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Bitkey | Bitkey is a Bitcoin cryptocurrency hardware wallet created by Block, Inc., which is owned by Jack Dorsey. Bitkey's physical device is reported to be shipped in early 2024 in 95 countries, priced USD$150. It uses a three-tier security system and supports cloud backups for pass keys. It integrates Square, Cash App and Coinbase. It supports both iOS and Android operating systems.
== References == |
Bitnation | Bitnation, or crypto nation: 5 , was a cryptocurrency-based project self-described as a "voluntary nation", wherein all citizens chose to be citizens, founded in 2014 by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. A part of the process for becoming a citizen involved recording vital records, identity, and other legal events through the use of a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. As of August 2022, the bitnation.co domain name had been sold, and the project is considered defunct.
== History ==
Bitnation founder Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof grew up in a Franco-Swedish family where her father had been stateless for a decade. She was inspired by blockchain technology, and Bitcoin inspired her to extend it into education and national security, which gradually evolved into the backbone concepts of the modern startup company Bitnation. Bitnation was founded on 14 July 2014 by Tempelhof.: 13
== Media ==
Bitnation was the subject of a Vice piece in September 2016 wherein the author noted that "because a nation is as much an ideological concept as it is a legal one, one strength of Bitnation lies in its ability to give agency to groups who have been ignored or repressed by modern nation-states."The Atlantic noted in February 2018 that "Bitnation [is] proposing a 'peer-to-peer voluntary governance system' to replace the arbitrariness of birth as the decider of one’s citizenship. Blockchain governance could allow for the creation of virtual citizenship and autonomous communities distinct from territorial nation-states."Bitnation also received notable coverage in The Economist and The Wall Street Journal for its experimental work using blockchain technology to solve the migrant crisis.
== Awards and accolades ==
In April 2017, Bitnation's BRER (Bitnation Refugee Emergency Response) programme was one of those awarded by the Grand Prix 2017, an annual Netexplo Forum prize co-organized by UNESCO.
== References ==
== Bibliographies ==
The Googlement: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Starting Your Own Nation (and Changing the World) (2014), Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, Nortia Press (English) ISBN 0988879859
Swarmwise (14 February 2013), Rick Falkvinge, Chapter 1–6, English, online journal
== External links ==
Krug, Joey. "Bitnation Public Notary (BPN)". Bitnation. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
Tarkowski Tempelhof, Susanne (16 July 2015). "BITNATION: Year 1 Summary". Medium. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
Tarkowski Tempelhof, Susanne; M. Farrell, Jason (2016). "Bitnation Whitepaper": 11. Retrieved 14 September 2017. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) |
Blockscale | Intel Blockscale was a brand of crypto-mining accelerator ASIC sold by the U.S. chip manufacturer Intel. The Blockscale product debuted in June 2022, and was cancelled by Intel in April 2023. Intel has stated that it will continue to supply chips to existing customers until April 2024.The Blockscale chips were SHA-256 hardware accelerators designed for proof-of-work calculations. According to Intel, they were capable of up to 580 GH/s with a power consumption of up to 22.7 W, and a claimed efficiency of up to 26 J/TH. The product came in three variants: the Blockscale 1120, 1140, and 1160.
== References == |
Proof of work | Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was invented by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork in 1993 as a way to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from a service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. The term "proof of work" was first coined and formalized in a 1999 paper by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels.Proof of work was later popularized by Bitcoin as a foundation for consensus in a permissionless decentralized network, in which miners compete to append blocks and mine new currency, each miner experiencing a success probability proportional to the computational effort expended. PoW and PoS (proof of stake) remain the two best known Sybil deterrence mechanisms. In the context of cryptocurrencies they are the most common mechanisms.A key feature of proof-of-work schemes is their asymmetry: the work – the computation – must be moderately hard (yet feasible) on the prover or requester side but easy to check for the verifier or service provider. This idea is also known as a CPU cost function, client puzzle, computational puzzle, or CPU pricing function. Another common feature is built-in incentive-structures that reward allocating computational capacity to the network with value in the form of cryptocurrency.The purpose of proof-of-work algorithms is not proving that certain work was carried out or that a computational puzzle was "solved", but deterring manipulation of data by establishing large energy and hardware-control requirements to be able to do so. Proof-of-work systems have been criticized by environmentalists for their energy consumption.
== Background ==
One popular system, used in Hashcash, uses partial hash inversions to prove that computation was done, as a goodwill token to send an e-mail. For instance, the following header represents about 252 hash computations to send a message to calvin@comics.net on January 19, 2038:
X-Hashcash: 1:52:380119:calvin@comics.net:::9B760005E92F0DAE
It is verified with a single computation by checking that the SHA-1 hash of the stamp (omit the header name X-Hashcash: including the colon and any amount of whitespace following it up to the digit '1') begins with 52 binary zeros, that is 13 hexadecimal zeros:[1]
0000000000000756af69e2ffbdb930261873cd71
Whether PoW systems can actually solve a particular denial-of-service issue such as the spam problem is subject to debate;
the system must make sending spam emails obtrusively unproductive for the spammer, but should also not prevent legitimate users from sending their messages. In other words, a genuine user should not encounter any difficulties when sending an email, but an email spammer would have to expend a considerable amount of computing power to send out many emails at once. Proof-of-work systems are being used by other, more complex cryptographic systems such as bitcoin, which uses a system similar to Hashcash.
== Variants ==
There are two classes of proof-of-work protocols.
Challenge–response protocols assume a direct interactive link between the requester (client) and the provider (server). The provider chooses a challenge, say an item in a set with a property, the requester finds the relevant response in the set, which is sent back and checked by the provider. As the challenge is chosen on the spot by the provider, its difficulty can be adapted to its current load. The work on the requester side may be bounded if the challenge-response protocol has a known solution (chosen by the provider), or is known to exist within a bounded search space.Solution–verification protocols do not assume such a link: as a result, the problem must be self-imposed before a solution is sought by the requester, and the provider must check both the problem choice and the found solution. Most such schemes are unbounded probabilistic iterative procedures such as Hashcash.Known-solution protocols tend to have slightly lower variance than unbounded probabilistic protocols because the variance of a rectangular distribution is lower than the variance of a Poisson distribution (with the same mean). A generic technique for reducing variance is to use multiple independent sub-challenges, as the average of multiple samples will have a lower variance.
There are also fixed-cost functions such as the time-lock puzzle.
Moreover, the underlying functions used by these schemes may be:
CPU-bound where the computation runs at the speed of the processor, which greatly varies in time, as well as from high-end server to low-end portable devices.
Memory-bound where the computation speed is bound by main memory accesses (either latency or bandwidth), the performance of which is expected to be less sensitive to hardware evolution.
Network-bound if the client must perform few computations, but must collect some tokens from remote servers before querying the final service provider. In this sense, the work is not actually performed by the requester, but it incurs delays anyway because of the latency to get the required tokens.Finally, some PoW systems offer shortcut computations that allow participants who know a secret, typically a private key, to generate cheap PoWs. The rationale is that mailing-list holders may generate stamps for every recipient without incurring a high cost. Whether such a feature is desirable depends on the usage scenario.
== List of proof-of-work functions ==
Here is a list of known proof-of-work functions:
Integer square root modulo a large prime
Weaken Fiat–Shamir signatures
Ong–Schnorr–Shamir signature broken by Pollard
Partial hash inversion This paper formalizes the idea of a proof of work and introduces "the dependent idea of a bread pudding protocol", a "re-usable proof-of-work" (RPoW) system.
Hash sequences
Puzzles
Diffie-Hellman–based puzzle
Moderate
Mbound
Hokkaido
Cuckoo Cycle
Merkle tree–based
Guided tour puzzle protocol
== Proof of useful work (PoUW) ==
At the IACR conference Crypto 2022 researchers presented a paper describing Ofelimos, a blockchain protocol with a consensus mechanism based on "proof of useful work" (PoUW). Rather than miners consuming energy in solving complex, but essentially useless, puzzles to validate transactions, Ofelimos achieves consensus while simultaneously providing a decentralized optimization problem solver. The protocol is built around Doubly Parallel Local Search (DPLS), a local search algorithm that is used as the PoUW component. The paper gives an example that implements a variant of WalkSAT, a local search algorithm to solve Boolean problems.
== Bitcoin-type proof of work ==
In 2009, the Bitcoin network went online. Bitcoin is a proof-of-work digital currency that, like Finney's RPoW, is also based on the Hashcash PoW. But in Bitcoin, double-spend protection is provided by a decentralized P2P protocol for tracking transfers of coins, rather than the hardware trusted computing function used by RPoW. Bitcoin has better trustworthiness because it is protected by computation. Bitcoins are "mined" using the Hashcash proof-of-work function by individual miners and verified by the decentralized nodes in the P2P bitcoin network.The difficulty is periodically adjusted to keep the block time around a target time.
=== Energy consumption ===
Since the creation of Bitcoin, proof-of-work has been the predominant design of Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Studies have estimated the total energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining. The PoW mechanism requires a vast amount of computing resources, which consume a significant amount of electricity. 2018 estimates from the University of Cambridge equate Bitcoin's energy consumption to that of Switzerland.
=== History modification ===
Each block that is added to the blockchain, starting with the block containing a given transaction, is called a confirmation of that transaction. Ideally, merchants and services that receive payment in the cryptocurrency should wait for at least one confirmation to be distributed over the network, before assuming that the payment was done. The more confirmations that the merchant waits for, the more difficult it is for an attacker to successfully reverse the transaction in a blockchain—unless the attacker controls more than half the total network power, in which case it is called a 51% attack.
=== ASICs and mining pools ===
Within the Bitcoin community there are groups working together in mining pools. Some miners use application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for PoW. This trend toward mining pools and specialized ASICs has made mining some cryptocurrencies economically infeasible for most players without access to the latest ASICs, nearby sources of inexpensive energy, or other special advantages.Some PoWs claim to be ASIC-resistant, i.e. to limit the efficiency gain that an ASIC can have over commodity hardware, like a GPU, to be well under an order of magnitude. ASIC resistance has the advantage of keeping mining economically feasible on commodity hardware, but also contributes to the corresponding risk that an attacker can briefly rent access to a large amount of unspecialized commodity processing power to launch a 51% attack against a cryptocurrency.
== Environmental concerns ==
These miners compete to solve crypto challenges on the Bitcoin blockchain, and their solutions must be agreed upon by all nodes and reach consensus. The solutions are then used to validate transactions, add blocks and generate new bitcoins. Miners are rewarded for solving these puzzles and successfully adding new blocks. However, the Bitcoin-style mining process is very energy intensive because the proof of work shaped like a lottery mechanism. The underlying computational work has no other use but to provide security to the network that provides open access and has to work in adversarial conditions. Miners have to use a lot of energy to add a new block containing a transaction to the blockchain. The energy used in this competition is what fundamentally gives bitcoin its level of security and resistance to attacks. Also, miners have to invest computer hardwares that need large spaces as fixed cost.In January 2022 Vice-Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority Erik Thedéen called on the EU to ban the proof of work model in favor of the proof of stake model due its lower energy emissions. However, a proof of stake model not resisting centralisation as well as proof of work does.In November 2022 the state of New York enacted a two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining that does not completely use renewable energy as a power source for two years. Existing mining companies will be grandfathered in to continue mining without the use of renewable energy but they will not be allowed to expand or renew permits with the state, no new mining companies that do not completely use renewable energy will not also not be allowed to begin mining.
== See also ==
Bitcoin
Bitmessage
Cryptocurrency
Proof of authority
Proof of burn
Proof of personhood
Proof of space
Proof of stake
Proof of elapsed time
Consensus (computer science)
== Notes ==
^ On most Unix systems this can be verified with echo -n 1:52:380119:calvin@comics.net:::9B760005E92F0DAE | openssl sha1
== References ==
== External links ==
Finney's system at the Wayback Machine (archived December 22, 2007)
bit gold Bit gold. Describes a complete money system (including generation, storage, assay, and transfer) based on proof of work functions and the machine architecture problem raised by the use of these functions.
Merkle Proof Standardised Format for Simplified Payment Verification (SPV). |
Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards | Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards, abbreviated to ACTUS, are a set of royalty-free, open standards for representing financial contracts. The standards combine (1) a concise data dictionary that defines the contractual terms present in financial contracts with (2) a simple but complete taxonomy of fundamental algorithmic contract type patterns that incorporate elements from that data dictionary that apply to a given contract type such that (3) the cash flow obligations that are established by the contract can be accurately projected, analyzed and acknowledged by all parties to the contract over the life of the contract.
Providing an open and royalty-free standard for the data elements and algorithms of financial contracts enables the consistent sharing of accurate financial data by organizations in the financial industry, whether to consolidate views of product lines within an enterprise, to manage obligations between institutions, or to facilitate the collection and consolidation of financial data by regulators. Adoption and uptake of ACTUS is viewed as a public good benefit to create a globally accepted set of definitions capable of representing the preponderance of financial contracts in the real economy. Such standards are regarded as important for transparency and efficiency in financial innovation, risk management, financial regulation, the tokenization of financial instruments, and the development of smart contracts for decentralized finance (DeFi) using blockchain.
== History ==
The difficulty of defining and analyzing financial data were described by Willi Brammertz and his co-authors in a 2009 book, Unified Financial Analysis: The missing links of finance. The simplicity of the problem is described in an ECB paper, “Modelling metadata in central banks”. This cites the issue of how financial institutions have tried to overcome data silos by building enterprise-wide data warehouses. However, while these data warehouses physically integrate different sources of data, they do not conceptually unify them. For example, a single concept like notional value still might be captured in various ways in fields that might be labeled ‘nominal value,’ ‘current principal,’ ‘par value’ or ‘balance’. Standardization of data would improve internal bank operations, and offer the possibility of large-scale financial risk analytics by leveraging Big Data technology. Key to this is the idea of "contract types".The concepts were expanded upon by Brammertz and Allan I. Mendelowitz in a 2018 paper in the Journal of Risk Finance. They describe the need for software that turns natural language contracts into algorithms – smart contracts – that automate financial processes. Financial contracts define exchanges of payments or cash-flows which follow certain patterns. They identify less than three dozen relevant patterns covering most existing contracts. Underlying these contracts there must be a data dictionary that standardizes contract terms. In addition, the smart contracts need access to information representing the state of the world and which affects contractual obligations. This information would include variables such as market risk and counterparty risk held in online databases that are outside the blockchain (sometimes called "oracles").
