In June 2026, the world’s leading Web3 taxi app will be launched in the Big Apple.
This ride-hailing app—called TADA—uses blockchain technology to connect drivers and riders via smart contracts. Its use of decentralized tech enables greater transparency, fairer earnings for drivers, and cost savings for riders, co-founder Kay Woo told Fortune in a Dec. 24 interview.
“We don’t work as an intermediary. We are becoming the software for both [drivers and riders] and while they’re using our network, they just need to simply pay a small fee,” Woo says.
TADA was founded in Singapore in 2018 by two South Korean tech entrepreneurs: Kay Woo and Jay Han. The ride-hailing app is best known for its “zero commission model”, which charges drivers a flat software fee (of around 78 to 92 cents) rather than a cut of their earnings.
The platform has a significant and growing share in Singapore’s crowded ride-hailing market, constituting 11.1% of market share in 2022, according to data platform Measurable AI. As of October 2024, TADA brought in a record $19.8 million in revenue, up from $15.7 million in 2023.
Since its launch, TADA has expanded to various markets in Asia, including Cambodia and Vietnam in 2019, and Thailand and Hong Kong in 2024. Within the U.S., the company is currently trialing its tech in Denver, and plans to launch officially in NYC in June.
The origin story
TADA’s entry to NYC marks a full-circle moment for Woo, who had first begun his entrepreneurship journey in the city.
In 2012, alongside a friend, Woo created a social gathering application with the goal of bringing people together—but the app flopped.
“I couldn’t sell the product. I come from an engineering and finance background, and my co-founder was an engineer. We were just a bunch of nerds,” Woo says.
After a few failures, they decided to create a product that would generate revenue from the get-go, and a ride-hailing app came to mind.
In 2014, Woo and Han moved back to Asia, and set out to digitalise the cross-border mobility services between the bustling cities of Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
According to Woo, although Uber and DiDi were popular in the region, ride-hailing apps didn’t yet offer cross-border transport services. Instead, car rental companies and drivers managed reservations with pen and paper—and Woo saw a gap in the market.
After a successful test run in Hong Kong and mainland China, TADA’s founders officially launched their ride-hailing business in Singapore, choosing the city-state as it is densely populated and has “superb infrastructure support.”
“Among Southeast Asian countries, Singapore is super important to showcase all other neighboring countries in Southeast Asia,” Woo says. “We got lucky in picking the right place, but also the right time.”
Aside from revenue from its platform fees, TADA has several other revenue streams.
Besides generating a profit from the broader Web3 platform by its parent company, MVL, TADA sells anonymized vehicle and driving data—with consent—to ecosystem partners, and offers MVL tokens to be traded on external cryptocurrency exchanges.
Journey to the west
After growing the business in Asia, Woo now has his sights set on the U.S., where he is ready to take on industry giants like Uber and Lyft.
“Whenever I go to New York, I interview the old drivers, and everybody says the same thing: current ride-hailing services take too much commission, but they don’t have any choice,” quips Woo. “We need to give them a choice—TADA is going to be a painkiller for them.”
Woo is a big proponent of disruption, believing it to be an essential tenet of progress.
He alludes to ‘legacy’ ride-hailing apps like Uber and Grab as part of the “first wave”, which disrupted the traditional taxi market. But these platforms were built with capitalistic goals, he says, leading to skyrocketing platform fees and prices.
“And now it’s their time to be disrupted with a new type of model,” Woo adds.
The next phase of tokenization won’t be won by speed, but by coordination, turning isolated pilots into a unified market. Unsplash+
Gone are the days when tokenization was a niche concept. It’s now a capital markets reality measured in billions, and the question has shifted from adoption to architecture. Can the industry coordinate fast enough to turn a rush of isolated pilots into a single, compounding market? Today, the answer is no, the coordination gap continues to drain value through duplicated integrations, stranded liquidity and regulatory drag.
The inefficiencies tokenization promised to fix
A decade of experimentation left a maze of base layers (L1s), layer-2s and token standards that often cannot speak the same language. An equity token minted on one chain rarely settles natively against collateral on another. Liquidity splinters, market makers must maintain multiple inventories, and the same asset is wrapped three different ways. This functions like walled courtyards, far from a unified market.
Tokenization promised faster settlement and broader access. Instead, firms are building parallel silos that import back-office frictions into a new substrate. Regulators see the duplication and hesitate. Investors face basis risk across wrappers. Issuers pay twice for audits and integration. Growth continues, but at a discount to what the technology could deliver.
The architecture of a unified market
There is no question that assets have to work across chains. Interoperability belongs in the design from day one. Encouragingly, both incumbent rails and emerging protocols are experimenting with exactly this mandate. SWIFT, for example, has shown that its messaging network can coordinate transfers of tokenized value across multiple public and private chains, reducing one of the biggest frictions to institutional scale. Regulators are more likely to bless systems that reuse the controls they already know.
At the infrastructure level, new interoperability protocols are tackling the same challenge with different architectures. Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) provides secure cross-chain messaging and programmable token transfers, allowing liquidity and compliance logic to move seamlessly across networks. Wormhole enables verifiable actions through a decentralized guardian network that validates cross-chain messages, while LayerZero connects applications across chains through an omnichain messaging framework built on lightweight nodes and configurable trust models. Each approach addresses the same problem: making tokenized value portable and composable without sacrificing security or regulatory confidence.
Let demand determine where liquidity pools, independent of initial consortium deployments. Cross-chain liquidity pools and smart order routing can direct flow to the best venue while maintaining a unified positions record for risk. The market should set measurable targets: cross-chain fill rates above 99 percent, sub-minute finality between domains, and reconciliation without manual breaks.
Second, standardize both the asset and the identity. A uniform, open token standard for regulated assets should include only the essentials—transfer controls, role-based permissions and lawful enforcement hooks, while remaining compatible with the most common blockchain formats, known as ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155. Emerging frameworks such as ERC-3643 and ERC-7943 are early efforts to codify compliance and interoperability for real-world assets, but they must remain modular, neutral, and open to extension so issuers can evolve without breaking composability.
Pair standardized assets with portable identity. Verifiable credentials and on-chain attestations should travel with the investor, ensuring that KYC and eligibility checks do not restart at every venue. This is the foundation of scalable compliance: identity and permissioning that move with the holder, not the platform.
Finally, synchronize regulation inside the asset itself. Regulators expect familiar outcomes—eligibility checks, sanctions screening, audit trails—but with improved transparency and observability. The EU’s DLT Pilot Regime demonstrates how harmonized infrastructure can evolve within existing securities law, enabling innovation under MiFID II supervision while preserving market integrity.
Bake these controls directly into the token. Rule sets can define who may hold or transfer an instrument, under which jurisdictions, and when forced transfers are lawful. That approach shortens compliance cycles and leverages shared messaging standards with minimal token primitives that any venue can implement. Singapore’s Project Guardian reflects this vision, with banks and asset managers testing regulated tokenization on open infrastructure under supervisory oversight.
Where the power plays are now
The rise of tokenized cash equivalents shows the appetite: assets in tokenized Treasury products have surged as institutions seek intraday settlement and programmatic collateral. Institutional players are no longer debating if tokenization happens; they are competing over where it settles and how it moves. Custodians want to be the universal safekeeping layer. Market infrastructures want to be the neutral hub for cross-chain messaging. Asset managers want to turn tokenized funds into the default cash leg for crypto-native activity. Each move is rational; only coordination scales them.
Consider the signal from mainstream finance. Citi estimates tokenized digital securities could reach four to five trillion dollars by 2030. Boston Consulting Group projects that as much as 18.9 trillion dollars of illiquid assets could be tokenized by 2033. Treat these numbers as a map of where capital intends to go if the rails align. Projects that keep assets stuck on single chains will miss those flows. The regulatory posture is shifting in the same direction. Central banks and industry groups are testing how to move tokenized value across networks using existing messaging standards. These are coordination bets that matter more than headline grabs. They reward open designs that keep compliance portable.
The scoreboard that matters: portability and trust
The next phase of tokenization is a race to make assets both portable and trusted across chains. Portability lowers the cost of capital by exposing issuances to broader liquidity and deeper collateral markets. Trust reduces legal friction, accelerates launches and opens institutional balance sheets to programmable finance. Together, they create network effects that a single-chain strategy cannot replicate, expressed in tighter spreads, lower collateral haircuts and faster listings. A critical enabler of this evolution is the emergence of atomic settlement, allowing cross-chain transactions to execute in full or not at all. Early implementations of atomic swaps already demonstrate how synchronized settlement can eliminate counterparty risk and reduce dependence on intermediaries for finality. As interoperability frameworks like Chainlink CCIP, Wormhole and LayerZero mature, they will bring these mechanisms into regulated environments, turning fragmented liquidity into a unified market fabric where assets and collateral move seamlessly across ecosystems without breaking compliance or auditability.
For decision-makers, the path forward requires prioritizing infrastructure over isolated issuance. The focus must shift toward interoperable rails, open token standards and portable identity frameworks built on verifiable credentials. Success will be measured by new targets: cross-chain settlement rates, shared liquidity depth, atomic swap efficiency and reduced time-to-compliance.
Tokenization is crossing from curiosity to critical infrastructure. The market already punishes fragmentation, thin liquidity, duplicated cost and preventable risk, even as architectures mature. The institutions that align early around interoperability, standardized assets and portable identity will own the compounding benefits of a unified market, while others remain confined to isolated silos.
