In a letter to District Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York, Buterin detailed his seven-year friendship with Griffith, who he met in 2013 and began collaborating with on research in 2016. In 2018, Griffith formally joined Ethereum as a developer after Buterin said he “convinced him to agree.”
The firm has also launched BessemerDAO, a Web 3 community for founders, creators and operators. BessemerDAO is meant to connect members of the crypto community for idea sharing, business development and tokenomics. The effort won’t be decentralized at first with Bessemer partners making decisions for the DAO, but the firm plans for the effort to become decentralized over time.
After a devastating 50% correction between Dec. 25 and Jan. 25, Polygon (MATIC) has been struggling to sustain the $1.40 support. While some argue this top-15 coin has merely adjusted after a 16,200% gain in 2021, others point to competing scaling solutions growth.
Either way, MATIC remains 50.8% below its all-time high at an $11 billion market capitalization. Currently, the market cap of Terra (LUNA) stands at $37 billion, Solana (SOL) is above $26 billion and Avalanche (AVAX) is at a $19 billion market value.
A positive note is that Polygon raised $450 million on Feb. 7, and the funding round was backed by some of blockchain’s most considerable venture funds, including Sequoia Capital.
Polygon offers scaling and infrastructure support to Ethereum Virtual Machine-based (EVM) decentralized applications (DApps). Besides, it is not plagued by the high transaction fees and network congestion that impact the Ethereum network.
However, as proof-of-stake layer-1 networks emerged and offered low-cost smart contract capabilities, it vastly increased the competition for Ethereum network decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible token minting, marketplaces, crypto games, gambling and social applications.
In comparison, Terra’s total value locked increased by 340% between July and December 2021, reaching $12.6 billion. Similarly, Avalanche’s smart contracts deposits increased from $185 million to $11.11 billion in the same period.
Polygon’s primary DApp metric started to display weakness in August 2021 after the network‘s TVL dropped below 4 billion MATIC.
The chart above shows how Polygon‘s DApp deposits peaked at 7.4 billion MATIC in July 2021, then drastically declined over the next couple of months. In dollar terms, the current $3.5 billion TVL is the lowest number since May 2021. These figures represent less than 5% of the aggregate TVL (excluding Ethereum), according to DefiLlama data.
Another positive is that on March 9, Ankr, a multi-chain toolkit for blockchain infrastructure, enabled a token bridge between Ethereum and Polygon. The first release will allow the aMATICb liquid staking token to be sent and stored. This enables users to earn additional layers of rewards on DeFi platforms.
To confirm whether the TVL drop in Polygon is troublesome, one should analyze DApp usage metrics. Some DApps, such as games and collectibles, do not require large deposits, so the TVL metric is irrelevant in those cases.
As shown by DappRadar, on March 10 the number of Polygon network addresses interacting with decentralized applications grew by 5% versus the previous month. Even though Polygon’s TVL has been hit the hardest compared to similar smart contract platforms, there is solid network use in the gaming sector, as measured by Crazy Defense Heroes’ 199,260 active addresses in the last 30 days.
On Nov. 16, Polygon launched its zk-STARK-powered Miden Virtual Machine, a zero-knowledge Scalable Transparent ARgument of Knowledge. Polygon has also committed over $1 billion for developing complex DeFi applications that need sensitive information redacted on digitized assets, reducing their size for fast verification by blockchain participants.
The above data suggest that Polygon is holding its ground versus competing chains, and those holders might not worry too much about MATIC’s 50% price correction. Polygon’s ecosystem continues to flourish, and the fact that it offers much demanded layer-2 scaling solutions for multiple industries can be viewed as a bullish factor.
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The Labor Department said crypto presents “significant risks and challenges to participants’ retirement accounts, including significant risks of fraud, theft and loss.” It highlighted as reasons speculation and volatility, challenges to making informed investment choices, custodial and record-keeping concerns, the lack of reliability of cryptocurrency valuations and an evolving regulatory environment.
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According to a recent report curated by NonFungible, players of the monster-battle nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, game Axie Infinity transacted nearly $3.5 billion worth of NFTs in 2021. This accounts for almost two-thirds of all NFTs transacted in the entire blockchain gaming industry in 2021. In second and third place were sports highlights marketplace NBA Top Shot with $827 million and community gaming platform Loot with $242 million, respectively.
Created by Vietnamese video game developer Sky Mavis in 2018, the game contains creatures called “Axies” that players collect and use to complete daily quests, duel other players, etc. Every Axie is an NFT minted on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Completing tasks with Axies rewards players with Smooth Love Potions (SLPs), which can be sold for cash on cryptocurrency exchanges, thereby generating a stream of income for players. On the whole, Axie Infinity accounted for 19% of the estimated $17 billion in total NFT transactions last year.
Last November, Axie Infinity surged significantly in popularity, especially among gamers in developing countries, where one can potentially earn more playing Axie Infinity than working minimum wage jobs. However, players have complained to its developers that their earnings have fallen in light of SLP falling in price by 67.5% in the past year.
Although, the price decline can be partly attributed to the rising token inflation due to more and more players joining and playing the game. At the time of publication, there are nearly 2.7 million monthly Axie players, compared to just north of 1 million last March. But from July 2021 to now, the circulating supply of SLP increased from 541.7 million to 5.13 billion.
Overall, blockchain gaming enthusiasts bought and sold $5.18 billion worth of NFTs last year, spread across 20,986,532 sales. In addition, there were a total of 112 blockchain games and 1.88 million active wallets. Based on analysis by NonFungible, these statistics accounted for 2.18% of the world’s total gaming market in 2021.
This time, however, rising inflation is thrown into the mix. Commodities, a traditional inflation hedge, tend to rally during the start of an inflationary cycle. Therefore, the correlation between bitcoin and commodities collapsed in recent months to more normal levels (zero correlation).
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Sin embargo, una estrategia de seis a 24 meses requiere que los inversores consideren factores como actualizaciones planificadas de redes, partnerships, hojas de ruta y desarrollos de proyectos que podrían materializarse y, como resultado, impulsar positivamente los precios. “Estas estrategias se basan en análisis a corto y medio plazo en los que la adopción, la integración y la escalabilidad del negocio tienen un papel importante en el análisis de la inversión para los inversores”, dijo Aguilar.
The majority of the reports required by the order relate to enforcement. The broadest of these is likely Treasury’s report with policy recommendations “to protect United States consumers, investors and businesses, and support expanding access to safe and affordable financial services.” The most impactful may be a joint U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) report on how their existing jurisdictions may address the risks of digital assets, and whether additional authority is needed. Other reports deal with illicit activity, financial stability, climate, privacy and consumer protection as well as competition.