiration to have his work featured at a major auction house. A curious and motivated individual, Yun is studying medicine while juggling his work
A wallet security team released a real-time dashboard that lets community members detect, track and monitor potential nonfungible token (NFT) hacks using offline signatures in the OpenSea marketplace. According to the team behind crypto wallet ZenGo, they created an NFT hack detector using a simple method. This includes tracking realized NFT trades in the NFT
Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced the Shapella upgrade is scheduled for Feb. 28. The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Sepolia network at epoch 56832. Shanghai and Capella (Shapella) are the upcoming Ethereum hard fork names. Shanghai is the fork’s name on the execution layer client side, and Capella is the upgrade name on
The co-founder of the social media website Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, reportedly bought 50,000 Ether (ETH) for just $15,000 during the cryptocurrency’s presale in 2014, a cost of just 30 cents per coin. Ohanian, who left the social media giant in 2020, told Forbes in a Feb. 21 article that he found the idea of a
The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)-operated golf startup, LinksDAO, may soon put in an offer to purchase the newly marketed Spey Bay Golf Club in Scotland worth about $900,000. LinksDAO — self-described as a “global group of golf enthusiasts” that is on a mission to build the “world’s greatest golf community” — officially opened the proposal
The staking services offered by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase are “fundamentally different” to what was offered by its peer exchange Kraken — which recently came under fire from the United States securities regulator — according to Coinbase’s head lawyer. Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, made the comments Feb. 21 in his response to a shareholder
Solana Spaces will close down its two Solana (SOL)-themed, community-oriented retail stores in New York City and Miami at the end of the month, as the physical stores didn’t onboard as many users as initially anticipated. Solana Spaces tweeted the news on Feb. 21, sharing a note from founder Vibhu Norby explaining the reasons behind
The price of Ether (ETH) rallied 18% between Feb. 13 and Feb. 16 but has since been range trading near the $1,700 level. Despite the recent price improvement, Ether derivatives metrics remain neutral-to-bullish ponder the investors the tighter regulatory environment and the potential impact of Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade. Investors’ biggest concern right now is regulation, especially
Blur (BLUR) could rise by up to 30% by March 2023 owing to a mix of technical and fundamental factors. Blur airdrop hype Blur is a nonfungible token (NFT) aggregator that indexes digital art listings across various base marketplaces like LooksRare and OpenSea. In doing so, the aggregator allows users to trade across all NFTs