Decentralized finance (DeFi) offers one of the most widely applicable use-cases for distributed ledger technology and today it is one of the main avenues for the wider adoption of blockchain technology.
Last week, as the wider crypto market corrected and Bitcoin (BTC) dropped by 22%, DeFiChain (DFI) bucked the trend and rallied 76% to establish a new high at $5.70 on Dec. 6 as its 24-hour trading volume surged from an average of $3.6 million to $24.3 million.
DFI/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Three reasons for the price breakout for DFI include the launch of decentralized assets on the DFI mainnet, a surge in transactions and users on the network and an increase in the total value locked on the protocol.
Traders pile into decentralized stocks and cryptocurrencies
The biggest source of momentum for DFI in recent weeks has been the launch of decentralized assets on the DeFiChain network and staking options for holders.
Users of the platform now have access to multiple pools that include large-cap cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, as well as synthetic versions of popular stocks and indices, including pairs for Tesla (TSLA), Apple (APPL) and the S&P 500 (SPY). In addition to having exposure to these assets, stakers also benefit from the higher-than-average yields available on the platform.
DeFiChain DEX pool pairs. Source: DeFi Scan
Other d-asset options available to users include Gold (GLD), Silver (SLV), the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT).
Transaction volumes surge
Another reason for the strong performance seen from DFI has been an increase in transactions on the network following the release of decentralized assets.
The surge in network activity is largely the result of the new use cases made possible by the launch of decentralized assets, including the creation of assets, liquidity mining and arbitrage trading.
The added features have also helped to attract new users to the DFiChain ecosystem, with the number of unique wallets holding DFI reaching a new record high of 42,555 on Dec. 8.
Related: Nasdaq to provide price feeds for tokenized stock trades on DeFiChain
Total value locked hits a new all-time high
DFI has also seen a steady increase in total value locked on the DeFiChain protocol, which is now at an all-time high of $1.83 billion according to data from Defi Llama.
Total value locked on DeFiChain. Source: Defi Llama
The spike in value locked coincides with the launch of decentralized assets on the network and it’s claer that users rushed to deposit funds to gain access to the high yield opportunities available to liquidity providers.
Aside from the staking features offered on the DeFiChain DEX, larger DFI holders with at least 20,000 DFI also have the option of locking their DFI tokens up in order to run a masternode on the network and earn rewards in return for helping to verify transactions and secure the blockchain.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Delivered by Alesia Haas, Coinbase Chief Financial Officer
Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member McHenry and Members of the Committee, good morning and thank you for this opportunity to testify on digital assets and the future of finance.
My name is Alesia Haas and I am Chief Financial Officer of Coinbase Global Inc. I also serve in the role of Chief Executive Officer of our U.S. subsidiary, Coinbase Inc. I joined Coinbase in 2018 after serving as Chief Financial Officer at Sculptor Capital and OneWest Bank, and have over 20 years of experience in the finance industry.
Today I’d like to introduce Coinbase, discuss the evolution of crypto, and highlight how today’s regulations could be changed to advance the bipartisan goals of protecting consumers and promoting innovation.
Coinbase’s mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. We were founded in 2012 with the idea that anyone, anywhere, should be able to easily and securely send and receive Bitcoin. Over the last nine years, our products and services have expanded to meet our customers’ needs in the rapidly innovating crypto industry. We have customers in every state except Hawaii and, as a remote-first company, we have employees in 45 states and the District of Columbia, including 24 of the 25 states represented by the members of this committee.
We now securely store 12% of the world’s crypto across more than 150 asset types, we offer customers the opportunity to learn about and buy, sell, send and receive more than 100 assets. We also offer customers the opportunity to spend, borrow, earn and stake on select assets. We serve more than 73 million customers globally, including 10,000 institutions and 185,000 application developers. Importantly, nearly 50% of our transacting customers are doing something other than buying and selling crypto, which indicates to us that crypto is moving beyond its initial investment phase into the long expected utility phase.
Since our founding, Coinbase has strived to be the most secure, trusted, and legally compliant bridge to the cryptoeconomy. Coinbase is federally registered as a money services business with FinCEN, licensed as a money transmitter in 42 states, holds a “BitLicense’’ and trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services, and we are authorized to engage in consumer lending in 15 states.
We have a robust AML/BSA program, and we are one of only two digital asset members of the Department of the Treasury’s Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group.
In addition to the various state regulatory regimes, we are subject to federal oversight from Treasury, the CFTC, SEC, FTC, and CFPB.
Much like the adoption curve of the Internet in the 1990s, we are seeing dramatic advancements in crypto participation. There are more than 220 million crypto holders globally, and around 16 percent of Americans have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency. Total crypto market capitalization at the end of Q3 was over $2.0 trillion, up from $800 billion at the end of 2020.
