Barely a decade ago, artificial intelligence was still something that was being scoffed at as the stuff of science fiction. Today though, anyone with a smartphone can see for themselves how ‘smart’ it’s actually getting, with numerous AI-powered apps being launched all the time, from productivity tools, virtual assistants, chatbots, facial recognition software, and autonomous devices. 

Currently, AI is one of the fastest growing technologies–perhaps, too fast–with the rate of data compute used for training AI doubling every six months, and investments pouring into the global industry at an annual growth rate of over 15% every year. 

But despite the rapid growth, AI is arguably, poorly understood. The technology is just too overwhelmingly complicated that AI programmers themselves don’t exactly understand how AI programs make decisions, and even the biggest names in the tech industry can’t agree on whether it will be a force for good or if it will bring about mankind’s demise.

This might be due to how research into AI is being conducted in a competitive arena instead of a cooperative one, with the biggest names like IBM, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft all building technologies within ‘moated platforms’ and racing against each other for market domination.

The solution currently being proposed with regard to AI is to use a decentralized approach, harnessing the power of community-driven data to establish global cooperation into AI research and development–an Internet of Artificial Intelligence (IoAI) so to speak. 

To decentralize the industry requires the use of blockchain technology–exactly what the developers of Openfabric are hard at work on, with the aim of bringing together a global community of programmers, researchers, innovators, investors, and users to tackle the AI question. 

What is Openfabric?

Openfabric is a Layer1 protocol built for establishing the groundwork for the ‘authentic AI revolution’ - wresting the direction of AI away from corporate tech giants and onto the greater global community and encouraging collaborative innovation towards scalable AI solutions. 

Inspired by the idea of a ‘primordial soup’, Openfabric hopes that a network where AI programs and developers can interact with one another will spontaneously lead to faster development, interoperability, and unlock more advanced features that would otherwise be overlooked within the siloed approach of conventional AI research facilities. 

A blockchain-based approach has a number of benefits over traditional AI platforms: 

First, decentralization will ensure that no single entity will be able to control AI data or information processing – something that should rightfully be prioritized given how a technology as powerful as AI should not be within the control of the few. A decentralized AI network is also more resistant to censorship and will also be more open and accessible for anyone to participate in.

Secondly, building an AI network on a blockchain will provide better security to enhance end-user privacy and guarantee intellectual property rights.  

Thirdly, a decentralized community will foster the development of standardized interfaces and solutions, addressing interoperability concerns for a wider user base.

A decentralized network, by design, is also more scalable, which means that it can support a large number of AIs and handle more data streams. 

Openfabric manages identity in a way that protects the user’s identity, reduces identity fraud, and strengthen online anonymity.

How do you use Openfabric?

From a user standpoint, Openfabric is a suite of three main products, namely the Openfabric Marketplace, Openfabric SDK, and Openfabric API. 

The Openfabric Marketplace is a digital hub where users can buy and sell AI services such as pre-trained AI algorithms or custom-made AI models for all sorts of use cases. The marketplace is also designed with low entry barriers so users won’t even have to possess any technical knowledge about AI in order to participate. 

The Openfabric Software Development Kit allows developers to build their own AI applications, providing access to a wide range of tools and programming libraries. These apps can then be later sold on the Openfabric marketplace. Meanwhile, the Openfabric API can also be used by programmers to integrate Openfabric with other existing platforms.

Openfabric AI applications occupy a wide range of use cases, anywhere from personal AI assistants, deepfake creation and detection, AI-generated art and audio, simulation and model designs, product development, and more. 

Openfabric already features a number of live AI programs.

Currently, there are already live AI tools available on Openfabric such as Memefabric, an AI meme-generator for Discord and Telegram, or Openfabric’s own AI crypto trading bot. There is even an AI drug discovery application that can be used in clinical drug research, among many others. In addition, there are over 70 ready-to-launch AI applications available, so watch this space for exciting developments.

How does Openfabric work?

Running such a large and complex network involving different AI programs requires an innovative approach to the system's architecture and protocol language. In other words, different programs must learn to abide by a common set of rules and procedures for fair and secure governance, and to do so, they must also be able to speak the ‘same language’, despite differences in programming. 

Decentralized Operating System

To address the first issue, Openfarbric hosts a decentralized operating system (DOS) to oversee the network's services, resources, and processes.

The DOS consists of a trusted peer-to-peer (P2P) network of nodes that uses virtualized, multidimensional consensus mechanisms. These mechanisms allow the network to make multiple decisions simultaneously, through a dynamic and adaptive process. Unlike legacy blockchains that only require at least 51% of the nodes to arrive at a consensus, in Openfabric, the number of nodes needed to agree on a decision varies according to the importance, security requirements, and impact of the event. 

Openfabric’s decentralized operating system introduces a novel dynamic approach to arriving at consensus. 

The system comprises three main layers: the application layer, which manages protocols for user-system interactions, the kernel layer for housing protocols for managing AIs, datasets, and infrastructure, and the resource layer for handling technological dependencies like IPFS and blockchain, and managing smart contracts for allocating and rating AIs and infrastructure providers.

The underlying P2P nodes are governed by a tokenized staking system using Openfabric’s own utility token, OFN,  which incentivizes positive connections with rewards and penalizes bad actors by slashing their stakes. 

Ontology-based protocol

Meanwhile, for the system to communicate effectively, Openfabric utilizes an ontology-based protocol. This allows AI developers to define how their algorithms send and receive data, in such a way that different AI algorithms can use the same data sets to execute their intended programming. 

This involves neatly categorizing data sets into multiple layers, that represents a standard format which different AI programs can interpret and utilize correctly. 

Openfabric’s ontology-based protocol

The OFN Token

Blockchain networks rely on tokenized economies, to encourage positive connections and deter bad actors. Openfabric AI's native utility token, OFN, serves as the fuel for this economy, providing the following utilities:

• Staking - Network participants can stake OFN and contribute to the ecosystem by providing data, infrastructure, or by functioning as network validators. 

• Rewards - Network participants can earn OFN rewards by deploying AI solutions, renting execution environments, or providing data sets for training AI programs.

• Payments - The OFN token will be used to access services on the platform. 

• Governance - As a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), holding OFN allows network participants to vote on parameters and future directions of the project. 

• Exclusive access - Holding OFN also grants access to exclusive products, early access to new releases, invitations to special events, and entry to exclusive communication forums such as on Discord. 

Tokenomics

OFN has a maximum supply of 500 million tokens, of which 62 million (or 8%) are already in circulation as of writing. 

OFN allocation are as follows:

Ecosystem – 33% (165  million OFN)

Seed – 5% (25 million OFN)

Private Sale – 14.8% (74 million OFN)

Public Sale – 4% (20 million OFN)

KOLs – 1.2% (6 million OFN)

Marketing – 2% (10 million OFN)

Liquidity – 7% (35 million OFN)

Innovators’ Fund – 10% (50 million OFN)

Team and Advisors – 18% (90 million OFN)

Partners – 5% (25 million OFN)

Team

Oopenfabric is headed by CEO and Founder Andrei Tara, who was a core developer for Elrond, and was also part of the advisory board for DevNetwork. He has also helped develope many projects including Paradine, Mayabo, and Sotec. 

Other team members include Ion Ceban, Nicolae Natea, Ioan Taban, Ovidio Costea, and David Costello. Collectively their experiences include having worked for Pacioli, TLabs, AUSY, Pentalog, Bosch, Honeywell, Connnatix, Inspiricon, DAOstack, and many more. 

Roadmap

Openfabric’s public testnet and its OFN token launched during the latter half of 2023. Meanwhile the 2024 roadmap is slated for development and unveiling of a number of technological and community features, including the platform’s validator selection program, enterprise features, and launching of its DAO. 

There are numerous ways to participate in the Internet of Artificial Intelligence.

Conclusion

Whether we like it or not, the one sure thing is that AI will be here to stay, and it falls upon the entire industry to make sure that AI solutions are steered towards the common good. Openfabric AI stands at the forefront of this responsibility, offering a platform that not only embraces the advancements in AI, but also prioritizes fairness, security, and accessibility. 

If successful, Openfabric AI will not just be shaping the future of AI, but also ensuring that it is a future we can all benefit from.

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References

4 Charts That Show Why AI Progress Is Unlikely to Slow Down

https://time.com/6300942/ai-progress-charts/

Statista – Artificial Intelligence - Worldwide

https://www.statista.com/outlook/tmo/artificial-intelligence/worldwide#

AI is now so complex its creators can’t trust why it makes decisions

https://qz.com/1146753/ai-is-now-so-complex-its-creators-cant-trust-why-it-makes-decisions

Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and the Feud Over Killer Robots

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-artificial-intelligence.html

Openfabric AI

https://openfabric.ai/

Openfabric Whitepaper

https://openfabric.ai/resource/openfabric-whitepaper.pdf

Openfabric Documentation

https://docs.openfabric.ai/

September of 2022 saw what is arguably the most significant software update in the cryptocurrency world when Ethereum switched from its mining-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol to a faster, more sustainable Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol, in an incredible engineering feat dubbed as “The Merge”. 

Ethereum, the second largest blockchain network–and housing an overwhelming majority of the world’s decentralized applications (dApps) – pulled off the transition with flawless precision, even as it involved uprooting its reliance on tens of thousands of mining nodes around the world, and utilizing PoS validators instead for securing the entire network. 

In simpler terms, this meant that there would be no more need for Ethereum miners with their expensive and energy-intensive GPU mining rigs (a huge win for the environment). Instead all it would take for anyone to participate in the network and earn Ethereum rewards was to put up a financial collateral – or a “stake”. 

Now this is the part where new problems spring up from fixing an old one. A network of Ethereum’s reputation would naturally of course, have high staking requirements, the exact amount of which was fixed at 32 ETH after the Merge. As of writing, this translates to around $115K, which is by no means a small amount of money. 

What does this mean then for securing the Ethereum network? From the outset, this presents a number of problems:

• It creates an extremely high financial barrier and discourages the community from participating as Ethereum validators. 

• Staking also meant locking up a substantial amount of one’s assets for a long period of time, during which the funds would be illiquid. 

• It also creates a highly centralized staking environment where only those with significant capital can afford to become validators.

• Even if one could reasonably afford setting up one’s own PoS node, the process is a very technical one and requires a lot of infrastructure expertise. 

As such, this is where a more inclusive solution is needed to empower anyone to participate as an Ethereum validator, without having to go through the aforementioned financial and technical hurdles. This is where Swell comes in as a platform that seems to offer one of the best liquid solutions to the Ethereum staking dilemma. 

What is Swell?

Swell is a non-custodial liquid staking and restaking platform developed by Swell Labs specifically to address the post-Merge issue that arose with the introduction of staking to the Ethereum network. Swell addresses this problem through a straightforward practical approach, by breaking down the role of PoS validator on ETH and delegating the responsibility  across a larger number of users who wish to participate in running the node collectively. 

In doing so, stakers can now participate in securing the Ethereum network for any nominal amount under 32 ETH and in return, receive a percentage of the profits of the node proportional to their staked amount.

What’s more, being a liquid staking platform, Swell issues a transferrable yield-bearing token, Swell Ether (swETH), that represents their staked ETH. This token can then be traded in the market as needed, or can be restaked to maximize yield using other DeFi strategies.

Through this simple approach, Swell manages to dramatically lower the barrier for participating on Ethereum, and greatly increases decentralization by exponentially increasing the number of users who are supporting the validator nodes for the Ethereum blockchain. 

Benefits of using Swell

For the individual user, Swell has the following advantages and benefits:

• Swell is a non-custodial staking platform, which means that users retain full control over their private keys.

• Swell provides yield without the constraint of locking up capital. 

• Swell provides higher yield opportunities all in one interface. Aside from earning passive income through staking ETH, users can likewise earn more rewards by restaking swETH to earn other yield-bearing tokens called rswETH.

• There is no minimum stake for participating in the Swell network. 

• No technical knowledge about staking is needed. Users only need to connect their ETH wallet to deposit their stake, as opposed to setting up a PoS node independently which requires technical know-how, appropriate hardware, and sufficient capital. 

• Users enjoy fully transparent and secure access in a fully democratized ecosystem.

• Users can access over 40+ DeFi services which are fully composable and integrated with the Ethereum ecosystem.

How to Stake ETH with Swell.

How does Swell work?

In its initial stages, Swell operated with a permissioned group of professional node operators, which will subsequently expand to a permissionless system wherein new node operators are added once enough liquidity has been collected to stabilize operations. 

When users stake their ETH on Swell, an equivalent amount of swETH is minted and sent to the user. Meanwhile, the protocol pools deposits together from different users until the minimum 32 ETH is reached, which the swETH protocol then deposits into the Ethereum contract to  acquire a validator key. Once this is done, the ensuing node can then queue in line along the consensus layer of the network for processing transactions and earning network rewards. 

The Swell staking process flow.

Meanwhile, the swETH tokens issued to users are ERC-20 liquid staking derivatives (LSD), which represents a user’s staked assets, as well as any rewards and penalties that the users’ funds accrue in the network while being staked. This can include consensus layer rewards, as well as MEV rewards (maximum extractable value) which are additional revenue earned from ‘tips’.  

The ingenuity of swETH is that they allow users to utilize their staked assets via proxy, enabling them to stake swETH on other platforms and DeFi protocols, and if they should choose to, sell to other users to instantly regain their liquidity. 

The following list outlines the full applications of the swETH token:

• Exit staking - swETH can be sold on decentralized exchanges to instantly regain their ETH. 

• Swell Vaults - extra yield can be earned by swETH holders through liquidity mining in the Swell Vaults. 

• Liquidity provider - swETH holders can use swETh to provide liquidity in third party platforms for earning  extra yield in trading fees and liquidity mining incentives.

• Lending and borrowing - swETH can be used to earn additional yield on external lending/borrowing DeFi protocols by supplying swETH, or using swETH as collateral to borrow assets.

Additionally, the underlying value of swETH accrues over time as the users’ ETH remains staked, making it more valuable in the secondary market. 

An example of the rate of accrued value can be seen in the exchange rate of ETH and swETH across a four-month period in the chart below:

Rate of accrued rewards for a user holding swETH. 

Swell’s exchange rate is managed by Chainlink’s proof-of-reserve oracle, which monitors the returns on Ethereum’s consensus layer on a daily basis and allocates the amount of swETH to be minted and the amount of ETH to return to users after their staking period. 

What is restaking?

In the Swell protocol, liquid restaking refers to the restaked liquidity deposited on the EigenLayer, which is used to secure bridges, oracles, Layer 2s, and other essential decentralized applications called Actively Validated Services (AVS) which also help manage and maintain the Swell protocol. 

Upon the release of rswETH v2 (Restaked Swell Ether, version 2), by restaking swETH, users will be issued the reward-bearing tokens, rswETH. The liquidity provided will be directed to specialized EigenLayer operators whose role is to validate transactions for the various AVS’s, who in turn issue restaking rewards to the swETH restakers. 

Currently users can ‘restake’ ETH directly on the EigenLayer, however, this feature is currently only available for users who can stake the full amount of 32 ETH to run a validator. Likewise, restaked ETH on the EigenLayer remains locked and illiquid for the user. 

Meanwhile rswETH will remain liquid and will continue to rise in price as the rewards accrue, regardless of where it is allocated.

Swell vs. other platforms

Swell has many other competitors for providing liquid staking on Ethereum, most prominent among them Lido, which has $35.32 billion in TVL. 

Comparatively, Swell offers a more simplified model for liquid staking, as well as one of the lowest cost staking options in the market. 

Swell has also invested heavily on interface, focusing on gamification and a “fun” approach to the staking process. For instance, Swell uses a nautical theme to package its Earn page and various features of its DeFi offerings. 

Prior to its token generating event (TGE), Swell has been rewarding users with ‘Pearl’ tokens, which can be exchanged for SWELL upon TGE. Meanwhile, the various DeFi stacks available on Swell have been quaintly named ‘Swell Voyage’ which has inspired the Swell community to assume the moniker of ‘Aquanauts’. 

Tokenomics and Governance

The Swell protocol is overseen by core contributors of the Swell DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). As a DAO, its members vote over proposals that determine the future directions of the network including matters of smart contract development, protocol parameters, node onboarding and management, treasury allocation, incentivization schemes, as well as future partnerships and programs. 

Aside from swETH and rsWETH, Swell will launch its own native token SWELL. Though its specific utilities and supply have yet to be announced, SWELL will serve a couple initial functions including DAO governance and voting, protocol growth incentivization through liquidity mining, referrals and air drop schemes. 

Meanwhile, as of writing, swETH has attained a circulating supply of 222,467 according to CoinGecko, with a market capitalization of $820 million. swETH has no maximum supply as its issuance is dependent on the number of ETH staked on its protocol at any given moment.  

Comparatively, Swell has accumulated approximately $1 billion in total value locked according to data from DefiLlama as well as from Dune. 

Team

Swell was originally created by the Swell Labs team, who serve as core contributors to the Swell DAO. 

Swell’s CEO and Founder, Daniel Dizon, is a blockchain entrepreneur and an active angel investor. Prior to foraying into liquid restaking and blockchain infrastructure, he was a Web2 entrepreneur and previously, worked professionally in corporate finance strategy and portfolio management.

Roadmap

Swell has recently successfully launched rswETH, developed with assistance from top-tier DeFi risk management firms Gauntlet and Chaos Labs, and audited by leading blockchain firm Sigma Prime. 

Also in the pipeline is a Layer 2 rollup for restaking aided by Swell’s partnership with AltLayer and EigenDA. With a TVL of approximately $1 billion across its restaked assets, Swell's Layer 2 will focus on liquid restaked assets on EigenLayer.

TGE for the SWELL token is expected to take place in mid-April of 2024.

Conclusion

Many liquid staking protocols are plagued by issues such as excessive complexity, subpar user experiences, and high fees that diminish staking returns. However, on all counts, Swell’s straightforward and low-cost approach provides convincing solutions towards enabling broader staking participation and as a result, bolstering the security of the Ethereum blockchain.

The exciting developments with the Swell protocol also seem to be perfectly timed, as the market is experiencing high optimism in anticipation of not only the forthcoming Bitcoin halving, but also a SEC approval of Ethereum ETFs, which are expected to fuel more adoption of cryptocurrencies and increased demand for Ethereum-based DeFi services and products. 

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References

Crypto’s Long-Awaited ‘Merge’ Reaches the Finish Line

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/technology/ethereum-merge-crypto.html

CoinDesk–How does Ethereum Staking Work?

https://www.coindesk.com/learn/how-does-ethereum-staking-work/

Swell Network

https://www.swellnetwork.io/

Swell Official Documentation

https://docs.swellnetwork.io/

Swell Airdrop x Eigenlayer — Staking & Restaking Guide

https://swellnetwork.medium.com/swell-airdrop-x-eigenlayer-staking-restaking-guide-cc44e187ba58

Swell’s Rise to Re-Staking Success

https://medium.com/coinmonks/swells-rise-to-re-staking-success-5ca0307481ab

Swell on X (Twitter)

https://twitter.com/swellnetworkio/status/1768525055099871364

Introducing rswETH

https://www.swellnetwork.io/post/introducing-rsweth

What is restaking?

https://www.swellnetwork.io/post/what-is-restaking

3 Things You Need to Know About rswETH

https://www.swellnetwork.io/post/3-things-about-rsweth

Addressing centralization concerns in liquid staking — Q&A with Swell

https://cointelegraph.com/news/addressing-centralization-concerns-in-liquid-staking-qa-with-swell

DefiLlama - Swell

https://defillama.com/protocol/lido

Dune- Swell

https://dune.com/swell-network/swell-network

As of writing, there is approximately $100 billion of total value locked (TVL) across all of DeFi applications, a figure that represents over a doubling from what it was barely half a year ago according to data from DefiLlama. Much of the surge is thanks to liquidity staking offered by the top two DeFi protocols, namely Lido Finance and MakerDAO.   

