Decentralized finance (DeFi) markets may have cooled down over the past year, but the technology powering these applications continues to advance. In particular, smart contract platforms that enable transactions to take place across DeFi applications are maturing to meet enterprise requirements. While it’s notable that enterprises have previously shown interest in DeFi use cases, smart contract limitations have hampered adoption. A report published by Grayscale Research in March puts this in perspective, noting that “Despite handling millions of transactions per day, smart contract platforms in their current state would be incapable of handling even 10% of the worlds’ internet traffic.” …

Smart contracts are self-executing lines of code that run atop blockchains and are triggered once a set of predetermined conditions are met. They are used to automate the execution of online agreements without the involvement of third parties. Today, they are used across many industries, including the healthcare industry. The healthcare sector stands to benefit a lot from the widespread implementation of these self-executing programs, especially when it comes to streamlining arduous manual processes, automating bureaucratic procedures and alleviating issues caused by human error. Today, many healthcare institutions rely on highly centralized conventional management systems to handle sensitive tasks such …

Blockchain data analytics carried out by Nansen highlights the ever-growing amount of Ether (ETH) being staked across various staking solutions in the months following Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. The highly anticipated Merge has been a boon for decentralized finance (DeFi) in general, and staking solutions have been in high demand since Ethereum’s shift to PoS. This is according to blockchain data from a variety of staking solutions across the Ethereum ecosystem. Nansen’s report highlights the impact of the Merge in introducing staked ETH as an out-and-out cryptocurrency-native yield-bearing instrument that has quickly outstripped other collateralized yield-bearing services. The …

RNS.id, a digital Web3 identity platform developed to support the application and issuance of sovereignty-backed IDs, announced on Nov. 30 that it is integrating with zkSync for on-chain KYC. RNS.ID indicated in a release shared with Cointelegraph that its on-chain KYC solution is designed on a “privacy engine” to encrypt users' identity attributes or properties into different “hashed slices” with multiple signature verifications. RNS.ID aggregates users’ fragmented identity properties data and uses ZK-proofs to generate encrypted proofs from metadata. Additionally, the company stated that RNS.ID enables users to create their own "minimal disclosure identifying information system" for constrained usages, thereby …

Chainlink (LINK) looks poised for 25% price rally in the days leading up to its staking protocol launch, based on several fundamental and technical facto. Chainlink price rallies ahead of staking launch The staking feature, which will go live as v0.1 in beta mode on Dec. 6, comes as a part of the so-called "Chainlink Economics 2.0" that focuses on boosting LINK holders' reward-earning opportunities for "helping increase the crypto economic security" of Chainlink's oracle services. Earlier, Chainlink users had to launch their own nodes to receive rewards in LINK tokens. The staking feature effectively opens new avenues for them …

What are the challenges with Web3 For mainstream adoption of Web3, prevalent challenges need to be dealt with. These include centralized infrastructure, lack of regulatory clarity and rug pulls. While Web3 is perceived to be decentralized, developers integrate Web3 applications with Web2 protocols to make them work. This creates a scenario where functioning of decentralized applications is hinged to a centralized infrastructure. Another major challenge before Web3 is a lack of regulatory clarity. Blockchain technologies are advancing fast, and regulators will take time to catch up. Absence of regulatory oversight has led to unethical behavior in some projects as happened …

Just a month after becoming the first Canadian crypto trading platform to get registered by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), Coinsquare suffered a data breach that compromised users' personal information. On Nov. 19, Coinsquare had to temporarily shut down operations to investigate an unusual activity on its platform. However, several days of proactive measures allowed Coinsquare to resume operations gradually. We will be re-enabling crypto deposits shortly after the maintenance window with crypto withdrawals to follow shortly after. — Coinsquare (@Coinsquare) November 22, 2022 In a follow-up email to investors, Coinsquare admitted that their customer database with …

For decades, banks and insurance firms employed the same mostly static but highly profitable and centralized business models. Also for decades, Big Tech firms such as Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google have monopolized user data for their profit. However, blockchain projects could significantly challenge Big Tech’s grip on user data. In 2015, the future of money was at the forefront of financial experts’ minds at the World Economic Forum in Davos. There, they started to seriously focus on the challenges presented by the rise of Bitcoin (BTC), digital assets and fintech. The world of finance began to realize that …

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap's recently updated privacy policy appears to have attracted the ire of some members of the community, with concerns that collecting and storing user data works against crypto's core values. In recent responses to a November blog post regarding its updated privacy policy, some vocal members of the community suggested it i uncharacteristic for a decentralized entity to collect and store information about its users. In the Nov. 11 post from Uniswap Labs, released around the time of FTX’s collapse, the decentralized exchange released its privacy policy to explain how it collected and stored user data. “With …

The fall of crypto exchange FTX and potential resulting contagion could lead to an acceleration of crypto-company layoffs in the coming months, recruitment specialists warn. A Nov. 14 report from crypto data aggregator platform CoinGecko found that as of Nov. 13, the crypto space has seen 4,695 employees let go in 2022 so far, presenting 4% of staff cuts across all “technology startups.” However, the authors of the report warn that crypto layoffs could increase in the coming months when the “full impact” of FTX’s sudden collapse takes effect: “With the collapse of FTX since November 2 and its full …

In Celsius Network’s recent court filing, the billion-dollar centralized finance (CeFi) platform exposed more than 14,000 pages of customer identity and on-chain transaction data without user consent — a prescient reminder that privacy absent decentralization is no privacy at all. As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, CeFi lending giant Celsius Network disclosed names and on-chain transaction data of tens of thousands of its customers in an Oct. 5 court filing. While Celsius’ user base complied with standard Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures in order to open personal accounts with the CeFi platform, none consented to nor could have anticipated a …

The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams every hour. Solidus Labs said on Oct. 27 that it had been monitoring 12 blockchains including Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and BNB Chain (BNB) since Oct. 10 and in that time had detected 188,525 smart contract scams. Former United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director, Kathy Kraninger, who is now Solidus’ VP of regulatory affairs, said in the statement that “while some of the big rug pulls …