Coinbase’s platform is powering the cryptoeconomy — a new financial system for the internet age — which is a critical infrastructure layer to Web 3.0. Technologies like non-fungible tokens, which we call NFTs, and decentralized application platforms will lead the way for Web 3.0 to revolutionize the internet, much like the internet was revolutionized when it went from static content to a place for dynamic engagement.
We believe sound regulation is central to fueling crypto innovation and adoption. That is why we introduced our Digital Asset Policy Proposal, which we refer to as dapp. The dApp assessed the challenges of the existing regulatory framework and proposed a four pillar solution.
First, we believe the government should regulate digital assets under a new, comprehensive framework that recognizes the unique technological innovations underpinning digital assets.
Second, responsibility for this new framework should be assigned to a single federal regulator. This regulator would be charged with establishing a registration process for intermediaries, which we refer to as Marketplaces for Digital Assets.
Third, this new framework should have three goals to ensure holders of digital assets are empowered and protected: A) Enhance transparency through robust and appropriate disclosure requirements. B) Protect against fraud and market manipulation. And C) Promote efficiency and strengthen market resiliency.
Our fourth and final pillar is to ensure that regulatory solutions promote interoperability and fair competition.
In conclusion, Coinbase believes crypto will drive transformational change across society in positive ways. That is why our mission is to promote economic freedom around the world. Disruption always challenges the status quo, but we believe sound policy solutions can improve the system for everyone. We applaud Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member McHenry and the members of this Committee for holding this hearing. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss these important issues, and I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
Opening Testimony: U.S. House Committee on Financial Services was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Be among the first to experience an ethical NFT marketplace with Souq NFT.
Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 Dec 2021 — MRHB DeFi, the first inclusive and ethical DeFi ecosystem platform is set to launch its NFT marketplace — Souq NFT. For its debut launch, MRHB DeFi is pleased to partner with DEV Challenge Season 18!
DEV Challenge is a Developer Championship thatholds the title for being the largest European IT competition since 2012. As the largest championship created for developers and designers in Ukraine, DEV Challenge has been supporting the technical potential of developers in Ukraine. To date, more than 20,000 developers have participated in this challenge.
Introducing Souq NFT an NFT marketplace powered by MRHB DeFi
Souq NFT is a marketplace for digital art and other halal NFT objects. Artists will participate in creating digital artwork for the first halal NFT marketplace in the world, following image, audio and video content guidelines such as: no nudity (ideally no body art at all), no hate speech, no racism and must be an original piece (no rip-offs of existing NFTs).
Perfect for Artists and Creators
Artists and Creators are invited to participate in an upcoming NFT competition set within the framework of the DEV Challenge Championship. This challenge is perfect for you if:
You have long wanted to figure out the best way to leverage NFTs and start selling your artwork.
You are a creator, with existing work on NFT marketplaces, and are currently looking for other options to monetize your art.
Kindly register for the competition and you will be sent detailed information about the launch of the Souq NFT platform and how best to start using it.
Attend the online or offline master class where you will be introduced to the platform. There are limited slots for participants, kindlyregister to join.
In order to properly guide and assist you during the competitive process, the organizers are implementing an online workshop, where you will be guided through the platform and taught how to correctly upload your artwork to the NFT Marketplace.
A tutorial guide to creators (digital artists, 2D, 3D designers, etc.) on how to mint your NFTs on the Souq NFT Marketplace will also be provided, where you will be assisted in setting up your accounts through which you can receive funds from NFT sales.
Please register for the Workshop.
About MRHB DeFi
MRHB DeFi is a halal, decentralized finance platform built to embody the true spirit of an “Ethical and Inclusive DeFi” by following faith-based financial and business principles, where all excluded communities can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi.
The diverse team comprises researchers, technocrats, influencers, Islamic fintech experts & business entrepreneurs, who came together to ensure that MRHB DeFi prevails in a manner that will impact society as a whole, essentially bridging the gap between the faith-conscious communities and the blockchain world.
Holiday sales in the United States for 2021 are expected to generate $834.4 billion. Additionally, the average American anticipates buying $942 in Christmas gifts and a third of Americans anticipate spending over $1,000, according to 2019 numbers. The holiday season is big.
But, with the expansion of the digital economy and the increasing popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) comes an entirely new set of possibilities, gifting digital assets. Already, there has been talk about gifting digital assets with the click of a button, rather than depending on large shipments of physical products to come through when there are such profound international supply chain issues.
How Would NFT Gifts Work?
Just like any physical gift, digital assets can confer similar, or even more, levels of excitement, wonder and appreciation. Whereas physical gifts are inherently constrained by the laws of physics, much more is possible in the digital realm since the creator can integrate multiple forms of media.
Consider the simplest illustration: buying a portrait as a gift. The same can be obtained with an NFT. While these have often been discussed in the context of large-scale digital galleries, they can be easily displayed inside an apartment or house. If you have a smart TV, you can display digital art on it when you’re not watching TV.