However, this combined TVL figure does not represent a fully accessible liquidity pool. The DeFi landscape is very heterogeneous with about 58% of funds currently stored on Ethereum, and the next 31% spread across nine other blockchains. Such fragmentation forces DeFi apps to build on multiple blockchains, a move which is more of a stop-gap solution than an actual cross-chain interoperability solution. 

What is lacking is a means to connect isolated liquidity sources from different networks without having to go through lengthy smart contract executions. As each chain is built differently, network time intervals and price feeds are not always in sync, hence processing transactions between different chains often ends up being troublesome and costly.

Optimizing liquidity across all of DeFi is a complex problem that requires addressing a number of things. First, different blockchains must have a more efficient means of communicating with each other, second, they must be able to execute multiple smart contract events in parallel, and third, they must be able to rely on a synchronized and uniform real-time price feed. 

Finding solutions to each of these issues are at the core of Entangle, an omnichain liquidity protocol with a vision of connecting all of DeFi into one seamless ecosystem.  

What is Entangle?

Entangle is an interoperability layer which acts as a foundation for decentralized applications (dApps) for facilitating value exchange and executing smart contracts between different blockchains.   

Simply put, by building on Entangle, dApps will no longer be limited to communicating only with one blockchain or ecosystem (as is the case with most dApps which can only function within their native network). Instead, they will be able to efficiently transact and derive liquidity from multiple blockchains, greatly expanding their utility and yield opportunities. 

For DeFi users, this is a game-changing proposition. Users will no longer have to be limited to using only the applications available within a single ecosystem, or be hassled with running separate DeFi strategies for each network.

Entangle empowers dApps with the following benefits: 

• Providing digital assets with cost-efficient cross-chain interoperability

• Establish trustless bridging between networks and cross-chain functionality between dApps

• Enabling smart contract automation even for multi-chain transactions

• Expanding dApp communities and resource ecosystems

But how does Entangle address the long-standing issues with interoperability and scalability? To understand its approach, we have to first see Entangle’s unique network architecture. 

How Entangle works: Bridging the EVM and non-EVM divide

Entangle is composed primarily of two main products, a communication layer called Photon, and an oracle-based data feed. 

The Photon messaging layer is unique as it is compatible with both EVM networks and non-EVM networks. For those who are unfamiliar with the distinction, it bears pointing out that EVM compatibility is perhaps the single most dividing factor when it comes to cross-chain interoperability. 

EVM or “Ethereum Virtual Machine” is simply a modular program that allows a network to execute Ethereum-based smart contracts. As Ethereum has an established majority share of the DeFi sector, many blockchains find EVM integration absolutely vital as it allows their own dApps to tap into an already established liquidity and user base. Networks such as BNB Chain, Polygon, Tron, Avalanche, and Cardano, all have their protocols built with EVM compatibility from the start, or have integrated EVM later on. 

Non-EVM protocols however, such as Solana, NEAR, Cosmos, and dozens of other smaller blockchains all run their own respective smart contract protocols. They prefer to remain outside of Ethereum as they appeal to developers and users who are looking for more cost-efficient solutions, as well as to investors who see them as having more room for innovation and growth. 

By ensuring both EVM and non-EVM compatibility, the Photon layer effectively removes the barriers between these two DeFi polar landscapes, creating entirely new opportunities for optimizing yield and cross-pollination of utility between dApps. More than that, it also optimizes communication between EVM networks thanks to its next component, its oracle-based infrastructure. 

Currently, Entangle has already set testnets to connect between Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Mantle, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, MultiVersX and SEI Network.

The Entangle Testnet app

Entangle as an Oracle network

Meanwhile, Entangle addresses the issues with smart contract execution and synchronized price feeds by basically functioning as its own ‘oracle’. 

An oracle is a specialized network that connects a blockchain with the outside world and vice-versa, feeding it relevant real-time data needed to accurately execute smart contracts such as price feeds and exchange rates. 

DeFi apps especially, need secure, verifiable and interoperable data which can be accessed on demand, and which adequately meets the parameters required for their varied functions. Currently, EVM networks predominantly rely on Chainlink, the most established oracle network for Web3. However, as Chainlink is largely non-compatible with non-EVM chains, this presents another problem when it comes to ensuring that smart contracts on either end of a transaction are receiving the same price feeds and at the same time intervals. 

Entangle’s oracle solution is to store data on-chain for easier processing and execution as needed, without having to rely on different networks’ varying time intervals, thereby also significantly lowering the costs needed for processing transactions. 

This setup is possible because unlike Chainlink, Entangle allows full customization for each dApps’ execution thresholds, allowing developers to design applications that are more streamlined for their specific use cases instead of having a one-size-fits-all solution. DApps that deal with sensitive data for instance, can set their execution thresholds at  a much higher rate, while routine processes can be set at lower thresholds for maximum efficiency and less network throughput.  

The Entangle network architecture, showing how it functions as an oracle for validating and aggregating on- and off-chain data. 

Entangle’s oracle network takes a page from the standard Proof-of-Stake (PoS) architecture, which requires nodes who would like to participate in validating data streams to first have a stake in the network, placing a safeguard against potential bad actors. In PoS, validators determine which data is accurate by a majority consensus. In return, they are rewarded with a percentage of the network’s profits proportional to their contribution, while nodes who consistently provide inaccurate inputs are penalized by having their stake slashed. 

In Entangle, these validators are agents which perform different tasks such as ‘transmitters’ who gather data from a broad range of external sources including decentralized and centralized exchanges (DEXs/CEXs)) and APIs. The data is then coursed through the blockchain’s ’Controller’ which uses a range of algorithms, including median, time-weighted average price (TWAP) and volume-weighted average price (VWAP). Other agents then sign off on the data before it is broadcast to the entire network. 

Meanwhile, the “Circuit” functions as a hub for the different external blockchains, and is responsible for collecting and aggregating data, and making it possible for smart contracts to be executed as a simultaneous event across multiple blockchains.

Additionally Entangle’s staking mechanism uses its own native token, NGL. 

How to use Entangle: the Liquid Vaults dApp

Liquid staking has become increasingly popular in DeFi as it allows users to continue leveraging the value of their assets even if they are locked in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chains. When previously, staked tokens were completely inaccessible for the whole duration of the lock-up period, liquidity staking issues its users with Asset Backed Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSDs) such as liquidity pool tokens (LPs) which are a direct representation of their staked assets. These LSDs in turn can be traded in the market, or utilized in other platforms for additional yield. 

Entangle simply takes this existing mechanism and empowers it further by widening the utility capabilities of LSDs. Through Entangle’s native dApp called Liquid Vaults, users can deposit their LSDs and utilize it to supercharge yield opportunities. 

Liquid Vaults is Entangle’s native vault for accessing liquidity across multiple blockchains. 

To illustrate an example, a user might stake tokens at a liquidity pool at Fusion X, which is a DEX native to the Mantle network. In return, Fusion X issues the users LPs equivalent to the value of the staked assets.

But since Mantle is a relatively smaller network, the utility of the LPs issued by Fusion X are somewhat limited.

What the user can do is to stake the LPs on Entangle, which stakes and auto-compounds the LP tokens. The user is issued a Liquid Vault in return as a receipt.

Users can even take it a step further by using the Liquid Vault receipts as collateral for borrowing USDC via Vendor.Finance, which can then be allocated for other DeFi opportunities. 

A step-by-step guide for using Liquid Vaults can be found here.  

To date, Liquid Vaults is deployed on nine networks and integrated with the following DEXs: Curve Finance (Ethereum), Pancake Swap (BNB Chain), Wombat Exchange (BNB Chain), Trader Joe (Avalanche), Stargate (Polygon), Stargate (Arbitrum), SpookySwap (Fantom), Stargate (Fantom), Velodrome (Optimism), Fusion X (Mantle), and AshSwap (MultiVersX).

The NGL Token

Entangle has its own native token, NGL, which has the following use cases: 

• NGL is used to set up one’s own validator to participate in the network and earn rewards. 

• NGL can be delegated to transmitter agents in exchange for a portion of their rewards. 

• NGL is used to connect dApps to the Entangle layer.

• NGL is used to pay for all gas fees for processing transactions on Entangle.

NGL token allocation

NGL has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, of which 30.6% are allocated for staking rewards, 9.8% for marketing and business development, 9.6% for liquidity, 12% for the Entangle team, 3% for advisors, 3% for airdrop, while the rest are distributed across public and private funding rounds. 

Team

Entangle is headed and founded by Faisal Mehrban, with Slava Korolev as co-founder. Mehrban is an Oxford graduate and has previous experience as Tech Programme Lead and Blockchain Advisory at Credit Suisse, and a Fintech consultant for Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. Meanwhile, Korolev is a fintech innovator with a computer science degree from Technische Universität Chemnitz. 

Other notable team members include Sergey Pogorelov, Amir Alnadi, Aziz Kenjaev, and Alexy Koninos, whose collective experience include working for Balancer, Tinkoff, Bing X, Overbit, TradingView, TON, and Neti. 

Community and Roadmap

Entangle has a healthy community of over 186K followers spread across its official Discord and Twitter (X) channels.  

Additionally, Entangle already has 10 blockchains connected to its testnet, with over 35 dApps and over 1.35 million transactions to date. The network aims to increase those numbers to over 13 networks and 50 dApps before the mainnet launching, happening sometime within February 2024. 

Conclusion

DeFi was meant to serve as a cornerstone for the democratization and expansion of financial opportunities, but it hasn’t quite achieved that yet due to the technological limitations of the current blockchain infrastructure. 

Projects like Entangle, which think big in finding solutions to interoperability, ought to be given more attention if the Web3 revolution at all is to succeed in truly creating an alternative global financial ecosystem. After all, the ability to seamlessly connect liquidity pools across diverse platforms will not only empower institutions, but also individuals worldwide in participating in previously inaccessible financial activities. 

Entangle also shows that DeFi continues to evolve and mature, which is a refreshing change from all the hype that used to define what the industry was merely a few years ago. 

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References

Entangle

https://entangle.fi/

Entangle Testnet

https://test.entangle.fi/

Total value Locked (DeFiLlama)

https://defillama.com/

All Chains TVL (DeFiLlama)

https://defillama.com/chains

Entangle Gitbook

https://entangle.gitbook.io/entangle/

EVM Blockchain Vs. Non-EVM Blockchain: what is the best solution?

https://www.scalingparrots.com/en/evm-blockchain-vs-non-evm-blockchain/#:

What is a blockchain oracle, and how does it work?

https://cointelegraph.com/learn/what-is-a-blockchain-oracle-and-how-does-it-work

Liquid Staking

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/liquid-staking

Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming peaked sometime in 2021, marked by the dominant success of Axie Infinity, the turn-based strategy game which had players battling and evolving NFT pets all day in exchange for earning real serious money. But as we all know by now, the P2E hype was rather short-lived, and hasn’t lived up to the predictions of it upsetting the mainstream gaming industry. 

Well, at least not yet. 

In hindsight, the reason was remarkably simple. When the market crashed in 2022 and Axie earnings plunged along with it (leaving many players unable to recover their investments) it was as if beer goggles finally came off and people realized that without the earnings, there was little reason to invest that much time and effort into the game. Axie Infinity, had been in fact–a grind, instead of being fun. 

The technology was certainly innovative, but the driving reason why players invest countless hours into a game is to immerse themselves in another world. To live out fantasy lives. Clearly, Web3 developers needed to go back to the roots of what ‘playing’ is all about. 

Which is why since the fall of Axie Infinity, proponents of P2E have been racing to come up with a game that would live up to the promise – combining the technological innovations of Web3 gaming, with the playability and immersiveness of mainstream Web2 titles. One of those passionately pursuing this quest is the game development studio, Aether Games. 

What is Aether Games?

Aether Games is the brainchild of Jens Peeters, who knows a thing or two about having fun, being an Esports celebrity manager, and at one time – the highest ranked World of Warcraft player at only fifteen. With his extensive background, he sees blockchain gaming eventually taking on the competitive route, churning out high quality games that would rival any other title out in the market today. 

To achieve this vision, Aether Games focuses at being at the intersection of multiple disciplines, dabbling not only in in-house solutions to Web3 gaming technology, but also in cinema production, augmented reality, and real-life merchandise which they see as all needed to create a truly high-quality blockchain game.

Artistry and cinematic quality production is one that Aether Games invests heavily into, as they see it as a crucial component in creating truly immersive gaming experiences. After all, most Web3 games have been criticized as focusing too much on just the technology and the economics for earning, while neglecting how the game is packaged. 

And the results are indeed promising as anyone can see from the CGI teaser for Gates of Eternity, their forthcoming augmented reality game, with painstakingly detailed creatures that look straight out of Hollywood CGI. Meanwhile, another game in the pipeline, Cards of Eternity, already features 200 stunning hand-crafted artworks to graze its NFT trading cards.

In fact, Aether Games not only makes the visuals and animations for their own games but for other gaming companies too, having already established a well-respected reputation as a CGI production house. Some of the iconic titles that their artistic team have worked on include God of War,  Farcry6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, and many more. 

Meanwhile, on the backend, Aether Games will also launch its own token, AEG, on the Polygon chain, which will power the Aether ecosystem for gamers, developers, and businesses alike. 

With its cinematic expertise and blockchain know-how, Aether Games hopes to break the barrier between Web2 and Web3 games, elevating decentralized infrastructure, asset ownership, and earning potential with seamless gameplay and artistry – to build a top-tier Web3 game.

Why should games be built on the blockchain? 

After the decline of Axie Infinity, one question that has often been asked is ‘should games be built on a blockchain at all?’

And with more emphasis now on playability and immersiveness rather than on play-to-earn mechanics, is there still any advantage to building on a blockchain rather than on a centralized server?

The answer is still a resounding ‘yes’, for the following reasons:

• Blockchains are more secure than centralized servers. Their decentralized infrastructure makes blockchains less prone to hacking attacks and exploits since there is no single point which bad actors can target. Not only does this protect player funds and in-game assets, but also players’ personal data.

• True digital ownership is only possible with a blockchain. In Web2 gaming, players' gaming assets and progress are stored in a centralized server which the gaming company owns. Should the company decide to discontinue a game or should their servers be compromised, a players’ hard won items and progress is lost.   

• True digital ownership makes unique gaming experiences possible such as interconnected gaming universes, where characters or assets in one game can be moved and used in another game. 

• Blockchain games allow for innovative business models, not only limited to play-to-earn or trading of in-game items in secondary markets. Real-world businesses for example, can purchase digital real estate within the gaming metaverse to put up a shop and offer real-world products.

Aether Games lineup

Aether Games is actively developing their flagship game set within the rich, dark fantasy universe of Aether, populated with a wide array of mythical creatures such as monsters, trolls, fairies, and elementals. Players can transform these beings into NFTs, thus gaining complete ownership. This game is distinctive for its 'dynamic' NFTs, which possess unique abilities and can be utilized across the expansive universe of Aether's game offerings.

Unlike traditional play-to-earn models, this game incorporates earning mechanisms akin to those found in many conventional games. These mechanisms are carefully designed to complement the gaming experience rather than overshadow it. Players can earn rewards through gameplay, which can then be used to acquire rare items or to enhance their creatures, thereby enriching the overall gaming experience without prioritizing profit over playability.

Alongside this engaging game, Aether Games is producing a CGI series named Aether Saga. This series delves into a mystical Viking world, telling the story of Holda, a wise völva, and Einar, a young man marked by a unique red birthmark. Their adventure starts in a Viking village, which is thrown into chaos with the arrival of dragons. Both the game and the series are key components of Aether Games' mission to create immersive experiences that span various media, merging traditional narratives with the forefront of digital innovation.

Cards of Eternity

Cards of Eternity is a free-to-play, turn-based card trading game reminiscent of other big titles in the genre such as Magic: The Gathering. In Cards of Eternity, players battle each other with a hero of their choice, with a customized deck consisting of different creatures, relics, and spells. With these, players can formulate endless unique strategies depending on the combination of attributes of the cards they possess. 

Different cards vary in rarity, from basic cards to ‘legendary’, creating a robust trading community and heightening the immersiveness of gameplay as players seek out rarer cards for their value in combat. What’s more, Aether Games has partnerships with Illuvium and Ultiverse, who will also have their own assets featured in Cards of Eternity.  

Aether Games unveils Cards of Eternity, a high-quality collectible card game now available on Epic Games.

Aether Saga

Aside from launching games, Aether Saga will be launched as a cinematic short story series to supplement and enrich the entire Aether Games franchise. The series will explore the immersive lore and backstories of Aether characters and creatures, through breathtaking artwork and stunning animation, and take players on interactive storylines throughout the vast Aether universe.

The AEG Token 

AEG is the utility token of the Aether Games ecosystem. It is an ERC-20 token built on the Polygon sidechain. Being native to Polygon, this allows users to enjoy faster network speeds and significantly lower gas feeds than on the Ethereum mainnet. 

• AEG is primarily used as a payment token for all transactions in the Aether Games ecosystem, such as the trade and rent of in-game assets and payment for services and merchandise. 

• AEG is used in-game for various purposes such as crafting NFT cards or NFT creatures, or for evolving NFTs to improve their abilities and characteristics. 

• AEG also has a staking mechanism via the Aether Vault. Staking AEG incentivizes users to hold on to their tokens in exchange for AEG or NFT rewards. 

Aether Games has officially announced that its initial distribution offering (IDO) will be happening on Polkastarter. The IDO will take place on the 6th of February, closely followed by the token generation event (TGE) on the 7th of February.

Previously Aether Games secured $4.5 million in token and equity funding, going on to raise a total of roughly $13 million in token sales. 

Team

Aside from CEO Jen Peeters, Aether Games has an impressive lineup which includes Sebastian Andres, Clément Martin, Denis Puhleacov, Dmitri Miachin, Zaur Akhundzada, Thomas Barrate, Andrzej Kostyuk, Kalani Lindsey, Yaroslav Dmytrenko, Remi Charles and Daniel Scott

The team has collectively worked in over 500 titles in the media and entertainment space, with contributions to massive titles (in addition to the ones previously mentioned) such as Hearthstone, World of Tanks, Final Fantasy XV, Love, Death & Robots, Viking: War of Clans, and League of Legends, just to name a few.    

The team also includes a dedicated team of professional actors for its production of the Aether Saga. 

Community and Roadmap

Aether Games has a community of over 5000 players in early access, with over 300K followers across Telegram, Discord, and X (Twitter). 

Aether Games has hinted at a lot of exciting collaborations in the future including mobile releases and partnerships with toy manufacturers and global food chains for its line of merchandise and physical collectibles such as table-top card decks. 

Conclusion 

Web3 gaming has already had its lows, but with all the development and exploration taking place in the industry, it’s a fairly good bet that it hasn’t gone anywhere near its highs yet. So much remains unknown on how the industry will be like five or ten years from now – which is just another way of saying how much growth and potential is brimming within the space, just waiting for that first runaway breakout title.   

And thanks to previous years, P2E developers have learned a lot, maturing in their vision and strategy. It's no longer about just finding ways to make money off game-play. For a game, true sustainability has always been, only a product of enduring playability – and outfits like Aether Games are putting playability back in the formula. 