Coordination is not an afterthought; it is the multiplier that turns pilots into markets. Whether the coming trillions in tokenized value flow through harmonized rails or fracture across closed venues will define the next decade of capital markets. Those who architect for coordination will capture the scale; those who do not will fund it for others.
There really are few phrases in the English language more annoying than “This could be a Black Mirror episode!” But a popular television series which scathingly explores and satirizes the effects of technology on the human race releasing its own themed memecoin and accompanying Web3 platform? That bloody could. At the end, everyone responsible would be thrown in a volcano.
Meme-based crypto currencies were once the domain of tech bros looking to make a buck at the top of a pyramid who’d leave the worthless coins in the hands of suckers and move on to the next. Now, their reputation has somehow sunk even lower, with the likes of Donald Trump exploiting his acolytes with Trump Coin (currently worth a fifth of day-one peak, and almost a quarter of its launch price). So it’s just the perfect moment, years after anyone took them even half-seriously, for Black Mirror‘s production company to launch $MIRROR, a coin based on the show. Why? According to a GamesBeat article, “To reward Black Mirror fans for their loyalty.”
Banijay Rights is an arm of Banijay Entertainment, a mammoth television production company responsible for shows like Lego Masters, Big Brother, Survivor, and indeed Black Mirror. It partnered with Web3 company Pixelynx a while back, with the intention to create a coin and run a bunch of Web3 bullshit like NFTs. The latter sold out instantly, with all 7,000 being picked up at $40 a pop in under three hours. It was suggested then that this deal could even influence future episodes of the show, but given Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker doesn’t seem the sort to countenance any of this crap, that sounded like a reach at the time.
But it’s not just a coin! There’s a motherfucking UNIVERSE, too. “The $MIRROR token goes beyond gamified engagement,” we’re told. Phew! “It’s a cultural token at the core of an expanding digital world that merges interactive entertainment, communities, identity, and social standing.”
Coin owners will be able to vote on covers for a Black Mirror comic from Twisted Comics—and get this!—have the chance to put more money into more nonsense non-products by investing in “royalty streams from selected product launches.”
This is all apparently “inspired” by the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” The 2016 episode was about people’s ability to rate each other from one to five stars, in a society where your social status is constantly dependent upon how others have rated you. I rate everyone involved in this crypto bullshit 1 out of 5! I’m sure the episode’s writers Ras,hida Jones and Michael Schur, will be just delighted about all this.
God, there’s so much more rubbish around this, but you get the gist. That gist being: everything is awful and we should shut down society forever. It could be a Black Mirror episode!
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
After Bitcoin launched in 2009, it became clear to proponents that it would have a difficult time ever becoming “electronic cash.” It was too slow and decentralized. Instead, the consensus was reached that its purpose should fit its architecture. The pivot was important: Bitcoin aimed to be a decentralized store of value — a digital vault. It wasn’t built for speed, and as a store of value, it would never need to be fast.
Ten-minute block times were acceptable because they didn’t need to be used for daily payments, let alone real-time gaming or algorithmic trading. It wouldn’t have to compete with Visa or PayPal; it simply had to serve as a hedge against macroeconomic and geopolitical risks, like its gold and rare metal counterparts.
As such, its limited throughput was reframed as a feature rather than a flaw, a security trade-off that prioritized immutability and decentralization over instant convenience.
In many ways, Bitcoin became a philosophical statement about the trade-offs inherent in trustless systems, teaching the industry that decentralization has costs, but those costs define its unique value proposition.
The blockchain space has evolved far beyond its origins, and no other chain can attempt to recreate Bitcoin’s narrative. In 2025, Web3 is no longer about theoretical use cases. It is powering actual economies, which rely on fast finality and battle-tested security. Tokenized assets, payments apps, decentralized finance, consumer loyalty, identity, gaming and increasingly AI systems all rely on the same foundation: scalable, low-latency infrastructure.
These real-world applications demand performance that was inconceivable in the early days of cryptocurrency. The promise of decentralized technology can no longer exist solely as a concept; it must operate at the speed, scale and reliability that modern users have come to expect.
But that foundation is nowhere near where it needs to be. Today’s blockchains are asked to perform like global-scale platforms, even as most still struggle with 1990s-era throughput. That mismatch is the biggest threat to Web3’s future, the distance between what’s demanded of a decentralized blockchain and what these protocols can actually offer.
Most chains today still process fewer than 100 transactions per second. Legacy networks like Visa can handle tens of thousands without breaking a sweat. High-frequency trading platforms operate with microsecond latency. And yet we expect developers, enterprises and users to build and transact on infrastructure that’s slower than dial-up.
The public will not wait for us to catch up. They are used to seamless, real-time experiences. Anything less feels broken. This is not a matter of optimization. It is a question of survival. If we do not build for performance, we will not be taken seriously. Web3 cannot survive on nostalgia or theoretical ideals alone; it needs infrastructure capable of handling the realities of billions of users, each expecting instant results, frictionless interaction and financial security at all times.
What Web3 needs now is a clean break from legacy limitations. The next generation of chains must be built for speed from day one. This includes advanced sequencing architectures that allow networks to prioritize and order transactions efficiently. It also includes parallelized execution, which enables blockchains to process thousands of transactions simultaneously, rather than one after another, in a single line. On top of that, developers need predictable fee structures that make sense at scale. Micropayments don’t work when fees are higher than the transaction itself. Without these foundational changes, innovation will remain bottlenecked and adoption will stall.
None of this is optional anymore; If we want blockchain technology to serve billions of users, we need infrastructure that performs like global financial rails. That means sub-second latency. It means tens of thousands of transactions per second. It means costs that make sense for everyday use.
Some of this is already underway. Several high-throughput chains are being tested right now, and a few are in production. Polygon PoS is expected to cross 5,000 transactions per second this year. Within the next twelve to eighteen months, 100,000 TPS is within reach. At that point, Web3 can begin to seriously challenge legacy platforms.
Plus, with the power of ZK technology, we can now have institution-grade blockchains that can provide 10s of thousands of TPS with full control and compliance available to the corresponding institution. Zero-knowledge proofs allow for privacy-preserving verification and regulatory compliance simultaneously, making it possible for institutions to leverage public blockchains without compromising security or governance requirements.
But we can’t afford to celebrate incremental improvements. Speed is not just a technical achievement. It is what unlocks the real-world applications we have been promising for over a decade. Without it, we stay stuck in the prototype phase.
The next generation of the internet won’t wait for us. It will move forward with or without blockchains at its core. If Web3 wants to be part of that future, it must start building like it.
Now.
After Bitcoin launched in 2009, it became clear to proponents that it would have a difficult time ever becoming “electronic cash.” It was too slow and decentralized. Instead, the consensus was reached that its purpose should fit its architecture. The pivot was important: Bitcoin aimed to be a decentralized store of value — a digital vault. It wasn’t built for speed, and as a store of value, it would never need to be fast.
Ten-minute block times were acceptable because they didn’t need to be used for daily payments, let alone real-time gaming or algorithmic trading. It wouldn’t have to compete with Visa or PayPal; it simply had to serve as a hedge against macroeconomic and geopolitical risks, like its gold and rare metal counterparts.
As such, its limited throughput was reframed as a feature rather than a flaw, a security trade-off that prioritized immutability and decentralization over instant convenience.
In many ways, Bitcoin became a philosophical statement about the trade-offs inherent in trustless systems, teaching the industry that decentralization has costs, but those costs define its unique value proposition.
In a late-stage economy dominated by established players, opportunity for new economic entrants can be bleak. So we went our own way. In the fall of 2022, at 19 and 22, we dropped out of Vanderbilt to establish Movement Labs. A year later, in the fall of 2023, we secured $3.4 million in pre-seed funding to kickstart our vision. Fast forward to April 2024, and we’ve just closed a $38 Million Series A round. Our journey isn’t just about reshaping the future of technology and finance with a next-gen coding language, it’s about the realities of navigating life as Gen Z starting from scratch.
The Gen Z advantage in a fast-moving space
Being young and flexible has been our secret weapon in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain and Web3. Our ability to adapt quickly, think outside the box, and challenge conventional wisdom has allowed us to identify and solve problems that others might overlook.
As digital natives, we grew up in a world where technology evolves at breakneck speed. This has instilled in us a natural ability to navigate and innovate in fast-moving spaces like blockchain. We’re not weighed down by legacy thinking or outdated practices—instead, we’re driven by a vision of what the future could be.
Breaking free from traditional paths
College helped us mature and develop into capable new economic entrants and entrepreneurs. But benefits to being in college eventually diminished, and we found rare opportunities that existed in the moment. College has been shaped as a path to finding a job and starting a career. Once we found a more stable and streamlined path, it only made sense to go all in.
Our generation understands that paths we’re told to follow don’t lead where they used to. We’re not afraid to take calculated risks and go off the path. This mindset has allowed us to move decisively, pivoting our focus to the Move programming language when we recognized its potential to revolutionize the blockchain industry.
Solving real problems in the blockchain space
Our goal at Movement Labs is to create a unified blockchain ecosystem where developers can build secure applications that interact seamlessly across different networks, and users can confidently manage their digital assets without fear of hacks or incompatibility issues.
The Move programming language was originally created by Meta (formerly Facebook) with the goal of building a foundation for a world where digital information is smart and programmable. While many in the tech world moved on when Meta’s project changed direction, we saw hidden potential that others missed.