Take that example one step further. Instead of just gifting a friend or family member an NFT that is in the form of a digital art piece, what if the NFT embedded both audio and art? For example, the NFT could have Silent Night playing and simultaneously displaying a creative rendition of the sky with the stars. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a picture and audio are worth many more.
Digital assets are not constrained in the same way that physical goods are. With the emergence of virtual reality and the metaverse, you could even gift someone virtual real estate or amenities for their digital identity. The same amenities that are available in the physical world would also be available digitally, and much more. For instance, suppose you know your friend loves the outdoors. Then, you could gift your friend virtual real estate of a forest containing all sorts of animals, plants, trees and adventurous travel ways. Clearly, that wouldn’t be possible in our physical reality, but there is nothing stopping that possibility from being a (digital) reality soon.
Advantages of NFT Gifts
An obvious reason for an nft gift is that it can confer an even more multidimensional experience for the user than a physical gift, or, at least, just as good as one in many cases (e.g., a digital art piece). However, another advantage is that NFTs can appreciate over time.
For instance, suppose you gift a friend an NFT of an exciting and emerging artist. Assuming your intuition is right, that NFT would grow considerably in value. If Jack Dorsey’s first tweet can sell for $2.5 million, and it does not confer any tangible value, then how much more could an artistic contribution grow in value over time? Compare that with an Amazon gift card that can only be redeemed at a given price, its upside is fundamentally fixed.
Many critics have complained that there is too much speculation in the NFT market. But, what market does not have speculation? Anytime there is a fundamental innovation, whether it’s electricity or the internet, there is a surge of buzz and interest that follows.
Instead, the better question is whether NFTs have value-creating properties. If so, then the question is whether we can identify prudent digital assets that might grow in value. Or, at the very least, we can purchase NFTs that confer some immediate value, whether it’s a beautiful art piece or rights to an idea or tickets to a future product launch.
The NFT and blockchain revolution are changing a lot, even the way we give gifts during holidays. Before following your typical routine this Christmas, consider searching for some NFTs that could make nice gifts for friends and family. The possibilities will only continue to grow in the years ahead!
Christos A. Makridis, research professor at Arizona State University, a digital fellow at Stanford University, and Chief Technology Officer and Head of research at Living Opera.
Holiday sales in the United States for 2021 are expected to generate $834.4 billion. Additionally, the average American anticipates buying $942 in Christmas gifts and a third of Americans anticipate spending over $1,000, according to 2019 numbers. The holiday season is big.
But, with the expansion of the digital economy and the increasing popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) comes an entirely new set of possibilities, gifting digital assets. Already, there has been talk about gifting digital assets with the click of a button, rather than depending on large shipments of physical products to come through when there are such profound international supply chain issues.
How Would NFT Gifts Work?
Just like any physical gift, digital assets can confer similar, or even more, levels of excitement, wonder and appreciation. Whereas physical gifts are inherently constrained by the laws of physics, much more is possible in the digital realm since the creator can integrate multiple forms of media.
Consider the simplest illustration: buying a portrait as a gift. The same can be obtained with an NFT. While these have often been discussed in the context of large-scale digital galleries, they can be easily displayed inside an apartment or house. If you have a smart TV, you can display digital art on it when you’re not watching TV.
Take that example one step further. Instead of just gifting a friend or family member an NFT that is in the form of a digital art piece, what if the NFT embedded both audio and art? For example, the NFT could have Silent Night playing and simultaneously displaying a creative rendition of the sky with the stars. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a picture and audio are worth many more.
Digital assets are not constrained in the same way that physical goods are. With the emergence of virtual reality and the metaverse, you could even gift someone virtual real estate or amenities for their digital identity. The same amenities that are available in the physical world would also be available digitally, and much more. For instance, suppose you know your friend loves the outdoors. Then, you could gift your friend virtual real estate of a forest containing all sorts of animals, plants, trees and adventurous travel ways. Clearly, that wouldn’t be possible in our physical reality, but there is nothing stopping that possibility from being a (digital) reality soon.
Advantages of NFT Gifts
An obvious reason for an nft gift is that it can confer an even more multidimensional experience for the user than a physical gift, or, at least, just as good as one in many cases (e.g., a digital art piece). However, another advantage is that NFTs can appreciate over time.
For instance, suppose you gift a friend an NFT of an exciting and emerging artist. Assuming your intuition is right, that NFT would grow considerably in value. If Jack Dorsey’s first tweet can sell for $2.5 million, and it does not confer any tangible value, then how much more could an artistic contribution grow in value over time? Compare that with an Amazon gift card that can only be redeemed at a given price, its upside is fundamentally fixed.
Many critics have complained that there is too much speculation in the NFT market. But, what market does not have speculation? Anytime there is a fundamental innovation, whether it’s electricity or the internet, there is a surge of buzz and interest that follows.