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References

Aether Games

https://aethergames.io/

Aether Games on X

https://twitter.com/AetherGamesInc

Play-to-Earn Games Are Missing the Point. Here’s How to Fix Them

https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/02/24/play-to-earn-games-are-missing-the-point-heres-how-to-fix-them/

Blockchain Gaming Needs Triple-A Titles to Truly Go Mainstream

https://nftnow.com/features/blockchain-gaming-needs-triple-a-titles-to-truly-go-mainstream/

Exclusive Interview with Aether Games: Cards of Eternity, a Recognizable IP, and the Power of AR

https://gam3s.gg/news/exclusive-interview-with-aether-games/

Aether Games announces IDO on Polkastarter!

https://medium.com/@AetherGames/aether-games-announces-ido-on-polkastarter-2fb34634faec

Announcing Aether Games IDO Allocation Tiers

https://blog.polkastarter.com/announcing-aether-games-ido-allocation-tiers/?utm_content=

Aether Games Secures $4.5M in Token and Equity Funding to Revolutionize the Gaming Landscape

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/aether-games-secures-4-5m-120000078.html

It was renowned intellectual, fictionist and biochemist, Isaac Asimov who said that, “Every hour a scientist spends trying to raise funds is an hour lost from important thought and research.” As idealistic as it sounds, the irony is that the pursuit of scientific discovery and innovation often finds itself bogged down by the very means necessary for it to propel forward. 

Such is the paradox for scientists and researchers today, who not only have to be good at what they do, but also have to have the skill sets and the time to navigate bureaucratic hurdles, charm their way through funding constraints, and build networks for collaboration.

Often, funding is constrained not because of a problem with the science itself, but because of the lack of an adequate business model or profit potential.  After all, why build an everlasting light bulb when the ones that fizzle out after a year make for better business? Why bother with a cure for cancer when patients can be lifelong clients instead? 

Though such are the stuff of conspiracy theories, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to wonder not if – but how much truth is behind such conspiracies. Given all the shelved projects and prototypes out there, we can also wonder how far science would have gotten along by now if money had never been an issue.   

Fortunately, the landscape of scientific exploration is evolving, propelled by what could be the next paradigm shift for funding research–decentralized science or “DeSci.”

What is DeSci?

Like how it sounds, decentralized science is a concept that envisions building an open and public infrastructure for the funding, development, and dissemination of scientific research, as opposed to the conventional government, academic, or corporate-backed venture.

But unlike your typical online crowdfunding setup, DeSci leverages technology a step further, utilizing the Web3 stack to create a faster, more secure, and more cost-effective system without compromising openness and accessibility.

In the same way that Bitcoin can facilitate lightning-fast peer-to-peer financial transactions between anyone in the world (without the need for banks or institutional middlemen), the same kind of network can be used to remove all the red tape between scientists and investors, allowing for faster collaboration and resource sharing, and as a result–faster and more accessible scientific breakthroughs.         

How DeSci utilizes Web3 tech

Through the use of blockchain features such as cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and smart contracts, DeSci can take the whole hierarchy of a conventional funding system, and simplify and automate many of its processes, making it exponentially more convenient and accessible. 

Cryptocurrencies can make sending donations as convenient as sending a text message, while projects with their own tokenized economies can use these tokens to automate decision-making and consensus through DAOs. 

Meanwhile, the earning potential of crypto and NFTs in particular, can also be used to boost the fund-generating capacity of a project itself. Projects can launch their own line of NFTs which not only generate revenue through direct sales, but also through the royalties from each resale in the NFT market. 

Meanwhile, smart contracts can be used for various applications within a project. They can be used to validate data and results across the community, or even automatically allocate funds once certain parameters or objectives are met. 

Benefits of DeSci

Thanks to these blockchain features, a decentralized funding system is capable of providing the following benefits:

Faster breakthroughs - Removing bureaucratic processes allows scientists and researchers to focus more on the science itself, accelerating the pace of discovery and innovation.

Reduced bias - A decentralized approach can mitigate bias in research outcomes, as a wider network can provide a diverse range of perspectives and greater scrutiny of the validity of findings. 

Global participation - Worldwide open access can take down geographical and political barriers, and allow researchers to share existing knowledge and build upon each other’s work. Meanwhile, anyone with an internet connection can conveniently and securely donate funds to support a project of choice. 

Transparent resource allocation - With the use of a blockchain ledger, all fund transactions are publicly accounted for, ensuring a fairer and more equitable distribution to deserving participants. 

Incentivized structure - A tokenized system can divert potential profit from a research project to the community itself ( as opposed to a corporation being the main beneficiary in a traditional system). Monetary incentives can also be given to good actors who uphold the network protocols and penalties given to bad actors. 

DeSci projects to investigate

GenomesDAO removes the middleman between between pharma/research organizations and an individual’s genomic data.

AntidoteDAO

AntidoteDAO, a pioneering blockchain initiative, dedicates its efforts to funding cancer research projects through innovative revenue streams. The AntidoteDAO Treasury, fueled by three distinct sources - initial NFT mint sales/secondary market royalties, the $C4C Token's transaction tax, and direct donations - forms the financial backbone.

The $C4C Token, a tradable asset of AntidoteDAO, can be obtained through contributions to the project, unlocking various utilities and rights. Additionally, AntidoteDAO engages the community through an NFT collection, accepting direct donations to the treasury via NFT auctions.

The NFT Library envisioned by AntidoteDAO provides valuable utilities, including charitable donation receipts, exclusive NFTs, merchandise rewards, IP NFTs, and governance rights. With a commitment to advancing cancer research, AntidoteDAO has allocated substantial funds to support crucial projects and organizations in the quest for a cure.

GenomesDAO

Genomes.io, established in 2018 and headquartered in London, is a leading genomic data security company founded by Dr. Mark Hahnel and Aldo de Pape. The UK-registered company offers the public access to clinical-grade whole genome sequencing, personalized genomic reports, and secure data storage through their DNA Vault.

Notably, users retain full ownership and control of their genomic data, contributing to research while maintaining privacy. Genomes.io extends its services to organizations and researchers, providing DNA Vault technology for secure and participant-owned genomic databases.

Distinguishing itself through data ownership, technology partnerships, and whole genome sequencing, Genomes.io pioneers responsible and transparent genomics, empowering individuals and advancing medical innovation.

LabDAO

LabDAO operates with the mission of advancing progress in the life sciences by enhancing accessibility to scientific tools. In an ideal world, scientific potential wouldn't be hindered by funding limitations or restricted infrastructure. Unlike the success of open source code in information technology, the biomedical field faces challenges such as high costs and low reliability.

LabDAO aims to bridge this gap by establishing an open exchange for wet-lab and dry-lab tools, introducing standards for reproducibility, and encouraging contributors to improve biomedical tools. This approach creates a collaborative environment for scientists to seamlessly share specialized tools and services, streamlining experimentation, replication, and global knowledge-sharing within the scientific community.

Molecule

Molecule is an open marketplace which connects biotech companies, academics, and scientists with investor communities for therapeutic research. Their point of difference is the use of blockchain protocols that enable the investors to directly govern the research and own any findings that result from it. This presents a novel pharmaceutical model which makes it easy and convenient for the patient collectives to be the actual stakeholders in the project.  

PsyDAO

PsyDAO operates as a decentralized organization focused on advancing psychedelics research within the web3 and crypto framework. Utilizing open-source models like IP tokenization and IPNFTs, it aims to establish a collective consciousness for ethical psychedelics development. The membership is inclusive, allowing pseudonymous engagement and emphasizing privacy protection.

PsyDAO's innovative IP tokenization system, developed alongside Molecule and VitaDAO, facilitates open research markets and strives to democratize access to psychedelics benefits while preventing monopolies and promoting community governance.

TLDR

The Longevity Decentralized Review or “TLDR” addresses perennial problems for scientists and academics, specifically with the high fees required for having their work peer-reviewed and published in academic journals before getting any public attention. With the use of a decentralized network, researchers and reviewers can be directly compensated for their work, while papers are more extensively scrutinized and are validated through a wider consensus network. 

Halogen

Halogen positions itself as a scientific engine, challenging the limitations of traditional academia. It addresses the current system's inefficiencies, controlled by large journal companies and competing entities, hindering progress. Halogen seeks to establish an advanced collaboration platform, offering scientists a seamless environment to define and solve problems collectively.

The platform's features include a unified hub for collaboration, standard-building, dynamic cross-pollination between fields, and an interactive knowledge graph. Positioned as the base layer for decentralized science (DeSci), Halogen aims to enable decentralized funding and peer review at scale, providing a viable alternative to existing academic structures.

VitaDAO

VitaDAO, a tokenized governance protocol, with the aim of funding unconventional yet groundbreaking projects, emphasizing moonshot ideas with transformative potential. With a primary focus on aging and longevity research, VitaDAO adopts a decentralized, member-driven approach, leveraging blockchain to overcome traditional barriers in funding, regulation, and public skepticism.

Over $4 million has been allocated to date for research initiatives, reflecting VitaDAO's commitment to accelerating progress in longevity science. Their innovative exploration of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) showcases a strategic effort to create environments fostering scientific breakthroughs.

Conclusion

The growing traction of the DeSci movement serves as compelling evidence that blockchain technology is evolving beyond a hype-driven landscape into a thriving industry replete with authentic solutions to the inefficiencies and shortcomings of the web 2.0 era. Beyond the realm of memecoins and flashy NFTs, crypto and blockchains are proving to be serious and groundbreaking technologies with profound real-world, and even life-saving, implications.

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Anyone old enough can remember what a grand time it was when social media first erupted into the scene with the likes of Friendster, MySpace, followed soon by the first iterations of Facebook and YouTube. 

All of a sudden, logging onto the Internet was no longer a passive activity–which back then consisted mostly of just checking emails, doing research for homework, or browsing business pages. The Internet transformed into something else entirely, as people started taking all of their experiences in the real world (no matter how personal or trivial) and sharing them online to a worldwide audience. 

It seemed that the original promise of the ‘world wide web’ was finally coming into fruition. Web 2.0 as it was called, was a paradigm shift  from a mostly “read only” experience to an unprecedented era of interconnectedness, democratic expression, content creation and global conversations. 

However, the decades since then have made it clear that the lofty aspirations of social media often clashed with the centralized nature of their corporate management, resulting in data privacy issues, content manipulation, and power concentration. This case was made no more apparent than in 2021 when Facebook was the focus of a US Senate inquiry, following revelations published by the Wall Street Journal of how Facebook had systems in place that prioritize divisive content and gives special privileges to high-profile accounts for the sake of profit. 

These limitations of Web 2.0 have fueled the rise of a new decentralized approach to social media, leveraging the use of blockchain technology to rectify past shortcomings and usher in Web 3.0 as an era of user empowerment, data ownership, and network resilience.

What is decentralized social media?

Decentralized social networks differ from their Web 2.0 counterparts by housing user data and content on a blockchain network rather than on centralized servers which are wholly controlled by corporate entities.

Blockchains are governed by their respective user communities themselves, through algorithmic consensus mechanisms such as Proof-of-Work (PoW) or Proof-of-Stake (PoS). These same mechanisms, which are responsible for securing and handling the financial data of massive cryptocurrency economies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, are also the perfect network infrastructure to handle the billions of user data for the next wave of social media platforms.   

But unlike centralized systems wherein control is in corporate hands, a decentralized approach champions heightened privacy and security, granting its users unprecedented ownership and authority over their personal data, digital identities and content creations.

Decentralized social media is key to free speech online

Recently, mainstream social media such as Facebook and X (Twitter) have been going through increased criticism over issues of censorship, with more and more users opting to close their accounts or explore other available platforms. Specifically, these concerns include: 

• Inconsistent moderation – Social media policies and algorithms have been found to either favor or suppress certain users or viewpoints in order to influence political outcomes or protect commercial interests.

• Lack of transparency - Many social media users who have had their content removed or accounts taken down often report a lack of clarity with their supposed violations of content guidelines. 

• Biases and discrimination - Automated moderation tools are not effective in handling content that contain nuances. Content which are of educational, artistic or cultural value are often removed or flagged as inappropriate simply by containing certain keywords or images which may not be outright offensive.

• Inability to appeal - When content is removed unfairly, users often find it difficult if not impossible to contact the platform’s support and appeal for a reversal.

• Inability to participate in decision-making - For platforms that are meant to be user-centric, it is quite ironic that decisions are left at the mercy of a small, powerful minority without users having a say in how they want their experience to be.  

• Susceptibility - Even with content moderation, mainstream social media platforms struggle to control external forces that aim to exert influence over online communities through the use of fake accounts and bots.  

On a decentralized platform however, users can create and share anything without having to be concerned about content moderation. Overall, decentralized social media offers the following advantages when it comes to free speech:

• Censorship-resistance - Without a central point of control, decentralized social media is free from the influence of governments, corporations, or any other third party, allowing for more diverse perspectives and ideas to proliferate and be shared among communities. 

• Transparency - In a blockchain, all transactions are recorded on an immutable ledger, allowing for the authenticity of content to be validated by any user, increasing trust in the network. 

• User authentication - User accounts are also verified and authenticated through a public key infrastructure, ensuring that content and interactions are legitimate and organic, while prohibiting the proliferation of fake accounts and automated bots. 

• Community governance - Users themselves can participate in the direction and development of the platform, or even with the formation and implementation of content guidelines through voting mechanisms with the use of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Another advantage of building social media platforms on blockchains is that it opens them up to ready integration with cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as better alternatives for content monetization. This effectively removes the corporate middleman between creators and their audiences, and creates free market conditions where creators are incentivized to come up with quality and reliable content. 

Though not yet household brand names, platforms like these have already been around for quite a while since the mid 2010s, with the likes of Mastodon, Steemit, Minds and DTube. Newer players are also constantly entering the scene such as Lens, DiamondApp, and friend.tech providing more alternative means to generate revenue directly for users. Extending on this concept, platforms such as OpenCampus allow members to create a custom educational experience paired with a supportive network.

Mastodon is a popular microblogging site with a familiar feel to Twitter/ X.

The current downside however is that decentralized platforms still struggle with attracting a large user base, which greatly limits the earning potential and quality of content given the limited competition. A small user base for a self-governing platform also makes it more likely for bad actors to manipulate the majority, as with the case with Steemit in 2020, when a corporate takeover was perceived by users as a threat to the integrity of the system, causing a massive user dropoff and a significant decline of the platform.

Some analysts however, look back at the incident with Steemit as proof of concept of democracy being hardwired in a decentralized platform. Because of blockchain transparency which allowed Steemit users to account for the tokens that could be used to manipulate the governance vote, the threat was detected from a mile away and the community jumped in to intervene on its own accord–something which would definitely not be possible on the likes of Facebook or X. 

Conclusion

Though still a fledgling movement, decentralized social media is already starting to make its points heard. In fact, mainstream platforms are already trying to get onto the blockchain, which should be an indicator that they too are in anticipation of the imminent shift to Web 3.0. Reddit, for example, already has its own user reward cryptocurrency, Moons (MOON) while X and Instagram are also already tinkering with NFT integration. It is unlikely however, that these platforms would adopt a fully decentralized structure anytime soon.

But whether decentralized social media will eventually take off is more likely just a matter of ‘when’. After all, in a world that is getting more and more digital everyday, it definitely won't be enough that we just migrate our real world experiences and memories online, but more imperatively–our rights to privacy and free speech.

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Technology in the 21st century has been an incredible boon for dating. Ever since the rise of social media, chat rooms and dating apps, finding someone compatible with your own personality and preferences has for the most part, been a lot simpler than it used to be. In fact, finding “the one” on an online platform is already the norm already among this generation of digital natives. But even so, most of us were unprepared for just how far technology can push the boundaries of romance when AI came into the dating scene.   

Enter the world of AI girlfriends: virtual companions powered by artificial intelligence, designed for the purpose of companionship, emotional support, romantic or erotic connections–and who can even be tailor-fit to your own liking.  

Why AI girlfriends?

True, from the onset the idea of having a computer program for a girlfriend might just seem outright depressing. But anyone who has ever been in a relationship also knows how frustratingly messy it can get at times, with many often getting emotionally scarred for life when things end badly. Meanwhile, for some, finding someone who feels ‘right’ can often seem like a hopeless pursuit. And for others who struggle with self-confidence or hectic work schedules, going through the ‘trial-and-error’ rituals of meeting someone can be more of a burden than something to look forward to.  

As a result, cases of loneliness and social isolation today are so much more prevalent, that quite a significant segment of society have taken to alternative means to fulfill the need for intimacy and companionship. One only needs to check on memes, for example, to find that living alone–but with a lot of pet cats–is a generally preferable relationship than being with someone who isn’t working out. 

But cats are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to where people will go to fill in the holes in their personal lives. In Japan for instance, it is not that uncommon to ‘rent’ someone as a girlfriend or boyfriend to take out on a date. Actually, these hourly rental services are legitimate businesses that promote their services as ‘unique opportunities for companionship… without the complexities of traditional relationships.’

Japan also hosts the extreme end of the spectrum, wherein people have given up on being with other people completely. One particular phenomenon is the obsession with ‘dakimakura’ or love pillows that are imprinted with the life-sized images of celebrities or anime characters. Needless to say, dakimakuras aren’t just regarded as pillows, but are treated as ‘companions’ for sleeping, with some of the latest models implanted with speakers and motors that allow them to ‘talk’ and ‘move’ around in bed. 

Someone has even gone as far as marrying his dakimakura, while others have tied the knot with other anthropomorphized objects or characters in video games. As early as 2009, a Japanese man was reported to have married a Nintendo DS character in a ceremony that was broadcast over the Internet. Meanwhile in 2018, another Japanese man married a three-dimensional anime hologram.

With all of the aforementioned examples, the leap towards having a relationship with an AI doesn’t seem that quite far-fetched anymore. In fact, they tend to point to AI as a much more logical solution, given the range of communication and near human-like interaction now possible with current AI language models. 

The appeal of AI girlfriends

AI girlfriend apps have been around for a while in recent years, with some of the more popular platforms including DreamGF.ai, Replika, and Eva AI already comprising millions of users worldwide. For many who resort to silicon companionship, there are many benefits to choosing an AI girlfriend or boyfriend:

• Companionship on demand – An AI companion can be accessed at any time for companionship or intimacy, and can be someone to talk to about any topic.

• Emotional support – An AI companion can have therapeutic benefits, by actively listening to users and providing encouragement and empathy, and can be particularly valuable during times of stress or emotional distress.

• Customization – AI platforms often allow users to customize their AI’s personalities and avatar appearances to their preference. Some even allow users to pick their AI’s backstory and interests, providing another layer of realism as if getting to know an actual person. 

• Compatibility, ease and convenience – An AI companion can be someone to talk to without fear of being judged, or running into social or cultural barriers. 

• Versatility – Besides offering emotional support, AI companions can also function in various roles, such as being an ‘online secretary’ to remind you of your schedules, or to give you restaurant or music recommendations. Some AIs are even multilingual and can help you practice learning a new language, for instance. 

• Novelty – The idea alone of having a virtual girlfriend can be appealing by itself to science fiction and technology enthusiasts, and may provide a refreshing outlook into the future. 

Blockchain integration

But with such powerful technology meant to engage with users’ most personal and intimate details of their lives, concerns naturally arise when it comes to data privacy, with many proponents of AI arguing that the only way to execute it right is through integration with blockchain technology. Currently, up and coming blockchain projects are already exploring the intersection between these two emerging technologies. 

With the use of a blockchain, user data is not housed in a central server, but is spread across a decentralized network, offering heightened security and ensuring data integrity. Likewise, in the same way that blockchain ledgers are used to attribute ownership over digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain ledgers can also be used to assure AI users that they retain their ownership rights over their personal data, and even to the code of their customized AIs.