Move is like a super-secure and efficient language for the digital age. It’s designed to handle information and digital assets more safely and effectively than older systems, making it ideal for businesses and financial applications.
This potential inspired us to make a bold move—we quit our internships and dropped out of college to go all in on Move. We’re swimming against the current, but that’s where we see the biggest opportunity. In most industries, large corporations have already claimed the lion’s share of the market. They’ve become like well-oiled machines, making it hard for newcomers to break in.
By focusing on Move when others have overlooked it, we’re creating a new playing field. It’s our chance to build something groundbreaking and carve out our own space in the fast-moving world of technology and finance.
Building a community-driven future
One of the most exciting aspects of being Gen Z entrepreneurs in the Web3 space is the emphasis on community. We are fostering a vibrant ecosystem of innovative builders and community contributors who share our vision. We build our seats at the table together.
This community-driven approach is second nature to our generation. We’ve grown up in a world of social media, open-source software, and collaborative online spaces. We understand that the best innovations often come from diverse groups working together toward a common goal. And we understand that breaking the mold requires collaboration between a number of diverse skill sets.
Our vision for the Move language is to make it accessible and decentralized. We want to level the playing field, opening doors for a new wave of innovation. This approach gives Gen Z around the world the chance to freely create and collaborate, building their own futures without traditional gatekeepers. It’s about empowering our generation to shape the digital economy, together.
The future is now
To those who might doubt the ability of young entrepreneurs to lead in such a complex industry, we say: The future is already here, and we’re building it. Our $38 million funding round isn’t just a validation of our technology—it’s a testament to the power of fresh perspectives and bold ideas.
We believe that the next wave of technological revolution will be led by those who are willing to question everything and reimagine what’s possible. That’s what we’re doing at Movement Labs, and that’s what we believe our generation brings to the table.
So, to our fellow Zoomers, we say: Don’t be afraid to take risks and challenge the status quo. Your unique perspective and skills are needed in the tech industry and beyond. And to the generations prior, we say: Embrace the energy and innovation that young entrepreneurs bring to the table. We can build a better future together.
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Illia Polosukhin doesn’t want big companies to determine the future of artificial intelligence. His alternative vision for “user-owned AI” is already starting to take shape.
Bitget Wallet Partners with Over 40 Projects Including Avalanche, Taiko to Launch the BWB Ecosystem Partner Program
Introducing the BWB Ecosystem Partner Program
In the dynamic landscape of Web3, collaboration and community are key drivers of innovation. Bitget Wallet, a leading player in the Web3 space, has recently unveiled its BWB Ecosystem Partner Program, heralding a new era of collaboration. This program brings together over 40 prominent blockchains and projects, including heavyweights like Avalanche, Taiko, Babylon, and Near, under one umbrella. The aim? To incentivize active participation and support for projects within the decentralized Web3 ecosystem.
Empowering Users with BWB Tokens
At the heart of Bitget Wallet’s ecosystem lies the BWB token. Serving as the core asset, BWB tokens unlock a world of exclusive rights for holders. Community governance, ecosystem airdrops, and dividends await those who hold BWB tokens as Bitget Wallet continues to expand its reach. With the launch of the BWB Ecosystem Partner Program, users have even more reason to engage actively within the Web3 space, as participation in various on-chain activities earns them BWB Points, which can later be redeemed for BWB tokens.
Fostering Growth and Engagement
Bitget Wallet isn’t just about providing a platform for transactions; it’s about fostering growth and engagement within the Web3 community. Through its support for over 100 popular blockchains, hundreds of EVM-compatible chains, and tens of thousands of DApps, Bitget Wallet serves as a bridge between projects and users. Moreover, initiatives like Task2Get, an incentivized Web3 exploration platform, encourage users to explore and interact with decentralized projects, creating a virtuous cycle of activity and interaction.
Building the Decentralized Ecosystem Together
In the words of Alvin Kan, COO of Bitget Wallet, “With over 20 million users worldwide and ranking fourth globally, we hope to leverage our user base and traffic to help emerging projects grow and develop.” The BWB Ecosystem Partner Program embodies this vision of collective growth, as Bitget Wallet joins hands with projects across Web3 to build a decentralized ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders. Through collaboration, innovation, and community support, Bitget Wallet and its partners are paving the way for a more inclusive and vibrant Web3 landscape.
In conclusion, Bitget Wallet’s BWB Ecosystem Partner Program is not just a partnership initiative; it’s a catalyst for change within the Web3 space. By empowering users, fostering growth and engagement, and building a decentralized ecosystem together, Bitget Wallet and its partners are shaping the future of finance and technology. So, whether you’re a seasoned crypto enthusiast or just dipping your toes into the world of Web3, there’s never been a better time to get involved with the BWB Ecosystem Partner Program.
Starbucks is pulling the plug on Odyssey, its Web3 rewards program that gave members access to collectible NFTs. The company updated its on Friday to let members know that the beta program is closing on March 31, and they have a little over a week left to complete any remaining activities (called journeys). Those will shut down March 25. Users won’t lose their Stamps (Starbucks’ NFTs), which are hosted on Nifty Gateway, but they’ll have to sign up for Nifty using their Starbucks Rewards email to access them there, if they haven’t already.
Starbucks was late to the NFT game with Odyssey, which launched in beta in late 2022 — well after interest in the digital collectibles peaked. Unlike some other NFT ventures from major brands, though, it seemed to be aiming for more than a quick cash grab. It gamified the rewards system, offering activities and coffee-related mini-games that encouraged members’ ongoing participation.
In a conversation with published just last month, Odyssey community lead Steve Kaczynski emphasized the community element, saying, “I’ve seen that people who live in California in the Starbucks Odyssey community are really good friends with people in Chicago and they have met up in real life at times. This never would have happened if not for Web3.” But it’s 2024, and brands and consumers alike have long since moved on from NFTs. (Naturally, Forum3, which worked with Starbucks on Odyssey, seems to have pivoted to AI).
Starbucks says the Odyssey marketplace, where members could buy and sell their stamps, will move over to the Nifty marketplace. They can also withdraw their Stamps to trade them on other platforms.
Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial.
Blockchain is famous for showing everything in the open—every transaction, clear as day. It’s like a glass house where everything is visible, and that’s been its big selling point. But there’s a catch: this see-through world is too revealing. It’s like we’ve walked into a room with glass walls, forgetting that others can look in if we can look out. This crystal-clear world reminds us of the old days of the internet (web1), where all information flowed freely. Sadly, it also started to resemble the world in which web1 became web2, and data began to be gathered, analyzed, and monetized. A world where our online moves were—and still are—tracked without us knowing.
The beauty of blockchain lies in its honesty and integrity, but it also bears the shadow of over-transparency. Like in web2, where tech giants constantly monitor online activities and gather data, blockchain’s openness allows anyone curious to observe our digital actions—with financial data visible out in the open (considered sensitive and encrypted data in web2). The very attribute that underpins blockchain’s reliability—its transparency—also introduces a level of exposure that might be more than what some users bargained for.
Blockchain was envisioned as a revolutionary space, granting us authority over digital presence. But as technology advances, there is a middle ground that promises a blockchain experience that respects user autonomy, offering a transparent yet controlled digital environment.
This new level of transparency in blockchain is innovative, but it also comes with some risks. The open ledger becomes a double-edged sword. Users, particularly those new to the blockchain world, are exposed to risks they hadn’t anticipated. The visibility of their transactions can lead to targeted phishing attacks, where malicious actors exploit transaction data to craft convincing scams.
This vulnerability extends beyond individual privacy concerns, touching the fabric of the decentralized ethos that web3 champions. The promise of a decentralized future was built on the pillars of user empowerment and security, but this level of exposure could inadvertently lead to a centralization of power in the hands of those who know how to exploit on-chain transparency.
The ethos of decentralization is rooted in the empowerment of the individual, a shift away from the centralized control that characterized web2. However, the current state of blockchain transparency could unintentionally replicate the very dynamics it sought to dismantle. In a world where every transaction is an open book, the power dynamics shift towards those who can access, analyze, and leverage this information.
This scenario could lead to a new digital divide, where the savvy few exercise disproportionate influence over the many. It challenges the core principles of decentralization, potentially leading to a web3 that mirrors its predecessor’s centralized, controlled landscape.
In the face of these challenges, advocating for on-chain data ownership emerges as a crucial solution, a beacon of hope in preserving the decentralized ethos of web3. Blockchain data ownership shifts the narrative from passive transparency to active control.
This approach hands users the reins of their digital presence, empowering them to choose what remains visible and what stays private. By giving control back to the users, on-chain data ownership addresses the surveillance issue head-on, ensuring that blockchain remains a tool for empowerment rather than a passive ledger of public information.
Empowering users to control their data and transaction visibility is the key to balancing the blockchain’s necessary transparency and user autonomy. This control can be implemented through various means, such as privacy-enhancing protocols or selective disclosure mechanisms that allow users to share necessary transaction information while keeping other details private. Such capabilities ensure that the blockchain can serve its purpose as a transparent and trustable ledger without compromising the autonomy and discretion of its users.
Vitalik Buterin brings an exciting twist to the tale regarding on-chain transparency. In his writings, Buterin suggests that privacy and regulation go hand in hand in the blockchain world. He challenges the old belief that everything on the blockchain has to be out in the open to keep things above board. There is a path that connects the two worlds. As Buterin states:
“In many cases, privacy and regulatory compliance are perceived as incompatible; this does not necessarily have to be the case if the privacy-enhancing protocol enables its users to prove certain properties regarding the origin of the funds.”