Instead, the better question is whether NFTs have value-creating properties. If so, then the question is whether we can identify prudent digital assets that might grow in value. Or, at the very least, we can purchase NFTs that confer some immediate value, whether it’s a beautiful art piece or rights to an idea or tickets to a future product launch.
The NFT and blockchain revolution are changing a lot, even the way we give gifts during holidays. Before following your typical routine this Christmas, consider searching for some NFTs that could make nice gifts for friends and family. The possibilities will only continue to grow in the years ahead!
Christos A. Makridis, research professor at Arizona State University, a digital fellow at Stanford University, and Chief Technology Officer and Head of research at Living Opera.
Further to a recent announcement, Rikkei Finance launched its dual IDO and IEO for its native governance token today, quickly selling out. Currently, Rikkei’s native token, $RIFI, is live trading on both Huobi and PancakeSwap.
Rikkei Finance is a metaverse DeFi protocol, built on Binance Smart Chain, that enables safe and secure open lending offering cross-chain support, NFT collateralization, and peer-to-peer insurance cover. The long-awaited IDO started alongside Rikkei Finance’s IEO, having previously been postponed since August.
It follows a successful $5.6 million fundraising round with investors including Signum Capital, X21 Digital, and Kyber Network, as well as the $RU token NFT project IDO for its RiFi United play-to-earn soccer manager simulator.
$RIFI IDO on RedKite Launchpad
RedKite is a cutting-edge launchpad powered by PolkaFoundry as part of the growing $PKF ecosystem. Projects are chosen carefully through a vetting procedure that analyzes the team and implementation capabilities.
Pool Details
Token ticker: $RIFI
Token type: BEP20
Price per token: $0.10
Vesting schedule: 20% released at launch, three months cliff, then unlock 20% quarterly
Network for IDO: BSC
Accepted currency for IDO: BUSD
Participants were able to register between December 3-6, with the IDO pool launching today, December 7. Phase 1 buying (guaranteed allocation) ran from 11:00 AM UTC to 12:00 PM UTC. Phase 2 (first come, first served) ran from 12:00 PM UTC to 12:15 PM UTC, and the community pool from 12:15 PM UTC to 12:30 PM UTC.
As previously mentioned, $RIFI is not live trading.
$RIFI IEO on Huobi Primelist
Regarded as a leading global digital asset exchange dedicated to providing secure and reliable digital asset trading, Huobi is listing $RIFI today on its brand new token listing platform, Primelist. The sale period runs from 10:00 AM UTC to 12:20 PM UTC, with trading time beginning at 1:00 PM UTC. Participants were offered two methods for registering for the sale: Queue or HT Holding.
Queue
To register via Queue, participants had to sign up on Huobi Global and complete the advanced verification process before 10:00 AM UTC on December 7, holding at least 50 USDT in their exchange account.
From 10:00 AM UTC to 11:00 AM UTC, eligible users register to participate in the event, with 5,000 lucky users randomly selected to qualify for the purchase and allocation of 50 USDT worth of $RIFI each.
HT Holding
To register via HT Holding, participants also had to sign up on Huobi Global and complete the advanced verification process before 10:00 AM UTC on December 7, having had 3-day minimum average holdings of 300 HT between December 3-6.
From 10:00 AM UTC to 11:00 AM UTC, eligible users register to participate in the event with the system automatically executing purchase orders for the maximum amount of USDT they could use for the order placement, allocating new tokens for each participant on a pro-rata basis.
Interested parties can now purchase $RIFI tokens on Huobi or PancakeSwap.
The 2021 Independent Reserve’s Cryptocurrency Index (IRCI) survey of more than 2,000 people found that the percentage of Australians surveyed who own or have owned crypto has reached 28.8%, up from 18.4% in 2020.
The results suggest that growth in the sector is being driven by the positive experience of those who own crypto, with 89% of those surveyed saying they have made money or broken even, up from 78% in 2020.
Independent Reserve CEO Adrian Przelozny told Cointelegraph that these results didn’t come as a surprise to him, due to an environment in which it has become “very difficult to get returns on investments.”
He stated that “cryptocurrencies have easily outperformed any other assets over the last 12 months,” before adding:
“I think it’s quite natural that more and more people get interested in an asset class that’s clearly outperforming the rest of the market.”
In October, Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin (BTC) is the official best-performing asset class of 2021.
Przelozny said that he expects the trend to continue as crypto matures and becomes less volatile. He said that the “biggest ally” of cryptocurrency is that “the longer it’s around, the more accepted it becomes.”
“With time, I think you’ll see volatility and the perceived risk of this investment reduce.”
28.6% of those surveyed by the IRCI who don’t currently own crypto said they would invest if there were better consumer protections in place. Another 26.6% said they’d buy crypto if industry regulation was improved.
Regulation is needed for continued growth
Przelozny said that “the sector still desperately needs regulation to catch up and provide greater security for both investors and cryptocurrency businesses.”