The idea of the standardized algorithmic representation of financial contracts predates digital currencies but is highly relevant for block-chains or distributed ledgers and the concept of smart contracts. Brammertz and Mendelowitz argue in their paper presented at the 2019 Cardano Summit in Miami that without such a standard, the chaos - already a reality in banks today - would potentiate on blockchains, since on block-chains with Turing complete languages, every contract could be written individually. They further argue that of the four conditions set by Szabo in his article published in 1996, block chains with a Turing complete programming languages fulfill only one, namely Observability. What is not met is Verifiability due to its unstandardized and difficult to read nature especially in the financial sector. The third condition Enforceability is therefore also not met since it is maximized by the combination of Observability and Verifiability. The ACTUS standard fulfills the Verifiability condition for financial contracts wherefore Enforceability is maximized. The fourth condition is Privity, which needs to be solved separately.
The authors argue that the adoption of a standard for smart contracts and financial data would reduce the cost of operations for financial firms, provide a computational infrastructure for regulators, reduce regulatory reporting costs, and improve market transparency. Also, it would enable the assessment of systemic risk by directly quantifying the interconnectedness of firms.This led to the ACTUS proposal for a data standard alongside an algorithmic standard. Together, these can describe most financial instruments through 31 contract types or modular templates. The research foundation and users' association develop the structure to implement the ideas. The specifications are developed, maintained, and released on GitHub.An ACTUS Financial Research Foundation and the ACTUS Users Association control the intellectual property and development approaches.In October 2021, the ACTUS data standard was added as the second reference after ISO 20022 to a database run by the Office of Financial Research, an arm of the US Treasury. ACTUS is being used to help define five asset classes (equities, debt, options, warrants, and futures) in the OFR's financial instrument reference database (FIRD). A third reference, the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) messaging standard, was added a year later. Early 2023 ACTUS became a liaison A member of ISO TC68 / SC9.
== References == |
Shiba Inu (cryptocurrency) | Shiba Inu token (ticker: SHIB) is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in August 2020 by an anonymous person or group using the pseudonym "Ryoshi". It is inspired by the Shiba Inu (柴犬), a Japanese dog breed, which also serves as the mascot for Dogecoin, another cryptocurrency with meme origins. Some categorize Shiba Inu as a "meme coin" There have also been concerns about the concentration of the coin with a single "whale" wallet controlling billions of dollars' worth of the token, and frenzied buying by retail investors motivated by fear of missing out (FOMO).Shiba Inu was introduced with a branding that positioned it as a potential 'Dogecoin competitor'. On 13 May 2021, Vitalik Buterin donated more than 50 trillion SHIB (worth over $1 billion at the time) to the India COVID-Crypto Relief Fund.In October 2021, the market price of the cryptocurrency experienced a significant rise, reportedly increasing by 240% within a week. However, at the beginning of November, it faced a decline, reportedly losing approximately 55% of its value by the end of the month.
== See also ==
Meme coin
Dogecoin
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 | Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 is a statute of the Legislature of the Marshall Islands which was passed on February 26, 2018. The Act creates and issues a digital decentralized currency (“cryptocurrency”) that will be used as a legal tender of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).
== Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 ==
The Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 creates and issues the Sovereign (SOV) its own cryptocurrency. This would lower the dependence on the USD. There are plans for a portion of the cryptocurrency's revenue to go towards radiation-related health care needs following nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958.
== Implementation ==
The Sovereign cryptocurrency was created through a partnership with Neema, a financial technology startup. Neema will use “Yokwe” protocol to ensure anonymity while also linking each account with a verified government identity that is both encrypted and private. The SOV will be issued by the Ministry of Finance and introduced through an initial coin offering (ICO) at a date yet to be announced. The number of SOV’s in circulation will start at 24 million and will grow by 4% each year. RMI President Hilda C. Heine called the creation of SOV “another step of manifesting our national liberty.”
== Response ==
In September 2018, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a report warning the RMI not to launch its own cryptocurrency, the Sovereign, with primary concerns with cryptocurrency being a second form of legal tender, that the revenue from the ICO would be smaller than expected, and that proper governance on the cryptocurrency were not adequate.
== See also ==
Petro (cryptocurrency)
== References == |
Stellar (payment network) | Stellar, or Stellar Lumens, is an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat money low-cost transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies. The Stellar protocol is supported by a Delaware nonprofit corporation, the Stellar Development Foundation, though this organization does not enjoy 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the IRS.
== History ==
In 2014, Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, launched the network system Stellar with former lawyer Joyce Kim. Before the official launch, McCaleb formed a website called "Secret Bitcoin Project" seeking alpha testers. The nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation was created in collaboration with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and the project officially launched that July. Stellar received $3 million in seed funding from Stripe. Stellar was released as a decentralized payment network and protocol with a native currency, stellar. At its launch, the network had 100 billion stellars. 25 percent of those would be given to other non-profits working toward financial inclusion. Stripe received 2 percent or 2 billion of the initial stellar in return for its seed investment. The cryptocurrency, originally known as stellar, was later called Lumens or XLM. In August 2014, Mercado Bitcoin, the first Brazilian bitcoin exchange, announced it would be using the Stellar network. By January 2015, Stellar had approximately 3 million registered user accounts on its platform and its market cap was almost $15 million.The Stellar Development Foundation released an upgraded protocol with a new consensus algorithm in April 2015 which went live in November 2015. The new algorithm used SCP, a cryptocurrency protocol created by Stanford professor David Mazières.Lightyear.io, a for-profit entity of Stellar, was launched in May 2017 as the commercial arm of the company. In September 2017, Stellar announced a benefits program, part of its Stellar Partnership Grant Program, which would award partners up to $2 million worth of Lumens for project development. In September 2018, Lightyear Corporation acquired Chain, Inc and the combined company was named Interstellar.In 2021, Franklin Templeton launched the first “tokenised” US mutual fund using Stellar.
== Usage ==
In 2015, it was announced that Stellar was releasing an integration into Vumi, the open-sourced messaging platform of the Praekelt Foundation in South Africa. Vumi uses cellphone talk time as currency using the Stellar protocol. Stellar partnered with cloud-based banking software company Oradian in April 2015 to integrate Stellar into Oradian's banking platform to add microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Nigeria.Deloitte announced its integration with Stellar in 2016 to build a cross-border payments application, Deloitte Digital Bank. In December 2016, it was announced that Stellar's payment network had expanded to include Coins.ph, a mobile payments startup in the Philippines, ICICI Bank in India, African mobile payments firm Flutterwave, and French remittances company Tempo Money Transfer.In October 2017, Stellar partnered with IBM and KlickEx to facilitate cross-border transactions in the South Pacific region. The cross-border payment system developed by IBM includes partnerships with banks in the area. The Lumens digital currency was ranked 13th in market capitalization at the time of the IBM partnership.In December 2017, TechCrunch announced Stellar's partnership with SureRemit, a Nigerian-based non-cash remittances platform.On January 6, 2021, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced cooperation and partnership with Stellar in development of Ukraine digital infrastructure, after which Stellar value increased by 40%.
== Ecosystem ==
Stellar has an active community ecosystem and supports projects that utilize the Stellar Network with the Stellar Community Fund.
== Overview ==
Stellar is an open-source protocol for exchanging money or tokens using the Stellar Consensus Protocol. The platform's source code is hosted on GitHub.
Servers run a software implementation of the protocol, and use the Internet to connect to and communicate with other Stellar servers. Each server stores a ledger of all the accounts in the network. 3 nodes are operated by the Stellar Development Foundation, in conjunction with 21 other organizations, providing for a total of 66 validator nodes. Transactions among accounts occur not through mining but rather through a consensus process among accounts in a quorum slice. The current network fee is 100 stroops, equivalent to 0.00001 XLM.
== See also ==
Blockchain-based remittances companies
== References ==
== External links ==
Official Website |
StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah | StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah (XIDR) is a digital stablecoin pegged to the Indonesian Rupiah. XIDR is issued by PT Xfers StraitsX Indonesia, which is an Indonesian subsidiary of Fazz Financial Group. In Singapore, as the subsidiary of Fazz Financial Group, Xfers is a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for e-money issuance.
== Usage ==
XIDR runs on multiple blockchains, such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Zilliqa.
== Reserves ==
Each XIDR is backed by one Indonesian Rupiah that is being held and safeguarded in a regulated financial institution in Indonesia.
== See also ==
USD Coin (USDC)
StraitsX Singapore Dollar (XSGD)
== References == |
StraitsX Singapore Dollar | StraitsX Singapore Dollar (XSGD) is a digital stablecoin pegged to the Singapore dollar. XSGD is issued by StraitsX, and StraitsX is a trademark of Xfers Pte Ltd, a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for e-money issuance. XSGD is also the world's first Travel Rule compliant stablecoin, which means it follows the guidelines of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the MAS Payment Services Act.
== Usage ==
XSGD runs on multiple blockchains, such as Ethereum, Hedera, Polygon, and Zilliqa.
== Reserves ==
Each XSGD is backed by a Singapore Dollar held in both cash and both MAS Bills.
XSGD reserves are regularly attested and the monthly attestations can be found on the StraitsX website.
== See also ==
USD Coin (USDC)
StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah (XIDR)
== References == |
Terra (blockchain) | Terra is a blockchain protocol and payment platform used for algorithmic stablecoins. The project was created in 2018 by Terraform Labs, a startup co-founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. It is most known for its Terra stablecoin and the associated Luna reserve asset cryptocurrency.
In May 2022, the Terra blockchain was temporarily halted after the collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and Luna, in the event that wiped out almost $45 billion in market capitalisation within a week.
== Design ==
Terra is a blockchain that leverages fiat-pegged stablecoins to power a payment system. For consensus, the Terra blockchain uses a proof-of-stake codesign. Several stablecoins are built atop the Terra protocol, including TerraUSD, which was the third largest stablecoin by market capitalisation before its collapse in May 2022. The Terra blockchain has a fully-functional ecosystem of decentralized applications (or DApps), such as Anchor, Mirror, and Pylon, which utilised the stable-coin infrastructure of Terra.Terra is a group of algorithmic stablecoins, named according to the currencies to which they were pegged—for example, TerraUSD (UST) was pegged to the U.S. dollar. Luna served as the primary backing asset for Terra, also used as a governance token for users to vote on Terra community proposals. UST stablecoins were not backed by U.S. dollars; instead, they were designed to maintain their peg through a complex model called "burn and mint equilibrium". This method uses a two-token system in which one token is supposed to remain stable (UST) while the other (LUNA) is meant to absorb volatility.The Anchor Protocol was a lending and borrowing protocol built on the Terra chain. Investors who deposited UST in the Anchor Protocol were receiving a 19.45% yield paid out from Terra's reserves. Due to such a high yield, some critics raised concerns that Kwon's stablecoin model could function like a "ginormous Ponzi scheme". Mirror Protocol was another Terra chain project, which designed and offered financial derivatives designed to "mirror" traditional listed stocks.
== History ==
In 2018, Do Kwon and Daniel Shin (also known as Shin Hyun-sung) co-founded Terraform Labs in Seoul, South Korea. In 2019, Terraform Labs launched its first cryptocurrency token. Terraform Labs raised more than $200 million from investment firms such as Arrington Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.In January 2022, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) was established as a non-profit based in Singapore, with Do Kwon as director. Terraform Labs allocated a portion of the profit from UST sales to Luna Foundation Guard, to be used as reserves to stabilise the price of UST. As of 7 May, just before UST broke its peg, LFG held reserves of 80,394 bitcoin worth approximately $2.4 billion. Bitcoin was the largest portion of the reserve, though LFG also held various other stablecoins and cryptocurrencies.In February 2022, Terra and the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team announced they had entered into a sponsorship agreement which provided stadium and television branding, as well as the rebranding of the Washington Nationals club and lounge to the "Terra Club". The deal was originally proposed to the Terra community by Kwon, referring only to an unnamed "sports franchise in one of the four major American professional sports leagues", and the community agreed to pay $38.15 million for a five-year exclusive partnership.The founders Kwon and Shin each owned one share of Terraform Labs, giving each founder 50% of the controlling power. Kwon later enlarged his stock pool to eleven shares, giving him 91.7% ownership and Shin the remaining 8.3%. Shin and Chai Corporation, a Terra-ecosystem payment service company that he founded, announced on 18 May 2022 that Shin no longer held any ownership stock in Terraform Labs. However, the Singaporean Account and Corporate Regulatory Authority revealed that Shin still held 8.3% Terraform Labs ownership, and Chai Corporation announced that Shin was not able to "finish liquidating his remaining ownership in time" despite having the same share of ownership as of 18 May. The documents from the Singaporean authority also revealed that as of 18 May, Shin held 51.2% of ownership and Kwon 22.4% of Chai Holdings, the parent company of Chai Corporation.
=== Collapse ===
Beginning on 9 May 2022, the tokens made headlines after UST began to break its peg to the US dollar. Over the next week, the price of UST plunged to 10 cents, while Luna fell to "virtually zero", down from an all-time high of $119.51. Before the crash, Luna was one of the top ten largest cryptocurrencies on the market. The collapse wiped out almost $45 billion of market capitalisation in one week.On 13 May, Terraform Labs temporarily halted the Terra blockchain in response to the falling prices of UST and Luna. Despite the company's attempts to stabilise UST and Luna via its bitcoin and other cryptocurrency reserves from the Luna Foundation Guard, they were unable to reestablish the 1:1 peg of UST to USD. As of 16 May 2022, blockchain analysts claim that the expenditure of the LFO bitcoin reserves still remains unclear.Likely causes of the collapse included mass withdrawals from the Anchor Protocol days before the collapse, investor concerns about cryptocurrencies more generally, and a drop in the price of bitcoin. During the collapse, holders converted Terra into Luna via the mint-and-burn system, which caused the price of Luna to collapse due to its increased supply. This in turn destabilised the balancing mechanism between the currencies.On 25 May, a proposal was approved to reissue a new Luna cryptocurrency and to decouple from and abandon the devalued UST stablecoin. The original blockchain is now called Terra Classic (LUNC), and the original Luna token is called Luna Classic. The new Luna coin is called "Terra 2.0" by investors, and has lost valuation in the opening days of being listed on exchanges.In an August 2022 interview on the NFTV series Coinage, months after the collapse, Terra founder Do Kwon remarked that his faith in Terra now "seems super irrational". However, he denied that the Terra system was a ponzi scheme.On 23 March 2023 Kwon attempted to travel to Dubai using false Costa Rican documents, while also carrying false Belgian travel documents, but he was intercepted and arrested at Podgorica Airport in Montenegro. A federal grand jury in Manhattan subsequently laid eight charges against Kwon, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy. The following month, KBS News reported that prior to the collapse of TerraUSD, Kwon had sent 9 billion won (worth USD $7 million) to the law firm Kim & Chang.
