What we call Web3 will be centered on an ecosystem of technology products that are decentralized, based on blockchain networks, interoperable, and without a traditional trusted validator (such as corporations, institutions and government bodies). But exactly what does this mean? What is Web3? Web3, a term coined by Gavin Wood, Web3 Foundation president, is the next phase of the internet and, perhaps, of organizing society as a whole. Web1 was the era of open, decentralized protocols, where most online activity involved browsing individual static pages. Web2, which we are now experiencing, is the era of centralization, in which a large …

Former Polychain Capital general partner Tekin Salimi has launched a new blockchain-focused investment fund that will eventually be converted into a founder-owned decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), offering a novel way for startup leaders to be rewarded for their contributions. The $125 million fund, known simply as “dao5,” will invest in blockchain and cryptocurrency projects in their pre-seed and seed stages. In the startup world, a pre-seed round usually helps company founders get their operations running. The seed stage is the first official equity funding round. The fund will invest primarily in projects specializing in layer-1 blockchain infrastructure, privacy technology, decentralized …

Insurance company Lemonade has partnered with prominent blockchain companies to form the Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition (L3C) decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to protect farmers from climate change by offering blockchain-based insurance. The insurance firm founded Lemonade Foundation, a nonprofit focused on creating social and environmental change with the use of blockchain-enabled technologies. The foundation will work closely with members of the L3C including Chainlink, Avalance, DAOstack, Etherisc, Hannover Re, Pula and Tomorrow.io. The climate insurance will take the form of a decentralized application (DApp) on the Avalanche platform. The DApp will also enable farmers to make and receive payments using …

Australian Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg opened the Australia Blockchain Week conference with a bombshell legislative proposal that he hopes will lay the groundwork for a new Digital Asset ecosystem down under. The proposed Digital Services Act (DSA) legislative package calls for reforms in crypto market licensing, custody, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), debanking, and taxes. Senator Bragg said in his address at the conference that he expects the legislation in the Act to “protect (crypto) consumers against malicious operators.” Senator Bragg outlined the four main pillars that the DSA is guided by. He explained that the DSA would be technologically neutral, …

Kimbal Musk, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Alex Zhang took to the SXSW stage on Monday to participate in the "Move Over NFTs. Here Come the DAOs" panel at Austin's Convention Center. Tolokonnikova is a former member of the Russian protest punk rock group Pussy Riot, and the co-founder of UnicornDAO and UkraineDAO. Zhang cofounded the social club DAO Friends With Benefits and serves as its mayor, while Musk cofounded the philanthropic DAO, Big Green DAO. Journalist Michael Casey moderated. Throughout the discussion, the panelists described their distinct and contrasting use cases behind their own decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, and came …

Monopolistic ISPs are overselling bandwidth while billions of people still don’t have internet access. Now, the world’s first layer-1 blockchain for bandwidth is introducing a solution to get the next billion people online. Cointelegraph talked to PKT lead developer Caleb James DeLisle about the problems with the internet industry and how to fix them. Tell us the story behind PKT. Why does a layer-1 blockchain have to do with bandwidth? The consumer broadband market is what I would call “rigged:” it’s overpriced and it’s underpriced at the same time. The way the companies in the industry do this is with …

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are individuals that collectively organize in social applications and blockchains to pursue common goals and interests. As the direction of the Metaverse keeps maturing, DAOs are rallying around the prospect of utilizing and investing in the Metaverse. Seeing that Goldman Sachs placed an $8 trillion valuation on the sector, eyes and ears have peeled into the possibility of accessibility, usability and monetization of these virtual worlds. Owners of digital land in the Metaverse tout some of the most recognizable names like Adidas, Nike, Snoop Dogg and JPMorgan. These entities are investing in the digital land and …

Brantly Millegan will be staying on as the director of the Ethereum Name Service Foundation after casting more than 363,300 votes against a decentralized autonomous organization proposal to remove him. According to a tally of roughly 3.7 million ENS DAO votes recorded at the end of the voting period on March 5, more than 1.6 million were against removing Millegan as director of the ENS Foundation — 43.39% of the vote. More than 698,000 votes abstained from the proposal, while roughly 1.4 million votes were in favor of Millegan’s removal — 19.1% and 37.51%, respectively. The controversial #ENS vote that …

Lobbying by the cryptocurrency industry and crypto proponents is booming in the U.S. Congress. According to a report released Tuesday by Public Citizen, the number of lobbyists for cryptocurrency-related issues rose from 115 in 2018 to 320 in 2021, with the number of representatives of the cryptocurrency industry itself jumping from 47 to 157 in that time. In February, that chorus was joined by the somewhat unorthodox Lobby3, “a project to fund effective policy advocacy and educate lawmakers about the positive potential of Web3” that is the brainchild of former U.S. presidential and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang. …

In the latest Cryptopedia episode, viewers can get a succinct and informative overview of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs. Cointelegraph's Jackson DuMont believes DAOs have the power to "completely transform how work and social collaboration are organized." What makes this type of organization both decentralized and autonomous? The answer is smart contracts on the blockchain. Fundamentally, a DAO runs on the lines of computer code written on smart contracts that anyone can interacted with in the same way. DuMont described the three major steps necessary to launch a DAO. The first step is creating that smart contract. The second step …

Now that the initial hype surrounding blockchain applications and the prolonged blockchain “winter” that followed are left behind, we now find ourselves in the middle of a “spring” that is helping organizations reimagine how they deliver value. So much so that blockchain is expected to add $1.76 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to PWC. A significant chunk of this uptick is expected to come from business-to-business (B2B) implementations, which stand to gain the most from the security, immutability and streamlining opportunities afforded by blockchain-based transactions and relationships. With processes that involve multiple partners, dozens (if not hundreds) …

Blockchain development is an ever-expanding space. In what feels like a daily occurrence, new projects and networks appear that claim to offer faster performance or new functions, unlike anything we’ve seen before. Whether or not those claims are true, the existence of multiple blockchain networks requires developers to consider the benefits and disadvantages of each one before building a decentralized application (DApp). And, more times than not, developers are locked to their network of choice from inception onward. A vital decision Building a DApp is no easy task. A development team must learn one or more programming languages, work around …