“I do think that once regulation comes on board, we’ll see a whole new class of investors into this space. And I think that’s what we’ve seen in other jurisdictions, like over in Singapore.”
Przelozny told Cointelegraph that he anticipates that older Aussies over 65 will make up the next big wave of investors as these regulatory issues are addressed.
“They’re looking for consumer protections from the government before they’re willing to take the plunge and enter the cryptocurrency market.”
Unsurprisingly, the 24 to 34-year-old age group was the most trusting of crypto with 27.6% saying they bought in to get rich, while disbelievers in the system are most likely to be found in the over 65 age group.
Related: Australian women owning crypto has doubled in 2021: Survey
According to the IRCI, Bitcoin remains the most well-known and popular cryptocurrency, with 89.1% of Australians surveyed saying they’ve heard of it and 21.1% actually owning Bitcoin. The second most popular crypto asset is Ethereum, at 11% reported ownership, up from just 5% in 2020.
The IRCI is an annual cross-sectional survey of more than 2,000 Australians conducted by PureProfile. Independent Reserve says its sample was reflective of the country’s gender, age, and geographic distribution.
We’re excited to announce the open sourcing of Kryptology. Kryptology is a cryptographic library for the Crypto community that will enable and empower developers to create novel crypto innovations with state-of-the-art cryptography.
At Coinbase, cryptography is a first-class citizen. We’re passionate about cryptography as a driver for innovation in crypto. It is the most important mechanism for delivering delightful user experiences, and it enables privacy solutions that will change the security paradigm.
Why do we believe this?
Crypto is founded on cryptographic innovation. As described in Bitcoin’s academic pedigree, Bitcoin used existing, but not-yet-production, academic cryptography (hashcash, Chaum’s E-cash, Merkle trees) with economic game-theory to solve the Byzantine Generals problem.
Crypto changes cryptography. The feedback loop is running at warp speed. Cryptographers created private transactions with zero-knowledge techniques in ZCash, The Internet Computer is built on new cryptographic breakthroughs, Monero uses ring signatures to gain confidentiality, skale is using BLS to create roll-ups to improve scale and reduce storage on-chain, and Mina and ZCash use Halo 2 and Pasta.
Coinbase also strives to bring near-future cryptography into production. zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators, FROST, and Threshold Signing.
While enabling further innovation is our primary goal, we also aim for Kryptology to elevate the standard for what is considered to be a robust, usable cryptographic library. The library provides developers with a toolbox of secure, audited, and easy-to-use APIs. Kryptology is designed to be misuse-resistant (i.e., “hard to screw up”), so developers can focus on what they do best. We hope this translates to more projects that build and grow the crypto ecosystem.
A guide to Kryptology, including full documentation, can be found in the repository. This includes common development issues and lessons learned from our years of experience with cryptographic implementations. We hope these learnings will be uniquely valuable for others that want to support developers and build great user experiences. Over time, our goal is to support a thriving ecosystem of new and working cryptography for many more applications. Check out our open source guidelines or get started here.
If you are interested in cutting-edge cryptography, Coinbase is hiring!
Meet Kryptology: Coinbase’s Open Source Cryptography Library was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Singapore, December 6th, 2021 — BSC-based (Binance Smart Chain) Era7: Game of Truth is set to open the sales of its first batch of NFT Mystery Boxes on 20th December 2021, paving the way for the launch of Era7’s most anticipated Play-to-Earn NFT Trading Card Game in the first quarter of 2022.
Era7’s journey into the blockchain gaming space is backed by some of the biggest names in the industry, who have rallied behind its vision and mission. To date, Era7 has completed its seed round and an initial private round of financing, led by Hashkey and MOBOX, and a dozen other renowned VCs and institutions including Huobi Ventures, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Good Games Guild (GGG), AU21 Capital, AlphaCoin Fund, Waterdrip Capital and more.
Funds will be directed towards the ongoing game development as well as marketing and operations. Notably, besides investing, MOBOX will also come on board Era7 as co-developer consultants, providing technology support towards the development of Game of Truth.
An Excellent Opportunity to Access Privileged NFT Prices
The upcoming NFT sale provides a good opportunity for early supporters to benefit from the privileged pricing of the unique trading cards. In the first batch of NFTs on sale, while the Mystery Boxes are priced the lowest, buyers will be able to enjoy privileged pricing across all NFT trading cards. Endowed with different features, all cards have intrinsic in-game value and can hold considerable upside potential in the TCG market as the trading cards gain increasing value alongside growth in the game’s popularity and a corresponding scarcity of the NFT cards on open markets.
Indeed, for fans of the game, this is the perfect opportunity to strategically collect cards and position themselves early in the game, not to mention an excellent opportunity to invest early at the lowest NFT prices for future returns.