Building on a blockchain platform can also leverage other features such as the use of digital tokens or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to create in-app economies, reward systems, or self-regulating communities (DAOs) to further ensure the transparency and trustworthiness of such platforms. 

Introducing Naifu: your virtual companion

In the ever-evolving realm of artificial intelligence companions, one name stands out as a comprehensive virtual companion – Naifu. This distinctive AI project, undertaken by the ImgnAI team, aspires to transcend the conventional role of digital assistants, with the aim of becoming an ideal companion in the virtual world.

Promotional material about Naifu showcases a wide range of capabilities that set her apart from the ordinary. Much like with expansive language models such as ChatGPT, Naifu is designed to excel in answering questions, solving complex problems, and fulfilling a diverse array of requirements. Whether it's engaging in meaningful conversations, tackling intricate inquiries, or assisting with various tasks, Naifu seeks to provide proficient support.

Users will be able to choose from a variety of personality models, enabling interactions with Naifu that resemble conversations with a trusted friend or a familiar confidant. With Naifu, users can expect a reliable companion who is readily available to assist with professional responsibilities, answer everyday queries, and engage in creative endeavors without limitations.

Early access to Naifu is now open

Conclusion

No doubt about it, we truly are standing on the threshold of an AI-driven future, with how artificial intelligence has already transformed the way we work, communicate, and now–with the way we build social bonds through technology. Though there are plenty of ethical, societal, and philosophical questions raised by having relationships with AI companions, with enough foresight and commitment to ethical development, advancements in this kind of technology might actually turn out to be advancements in human perspective and insight as well.

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Anyone who has entered the crypto-sphere since the explosion of assets enabled by Ethereum’s ERC20 token standard knows how it can be quite a hurdle getting over their initial fears spurred from the negative press. This is heightened by the warnings from skeptical friends or concerned family members who have lost, or know someone who has lost a lot of money in online scams or fraudulent crypto projects. 

For beginners especially, who may still be unfamiliar with how cryptocurrencies work, the naysayers do seem to make a point. After all, how can something intangible–something that you can’t physically hold in your hands, have any value at all? As a newcomer, the notion that some numbers you just view on a screen can be worth substantial sums can sound too baffling to be true. 

It is quite natural–and wise–to feel some level of  apprehension before exchanging your hard-earned cash for any cryptocurrency. But the more you understand what cryptocurrencies are and how the technology works, the more you can set aside your doubts and see the opportunities they present for the future.

How is crypto legit?

To understand why cryptocurrencies have value, it can be helpful to ask why ordinary money such as dollars, euros, or pesos, have any value in the first place as well. 

When you think about it, government-issued currencies (also called “fiat” money) are merely numbers that are printed on paper. The paper material itself has no value, but because they are backed by the government as legal tender, people are able to put their trust in it and believe that they carry the value they represent. 

In fact, besides trust in the government, there is not much else backing the value of fiat money. Ever since the gold standard (a monetary system which fixed the value of currencies against actual gold reserves) was abandoned globally, the value of fiat currencies has since then, completely depended upon the flow of trade between nations. In short, fiat currencies’ values are simply derived from the legitimacy bestowed upon them by the governments that issue them.

Now when it comes to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or Ethereum, trust plays a part as well when it comes to their perceived value, but through a completely different approach.  

In crypto, trust is not derived from an authority such as a government, but rather facilitated through a decentralized network called a “blockchain”. A blockchain is a complex global network which operates completely through automated algorithmic protocols–without any central authority overseeing it. The protocol itself resides across the entire network, which effectively removes any single point of failure, making the network practically impossible to hack or influence. This security gives communities the confidence to put their trust and their money in the technology. 

In fact, blockchain networks are also called as “trustless” protocols since their algorithms allow different parties to transact with one another without these parties needing to put their trust on each other beforehand, or even without knowing anything about each other at all.

Crypto vs fiat

Fiat, by the standards of today’s technology, is already a crude invention, and cryptocurrencies were created to address the many flaws and pitfalls when it comes to its use. Bitcoin itself, the very first cryptocurrency which was developed in 2009, was specifically designed to address the problems with centralization and what many are calling a ‘broken banking system’.

• Fiat has no supply cap -  Because fiat is not backed by anything tangible, governments and financial institutions are free to create more money as they wish. Though this can be useful at times when the economy needs a jumpstart, more often, this leads to inflation, devaluing the currency itself, and creating more economic problems.

• Banks and other intermediaries can get in the way - Because fiat is subject to government and regulatory control, this means that not everyone is really free to spend their money as they wish. Institutions are needed to oversee large transactions, often causing delays. Meanwhile low-income communities and the unbanked are often hampered by regulatory measures from participating in greater financial opportunities that would otherwise benefit them the most.

• Fiat is too slow for an increasingly online world - Using cash for money transfers, and remittances can be a time-consuming and expensive process. Banks often require verification checks and documents before proceeding, and may deduct a hefty fee for their services. 

Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, offer many practical and technological advantages over fiat currencies:

• Most cryptocurrencies have fixed supply caps - Because cryptocurrencies reside within self-regulating networks, the supply of many cryptocurrencies are often fixed, ensuring that they retain (or even increase) their value over time. Bitcoin for example, has a fixed supply of only 21 million BTC that will ever be in existence. Meanwhile, some cryptocurrencies have different systems in place as various utilities and ‘burning’ mechanisms to automatically control their token supply.

• Cryptocurrencies allow for direct anonymous transactions - Crypto transactions eliminate the need for a middleman to validate a transaction, allowing for direct peer-to-peer transfers without the need for either party to divulge their identity or any information about themselves. This makes crypto transactions significantly faster, more secure, and less costly than bank transactions.

• Crypto transactions are transparent and secure - A blockchain’s ledger can be viewed by anyone at any time, adding another layer of security and integrity as this means that all of the supply of a particular cryptocurrency can be accounted for by the entire network community. 

• Transactions are fast and convenient - Crypto transactions are instantaneous, requiring no more effort than it takes to send a text message, making it very ideal for payments and remittances. 

In fact, the advantages of cryptocurrencies are such that even governments themselves are paying attention. Already, many countries are looking into launching their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) which are basically fiat money in cryptocurrency form, utilizing the same blockchain technology. Though marketed as being ‘a combination of the best of both worlds’, CBDCs have their own fair share of supporters and critics alike, and it remains to be seen as to how they will be received by the general public once they are launched. 

Crypto doesn’t just stop at being ‘money’

If those advantages aren’t enough to convince anyone that crypto is the future of money, then discussing its applications within the emerging Web3 landscape might tip the scales for those who still have doubts.

Since a blockchain is an online network, the applications of crypto don’t stop at just being a new kind of payment system. Some blockchains such as Ethereum or Solana, can do more than function as a decentralized ledger. In actuality, these networks are more of ‘decentralized servers’ which means they can host a more widely distributed version of the Internet. In other words, these networks can run their own apps and store information without relying on centralized servers–heralding a completely new age of data privacy and security.

How do blockchains and cryptocurrencies play a role in Web 3?  Besides decentralized finance (DeFi) replacing traditional banking platforms and making online transactions faster, more secure, and foolproof, here are just a few to begin with:

• Redefining social media and cloud storage - With decentralized technology, users will be able to have full control over their personal online data, resolving concurrent privacy issues and unwanted third party infiltration. 

• Tokenized online economies - With cryptocurrencies, various decentralized applications such as online gaming, content sharing platforms and metaverse worlds can have their own streamlined economies to ensure that it's the users and creators themselves who profit directly from their online activities instead of mega corporations such as Google, YouTube or Facebook. 

• Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) - Blockchain technology already has the capability to redefine the traditional political or corporate hierarchical structure. Through algorithm-assisted protocols, organizations can conduct their operations in a less centralized manner, relying instead on the tokenized votes of their entire communities for making decisions. 

• IoT and AI applications - With other emerging technologies lined up such as Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), decentralization can be utilized to ensure that these technologies are used responsibly and ethically, and decisions voted on by communities instead of being left in the hands of the few.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrencies are more than what they seem upon first glance, and we're merely scratching the surface of their potential for future applications. One thing should be clear though–the future is decentralized, and as for cryptocurrencies - their permeance is undeniable.

With crypto comes the opportunity to democratize finance, technology, politics, healthcare, arts and many other fields currently burdened with an ever-increasing concentration of power taken by a select few. So, to clarify, crypto isn't a deceitful scheme, it’s the antidote to the status quo and couldn’t have arrived when we needed it more.

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The tech industry has always been the domain of companies who capitalized on their ‘first-mover advantage’. Instead of proverbially ‘exploding into the scene’, brands like Apple, Amazon, eBay and Uber created the scene themselves and never left. Web3 is no different with the likes of Ethereum who made the scene for dApps and OpenSea for NFTs.

So when a latecomer like Blur suddenly snatches the spotlight from OpenSea, it's hard not to pay attention. Especially when people have been claiming the NFT bubble to have burst for some time already. Yet sales on Blur soared last February–at one time seeing a 361% increase, worth $460 million–within a week, making OpenSea’s $12 million sales for the same period look a bit amateurish.  

So how did Blur manage all this so late in the game?

What is Blur?

Blur is an NFT marketplace on Ethereum which launched only in October of 2022, after only less than a year in private development. Blur’s main selling point is that it was designed primarily for professional NFT traders and provides a plethora of advanced tools and sophisticated services.  

Most prominent among these are Blur’s aggregator capabilities, allowing users to browse NFT listings even in other NFT marketplaces; as well as powerful bulk-buying options for really serious collectors and NFT whales. Additionally, there are currently zero transaction fees for trading on Blur. 

Blur services and capabilities

• Aggregator - Blur allows users to browse and analyze collections not only on its site, but on multiple platforms at the same time to compare prices and detail characteristics. What’s more, you can make purchases from other platforms even through Blur. 

• Bulk buying - Traders can buy multiple NFTs in a single transaction, securing purchases quicker and saving on gas fees. 

• Floor sweeping - in NFT trading, means buying a huge number or all of the items at the lowest asking price. 

• Snipe reveals - gives users the abilities to spot rare items across different marketplaces faster.

• Portfolio analytics tool - track users’ sales efficiently and get updated portfolio valuations based on real time data.

The Blur marketplace designed for the professional NFT trader. 

The Blur blitzkrieg

Blur not only went head-to-head with OpenSea, but went straight for the jugular with a well-executed ‘vampire attack’. Aside from charging zero transaction fees, they also implemented a unique royalty system that runs completely counter to OpenSea’s.

In NFT marketplaces, creators profit not only from directly selling their NFTs, but also from royalty fees from succeeding sales. Being the pioneer marketplace, OpenSea made royalty fees mandatory to attract creators to launch their collections on its platform. However, OpenSea also made it so that creators can’t collect royalties from sales on any other platform at the same time. Listing your collection on any other platform would automatically set your royalties to “optional” on OpenSea. 

This didn’t sit right with Blur, whose stand is that creators should be able to collect royalties on all marketplaces that they whitelist–and not be forced to just pick between selling on OpenSea or on other smaller marketplaces that couldn’t stand up to OpenSea’s popularity. In a bold statement, Blur decided to enforce full royalties on collections that block OpenSea.

And as the numbers prove, Blur won the hearts of NFT creators in ‘one fell swoop’. Not to mention the series of aggressive airdrop campaigns that have raised massive revenues. 

The BLUR token

Blur has its own native cryptocurrency with the ticker BLUR, which users earn by trading on the platform or by providing liquidity. BLUR also functions as a governance token for the Blur DAO which gives holders voting rights on the protocol’s future directions such as determining the fee rate, as well as the protocol’s value accrual and distribution. 

The first BLUR airdrop was completed last February to much anticipation, marking the end of the first round which released 360 million tokens, or about 12% of the total supply. Blur took a gamified approach by issuing “care packages” which were based on users’ activities on the platform, with some users reporting to have received as much as $3 million worth of tokens. 

Blur’s second airdrop was issued in April. To maximize earnings for this airdrop, users’ were encouraged to engage with the platform by buying, selling, and listing NFTs.

Tokenomics

BLUR has a total supply of 3 billion, all of which were minted during genesis, but which will be made available over the course of four to five years. The allocation during this period will be as follows:

51% to Blur community members (1.53 billion BLUR)

29% vested over four years to core contributors (867.60 million BLUR)

19% vested over four years to investors (563.63 million BLUR)

1% vested four to five years to advisors (36.76 million BLUR)

Founding team and backers

Blur was co-founded pseudonymously by “Pacman” who only revealed himself in the wake of Blur’s success as Tieshun Roquerre who attended MIT but dropped out to found crypto domain startup, Namebase. Other team members include developers and creators who have worked previously with Citadel, Five Rings Capital, Twitch, Brex, Square, and Y Combinator.

Blur raised 11$ million from initial investments from Paradigm, 6529, Cozomo Medici, dhof, Bharat Krymo, Zeneca, OSF, MoonOverlord, icebergy, Deeze, Andy8052, and Keyboard Monkey. 

Conclusion

Blur’s accomplishments in such a short span of time are nothing short of legendary considering the adversary it had to pit itself against. Add to its impressive lineup of investment backers and the huge success of its airdrop, and there is very little room for improvement or criticism.  Especially during a bear market and after the so-called “bursting of the NFT bubble”. Perhaps there wasn’t any NFT bubble at all. Maybe Blur is really just showing us here how NFTs are a mainstay for the web3 economy. 

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

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References:

Blur Overtakes OpenSea as Ethereum NFT Trading Skyrockets

https://decrypt.co/121768/blur-opensea-ethereum-nft-trading-skyrockets

NFT Marketplace Wars Heat Up As Blur’s Airdrop Drives It To The Top Spot

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeorshimron/2023/02/25/nft-marketplace-wars-heat-up-as-blurs-airdrop-drives-it-to-the-top-spot/?sh=5410b9612f91

Blur.io: How to earn royalties on Blur

https://mirror.xyz/blurdao.eth/vYOjzk4cQCQ7AtuJWWiZPoNZ04YKQmTMsos0NNq_hYs

Here’s What You Need To Know About Blur’s Upcoming Season 2 Airdrop

https://coingape.com/blur-season-2-airdrop-details/

Blur Foundation - Governance

https://docs.blur.foundation/governance

What is Blur NFT Marketplace?

https://www.datawallet.com/crypto/what-is-blur-nft-marketplace

Blur Founder 'Pacman' Revealed as 24-Year-Old High School, MIT Dropout

https://decrypt.co/121950/blur-founder-pacman-high-school-mit-dropout

An Introduction the New Marketplace Blur

https://nftnewstoday.com/2022/10/27/an-introduction-to-the-new-nft-marketplace-blur/

The Rise of Blur: How it Beat OpenSea and became the #1 NFT Marketplace

https://coinsbench.com/the-rise-of-blur-how-it-beat-opensea-and-became-the-1-nft-marketplace-63b38644b46a

When it comes to NFTs, finding a worthwhile project could be quite tricky. Unlike cryptocurrencies which you can evaluate objectively based on utility or technological innovation, NFTs, to the uninitiated, seem to be mere ‘eye candy’ pieces, leaving most people (even those already familiar with crypto) baffled as to why anyone would spend millions to buy a piece of digital art. 

But as it is with any kind of collectible, whether it be baseball cards or action figures, the value of any item is simply a reflection of the eagerness of its community. Desirability (and thus value) is derived not just from ownership, but from one’s inclusion into a community of a shared culture. 

Simply put, when looking for an NFT project to get into, one of the best things to consider is to look at how engaged its community is with the project. And we’re not just talking about how actively people flip their NFTs–but also in the way the project captures the imagination and creates a world of its own for its followers. 

And currently one of the best examples of that, is 0N1 Force. 

What is 0N1 Force?

0N1 Force is a collection of 7,777 unique Ethereum-based NFTs, each depicting an 0N1 (pronounced "OH-knee") –warrior citizens of a futuristic cyberpunk world called the Ethereal Enclave. Each 0N1 is meticulously hand-drawn by Bryan Lie, also known as IMCMPLX. 

Similar to other PFP (profile picture) collections, each 0N1 features unique rarity attributes such as masks, bomber jackets, hoodies, kimonos, and various headwear and skins.  

But what sets the 0N1 Force apart is that the collection is steeped in incredibly deep lore and backstory, in line with its vision of establishing a storytelling community that thrives as a ‘digital social network with no boundaries’.  

This thinking has led to a global community which comprises art enthusiasts, artists, and celebrities including Logan Paul, Bobby Kim, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Steve Aoki. The community itself has supported and propelled the project forward, helping create a vast mythology that underscores the 0N1 Force project.

0N1 is a collection of 7,777 unique PFPs

0N1 Lore

0N1’s backstory revolves around a place called the Ethereal Enclave, a sprawling megacity and home to millions of life forms. The city itself was created by seven beings known as the Genesis Y0KA-1. These beings in turn were created by the Emperor's Eye, which was the first to emerge from the ‘One Source’ or the fountain of infinite potential. 

Using the energy harvested from the One Source, the seven Y0KA-1 laid down the structure and the technology that formed the Ethereal Enclave. Over time, the Y0KA-1 transformed into more powerful classes of beings called B4K3M0-N0, then to golden eyed 0N1, and eventually into the all-powerful K4M-1, all of which are represented in the NFT collection. 

The story continues that the Enclave continued to grow immensely, with its skyline consisting of pyramids, spired pagodas, and technologically advanced skyscrapers, all surrounded by invisible force fields. Controlled microclimates were able to regulate disease and pollution, which allowed the 0N1 to live prosperously for eons.

However, with the passing of time, the 0N1 became complacent. With the sudden death of the Emperor, the technology that sustained their lives began to malfunction, and a shift occurred within the One Source, causing panic among the Enclave's residents.

New forms of authority began to surface from the ensuing chaos, and clans formed to claim their districts. The 0N1, who once forgot about the Emperor, now gather in force, donning their mechanical Nano Suits, in preparation to protect themselves and to fight to restore balance in the Enclave.

0N1 Utility 

As a PFP collection, the 0N1 NFTs are meant to be used primarily for profile pictures or avatars on platforms such as Twitter, Discord, or GitHub. But 0N1s aren’t just visually striking eye candy.

True to building upon storytelling as the main driving force behind the collection, owning an 0N1 gives, among  other things, exclusive access to the upcoming 0N1 Force digital comic series, which is planned to expand more on the collection's characters and storylines.

The comic book will also feature the same eye-catching visuals as the NFT collection and is already underway in collaboration with artist Cromagnus and comic producer Josh Blaylock.  

Moreover, members of the 0N1 Force NFT community will have exclusive access to new NFT releases from the 0N1 Force team, such as the 0N1 FRAMES of which only 7,777 are available–one for each 0N1 NFT, which can also be used in the future as a pass for exclusive events and airdrops. 

01N Frames

The 01N FRAMES are the second NFT release from the 01N Force team and which faithfully plays into the storyline, in fact–they are the ‘Nano Suits’ for each 01N warrior. 

Each 01N FRAME is likewise tied to and redeemable only through ownership of a specific 0N1 NFT. Redeeming the FRAME is completely free, and owners will only have to shoulder the gas fees for minting. 

In the future, 0N1 Force plans to expand to other NFT assets such as virtual land, vehicles, and other accessories, which are also all tied to the original 0N1 NFT. This model is meant to drive value return to 0N1 holders, as the original 0N1 NFT keeps on expanding its utilities and allows for more engagement with the brand, partners, the community and the storyline.  

0N1 Force also envisions future releases to include such utilities as ‘character morphing’ to upgrade the character traits of one’s 0N1. Sharing or lending frames and accessories is also a clear possibility given how each of NFT can be recalled and returned to the original holder, while original 0N1s are kept in cold storage.