== Licensing and regulatory issues ==
Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd., the company behind Terra, is incorporated in Singapore but did not submit an application for a licence under the Payment Services Act according to The Straits Times. It is also not a notified entity, meaning it has not been granted temporary exemption from holding a licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. According to documents filed by Kwon at the Supreme Court of Korea's Registry Office, Kwon filed to dissolve the company's Korean entity on 30 April 2022, and was granted approval on 4 May 2022.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a subpoena to Terraform Labs and Kwon in 2021, with specific regard to Terraform Labs' Mirror Protocol, which designed and offered financial derivatives that virtually "mirrored" actual listed stocks. Kwon refused the subpoena, and instead announced he would sue the SEC. Despite his attempts to dispute and avoid investigations from the SEC, a U.S. Court hearing in Manhattan in February 2022 ruled in favour of the SEC's right to continue its investigation into Kwon and Terraform Labs. In February 2023, the SEC charged Terraform Labs and Kwon with fraud.On 18 May, the newly appointed Korean Minister of Justice, Han Dong-hoon, enlarged the economic crimes investigation division of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office, vowing to "track illegal funds and capital transfers, crack down on tax evasion, audit company finances, compile transaction data, and seize the proceeds of criminal financial activity." On its first day of operation, the Financial and Securities Crimes Joint Investigation Team singled out the Luna and Terra crisis as its first investigation target.A class action, Patterson v. TerraForm Labs Pte Ltd. et al, was filed against Terraform Labs and others in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on 17 June 2022. In September 2022, a $56.9 million class action was filed at the High Court of Singapore against Do Kwon, Terraform Labs, Nikolaos Alexandros Platias and the Luna Foundation Guard.In June 2022, Yonhap News reported that 15 people, including former Terraform developers for the Anchor lending protocol, had been imposed with travel restrictions by the Korean government. On November 29, 2022, an arrest warrant was issued for Daniel Shin by South Korean prosecutors.
== References ==
== External links ==
Anchor Protocol whitepaper |
Tether (cryptocurrency) | Tether (often referred to by its currency codes, USD₮ and USDT, among others) is a cryptocurrency stablecoin, launched by the company Tether Limited Inc. in 2014. As of July 2022, Tether Limited has minted the USDT stablecoin on fourteen protocols and blockchains.It is the largest cryptocurrency in terms of trading volume, commanding 64% of the market share among stablecoins and having surpassed Bitcoin in 2019 to become the most traded cryptocurrency in the world. In 2023, Tether had $84 billion in circulation.Tether Limited is owned by the British Virgin Island-based company iFinex Inc., which also owns the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.
== History ==
=== Creation ===
In 2012, J. R. Willett published a whitepaper which described the possibility of building new cryptocurrencies on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Willett went on to help implement this idea in the cryptocurrency Mastercoin, which had an associated Mastercoin Foundation (later renamed the Omni Foundation) to promote the use of this new "second layer". The Mastercoin protocol became the technological foundation of the Tether cryptocurrency, and one of the original members of Mastercoin Foundation. Brock Pierce became a co-founder of Tether and Tether founder, Craig Sellars, became the CTO of the Mastercoin Foundation.The precursor to Tether, originally named "Realcoin", was announced in July 2014 by co-founders Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars as a Santa Monica-based startup. The first tokens were issued on 6 October 2014, on the Bitcoin blockchain. This was done by using the Omni Layer Protocol. Realcoin used bitcoin's computer infrastructure to exchange property and execute contracts without third-party intermediaries, opening up bitcoin’s network to a variety of commercial uses. Realcoin worked with banks, digital-currency exchanges and ATM providers to become "gateways" for buying, trading or redeeming realcoins around the world.On 20 November 2014, Tether CEO Reeve Collins announced the project was being renamed to "Tether".The company also announced it was entering private beta, which supported a "Tether+ token" for three currencies: USTether (US+) for United States dollars, EuroTether (EU+) for euros and YenTether (JP+) for Japanese yen. Tether falsely claimed at launch that "[e]very Tether+ token is backed 100% by its original currency, and can be redeemed at any time with no exposure to exchange risk", although this was not true at the time and remains false. The company's website states that it is incorporated in Hong Kong with offices in Switzerland, without giving details, and has never submitted to an independent audit.
=== 2015–2016 ===
In January 2015, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex enabled trading of Tether on their platform. While representatives from Tether and Bitfinex say that the two are separate, the Paradise Papers leaks in November 2017 named Bitfinex officials Philip Potter and Giancarlo Devasini as responsible for setting up Tether Holdings Limited in the British Virgin Islands in 2014. A spokesperson for Bitfinex and Tether has said that the CEO of both firms is Jan Ludovicus van der Velde. According to Tether's website, the Hong Kong-based Tether Limited is a fully owned subsidiary of Tether Holdings Limited. Bitfinex is one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges by volume in the world.For a while, Tether was processing US dollar transactions through Taiwanese banks which, in turn, sent the money through the bank Wells Fargo to allow the funds to move outside Taiwan. Tether announced that on 18 April 2017, these international transfers had been blocked. Along with Bitfinex, Tether filed suit against Wells Fargo in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit was withdrawn a week later.Tether issues token on Bitcoin (Omni and Liquid Protocol), Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, SLP, and -OMG Network blockchains.Currently, there are a total of five distinct Tether tokens: United States dollar tether on Bitcoin's Omni layer, euro tether on Bitcoin's Omni layer, United States dollar tether as an ERC-20 token, and euro tether as an ERC-20 token, and added in 2020 United States dollar tether as a TRC-20 token on the TRON network.
=== 2017–2018 ===
From January 2017 to September 2018, the amount of tethers outstanding grew from about $10 million to about $2.8 billion. In early 2018 Tether accounted for about 10% of the trading volume of Bitcoin, but during the summer of 2018 it accounted for up to 80% of Bitcoin volume. More than $500 million of Tether was issued in August 2018.On 15 October 2018 the tether price briefly fell to $0.88 due to the perceived credit risk as traders on Bitfinex exchanged tether for Bitcoin, driving up the price of Bitcoin.The Wall Street Journal reported that in late 2018, Tether Holdings Ltd co-owner Stephen Moore discussed efforts by a major Tether trader in China to “circumvent the banking system by providing fake sales invoices and contracts for each deposit and withdrawal.” The report quoted a Moore email in which he admitted signing these fake invoices and contracts but said he “would not want to argue any of the above in a potential fraud/money laundering case.” Tether released a response calling the Journal report “wholly inaccurate and misleading” but didn't cite any specific inaccuracies.
=== 2019–Present ===
In 2019, Tether surpassed Bitcoin in trading volume with the highest daily and monthly trading volume of any cryptocurrency on the market.As of July 2021, Tether is tied to half of all Bitcoin trades.In May 2022, Tether launched its MXNT token pegged to Mexico's peso as a "testing ground" in Latin America.In October 2023, Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer for Tether, was promoted to CEO. He will lead the company starting in December 2023, succeeding current CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde.In October 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tether has been increasingly showing up in investigations tied to money laundering, terror financing and sanctions evasion. The report alleges that Tether appears to have been used in financing Hamas, paying Chinese fentanyl suppliers, funding the North Korean nuclear program and buying sanctioned Venezuelan oil for sanctioned Russian oligarchs. In response, the company published a blog post denying inadequate customer due diligence and screening practices, and describing how they have aided governments with criminal investigations, helping freeze a total of $835 million in assets linked to theft.In June 2023, Tether partnered with El Salvador and invested in the country's renewable energy project. Tether is one of the investors in a first-round of funding for Volcano Energy, a 241 megawatt (MW) renewable energy park.In June 2023, Tether Operations Limited held meetings with governmental structures and signed a memorandum with the Government of Georgia. The partnership will create a special fund for local startups and aid in the development of blockchain technologies in Georgia.
== Alleged price manipulation ==
=== Academic research ===
Research by Griffin and Shams found that Bitcoin prices increased after Tether minted new USD₮ during market downturns. They speculated this was an attempt at market manipulation. These findings were contested by the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange who claimed the authors cherry-picked data and lacked a complete dataset. Subsequent researchers found little to no evidence that Tether USD₮ minting events influenced Bitcoin prices, supporting the Bitfinex critique. In 2022, research found that Bitcoin prices only increased when Whale Alert tweeted to the public that Tether had minted USDT, supporting a classic investor response to news announcements. Academic research following the Griffin and Shams study did not conclude that Tether manipulated Bitcoin. The CEO of Tether and Bitfinex commented on the academic debate: "Bitfinex nor Tether is, or has ever, engaged in any sort of market or price manipulation. Tether issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of Bitcoin or any other coin/token on Bitfinex."
=== Media research ===
Bloomberg News reporters found irregularities on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, with small market orders moving the market price of Tether as much as larger market orders from 1 May 2018 to 22 June 2018. New York University Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Federal Reserve bank examiner Mark Williams suggested the unusual order sizes were indicative of wash trading by automated trading programs. The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange offered a rebuttal of these claims, stating that Bloomberg News misunderstood the concept of stablecoin and that the market price of Tether was not greatly influenced by market order size because Tether was a stablecoin pegged to the United States dollar. The user responsible for unusual order sizes also confirmed that the oddly specific order sizes and decimal places were "randomly selected." The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange rebuttal of the Bloomberg News findings were later supported by academic research concerning the stability of stablecoins.
=== Legal research ===
On 20 November 2018, Bloomberg reported that U.S. federal prosecutors are investigating whether Tether was used to manipulate the price of Bitcoin.According to Tether's website tether can be newly issued, by purchase for dollars, or redeemed by exchanges and qualified corporate customers excluding U.S.-based customers. Journalist Jon Evans states that he has not been able to find publicly verifiable examples of a purchase of newly issued tether or a redemption in the year ending August 2018.
== Security and liquidity ==
Tether claims that it intends to hold all United States dollars in reserve so that it can meet customer withdrawals upon demand. It was unable to meet all withdrawal requests in 2017. Tether purports to make reserve account holdings transparent via external audit; however, Tether never produced an audit showing it had the purported reserve. In January 2018 Tether announced that they no longer had a relationship with their auditor.About $31 million of USDT tokens were stolen from Tether in November 2017. Later analysis of the Bitcoin distributed ledger showed a close connection between the Tether hack and the January 2015 hack of Bitstamp. In response to the theft, Tether suspended trading, and stated it would roll out new software to implement an emergency "hard fork" in order to render all of the tokens that Tether identified as stolen in the heist untradeable. Tether has stated that as of 19 December 2017, it has re-enabled limited cryptocurrency wallet services and has begun processing the backlog of pending trades.Tether has been criticized for a lack of transparency and verifiability of its claimed fiat reserves. In 2021, the company was fined by regulators for only maintaining full reserves during 27.6% of the days in the period from 2016 to 2018 as well as for failing to present audits showing sufficient asset reserves.On September 19, 2022, due to an ongoing lawsuit in New York District Court, Bitfinex and Tether (referred to in court records as B/T), were ordered to produce documents showing the backing of USDT, the outcome of which is still pending.On November 20, 2023, Tether reported that together with OKX it had frozen $225 million worth of its cryptocurrency which had been linked to a human trafficking group in Southeast Asia responsible for a global pig butchering scam. Tether claimed the freeze had been done at the request of the US Secret Service, and that it was its largest ever freeze of its token.
== Questions about dollar reserves ==
Tether is not fully backed by fiat reserves, despite false claims by Tether to the contrary. An online critic who goes by the name "Bitfinex'ed" has raised questions about the relationship between Bitfinex and Tether in 2017, accusing Bitfinex of creating "magic Tethers out of thin air". In September 2017, Tether published a memorandum from a public accounting firm that Tether Limited claimed showed that tethers were fully backed by US dollars; however, according to the New York Times, independent attorney Lewis Cohen stated the document, because of the careful way it was phrased, does not prove that the Tether coins are backed by dollars. The documents also fail to ascertain whether the balances in question are otherwise encumbered. The accounting firm specifically stated that
This information is intended solely to assist the management of Tether Limited ... and is not intended to be, and should not be, used or relied upon by any other party.
Tether has failed to present audits showing that the amount of tethers outstanding are backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars on deposit despite repeated claims that they would. A June 2018 attempt at an audit was posted on their website in June 2018 which showed a report by the law firm Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan LLP (FSS) which appeared to confirm that the issued tethers were fully backed by dollars. However, FSS stated "FSS is not an accounting firm and did not perform the above review and confirmations using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles," and "The above confirmation of bank and tether balances should not be construed as the results of an audit and were not conducted in accordance with Generally Accepted Auditing Standards." Stuart Hoegner, Tether's general counsel said "the bottom line is an audit cannot be obtained. The big four firms are anathema to that level of risk. We’ve gone for what we think is the next best thing."
== Legal cases ==
=== New York Attorney General's case against iFinex ===
On April 25, 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James (prosecution) filed a lawsuit against iFinex (defendant)—the parent company of Tether Limited and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange. The prosecution claimed that the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange had been unable to secure a reliable fiat banking relationship, so it had entrusted US$1 billion to the Panamanian payment processing firm Crypto Capital Corp. The prosecution alleged that funds were commingled with corporate and client deposits and that no contract was ever signed with Crypto Capital. The prosecution speculated that Crypto Capital Corp had lost or stolen the money, and executives at Bitfinex and Tether Limited had been unable to recover up to US$850 million of funds. The prosecution accused iFinex, Bitfinex, and Tether Limited of using Tether Limited to cover up the shortfall.On April 26, 2019, iFinex contested claims that funds had been lost or stolen by Crypto Capital Corp, stating that funds had actually been seized and Bitfinex sought release of the funds. Crypto Capital Corp told Bitfinex the seizures were temporary and presented excuses as to why the funds could not be released to Bitfinex (Case Point 33). Crypto Capital Corp stated that: in May 2018, the government of Poland had frozen a Crypto Capital Corp bank account holding at least US$340 million of Bitfinex funds (Case Point No. 33); and between April and July 2018, a Crypto Capital Corp account in Portugal containing around $150 million of Bitfinex funds had also been frozen (Case Point No. 34). The principals of Crypto Capital Corp were later arrested. During the case, iFinex contested claims that Tether Limited had been used to cover up alleged losses, stating that Bitfinex had borrowed US$400 million from Tether Limited due to the inability to access seized funds from Crypto Capital Corp (Case Point No. 38). Bitfinex stated they had fully repaid the loans with interest to Tether Limited by February 5, 2021.On May 16, 2021, New York Supreme Court Judge Joel M. Cohen granted iFinex's motion to modify the injunction because the New York Attorney General's office's accusations were too general and lacked specificity, stating the prosecution's case was "couched in exceedingly sweeping terms" and "injunctions must be specific." On February 17, 2021, iFinex settled the legal dispute with the New York Attorney General's office. iFinex, Bitfinex, and Tether Limited did not admit any wrongdoing and paid US$18.5 million to settle the case.