According to Era7, they will also implement an NFT airdrop right before the NFT sales to reward the community for their continued support and commitment to Game of Truth.
Game of Truth aims to be a Benchmark for NFT trading card games
Era7: Game of Truth is the first trading card game to deploy the concept of NFTs and DeFi to captivate gamers with its unique Play2Earn features. Designed to drive traditional gamers to GameFi, Era7 gives them and blockchain gamers the opportunity to earn, own, and exchange in-game items with real-world monetary value.
By providing modestly competitive and fast-paced gameplay, combining combat and strategy, Game of Truth hopes to become every gamer’s choice. In a three-minute game, players may think about how to configure and strategize their greatest decks in PVP (player-versus-player), PVE (player-versus-environment), and other tournament types to win the game as well as token rewards.
The Era7 developers aim to establish a market-oriented approach for the Game of Truth. By combining cutting-edge technology and ground-breaking new gaming innovations, Game of Truth’s target of being a TCG benchmark in the world of GameFi looks poised to take off.
About Era7: Game of Truth
Era7: Game of Truth is a Play-To-Earn NFT-based trading card game (TCG). It offers the perfect combination of traditional gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi) to gamers, bringing an entertaining gaming experience while providing an avenue to earn.
According to Era7 ancient folklore, the seven races on the continent of Truth battle against each other for supremacy all year long, to vie for the title “King of Truth”. The victor from the Game of Truth emerges as the ruler of the continent whereby he and his race then enjoy the highest honors in the land.
Founded by core team members from internationally renowned game developers with over 15 years of valuable experience such as Com2uS, NCsoft, Nexon, and Netmarble, Era7 is backed by heavyweight VCs and blockchain institutions such as Hashkey, MOBOX, Huobi Ventures, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Good Games Guild (GGG), AU21 Capital, AlphaCoin, Fund Waterdrip Capital and more.
Following the tech journeys of four noteworthy Odisha personalities making their mark in the fast-developing blockchain space.
Blockchain technology offers a great many advantages to many industries, with the financial sector being one of the most notable examples. It has the potential to have an even greater impact in developing countries, where blockchain-enhanced fintech can help improve financial accessibility for the 1.7 billion unbanked people around the world through services such as peer-to-peer loans and alternative currency payments and investments.
This Is why it should come as no surprise that, while most of the first wave of cryptocurrency influencers such as Erik Voorhees, Charlie Lee, Tim Draper, Andreas Antonopoulos and many more all hail from first-world Western countries, it is from the developing countries that some of the technology’s biggest thought leaders can be found.
In fact, four highly respected champions of blockchain technology are Odia, referring to people who originate from Odisha, a state in the Indian subcontinent. Despite being one of the poorest states of the country, Odisha has produced four trailblazing journeys, united by both geographic origin as well as their respective challenges in the tech industry. In particular, these personalities are making their mark in the world of blockchain, in remarkably exciting times for disruptive technology.
Sopnendu Mohanty
Sopnendu Mohanty got his start in the IT industry back in 1995, following both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in information science. In 1997, he moved to Japan to join Citigroup’s product and services development division. He would stay with the company for 18 years, eventually being promoted to Head of Citigroup’s Asia Pacific Branch Operations, and then later to Head of Citigroup’s Global Consumer Lab.
In 2015, Sopnendu Mohanty left Citigroup and joined the Singapore government-run Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as Chief Financial Officer. At MAS, he has helped contribute to Singapore’s rise as one of the world’s top fintech hubs.
In addition to his work at MAS, Sopnendu is also an avid speaker and global thought leader in fintech, and an outspoken advocate for an accelerated transformation to a digital blockchain-based economy.
“Having a distributed ledger by design takes away the whole complexity behind settling things, checking things. And it allows some of the business rules to be built into the use cases — the payment process, the settlement process, the underlying business rules can be encoded to a single stream,” said Sopnendu Mohanty.
“There are two different processes in today’s world. There’s a process where you pay each other and there’s a process in which we exchange goods and services. Blockchain digital currency brings together these two processes into a single process in which you’re not only paying each other but also ensuring that goods and services are exchanged at the point of payment.”
In September 2021, the MAS granted DBS Vickers — a subsidiary of DBS Bank, the largest bank in Southeast Asia — a license to officially offer cryptocurrency services.
“This is a natural progression in any innovation and there has been a very clear growing interest in digital assets,” Sopnendu Mohanty said.
“Fintechs are always pushing banks out of their comfortable traditional finance space. It’s very encouraging for us to see DBS think about such new areas where they can add value and create a new service. This is truly a sign of the maturity of the Singaporean fintech sector. Here, we don’t see a difference between fintechs and banks. Both are complimentary, they come together and work together.”
Mriganka Pattnaik
Hailing from the ancient city of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, Mriganka Pattnaik got his fintech career off the ground with numerous internships even before he finished his technology Bachelor’s degree from ITT Guwahati in 2013. Upon graduation, Mriganka went straight to work at Bank of America as an analyst in their Mumbai branch.