0N1 Frames are Nano Suit armors tied to each original 0N1 NFT. 

Recent acquisition

Last month, a group of investors composed of former executives from Binance and Yield Guild Games bought the 0N1 Force project through a community buyout led by blockchain investment firm Old Fashion Research (OFR) for an undisclosed amount. 

With the acquisition, the group intends to invest significant funds to establish 0N1 Force as a leading metaverse-native IP. They also plan to hold a 50 ETH Artist Fund to support the development of the planned graphic novel series while supporting community talent. 

Community and market stats

0N1 has 88.7K followers on their official Twitter page and another 11.5K on Instagram. 

According to nft.stats.com there are currently over 3700 owners of 0N1s with the average floor price at $1,900 at the time of writing. 

The most expensive purchase was for K4M-1 #1 (one of the first seven 0N1s in the origin storyline) for $110,000 last February. 

Conclusion

Given the strong investor and community backing It’s projects like 0N1 Force that seem to disprove what critics have been calling the ‘NFT bubble’ –which was also supposedly to have burst in mid-2022. But moving on into 2023 and its apparent we’re only still seeing what fresh innovations and opportunities are still widely possible with NFTs. As it claims, 0N1 stands at the intersection of art, storytelling and technology, and like the Ethereal Enclave itself, is clearly pushing out its walls and widening its borders into the beyond. 

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

References

0N1 Force

https://www.0n1force.com/

What is 0N1 Force?

https://www.kraken.com/learn/what-is-0n1-force-nft

0N1 FRAMES: IMAGINE A FUTURE…

https://medium.com/@0N1FORCE/0n1-frames-imagine-a-future-ccd24b22030b

NFT.STATS.COM: 0N1 Force

https://www.nft-stats.com/collection/0n1-force

NFT project 0N1 Force bought out by group including former Binance, YGG execs

https://www.theblock.co/post/213460/nft-project-0n1-force-bought-out

While a lot of NFT collections out there try to be strikingly eye-catching and ‘cool’ at first glance, Bryan Brinkman knows a thing or two about how to make pastel colors and subtle subjects–like cutout clouds or clumps of falling string–make you think and feel something. 

A graphic artists and animator by trade, Brinkman brought his storytelling skills to the NFT space in 2020, and has since then been prolific with hundreds of pieces in his catalog featured across various platforms such as SuperRare, OpenSea, NiftyGateway, Async, and Art Blocks. His most recent standalone piece, Automatonomy, is listed at Sotheby’s (which is still open for bidding at the time of writing). 

“Cloudy Thoughts” from bryanbrinkman.com

Even while he was making the leap to NFTs, Brinkman was already racking up an impressive resume, having worked on HBO, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, as well as SNL. He won four Emmys for ‘Outstanding Variety Sketch Series’ for the visual effects he worked on for SNL in 2020 and 2021.

Meanwhile, his NFT work is reflective of the influences he often cites in interviews, in particular, the animations of Don Hertzfeldt, which convinced him that one can convey profoundness even with ‘just stick figures’, and that one ‘doesn’t have to be Disney’ when it comes to animations.  

As a nod to the “stick figure” aesthetic, Brinkman came up with his own simplistic formula to distinguish him from much of the same repetitive NFT motifs. In an interview with Anna Seaman of Morrow, he described how he decided to commit to just five pastel tones, or what he terms as “candy coating colors” to come up with his own signature style. Inadvertently, his signature also creates a nuanced thread (pun intended) which connects many of the pieces to one another, whether intentionally or not. 

And though his color scheme might come off to most people as light or uplifting, the colors sometimes mask serious or even troubling underlying messages–often personal commentaries on the developing role of technology and the blockchain on people’s lives. In Swing for example, the NFT space is depicted as hung up precariously on just a few strings, while in Dis/Connected one gets the sense of the isolation from working completely online. 

Which does not mean to imply that he is at all ‘anti-technology’ (which would be incredibly ironic for an NFT artist). In fact, Brinkman is seriously interested in the new creative opportunities that come about with any new technological update. In a podcast interview with The Nifty he talks at great length about the role of generative art and how he used technology to come up with new ways for creative expression such as ‘system-based art’ for his Nimbuds and Nimteens collections. 

Nimbuds

Screenshots of animated NFTs from ArtBlocks.io

Launched in 2021 on ArtBlocks, Nimbuds is a collection of 400 ‘cumulonimbus buddies’ or cutout cloud faces which seem to be hung on Brinkman’s signature colored strings. As animated NFTs, each cloud is said to have its own ‘personality’ through its facial expressions and eye and mouth movements–which are also the traits that factor into each piece’s rarity.

Which is what sets it apart from other PFP (profile picture) sets (such as BoredApes or CryptoPunks) whose traits are defined algorithmically based on a predefined set of traits to choose from. Nimbuds does not rely on any predetermined traits, but rather uses JavaScript coding to generate each Nimbud’s eyes and mouths uniquely for each piece.

At the time of writing, the floor price for a Nimbud is at 1.4 ETH on OpenSea, with the highest sale at 13.5 ETH.

Nimteens

Screenshots of animated NFTs from ArtBlocks.io

A follow up collection to Nimbuds launched in January of this year, Nimteens is described as a collection of 400 ‘cumulonimbus teenagers’ who also have unique traits and personalities, this time including hair colors and styles, hand gestures, as well as ‘accessories’ such as glasses, bow ties, and even acne. Similar to Nimbuds, Nimteens uses vanilla JavaScript to generate their rarity traits uniquely.  

The floor price of a Nimteen is at 0.1799 ETH at the time of writing on OpenSea. The highest sale so far is 1.2 ETH for a Nimteen that is comedically holding up a finger on each hand. 

Final note

Bryan Brinkman is undoubtedly one of the more prominent NFT artists to date, with impressive sales and a career that seems to be just getting better and better. And in a space that’s cluttered with overused zombie and punk motifs, and dark, trashy and repetitive pieces, it surely doesn’t hurt to be the nice guy playing around with refreshing clouds and balls of string. 

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

References

Digital Art – Bryan Brinkman

https://www.bryanbrinkman.com/digital-art

An interview with Bryan Brinkman

https://annaseaman.medium.com/i-use-a-candy-coating-of-colour-to-get-people-to-listen-cfcf16ddc000

CAA Signs Emmy-Winning Multi-Media Artist Bryan Brinkman

https://deadline.com/2022/05/bryan-brinkman-multi-media-artist-signs-caa-1235032386/

Bryan Brinkman on Generative Art in the NFT Space

Most Influential Artist: Bryan Brinkman

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2022/12/05/bryan-brinkman-most-influential-2022/

With the tedium of a year-long crypto bear market now looking like something we can discuss in past-tense, we haven’t been spoiled with many legitimate projects that have performed consistently well after launch. But despite the series of financial meltdowns that have seen other protocols spiraling, there’s one platform that not only has held its ground, but has consistently grown by many key metrics.

GMX, a decentralized spot and perpetual exchange, has the numbers to claim it as one of the biggest successes among decentralized exchanges (DEXs). It’s also the leading protocol in terms of total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum with a trading volume exceeding $89 billion  as of writing. 

What is GMX?

As a decentralized exchange built on Arbitrum and Avalanche, GMX offers swaps on a number of leading Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Avalanche (AVAX), Chainlink (LINK), Uniswap (UNI), and stablecoins Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), and Frax (FRAX). 

However, unlike other DEXs which only offer direct swaps, GMX is able to offer its users perpetual swaps – a type of futures contract but without a fixed settlement date. 

• Spot exchange - allows users to make market and limit orders. 

• Perpetual exchange - allows for long and short positions with up to 50x leverage. Market, limit, take-profit, and stop-loss orders are also available.

GMX also highlights low swap fees and zero price impact as one of its main points of difference. With zero price impact, this means that trades are executed exactly at the marked price, even for large trades. 

GMX also provides the same convenience as with other DEXs, as users can immediately start trading just by connecting their wallets, without the need to set up or verify an account. 

What are perpetual trades?

Perpetual trading is a type of futures trading, wherein traders do not trade with the assets directly (as with spot trading) but instead trade futures contracts. Futures contracts are simply agreements between the buyers and sellers to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price and time in the future. 

In commodities, futures contracts are carried out as a safeguard between producers and traders in case of market fluctuations between the time it takes to produce the goods and sell them in the market. In stocks and cryptocurrencies, futures contracts are made to speculate on price movements to gain massive profits through the use of leverage, or to manage risks with huge investments. And since trades are carried out with contracts, futures trading allows for traders to trade without necessarily owning any of the assets themselves. 

With perpetual trading, the main advantage is their flexibility and liquidity, as traders can enter and exit positions at any time without worrying about expiration dates.

How does GMX work?

GMX is able to offer its users zero price impact through an automated market maker (AMM) and a system called “dynamic pricing”. With dynamic pricing, the exchange does not rely on order books for its market prices, but instead relies on real time data from Chainlink oracles, which aggregates them from the prices on leading volume exchanges. This makes the platform’s prices consistent with everywhere else and limits the chances of slippage.

Instead of an order book market, trading relies on a “unified” multi-asset liquidity pool which earns its providers fees from providing liquidity as well as from fees collected from swaps and from opening and closing positions in leveraged trading. 

Users who provide liquidity for the platform are given liquidity provider tokens called GLP, which represent the size of their share of the pool and rewards collected from fees. GLPs are only minted accordingly with every deposit, and likewise burned when any of their corresponding assets are redeemed, thus functioning as an accurate index of the assets in the pool at any given time. 

GLP swap fees adjust accordingly for each indexed asset, according to their supply. So if an index asset falls over or below its target weight, its fees are adjusted to incentivize users to balance its supply in the pool. 

GLP can also be staked to earn escrowed GMX and ETH rewards for LP rewards. GLP accrues a large portion of the platform’s fees –70%–, as GLP holders essentially function as the counterparty to all perpetual traders’ trading positions.  

The GMX token

Meanwhile, GMX also has its main utility and governance token of the platform, also called GMX. Staking GMX allows for the users not only to vote on community proposals for the DEX, but also rewards the stakers with 30% of the generated fees from the entire platform. These staking rewards are then distributed in three ways:

• Staking GMX rewards users with escrowed GMX, multiplier points, or Ethereum (ETH) and Avalanche (AVAX) for staking on Abitrum and Avalanche respectively. 

• In turn, escrowed GMX can also be staked for more rewards, or vested over a year to be converted in GMX tokens. 

• Meanwhile, multiplier points can be used to compound ETH and AVAX rewards.  

GMX Tokenomics

GMX has a projected total supply of 13.25 million tokens of which 8.5 million are currently in circulation as of writing. The GMX supply is closely tied with two other protocols, XVIV and Gambit – who share the same anonymous founders as with GMX. 

• 6 million (45.28 %) for XVIV and Gambit token migrations. 

• 2 million (15.09 %) paired with ETH for liquidity on Uniswap

• 2 million (15.09 %) reserved for vesting for escrowed GMX rewards

• 2 million (15.09 %) for the floor price fund

• 1 million (7.55 %) for marketing, partnerships and community developers

• 250,000 (1.9 %) to be distributed to contributors over two years

Conclusion

On its own numbers alone, GMX already seems well poised to become a favored platform when it comes to trading cryptocurrencies in a permissionless and automatic way. Further, the derivatives market in the crypto industry has observed a significant surge of 114% from December 2022 to January, now accounting for a substantial 70.3% of the total crypto market. With this development, it seems improbable for the platform to relinquish its share of crypto customers anytime soon.

References

GMX: https://gmx.io/#/

GMX Gitbook: https://gmxio.gitbook.io/gmx/

GMX Token Terminal Dashboard: https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/gmx

Arbitrum TVL - DeFi Llama: https://defillama.com/chain/Arbitrum

GMX Stats: https://stats.gmx.io/

Cointelegraph – What are perpetual futures contracts in cryptocurrency?https://cointelegraph.com/explained/what-are-perpetual-futures-contracts-in-cryptocurrency#:~:text=Perpetual%20futures%20trading%20allows%20traders,case%20of%20such%20financial%20instruments.

Crypto Derivative Volumes Saw Speedy Growth as Prices Rose in January: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/02/08/crypto-derivative-volumes-saw-speedy-growth-as-prices-rose-in-january/

GMX: The perps DEX of the future: https://www.stakingrewards.com/journal/gmx-valuation-staking-the-perps-dex-of-the-future/

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

We’ve barely even started with getting acquainted with how revolutionary the impact of the blockchain is going to be to our everyday lives. It’s only been a little over just a decade since Bitcoin was launched, and we’re still only just laying the foundations for DeFi, play-to-earn gaming, the Metaverse and Web 3.0. But even so, something else is coming up over the horizon that’s an even more outright earth-shattering piece of technology–and it’s already leaving everyone mind blown with just a few taps on a keyboard.

And unlike the esoteric concepts of decentralization and the blockchain, AI (short for artificial intelligence) comes out to bat straight out of the stuff of your everyday science fiction. With the likes of ChatGPT or Midjourney, anyone can just type in a few simple prompts to get your original 800-word essay, your legal contract, your marketing slogan, your metered poem, your steampunk landscape or your noir photograph–churned out with “human-like” machine precision in mere seconds. And all that with alarmingly miniscule effort on the part of the user.

And as if that weren't enough to leave us speculating just how AI will change our lives forever, what more for when we eventually manage to combine AI capabilities with the security and flexibility of a decentralized blockchain platform? 

It seems like the future can’t get here fast enough, since that’s exactly the idea behind ImgnAI, a crypto-native development team currently working on an AI image generation bot that’s already functional on Telegram and Discord. Called ‘Nai’, the bot functions as efficiently and as conveniently as any of its mainstream competitors, with the added advantage of having a blockchain infrastructure to power its growth. 

What is Nai?

Nai already has plenty of custom image models to suit a wide range of style preferences.  

Despite the deep technology behind it, Nai couldn’t be simpler. Type in a short description of anything–anything at all, and the bot turns your words into an original image. The more specific your details are, the more accurate the image’s subject will be.

As of writing, Nai already has fifteen custom image models that can each generate your image in a different style. From photo-realistic images, anime-style portraits, and even NFT-inspired styles to make your own Cyberpunk or Pudgy Penguins profile pictures, Nai already offers plenty of options for the AI artist to play around with, with more image models currently in development. 

And the best part? Nai is completely free to use–at least for now, with plans for a premium version with even more revamped features to come out in the future.   

How to use Nai

To set up Nai, simply click on the following links to set up the bot on either Telegram or Discord as outlined in the official ImgnAI website:

Add Nai to Telegram

In your Telegram account, add the Nai bot to any group to generate images within the group chat. 

To start using Nai, type in your command followed by the text prompt (commands are listed under the “/” button). Hit enter to generate.

Add Nai to Discord

In your Discord account, add Nai to your server and give it full permissions. 

Use the /commands listed to enable Nai in all or specific channels. (You can even enable NSFW content with the /commands provided by the bot!)

Here’s a few tips as well from the ImgnAI team: 

• Avoid short, non-descriptive prompts. The more detail the better!

• Separate text with commas for best results (ex: cute dog girl, sunset, stunning, 4k)

• Use parentheses to emphasize important descriptions (ex: cute dog girl, ((pink hair)), sunset)

• Use style descriptions to enhance the quality of your render (ex: 8k, lush, cinematic lighting)

• Use style descriptions to mimic the style of famous artists and/or photographers (ex: Monet, watercolor; Picasso, abstract; or cyberpunk, Syd Mead)

Examples of Nai-generated images.  

A blockchain-based ecosystem

So how does the blockchain integrate with Nai? Simply put, once Nai’s premium version is launched, access to exclusive features will be facilitated completely through a tokenized system. Not only will this make paying for transactions faster, more secure but it will also make it much even more convenient for users themselves to collect any revenue that they can generate from within the Nai community through the the sale of their images–especially if they mint them as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) –another advantage of a blockchain infrastructure. 

Furthermore, Nai’s tokenized economy would easily allow for a governance system to be put in place in the future, giving ImgnAI’s growing community more influence and control over the project’s future directions, updates, and features.    

The IMGNAI token – key features and benefits

ImgnAI’s utility token is built on Ethereum (ERC-20) with the ticker IMGNAI. The token will have a range of uses which will gradually be developed as the ImgnAI community continues to grow:

• Unlocking upcoming premium features such as exclusive art styles, image upscaling, HD/4K resolutions, AI art remixing, and watermark removal. 

• Minting user-generated images directly into NFTs.

• Governance staking and voting as the network becomes decentralized over time.

• Other utilities which have yet to be announced. 

Currently, users can already access unreleased beta image models to community members who hold at least 100,000 IMGNAI via Collab.land, a user-management platform for tokenized online communities. 

Tokenomics

IMGNAI has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens of which 750 million (75%) are already in circulation as reported by the ImgnAI team. The remaining 250 million (25%) were initially locked in FlokiFi, a DeFi platform for securing NFTs and other digital assets, and are intended for future operational needs such as partnerships, CEX listings, and staking features. To date, only 50 million of these locked funds have been used for onboarding key partners.  

IMGNAI tokens are burned with utility, making the overall supply deflationary in the long run.

Roadmap

ImgnAI is still halfway in its official roadmap which is divided into three major phases. Funding and liquidity were the focus for the pre-launch in Phase 1. Meanwhile, Phase 2 covers key development of the bot’s features including text-to-speech functionality, improvement of image render quality, launching of some new in-house models, and upgrading the tech stack. Phase 3 meanwhile will announce major partnerships and introduce Nai Premium, as well as launch staking features for IMGNAI holders. 

Conclusion

As with any revolutionary technology, AI is not exempt from its fair share of critics, especially from the traditional art industry who see it as both a livelihood and existential threat to the very meaning and nature of art itself. But similar to the ideals of Satoshi Nakomoto who conceived a financial system on a more level playing field for all, technologies like these are all about empowerment, pushing the boundaries, and resisting the gatekeepers in any area–even in art. So it makes perfect sense to marry the blockchain with AI and be that one step closer to a more realized Web 3.0. On that thought, ImgnAI is definitely another beginning into something far more exciting than we could realize at this time.  

References

ChatGPT and Midjourney will change our life. Forever.

https://dimillian.medium.com/chatgpt-and-midjourney-will-change-our-life-forever-d5590836fbd9

IMGNAI

https://imgnai.com/#bot

Etherscan - Image Generation AI | imgnAI.com

https://etherscan.io/token/0xA735A3AF76CC30791C61c10d585833829d36CBe0

Uwutility…loadinggg

https://imgnai.medium.com/uwutility-loadinggg-7e33703a2e99

2022 has already proven to be an eventful year for crypto, from the massive collapse of the Terra ecosystem, worldwide talks on regulation, and increasing public adoption in various forms—from the rise of move-to-earn decentralized applications (dApps), to circumventing government sanctions in war-torn states. And yet, the latter half of 2022 still holds one of the most awaited events for the global decentralized community. 

“The Merge” also previously known as “Ethereum 2.0” is an event of unprecedented scale as far as blockchain development goes. The move entails shifting the entire Ethereum network’s consensus protocol from a proof-of-work (PoW) system, to proof-of-stake (PoS) in order to address scalability, security and sustainability issues.   

It’s not merely a case of forking a network, since changing a network’s main protocol is practically like changing a car’s engine from internal combustion to electric. Add to that the fact that Ethereum is the second largest blockchain next only to Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization—hosting practically more than half of the entire global dApp  industry, as well as  a near monopoly of the NFT industry—and you can begin imagine how big the implications are for such an undertaking.

What is The Merge?