=== U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ===
On December 5, 2017, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (prosecution) issued subpoenas to Bitfinex and Tether Limited concerning the backing of minted USD₮. Before February 25, 2019, Tether Limited's terms claimed "Every tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our reserves. So 1 USDT is always equivalent to 1 USD",. After February 25, 2019, Tether Limited revised their terms to instead claim that "Tether Tokens are 100% backed by Tether’s Reserves", defining said "reserves" as "traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities."On April 30, 2019, iFinex (defendant)—the parent company of Tether Limited and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange—issued an affidavit asserting that minted USD₮ was 74% backed by a narrow definition of cash and cash equivalents, with the remaining 26% supposedly backed by other assets.On October 15, 2021, Tether Limited paid a fine of US$41.6 million for inaccurately claiming that minted USD₮ were 100% backed by fiat USD, when they were not—even by Tether Limited's own affidavit, they were only backed by a combination of fiat USD and other assets such as "unsecured receivables, commercial papers, funds held by third parties, and other non-fiat assets" (supposedly at 100% in total). Tether Limited responded by revising their claims to state that "All Tether tokens are pegged at 1-to-1 with a matching fiat currency and are backed 100% by Tether’s reserves." Tether Limited released assurance reports from 2017 to 2022 attesting to the 100% backing of minted USD₮. In May 2021, Tether published a report showing that 2.9% of Tether was backed by fiat USD, with over 49.6% backed by commercial paper, and the remaining amount backed by other assets. Tether Limited continues to refuse to allow an independent audit to verify its claims of full backing.
== See also ==
USD Coin (USDC)
Dai (DAI)
Pax Dollar (USDP)
Gemini Dollar (GUSD)
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
What is the Difference Between USDT and USDC |
The Graph | The Graph is an indexing protocol for organizing and accessing data from blockchains and storage networks. It allows developers to search, find, publish, and use the public data they need to build decentralized applications. The Graph Network enables the accessibility of decentralized applications through public and open APIs, called subgraphs. The native currency of The Graph is GRT. The Graph has volunteers known as Curators, Indexers, and Delegators who work to process data and share it with Consumers. The Graph offers support to index data from 25 different blockchain protocols including Ethereum, NEAR, Arbitrium, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, Celo, Fantom, and Moonbeam.
== History ==
The Graph was launched on the Ethereum blockchain in 2018 by Yaniv Tal, Brandon Ramirez and Jannis Pohlman. In June 2020, The Graph raised $5 million in a token sale to Framework Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group, Multicoin Capital, DTC Capital, and others. In October 2020, the governance of the network was turned over to an independent network called The Graph Foundation. Eva Beylin was nominated to serve as director.In October 2020, The Graph raised $12 million in a public sale of its native GRT token. In December 2020, the Graph mainnet was launched. In January 2022, The Graph Foundation raised $50 million in a sale of digital tokens to investors led by Tiger Global Management. In February 2022, a group of venture capital firms including Digital Currency Group, Multicoin Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, gumi Cryptos Capital, NGC Ventures, and HashKey announced the launch of a $205 million ecosystem fund to support developers building on ‘The Graph’ protocol.
== Grants ==
In 2021, Sommelier announced a $1 million R&D grant from The Graph Foundation. In December 2021, The Graph awarded a $48 million grant to The Guild to join The Graph as a core developer.
== References == |
Tron (cryptocurrency) | TRON is a decentralized, blockchain-based operating system with smart contract functionality, proof-of-stake principles as its consensus algorithm and a cryptocurrency native to the system, known as Tronix (TRX). It was established in March 2014 by Justin Sun and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source software.
It was originally an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, which switched its protocol to its own blockchain in 2018. TRC20 has a fee of 5 trones per 1 USDT coin for the transfer. On some cryptocurrency wallets, users can't withdraw their USDT funds until they have enough money for the network fee.
== History ==
TRON was founded by Justin Sun in 2017. The TRON Foundation was established in July 2017 in Singapore. The TRON Foundation raised $70 million in 2017 through an initial coin offering shortly before China outlawed the digital tokens. The testnet, Blockchain Explorer, and Web Wallet were all launched by March 2018. TRON Mainnet launched shortly afterward in May 2018, marking the Odyssey 2.0 release as a technical milestone for TRON.
In June 2018, TRON switched its protocol from an ERC-20 token on top of Ethereum to an independent peer-to-peer network. On 25 July 2018, the TRON Foundation announced it had finished the acquisition of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Upon this acquisition, in August 2018, BitTorrent Founder Bram Cohen also disclosed that he was leaving the company to found a separate cryptocurrency, Chia.By January 2019, TRON had a total market cap of about 1.6 USDT. Despite this market performance, some authors viewed TRON as a typical case of the complex and disordered nature of cryptocurrencies. In February 2019, after being acquired by TRON Foundation, BitTorrent started its own token sale based on the TRON network.In late 2021, Justin Sun resigned as CEO of the TRON Foundation, which was subsequently reorganized as a DAO.In March 2023, Sun and Tron were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities related to the sale and promotion of Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BBT) tokens, alleging that Sun and Tron had engaged in wash trading in the secondary market for TRX in order to buoy its price. Eight celebrities, including Akon, Ne-Yo, Austin Mahone, Soulja Boy, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and Lil Yachty, were charged with promoting these cryptocurrencies without disclosing that they were sponsored, with all those other than Soulja Boy, and Mahone settling with the FTC for more than $400,000, without admitting or denying the charges.
== Architecture ==
TRON adopts a 3-layer architecture divided into storage layer, core layer, and application layer. The TRON protocol adheres to Google protocol buffers, which intrinsically supports multi-language extension.The TRON protocol, maintained primarily by the TRON Foundation, distributes computing resources equally among TRX holders with internal pricing mechanisms such as bandwidth and energy. TRON provides a decentralized virtual machine, which can execute a program using an international network of public nodes. The network has zero transaction fees and conducts approximately 2,000 transactions per second.The implementations of TRON require minimal transaction fees in order to prevent malicious users from performing DDoS attacks for free. In this respect, EOS.IO and TRON are quite similar, due to the negligible fees, high transactions per second, and high reliability, and as such are regarded as a new generation of blockchain systems. Michael Borkowski, Marten Sigwart, Philipp Frauenthaler, Taneli Hukkinen and Stefan Schulte defined TRON as an Ethereum clone, with no fundamental differences. The transactions per second rate on Tron's blockchain was questioned because it was far below its theoretical claim.
== Criticisms ==
In January 2018, via a Tweet, Juan Benet, the CEO at Protocol Labs, revealed that the white paper of TRON copied portions of the white papers from IPFSbot and MineFilecoin, without a single reference. Researchers from Digital Asset Research (DAR) discovered multiple instances of code copied from other projects in the Tron code base. It is also accused of violating the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 (LGPL) because the project does not mention that its client was derived from EthereumJ, a Java implementation of Ethereum. These accusations were denied by the TRON Foundation, the organization behind the design of the system.In May 2019, the cyber-security testing service HackerOne revealed that just one computer could have brought TRON's entire blockchain to a halt. The revelation showed that a barrage of requests sent by a single PC could be used to squeeze the power of the blockchain's CPU, overload the memory, and perform a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.On 13 June 2022, Tron's algorithmic stablecoin, USDD, lost its peg to the US Dollar, trading at 0.96 per dollar for about a month.In November 2023, Tron was linked to funding of various terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
Verge (cryptocurrency) | Verge Currency is a decentralized open-source cryptocurrency which offers various levels of private transactions. It does this by obfuscating the IP addresses of users with Tor and by leveraging stealth transactions making it difficult to determine the geolocation of its users.Verge Currency has a maximum supply capped at 16.5 billion XVG. It uses the Proof of Work (POW) mining principle with multi-algorithm support and 5 different hash functions: Scrypt, X17, Lyra2rev2, myr-groestl and blake2s.
== History ==
Verge Currency was created in 2014 and originally named DogeCoinDark. It was rebranded to Verge Currency in 2016.Following the bitcoin principle, Verge Currency has a transparent ledger that allows anyone to view all of its transactions, but protects user identities and locations. This was achieved by integrating both Tor to not expose IP addresses and using stealth transactions, formerly known as Wraith Protocol, to hide the value of transactions.
In April 2018, it was announced that the adult entertainment provider MindGeek would begin accepting Verge Currency as a payment option on its website network.Also during April and May 2018, Verge Currency suffered from timestamp exploit on one of its 5 mining algorithms. This could have resulted in a 51% attack if it had only one algorithm.
== References == |
WhopperCoin | WhopperCoin was a cryptocurrency launched by the Russian branch of Burger King as a loyalty program in the summer of 2017. It was primarily notable for being the first issuance of branded cryptocurrency by a major company and the first form of loyalty points that could be traded freely; the BBC noted that Burger King was the "first major corporate brand to issue its own crypto-cash", with WhopperCoin turning a burger into an "investment vehicle". It was hosted on the Waves blockchain platform.The cryptocurrency did not prove successful: while WhopperCoins had traded at prices as high as USD$0.14 in September 2017, by January 2018 the price had fallen to less than USD$0.002, and by September 2019 trading volume had declined to zero.
== Implementation ==
WhopperCoin transactions were hosted on the Waves platform, a rival to Ethereum. Waves ran a blockchain ledger (a distributed record of transactions resistant to tampering or alteration), which tracked ownership of WhopperCoin and recorded transactions. One billion coins were initially issued.WhopperCoins were permitted to be bought, sold or given away freely, which meant that they could be used as financial instruments and traded on exchanges alongside other cryptocurrencies. In June 2017, Burger King Russia had announced that they would begin accepting Bitcoin. In August, Ivan Shestov, the head of external communications at Burger King Russia, referred to WhopperCoin as an "investment tool" and was quoted as saying that "eating Whoppers now is a strategy for financial prosperity tomorrow".The specifics of implementation were initially unclear; on 24 August, New York magazine and Fortune cited a Russian-language article from Rusbase saying that customers would receive one WhopperCoin for each Whopper purchased and that its initial use would be as a loyalty program where WhopperCoins could be used to purchase menu items. At that time, the company had not established an exchange rate at which WhopperCoins could be used to make Burger King purchases. On 29 August, however, sources began to reflect that one WhopperCoin would be given out for each ruble spent on a Whopper, and that a Whopper would be able to be purchased for 1,700 WhopperCoins. This meant that one free Whopper could be obtained for every "five or six" purchased with normal currency. The BBC also added that customers would be able to claim coins by scanning their receipts on a smartphone, with Android and iPhone apps expected to be released in September 2017.
== Impact ==
In September 2017, immediately after its launch, one WhopperCoin was valued at USD$0.14. Previously, Burger King had pioneered the use of cryptocurrency in the fast food industry with its Netherlands branch accepting Bitcoin in 2016. Additionally, reports in June 2017 said that Burger King Russia "would be accepting bitcoin as payment". However, at the time of WhopperCoin's launch, CNBC noted that previous attempts toward cryptocurrency adoption by Burger King Russia had been poorly received by the Russian government, with 2016 reports "suggesting users could even face jail time under proposed legislation". However, subsequent statements showed support for the idea, including an interview where First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said "I am a supporter, a cryptoround [sic] must exist." However, at the time, no legal framework for cryptocurrency existed in Russia, where it remained illegal to use cryptocurrencies as payment for any goods or services.WhopperCoin was not widely given serious consideration. Upon its release, Fortune contrasted it with "cryptocurrencies you may actually use", while New York magazine sardonically praised it as a "way to satiate both your appetite and your need for rather useless virtual money". The Verge described Shestov's claim that "eating Whoppers now is a strategy for financial prosperity tomorrow" as a "bit of a stretch"; in September 2017, Business Insider cited it as evidence that the "ICO craze" had "reached its zenith". Marketing Week said that cryptocurrencies had been "described at one extreme as gimmicks that simply make good fodder for PR stunts, and at the other as a new economic paradigm", and described Burger King Russia's move as "capitalising on the blockchain buzz".Despite this, WhopperCoin's uniqueness was widely discussed. Adweek praised Burger King's "knack for hijacking the hype train" and some pointed to it as a potential new direction for corporate loyalty programs. Garrick Hileman, a research fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, compared them favorably to airline miles programs, which cannot be traded as financial instruments (or, generally, with any entity besides the issuing company and its affiliates); the possibility of trading WhopperCoin against currencies or other assets had the potential to make them "more compelling than a standard loyalty scheme". Emin Gun Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell University, said that rewards points were "actually a good use case for blockchains" and WhopperCoin was likely the first of many similar programs. In a conversation with the BBC, he cautioned that they also had the potential to be used as a vehicle for ransomware and money laundering.
== Demise ==
Despite initial fanfare, the program was not successful. In January 2018, the price of a WhopperCoin (which had been USD$0.14 in September 2017) had fallen to less than USD$0.002. While the token had a dedicated asset page on Waves' website at its launch in 2017, Verdict reported that "despite a strong start, the Whoppercoin fad died down fairly quickly". Although later cryptocurrency initiatives by Burger King would see success (the German branch began accepting Bitcoin in 2019), WhopperCoin did not.
As of September 2019, WHO trading volume stood at zero. In October 2019, Wired noted that WhopperCoin had "long lost its sizzle", along with thousands of similarly ambitious cryptocurrency ventures, many of which it characterized as "blockchain memes".
== References == |
Worldcoin | Worldcoin is an iris biometric cryptocurrency project developed by San Francisco- and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity. Founded in 2019 by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania, it is backed by VC Andreessen Horowitz.
== History ==
In 2021, the company stated that its token (WLD) is intended to be a larger effort to drive a more unified and equitable global economy driven by the internet economy, although it will not be available in the USA. The token will be a Layer 2 Ethereum-based cryptocurrency that leverages the security of the Ethereum blockchain while having its own economy.In October 2021, the project raised an initial $25 million. Within six months, an additional $100 million was raised, pushing the token's value up to $3 billion.In April 2022, a report from MIT Technology Review cited those from the community who accused Worldcoin of "taking advantage of students" and "targeting lower-income communities", and came to the conclusion that "it's just cheaper and easier to run this kind of data collection operation in places where people have little money and few legal protections."In May 2023, TechCrunch reported that hackers had been able to steal login credentials of several of Worldcoin's operators' personal devices including their credentials to the Worldcoin operator app. However, Worldcoin's spokesperson said that no personal user data was compromised, as the operator app does not access user data.Further funding of $115 million was announced in May 2023, to be used for investment into bot detection, research and development, and expanding the Worldcoin project and application. While in beta, Worldcoin was reported to have onboarded approximately two million users.Worldcoin launched out of beta on July 24, 2023 with 11 orb locations in the U.S. and plans for 35 cities in 20 countries.In August 2023, Kenya, one of the first countries where Worldcoin was launched, suspended its enrollment in the country, citing security, privacy and financial concerns. Worldcoin was previously ordered to stop collecting personal data by the Kenyan Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, but did not comply.