Two years later, he left to found his first company, Datatrix Healthcare Technologies, to help people remotely order medication and home diagnostic tests from nearby pharmacies.
“I saw an opportunity to address a need and to this day, I believe that entrepreneurship is the most direct way to bridge these gaps,” Pattnaik said
“Unfortunately, there was a lot of regulatory ambiguity in the area of online pharmacies. It was difficult to understand the full picture in terms of risk. Through this experience, I understood how regulatory ambiguity can really hinder innovation and hurt early startups. Afterward, I moved to Singapore in 2016 to work at Luno, a prominent crypto exchange, to support strategy and country-specific execution across three continents.”
During his time at Luno, he witnessed firsthand the compliance challenges faced by digital asset businesses in diverse jurisdictions and the key role regulations play in the industry’s health and sustainable growth. He then joined the Entrepreneur First tech incubator where he met Nirmal Aryath Koroth, with whom he co-founded his second company, Merkle Science, in 2018.
Merkle Science is a risk and intelligence platform that helps companies and government organizations detect, investigate and prevent illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies.
“As blockchain and cryptocurrency gained popularity, more financial institutions, retail platforms and governments started adopting the technology. Unfortunately, as the legitimate use cases rise, so does its illegal use,” Pattnaik said. “In 2020 alone, it is estimated that more than 12 billion dollars worth of crypto was involved in illicit transactions.”
“Unsurprisingly, this has led to many governments around the world introducing new laws and regulations that govern how cryptocurrency businesses can operate. These new regulations seek to mitigate the risk that comes with cryptocurrencies. However, these new laws and regulations have made it difficult for companies to work with cryptocurrencies and they struggle to figure out how to comply. With these new laws, there is then a need for new-age solutions and this is where Merkle Science comes in. We have developed a suite of solutions designed to make use of the blockchain’s transparent and traceable nature in order to help businesses identify and protect themselves against criminal use,” commented Pattnaik.
Debajani Mohanty
Debajani Mohanty is the bestselling author of five books on blockchain and was ranked among the top 30 Blockchain influencers from India on Singapore Fintech news as well as the world’s top 100 blockchain social influencers by Piktale awards. Born in coastal Odisha, she studied Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at Sambalpur University before launching straight into what would become a 24-year career (and counting) devising software solutions for companies from India and, since 2020, England.
She got her feet wet with blockchain in 2017, from which point she has worked in development using numerous blockchain technologies. “The true potential of blockchain is yet to be realized,” Debajani Mohanty said. “We need much more dedicated research.”
Debajani Mohanty’s books range from broad blockchain overviews for new students on the subject, such as her five-star books “Blockchain for Self Sovereign Digital Identity” and “Ethereum for Architects and Developers”, to deep-dive courses on the specific blockchain technologies R3 Corda, Ripple and Ethereum. She has also published a novel focused on themes of the empowerment of women, titled “The Curse of Damini”, for which she was honored with the Arya award by Nobel Peace prize winner Kailash Satyarthi.
Since the beginning of her blockchain career, she has tried to share her learning through books, blogs, videos and live sessions at numerous blockchain summits in India and abroad. She stresses that “propagating knowledge especially to business leaders and decision-makers is the need of the hour, as they have the authority to carry forward this blockchain journey to the next level.”
According to Debajani Mohanty, the next big trends in blockchain are expected to be CBDC, Decentralized Identity and enforcement of data acts (GDPR, CCPA, PDPA etc.) in handling personal data leading to privacy-preserving solutions.
Naquib Mohammed
Born in the city of Cuttack, Naquib Mohammed studied information technology at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Bhubaneswar. He then spent more than a decade in information technology, starting as a software engineer then later as a business architect, working for companies across the globe.
“My interest in cryptocurrency really started to get serious after spending a few years learning and working on enterprise use cases of distributed ledger technology in the bull run of late 2019,” said Naquib Mohammed.
“As an enterprise architect, researching the growing IT market was a natural move, and this is where I noticed blockchain as an important part of Industry 4.0 technologies.”
Mohammed was invited to Australia in 2020 by invitation of the Australian government as a “Distinguished Global Fintech Talent”. There, he dove headfirst into blockchain technology, devoting 7–8 hours a day to study and learn the technology.
“During this tenure, I completed over 15 certifications in different areas of blockchain within a six-month span.”
In April of 2021, after working at another startup he decided to launch his own pioneering decentralized finance startup, MRHB (pronounced Marhaba) DeFi. This was to address what he felt was a major gap in a crypto space that excluded many communities due to their faith (in particular himself as a Muslim), lack of access and technological complexity. The demand for financial services which are consistent with faith principles is evidenced by the Islamic Finance industry, currently worth around $3 trillion USD.