Ethereum has been running two parallel systems for quite a while now in anticipation of The Merge. One system—the Ethereum Mainnet—is the blockchain’s original PoW network and is the Ethereum that we know and transact with. The other system called “Beacon” was shipped in December of 2020, and has since been testing Ethereum’s soon-to-arrive PoS system. As the name implies, The Merge is when these two networks converge into one, with PoS gradually taking over all of the PoW functions. 

The Merge was previously marketed as “Ethereum 2.0” or “Eth2”  but due to misconceptions arising from the name, decisions were made to scrub it altogether. Specifically, there was the tendency for people to assume that Ethereum 2.0 was to be launched as an entirely new network, a misinformed notion which scammers have been quick to take advantage of—coming up with schemes that fooled some people to swap their Ether for bogus “ETH2 tokens”. With “The Merge” as the now-official terminology, perceptions will be clearer that Ethereum will remain as one blockchain and will be using the same cryptocurrency.

“Eth1” and “Eth 2” terms have thus been replaced with “execution layer” and “consensus layer” respectively across all official documentation and community groups. The Ethereum Mainnet is the execution layer which is to be the site of The Merge, with Beacon as the consensus layer which will be applied and merged with the Mainnet.

The Merge has actually been part of Ethereum’s roadmap from the beginning, something which may come as a surprise to most people. But during the early years of Ethereum, developers had been working on scaling issues and the transition to PoS systems separately, and it was only in 2018 when they were combined under one project banner. Fast forward to 2022 and the project is relatively still on track with the Merge testnet happening on June 8 as announced by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. 

The Merge will bring together the Beacon’s Proof-of-Stake network onto Ethereum’s Mainnet to ease out its Proof-of-Work protocol.

What problems will The Merge solve?

Ethereum, for all its popularity, has some pretty large drawbacks due to its PoW protocol that is already quite outdated by today’s standards. Foremost among these problems are its high gas fees. “Gas” is the term used for the fee paid out to miners for processing transactions and in Ethereum in particular, the more gas you are willing to pay, the faster your transactions can be picked up by miners and processed. But during peak hours of network activity, these gas fees can become so disproportionately bloated that sometimes the fee can turn out to be more expensive than the amount being transferred. 

Such fees are a result of network congestion because Ethereum has not been able to scale proportionally to its massive growth. Ethereum is only able to process 15 transactions per second (TPS), which was fine during its early years when the network was still small, but with almost 300,000 validator nodes today, such slow speeds means your transactions could be queued for minutes, if not hours, especially if you’re not willing to spend the extra gas.

This is an inherent flaw among legacy PoW blockchains because their consensus protocol requires all of their validator nodes to participate in checking the legitimacy of each block as it is added to the chain. As more and more nodes are required to provide computational power to the growing network, the amount of data being transferred back and forth between all the nodes—for them to arrive at a consensus—also grows exponentially, while the bandwidth remains the same.

In fact, it is Ethereum’s scalability issues that have led to the development of Layer-2 sidechains that are built onto the Ethereum Mainnet to simplify protocols and make certain applications run faster, cheaper and more convenient for users. Polygon (MATIC) is one such sidechain that has capitalized on the need for scalability on Ethereum, while others like Ronin (RON) and Immutable X (IMX) were designed to sidestep the huge gas fees on Ethereum to make play-to-earn (P2E) games more feasibly profitable for gamers. 

Scalability has also been the driving objective for the range of competitor Layer-1 blockchains that were developed after Ethereum, most notable among them Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Avalanche (AVAX), Harmony (ONE), and NEAR Protocol (NEAR), all of which avoided the PoW route precisely because of the lessons learned from Ethereum. 

PoW consensus mechanisms likewise are heavily criticized for their environmental impact, due to the high energy requirements for mining. Currently, Ethereum consumes over 100 terawatts of energy per year, exceeding the energy requirements of countries like Colombia and the Czech Republic. Mining in its simplest sense, is a competition between the network nodes which are tasked with solving cryptographic puzzles, and is that which accounts for “work” in the “proof-of-work” system. Successfully solving the puzzle equates to the privilege of adding a block to the network’s ledger and earning the block rewards which were paid for by the gas fees. This means that as the network grows, the number of nodes using up electricity to compete for blocks also grows. This competitive setup in PoW blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin is so stiff that there is currently a global shortage of high performance GPU processors due to the huge demand for mining.    

How will Proof-of-Stake solve these problems?

PoS is a huge improvement over PoW in many departments. For one, PoS validators will no longer be required to use up energy resources and bandwidth for heavy number-crunching processes but instead need only to have a financial “stake” in the network in order to participate. Instead of racing to compute cryptographic puzzles, validators now only need to position themselves with larger stakes to be guaranteed of more opportunities to add blocks and earn rewards. This in turn incentivizes node operators to uphold the network protocol since acting maliciously will be penalized by having their stakes “slashed” resulting in severe financial loss. 

With less computational upkeep, PoS systems are thus more energy efficient—by as much as 99%—compared to PoW blockchains. This naturally leads to less network congestion, faster transaction speeds and thus proportionately lower fees.

Furthermore, with less hardware requirements, PoS networks also have significantly lower entry barriers which can only result in encouraging more sustainable network growth. 

When it comes to network security, PoS systems are also virtually impenetrable to such vulnerabilities such as a 51% attack. Simply put, a 51% attack occurs when malicious actors are able to take control of more than half of the network nodes to influence network consensus. But since influence in a PoS network is determined proportionately by the amount of staked assets, the financial requirements are so astronomically high to cover for 51% of the nodes that they effectively offset any potential gains to be made from such an attack. 

What is “Sharding”?

Another huge advantage of PoS is that it allows for a programming technique known as “sharding” which can address Ethereum’s scalability issue, and is a feature already being implemented in other Layer 1 blockchains such as Harmony and NEAR. Sharding is basically splitting up a blockchain into smaller, more manageable pieces or “shards” which has the effect of further reducing the computational workload and increasing the overall computational capacity for the entire network. 

With the implementation of sharding, Ethereum will effectively be split into 64 shards, with the original Ethereum Mainnet being just one of these shards. This means that the overall computing power and capacity will also be extended 64-fold—that is, Ethereum—but with the power of 64 blockchains.  

Consequently, sharding will also leverage Ethereum’s security, as malicious actors will find it exponentially more difficult to collude across separate shards. 

And since sharding drastically reduces computational throughput, this will also reduce the hardware demand on validators, and may make it possible to operate a validator node on even a laptop or a mobile phone. Shards will also allow dApps to “rollup” transactions, which means the ability to “bundle” data off-chain to make them even smaller before sending them for processing. 

All in all, these cumulative reductions in necessary computing power are estimated to increase Ethereum’s network speed to 100,000 TPS, for a 666566.66% efficiency improvement. 

How will The Merge take place?

Though the shift to PoS is the main highlighted feature, Ethereum’s transformation to a more efficient and economically-friendly blockchain is a more elaborate process that extends further after the transition to PoS and the addition of sharding. The completely new Ethereum of the near future will in fact, undergo a five-stage process:

1. The Merge - the shift from PoW to PoS with the proof-of-stake protocol to be supplied by Beacon while retaining smart contract capability from the original Ethereum Mainnet

2. The Surge - the addition of sharding and rollup capability

3. The Verge - the replacement of Merkle trees with  “Verkle trees” which are more efficient commitment schemes for network nodes

4. The Purge - an additional step in making Ethereum less data-heavy by eliminating the need for validators to store the entire blockchain history (or block height) and only requiring historical data from a one-year period; thus also increasing every node’s operational capacity and potentially attracting more participants to the network

5. The Splurge - a series of smaller miscellaneous improvements which may include among other things: the additional of ZK-Snarks (zero knowledge proof) capability 

The complete  Ethereum Roadmap showing the levels of completion for The Merge as well as further stages.

It is also interesting to note that a “difficulty time bomb” will be used to facilitate the shift from PoW to PoS, to further encourage miners (who may be hesitant to accept the network changes) to transition to staking. A difficulty time bomb is similar to Bitcoin’s halving process, which makes it gradually harder and harder to compute blocks over a given period of time in order to mitigate supply. Ethereum’s on the other hand, will be conducted in such a way that it will eventually make it completely impossible to mine Ether at all, and PoW miners will have no recourse but to adopt the PoS system. 

How will The Merge affect ETH Tokenomics?

Ethereum currently has a circulating supply of 121 million ETH as of writing and has never had a specified maximum supply. Supply is affected by two opposing metrics: the ETH awarded for miners, and the amount of ETH that is burned as gas for processing transactions. Demand for ETH meanwhile has been at a consistent high, especially with the DeFi and the NFT boom of 2020 and 2021. 

The shift to a PoS system is expected to make the supply deflationary, as the 4.8% supply that is currently handed out to miners may be reduced to within the 1% range once staking is fully implemented—a shift that is estimated to be equivalent to two Bitcoin halving events happening at the same time. Furthermore, overall available supply is also expected to dwindle with more ETH being locked in validator nodes and staking pools, further increasing demand.

As such, analysts are generally bullish on the effect of The Merge to Ethereum’s price, though the eventual outcome will depend on the reception that the Beacon receives once The Merge is actually on its way. 

Conclusion

According to Buterin, if testing is immediately successful, The Merge could be executed by as early as August, though September and October may be more probable. The current bearish market sentiments however, makes it more complicated to gauge how The Merge will actually affect Ethereum’s price movements, with some analysts saying that volatility could drive prices by as high as 400% before the year is over.

Over a longer period however, The Ethereum Merge is expected to live up to its expectations. After all, Ethereum dominates the cryptocurrency sphere—arguably even more so than Bitcoin —due to its numerous utilities across DeFi, play-to-earn, NFTs and metaverse applications—that it is almost inconceivable to imagine a world without Ethereum. It should also be noted that Ethereum just recently took the worst of what the Terra meltdown could throw at the entire blockchain industry, and still came out with a market cap well above $200 billion. 

And despite the emergence of numerous other blockchains across the years, self-proclaiming themselves as “Ethereum killers”, none have actually lived up to the claim. However you put it, Ethereum remains as the only blockchain after Bitcoin that we can safely say has stood the test of time, and it seems like it's just about to show the world what more it could be with its next reiteration. 

References

FINALLY! Vitalik Updates Ethereum 2.0 Release Date!

Ethereum Validators Near 300,000 as Amount of ETH Staked Surpasses 9.5 Million

https://u.today/ethereum-validators-near-300000-as-amount-of-eth-staked-surpasses-95-million

Ethereum energy consumption worldwide from May 2017 to January 10, 2022

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265897/worldwide-ethereum-energy-consumption/

Crypto-miners are probably to blame for the graphics-chip shortage

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/19/crypto-miners-are-probably-to-blame-for-the-graphics-chip-shortage

Shard Chains

https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/shard-chains/

Merkle Tree Structure

https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/02/verkle-tree-structure/#:~:text=A%20Verkle%20tree%20is%20a,wider%20branching%20factors%20more%20efficient.

Difficulty Time Bomb Definition

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/difficulty-bomb.asp

Ethereum (ETH)

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/

Ethereum and its Transition to Ethereum 2

https://www.bitcoinsuisse.com/research/outlook/2020/ethereum-and-its-transition-to-ethereum-2

Experts Predict How High Ethereum’s Price Could Go in 2022, a ‘Make-or-Break Year’

https://time.com/nextadvisor/investing/cryptocurrency/ethereum-price-predictions/#:~:text=Ethereum%20is%20the%20most%20well,much%20as%20400%25%20in%202022.

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

If you’ve ever dabbled in the arts, whether it be painting, music or poetry, it soon becomes apparent how notoriously difficult it is to sell one’s craft and to make a living as an artist. Most of those who manage to get by do so by begrudgingly taking on corporate gigs, where having your work displayed as a billboard ad on the freeway instead of in a gallery would have to do.

Which is why when NFTs came around, many creatives found in the technology a means to liberate themselves from the gatekeeping of the conventional art market and the general lack of appreciation from a society which doesn’t see art as that valuable a contribution. But in 2021 alone, the global NFT market went ballistic—breaching a $41 billion valuation, in comparison with the conventional art market which stood not far at just $50 billion.¹ And take note, most of the artists making serious money through NFTs are young, unknown, and more importantly, unperturbed by the ridicule and backlash from the established art world. True to the virtues of decentralization, NFTs are literally challenging the very notion of how we view and consume art. 

Platforms like OpenSea and Rarible have become the top havens for creators of art, videos, music, and other digital collectibles, allowing ease of use for selling their works and earning royalties through auctions and resales. And with their established dominance, it seems unlikely that anyone would undertake the challenge of creating another platform from scratch and becoming a competitor—but Universe.xyz is already fusing and quarking itself seemingly out of nowhere for a slice of the NFT pie. The question is though, will it have its Big Bang moment?   

What is Universe.xyz?

Like the aforementioned big players, Universe.xyz is an Ethereum-based NFT platform aimed at empowering artists by providing them with the means to monetize their creations. The difference being that Universe puts emphasis on community-backed protocols to provide a platform that isn’t making money “off the backs of artists” as well as digital tools and media services streamlined to make the process of minting and curating works as convenient and simple as possible. 

Still early in its roadmap, Universe has NFT minting already available among its list of products, with its auction house, marketplace, social media hubs and other features soon to follow:

Minting - Universe supports various digital formats for graphics, videos, music and other forms of digital collectibles. Collections can be organized to contain up to thousands of NFTs and allow for different formats to be bundled together. Collections can even have sub-collections located within them. The idea is to allow for community engagement in creating layers of mix and match content while retaining the creators’ programming links to their works. 

Auction - the Universe auction house is the upcoming feature that best sets it apart from other platforms. Whereas auctions at OpenSea and Rarible sell only to the highest bidder, the Universe format will allow for multi-tier auctions with multiple winners, and even multiple prizes for each winning bid. Each tier can also be set with a reserve price and a specific ERC-20 coin of choice. 

True to its aim of empowering artists, initial auctions will collect zero fees—the only platform to do so, with all revenue for new works all going to their creators.  

Furthermore, the platform will also allow for creators to specify the percentage royalties to be paid for each subsequent resale of their work. Resales will also add a 2% fee to support continuing platform development. 

NFT Marketplace - Universe will feature a completely decentralized marketplace with open source tools highlighting the ease of use of the platform for even uninitiated aspiring artists. 

One such feature is Core Collections which will serve as a guide for creating one’s franchise as well as provide incentives through grants. Works produced under Core Collections will be issued an IP under a Creatives Commons license to encourage others to build new content on top of the base collection, but retain the original characters, background, and lore as intended by the original creator. 

Social Media - with much of NFT trade discussions happening in Reddit or Discord (with some level of exclusivity required on some subreddits and servers), the Universe plans to integrate a decentralized social media hub within the platform itself wherein creators and users can interact in forums and direct messaging, as well as create and visit customizable galleries and slideshows. 

Gaming - the platform already has plans for its first signature game, Polymorphic Universe V2, which is described as an initial “bootstrap model” for web 3.0 games that will allow for the community to add functionality and eventually create their own games as an extension to the Universe protocol. 

The Universe DAO

At the core, the Universe.xyz will be a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), or simply put—a community wherein the members control the decisions through self-executing programming—eliminating the need for a central authority like a CEO or a board of directors. Universe’s DAO is patterned after the governance models of Bitcoin and Ethereum to provide the scaling needed for a massive community network, while simplifying the voting process and making it accessible for everyone. 

The XYZ token is the Universe’s utility token which will be used solely for governance (and not for trading within the platform) on matters such as fees and future upgrades. Staking XYZ grants not only rewards but also voting and proposal rights to changes in the platform, and requires approval of 60% of the stakers for the changes to take effect.  

Staking the XYZ token will grant rewards and voting rights in the DAO protocol.

Tokenomics

Total supply of XYZ is at 1 billion tokens, with a certain percentage to be released in streams annually to support new users. Distribution is as follows:

Multi-sig (3%) — 30,000,000

DAO Staking Rewards (5%) — 50,000,000

LP Reserve (7%) — 70,000,000

LP Rewards (6%) — 60,000,000

Community Drop (6%) — 60,000,000

Community Bidders (2%) — 20,000,000

Community Discretionary (8%) — 80,000,000

Yield Farming (7%) — 70,000,000

Contributors (21%) — 210,000,000

Team (24%) — 240,000,000

Advisory (2%) — 20,000,000

Contributors (OG) (9%) — 90,000,000

Yield Farming

Yield farming is basically lending cryptocurrency to provide liquidity for other decentralized applications (DApps) and earning through rewards or interest. Currently, the XYZ token can be farmed with other tokens such as AAVE, BOND, COMP, LINK, SNX, SUSHI and ILV. 

The XYZ token will also be distributed through yield farming in seven pools with 1% percent distribution for each pool. 

Conclusion

Universe.xyz plans to be a one-stop, all-in-one platform for the creative types, allowing for greater freedom for artists and the community to explore their creative directions in line with the ever-expanding NFT space and technology. Though its core features remain to be seen if it will be a worthy competitor for OpenSea and Rarible, there are already promising indicators of community support and upcoming projects which should make it something to watch out for. 

Already, there are close to 30k followers on Twitter and Discord. Meanwhile, two initial NFT drops are already slated for launch, namely Polymorphic Universe and the Universe Planet Drops, which unlike most conventional NFTs are technically advanced, morphing NFTs built for the Web 3.0 ecosystem. 

The Universe founders also consist of experienced DeFi developers namely Troy Murray, Tyler Ward and Milad Mostavi, who all worked with BarnBridge, as well as serious NFT investors and collectors like Tim Kang. Recently, the team has announced securing a $4.3 million seed funding and a $21 million valuation for the project.² 

And with 2022 off to a strong start with $7 billion worth of NFT sales for January alone³, it looks to be that there is still a lot of space remaining for Universe.xzy to expand into.

References

¹NFTs ballooned to a $41 billion market in 2021 and are catching up to the total size of the global fine art market https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/nft-market-41-billion-nearing-fine-art-market-size-2022-1

²Universe.xyz Closes $4.3m Seed Round to Build a Non-Fungible Universe

https://medium.com/universe-xyz/universe-xyz-closes-4-3m-seed-round-to-build-a-non-fungible-universe-faf23b4f125c

³NFT sales hit $7 billion all-time-high in January, but it may just be a bubble waiting to pop

https://www.businessinsider.in/investment/news/nft-sales-hit-7-billion-all-time-high-in-january-but-it-may-just-be-a-bubble-waiting-to-pop/articleshow/89249178.cms#:~:text=The%20NFT%20marketplace%20LooksRare%20has,volume%20per%20transaction%20of%20%24415%2C000

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

Too often, crypto enthusiasts become too fixated on trading charts, ICOs or airdrops and forget (or are unaware to begin with) how the technology itself is bigger than the asset when it comes to what good it can do for humanity. Cryptocurrency as a store of value is just one application of the blockchain, and there are other more far-reaching potentials for the technology in improving our quality of life. 

In our time, one such potential is being demonstrated by the World Mobile Token, a UK-based telecommunications project on the Cardano blockchain that is aiming to bring the Internet to isolated communities around the world. At the moment, they’re starting in Tanzania, East Africa, where they’re already making an impact in the lives of over 100,000 people in the fishing villages of Zanzibar, who previously could only dream of being connected to the rest of the world. 

Which is ironic to say the least when we think about the bigger picture. Half of the world’s population (around four billion people) still don’t have access to the Internet, while video bloggers in developed countries have so much connectivity to know what to do with, they can afford to live stream themselves playing video games all day, binge eating or even—just sleeping. The disparity couldn’t be more stark, and it’s just about time that we do something with the technology to address the growing digital divide. 

What is World Mobile?

