As one of the main growing sub-sectors in the crypto industry, decentralized finance (DeFi) has faced a challenging year amid market dynamics, cyberattacks and regulatory uncertainty. Its future demands more transparency and clarity in the regulatory landscape, according to a panel discussion at the International Workshop on P2P Financial Systems 2022 on Dec. 1. Moderated by Cointelegraph’s editor-in-chief Kristina Cornèr with Gaspard Pedruzzi, CEO of APWine; Daniel Perez, co-founder of Mero; Hugo Philion, CEO of Flare, and Niall Roche, CTO-in-residence at the University College London School of Management as panelists, the discussion focused on the DeFi future among a disruptive …

Tokenization is the process of converting something with tangible or intangible value into digital tokens. Tangible assets like real estate, stocks or art can be tokenized. In a similar vein, intangible assets like voting rights and loyalty points can be tokenized, too. We see Avios as an example of tokenized loyalty points by the traditional credit card industry. However, when tokens are created on a blockchain, they add a level of transparency that previous iterations of tokens couldn’t achieve. There are several banks that are experimenting with tokenization. But, before diving into the use cases in banking, it would be …

Telegram is set to build a set of decentralized tools, including noncustodial wallets and decentralized exchanges, according to founder Pavel Durov via his Telegram channel on Nov. 30. The initiative is a response to the recent FTX collapse, said Durov, as the industry ended up being concentrated in the "hands of a few to abuse their power. As a result, a lot of people lost their money when FTX, one of the largest exchanges, went bankrupt." This announcement comes weeks after the launch of Fragment, a decentralized auction platform for unique usernames based on The Open Network, or TON, a …

Decentralized lending protocol, MakerDAO, has voted against crypto investment firm CoinShares' proposal to invest between 100million and 500million worth of the community’s funds, into a portfolio of corporate debt securities and government-backed bonds for yield, as an investment strategy. 72.43% of the community votes went against CoinShares' proposal to invest MakerDAO’s funds into various traditional assets. If the community had voted in favor of CoinShare’s proposal, the crypto investment firm would have provided “a variable APY above the SOFR interest rate (3.01% as of October 26, 2022) in the community’s preferred currency (DAI, USDC, USD…) to MakerDAO'', which would have …

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are taking over governance in the blockchain space, and this trend is only in its early stages still. Occam DAO, the decentralized voter community behind OccamFi, has recently voted in a new partnership for the incubator platform. Humanode will be joining the Occam ecosystem with its revolutionary approach to blockchain security and power distribution. You can get an in-depth overview of this new partnership in the next Cointelegraph AMA session on November 28th. Cointelegraph will have a chat with Victor from Humanode and Cristina from Occam DAO to bring you the most important details behind the …

A handful of government-backed financial institutions have been exploring tokenization use cases to revolutionize traditional financial systems. For instance, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Volcanic bond project has been in the works for over a year and aims to raise $1 billion from investors with tokenized bonds to build a Bitcoin city. The Central Bank of Russia has also expressed interest in tokenized off-chain assets. In addition, the Israeli Ministry of Finance, together with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), recently announced the testing of a blockchain-backed platform for digital bond trading. Cointelegraph Research’s 2021 Security Token Report found that most securities …

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 …

The collapse of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has raised many concerns over unregulated centralized platforms. Investors are now coming to question how safe it is to keep one’s funds on these exchanges and have voiced grave concerns about centralized decision-making without any checks. FTX held one billion in a customer’s fund and was found to be using the customer-deposited crypto assets to mitigate its own business losses. Furthermore, a recent report suggests that the downfall of numerous crypto exchanges over the last decade has permanently taken 1.2 million Bitcoin (BTC) — almost 6% of all Bitcoin — out of …

Think back to the communities you’ve been genuinely excited to be a part of throughout your life. It’s likely these were groups formed on the basis of shared interests, right? That’s because we feel a sense of belonging when we bond with others over any particular thing we feel a particular way about. For example, I love games, and I never get tired of exploring or fostering communities where I can meet other gamers. That’s how I know that the current GameFi space is no breeding ground for gamers like myself and my enthusiastic peers: It’s a breeding ground for …

The rising popularity of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) reflects the growing tendency toward the creation of community-focused projects within the Web3 ecosystem. At its core, a DAO is an organizational structure that allows decentralized decision-making within a community. Currently, there are over 4,000 of these projects in existence, according to the registration data of DeepDAO. With new tools available to make DAOs easier than ever, quantity can easily overtake quality within these communities and it begs the question of what will eventually make these projects relevant in the long run. A basic ingredient The basic structure for decentralized organizations seems …

After community backlash received from an initial privacy policy revision on Nov. 23, ConsenSys, the parent company of MetaMask, released a statement to reiterate the intentions of its data collection. The company stated that the policy has always relayed how certain types of personal information are automatically collected, which could include IP addresses. According to ConsenSys, the latest updates were in the act of transparency as to how Infura, MetaMask’s default Remote Procedure Call (RPC), works with user data. ConsenSys highlighted that MetaMask itself does not collect IP addresses. Rather the policy says users running the wallet through Infura applications …

The term Web3 is often used as shorthand to discuss the new phase of the internet. It describes leaving the era of centralized social media and massive e-commerce platforms and arriving at a utopia of user-controlled data. Web3, in a colloquial sense, is simply an umbrella marketing term that means anything crypto-adjacent. To offer clarity on this topic, the Cointelegraph Research team has released a new report detailing the nature of the real Web3. These key insights are invaluable for investors to understand to separate facts from fundamental misconceptions. The blockchain web and the decentralized web Cointelegraph Research’s “Web3: Marketing …