In addition, Mohammed wanted to build a more empowering, ethical and community focussed project that would cater to those new to crypto and also address the negative perception created by extensive instances of fraud, risk and opacity in the sector. As such, he hopes to create a more ethical and inclusive project that benefits everyone regardless of faith.
“As our platform is based on very high ethical standards, one of our product offerings is a crypto-based donations platform, the DePhi, a decentralized philanthropy protocol, planned in Phase 2. We sincerely hope to attract investors from all walks of life who are interested in making sure their investments have some form of social impact in addition to benefiting from the wealth opportunities of the cryptoverse,” explained Mohammed.
“By approaching the new crypto economy with a more ethical approach from the very start, we can all do our part to create a more equitable and more inclusive future for all.”
A landmark project in the DeFi ecosystem, being the first to target the USD 3 trillion Islamic Finance ecosystem and other excluded communities, MRHB DeFi is notably backed by Polygon Technology. A prominent Layer-2 blockchain, Polygon is supporting the development of the first dApp focussed on the Islamic and ethical finance sector.
With their blockchain stories impacting different industries and use-cases, from regulations, compliance, intelligence gathering and security to education, ethics, inclusion, and philanthropy, these blockchain personalities are an inspiration to people all over the world who wish to be involved in the revolutionary technology.
As the blockchain and decentralized finance movements sweep across the world, we will undoubtedly see more professional representation from everywhere. Hopefully, blockchain innovators and startup founders from underdeveloped economies especially will find great success, for these are the regions where the technology can do the most social good. Financial services such as zero-fee payments and transactions, peer-to-peer loans and all manner of banking transactions for excluded communities are possible in the realms of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
We need only for more pioneers to step up and seize the opportunity.
Over the last few months, there have been several token launches on Terra. What has been noted, is that there have been two major challenges that continue to occur. First, the initial liquidity pools are just not deep enough. This causes an outrageous manufactured initial price pump, making all the insiders feel really good, but is quite unfortunate for the retail buyer as they are not part of that initial purchase. The second issue is that as soon as the token goes live, all the liquidity at the initial list price is sniped by bots in the first seconds, again forcing the retail buyer to buy in at higher levels.
White Whale has designed an initial token launch model that addresses both of these issues while at the same time bootstrapping our own protocol owned liquidity efforts… it is called “THE BOOTSWAP”
So what is a BOOTSWAP?
Here’s how it works, White Whale is utilizing the latest, freshly audited, open-sourced LBP code graciously provided to the community by the Astroport team. An LBP, or Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool, is a mechanism for launching tokens originally utilized by Balancer that is designed to defer bot activity by starting the token price high and allowing it to float down to price discovery over a pre-set period of time, say 72 hours. LBP’s are also utilized as fundraising tools as the team provides the initial liquidity at a disproportionate ratio, say (98/2 token/stablecoin) and as the tokens are sold the ratio eventually balances out to whatever target ratio is set by the team in the parameters (i.e. 20/80 token/stablecoin), allowing them to claim the stablecoins and so raise capital from the difference.
This is how it generally works, however at White Whale they are taking a slightly different approach. The team from White Whale has been signaling their intention to pursue Protocol Owned Liquidity for some time now, with that said, unlike most other LBP events, White Whale’s BOOTSWAP event will not be a token sale or fundraiser in any way. Absolutely none of the profits from the event will go to the White Whale team or incubating entities. The team funds will be deposited into the LBP pool (along with WHALE tokens) initially, and at the end of the LBP event, when the liquidity pool balances at our predetermined ratio of 50/50 UST/WHALE, same as your standard LP token… all of that liquidity will migrate straight to TerraSwap and will serve as the perpetual trading liquidity for the UST/WHALE pair. All of the corresponding LP tokens will be deposited into the White Whale War Chest and be owned by the protocol.
So what does this mean?
From its inception, White Whale should own the lion’s share of its own liquidity. That’s right… POL right from the start, and
It means that because this is not a sale or raise and all of the funds are going straight into the community-owned treasury, there will be no KYC requirements or trading restrictions for this event!
Questions that are commonly asked are: how does this benefit the regular retail buyer if the price already starts high? What if it stays high and never comes down? White Whale has thought this through and developed a solution for this scenario. Their goal is to distribute WHALE tokens at fair and honest levels to retail buyers. In order to do so, rather than being another project who under-fills the initial pools to manufacture a pump, the plan is to overshoot demand with our initial pool size. They will be depositing 100 million WHALE tokens into the LBP to start. Their reason for this is arguably refreshing – “Because F#&% The Bots, that’s why. They believe this will give everyone who wants to buy liquid WHALE tokens on the first days of trading an opportunity to do so at good levels without all the juicy initial liquidity being stolen by the bots. The starting price will be $1.00, so if bots want to snipe, that’s the price they will be sniping at. It will then float down to price discovery over a period of 72 hours, or until the target ratio is met