World Mobile is a wireless network infrastructure, powered by blockchain technology and modeled as a sharing economy. This means that in contrast with corporate telecom providers, services will have no central point of failure, will be cheaper to deploy and operate, and will have rapid and expansive growth as anyone can take part in building and the network to supply connectivity to their own communities.

How does it work?

To illustrate more concretely, we have to point out the reason why far-flung communities remain isolated—corporate telecom providers simply cannot offset the costs of building towers and facilities, laying down hundreds of miles of cables across mountains, deserts or oceans just to reach a modest-sized population who do not have the purchasing power to afford their services in the first place. World Mobile works around these problems by relying on other readily available technology such as low-traffic frequencies of unused TV channels as well as free space optics, or LiFi  (transmitting data to space via infrared light). To further cut down on energy costs, solar panels are used to power the routers instead of connecting to the main grid (which may not even exist in most remote areas).

An “air node” installation can thus be as simple as a wireless router running on a couple of solar panels at the end of a vertical pole. Each air node can connect between 500 to 700 users and costs around 7000 dollars²—a relatively low price within the purchasing power of community pools, or with the assistance of microfinancing programs.

Air node operators are incentivized to maintain their equipment and expand their operations by earning World Mobile Tokens (WMT) from transaction fees. Community subscribers can purchase WMT with their local fiat currency from partner stores which they can then use to top up their credit balances and maintain access.

An “air node” installation which can provide connectivity to a community of 500-700 users. 

(Image credits: World Mobile Group via TechCrunch.com)

Meanwhile, operating an “earth node” means providing computational power for the user registry and authentication services, checking user credit balances, routing connections and updating the blockchain ledger. Running an earth node can be done from anywhere in the world.

Lastly, running an “aether node” provides the interface with legacy telecommunications networks, protocol translations and media transcoding, i.e. the backend programming which allows the World Mobile network to talk with the other established networks. A minimum of one aether node is required to provide service to a country. 

All in all, the whole setup adds up to drastic expense cuts by avoiding costly taxes and licensing fees, operational expenditures, employed personnel and security, and costs of power supply², not to mention having to completely avoid time-wasting bureaucratic processes and barriers.  

Network Incentives

Holders of WMT can support the network by staking their tokens to a node operator of their choice. In doing so, they also earn a portion from the transaction fees paid to the node operator depending on the amount of WMT that they have staked. 

Node operators are thus incentivized to compete for token holders, encouraging quality services and competitive resource pricing. The better the service the operators provide and the more users they cater to, the more WMT they can earn from transactions and the more token holders they will attract to support their nodes. Extra rewards are also given for meeting the specifications of a node quality grading system. 

To mitigate risks, inflation rewards will also be shared among node operators and stakers to support the early stages of the network, the allocation of which will gradually decrease over time in the course of 20 years. Twenty-nine percent of the total supply of WMT is allocated for inflation rewards.

Projected network inflation over time.

Running an earth node requires a stake pool of 100,000 WMT after which operators are rewarded proportionately for the amount of contribution to the network. Operating an aether node on the other hand requires a stake pool of 1,000,000 WMT, with the rewards proportional for the amount of traffic that the node handles.

Tokenomics

WMT will have a maximum supply of 2 billion tokens and is distributed as follows:

Node Operators (29%) — 580,000,000

Co-founders and Team (19.25%) — 385,000,000

Partnerships (7.85%) — 157,000,000

Private Sale (2.5%) — 50,000,000

Early Staking Rewards (2.5%) — 50,000,000

Operation Fund (18%) — 360,000,000

Public Sale (10%) — 200,000,000

Advisors (5.9%) — 118,000,000

Community Fund (2.0%) — 40,000,000

Incentive Rewards (3.0%) — 60,000,000

Conclusion

The World Mobile Group managed to raise $39 million in under five weeks during their public offering in September of last year, on top of $5 million in private sales.¹ But perhaps validation should come not from funding acquired but from real stories on the ground. 

Micky Watkins, World Mobile CEO, recounts how in a remote island in Zanzibar, it had been the way of life for fishermen to dry the fish that could not make it to market in time, greatly reducing the value of their catch. 

But in 2019, within only nine months of installing an air node in the island, fishermen were able to connect directly to buyers not only in the markets, but directly to restaurants and hotels, increasing their profits many times over. In fact, they had even begun exporting their catch all the way to Europe.¹ 

Spurred on by other such stories, the eGovernment Agency of Zanzibar (eGAZ) has recently accepted a partnership with the World Mobile Group in installing free-metered WiFi internet access at government offices, bus stops, airports, fish markets, hospitals and other public institutions.³ Such is the positive reception towards the technology that balloon company Altaeros was also reeled in to work with World Mobile in launching two tethered blimps that can provide coverage for 8,000 square kilometers in lieu of more expensive and impractical cell towers.⁴ The goal being—to turn Zanzibar from a mere impoverished fishing archipelago to “Africa’s blockchain hub”.

Without a doubt, the World Mobile Token is a project that people everywhere should be fully supporting, not just with the potential profit in mind, but simply because—it’s the right application for blockchain technology and the right thing to do. 

References

¹World Mobile Wraps $39M Token Sale to Launch Mesh Network in Zanzibar

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/08/16/world-mobile-wraps-39m-token-sale-to-launch-mesh-network-in-zanzibar/

²World Mobile Group bringing Zanzibaris online through mobile network built on blockchain

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/23/world-mobile-group-bringing-zanzibaris-online-through-mobile-network-built-on-blockchain/

³World Mobile to launch connectivity in public spaces to boost Zanzibar's GDP

https://africabusinesscommunities.com/tech/tech-news/world-mobile-to-launch-connectivity-in-public-spaces-to-boost-zanzibars-gdp/

⁴Altaeros partners with World Mobile for balloon-based network in Zanzibar

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/altaeros-parters-with-world-mobile-for-balloon-based-network-in-zanzibar/

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

The basic proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model is relatively straightforward: to join a blockchain network for the opportunity of earning rewards as a validator (which simply means providing computational power to add blocks to the chain), one must first provide a financial “stake”—a sort of security deposit to ensure one’s commitment of upholding the network protocol. 

The size of one’s stake is proportionate to the likelihood of being selected more frequently to validate blocks. The system thus incentivizes validators to increase the size of their stake to be able to earn more—but at the same time, it also motivates them to perform their functions accordingly, as poorly performing or malicious validators risk getting their stakes “slashed”, resulting in a financial loss.

This setup works quite well for PoS blockchains like Cardano (ADA) or Solana (SOL) as the nature of the data that passes through their validator nodes are mostly homogenous—made up mostly of user requests for transferring assets from one wallet to another. Simply put, conventional blockchains like these are only preoccupied with validating one block after another to maintain their public ledger of who had how many of their tokens at any particular time. In fact, once properly set up, validator operators can simply leave their computers running to fend for themselves and start earning rewards. 

However, some blockchains deal with other kinds of data which make staking a little more complicated. One notable example is with oracle networks such as Chainlink. 

Unlike simply keeping a ledger, oracles perform a wider range of functions and deal with a diverse range of information. This is because oracles are third party “bridges” to the outside world that allows data to be fed onto the blockchain so that decentralized applications (dApps), which rely heavily on these data, are able to carry out their functions. 

Data may range from current market prices of fiat currencies, stocks and commodities, or even weather reports or football scores. But ensuring that only truthful information is able to make its way onto the blockchain is not a straightforward task, requiring an altogether unique approach—and thus an altogether unique staking system. 

What is Chainlink?

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network established in 2017 which since then has become the industry standard for the oracle service industry and the most widely used especially in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Chainlink’s role in the cryptocurrency space simply cannot be overstated, as the need for verifiable real world data is a prerequisite for smart contracts to be able to operate.

For those in need of a reviewer, “smart contracts” are self-executing programs that are built onto a blockchain to carry out numerous applications autonomously. For instance, a dApp could be programmed to carry out a trade once bitcoin hits a certain target price; a stablecoin could be minted and pegged to the value of a real world currency which it needs to match in real time; or a sports betting app could be set up to deal out winnings to bettors as soon as the results of a game are in—all of these taking place without human intervention. 

But for all of these functions to happen on their own, a constant stream of outside information is needed to trigger the smart contracts’ algorithms. This is where oracles come in to provide the missing data in their equations. 

But for a decentralized network to have an oracle is a conundrum in itself. Since the blockchain becomes dependent on the information they provide, in essence—they cancel out the decentralized nature of the network by becoming a possible single point of failure. Unreliable or malicious oracles can wreak havoc on the entire chain, or they can become inviting targets for hackers. This is what is otherwise known as “the oracle problem” and which is what Chainlink was designed specifically to address.

How does Chainlink work?

Chainlink oracles are basically validator nodes that are required to put up a stake to be able to earn from the network, similar to the usual PoS setup. The difference is instead of contributing processing power to add blocks to the chain, oracles accept “jobs” from smart contracts to provide reliable and accurate off-chain data. Rewards are earned every time the data provided is accepted in consensus with other validators, and penalties in the form of slashing one’s stake are also dealt out for providing inaccurate information. 

Chainlink itself is not one single network, but rather “a network of networks'' wherein users are free to use Chainlink’s open-source code to build their own oracle networks that run independently from one another. This setup thus establishes a free market economy within the blockchain, wherein oracles compete with one another to be able to accept jobs.  

Chainlink allows users a high level of flexibility, from determining how many nodes it wants to be involved in a query, the reputation rating required of those nodes, as well as which data sources it wants the validators to use.

Once a query is posted, an “order contract” is placed to process the request. After which Chainlink’s reputation scoring system selects the validators that pass the reputation threshold set by the requestors. Nodes with clean track records are prioritized for the job while those with poor performance ratings may find it difficult to be included in the pool.¹   

This is followed by an “order-matching” contract wherein the system selects which nodes are best suited for the job based on the kind of data they deal with. Not all Chainlink oracles are the same—in fact, node operators can choose their specializations and take only the jobs that are suited, or those to which they have access to the corresponding data feeds. Some nodes may focus on giving stock market prices while some may focus on weather reports, or generating random numbers. 

This also sets it apart from the usual PoS or proof-of-work (PoW) configuration wherein all the nodes in the chain take part in the validation of each block. In an oracle network, since data is heterogenous and non-deterministic, having all nodes participate in validating is not at all practical or even economically feasible. Chainlink instead employs aggregating contracts that are able to weigh averages of data from single and multiple sources to arrive at the “definitive truth” about real world events.¹

Chainlink 2.0

Chainlink has seen massive growth with the increase in dApp adoptions requiring oracle services. 

Since its inception, Chainlink’s formula has been a massive proof-of-concept, with over 800 oracle networks having served over 600 million data points and with over $75 billion secured within the smart contracts of dApps that currently avail of their services. Being blockchain agnostic, Chainlink’s adoption also spans across ten blockchains, all major networks included.⁶

In fact, Chainlink’s massive growth has breached a threshold wherein some node operators are able to profit from dApp fees alone, which previously, only accounted for a minute percentage of the total income from operating a node. In most PoS setups, as much as 98 percent of profits are derived from the network rewards with only 2 percent coming from user fees. But due to the massive adoption that has been taking place with dApps and the high efficiency that oracle nodes have been incentivized to attain, it is now possible for dApp fees to surpass earnings from the network itself.

As much as this is a huge milestone for Chainlink, this also presents a unique problem for the network since the nodes can now arrive at a point of diminishing returns: If nodes are already able to earn sufficiently from dApp fees, this means that the incentive provided by network rewards is effectively weakened—if not canceled out, posing a security issue over how to maintain trustworthiness within the network. 

This unusual outcome requires some significant changes, which is why Chainlink 2.0 was proposed, outlining the development of a second metalayer over the existing blockchain to enhance its features, increase earning potential, and introduce further scalability to keep up with the rapidly expanding dApp market. The improvements are scheduled to be rolled out within 2022. 

With node operators' high-efficiency best practices, a profit plateau is reached wherein nodes are earning more from dApp user fees rather than from network rewards.

In a broadcast presentation, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov outlines the major changes that will happen with the network upgrade with regard to node staking, focusing on two key points: 1) the introduction of node reputation rewards to increase the payout of oracles who consistently provide low latency services, accurate reports, and are able to maintain service level agreements; and 2) innovating the staking system to increase the crypto-economic security of the network, and giving it the capability to resist a broader range of attacks.

Layer-2 Features

As outlined in its whitepaper, Chainlink 2.0 will introduce a number of innovations that will greatly improve the capabilities of its decentralized node operators (DONs) and push the possibilities of what can be done within an oracle network, most notable among them:

• Hybrid smart contracts - a hybrid contract combines on-chain programming with off-chain data and computation provided by DONs. By combining the immutability of a blockchain with the flexibility of oracle networks, hybrid smart contracts will be able to provide a greater degree of scalability, security, confidentiality and connectivity with data sources.⁴ 

  
  Hybrid smart contracts are able to combine these features while retaining decentralization. This is achieved by the architecture which keeps the functions of the ledger, settlements, and disputes situated on the blockchain, while oracle functions of fetching, validating, and relaying data are kept isolated on its own layer, while also providing decreased latency. 

• Explicit staking - unlike conventional staking systems, “explicit” staking is a super-linear staking mechanism designed to scale the crypto-economic security of a network to maximize the cost of any potential attack on the network.²

  
  A typical PoS blockchain is theoretically susceptible to a 51 percent attack, which happens when at least more than half of the network nodes have been controlled by a malicious actor, or have colluded to act maliciously. Though the financial requirements to conduct a 51 percent attack are enormously high (one must stake enough funds to attain majority influence), such an attack is somewhat more feasible on an oracle network that is relatively smaller in scale.

  
  To counter this, explicit staking will require malicious actors to have a budget not only larger than 51 percent of the stake—but even greater than the combined deposits of all nodes within a DON, thus exponentially increasing network security and reliability of oracle reports.³ 

Explicit staking will greatly increase the stake required for malicious actors to mount a successful attack.

• Two-tier oracle design - an additional 2-step measure will be imposed to guarantee that service agreements are met: a first-tier DON takes on the responsibility of aggregating oracle reports, followed by a higher security second tier DON which will be used to settle disputes that may be generated with the first tier, and to hold any first-tier oracle accountable for any mistakes. 

LINK Tokenomics

LINK is Chainlink’s native utility token that runs the Chainlink economy. It has the following main utilities: 1) it is used by validators for staking deposits to secure a place within the network; 2) it is used for network rewards for successfully accomplishing job queries and; 3) it is used by oracles to bid for jobs queries. 

LINK has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, all of which were already issued during Chainlink’s inception in 2017. The current circulating supply however is at 467 million while 35 percent of the total supply (35 million) are still held in reserve as incentive rewards for node operators.⁵

Reports indicate that the supply of LINK tokens grows at an average of 1.4 percent every month⁵, leaving a lot of room into the future before the total supply is eventually diluted, especially with the prospect of more LINK being locked up in staking pools with the full implementation of Chainlink 2.0.

Conclusion

The integration of Chainlink’s 2.0 features started in 2021 and will continue to be developed in the next few years. If successful, this upgrade will resolve the issues surrounding the profit plateau encountered by high-functioning oracle nodes and provide operators with further increases to their cumulative revenue, contributing overall to a more robust and highly responsive oracle network. 

Chainlink 2.0 will likewise fuel more growth in the dApp development sector, as faster, more secure and more accurate oracle services are provided as a result of network improvements. All in all, Chainlink seems securely on path to continue as the industry’s gold standard, and add momentum to the global adoption of blockchain technology for everyday applications.  

References:

¹What is Chainlink? LINK Explained with Animations

²Explicit Staking in the Chainlink Network

https://blog.chain.link/explicit-staking-in-chainlink-2-0/

³Chainlink 2.0 and the Future of Decentralized Oracle Networks

https://blog.chain.link/chainlink-2-0-lays-foundation-for-adoption-of-hybrid-smart-contracts/ 

⁴Chainlink 2.0: Advanced Decentralized Oracle Networks

https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/chainlink-staking-link-crypto-chainlink-smart-contracts-update

⁵Tokenomics Review, Chanlink (LINK) 

/https://assets.ctfassets.net/k3n74unfin40/2osibnaDM6se50FWm95kxD/987e627c4630c36d1acdbea3ffa8aca1/Tokenomics_2022.03.17_LINK.pdf

⁶Chainlink now secures over $75 billion on supported dApps

https://cryptoslate.com/chainlink-now-secures-over-75-billion-on-supported-dapps/#:~:text=Since%20the%20mainnet%20launch%2C%20over,to%20over%2010%20different%20blockchains.

https://www.stakingrewards.com/journal/chainlink-2-0/ 

https://decrypt.co/89958/whats-next-chainlink-2022-link-staking-internet-of-blockchains

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

It’s only been a year since the Playstation 5 came out, but just by looking at annual revenues, one can make the argument that the age of the gaming console and even the gaming PC is really quite over. Though back in 2012 they did dominate 45% and 37% of the global market respectively, this year has seen these figures drop to a mere 22% and 19%, pushed aside by a more handy, versatile, and cheaper platform—mobile gaming, which is now a $106 billion dollar industry and currently accounts for 59% of the worldwide gaming market.

Titles like Clash of Clans, Genshin Impact and Mobile Legends appeal to a new generation of gamers who aren’t bothered by tiny screens or the inability to mash physical buttons. Instead, ease of connectivity, massive online communities, and the convenience of being able to play anywhere have become gaming’s predominant virtues over high resolution graphics and sleek and ergonomic gaming hardware.   

This huge gaming market is currently ripe for the next up-and-coming innovation of “play-to-earn” gaming, and currently Stepico Games along with Immutable X are close to releasing Guild of Guardians (GOG), a free-to-play fantasy RPG where players anywhere in the world can assemble into teams to take on dungeon quests and earn actual money while they’re about it. 

With Immutable X having also recently developed other pioneering NFT games such as the highly successful trading card game—Gods Unchained, GOG is already causing a stir as anticipation mounts for what a lot are already claiming to be the next blockchain game with massive earning potential (in the same league as Axie Infinity) and the very first blockchain RPG with a AAA graphics quality and development. 

Gaming is no longer a ‘waste of time’

The play-to-earn concept is a complete departure from the pay-to-win format which the previously mentioned games fall into. Like how it sounds, instead of paying for special in-game items or characters to give you an advantage in the gameplay, players instead get to build their own NFT items through crafting or to build up their characters which they can later sell or trade with. The idea is for the game to have its own self-sustaining economy and to have communities of players earning together instead of having the gaming companies cashing in on all of the profit. 

Such a setup is only made possible by migrating a game onto a blockchain. In this case, GOG is built on Ethereum, with Immutable X’s innovative second layer designed specifically for NFTs.  

If you’re still unfamiliar with NFTs, these refer to “non-fungible tokens” which, thanks to blockchain technology, allows for data to exist uniquely and be owned exclusively by individuals. This means that digital art or even weapons and armors in games can’t simply be “copied and pasted” like Word files. And since each NFT is unique, collectability and rarity come into play, and prices can really go way up the more desirable an item is.

Summary of Gameplay

Guild of Guardians follows in the fantasy genre of classic games like Diablo or Dungeons and Dragons, and players can choose among the many races that exist in the realm as their playable hero whether it be a human, orc, elf or some other exotic magical creature. But unlike Diablo, GOG is meant to be played in cooperative multiplayer mode, as your team explores the depths of dungeons in a fully 3-D perspective to accomplish quests and hunt for loot, relying on the different skills and capabilities of your motley crew to get the upper hand for different situations.

Your hero’s faction, class, and elements all influence gameplay with some attributes better suited for dealing with specific monsters and bosses, and certain combinations resulting in some really powerful attacks. The game also retains traditional RPG roles that complete a well-rounded team: Tank, Healer, DPS (damage per second), and Support, which would make experienced RPG players feel right at home. 