Think of them as digital cloaks that let you show only what you need on the blockchain, like proving where your funds came from without revealing your entire life story. It’s like having a magic wallet that shows your ID when needed but keeps your cash hidden. These tools let us keep our data private while ensuring everything’s legit and above board. It’s a game-changer because we can be part of the blockchain world without feeling like living in a fishbowl.
We are at a turning point for blockchain. Blockchain’s been tremendous at showing everything, but maybe it’s shown a bit too much. Web3 starts to resemble web1 when the internet had just begun turning web2, and every click started to be monitored, noted, and analyzed. Do we want to stay in web3, where information is decentralized and users own their data, or do we want to enter web4, which will once again profit from data appropriation? The answer is clear: we need to empower users by data ownership in web3.
It’s time to grab that remote and start deciding what to show and what to keep under wraps. Users aren’t passengers on the blockchain train; they drive it. Blockchain can be a place where everyone enjoys the view without worrying about who’s peeking in.
Matan Almakis
Matan Almakis is the Head of Project at Data Ownership Protocol (DOP), reshaping web3 by pioneering data ownership. With a track record in driving growth at Lamina, a Layer 1 blockchain, where he contributed to Israel’s first IoT-focused L1 blockchain, Matan now leads DOP in ensuring that web3 users share their data exactly how and with whom they want. Matan believes encrypting sensitive financial data on the chain is a fundamental human right and often speaks about how data ownership is crucial for web3’s mass adoption. Matan leverages blockchain to solve real-world problems with a human-centered approach.
Web3 advisor Coinsilium Group Ltd. has inked a deal with global trade exchange platform LC Lite, steering the ship for its upcoming token launch.
The collaboration aims to integrate distributed ledger technology (DLT) features into LC Lite, to enhance marketplace liquidity and foster stability in cross-border export financing.
Coinsilium’s strategic advisory services come to the forefront as LC Lite, which was recently acquired by Incomlend, aligns itself with the Web3 advisor. Incomlend, a company focused on addressing loopholes in the global trade finance ecosystem, has joined forces with LC Lite.
LC Lite aspires to introduce Web3 principles to Incomlend, with a focus on enhancing marketplace liquidity, providing multi-currency solutions for cross-border export financing, and fostering broader stablecoins adoption.
The collaboration positions LC Lite to seize emerging opportunities within the rapidly expanding digital asset market. This move aligns with broader industry trends, as evidenced by the growing institutional interest in crypto investments, with companies like Coinsilium joining the bandwagon.
Coinsilium’s involvement goes beyond advising on tokenomics for LC Lite’s planned token launch in Q4 2024. The collaboration extends to leveraging Coinsilium’s extensive network, connecting LC Lite with major service providers and cryptocurrency firms. This strategic alliance facilitates LC Lite’s integration into the broader crypto ecosystem.
The compensation model for Coinsilium’s services is noteworthy — payment in various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and project-specific digital tokens. This aligns with the industry’s evolving landscape and showcases a commitment to embracing the very technologies Coinsilium advocates.
Eddy Travia, chief executive officer of Coinsilium, emphasizes the potential impact of LC Lite on the multi-trillion-dollar trade finance market. His statement reflects a measured optimism, avoiding hyperbole, and focuses on the tangible benefits that LC Lite could bring to real-world assets.
Jean-Charles Devin, co-founder and director of LC Lite, underscores the value of Coinsilium’s reputation and expertise in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. The emphasis on collaboration and shared innovation sets the tone for a partnership grounded in mutual growth and success.
Together, Coinsilium and LC Lite aim to establish a robust foundation for sustained growth, empowering businesses with streamlined cross-border payment solutions for real-world assets. The narrative avoids overused phrases, maintaining a clear and informative tone throughout.
Coinsilium is a blockchain and open finance venture operator based in Gibraltar. The Londn-based company, which became the first blockchain entity to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in 2015, has evolved to offer revenue-generating strategic advisory services.
This includes notable ventures such as a fifty-fifty partnership with IOV Labs in Singapore and a collaboration with blockchain technology experts Indorse to establish Nifty Labs, a non-fungible token (NFT) technology development studio in Gibraltar.
The rise of institutional adoption
A survey conducted by Coinbase in November suggests a growing interest in institutional crypto adoption.
Additionally, the approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the Gary Gensler-led U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is noted as a historic decision with major financial institutions like Grayscale, Fidelity and BlackRock entering the Bitcoin investment space.
The Bitcoin ETF move is viewed as a catalyst for legitimizing and stabilizing Bitcoin as an asset class. Recently, Blockworks revealed that the ETFs have amassed over $25 billion in collective assets under management in the space of one month.
The subsequent uptrend in the price of Bitcoin aligns with the wider institutional interest fostering a positive sentiment in the crypto.
As of the time of writing, the total cryptocurrency market cap stands at $2.06 trillion, with Bitcoin commanding a 52.7% market share, per data from CoinGecko.
What is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN)? Discover how this framework is changing real-world infrastructure.
The relatively new concept of a decentralized physical infrastructure network, or DePIN, aims to fundamentally change sectors such as telecommunications, cloud computing, transportation, and energy distribution.
Tech giants have traditionally dominated these sectors, wielding considerable control and maintaining their market share through vast capital investments and sophisticated logistics. DePIN offers a framework where the community builds, maintains, and collectively operates physical infrastructure using blockchain protocols.
So, what exactly is DePIN, and how is it poised to turn infrastructure services on its head? Read on to find out more.
DePIN explained:what is DePIN in crypto?
DePIN is the convergence of blockchain technology with solid infrastructure services. These networks are using cryptocurrency to help grow important services, leveraging the growing popularity of online connections to start a new type of dapps that combines digital and real-world services.
The crypto analytics platform Messari first introduced the term DePIN in November 2022, following a public poll on X to find a name for web3’s physical framework.
DePIN won more than 31% of the vote, outperforming other proposed names like “proof of physical work (PoPw)” and “token-incentivized physical networks (TIPIN).”
Web3 physical infrastructure needs a name!
Often referred to as Proof of Physical Work (PoPw), Token Incentivized Physical Networks (TIPIN), EdgeFi, or Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), crypto has yet to reach a consensus.
As Messari highlights, DePIN represents a standout trend for peer-to-peer infrastructure. In 2023, the sector grew to more than 650 projects with a combined market cap north of $20 billion.
Additionally, the Messari report indicated that the DePIN industry was the most resilient crypto sub-sector in 2023, experiencing price drops of between 20-60% compared to the 70-90% registered in the broader crypto market.
Messari’s analysis of decentralized physical infrastructure networks revealed two primary DePIN categories based on the nature of their contributions.
The first type, physical resource networks (PRNs), are geographically anchored entities that supply location-specific resources—from connectivity to mobility—from a consortium of independent providers. Such resources are inherently unique, tied to the locale, and non-transferable.
The second type, known as digital resource networks (DRNs), involves contributors who offer transferable digital resources like computational power, bandwidth, or storage. These resources transcend geographical restrictions, broadening the scope and fluidity of digital asset provisioning.
Additionally, real-world applications of DePIN technology span across four main categories, each offering unique solutions to diverse challenges:
Cloud and storage networks: This category encompasses services like file storage, relational databases, content delivery networks (CDNs), and virtual private networks (VPNs). Projects like Filecoin (FIL) exemplify decentralized cloud networks, enabling individuals to monetize their spare computer storage space. By participating in Filecoin, users contribute to a digital storage rental service where available space is tracked on a blockchain, earning cryptocurrency rewards in return.
Wireless networks: With a focus on technologies like 5G and low-power wide-area networks (LoRaWAN), this category is particularly relevant to the Internet of Things (IoT). Initiatives such as Helium empower individuals to establish hotspots in their homes, extending coverage and supporting IoT devices. Participants earn cryptocurrency by contributing to the Helium network.
Sensor networks: This category involves devices equipped with sensors to collect real-time data from the environment, including geographical information systems (GIS). One example is Hivemapper, a platform involving people mapping their communities. It encourages individuals to share local knowledge and real-time data captured through their dashcams. In exchange for their contributions, users are rewarded with virtual currency.
Energy networks: This category aims to improve power grid reliability and efficiency by using various renewable energy sources. Arkreen is one such platform that connects green energy providers, allowing them to share data from their renewable resources. By bringing these providers together, Arkreen encourages the integration of sustainable energy into the wider energy infrastructure.
How do DePINs work?
DePINs function through the decentralized blockchain technology framework, effectively distributing control and responsibility across a network rather than allowing it to pool within a singular entity.
At the heart of the DePIN sector lies a cryptocurrency-based economy that rewards participants for contributing resources such as computing power, internet connectivity, or storage capabilities.
When the concept started, most of these DePIN crypto rewards did not hold tangible value, akin to early speculative investments. Participants essentially functioned as “risk miners”, betting on the potential of nascent DePIN projects and eyeing rewards in the form of future token value hikes and accumulation.
Every DePIN application is built upon four fundamental pillars:
Physical network infrastructure includes tangible assets needed for network functions, like servers and transportation systems.
Off-chain computing systems bridge real-world contributions to blockchain incentives and provide smart contract data.
