NBA Playoffs NFTs, Rarible adds Solana & Tether launches on Kusama

PoS Round-Up is our focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem.

stakefish

26 Apr 2022 — 9 min read

PoS Round-Up is our focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem.

Ethereum

The NBA announced it will release an Ethereum-based NFT collection, called The Association. Each NFT represents a real NBA player in this year’s playoffs and their traits will evolve based on each player’s real-life performance.

The long-awaited Ethereum Merge, the network’s migration to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), was delayed from its scheduled release of June this year. Developers working on the upgrade suggested there is still a fair amount of trial and error to go and estimated the completion time would be a few months after June.

Coinbase announced its web3 NFT social marketplace is officially live in beta. Anyone can explore the vast collection of NFTs, which are currently only on the Ethereum blockchain. Beta testers can additionally create a Coinbase NFT profile to buy and sell NFTs using any self-custody wallet.

Hackers breached Bored Ape Yacht Club’s official Instagram page and shared links to a fake airdrop with the project’s followers. Unconfirmed reports on social media indicate that approximately 100 of the popular Ethereum-based NFTs were stolen during the phishing attack.

Beanstalk, a credit-based stablecoin protocol built on Ethereum, is the latest DeFi project to suffer a major exploit. An attacker used a flash loan exploit to drain the protocol’s funds and got away with 24,830 Ethereum worth around $76 million at the price at the time, but the protocol’s losses are estimated to be much higher.

The US Government claimed that Lazarus Group, a notorious cybercrime group that is believed to be run by the North Korean government, has been linked to the $625 million Ronin Network hack. The US Department of the Treasury’s list of the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) now includes the Ethereum address that was involved in the historic security breach.

Solana

Multi-chain NFT protocol, Rarible, has integrated with Solana, which is now the fifth blockchain compatible with its ecosystem. The protocol is also partnering with the Degenerate Ape Academy to launch a custom secondary market for the top Solana NFT collection.

Solana Ventures has announced the winners of Riptide, a global hackathon focused on bringing the next wave of high-impact projects into the Solana ecosystem. The Grand Champion prize went to Cronos, an on-chain task scheduler that allows users to schedule instructions.

Umbrella Network, a community-owned Layer-2 oracle network that batches data for providing low-cost, scalable, and secure data, launched its decentralized oracle solution on the Solana blockchain.

Polygon

Twitter and Stripe announced the rollout of crypto payouts for content creators. A select group of creators on Twitter will soon be able to receive their earnings on the platform in the form of the USDC stablecoin through the Polygon network.

PayBolt, a web3 multi-chain payment gateway, is deploying on Polygon to allow merchants to accept Polygon-based tokens, such as MATIC and QUICK.

DEVITA, a blockchain-based health data platform aiming to optimize legacy healthcare processes and operations, is going live on Polygon. DEVITA can now leverage Polygon’s lightning-fast data transmission and exceptionally low transaction costs to provide opportunities for more equitable healthcare and personal data management to its users.

Cardano

Activity on Cardano is starting to pick up, with 400 new projects in the works along with 100,000 new wallets being created over the past month. Despite increasing numbers of projects in development, the number of DApps up and running appears to be limited. However, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson suggested the tide could turn with the upcoming Vasil Hard Fork upgrade, which will provide a massive performance improvement to the network and its smart contract capabilities.

Polkadot

Tether announced that it will be launching its USDT stablecoin on Kusama and eventually on Polkadot. USDT will power transactions on Kusama’s first parachain, Statemine, which enables the deployment and balance-keeping of assets, such as stablecoins and NFTs. The lower costs and faster transactions offered by Statemine make it a better option for users.

Unique Network, a scalable blockchain for composable NFTs with advanced economies, won Polkadot’s latest parachain auction.

Dora Factory, a DAO-as-a-Service infrastructure for future organizations and communities, won Kusama’s latest parachain auction.

Moonbeam

Moonbeam announced the release of its Runtime 1401 Upgrade, which brings XC-20 minting to Moonriver and soon to Moonbeam. XC-20 tokens conform to ERC-20, the technical standard for all smart contracts on Ethereum, while also remaining accessible across Substrate-based chains via Polkadot’s XCM technology.

Moonbeam announced the availability of the Bifrost native token, BNC, on Moonriver. Bifrost’s token can now be used as xcBNC (an XC-20 representation of BNC) across the Moonriver ecosystem.

Cosmos

The Cosmos Hub Theta upgrade went live successfully. The upgrade brings the long-awaited feature of interchain accounts, which allows users to give permission to an application running on one blockchain to perform an action on another. Other features include updated versions of Cosmos SDK and the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.

Tezos

PixelPower, a new collectible NFT card game from the creators of Pixel Potus, went live on Tezos. The game revolves around 50+ NFT weapons with 6 levels of rarity. Collectors can claim one free NFT per day and buy up to 20 random common-level NFTs per day.

The Graph

Siren, a DeFi protocol that lets users trade options and earn yield on any ERC20 token, has integrated The Graph’s hosted service to power its user interface, including data visualizations that allow users to understand how they make money on their platform.

NEAR Protocol

Capsule Social, a decentralized social network that builds innovative tools to enable decentralized discourse, launched Blogchain, a NEAR-native web3 publishing platform for independent writers, providing them with a decentralized, censorship-resistant, and user-friendly space to engage and grow their audience.

Casper Network

Metacask launched its NFT marketplace on the Casper blockchain, allowing whisky aficionados to purchase and collect their own luxury whisky cask NFTs.

Gnosis Chain (formerly xDAI)

Ambire Wallet has integrated Gnosis Chain as its 8th supported blockchain, enabling fast and inexpensive transactions for its users.

DXDao, a sovereign collective developed by Daostack and Gnosis, launched the first-ever KPI based awareness mining campaign using Carrot.eth, during Ethereum’s Devconnect week in Amsterdam. The goal was to get thought leaders to start following the DXdao Twitter account.

Augmented Finance, a DeFi lending and borrowing protocol on Gnosis Chain, has integrated Chainlink’s price feeds to help protect the protocol against data manipulation attacks.

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