Guilds consist of up to 20 members to form an Adventurer’s Guild and up to 50 for a Mythic guild to tackle the most challenging quests and unlock other features, rewards, items, and game modes as well as guaranteed first cuts on any guild-crafted item sale. 

Your hero’s rarity also corresponds to how powerful it is, with tiers ranging from “common” to “legendary”. However each hero has its own strengths and weaknesses for a balanced gameplay and not all legendary heroes are the best for every situation. Each hero has a level cap that once reached “ascends” the hero, unlocking its full potential.  

As with virtually all RPGs, equipment in the game ranges from your hero’s weapons, armor, jewelry, and boots, each one providing unique buffs, stat bonuses, and boost capabilities. Equipment can be bought, won or crafted. Pets too are part of the game and can enhance your party by acting as scouts or hunters, or providing passive resources. 

Guild of Guardians factions, classes, elements, and rarity tiers. 

After every dungeon quest, your character’s  energy will be depleted and needs to recover over time. There are however energy booster NFTs that can be used should one wish to continue playing, though persistently entering dungeons in the same day can cause your hero to be “fatigued” resulting in stat deductions. 

Making Money on GOG

Guild of Guardians offers lots of ways for players to make money. With the use of the GEMS ERC-20 token as in-game currency, players can craft, trade, and get rewards for accomplishing tasks. 

• Guild Crafting — resources for crafting are dropped in dungeons for players to collect and to craft into NFTs such as weapons, armor or other magical items, which can then be sold or acquired at the marketplace. Profits are distributed among guild members depending on their contribution to the craft.

• Hero Merging — heroes can be merged to produce rarer and more powerful characters which can then be traded with. For example, merging common heroes bought from the game can produce rare heroes. 

• Daily Gem Rewards — GEMS are rewarded for completing daily quests, achieving milestones or for length of playtime. 

• Leaderboard Prizes — different guilds can compete with each other for leaderboard prizes.

• Upcoming Features — other profit potential features in development include guild raids, PvP play, eSport tournaments, user-generated dungeons and lounge and trading zones. 

The GEM Token and Tokenomics

The GEM token is GOG’s native utility coin and aside from being used in minting (crafting) NFTs throughout the game, GEMs also facilitate buying and trading game assets, staking rewards and community governance. 

Any GEM used in crafting is sent to a “reward pool” along with 20% of primary sales and 20% of secondary trading fees which then are distributed proportionately to all stakers. 

The supply of the Guild of Guardian GEMs is capped at 1 billion tokens allocated as follows:

Player Rewards (35%) — 350,000,000

Community Rewards (28%) — 280,000,000

Developers (20%) — 200,000,000

Guardians Corporation (6%) — 60,000,000

Public Sale (6%) — 60,000,000

Private Sale (5%) — 50,000,000  

Conclusion

Things are falling neatly in place for Guild of Guardians and there is a lot to be optimistic about when the game releases in mid-2022. There is already a brimming community of more than 220,000 across Twitter and Discord and all Founder NFTs are already sold out on the official GOG website. The game’s visual packaging is also very promising and which can be previewed on their YouTube channel, attesting to the careful attention to detail of the developers and artists who have already worked previously on other AAA games. 

Corporate backing is also strong with investors such as Coinbase, Naspers and Galaxy Digital pooling in 17M behind Immutable X. Partners in development also include gaming heavyweight Ubisoft, as well as Sandbox and Yield Guild.

2022 is priming to be a really good year for crypto-gamers. 

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

When it comes to the merger between gaming and NFTs, nothing makes perfect sense more than having a blockchain-based trading card game (TCG)—for some obvious reasons. For one, gameplay can be exactly as it is as if players were holding real physical cards between them (albeit much faster without having to compute points manually) And two, because the cards are NFTs, the same market dynamics can exist as they do with real-world cards—the rarer the card, the more desirable and expensive it. And some rare trading cards CAN get really expensive. 

A first edition holographic Charizard for example, from the Pokémon trading card game (PTCG), sold for a whopping $369,000 in December of 2020.¹ Meanwhile, a Black Lotus (Alpha) card from Magic: The Gathering (MTG) sold on eBay for $511,100 in January—the most expensive TCG card ever sold to date.² 

And digital ownership of NFT trading cards is technically more secure than owning actual physical cards. There are plenty of forgers out there who are constantly trying to pass off bootleg PTCGs and MTGs for the real thing, and dealing with rare cards comes with the hassle of having to consult with experts and authenticators. Current online TCG platforms meanwhile are no better, relying on centralized databases for storing game data—which are prone to hacking and which doesn’t give players that “feel” of actually owning one’s card deck.

But all of that is practically done away with using blockchain technology. In fact, this is the reason why game director, Chris Clay, left his executive posting at Magic:The Gathering Arena to work instead on a blockchain-based TCG, Gods Unchained, throwing his bet on cryptocurrency gaming as the new frontier for game developers.³ Already, that bet is paying off with Gods Unchained drawing in 450,000 players on its beta release alone and with over $34 million worth of NFTs sold or traded so far. 

The new frontier is of course, play-to-earn gaming, which is literally turning the whole gaming industry inside-out by providing gamers a return on their investment instead of games being just another commodity that people buy for entertainment and having all the revenue going to the gaming companies. 

Gods Unchained’s play loop uses the GODS token to support a sustainable in-game economy. 

And Gods Unchained is built precisely on this key value proposition. The game is free-to-play, but the more you play, the more you earn GODS (the game’s native utility token). The GODS token can be used to craft or buy NFT cards, which you can later sell for ETH or trade for other NFTs to expand your own card deck and improve your gameplay. In fact, Gods Unchained is so heavily bent on establishing this self-sustaining in-game economy that 34% of all supply of GODS is already allocated for play-to-earn rewards. 

How to play Gods Unchained

For those who have never played TCGs before, the mechanics might seem daunting to learn and for good reason. TCGs are the epitome of strategy gaming. With a pool of thousands of different cards, the combinations of plays seem infinite. In fact, Magic: The Gathering has been declared by mathematicians as the world’s most complex game,⁴ more computationally difficult than chess by many orders of magnitude. But before this scares you from even trying out Gods Unchained, keep in mind that it is this same complexity that lends TCGs their unique depth, lore and balance of gameplay.  

Like MTG, Gods Unchained is set in a fantasy universe with heroes, wizards and other magical creatures comprising your deck of cards, with the objective of using the unique abilities of these characters in toppling the other player’s deck. In Gods Unchained however, you start each round by selecting a god you wish to play as, keeping in mind that each god has its own perks that you can use to your advantage in combination with the deck that you own. 

After selecting a god is the “mulligan phase”, where cards are reshuffled and players can pick which cards to start with. Like in MTG, “mana” is used to activate cards into play with each player starting with only one mana, but which builds up progressively after each turn, allowing players to use more and more powerful cards and to come up with unique hands for combined attacks.  

For each turn, players can choose to attack the other player’s god, or to attack its minions (the other cards in play) and whoever can bring down the opposing god’s health to zero, wins the match. 

A tutorial video from the official God’s Unchained YouTube channel.⁵ 

Winning matches earns players card packs (each with five cars inside), which players have the option of selling as an unopened pack in the marketplace or opening it and selling the individual cards. Card packs come in four tiers corresponding to the value of its contents:

• Core pack — contains five standard base cards

• Rare pack — contains at least one rare card

• Epic pack — contains at least one epic card

• Legendary pack — contains at least one legendary card

Duplicate cards can be combined to create more powerful cards, which players can trade or sell or put into play.  

Crafting and buying new NFT cards and NFT packs.

From time to time, Gods Unchained also releases expansion sets which are limited NFTs only available for purchase. Though players can make do with the cards they win by playing, expansion sets are a means to offer new content and new dynamics to the gameplay. 

Immutable X and the future of NFT ownership

Another groundbreaking feature of Gods Unchained is its partnership with Immutable X in providing the NFT infrastructure. As Ethereum’s Layer 1 has long been critiqued for its limited capacity and high gas fees, Immutable X’s Layer 2 solution provides the scalability Ethereum needs to support fast NFT exchanges. And with immediate massive success as since migrating to Immutable X in June 2021, the NFT trading volume for Gods Unchained alone was 1.5 times greater than all other NFT trades on the Ethereum mainnet itself for the same time period. Speed likewise is at an astounding 9,000 trades per second—with zero gas fees! 

This bodes well for Chris Clay’s vision for Gods Unchained with NFT cards “being able to travel the world and know where it’s been” as opposed to just being stored in a database as with current online TCG arenas. To put this in context, he points out that in the future, card decks that will be used in championship games will carry with them that provenance, greatly increasing their value and collectability.³ In fact, NFT cards can also be digitally signed by creators, artists, celebrity gamers and the likes, ushering in a truly new global culture of digital ownership.

GODS Utilities and Tokenomics

Aside from purchasing and crafting NFTs, the GODs token is also used for staking and community governance. Furthermore, 20% of all primary fees and 20% of secondary trading fees in the marketplace are paid for in GODS and are placed in the GODS staking pool.

From the pool, staking rewards are given to all active stakers at seven-day intervals, proportional to the lowest amount held in their Immutable X account. 

GODS has a total supply of 500 million which are allocated as follows:

Play-to-earn reward (34%) — 170,000,000

Reserve (25%) — 125,000,000

Community and Ecosystem Fund (20.5%) — 102,500,000

Community Allocation (7%) — 35,000,000

Token Sale (7%) — 35,000,000

Token Foundation (6.5%) — 32,500,000

Conclusion

With their team comprising some of the best and most experienced talent in TCG development, it’s really hard to be skeptical about the future of Gods Unchained. And with an already strong community foothold, thanks to familiar game mechanics that are so readily adaptable onto a blockchain, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of places where things could go wrong for this game. 

Real-world TCGs are historically known to have cult-loyal followings which drive up the value of their cards as time goes by. And though this remains to be seen with current blockchain projects, all the signs point to how the whole setup is a perfect formula along conceptual, technical and economic lines. Gods Unchained as the first successful blockchain TCG is simply looking like it's going to be MTG on steroids. 

References:

¹The Top 12 Most Valuable Pokemon Cards in History

https://kotaku.com/the-top-10-most-valuable-pokemon-cards-in-history-1847225621/slides/12

²14 Most Valuable and Rare Magic: The Gathering Cards

https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/magic-the-gathering-game/best-games/most-expensive-mtg-cards

³‘Magic: The Gathering’ Executive Leaves for Blockchain-based ‘Gods Unchained’

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenorsini/2019/08/08/magic-the-gathering-executive-leaves-for-blockchain-based-gods-unchained/?sh=48cc093e419f

⁴“Magic: The Gathering” is officially the world's most complex game

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/05/07/135482/magic-the-gathering-is-officially-the-worlds-most-complex-game/

⁵How to Play; Gods Unchained Tutorial

https://youtu.be/t2PtC76k4b0

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.

Despite the proliferation of decentralized applications (dApps), no single protocol so far has been able to claim mainstream adoption due to the complex nature of cryptocurrency in general and the lack of personal and meaningful connection of most dApps with users. Except perhaps—for just one—which somewhat ironically happens to be in the form of a blockchain game. We’re talking of course about none other than Axie Infinity¹, whose cast of fluffy delightful creatures have become for many, the foremost recognizable faces for the cryptosphere.

But ever since Axie’s meteoric stint, everyone has been on the lookout for the next thing to supplant it, for a likely candidate among up-and-coming blockchain games that can be dubbed as the “Axie Infinity Killer”. At this time, a lot of fingers are already pointing at a promising RPG called Chumbi Valley and for a lot of good reasons. In fact, it’s already been nominated as the “Most Anticipated Blockchain Game of 2022” by the PlayToEarn.net Blockchain Game Awards of this year.² 

What are Chumbi?

If the name itself doesn’t carry that certain ring to it like it could easily become a household term already, then just looking at the game’s beautifully illustrated characters and game environment would be more than enough to cast an air of nostalgia, connecting with anyone who grew up with the likes of Pokémon, Legend of Zelda, or Studio Ghibli films. This is actually what developers wanted to capture for a blockchain game—to give that familiar gaming experience that people grew up with, but without the complicated and alienating blockchain jargon.  

A Chumbi is basically a magical forest creature on two legs, round like an egg, with ears and tiny appendages hardly sticking out from its sides. Chumbi are the spiritual stewards of the valley, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like to duke it out with each other with their spell attacks to get better and stronger and gain more experience. Chumbi are also the game’s primary NFTs that players can nurture, train, and trade with.   

Chumbi are magical creatures with a wide range of skills and attributes unique to their type. 

As with Pokémon and Axie Infinity, Chumbi come in different types depending on where they live or what they’re good at. The 15 types in existence include such species that come from forests, rivers, mountains, caves, and even those who wield special abilities like flame or frost types. Their different skills, of course, give certain Chumbi special advantages over others. And like in Pokémon, gameplay promises to be simplistic and easy to learn, but with a depth of strategy involved that is difficult to master. 

Gameplay: How to make money while playing Chumbi Valley

Chumbi Valley has a lot of options for profit potential, keeping to its vision of prioritizing players as the driving force behind any game. When previously, only big gaming companies made any money at all with the pay-to-win format, blockchain gaming is turning the industry on its head by directing the bulk of profits to the gaming community itself.     

Besides being play-to-earn, Chumbi Valley will also be a free-to-start game, wherein if you don’t have your own Chumbi yet, you can start with an Ancestor Chumbi (which is not an NFT) to get familiar with the game mechanics and to get to know the valley. 

From there, you can explore the serene mystical forests to discover hidden NFT items, and battle with other players or wild cursed Chumbi for rewards. Each Chumbi starts with two attack moves based on its type, but as your Chumbi gets more experienced, you can send it to the Chumbi Sage to learn more spells. The stronger your Chumbi becomes, the more rewards you can earn from winning battles.   

Battles are only one aspect of the gameplay however, and players can choose to focus on more relaxing tasks such as farming. Players can collect rare seeds from the forest to cultivate and harvest tokenized crops which are used to feed your Chumbi and raise their happiness levels, or be sold to other players for their own convenience. Some of the spells that your Chumbi can learn from the Sage can also be used in other ways such as gathering in-game resources like wood, stones, or fish even when offline, ensuring a steady supply of profit.     

Crafting can also be another profit-generating activity, wherein you can make unique NFT items such as character tools and cosmetics from the resources you gather. Crafted items can be sold and bought at the marketplace along with seeds, crops, and even land. 

Chumbi come in 15 types and can be bred in an infinite number of combinations. 

Breeding is one of the game’s more exciting play-to-earn features as this is how you produce more Chumbi with even more interesting and unique attributes. As each Chumbi is a combination not just of different types, but also coats, patterns, eyes, ears and horns, the possibilities for the offsprings are literally infinite, and if you’re lucky, you might just produce ultra-rare types!    

And similar to Axie Infinity’s scholarships, fostering is an option where you can temporarily lend your extra Chumbi to other players and earn an adjustable percentage of the rewards that they acquire. Fostered Chumbi are returned immediately upon request, and the system itself is a good means for maximizing profit when you have more Chumbi than you know what to do with. It’s also a more affordable entry-point for players who want to try out the game first before committing serious investments.   

Even staking the game’s in-game currency, CHMB, has been integrated into the gameplay and storyline. How it goes is that Chumbi’s natural hoarding instincts has led to a practice of worshiping the “Shrine of Giving” wherein players can lock their CHMB tokens for a given period to receive more CHMB and other NFT rewards. And if the Chumbi offering on the shrine has its happiness levels maxed out, a higher APY than the base rate can be unlocked, and the Chumbi as well becomes a prized NFT. 

Chumbi Valley offers plenty of opportunities to reap profits for players. 

Lightning transaction speeds and zero fees

One of Chumbi Valley’s immediate advantages over Axie Infinity is that it’s built on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Polygon (MATIC) networks, which promises nothing less than near-instant transaction speeds and zero fees. A huge relief compared to the notorious gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet, which coupled with the Ronin side-chain, has been a source of stress Axie Infinity players and guild managers.

BSC is EVM-compatible (Ethereum Virtual Machine) which means it operates in the same way a s the Ethereum blockchain but with additional tweaks that make it faster³  at about 55 to 60 transactions per second (TPS) compared to Ethereum’s 15 TPS.⁴

Meanwhile, Polygon is a scalability side chain on top of Ethereum which was designed to link the massive network of Ethereum-based blockchains. It has a whopping 65,000 TPS and a block confirmation time of less than two seconds⁵, which accounts for why transaction fees on the Polygon network are practically null. 

CHMB Tokenomics

CHMB is used to pay for Chumbi, breeding and Sage fees, as well as other in-game purchases. CHMB will also later have governance functions after the game’s release and early guided phase, allowing CHMB holders to eventually take part in the game’s future directions. A “Chumbi Treasury” will also be set up in the future as the community grows, where tokens will be burned to make CHMB deflationary, further incentivizing players to hold their tokens. 

CHMB will have a total supply of 30,000,000,000 (30 billion) with an initial circulating supply of 15,150,000. Allocation is as follows:

Play-to-earn (21%) — 6,300,000,000

Staking (24%) — 7,200,000,000

Team (18%) —5,400,000,000 

Advisors (8%) — 2,400,000,000

Marketing (7%) — 2,100,000,000

Private Sale (11%) — 3,300,000,000

Seed Sale (5%) — 1,500,000,000

Liquidity Reserve (4%) — 1,200,000,000

Airdrop (1%) — 300,000,000

IEO (1%) — 300,000,000

Additionally, Chumbi Valley will have a secondary token called Lucky Stars (LSTS) and will be used for various game functions such as crafting, spells, breeding, and happiness. It has an infinite supply and will be used only to further power the play-to-earn aspects of the game. 

Conclusion

Unlike most blockchain games being developed, Chumbi Valley comes off right away as a project that is deliberately taking its time, making sure it’s dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. The whole package has an air of refinement to it, from the storyline, artwork and character designs, and gameplay mechanics. It’s also breaking the mold from most other games, aiming for that relaxing feel instead of that flashy highly-charged action prevalent among most hack-and-slash titles.

Currently, Chumbi Valley already has a 228K strong community on Discord with another 245K followers on Twitter. Promotion has been great this last month with CHMB securing the KuCoin IEO spotlight  and all seed Chumbi selling out within just four minutes of opening its NFT sale last December 16. Hype is strong for January as well with the Chumbi “Hatching Event” competition offering rare NFTs for prizes.⁶

2022 will see if the time of Axie Infinity is over, and if the sun will shine in the valley. 

References:

¹Axie Infinity: The CRAZIEST Crypto Game EVER!!

²Chumbi Valley is Nominated for “Most Anticipated Blockchain Game of 2022”

https://medium.com/@chumbivalley/chumbi-valley-is-nominated-for-most-anticipated-blockchain-game-of-2022-8a11f52d321d

³Polygon vs BSC: What’s the Difference?

https://bsctimes.com/polygon-vs-bsc-whats-the-difference/

⁴Binance Smart Chain—How Far Can it Go?

https://www.kirobo.io/binance-smart-chain-how-far-can-it-go/

⁵All about Polygon(MATIC) in One Shot (with audio) https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-polygon-matic-a6c61dbc2d3c

⁶Seed Chumbi Giveaway Competitions & Hatching Event Schedule

https://medium.com/@chumbivalley/seed-chumbi-giveaway-competitions-hatching-event-schedule-a7412e0aa353

The information on this website is for general information only. No information provided in this article or any other content created by Coinvision constitutes financial advice. Coinvision is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by use of this website.