Those that were around in 2017 likely remember the initial coin offering (ICO) craze, which saw swathes of new projects emerge — many of which generated staggering returns for participants in a matter of weeks or months. Although many ICO-funded projects turned out to be duds, a small proportion grew and evolved to become the current heavyweight blockchain platforms, including Ether (ETH), Filecoin (FIL), Polkadot (DOT) and Cardano (ADA) — each of which are among the top 30 largest crypto assets by market capitalization. The average ICO generated a whopping 1,320% profit for short-term investors, making them among the most …

Catch up on nonfungible token (NFT)-related news this week from restaurants to movies and music. Below is a roundup of stories you don't want to miss. Melania Trump's eyes become an NFT Former first lady Melania Trump launched her own NFT platform and dropped her first digital collectible titled "Melania's Vision," which will be on sale through the rest of the month. "Melania's Vision" is a watercolor art piece by artist Marc-Antoine Coulon. The limited-edition digital artwork will be available for 1 SOL ($150) and includes an audio recording from Mrs. Trump. The Melania Trump NFT platform utilizes the Solana …

Yearn Finance (YFI) emerged as one of the best performers in the crypto market this week, rallying by over 46% in just four days to reach a two-week high above $29,100. The gains surfaced primarily as Yearn Finance revealed that it has been buying back YFI en masse since November in response to a community vote to improve the YFI token's economics. The decentralized asset management platform purchased 282.40 YFI at an average price of $26,651 per token — a total of over $7.50 million. Furthermore, Yearn Finance noted that it has more than $45 million saved in its Treasury …

On Wednesday, crypto-fiat gateway payments provider Ramp announced it had raised a $52.7 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital, NFX, Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, Firstminute Capital, and angel investors. Ramp allows its partner brands to offer crypto-enabled services, claiming that it takes mere hours for developers to integrate their decentralized applications, or dApps, with its software. It has over 400 partners, including Axie Infinity, Mozilla, Opera Browser, Dapper Labs, Aave, Argent, Trust Wallet, and Zerion. The firm has regulatory approval in the U.S., U.K., and Poland. Current uses of Ramp include purchasing cryptocurrencies for storage in wallets directly …

Mintable marketplace announced its partnership with Immutable X, a StarkWare-based layer 2 solution for NFTs on Ethereum, to make over 24 million NFTs on Immutable X available for sale on Mintable. This integration will enable users to deposit ETH and ERC-20 tokens with instant confirmation and no gas fees. According to Mintable’s Twitter thread, Mintable and Immutable X share a vision to scale NFT marketplaces by offering access to NFTs to the masses. 1/We're thrilled to partner up with @Immutable X - the 1st & leading Layer 2 for #NFTs on Ethereum! All NFTs on Immutable X are now available …

The crypto industry has enjoyed astronomical growth over the last couple of years. Now, talent recruitment experts say that crypto firms are in dire need of good leadership to scale their businesses. Previously seen as a nascent market, crypto is now a fast-maturing industry that attracts a lot of talent, David Richardson, partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, told Cointelegraph. “It's all driven by the growth rate of these firms and hiring leaders that can help them continue to scale and continue to keep pace with the growth rate in the business,” he said. Crypto companies are looking …

Dear Lord Sugar Mountain, Attention: to my Facebook friend who is building a version of the metaverse that nobody wants as a starter. The last few years must certainly not have been easy. Your business model centered around polarization and, subsequently, outrage has ironically unified many of us against relying too much on your social media platform. Your government — whose sniper rifle accuracy you know all too well as they took out your ill-conceived stablecoin project shortly after your expensive global advertising campaign went live — has tuned in to the many whistleblowers exposing how your company captures and …

Even as nonfungible token (NFT) transactions have taken off and made headlines, to most people outside the crypto world, they’re just a gimmick. The metaverse will change that. There’s always a tipping point when new technologies go from incomprehensible fringe interest to, suddenly, part of life. That point usually comes from the confluence of a number of drivers and, right now, we’re experiencing what happens when two such trends hit the inflection point together. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to rebrand Facebook to Meta was enough to propel the metaverse into major headlines around the world, although the concept has been around …

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. Although the markets may be down and technical indicators built upon AWS malfunctioning, fear not young degens, fundamental news and the spirit of Wagmi is abundant as ever. So, read on and discover all you need to know about the most important events of this week. What you’re about to read is a shorter, more succinct version of the newsletter. For a comprehensive summary of DeFi’s developments over the last week, subscribe below. AWS outage highlights the need for truly decentralized exchanges. An Amazon Web Service outage this week produced …

On Friday, Assembly, a decentralized layer one smart contract network built within the IOTA ecosystem, announced it had raised $100 million from private investors, including LD Capital, HyperChain Capital assembly, and Huobi Ventures. The project stated that the funds will be used to accelerate the development of decentralized finance protocols, nonfungible tokens, and play-to-earn crypto games. IOTA is a blockchain designed for facilitating internet-of-things transactions. Its proprietary technology consists of a system of decentralized acyclic graphs that can connect to one another in multiple vectors as opposed to in-series as with a regular blockchain. As a result, one new block …

On Friday, Virtue Gaming, a decentralized online poker platform built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, launched the first play-to-earn digital poker casino in the United States. In the U.S., only six states (Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Michigan) have legalized and currently regulate online poker. The country has been slow to act on the subject due to concerns that international poker platforms would take revenue away from domestic, land-based gambling venues. Moreover, even in the said states, poker platforms must obtain licenses from each individual jurisdiction to operate. As a result, U.S. residents typically cannot access popular …

Late Wednesday, Joseph Delong, chief technology officer of SushiSwap, the 13th largest decentralized exchange, or DEX, by trading volume, tendered his immediate resignation from the role. Explaining his decision, Delong gave the following statement: "I wish Sushi the best and am saddened that Sushi is so imperiled within and without. The chaos that is occurring now is unlikely to result in a resolution that will leave the DAO as much more of a shadow than it once was without a radical structural transformation." In the interest of the Sushi Community I am resigning as CTO effective immediately. I very much …