Have you ever played the game series Civilization, created by designer Sid Meier? Through the years, much has changed, but one of the unchanging hallmarks of the series has been the technology tree. Why has it been such a stable component of this game? Because it allows you, on one look, to get a bird’s-eye view of the technological capabilities necessary to make progress on your audacious civilizational goals. Compare this with our real civilization. If we wanted to, we could probably map the many technological capability paths that got us to where we are today. After all, our current …

Building a career or constructing a team in decentralized finance (DeFi) and crypto relies on finding talent, skills and the right attitude anywhere, in anyone. While this is no different than other industries, what makes ours unique are the much-needed, specialized skill sets combined with finding a good culture fit in an international and remote setting. Despite recent turbulence in markets, crypto companies continue building and growing. The increased energy and legitimacy in the industry over the years has many people wanting to make the switch from Web2 to Web3. This requires recruiters to sift through hundreds of applicants every …

The Open Network (TON) Foundation is the latest cryptocurrency company to upgrade its ecosystem with Ethereum Name Service (ENS)-like domain names. The TON Foundation on Thursday announced the launch of TON DNS, a new service that allows users to assign human-readable names to crypto wallets, smart contracts and websites. Similar to other popular crypto-related domain names like “.eth” or “.crypto” the domain zone for TON DNS is “.ton” and will enable users to access decentralized applications in a simple way. With TON DNS, users will be able to use simple and short domain names instead of typing in a long …

Many businesses and big brands have already jumped on the nonfungible token (NFT) bandwagon, including Nike, the National Basketball Association, Pepsi and even Taco Bell. But are these just for the show, or are these NFTs creating value? Much like digital services have become essential for every business in and outside of the technology sector, I believe that tokens — and, specifically, NFTs — are likely to become equally crucial in the emerging Web3 economy for at least two reasons. First, my view is that NFTs tokenize ideas at the atomistic level, creating rivalry and exclusivity around goods or services. …

Wandering around the metaverse is like being in a computer game, but soon, it will look exactly like real life. Unlike some dystopian visions of the metaverse, I don’t think we will give up on reality and stop participating in the physical world. On the other hand, advancements in artificial intelligence content generation will likely lead to a photo-realistic metaverse featuring exact replicas of ourselves and propel us toward a hyper-reality that combines our real-world and digital lives. Everything we do today on the internet will happen in the metaverse, just with a more engaging visual interface. The virtual content …

Billionaire tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that Web3 and its underlying blockchain technology reminds him of the rise of the early internet. Andreessen, better known today as the co-founder of the blockchain-focused venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), originally found success by developing the first widely used web browser called Mosaic and then founded Netscape Navigator, which dominated the browser market throughout much of the 1990s. Appearing on the Bankless podcast alongside investment partner and colleague Chris Dixon, Andreessen said that increasing adoption and a flurry of development in Web3 appears remarkably similar to the rush of …

Job creation is traditionally engineered by politicians desperate to get the country back to work and to be seen as stimulating the economy. From the job creation programs of the Great Depression to United States President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act, employment schemes have a long, checkered history. Today, fostering meaningful employment for the masses remains as popular as ever with policymakers, and yet, the next great job creation scheme is unlikely to be issued as a top-down order. Rather, it will emanate from a realm that most politicians have little dominion over and few powers to control: the Metaverse. …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been in the headlines for the past few years. While swaths of the population have tried to get their head around why NFTs exist, demand has soared, institutions have been built, and the lingo has entered our collective consciousness. There is an elephant in the room, though: NFTs are difficult to use and a majority of them are digital snake oil. But these problems create the opportunity to provide answers. The accessibility and legitimacy of NFTs are both ripe for change. As funding pours into the space, the market is starting to mature, and that change …

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has tipped commercial smart contract adoption as the next catalyst to drive the crypto and blockchain sector. The Dallas Mavericks owner and crypto proponent was commenting on the current “lull” state of the crypto market, compared to the internet or dot-com bubble in the early 2000s that saw a lot of over-hyped and relatively similar companies collapse. The crypto market is painting a fairly grim picture of late, with nearly all of the top 100 digital assets facing double-digit losses over the past seven days. There are likely to be several factors behind the bearish sentiments, …

Crypto-friendly browser Opera integrated BNB Chain, a decentralized blockchain ecosystem formerly known as Binance Smart Chain, to enable BNB Chain-based decentralized apps (DApps) on Android, iOS and desktop versions of its Crypto Browser. The integration will enable Opera’s 350 million users to purchase BNB (Build N Build) token with fiat and send and receive it via the built-in Opera crypto wallet, as well as access DApps on the BNB Chain ecosystem. The list includes decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like PancakeSwap, 1inch and BiSwap, as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) products like DRIP Venus, Tranchess, Treehouse, ApeSwap and AutoShark Finance. The Opera …

In his monthly crypto tech column, Israeli serial entrepreneur Ariel Shapira covers emerging technologies within the crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain space, as well as their roles in shaping the economy of the 21st century. With the news that Meta plans to take a nearly 50% cut of virtual asset sales in Horizon Worlds, it will not be surprising if independent artists and content creators turn away from the Metaverse entirely. Or at least from its Meta rendition, no matter how excited the company might be about the creator economy. It’s one thing to pay this much when the …

Swiss privacy startup Nym Technologies announced it has secured $300 million in commitments from venture capital partners in support of the NYM Innovation Fund. Nym intends to issue grants to developers and incentivize them to build on top of Nym's decentralized infrastructure. This funding comes a couple of weeks after its native token NYM launched on major crypto exchanges, including OKX and Huobi. At the time of publication, the NYM token traded at an average price of $0.92, and its 24-hour trading volume has witnessed a spike since the fund's announcement. The day that NYM was first listed on April …