Tailoring his argument to many of the companies that were market leaders at the time, his ideas eventually also applied to companies that either hadn’t fully defined their markets or didn’t even yet exist but would go on to generate billions in market share: Uber, Lyft, TikTok/ByteDance, Robinhood and Coinbase, among several others. If you were going to be a unicorn in the 21st century, software was probably going to be a key part of earning that horn. The hidden motor behind this complete disruption of modern economies and life was the emergence of true cloud computing and cloud giants, …

The function of crypto wallets has changed significantly over the last few years. They initially secured token holdings or served as art galleries with nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Today, they’ve become like bank accounts for many, and soon, they will offer even more functionality by enabling digital curriculum vitae (CVs). In a May 2022 paper, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and others introduced the concept of “Soulbound tokens” (SBTs). Buterin and his co-authors argued that credentials on a blockchain offer many advantages to establishing provenance and reputation. Nonfungible tokens will serve as essential building blocks Related: Facebook and Twitter will soon be …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) led cryptocurrency’s rapid growth in early 2021, but the crypto market has since plummeted in value. Global markets have played a role, but so has recklessness among developers when it comes to both cybersecurity and (often self-serving) inflationary token models. Too much DeFi has been based on tokens minted from nothing or tokens that finance other tokens at high interest rates, with no part of the entire activity having any real underlying economic activity to back the yields offered. Secondly, security issues, hacks and exploits of DeFi contracts and bridges have been widespread, and most notable DeFi …

Some critics deem nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to be totally worthless. They don’t see the point. Why should they? The industry hasn’t covered itself in glory with countless rug pulls and celebrity endorsements with prompt pump-and-dumps. But, this is missing the point. Already most of the digital and physical objects we use in real life are unique, they are not fungible: this means they cannot be copied, substituted or subdivided. Detractors might still say, well, what’s the point? NFTs are immutable and verifiable assets on the blockchain — these sound like industry buzzwords with little meaning. However, they go a long …

A proposal out of Stanford University to make crypto transactions reversible is adding a wrinkle to discussions of crime and fraud prevention. Researchers suggested that mutability — the ability to reverse blockchain transactions — would help prevent crime. One of the advantages of cryptocurrency is that it is possible for the market — individuals, traders and banks — to decide if reversibility is wanted. Not only would a new (reversible) cryptocurrency be able to test the acceptance or desire for reversible transactions, it would help to test the idea that reversibility reduces crime. Although cryptocurrency is not a tool of …

Web3 is the buzzword that's on everyone's lips — but when you put the mania aside for a moment, there's a burning question that needs to be asked: Can these projects fully replace Web2… and what stands in the way of this happening? The likes of Google and Facebook have made a killing during the Web2 era, amassing billions of dollars in profits and a profound influence over the shape of the internet. But their continued influence is far from guaranteed. The 30-year history of the web is littered with the collapses of once-indestructible companies… MySpace being a notable example. …

Since the founding of Ethereum in 2015, an animating question that plagued the community was answered at exactly 06:42:59 UTC on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. Ethereum, the technological layer where a new class of applications and self-organizing organizations are being built, eliminated its reliance on an energy-intensive consensus mechanism called proof-of-work (PoW) to a more sustainable and secure consensus mechanism called proof-of-stake (PoS). In what has been described as one of the most significant milestones in blockchain history, the Merge has set the template for how Ethereum will continue to be the most powerful, most used, most credibly neutral, and …

It’s time to move on from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. They’re bad for nonfungible tokens (NFTs). They give critics ammo and distract from the technology, which is where the real value lies. For those on the outside looking in, NFTs are nothing more than overpriced monkey JPEGs. Or whichever choice of animated animal profile picture is in the firing line. NFTs, of course, are much more than that. But, because of Bored Apes, and the countless imitations they’ve spawned, NFTs are getting a bad rep. “Bubble,” “money laundering” and “scams” are all terminology associated by critics with the new …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) and Ether’s (ETH) agonizing 60% and 66% respective drop in price is drawing a lot of criticism from crypto critics and perhaps this is deserved, but there are also plenty of stocks with similar, if not worse performances. The sharp volatility witnessed in crypto prices is partially driven by major centralized yield and lending platforms becoming insolvent, Three Arrows Capital’s bankruptcy and a handful of exchanges and mining pools facing liquidity issues. For cryptocurrencies, 2022 has definitely not been a good year, and even Tesla sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings in Q2 at a loss. The quasi-trillion …

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have been heralded as the future of governance, unlocking a more egalitarian approach to decision-making. However, decentralizing leadership isn’t a magical solution that instantly leads to better results. To truly get the most out of a decentralized organization, steps must be taken to regulate weighted voting and tokenomics. If not carefully balanced, DAOs can implode — and some already have. Decentralized governance explained DAOs offer a model for managing a project or company that distributes voting rights across all members. There is usually no central authority, only the will of the collective. While this sounds equitable …

After Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge, it’s an ideal time to think about how we can also improve smart contracts. Essentially apps that run on blockchains, smart contracts are a vital component of our Web3 applications. But interacting with them remains quite dangerous, especially for non-developers. Many of the incidents where users lose their crypto assets are caused by buggy or malicious smart contracts. As a Web3 app developer, this is a challenge I think about often, especially as waves of new users keep onboarding into various blockchain applications. To fully trust a smart contract, a consumer needs to know exactly what …

Ethereum (ETH) is heading for the most significant upgrade in its history, which is scheduled to happen at around 5:27am UTC on Sept. 15. Those wanting to watch the Ethereum network make its historic shift to proof-of-stake (PoS) in real-time will have plenty of options to choose from. The Ethereum Foundation has scheduled an Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party live stream ready to go live on YouTube around 4:00 am UTC, which is roughly an hour and a half before the estimated time of the Merge. The Merge will take place when the network reaches a total terminal difficulty of …