Blockchain framework is a transparent and immutable ledger that employs smart contracts to manage network transactions.
Token rewards system encourages infrastructure contributions that feed the early growth of the network until it matures into a self-sustaining ecosystem through transaction fees.
The DePIN flywheel
DePIN projects tend to harness the potential of their native crypto tokens to drive a self-reinforcing cycle known as a flywheel effect. As user engagement rises, the demand for DePIN crypto tokens naturally grows, increasing their market value.
DePIN flywheel | Source: iotex.io
This surge in value then incentivizes developers and contributors to double down on their efforts to improve the network as the rewards for their work become more lucrative.
The expansion of the network then piques the interest of investors, drawing additional capital and support, which, in turn, propels network growth.
Open-source projects and those sharing data openly serve as fertile ground for building dapps on top of this data layer, thus enhancing the ecosystem’s value. This, in turn, attracts a broader base of users and contributors, further spinning the flywheel and continuing this cycle of growth and innovation.
Advantages of DePIN technology
Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) offer several advantages that could change the way we approach scalability and community empowerment:
Scalability: DePINs leverage crowdsourced infrastructure, enabling faster and more cost-effective expansion compared to traditional frameworks. This horizontal scalability allows them to adapt to changes in demand without requiring significant resource increases, maintaining efficiency without major reorganization.
Community empowerment: Unlike centralized platforms controlled by a select few, DePINs distribute hardware ownership among users, fostering collaboration and community involvement. This democratized approach promotes equal access and participation, empowering users at every level.
Transparent governance: DePINs champion transparent governance, replacing opaque practices with open and democratic decision-making processes. This ensures equal access for all users and encourages community-driven initiatives.
Accessible participation: By eliminating centralized gatekeepers, DePINs prioritize open access and censorship resistance. This inclusive model promotes accessible participation for all users, regardless of background or location.
Cost efficiency: DePINs aim to lower costs by leveraging a diverse network of service providers who can competitively offer their services. This competitive environment encourages fair pricing and reduces the inflated costs often associated with centralized services.
Incentivization: Within the DePIN framework, incentivization structures drive participation and growth by offering service providers opportunities for passive or active income. These incentives further boost network engagement and expansion.
DePIN challenges
As DePIN navigates its early stages within the blockchain realm, it encounters several hurdles that may impede its progress:
Limited interest and adoption: One of the primary challenges stems from the novelty of DePIN, resulting in limited interest from both the blockchain community and infrastructure owners. Without a critical mass of participants, the ecosystem’s growth and success are at stake.
Complexity and education: The inherent complexity of DePIN technology poses a barrier to entry, requiring extensive education to engage potential adopters effectively. Overcoming this hurdle involves simplifying the technology and providing comprehensive educational resources.
Financial requirements: Maintaining private networks comes with substantial operational costs, often without external funding. This financial burden makes it challenging to attract prospective network hosts and sustain network operations in the absence of sufficient resources.
Provider profitability: Profitability serves as a key motivator for network providers. DePIN platforms must strike a delicate balance between compensations and costs to ensure provider profitability. However, achieving this balance proves difficult amid low engagement rates from both users and providers.
Are DePINs paving the way for web3’s future?
Some experts in the blockchain and crypto community see DePIN advancements as a significant step forward in shaping the future of web3 by addressing the limitations of centralized systems. By distributing tasks across multiple components, DePINs aim to prevent bottlenecks and create a more resilient network. However, widespread adoption is crucial for this concept to drive the evolution of digital interaction and infrastructure.
The potential benefits of DePINs could lead to greater accessibility in web3, especially in areas where traditional centralized networks are lacking. By bridging this gap, DePINs could enable advanced technology to reach a broader audience, promoting access to decentralized solutions worldwide.
Examining practical applications, initiatives like Render (RNDR) showcase the capabilities of DePIN projects. Analysts suggest that Render could disrupt the 3D graphics market by offering high-quality rendering capabilities at a lower cost compared to traditional centralized competitors.
Industry experts anticipate a grassroots movement toward increased crypto engagement as more innovative projects emerge. These projects empower communities to collaborate in building and maintaining infrastructure, potentially reducing costs through collective efforts. This approach aims to challenge monopolistic practices, often leading to inflated pricing due to market control. Successful ventures in this direction could highlight the benefits of decentralized approaches in democratizing technology and processes.
KuCoin Ventures has backed blockchain game development firm Crystal Fun in an effort to further decentralize gaming platforms.
In a press release on Feb. 20, KuCoin‘s investment arm, KuCoin Ventures, said the “strategic investment” underscores its confidence in the potential of “web3 gaming to reshape the entertainment landscape.” In total, Crystal Fun secured $5 million in seed funding, with contributions from Actoz Soft, Waterdrip Capital, ælf Blockchain, and other investors.
Crystal Fun has developed four blockchain games to date: Endless War, STARFALL2312, Survivor, and OUTER, the latter of which recently completed its initial testing phase. While the specific allocation of the funds remains unclear, it’s understood that the funding will support the company’s efforts to launch games on its proprietary gaming platform throughout the year.
“This investment aligns with our commitment to fostering innovation in the blockchain space and we are excited to be part of the next evolution in gaming.”
Lou Yu, head of KuCoin Ventures
For KuCoin, this appears to be the second deal in February, as earlier this month the venture branch announced another “strategic investment” in Ta-da, a platform that is gathering and verifying data to train artificial intelligence. However, financial details regarding Ta-da’s funding were not disclosed.
Farcaster aims to shake up centralized social media by empowering users with data ownership while giving them the familiar web2 feel. Will it transform the scene or fade after the initial excitement?
Farcaster is a crypto project that deviates from the typical genre of web3 applications. While blockchain has been diving head-first into the finance scene, its application in other areas has been rather slow.
The social media sector is one of these areas where the dominance of web2 apps has not allowed web3 applications to shine.
Platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit have overshadowed the prominence of their emerging web3 counterparts such as Friend.tech, Diamond App, Lenster, Mastodon, and Chingari. These web3 social platforms have not gotten the traction they needed to go mainstream.
However, Farcaster appears to be sticking its neck out, with its increased social mentions bolstered by a recent update. The protocol aims to transform the way web3 users communicate online by enabling the creation of decentralized social networks, where users and developers have full ownership and access to their data and identity.
Farcaster leverages Optimism, a layer-2 scaling solution built atop the Ethereum network. It also adopts web2 techniques to facilitate easy onboarding and better user experience. This allows it to incorporate the best practices of web2 and web3 for a balanced approach.
What is Farcaster?
Introduced in 2020 by Varun Srinivasan and Dan Romero, both former employees at Coinbase, Farcaster boasts a network of decentralized social apps working on its protocol. This lets anyone create and use social apps that are interoperable and resistant to censorship, according to its website. The project secured $30 million in a funding round in July 2022.
Farcaster cast, reaction, link volume | Source: Dune
Farcaster is one of the fastest-growing crypto projects in 2024, with over 314,000 users and 89,548 average daily casts, per data from Farcaster Network. Its success has been bolstered by positive feedback and recognition from the crypto community, with adoption from industry leaders such as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
“Bad gamefi is using financial speculation as a substitute for fun. Blockchain games need to be fun as games” – approx quote I’ve said many times
I believe a similar thing for crypto social.
Registering a prediction: farcaster and lens will NOT be deserted in 4 months, or 1 yr.
Farcaster is not a single social media platform. It represents a collection of decentralized applications for various use cases. Farcaster users own their accounts and relationships, with the protocol granting them the opportunity to move between different apps without losing data or identity. In addition, developers can build on Farcaster using any programming language, per the Farcaster documentation.
Here are some of the live apps on Farcaster:
Warpcast
Warpcast is a microblogging platform serving as the major Farcaster client. The platform enables users to share brief text messages, known as “casts,” and engage with others. The protocol shares a striking semblance with X, giving users the web2 feel they are familiar with while leveraging web3 benefits.
Farcaster’s Warpcast also employs a drastic but effective measure to eliminate bot activity, a feat Elon Musk has struggled to attain on X. The protocol charges $5 as a sign-up fee to this effect.
There are additional charges for posting casts on the protocol. Users would have to purchase storage units, which would give them a limited number of interactions on Warpcast. Each storage unit, going for $5, has a validity of one year and allows 5,000 casts, 2,500 links, and 2,500 reactions.
Warpcast goes beyond basic messaging. Regarding its web3 features, the protocol offers additional functionalities like non-fungible token (NFT) minting and token claiming. Warpcast also features a feed for NFTs, allowing its users to embed collectibles for minting.
In addition, Warpcast supports channels. These channels gather feeds of casts around a particular topic on the platform. For instance, casts on Ethereum could be pooled into the Ethereum channel. The feature was incorporated into the protocol last June, and has since seen the creation of multiple channels around several topics.
Introducing Farcaster channels
– Channels are feeds of casts organized around a topic
Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero also announced the launch of Warpcast group chats on Jan. 24, with a maximum of 100 members for each group. Users can create group chats through the Messages section, per Romero’s post.
Warpcast recently introduced a new feature called “Frames,” allowing users to embed interactive apps within their casts and offering features like gaming, polling, and tipping.
Frame
Frame is intricately linked to the Warpcast client, allowing users to convert any cast into an interactive app called a “frame.” These frames can have diverse functionalities, like facilitating games, quizzes, and other interactive elements. The protocol was launched on Jan. 26 and accounted for the increased publicity Farcaster recently enjoyed.
