While many pundits have labeled Solana (SOL) as an "Ethereum killer" due to its lower fees and faster transaction times, Solana Labs co-founder Raj Gokal said the project has no desire to kill the cryptocurrency — and wouldn’t be able to if it did. Gokal made the comments in response to a Nov.10 Twitter post from the co-founder of venture capital firm Placeholder, Chris Burniske who wrote that “despite pretty words, L1 knives are fully out. In crypto, generally, people want their biggest bags to win.” “This will influence almost all communications, so don't take what you see and hear …

Messaging apps are commonplace in our day-to-day interactions, with more than 3.6 billion people worldwide using them. For perspective, the average person is estimated to send up to 72 messages every day. While messaging has dramatically opened up the door to communication, recent high-profile events have shown just how concerning the management of data collected from these apps can be. In September 2021, WhatsApp was fined 255 million euros for data sharing violations. Before this, in August 2020, Telegram suppressed a data leak that exposed the personal information of nearly 500 million of its users. Although these concerns were brought …

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) have again risen to a new all-time high on Nov. 10, indicating that the trend remains firmly in favor of the bulls. In a recent report from Kraken exchange, analysts said that the current quarter’s price action has a correlation of 0.88 with the fourth quarter of 2017. Bitcoin had rallied 220% in 4Q 2017 and if history repeats itself, Bitcoin could reach $96,355, which could potentially be this cycle’s top. Long-term holders, who have held their Bitcoin for more than 12 months, are reluctant to spend their coins, according to Glassnode’s “The Week On-Chain” …

Standard Custody & Trust Company, a digital asset custodian based in New York, has expanded its crypto offerings to include Solana (SOL), giving institutional investors the ability to stake and custody the world’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency. Beginning Wednesday, institutional investors will have the ability to interact directly with Solana’s rapidly growing ecosystem through both segregated and on-chain accounts, with staking services offered through Figment, an application layer solution provider for institutions. The company said it also plans to provide custody services for Solana Program Library tokens, which are a collection of on-chain programs. Standard Custody is rolling out support for Solana …

DeFi development firm Neon Labs has concluded a $40 million private token sale as part of its ongoing efforts to create an Ethereum-compatible environment on Solana, underscoring heightened investor demand for scalability and liquidity solutions in the rapidly growing decentralized finance market. The private sale of NEON tokens was led by Jump Capital, a Chicago-based venture firm, with additional participation from Shu Zu’s Three Arrows Capital, Solana Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Ethereal Ventures and CoLab Ventures, among others. Over 60 angels and ecosystem partners participated in the token sale, the company confirmed. Proceeds from the sale will go towards Neon …

Identity verification tech firm Civic Technologies has launched a free tool to combat botting activity in Solana (SOL)-based NFT drops. According to a Nov. 8 announcement, Civic’s new tool “Ignite Pass” will filter out bots by requiring buyers to complete a liveness verification before being approved to make NFT purchases. Civic’s website notes that users will be required to take a video selfie in order to verify, with an Ignite Pass then being issued to their wallet address upon completion. The pass also remains active for 24 hours to “limit the options of malicious botters verifying multiple wallets. ” The …

Jules Urbach, the CEO and founder of OTOY, wants to democratize content creation, specifically as it pertains to virtual assets. OTOY’s technology intends to fulfill the promise of an open cloud-based metaverse via the Render Network — the first decentralized GPU rendering network & 3D marketplace built on OTOY's OctaneRender NFT ecosystem. While at the inaugural Solana Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, Portugal, Urbach announced Render Network’s integration with the Solana blockchain, as well as a partnership with NFT minting platform Metaplex. Urbach noted that the project's recent move to Solana happened for a variety of reasons. He mentioned that Solana …

During Solana's Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, Portugal, executives at Brave and Solana Labs announced that the Brave browser would integrate with the Solana (SOL) blockchain and feature Solana decentralized applications, or dApps, on its browser. Simultaneously, Solana will promote the adoption of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), the native digital currency of the Brave Browser, among its dApp users. We've partnered with @solana to integrate it into the browser and make it the default for DApp support. We will soon bring best-in-class wallet features for the Solana blockchain into our desktop & mobile browsers. #BreakpointLisbon https://t.co/tTB7NXKWjI — Brave Software (@brave) November …

Bitcoin (BTC) is close to making a new all-time high and Ether (ETH) finally soared to hit a new high at $4,800. This pushed the total crypto market capitalization above $3 trillion for the first time ever on Nov. 8, according to data from CoinGecko. Data from Santiment shows that Bitcoin whales holding between 10,000 BTC to 100,000 BTC in their wallets have been aggressively buying in the past few days. They have added 92,000 Bitcoin in the past 25 days out of which roughly 43,000 have been purchased in the past five days. Another important group that has been …

Solana (SOL) surpassed Cardano (ADA) and leading stablecoin Tether (USDT) to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. At press time, the net worth of total SOL tokens in circulation was a little over $76 billion, falling only behind Binance Coin's (BNB) $109 billion, Ether's (ETH) $540 billion, and Bitcoin's (BTC) $1.17 trillion. Meanwhile, Cardano and Tether's market cap came out to be $66.39 billion and $74.42 billion, respectively. $100M fund launch boosts SOL's bullish outlook Solana's market capitalization surged as its native token, SOL, rose to yet another record high. On Nov. 7, the SOL price crossed above $262 …

While the Ethereum blockchain has the community advantage, the competition with Solana is heating up thanks to the rise of blockchain-based play-to-earn games, which is now simply called GameFi. Founded by Scopely and Glu Mobile veterans, game developer and publisher Faraway announced that the studio has raised $21 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and major crypto exchange FTX. Along with the $8-million seed round, Faraway now has $30 million in total funding from renowned crypto ecosystem investors a16z, Sequoia Capital, Pantera Capital, Jump Capital and Solana. The company is developing its flagship title, …

Bitcoin (BTC) denied bulls their big break on Nov. 4 as sideways action dragged the market ever closer to $60,000. BTC hodlers in "buy the dip" mode Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD back below $62,000 at 8am UTC. The pair saw a difficult 24 hours after hitting local highs above $64,000, finally bouncing at $60,000 in a brief but significant dip. The plebs continue to stack. — Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_) November 4, 2021 While some suggested the price action was a gift to investors looking to add to their BTC stash before further upside, analysts were …