== Design ==
Worldcoin hopes to provide a reliable way to authenticate humans online called World ID, to counter bots and fake virtual identities facilitated by artificial intelligence. Worldcoin attempts to recruit new users to join its network by getting their iris scanned using Worldcoin's orb-shaped iris scanner in return for some Worldcoin. Worldcoin claims the distribution mechanism was inspired by universal basic income discussions.
== Controversies ==
The currency has not formally launched in the US and other countries because of concerns by national regulators regarding privacy and potential use of the tokens for fraudulent purposes.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
Cardano (blockchain platform) | Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. It can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, ADA.Cardano's development began in 2015, led by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. The project is overseen and supervised by the Cardano Foundation based in Zug, Switzerland. When launched in 2017, it was the largest cryptocurrency to use a proof-of-stake blockchain, which is seen as a greener alternative to proof-of-work protocols.
== History ==
After leaving Ethereum in 2014 Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood set out their plans for Cardano in 2015. Hoskinson had left Ethereum after a dispute with another co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. Hoskinson wanted to accept venture capital and create a company, while Buterin wanted to keep it as a nonprofit organization. Woods and Hoskinson co-founded the business IOHK to develop blockchains for use by corporations, governments, and education institutions.Cardano was initially released to the public in 2017. That year, IOHK partnered with the University of Edinburgh to launch the Blockchain Technology Laboratory. The lab had six post-doctoral and professorial positions with up to 35 jobs created in total, and was led by Aggelos Kiayias, developer of the Ouroboros protocol.Cardano reached a market cap of $77 billion in May 2021, which was the fourth highest for a cryptocurrency at that time.Advertising agency MBLM ranked Cardano 26th for brand intimacy out of 600 brands in August 2022, in between Ford and Nestlé and the highest rank for a cryptocurrency. Citing an MBLM partner, advertising industry magazine Ad Age said Cardano's high ranking "can likely be chalked up to the gambling element of crypto".
== Design ==
=== Governance ===
Cardano is controlled by three entities:
Cardano foundation aims to standardize and promote the ecosystem (based in Switzerland).
IOHK: an engineering company responsible for building the Cardano blockchain.
Emurgo: responsible for commercial applications.As of 2021, Frederik Gregaard is known to be the CEO of the Cardano Foundation.The platform is named after Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, while the cryptocurrency itself is named after the English mathematician Ada Lovelace. The Ada sub-unit is the Lovelace; one Ada = 1,000,000 Lovelaces. Cardano differentiates itself from many other cryptocurrencies by focusing on scientific research and working together with universities.
=== Technical design ===
Atypically, Cardano does not have a white paper. Instead, it uses design principles intended to overcome issues faced by earlier cryptocurrencies such as scalability, interoperability, and regulatory compliance. Cardano claims that it overcomes problems found in other cryptocurrencies: mainly that Bitcoin is too slow and inflexible, and that Ethereum is not safe or scalable. Like Bitcoin, Cardano uses a UTXO ledger model, though it is an extended version (EUTXO) to facilitate smart contracts and scripting languages.Cardano uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol named Ouroboros; this is in contrast to Bitcoin and Ethereum, which use proof-of-work protocols (though the latter switched over in 2022). Proof-of-stake blockchains use far less energy than proof-of-work chains. This is achieved by eliminating the computing resources that a proof of work algorithm requires. In February 2021, Hoskinson estimated the Cardano network used 6 GWh annually, less than 0.01% of the 110.53 TWh used by the Bitcoin network as calculated by the University of Cambridge.
Within the Cardano platform, Ada exists on the settlement layer. This layer is similar to Bitcoin and keeps track of transactions. The second layer is the computation layer and is designed to be similar to Ethereum, enabling smart contracts and applications to run on the platform.The cryptocurrency Ada (ADA) can be stored on Cardano's native digital wallet named "Daedalus". The wallet downloads a full copy of the entire Cardano blockchain transaction history. Users face the risk of losing access to funds if the wallet's seed phrase is lost or stolen. The review in Investopedia highlighted the wallet's security and noted the lack of: mobile support, support for other tokens, and "onramp" to purchase assets with money.Development phases of Cardano, or "eras", are named after notable figures in poetry and computer science: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire. The first three stages implemented a basic blockchain, and then implemented decentralisation and smart contracts. The Basho era focuses on scaling the blockchain. Voltaire, the final era, adds voting and treasury management functionality to the blockchain.Once Voltaire is complete IOHK has said it plans to release the development of the network entirely to the community. The "Cardano improvement proposal" CIP-1694 is the first step towards "on-chain" governance. It intends to allow ADA token holders to create proposals that may be voted upon by the community and, if successful, implemented. As with other proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies, Cardano offers "staking", which allows token holders to set-aside (delegate) tokens to potentially "validate" transactions on the same blockchain (see Figure 1). The quantity of tokens staked corresponds with the likelihood of being chosen to validate a transaction, and thus be rewarded by the algorithm with more of the same token. Cardano's Daedalus wallet allows for staking. For Cardano, users participate in "staking pools" with other token-holders.
== Applications ==
Applications of the Cardano blockchain include:
In 2018, IOHK signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Ethiopia to consider the use of Cardano in its coffee supply chain. The partnership with the Ethiopian government also investigate other ways to deploy Cardano in the country.
In 2019, the Ministry of Education in the country of Georgia signed a memorandum of understanding with the Free University of Tbilisi to use Cardano and Atala, IOHK's decentralized identity software, to build a credential verification system for Georgia.
In 2019, New Balance announced a pilot program on the Cardano blockchain so buyers could track the authenticity of OMN1S Kawhi Leonard basketball shoes.
In April 2021, IOHK and the Ethiopia Ministry of Education announced plans for an identity and record-keeping system on Cardano and Atala for the country's five million school pupils.
In 2021, Hoskinson began working with electronic dance music DJ Paul Oakenfold to release an album, Zombie Lobster, on the Cardano blockchain.
In 2021, IOHK and Dish Network announced a collaboration to investigate the use of distributed ledger technology.
The Cardano blockchain was cited in Quartz as having the potential to help citizens in Zanzibar, Ethiopia and Burundi get digital IDs.
World Mobile Token (WMT), a project built on Cardano, offers remote mobile network access in Africa with approximately 150 nodes in East Africa (2022). Mark Cuban is cited as being skeptical about the project and Cardano adoption.
In 2023 a Ghanaian startup named "Mazzuma" received funding from the Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator. Massuma(GPT) aims to use AI in its smart contract creation platform.
=== Decentralized finance ===
Cardano implemented decentralized finance (DeFi) services on September 12, 2021, including an upgrade to enable smart contracts and the ability to build decentralized applications (DApps). Also included is Plutus, a smart contract language written in Haskell, and Marlowe, a language designed by Simon Thompson for non-programmers in the financial sector.
=== Partner chains ===
In November 2023 Cardano began introducing sidechains, referred to by the project as "partner chains". Sidechains are intended to perform off-chain computations, known as smart contracts, while using the Cardano network for settlement. The first example of such a chain, named "Midnight", will make use of the Polkadot (cryptocurrency) framework in combination with Cardano.
=== Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) ===
Cardano also enables creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Snoop Dogg released several thousand NFTs in a project named "Baked Nation" for the Cardano chain in April 2022. In 2023 a digital artist from the UK sold 7,200 individual works of humanoid deer for almost £500,000 on Cardano.
== Legal status and regulation ==
In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a US regulator, issued a complaint against the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken for offering unregistered securities (in violation of the Securities Act) and promising returns on investment for staking in multiple proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies, including Cardano. Without any admission of wrongdoing, Kraken agreed to pay a fine of $30 million and halt its staking program in response.In June 2023, the SEC sued Binance. Among the allegations was that Cardano was a security and so the cryptocurrency exchange was trading illegally in the US. IOG made a statement in response claiming that the filing was inaccurate and asserting that Ada was not a security. The Ada price fell from $0.38 to $0.26 in a day on the FT Wilshire index. Both the Wall Street Journal and The Times linked a fall in the price of Cardano – 19 per cent in June – and a slide for other major coins to the SEC's actions.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
Celsius Network | Celsius Network LLC is a bankrupt cryptocurrency lending company. Headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, Celsius maintained offices in four countries and operated globally. Users could deposit a range of cryptocurrency digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, into a Celsius wallet to earn a percentage yield, and could take out loans by pledging their cryptocurrencies as security. As of May 2022, the company had lent out $8 billion to clients and had almost $12 billion in assets under management.In June 2022, the company gained notoriety when it indefinitely paused all transfers and withdrawals due to "extreme market conditions", resulting in steep declines in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. On July 13, 2022, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
== Business model ==
The company facilitated lending and borrowing for its users. Depositors earned interest by depositing qualifying cryptocurrencies, with the rate of interest dependent upon the cryptocurrency deposited (e.g., up to 6.2% interest on bitcoin). The company paid the interest in cryptocurrencies, including in its own CEL token. Borrowers paid between zero and 8.95% on bitcoin-backed loans, depending on the loan-to-value ratio. Some of the money that Celsius used to fund the loans came from hedge funds that were looking for higher yields than banks pay.Celsius generated revenue from token sales, lending, bitcoin mining, and discretionary trading of cryptocurrencies. Celsius claimed that up to 80% of its revenue was returned to its user community through interest payments on deposits made through its platform. The company did not charge any fees to its users.On July 7, 2022, former investment manager Jason Stone sued Celsius, alleging that the company ran a Ponzi scheme. On August 23, Celsius sued Stone, alleging that he lost or stole tens of millions of US dollars' worth of cryptocurrency. The independent examiner's report filed on January 31, 2023, as part of the bankruptcy filing, said that an insider at Celsius described aspects of the business model as "very ponzi like". In an internal memo, coin deployment specialist Dean Tappen stated "that his title at Celsius should be 'Ponzi Consultant.'"
== History ==
Celsius was founded in 2017 by Alex Mashinsky, Daniel Leon, and Nuke Goldstein.
=== Growth ===
In March 2018, Celsius raised $50 million in its initial coin offering (ICO) of the CEL digital currency. In April 2018, the CEL cryptocurrency began trading on cryptocurrency exchanges. In advance of the ICO, Celsius listed its currency as a security. In June 2018, Celsius launched its mobile app. In 2019, Celsius completed a $24 million equity round at $140 million valuation.Celsius was a major buyer of its own token, buying CEL interest it owed to customers on the open market. Crypto analysis firm Arkham Intelligence estimated Celsius had spent $350 million on purchases since July 2019.In August 2020, Celsius raised $20 million via an equity crowdfunding to support its operations. In the fall of 2020, the price of Celsius's currency climbed more than 230% in less than a month.In October 2020, the company reported that its CEO, Alex Mashinsky, sold $500,000 worth of CEL tokens in one transaction. In December 2021, Mashinsky tweeted, "All @CelsiusNetwork founders have made purchases of #CEL and are not sellers of the token." Based on public data, Arkham Intelligence estimates that Mashinsky sold $44 million worth of CEL through exchanges.In November 2020, Celsius said it had plans to open an office in Australia and to expand its office in Israel.In December 2020, Celsius had $3.31 billion in assets under management. In January 2021, Celsius had more than $4.5 billion in assets.In October 2021, Celsius raised $400 million in new equity from investors. The funding round was led by WestCap, the fund led by former Airbnb executive Laurence Tosi, and CDPQ, Canada's second largest pension fund. The funding round valued Celsius at $3 billion. At this time, Celsius's office in Israel employed 100 people.In November 2021, Celsius acquired the Israeli cybersecurity company GK8 for $115 million.
=== Controversies and regulatory scrutiny ===
On April 16, 2021, Celsius confirmed that a security breach had occurred in its systems; a third-party server with customer data had been compromised, resulting in a portion of the company's customer list being exfiltrated and a phishing email being sent to Celsius customers.In September 2021, authorities in a number of US states said that Celsius's interest-bearing cryptocurrency accounts constitute an unregistered securities offering. The attorney general of New Jersey ordered Celsius to stop issuing interest-bearing cryptocurrency products via a cease-and-desist order. Texas state regulators filed a notice seeking a hearing in February 2022 to determine whether to take similar action. Kentucky's securities regulator told Celsius to cease and desist from offering its interest-paying accounts in the state. Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky said he was "very confident" that none of Celsius's products in the United States were securities. Celsius said it was working with US states in order to provide clarity about its business operations.On October 18, 2021, Celsius received a request for more information from New York Attorney General, Letitia James. Earlier that month, Celsius had US$400 million in new equity funding from investors.On November 26, 2021, Celsius announced that one of its senior employees was the focus of an Israeli police probe associated with prior employment activities; the employee was later suspended.
=== Decline and bankruptcy ===
Celsius had been using the crypto custodian Prime Trust to store some customer assets since March 2020. This relationship ended in June 2021, when Prime Trust's risk team expressed concern about Celsius's strategy of "endlessly re-hypothecating assets ... lending the same assets over and over and over again to juice yields". Prime Trust founder Scott Purcell suggested that re-hypothecating "would be destined for failure as any sharp market movement in either direction would be catastrophic to such a ridiculously leveraged business model". Celsius sued Prime Trust in August 2022, accusing the custodian of retaining $17 million worth of assets after the relationship ended.CNBC described Celsius as "one of the largest players in the crypto lending space" in the second quarter of 2022. The company had issued loans totaling more than $8 billion, and as of May, it had almost $12 billion in assets under management. In June 2022, Celsius said it had 1.7 million customers and that it offered yields as high as 17% per year.On June 7, in a blog post entitled "Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead", Celsius addressed rumors that the company had lost client funds by making poor investments and that it was facing a liquidity crisis. The company dismissed these rumors as the actions of "vocal actors ... spreading misinformation". The blog post denied claims that Celsius sustained significant losses as a result of the collapse of Luna in the preceding month.On June 10, during his weekly "Ask Mashinsky Anything" session on YouTube, the CEO denied that Celsius was having problems with clients' access to their funds and he suggested that its critics were being paid by competitors. Mashinsky said on the live stream, "Celsius has billions in liquidity, right, and we provide immediate access to everybody". Around this time, Mashinsky was questioning skeptical commenters on Twitter, accusing them of spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Celsius.On June 13, the company paused all customer withdrawals "in order to stabilize liquidity and operations", citing "extreme market conditions". After this announcement, the prices of bitcoin and Ethereum decreased by 12% and 14% respectively from the previous day. Celsius's own CEL token, which had been trading for almost $7 a year prior, was down by one-third after the withdrawal pause announcement, falling to $0.21. The total market value of all cryptocurrencies fell to $983 billion, marking the first time since January 2021 that the cryptocurrency market was collectively worth less than $1 trillion. The news also caused a 10% decline in the share price of Celsius Holdings, an unrelated beverage company, on June 13, due to investor confusion between the two companies' names. The beverage company's shares increased by about 5% the following day.Rod Bolger, who joined Celsius as CFO in January 2022, resigned on June 30. Celsius appointed Chris Ferraro, its head of financial planning, analysis, and investor relations, to succeed Bolger. Celsius Network laid off 150 employees, a quarter of its workforce, in early July.Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 13, one month after pausing withdrawals. A declaration filed the following day reported a $1.2 billion deficit in the company’s balance sheet. Mashinsky said that the company had "made what, in hindsight, proved to be certain poor asset deployment decisions". According to the bankruptcy filing, the company had $167 million in cash on hand, which it said would provide "ample liquidity" to support its operations during its bankruptcy. Of Celsius's $5.5 billion in total liabilities at the time of its bankruptcy filing, the company owed $4.7 billion to its users, who were listed as unsecured creditors. Celsius's choice of Chapter 11 bankruptcy would prioritize repayments to secured creditors first, then unsecured creditors, then equity holders.Mashinsky resigned as Celsius CEO on September 27, 2022. Chris Ferraro, the former CFO of Celsius, was appointed to replace him as interim CEO.