Farcaster has since surged in user activity, attracting about 52,000 weekly users, with 51,000 connected Ethereum addresses, according to data from Farcaster Network. This figure rose from 41,000 between Feb. 6 and 8. The platform also boasts around 2.9 million messages, with a user growth rate of 12%.
Farcaster data | Source: Farcaster Network
Moreover, the Frame platform serves as the driving force behind the “Frames” feature on Warpcast. Users can access frames while scrolling through their feeds on Warpcast. This allows them to interact with the app without leaving their feed.
The protocol has a marketplace where users can explore and use frames crafted by other developers or even sell their own frames to earn tokens. A recent surge in trading saw some Frame NFTs sell for thousands of dollars on Farmarket, with the single-highest sale coming in at $7,000.
These frames are in the form of Farcaster IDs (FIDs), represented in digits. With its functionality, Frame adds a layer of dynamic interactivity and functionality to the Farcaster network.
Currently, Frame, which boasts the Farcaster EdDSA authorization system, only supports the Ethereum network and layer-2 protocols built atop the second-largest blockchain. Romero recently disclosed that on-chain functionality would extend to the Solana blockchain starting next week. Subsequently, Frame would incorporate Solana account verification.
Farcaster is easily my favourite app in crypto right now
and it’s now coming to Solana 😱
colossal
hint: with Farcaster Frames (embeddable actions into posts) — Solana is the **only** way to go from frames -> onchain without a backend
Farcaster challenges the dominance of centralized platforms in web2 social media. These platforms are notorious for collecting and selling data and censoring content. Farcaster, like most SocialFi protocols, seeks to offer an alternative.
Romero revealed that Farcaster has reached over 5,000 on-chain recoveries with the introduction of a solution to a common problem: people forgetting passwords. Drawing from his experience at Coinbase, where he noticed users often struggle with password issues, he wants Farcaster to be self-custodial, Romero said in an X post.
Improving crypto UX with onchain password reset
We just crossed 5K onchain recoveries for Farcaster.
One thing that I learned at Coinbase was that mainstream users forget passwords.
But we want Farcaster to be self-custodial. So we’ve implemented two layers to help users keep… pic.twitter.com/aIUAKR0PvU
Farcaster employs two protective layers to achieve this. At sign-up, it generates a new mnemonic linked to a Passkey stored on the user’s device, eliminating the need for writing down a seed phrase.
If the Passkey is lost, Farcaster’s protocol helps transfer the account to a new address. This address is, by default, set to Warpcast. However, users with more advanced knowledge have the opportunity to change it to an address they have personal control over.
While Farcaster is growing fast, it’s too early to call it a game-changer. Similar projects surged but then fizzled out, like Friend.tech last August. This shows the need for ongoing engagement beyond the initial excitement. Platforms like Bluesky and Threads often lose steam once the hype dies down. Farcaster and others must keep innovating and engaging users genuinely to stay relevant. Its journey, like others, depends on how well it can adapt and truly connect with users over time.
Hedera, a leading Proof of Stake (POS) blockchain platform, has entered into a five-year partnership with the Saudi Ministry of Investment (MISA) to help companies develop web3 technologies in the region.
The collaboration, valued at $250 million, was announced during the Saudi-Swiss Roundtable Meeting, marking a milestone in KSA’s efforts to enhance its investment landscape. This initiative will introduce advanced solutions across various sectors, including AI, blockchain, and other deep technologies.
The Hashgraph Association has also launched the DeepTech Venture Studio, dedicated to empowering technological advancements for Saudi companies, aligning with the kingdom’s vision to become a global hub for innovation.
Following the announcement, Hedera’s native token, HBAR, witnessed a 5% surge in price, reflecting the market’s positive reception to this significant collaboration. HBAR’s trading volume has soared by nearly 400% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
Since last year, Saudi Arabia has invested in web3 and blockchain projects to support the region’s global vision. In November, the Kingdom invested $50 million in Animoca Brands to support web3 gaming and metaverse projects.
The country’s central bank has also been exploring blockchain use cases for the past two years.
In 2023, web3 saw a 124% surge in Unique Active Wallets, with Near, Klaytn, and Arbitrum leading growth, while others declined.
In a recent report by blockchain analytics platform DappRadar on January 11, 2024, the web3 landscape witnessed substantial growth, with a 124% increase in Unique Active Wallets (UAW) engaging with decentralized applications (DApps) throughout 2023.
The data spotlighted Near, Klaytn, and Arbitrum as the frontrunners in growth, while Harmony, Solana, and Hive experienced declines in user engagement.
On average, 4.2 million UAW interacted daily with web3 apps, doubling the previous year’s figures. Nonfungible token (NFT) products dominated growth, boasting a 166% increase, followed by defi with a 112% surge. Social media apps, buoyed by leading protocols like Friend.tech, Lens Protocol, and Galxe, reported a 29% gain.
Near, Klaytn, and Arbitrum emerged as the standout performers, exhibiting growth rates of 1,902%, 1,099%, and 624%, respectively. Key DApps on these networks, such as KAI-CHING, SuperWalk, and Uniswap V3, contributed significantly to their success.
Conversely, Harmony, Solana, and Hive faced setbacks, experiencing declines of 96%, 76%, and 68%, respectively. Harmony’s struggles were linked to a bridge exploit in June 2022, while Solana grappled with challenges tied to its association with FTX.
The report acknowledged Solana’s impressive recovery in the latter part of 2023. Hive’s loss of users was speculated to stem from missing financial targets and reporting significant losses.
Overall, the report underscores the vibrancy of blockchain networks, citing instances like Stars Arena driving 10,000 UAW to the Arbitrum network in October and Ethereum collecting over $54.3 million in fees in a single week in November.
This is an interpretation of VESA’s appearance on the Human Generated podcast by Omid Honari. The two met during a day of keynote speeches at the Mohammed Bin Rashid library, where as it turns out, both of their topics touched on not only art and its implications, but also spirituality. It was no wonder that when VESA and Omid sat down to record this podcast, the deeper topics were soon elaborated on.
Why read further ( or return)? Breakdown, links and illustrations:
The conversation took place in late May when Dubai was plunging into the hot temperatures. Vesa told that as a 44-year-old, the elapsing winter was the first where he had enjoyed consistent warm weather, being natively from Finland and having lived in the UK for several years. ‘There’s a lot of cold trauma still to be purged’, he said. Omid relayed a piece of advice he heard as a boy that coping with cold is much easier than coping with heat, since you always have the option of adding a layer of clothing, but there is only so much you can remove. This advice also speaks to how personal our relationship with the weather and our immediate surroundings is. We rationalize our emotions towards it via stories and these pieces of advice that we tell each other.
To delve right into the mouth of the beast, Omid poses an interesting proposition of the constellation of new technologies, NFTs, metaverse and the whole Web3 being at odds with the creative arts as we know it. ‘Most respectfully, I disagree with that, VESA starts. VESA explains that one of the concepts that governs how he views art, and life itself, is Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory. This theory helps to see yourself, your contribution, philosophies, and beliefs as functional parts of the elaborate whole. This way of approaching art is not taught in colleges and universities, where most art history begins or at least emphasises the post-modern period without studying the roots of why humans began creating art in the first place, namely cave painting and body painting. With a fractionalized outlook on art, new technologies can feel like a jarring, disjointed note in the melody of human creativity, whereas from the Integral point of view, these are tools that if utilized to their utmost potential, will remove the old gatekeeping systems for more creativity to blossom in society. ‘My LUXOR- inspired art gallery is a great example of this. It uses new technologies, it breaks barriers of entry and in substance, it studies the origins of art, VESA says. ‘It’ll take a little bit of time, and whether the traditional art institutions will adopt this remains to be seen, since their interest is so much in identity politics, but for people, this means total freedom’, he explains.
Omid agrees that the limitation of the current arts education seems to be that it is taught from the perspective of the current ideological climate, and it must go along the epoch of our time and what that does is hides the vastness of possibility that is currently available. Intrigued by VESA’s mention of primordial art, Omid asks next how does an artist with a capital A bridge together the gap of something so corporal, so essential as body paint with something as cerebral and intangible as the digital realm. ‘When I saw my first model with full body paint in my studio, I knew that this was it, it was like a superhero had appeared in front of me’, VESA says. ‘But when it comes to embarking on the digital journey, I had no other choice. My method dictated that my originals were digital ever since 2008, and this was a major issue for the art institutions before the advent of NFTs. They would ask for an oil original that I didn’t have’.
“Escapist” was the first bopypainting and photography based collage work VESA made in 2008.
‘The technology that facilitates Bitcoin is the turning point in digital scarcity and digital ownership, because it facilitates digital assets, like artworks, that are as rare as the physical Mona Lisa’. Omid then points out that isn’t one of the most valuable digital artworks verified on the blockchain a picture of a monkey, homing in on his original point of new technologies diluting actual artistic endeavour. ‘There’s some genius marketing behind that project, and it gains its value also through being an access pass. What it’s not is art’, VESA explains. ‘How is the casual consumer going to gain an education about the difference between these two categories?’, Omid asks. VESA explains that this is a deeper issue than what meets the eye, how in the words of the cultural critic Camille Paglia we are on the brink of another cultural Renaissance, should we take the steps to get there, but our institutions are not paving the way for our collective consciousness to get there. He also re-iterates the difference between the collectible digital art and the digitized fine art, where the only common factor is the underlying technology. Having said that, VESA expresses how positive it is that the gatekeeping of the old system is coming down due to technological advancements. His native country Finland is a great example of this, where a lot of government grants are given only to art that perpetuates a certain narrative. This suffocates actual creativity and resembles more a high-school student, who studies what he knows the teacher cares the most about, not what is relevant.