== Aftermath ==
After Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, Molly White tweeted a list of excerpts from customer letters to the bankruptcy court judge. Among the stories were concerns about how Celsius had frozen their funds and statements about the company's negative impact on customers' lives. On its bankruptcy website, the company said that it intends to offer two options to customers, "... to recover either cash at a discount or remain 'long' crypto."Six lawyers specializing in bankruptcies, restructuring, or cryptocurrency told Reuters that there was little precedent for bankruptcies at cryptocurrency companies. "This could last for years", said one attorney about Celsius's bankruptcy process.On September 28, 2022, the court ordered Celsius to publish customer lists with financial details to create transparency. Celsius had argued that the customer list had resale value and should therefore be kept secret. The CelsiusNetworth website was created based on court documents that are in the public record. According to CelsiusNetworth, the top three names lost $40.5 million, $38.2 million, and $26.4 million, respectively. Celsius owes users approximately $4.7 billion but lacks the funds to pay them.On December 2, 2022, Celsius announced the sale of GK8, a digital asset custody platform, to the Michael Novogratz-founded company Galaxy Digital Holdings. According to a lawyer representing Celsius's creditors, the proceeds from the sale are expected to go to Celsius's legal fees and former customers.On December 7, 2022, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ordered Celsius to return cryptocurrency worth $50 million to users of its custody accounts. In January 2023, the same judge ruled that about 600,000 customers had deposited cryptocurrency that, per the company's terms of use, belonged to Celsius, making the depositors into unsecured creditors.At a court hearing on February 15, 2023, Celsius stated that it had selected NovaWulf Digital Management to provide guidance for its path out of bankruptcy. The deal is subject to approval by a bankruptcy judge and by Celsius's creditors. Some Celsius creditors objected to the terms of the NovaWulf deal, such as that creditors would need to take a haircut on the assets they had deposited. The unsecured creditor committee (UCC), a recognized group of Celsius creditors, agreed that Celsius should proceed with the NovaWulf deal. According to a bankruptcy filing filed on April 22, 2023, two new groups will compete with NovaWulf to take over Celsius's assets: Fahrenheit, backed by Michael Arrington, former Algorand CEO Steven Kokinos, investment banker Ravi Kaza, and U.S. Data Mining Group and Proof Group; and Blockchain Recovery Investment Committee, backed by the Winklevoss twins' Gemini Trust, fund manager VanEck, Abra and Global X Digital. Arrington had tweeted that Coinbase was part of the Fahrenheit coalition, but later deleted that tweet.On July 13, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement that would ban Celsius Network from handling consumers' assets. Its founders, Alex Mashinsky, Daniel Leon, and Nuke Goldstein, face federal charges. Celsius agreed to pay $4.7 billion, one of the largest settlement amounts in the FTC's history. Concurrently, the SEC announced charges of its own against Celsius and Mashinsky.On November 9, 2023, Celsius received U.S. bankruptcy court approval for a restructuring plan that will return cryptocurrency to customers and create a new Bitcoin mining firm owned by the Celsius creditors. The company is expected to emerge from Chapter 11 in early 2024 and to be listed in Nasdaq, providing Celsius customers with stake in the new company as part of their bankruptcy recovery. The customers will also receive partial repayment of their cryptocurrency assets.
== Reaction to collapse ==
Celsius's bankruptcy filing ascribed its $1.2 billion deficit to a modern version of a bank run, in which depositors, anxious about the security of their funds, try to withdraw their funds in great numbers. One critic of Celsius told CBS News, "This was yet another bank run. You're not reinventing anything here. They were promoting their services as a better savings account but in the end you're just another unsecured lender."The sudden end to customer withdrawals and subsequent bankruptcy led some commentators to highlight the lack of deposit insurance in the cryptocurrency sector. Celsius's terms of use permitted the company to halt trading for its users. Without deposit insurance, no entity is obligated to compensate Celsius's users or to prioritize them more highly than its investors should the company enter liquidation. Securities regulators in five U.S. states announced investigations into Celsius's withdrawal freeze within three days of the company's announcement. Federal entities such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had considered extending deposit insurance to stablecoin investors, but no FDIC protections for crypto investors existed at the time of Celsius's withdrawal freeze.Celsius's collapse exemplified what one commentator called a "pervasive problem in the crypto industry, where financial services that claim to be decentralized ... are actually centralized entities, with the power to control the flow of crypto assets." The bankruptcies of centralized cryptocurrency financial institutions like Celsius led some investors to lose trust in centralized storage and to move their funds onto hardware cryptocurrency wallets.
== References == |
Chia (cryptocurrency) | Chia is a cryptocurrency where mining (or farming, in Chia parlance) is based on the amount of hard disk storage space devoted to it rather than processing power as with proof of work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The platform was created by a California based company called Chia Network Inc. The Chia Network was founded in 2017 by American computer programmer Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent protocol. In May 2021, Chia Network raised a $61 million investment, valuing the company at about $500 million. The same month, the company announced plans to conduct an IPO before the end of 2021. As of 2023, Chia had filed a draft registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission towards an IPO.
== Computer data storage shortages ==
In China, stockpiling ahead of the May 2021 launch led to shortages and an increase in the price of hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD). Shortages were also reported in Vietnam. Hard drive manufacturer Seagate said in May 2021 that the company was experiencing strong orders and that staff were working to "adjust to market demand". In May 2021 Gene Hoffman, then president and current CEO of Chia Network, admitted that "we’ve kind of destroyed the short-term supply chain" for hard disks. During the first months since Chia's launch, concerns were raised about the prerequisite plotting process drastically limiting a hard drives' lifetime.
== References == |
Chiliz | Chiliz is a blockchain platform developed by Maltese-based sports company Mediarex. The Chiliz blockchain powers the Socios.com platform, which offers fan tokens to sports fans, enabling them to participate in polls hosted by the clubs, or receive rewards and promotions. The native token Chiliz is used to buy the fan tokens. Alexandre Dreyfus is the CEO of Chiliz and Beatrice Collet is the managing director.
== History ==
Chiliz was launched in 2018 by Maltese-based sports company Mediarex led by CEO Alexandre Dreyfus. Members of the firm's advisory panel include Dr. Christian Mueller, InFront Sports’ vice president, strategy and business development, and Sam Li, Sina Sports’ head of strategic partnerships; with Perform Group's chief strategy officer of Perform Group, John Gleasure, also a shareholder of Mediarex. Other members of the advisory board are Fnatic's CEO Wouter Sleijffers and Team Vitality's CEO Nicolas Maurer.In June 2018, Chiliz raised $65 million in a round led by Binance with other reputed names in the industry like OK Blockchain Capital, FBG Capital, Ceyuan Ventures, and Bancor also investing. In March 2021, the company announced it will invest $50 million in an expansion to the United States.
== Fan Tokens ==
Fan tokens are digital coins created on the Chiliz blockchain that sports organisations provide to their fans through the app Socios.com. They allow fans to vote on a variety of minor decisions, such as new facilities, kit designs, shirt numbers of new signings, celebration songs, and more. Fan Tokens were first introduced in 2019, with football clubs Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain being the first clubs to launch their official tokens. Sports clubs including Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Manchester City, Inter, Arsenal, AS Roma, Galatasaray, Flamengo, Corinthians and 60 other teams have launched Fan Tokens through Socios.com.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official Website |
Dai (cryptocurrency) | Dai (or DAI, formerly Sai or SAI) is a stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain whose value is kept as close to one United States dollar as possible through a system of decentralized participants incentivized by smart contracts to perform maintenance and governance functions. Dai is maintained and regulated by MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) composed of the owners of its governance token, MKR, who may propose and vote on changes to certain parameters in its smart contracts in order to ensure the stability of Dai.Together, Dai and MakerDAO are considered the first example of decentralized finance to receive significant adoption.
== Overview ==
Dai is created and destroyed through an overcollateralized loan and repayment process facilitated by MakerDAO's smart contracts in the form of a decentralized application. Users who deposit one of the accepted collateral types (such as Ether) are able to mint new DAI, as a loan, against the value of their collateral. The USD value of the collateral divided by the amount of DAI borrowed is the loan's collateralization ratio; this is calculated using the USD price of a unit of the collateral asset as reported by a set of decentralized oracles. Each loan type has a minimum collateralization ratio, which is usually in the range of 110-200%. If the collateralization ratio of a loan falls below the minimum ratio, anyone may call a certain function of the contract to cause a portion of the collateral to be sold for DAI on a decentralized exchange, which is then used to pay off the debt and pay a reward to the account that called the function. Setting a minimum ratio well above 100% provides enough time to sell the collateral to cover the debt in the event of a flash crash in the price of the collateral asset; generally, the lower a minimum ratio is, the higher the interest rate will be, to offset the systemic risk.Upon repayment of the loan and its accrued interest, the returned Dai is automatically destroyed, and the collateral is made available for withdrawal. In this way the USD value of Dai can be said to be backed by the USD value of the underlying collateral held by MakerDAO's smart contracts. By controlling the types of accepted collateral, minimum collateralization ratios, and the interest rates for borrowing or storing Dai, MakerDAO is able to control the amount of Dai in circulation, and thus its value.The power to propose and implement changes to such variables is granted, through code, to holders of the MKR token. Owners of the governance token are able to vote on proposed modifications in equal proportion to the amount of tokens they hold. The MKR token also serves as an investment in the MakerDAO system. Added interest that borrowers pay back, on top of their loan's principal, is used to buy up MKR tokens from the market and burn them, taking them permanently out of circulation. This mechanism aims to make MKR deflationary in correlation to the revenues from lending Dai.
== History ==
MakerDAO was formed in 2014 by Danish entrepreneur Rune Christensen.On December 18, 2017, Dai was launched on the main Ethereum network. The price of Dai was successfully kept close to one US dollar during its first year of existence, even though the price of Ether, the only collateral available at the time, declined by more than 80% during the same time period.In September 2018, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $15 million in MakerDAO by purchasing 6% of all MKR tokens.In 2018, MakerDAO formed the Maker Foundation, run from Copenhagen, which serves to help bootstrap the ecosystem by, for example, writing code needed for the platform to function and adapt.In 2019, MakerDAO experienced an internal struggle over whether to integrate more with the traditional financial system. Christensen wanted greater regulatory compliance to allow for assets besides cryptocurrency to serve as collateral for Dai. The struggle led to the departure of MakerDAO's CTO.In March 2020, as a result of extraordinary market volatility at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dai experienced a deflationary deleveraging spiral that, at its peak, caused it to trade for up to USD $1.11 before returning to its intended $1.00 valuation.
== Name ==
According to Rune Christensen, the name of the cryptocurrency is based on the Chinese character 貸, which he translated as "to lend or to provide capital for a loan".
== See also ==
Cryptocurrency
Stablecoin
Decentralized finance (DeFi)
Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
makerdao.com |
Dash (cryptocurrency) | Dash (formerly known as XCoin) is an open source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users, which are called "masternodes".
== History ==
The currency was launched in January 2014 as "Xcoin" by Evan Duffield, as a fork of the Bitcoin protocol. It is an altcoin and in its early days it was subject to pump and dump speculation. It was rebranded as Darkcoin, which received press for being used in dark net markets. In March 2015, it rebranded again with the name Dash as a portmanteau of 'digital cash'. As of August 2016, Dash is no longer used in any major dark net markets worth noting.In early 2017 Duffield, who lived in the Phoenix area, and some other people working on Dash took space in a business incubator at Arizona State University. The Dash DAO later funded a blockchain research lab at ASU.As of April 2018, Dash's market capitalization was around $4.3 billion and it was one of the top 12 cryptocurrencies.As of February 2019, Dash was the most popular cryptocurrency in Venezuela according to Der Spiegel.In October 2022 Dash had a valued market capitalization of 450 million USD.
== Overview ==
The main differences between Dash and Bitcoin are as follows:
InstantSend mechanism, which is applied to all transactions by default, ensures that all transactions are confirmed in less than 2 seconds.
Dash is protected from double-spending due to ChainLocks technology, which makes consensus unambiguous and unreviewable, allowing transactions to be considered fully confirmed after just one block (creating one block takes ~2.5 minutes), even if for some reason InstantSend is inactive, a transaction in Dash can still be finally confirmed extremely quickly.
The user can utilize an increased level of transaction privacy due to the inbuilt optional CoinJoin feature.
Dash uses a combination of several cryptographic algorithms rather than just one.
Dash mining requires less energy.
Decisions on the further development of the system are not made by individual programmers, but by all members of the Dash network through a Decentralized Governance mechanism.
In addition to the mining mechanism, Dash uses masternodes, which provides both faster transaction confirmation and increased transaction privacy.
== Decentralized governance ==
Decisions on changes to Dash are made by general voting among the owners of masternodes and evonodes within the Dash DAO. Anyone can submit a Dash-related project for public discussion (submitting a project for voting costs 1 Dash).
This is how the decision to increase the block size from 1 MB to 2 MB was made. The decision-making process took less than a day.In addition to making key and important decisions about the further development of the Dash blockchain, projects that want to receive funding can be put to a vote. As of early 2024, the Dash DAO treasury budget that can be allocated within 1 cycle (~30 days) is 8,528 Dash.
== Dash Emission ==
Dash, like Bitcoin, has a block reward. The issuance of Dash is algorithmically limited - the reward per block decreases by ~7.14% every 210240 blocks, thus the maximum number of Dash in circulation is less than the maximum number of Bitcoins. The block time of Dash is 2.5 minutes, which means that on average, a decrease occurs every 365 days.