The Camille Paglia lecture “Art belongs to everyone” has been one of the themes that have inspired this direction of thought.
The Origins
As VESA has mentioned Finland, and the general climate of art there, Omid is interested to know how art and VESA came to be. ‘What was the origin story?’, he asks. ‘It’s always been about connection, and the two points in time that come to mind are my connection to music, and especially African drums that lit something up inside me, and my connection to something spiritual that I experienced, when I very nearly drowned as a six-year-old.’, VESA says. ‘At its best, it doesn’t even feel like I am the one who is doing it. And skill comes into play so that it takes a form that others might enjoy as well, but it’s always about that connection that drives everything I do creatively’.
The Knight Rider theme was the first song to get VESA to play to be a rock star as his toy plastic axe as the guitar, sliding on his knees across the room as a 5 year old.
‘So where is the divine for you, then?’ Omid asks. ‘One of the books that talks about this is called Flower of Life, and it explains that this pattern at the very core of everything that comes into being is all coming through the One, but the multitude of expressions that the One takes, is our experience of the world’,
The ancient secret of the flower of life was a significant book to read while travelling shooting a documentary in Egypt and Mexico in 2012.
‘In terms of humans, I see the brain much more a receiver than a generator’, VESA says as he hints towards his understanding of the divine. ‘My traumatic experience of nearly drowning was so pivotal to my creative growth because it brought me violently close to that origin point, the point of ultimate connection to God. Maybe I remembered something, maybe I have been here before – it is a possibility’, VESA expands. Omid illustrates our longing for our origins beautifully through a famous opening to a poem by Rumi, which describes the haunting sound of the reed pipe, longing to return to the whole it was cut from. Perhaps we are like the reed pipe, the divine breath moving through us, but always hankering to get back into unity with our origin.
The Pink Floyd “Back catalogue” poster on VESA’s wall as a teenager likely had a significant impact on his life choices later on.
Different bodies
Omid draws a parallel between VESA’s method of bodypainting and seeing inanimate objects as bodies, such as the body of a car that Omid had seen at an event recently. Does VESA see his Art Cars and other painted objects as a continuation of his bodypainting methodology? ‘In some sense, it is still human centric, because these different bodies are still painted for humans to admire’, VESA starts.
The Dr Marwan Tesla covered in art in Dubai also has a digital douible made by Zoan.
‘I also want to be incredibly respectful towards Islam, and not to portray a human as an idol, so I have a lot to study on how to bring to the front my goal of showcasing the divine spark in the human form, how He made us so magnificently’, VESA says. ‘In that spirit of further conversation and discussion, we could go on for so much longer, but I want to invite you to the possibility of having a second episode with you, ‘Inshallah’, VESA says.
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The COVID-19 pandemic gave a 3-4x boost to digital transformations and adoptions worldwide. During its peak in 2020, 58% of global consumer interactions happened digitally.
Once users, consumers, and employees experienced the upsides of digital interactions—more flexibility or freedom, lower commutation time, etc.—they mostly didn’t want to go back. Online channels became the “new normal” for both personal and professional communications.
But while there’s good reason for tech optimists to celebrate this shift, it’s vital to identify and mitigate the risks coming along. For example, centralized real-time communication (RTC) platforms like Skype, Zoom, Slack, etc., pose severe data-mining and privacy violation threats to users.
Solving these problems will enable users to fully leverage digital communications’s power. Web3 has unlocked new opportunities to this end. Decentralized real-time communication (dRTC) innovations are ongoing and will put users in control of digital interactions and data.
Centralized RTC networks are rivalrous private goods
Most existing RTC platforms are “private goods” with one primary goal: profit maximization. They usually have a freemium model where users can onboard and use the product with zero or minimal costs. But as the saying goes, if you’re not paying for it, you are the product.
Web2 communication giants have been infamously guilty of mining user data and monetizing them via third-party ads and other channels. Zoom, for instance, was caught shipping users’ personal information to Meta from the moment they logged on.
The data set included everything from contact information to the user’s device model, unique advertising ID—everything. More concerningly, the packets are transport encrypted and not content encrypted. This means the encryption breaks at the server end, allowing Zoom to see and read users’ data.
Notably, Zoom supplied the said information even for users who didn’t have a Facebook account. While it seems weird, this reveals how legacy digital communications and advertising are totally company-centric rather than user-led. “Help us provide the best experience” is a farce.
“The unique advertising identifier allows companies to target the user with advertisements,” as the lawsuit against Zoom stated. It’s all about the platform or service provider(s) making the most money out of the user’s data with little care for ethics or fairness. Whereas users don’t have much control over the fuel of digital economies—i.e., data—despite being its primary source.
Legacy RTC systems are skewed and broken from every angle. Besides unethical practices, they are prone to external hacks and breaches due to excessive centralization and single points of failure. The rise in high-profile “Zoombombing” cases provides concerning evidence.
Moreover, in 2019, Slack had to reset user passwords four years after a security breach in March 2015. This shows how the actual lifecycle of data breaches can be longer than the global 200-day average IBM highlighted in its “Cost of a Data Breach”report in 2023.
Last but not least, centralized RTC networks face significant performance bottlenecks when there are sudden spikes in user activity. Particularly for users with low bandwidth and connection speeds, legacy A/V communications can be frustratingly choppy.
‘Privacy is for those who’re hiding something’
Count this among the most notorious and misleading claims of the century. It’s a ploy for corporations to gaslight users into giving up control over their digital lives and data. And trading privacy for convenience was the best users could do so far, for the lack of alternative tools.
Web3, however, is here to change things for good. Privacy is a foundational principle for this ecosystem, building on Joseph Kupfer’s idea that it’s indispensable for autonomy and freedom. Access to private and secure communication channels lets users choose which thoughts, feelings, or information they want to share and with whom.
Rather than a haven for criminals and wrongdoers, privacy is a way to retain basic human dignity and safety. Because, as Edward Snowden rightly said, knowing too much about us gives Big Tech firms the power ‘to create permanent records of private lives.’ It’s like we’re living our lives in someone’s database.
These records can be used to influence users’ decisions, behaviors, and choices—literally everything about who they are. And with legacy giants betraying totalitarian tendencies via incidents involving Cambridge Analytica to Pegasus, there’s good reason to associate platforms like Zoom with the NSA.
Zoom updates its Terms of Service to become the NSA 2.0:
I’m in disbelief at this update because of how far-sweeping it is, yet here we are. Direct quotes from section 10.2
Tim Berners-Lee envisioned the World Wide Web as a decentralized realm where everyone can access ‘the best information at any time.’ We have come a long way from that point. The web is no longer only about consuming/accessing information but also about creating, storing, and sharing data. Yet, this is also the journey of users losing control in the ways discussed above.
It’s clear that centralization and private profit-maximization motives have been the main culprits in this story. Legacy RTC platforms and service providers don’t have the incentives to prioritize end-user privacy and focus only on pumping their bags. They are rent extractive by nature, and mere ethical arguments won’t change a thing.
Decentralized real-time communication (dRTC) networks, however, can set the record straight and align incentives for companies and end-users. Moving beyond simple peer-to-peer frameworks popular in the very early days of web3’s evolution, they unlock secure wallet-to-wallet communications. This enhances anonymity by giving users an option besides the typical IP/email address-based communications.
Innovative dRTC frameworks also use Insertable Streams and Sframes for robust end-to-end encryptions. This ensures better security against surveillance and censorship. It’s challenging for any unwarranted third party to intrude into these channels, which only verified participants can access.
On the other hand, breaking down siloed architectures and using globally distributed data points (nodes) gives dRTC a significant performance boost. Even users with weak internet connections can access high-quality A/V communications in this manner, democratizing access in unforeseen ways.
Most importantly, the wallet-based dRTC infrastructure is absolutely user-centric, as individuals remain in complete control of their data at all times. The community orientation of web3-native dRTC protocols ensures that rules are implemented or modified through consensus, not at the whims and fancy of any centralized entity. Unlike legacy RTC models, dRTC networks foster sovereign and circular economies where value ultimately returns to the community that produces it.
Thus, dRTC is the new frontier for digital communications, and its implications stretch beyond secure data and information sharing. It’s a way to provide genuine mechanisms for free speech and self-expression. Last but not least, dRTC will enable the socio-economic dApp paradigm. It’ll thus go a long way in making communities worldwide more robust, resilient, and self-sufficient, fostering inclusion and progress across the board.
Susmit Lavania
Susmit Lavania is the co-founder and CTO of Huddle01. Before Huddle01, Susmit was co-founder and CEO of OC2, India’s first decentralized exchange, which was acquired by CoinDCX in 2019. With CEO Ayush Ranjan, Huddle01 was founded in 2020 to make real-time communication open, secure, and borderless by leveraging blockchain and crypto-economics. Today, Huddle01’s video meeting platform has clocked in over one million minutes of meetings. The team is currently building the first decentralized real-time communication (RTC) network, emphasizing user-powered nodes, safeguarding privacy and security, and enabling high-quality, scalable interactions.