The final total emission is between 17.74 and 18.92 million Dash.
The variation arises because it is unknown how much of the 20% block reward reserved for budget proposals will actually be created and allocated, for it depends on future votes within the Dash DAO.After about 192 years, less than 1 Dash will have been created in a full year. After 2209, only 14 new Dash will be created, and in 2477, generation will cease completely.
== X11 - Hashing algorithm ==
Instead of using the SHA-256 or scrypt algorithm, Dash uses 11 different hash algorithms in sequence to prove work completion.X11 is a system of hashing algorithms that uses a chain of 11 algorithms like Cryptographic hash function to prove work. The X11 algorithm was proposed by Evan Duffield, the chief developer of Dash, to make it more difficult to use specialized mining hardware.
For sequential hashing, last generation CPUs on average give the same performance as GPUs. Running this algorithm on GPUs requires about 30% less electrical power compared to the `scrypt' algorithm and 30% to 50% less resources for heat dissipation. This significantly reduces costs for miners and extends the resources of computer hardware.
== Dark Gravity Wave (DGW) ==
Dark Gravity Wave (DGW) is a mining complexity adjustment algorithm designed to circumvent the flaws in Kimoto's Gravity Well algorithm. It uses a repeated and simple moving average to smoothly adjust the difficulty, which is recalculated for each block. The reward per block does not change strictly with block number, but instead uses a formula based on Moore's Law: 222222222/((Difficulty+2600)/9)2
== InstantSend ==
«InstantSend» — is a service for instant transactions. In this system, inputs are blocked only for a specific transaction verified by a consensus mechanism in the masternode network. Conflicting transactions are blocked and rejected. If consensus cannot be reached, the transaction is validated using the standard block validation mechanism. InstantSend solves the double spending problem without the long confirmation delay, which occurs in other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
== Protection from 51% attack ==
The Dash Core 0.14.0 release introduced protection against double spending («51% attack») by implementing ChainLocks based on LLMQs (Long Living Masternode Quorums).
== Masternodes ==
Masternodes are special nodes (servers) of the network, which ensure the operation of CoinJoin and InstantSend mechanisms. Masternodes perform standard node functions like hosting a copy of the blockchain, relaying messages, and validating transactions on the network, and in addition act as shareholders, voting on proposals for improving Dash's ecosystem. Masternodes are managed by a community of volunteers without a single centralized governing body. Each time a user intends to use CoinJoin, he or she specifies the number of rounds of mixing (usually two to eight, but more are possible), which greatly increases the degree of anonymity. Next, randomly selected masternodes perform the coin shuffling. The combination of several random independent masternodes increases the assurance that no one has complete information about all inputs and outputs in the transaction process.
In order to avoid a scenario where multiple masternodes on the network are managed by an attacker who wants to expose anonymous transactions, a deterrent is applied: each masternode that connects to the network requires a 1000 Dash collateral. In order to incentivize volunteers to create and manage masternodes, they are rewarded for their work with 60% of the emission or 75% of the miner's reward per created block .
=== Evolutional masternodes (Evonodes) ===
Evonodes — This is a subset of masternodes that, unlike other nodes, will support not only the operation of the core (payment) Dash blockchain, but also the operation of the Dash platform. An evonode is a lot like a regular masternode with the following differences:
== CoinJoin ==
Dash CoinJoin (formerly known as PrivateSend) — is an optional payment mixing function based on the CoinJoin method. Subsequently, the pre-mixing method was improved and integrated into the client programme.
The current system implementation increases the anonymity of transactions by combining multiple inputs from different users into a single transaction with multiple outputs. This hides the flow of funds and limits the ability to directly trace transactions, but does not guarantee their complete anonymity. A hierarchical list mechanism (based on inputs and outputs) has been proposed to track such transactions, but no practical evidence has been presented to show that such analyses are possible.
Dash has optional privacy and it is incorrect to think of it as an anonymous coin, its overall level of privacy is comparable to bitcoin, as noted on the official Dash Twitter feed on 1 January 2021.CoinJoin mixing involves a number of steps:
Pre-denomination - input transactions are split into the same denominations: 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, and 10 Dash, which prevents tracking by specific amounts.
The wallet sends a request to the masternode network to mix coins, once the network receives 2 more requests from other people to mix a similar amount, a round of mixing begins.
The user can choose from 2 to 16 rounds of mixing, more rounds means more privacy
Each denomination of coins, goes through its own rounds
Coins do not leave the user's wallet, i.e. mixing in Dash is non-custodial
Only matching denomination pieces are mixed. For each round of denomination mixing, a new mixing masternode is selected
The mixing time depends on the size of the amount to be mixed and the number of rounds
After successful mixing, the coins continue to be stored at new anonymous addresses in the wallet and can be sent via the "CoinJoin" tab. To be able to send urgently without waiting for mixing, it is possible to perform the mixing procedure in advance, but it is acceptable only for cases when the payment amount is known in advance or it can be formed from standard denominations.
== Block reward allocation ==
Dash was designed to allow transactions quickly and to have a swift governance structure in order to overcome shortfalls in Bitcoin. Like most cryptocurrencies, Dash has no centralized management - issuance occurs by mining. Unlike bitcoin, which allocates 100% of the block reward to miners, Dash retains a portion of the block reward for use in the decentralized budget system (Part of Dash DAO). During one cycle, namely ~30 days, miners mine blocks with a reduced reward of 80% of the target size, and then once a month a superblock is mined, which generates the amount of Dash needed to fund Dash DAO-approved proposals. In Dash, masternodes and evonodes receive 60% of the target reward size, while miners receive 20%. The superblock size is limited to 20% of the target size of block rewards mined per cycle.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Official Discord server
Official Telegram group |
Decentraland | Decentraland is a 3D virtual world browser-based platform. Users may buy virtual plots of land in the platform as NFTs via the MANA cryptocurrency, which uses the Ethereum blockchain. Designers can create and sell clothes and accessories for the avatars to be used in the virtual world.It was opened to the public in February 2020, and is overseen by the nonprofit Decentraland Foundation. In 2017, the platform raised $26 million in its initial coin offering (ICO); by 2022 indy100 reported that it had a $1.2 billion market evaluation. While DappRadar found that as few as 38 users performed currency transactions in a single day, Decentraland claimed that 8,000 people per day used the platform in 2022.Decentraland has received widespread criticism by technology and video game journalists for its technical bugs and mostly empty virtual world.
== History ==
Decentraland was created by Argentinians Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, and has been in development since 2015. When it launched in 2017, parcels of digital land sold for about $20, and mana tokens sold for $0.02. The game's first map, Genesis City, was made up of 90,601 parcels of land. It raised $26 million in its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017.In April 2021, during a surge in popularity for NFTs, parcels sold for between $6,000 and $100,000. Because of the relatively small pool of mana, the currency is volatile, spiking to as high as $5.79 after events like Facebook's rebrand to Meta.In November 2021 a virtual real-estate company purchased a plot of land in Decentraland for $2.43 million.Users have minted NFTs of avatars with slurs in their names, and at one point the name "Jew" was for sale for $362,000. In November 2021 the community held a vote on whether to add "Hitler" to the banned names list, but there were not enough votes for the decentralized autonomous organization's (DAO) smart contract to execute.In late 2021 and early 2022, major brands appeared in Decentraland or bought "properties" in it. These include Samsung, Adidas, Atari, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Miller Lite. Sotheby's held its first metaverse auction, and in March 2022, Decentraland hosted Metaverse Fashion Week in which major fashion brands appeared, including Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, Elie Saab, Nicholas Kirkwood, Perry Ellis, Imitation of Christ, and Estée Lauder. Music artists including Deadmau5 and Grimes held concerts in the platform.In October 2022, indy100 reported that Decentraland had a market valuation of $1.2 billion.In October 2022 the DappRadar tracking site reported that the Decentraland platform was seeing fewer than 1,000 users performing currency transactions on the site each day, with one particular 24-hour period having only 38 such users. Decentraland later claimed that "active users" were only users that had unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with its system, and that users that did not have wallet addresses weren't counted. Sam Hamilton, Creative Director at Decentraland, said by their own metrics the platform was used by an average of 8,000 people per day. The Verge compared this number unfavorably with the 2009 PC game Left 4 Dead 2, which had 18,000 active users playing the game at one point during the same month.
== Reception ==
In March 2020, Luke Winkie, writing for PC Gamer, described the game as "rickety", noting numerous bugs and the game's "brutally long loading times", as well as hard-locks related to the game's cryptocurrency-based authentication process. Winkie described the platform as having a strongly libertarian political bent, saying "Decentraland is a truly fascinating concept. It peels back like an onion, revealing a Randian fever-dream built with Roblox textures".According to Eric Ravenscraft of Wired, activity on the platform is unclear, with the world mostly empty and with a number of concurrent users of around 1,600 in 2021, a figure that might include inactive users who remain logged on. Ravenscraft wrote that Decentraland was buggy with poor moderation, and said that it felt reminiscent of an early access game.In January 2022, a video clip of a rave in Decentraland was posted to Twitter by DJ Alex Moss. The clip went viral and was widely mocked on social media. Zack Zwiezen, writing for Kotaku, unfavorably compared the clip to similar virtual concerts and parties in AdventureQuest 3D, Fortnite, Roblox, and VR Chat, and described the look of the game itself as similar to “a fictional game that was tossed together in a few hours for an episode of CSI: Whatever City, in which the investigators are trying to solve a murder that involves some 'new' and 'popular' online world." Prompted by the clip, Jason Koebler of Vice investigated other raves held on the platform, and described the experience as mostly empty and plagued by technical bugs.In January 2022, Zachariah Kelly, writing for Gizmodo, reviewed a virtual version of Melbourne Park created in Decentraland to promote the Australian Open. Kelly praised the 3D models created for the project, as well as the platform's ability to run in a browser, but poor draw distance and other issues made it feel "clunky" and lacking in activity. Kelly was also skeptical of the necessity for blockchain and NFTs. Kelly Revisited Decentraland's Australian Open space several days later, to review the closing concert. He said his experience was plagued by technical issues, and that footage of the event taken by others were unfavorably compared to online concerts held on other platforms, such as Fortnite.In April 2022, Business Insider review, Lisa Han praised the world's architecture and minigames, though criticized the emptiness of the world and its glitches and technical issues along with the game's removal of a quest log feature and the limitations of user interaction with Decentraland's architecture.In August 2023, Finance Research Letters found that Decentraland investors typically fell into four categories: those drawn to self-expression and aesthetics; those seeking community and social engagement; speculators focused on investment; and enthusiasts of technological innovation. [29]
== See also ==
Metaverse
Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Source code |
Diem (digital currency) | Diem (formerly known as Libra) was a permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin payment system proposed by the American social media company Meta Platforms. The plan also included a private currency implemented as a cryptocurrency.
The launch was originally planned to be in 2020, but only rudimentary experimental code was released.The project, currency and transactions would have been managed and cryptographically entrusted to the Diem Association, a membership organization of companies from payment, technology, telecommunication, online marketplace and venture capital, and nonprofits.
Before December 2020, the project was called "Libra", although this was changed to Diem following legal challenges regarding its name and logo.The project generated backlash from government regulators in the European Union, the USA, other countries, and among the general public over monetary sovereignty, financial stability, privacy, and antitrust concerns which ultimately helped kill the project.The Diem Association (originally the Libra Association) shut down in January 2022 and sold the project to Silvergate Bank. Silvergate wrote off their Diem investment in January 2023.
== History ==
Morgan Beller started working on cryptocurrency and blockchain at Meta in 2017, and was initially the only person working on Meta's blockchain initiative.Meta vice president David A. Marcus moved from Facebook Messenger to a new blockchain division in May 2018. First reports of Facebook planning a cryptocurrency, with Marcus in charge, emerged a few days later. By February 2019, there were more than 50 engineers working on the project. Confirmation that Facebook intended a cryptocurrency first emerged in May 2019. At this time it was known as "GlobalCoin" or "Facebook Coin".The project was formally announced on June 18, 2019, under the name Libra. The creators of the coin are listed as Morgan Beller, David Marcus and Kevin Weil (Novi's VP of Product). The first release was planned for 2020.On July 15, 2019, Facebook announced the currency would not launch until all regulatory concerns have been met and Libra had the "appropriate approvals". On September 18, 2019, during a meeting with top Senate Democratic leaders, Mark Zuckerberg said that Libra would not be launched anywhere in the world without first obtaining approval from United States regulators. In October 2019 multiple companies left Libra Association: PayPal left on 4 October, eBay, Mastercard, Stripe, Visa and Mercado Pago followed on 11 October, and Booking Holdings on 14 October.According to a November 2020 report in the Financial Times, Libra will be launching a slimmed down plan that includes the cryptocurrency being a stablecoin backed by the US dollar rather than a multiple currency collection. The newspaper also reported that the cryptocurrency will now be called Diem, which is Latin for "day". In December 2020, Libra was rebranded as Diem, and Libra Association renamed Diem Association. As of December 2020, Diem Association had 27 members.In January 2022, it was reported that the Diem Association was winding down, with Diem's assets being sold to the California based Silvergate Capital for a reported $200 million. Facebook was also reported to have planned to launch the token in the U.S. with it being issued by Silvergate although the Federal Reserve and the United States Department of the Treasury were not supportive of the project.In January 2023, Silvergate announced in their earnings call for Q4 2022 that they were writing down their entire investment in Diem. Silvergate Bank was shut down in March 2023.
== Currency ==
The plan for the Libra token was to be backed by financial assets such as a basket of currencies, and US Treasury securities in an attempt to avoid volatility. Facebook announced that each of the partners would inject an initial US$10 million, so Libra had full asset backing on the day it opened. As of January 2020, Libra is said to have dropped the idea of a mixed currency basket in favor of individual stablecoins pegged to individual currencies.Libra service partners, within the Libra Association, will create new Libra currency units based on demand. Libra currency units will be retired as they are redeemed for conventional currency.
Initial reconciliation of transactions will be performed at each service partner, and the blockchain's distributed ledger will be used for reconciliation between service partners. The intent is to help prevent everyone but members of the Libra Association from trying to extract and analyze data from the distributed ledger.
In contrast to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin which use permissionless blockchains, Libra is not decentralized, relying on trust in the Libra Association as "a de facto central bank".In September 2019, Facebook announced that the reserve basket would be made up of: 50% United States dollar, 18% Euro, 14% Japanese yen, 11% Pound sterling and 7% Singapore dollar.Libra considered using coins based on individual national currencies on the network, alongside the basket-based Libra token. This was first mooted publicly by David Marcus in October 2019, and by Mark Zuckerberg in his October 2019 Senate testimony. The idea was promoted again in March 2020.On April 16, 2020, Libra announced plans to create an infrastructure for multiple cryptocurrencies, the preponderance of which will be backed by individual fiat currencies, and said the association was in talks with regulators from Switzerland for a payments license.In May 2021, Diem announced that it had withdrawn its application to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority and said that it would instead seek approval with the US treasury to register as a money services business.
== Diem Association ==
Facebook established the Libra Association (later renamed to Diem Association) to oversee the currency, founded in Geneva, Switzerland. As of December 2020, Diem Association includes:
Payments: PayU Checkout.com
Technology and marketplaces: Facebook's subsidiary Novi Financial, Farfetch, Spotify, Shopify
Taxis: Lyft, Uber
Telecommunications: Iliad SA
Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Xapo
Venture capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures, Slow Ventures, Temasek Holdings
Nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions: Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women's World Banking, Heifer InternationalSeven other companies had been named as Libra Association members in the initial June 2019 announcement, but left before the first Libra meeting on 14 October 2019: Booking Holdings, eBay, Mastercard, Mercado Pago, PayPal, Stripe and Visa Inc. Visa chairman and CEO Alfred F. Kelly clarified in July that Visa had not joined, but had signed a nonbinding letter of intent; and that "no one has yet officially joined." He said that factors determining whether Visa would, in fact, join included "the ability of the association to satisfy all the requisite regulatory requirements." Vodafone joined the association in October 2019, but left in January 2020, saying they preferred to work on their mobile banking subsidiary M-Pesa.Press coverage around the initial Libra announcement noted the absence of Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon and of any banks. Banking executives had been reluctant to join due to uncertainties surrounding regulation and feasibility of the scheme.In late February 2020, e-commerce site Shopify and cryptocurrency brokerage Tagomi joined.
The association hopes to grow to 100 members with an equal vote.In late April 2020, the payment processing company, Checkout.com, announced they would be joining the association. In May 2020, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, cryptocurrency investor Paradigm and private equity firm Slow Ventures announced they would join the association.Libra Association was renamed to Diem Association on December 1, 2020, as part of the rebranding from Libra to Diem.
== Reception ==
The project faced criticism and opposition from central banks. The use of a cryptocurrency and blockchain for the implementation was questioned.
=== European Union regulatory response ===
The first regulator response to Libra came within minutes of the launch announcement, from French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, who was being interviewed on French radio station Europe 1. He said that Libra could not be allowed to become a sovereign currency, and would require strong consumer protections.Le Maire then warned the French Parliament of his concerns about Libra and privacy, money laundering and terrorism finance. He called on the central bank governors of the Group of Seven to prepare a report on Facebook's plans.Bank of England governor Mark Carney said there was a need to keep an "open mind" about new technology for money transfers, but "anything that works in this world will become instantly systemic and will have to be subject to the highest standards of regulation."German MEP Markus Ferber warned that Facebook could become a shadow bank. His colleague MEP Stefan Berger sees Libra's power potential as a threat to the economic stability of the euro zone and its democracies: Libra could make Facebook its central bank. Berger argues in favor of the development of a European stablecoin in order to be able to offer a secure alternative to the Facebook currency. Berger will be in charge of the European report of Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) which will serve as base for a regulatory framework for crypto-assets.On September 13, 2019, Le Maire stated that France would not allow development of Libra in the European Union, as would be a threat to the monetary sovereignty of states. He also spoke about the potential for abuse of marketing dominance and systemic financial risks as reasons for not allowing stablecoins to operate yet within the EU.According to a Reuters report, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said following a video conference of G7 finance ministers that Germany and Europe cannot accept Diem currency entry into the market while the regulatory risks are not adequately addressed. Scholz stated that he does not support private-sector digital currencies, and his remarks could be detrimental to Diem and JPMorgan Coin.
Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People, stated at the Digital Finance Outreach 2020 Closing Conference that the European Union is preparing a new cryptocurrency regime that may include stricter requirements for "global stablecoin" projects like Libra. In addition, Dombrovskis stated in his address that stablecoins that function on a global scale can "present new concerns" — they can disturb financial and monetary stability.
=== United States regulatory response ===
US regulators and politicians expressed concerns within hours of the mid-2019 announcement. Maxine Waters, Chairperson of the United States House Committee on Financial Services Committee asked Facebook to halt the development and launch of Libra, citing a list of recent scandals and that "the cryptocurrency market currently lacks a clear regulatory framework". The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Democrats sent a letter to Facebook asking the company to stop development of Libra, citing concerns of privacy, national security, trading, and monetary policy.Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress on 10 July 2019 that the Fed had "serious concerns" as to how Libra would deal with "money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability."President Donald Trump tweeted on 12 July 2019 that "If Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations."US regulators contacted Visa, PayPal, Mastercard and Stripe, asking for a complete overview of how Libra would fit into their anti-money-laundering compliance programs.Since several participants left the project in late 2019, the Libra Association worked to address concerns from United States regulators with the development of a "Libra 2.0" blueprint.According to CNBC, in 2021, Diem reportedly withdrawn its application for a Swiss payment license, intending to instead move its activities to the United States. Diem announced that it would relocate its operating headquarters from Geneva to Washington with an intend to establish its payment system from the United States.
=== Other countries ===
David Marcus told the US Senate that the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner would oversee privacy for Libra, but the commissioner said that it had not heard from Facebook at all.The government of Japan began the process of investigating Libra and doing an analysis on the effect on Japan's monetary policy and financial regulation. In July 2019, Japanese officials formed a working committee, consisting of the Bank of Japan, the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Services Agency, to coordinate policies to address Libra's impact on regulation, monetary policy, tax, and payments settlement. The working group will coordinate measures to handle Libra's influence on regulation, monetary policy, tax, and payments settlement. This will be done before the Group of Seven meeting in France between 24 and 26 August 2019.Data protection regulators internationally issued a statement asking Facebook to protect personal data of users, and to detail Libra's planned practices for handling personal data, in the light of "previous episodes where Facebook's handling of people's information has not met the expectations of regulators, or their own users."Finance Watch describes Libra as a "huge risk to public monetary sovereignty" and "concludes that Libra is a bad idea – for its users, for the stability of our financial system, and last but not least for our democracy."On September 16, 2019, officials from the Libra consortium, including J.P. Morgan and Facebook, met with officials from 26 central banks, including the Federal Reserve and Bank of England, in Basel, Switzerland and the meeting was chaired by European Central Bank board member Benoît Cœuré, a vocal Libra critic.
=== Privacy concerns ===
Industry observers have speculated whether Libra will provide meaningful privacy to its users. Facebook's plan is to let its subsidiary Novi Financial manage Libra for Facebook users, and Facebook executives have stated that Novi will not share account holder's purchase information with Facebook without authorization. However, the system is also planned to include a friend-finder search function, and the use of this function will constitute permission for Novi to combine the account holder's transaction history with their Facebook account.In August 2019, according to CNBC, top data protection officials including Democratic FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra, U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, EU Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli, and other top regulators from Australia, Canada, Albania, and Burkina Faso in a joint statement expressed doubts over Facebook's proposed digital currency project Libra (Diem). According to CNBC, Facebook confirmed that governments and regulators throughout the world were scrutinizing Libra.In general, consumer advocates and public interest groups have opposed Diem on privacy grounds and rejected the tethering of financial services to mass surveillance.
=== Antitrust concerns ===
Scholars have highlighted several antitrust risks associated with Diem, namely, a risk of collusion between association members, a risk of tying between Diem and Novi, and a risk of exclusivity agreements if Novi is required to use Diem within Facebook environment.
=== Fake Libra websites ===
Facebook tries to police inaccurate information and fake Libra websites on its platform. According to The Washington Post, nearly a dozen fake accounts, pages, and groups on Facebook and Instagram advertised themselves as legitimate centres for the Libra digital currency, in some cases trying to sell discounted Libra which was not yet accessible. Numerous of the counterfeits used the Facebook logo, images of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Libra's official marketing material. The growth of fake pages and groups devoted to Libra added to Facebook's difficulties with global authorities.
== Legal issues ==
Diem Association (formerly Libra Association) faced legal challenges as both the name and the logo of the digital currency are already in use within different territories.
Finco Services Inc filed a lawsuit with New York Southern District Court against Facebook, Inc., Novi Financial, Inc., Jlv, LLC and Character SF, LLC for an alleged trademark infringement arising out of the use by the latter of a logo similar to the start-up bank operated by Finco Services, Inc. The plaintiff requested a preliminary and permanent injunctive relief as well as monetary relief from the defendants. A settlement conference in this matter is scheduled for March 26, 2020 in the United States Courthouse, while the parties did not consent to conducting the proceedings before a magistrate judge and requested to be tried to a jury.In Europe, Libra Association filed an application with the European Union Intellectual Property Office for the registration of the word "LIBRA" as a verbal trademark. The proceeding already received five oppositions to registration from four European companies based mainly on the alleged likelihood of confusion with their prior trademarks. The opposing companies are Lyra Network, Libra Internet Bank, Libri GmbH and Advanced New Technologies Co., Ltd. In April 2020, the parties will reach the adversarial part of the opposition proceedings, unless a settlement is reached during the cooling-off period.
== Implementation ==
=== Blockchain consensus ===
Diem will not rely on cryptocurrency mining. Only members of Diem Association will be able to process transactions via the permissioned blockchain.
Diem hopes to begin transitioning to a permissionless proof-of-stake system within five years; although their own materials admit that no solution exists "that can deliver the scale, stability, and security needed to support billions of people and transactions across the globe through a permissionless network."
=== Software ===
Diem source code is written in Rust and published as open source under the Apache License on GitHub.
In June 2019, Elaine Ou, an opinion writer at Bloomberg News, tried compiling and running the publicly released code for Libra. At the time, the software did little more than allow fake coins to be put in a wallet; almost none of the functionality outlined in the white paper was implemented, including "major architectural features that have yet to be invented." Ou was surprised that Facebook "would release software in such a state".
=== Digital wallet ===
In June 2019, Facebook announced plans to release a digital wallet called Calibra in 2020, as a standalone app and also to integrate it within Messenger and WhatsApp. In May 2020, Calibra was renamed Novi. As of February 2021, Novi and Diem were not released yet and do not have a set release date.
=== Move ===
Move was the Diem blockchain's proposed smart contract and custom transactions language. It was planned to be a statically-typed programming language, compiled to bytecode.
The Move language syntax was never released. An example Intermediate representation of the language is shown in the Move white paper:
== See also ==
Beenz – an earlier attempt at an Internet-wide digital currency
Facebook Credits
Flooz – an earlier attempt at an Internet-wide digital currency
List of online payment service providers
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
Nano (cryptocurrency) | Nano (Abbreviation: XNO; sign: Ӿ) is a cryptocurrency characterized by a directed acyclic graph data structure and distributed ledger, making it possible for Nano to work without intermediaries. To agree on what transactions to commit (i.e., achieving consensus), it uses a voting system with weight based on the amount of currency an account holds.Nano was launched in October 2015 by Colin LeMahieu to address the Bitcoin scalability problem and was created to reduce confirmation times and fees. The currency implements no-fee transactions and achieves confirmation in under one second.
== History ==
Colin LeMahieu started the development of Nano in 2014 under the name "RaiBlocks". A year later, RaiBlocks was distributed for free through a captcha-secured faucet. In 2017, after 126,248,289 RaiBlocks were distributed, the faucet shut down. This fixed the total supply to 133,248,297 RaiBlocks, after addition of a 7,000,000 RaiBlocks developer fund.
=== BitGrail hack ===
On February 9, 2018, an Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail announced its hack and eventual shutdown. Users were prevented from accessing assets stored on the platform, which was collectively worth 17 million Nano. The victims then launched a class-action lawsuit against BitGrail owner Francesco Firano for recoupment, inside the Florence Courthouse. The exchange was ruled to be guilty in January 2019, as it was found to fail at implementing safeguards and reporting losses. The Italian police branch Network Operations Command (Italy) alleged the Bitgrail founder had conducted fraud. Nano prices had been around $10 prior to the hack and after the hack fell to $0.10.
== Design ==
Nano uses a block-lattice data structure, where every account has its own blockchain for storing transactions. It is the first cryptocurrency to use a directed acyclic graph data structure, by having a "block" consisting of only one transaction and the account's current balance.Consensus is reached through an algorithm similar to proof of stake. In this system, the voting weight is distributed to accounts based on the amount of Nano they hold; accounts then freely delegate this weight to a peer (node) of their choice.If two contradictory transactions are broadcast to the network, indicating a double-spend attempt, nodes will vote for either transactions. Afterward, they broadcast their vote to the other nodes for strictly informational purposes. The first to reach 67% of the total voting weight is confirmed, while the other transaction is discarded.
== See also ==
IOTA (technology)
== References == |
NEO (cryptocurrency) | Neo is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency and application platform used to run smart contracts and decentralized applications. The project, originally named Antshares, was founded in 2014 by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang and rebranded as Neo in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, the cryptocurrency maintained some success in the Chinese market despite the recently-enacted prohibition on cryptocurrency in that country.
== Technical specifications ==
The Neo network runs on a proof-of-stake decentralized Byzantine fault tolerant (dBFT) consensus mechanism between a number of centrally approved nodes, and can support up to 10,000 transactions per second. The base asset of the Neo blockchain is the non-divisible Neo token which generates GAS tokens. These GAS tokens, a separate asset on the network, can be used to pay for transaction fees, and are divisible with the smallest unit of 0.00000001. The inflation rate of GAS is controlled with a decaying half-life algorithm that is designed to release 100 million GAS over approximately 22 years.X.509 Digital Identities allow developers to tie tokens to real-world identities which aid in complying with KYC/AML and other regulatory requirements.
== History ==
In 2014, Antshares was founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang. In the following year, it was open-sourced on GitHub and by September 2015, the white paper was released.A total of 100 million Neo were created in the genesis block. 50 million Neo were sold to early investors through an initial coin offering in 2016 that raised US 4.65 million, with the remaining 50 million Neo locked into a smart contract. Each year, a maximum of 15 million Neo tokens are unlocked which are used by the Neo development team to fund long-term development goals.Neo was officially rebranded from Antshares in June 2017, with the idea of combining the past and the future.Neo3 or N3 was first announced by Erik Zhang in 2018 as an upgrade to the previous Neo protocol (now known as Neo Legacy). Certain new features do not have backward compatibility with the Neo Legacy blockchain. N3 was implemented and launched with a new genesis block.In March 2018, Neo's parent company Onchain distributed 1 Ontology token (ONT) for every 5 NEO held in a user's cryptocurrency wallet. These tokens were intended to be used to vote on system upgrades, identity verification mechanisms, and other governance issues on the Neo platform.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official Website |