Wemade Co., the South Korean video game developer, announced the launch of a $100 million web3 fund in collaboration with Singapore-based investment firm Whampoa Digital.
Fostering web3 adoption
In a collaborative effort, the two companies have formed the Wemade Web3 Fund, dedicated to investing in blockchain gaming projects, particularly focusing on the Middle East region. The fund aims to expedite the adoption of blockchain technology, as stated in the announcement.
Additionally, Wemade is actively constructing the Wemix Play Center, a commercial space centered around blockchain gaming, situated in Dubai’s DIFC Innovation Hub.
As part of the initiative, blockchain gaming entities receiving grants from the fund are anticipated to establish office spaces within the Wemix Play Center. This strategic move aims to foster cross-collaboration and mentorship among the supported companies, according to the announcement.
Whampoa Group Senior Partner Aureole Foong stated in a released statement that the partnership will enable them to lead the way into uncharted territories within the digital asset industry, extending beyond their current established sectors. Additionally, it aims to encourage innovation in the Middle East, recognized as one of the fastest-growing regions in the Web3 space.
Wemade CEO Henry Chang remarked in a statement that, through their collaboration with Whampoa Digital, a prominent investment firm in Singapore, they aim to exchange valuable insights concerning blockchain technology. He highlighted that both parties are contributing their distinctive expertise to enrich the partnership.
Back in March, Wemade entered into a partnership with Space and Time, a decentralized hybrid transactional database and analytic data warehouse.
The collaboration aimed to enhance and broaden the infrastructure for blockchain gaming. Space and Time’s platform integrates on-chain and off-chain data within a single trustless environment, optimizing on-chain gaming experiences. Wemade leveraged Space and Time’s suite of developer tools to empower gamers with increased ownership and control over their digital assets.
Wemade and web3
Last year, Wemade, took legal action by filing injunctions against four major local cryptocurrency exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit, to challenge the delisting of its WEMIX cryptocurrency from those platforms.
The decision to file the injunctions followed the exchanges’ announcements of WEMIX’s impending delisting, citing reasons such as inaccuracies in circulating supply figures.
Wemade contended that the exchanges’ decisions were based on vague reasoning, leading to damage for investors. Despite Wemade’s efforts, the Seoul Central District Court dismissed the injunction, allowing the exchanges to proceed with the delisting of WEMIX.
In November 2022, Major South Korean exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit, delisted Wemade’s WEMIX token, alleging that there was a distribution of more tokens than previously stated.
Wemade’s injunction against the delisting was dismissed by the Seoul Central District Court. WEMIX went on to lose about 60% of its value in 24 hours and over 90% in 30 days. This legal dispute highlights challenges in the cryptocurrency industry, specifically related to listing and delisting on major platforms.
Earlier this year, The South Korean government banned the domestic distribution of blockchain-based play-to-earn (P2E) games, including non-fungible token (NFT) games, due to concerns over speculation (i.e., gambling). The ban was imposed by the South Korean authorities, who cited a 15-year-old incident where a game rewarded players with gift certificates that led to cash centers outside arcades, where players would turn in their certificates to grab cash.
The ban has caused a significant setback to the gaming industry, with South Korean P2E game makers releasing blockchain-based games abroad, hoping that the local ban will be lifted. The ban also requires Apple and Google to remove P2E games from their respective app stores.
Since early 2021, the South Korean government has been opposing blockchain gaming within its borders.
According to Decrypt, Wemade confirmed that it won’t release blockchain-powered adaptations of its existing games in Korea.
Still, the chairman of Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee has shown a welcoming attitude toward blockchain-based games if they do not contain speculative elements. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol had promised to abolish the P2E ban in his election campaign, and Wemade CEO expects South Korea to lift the ban on P2E in 2024.
Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial.
Consumer retail spending is rising, with shoppers spending almost $10 billion in online Black Friday sales this year. Clearly, demand for great products has not waned despite inflation, and so competition for consumer attention is on the rise. There is an unexpected beneficiary to this tug-of-war between brands for consumer dollars—web3. In 2024, we’re likely to see growing numbers of brands and companies leveraging web3 to strengthen the bond between their brand and customers.
The latest developments in web3 give consumer brands a powerful tool to enhance their membership and loyalty programs. In return for their loyalty, customers can now own their interaction with brands as an NFT, creating powerful incentives for customers to engage with brands they value.
When a company creates a brand incentive program and customers fulfill elements of it—like reaching a spend threshold or interacting on social media—the customers can now be granted ownership of the rewards they earned thanks to web3 technology. Using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) recorded on a public blockchain, points, and status tiers become ownable assets, making them much more compelling as incentive mechanisms.
Customer rewards can be owned and transferred just like any other real-world asset. Ownership of the rewards confers a wide range of potential benefits (discounts, experiences, and so forth) to the owner. This new generation of loyalty mechanism is similar to the dog-eared punch card hiding in your wallet—buy nine coffees, get the tenth one free—but these digital asset NFTs are harder to lose, easier to value, and much easier to transfer.
Most existing loyalty program rewards are non-transferable or challenging to value and sell. But what if a customer could give their top-tier airline status to a friend, rent it out, or even sell it outright on the open market? Enabling ownership and transferability of a consumer’s interaction with a business brings completely new dynamics. Now, the consumer has more incentive to earn those rewards, which benefits both the consumer and the brand.
Brands can easily enable this use case via NFTs that live on public blockchains, which makes it easy to transfer digital assets wallet-to-wallet or through marketplaces. Customers can bring their own web3 wallet, or brands can provide one integrated with the membership app or account. Furthermore, brands need not cede all control by enabling this ownership model. Using smart contract technology to power these NFTs, brands can choose the level of exclusivity or transferability of these assets, retain control over their redemption value as earned fees, and track when these assets change hands. Brands can also choose to hide the use of NFTs or blockchain completely, allowing for a familiar but more powerful experience powered by web3 “under the hood.” Web3 provides a best-of-both-worlds scenario, enabling the aspects of ownership that increase consumer incentives while allowing brands to curate the experience and collect additional data.
Brands that don’t sell directly to their customers can face additional challenges when engaging with and understanding their buyers. With web3 technology, though, a company—let’s say an apparel company—can close the loop to gain insights into who is buying their products. Perhaps it involves the customer downloading an app or scanning a QR code through their web3 wallet; the company can then incentivize buyers to provide proof of purchase to earn an NFT and gain additional rewards. Companies can better reach their customers and, by delivering satisfying web3-based incentives, encourage consumers to sign up for a membership account with an embedded web3 wallet.
Alternatively, if a consumer already has their own wallet, then web3 tech offers the ability for brands to market to new, qualified customers. Since wallet contents are publicly visible (though pseudonymous), a big box home improvement store is able to identify wallets that contain a loyalty reward from a major competitor. The big box store could then target the wallet owners with promotional offers and incentivize the customers to shop with them instead.
As a bonus, web3 technology can also facilitate brand partnerships by programming the interactions between web3-powered loyalty programs. A coffee business could partner with a brand—say, an apparel business—with similar customer demographics. Using a smart contract to govern the interaction, a customer of the coffee chain could easily exchange their rewards for discounts at the apparel chain. The two brands can jointly engage with customers, doubling the benefits for consumers; this also expands the audiences for the companies and helps them to get a fuller understanding of the profiles and interests of their customers. With the advent of new cross-chain protocols that provide easy interoperability, the two brands could even use different blockchains.
Web3-powered membership and loyalty programs enable consumers to take ownership of their investment of time and money, creating additional incentives for them to engage. Meanwhile, forward-thinking companies can connect with their customers in creative new ways, easily form new partnerships, and ultimately increase profits via a customer base that is literally invested in the brand. Adopting web3 can be daunting for any company, but the rewards are immense.
Audentes Fortuna Iuvat. Fortune favors the bold.
Frank Wang
Frank Wang is the director of platform sales at BitGo, an institutional digital asset financial services company that provides clients with security, custody, and liquidity solutions. Frank works with BitGo’s exchange, fintech, and enterprise clients, focusing on enabling blockchain adoption for consumer-facing technology platforms like payments and loyalty programs. Prior to joining BitGo in early 2022, Frank spent 19 years at various finance and technology companies. Frank graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A.S. in Systems Engineering and a B.A. in Economics and East Asian Studies.
MetaMask broadens its global presence with key partnerships in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Egypt, and Chile.
In a Dec. 8 post on X, MetaMask, a well-known software cryptocurrency wallet, unveiled new partnerships in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Egypt, and Chile.
As stated in the announcement, MetaMask is working with VietQR and Mobile Money in Vietnam, GCash in the Philippines, QRIS in Indonesia, Thai QR in Thailand, Vodafone Cash in Egypt, and Webpay in Chile. These collaborations empower users with localized options.
We’ve partnered with @Unlimit_com and @getTransFi to support more payment methods in more regions.
Web3 is global, and MetaMask has been on a mission to partner with providers worldwide to help onboard anyone—regardless of where they are—to web3.
MetaMask has also extended its reach to Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea, offering additional support for local transfers through strategic alliances with Unlimit, a borderless payment solution, and TransFi.
The Buy aggregator feature is said to be accessible across various MetaMask platforms, including the mobile app and browser extension, and directly within the MetaMask Portfolio.
Alongside growth announcements, MetaMask recently encountered transaction issues for mobile users on v7.9.0.
Following the bug fix on Nov. 15, MetaMask recommended mobile users promptly update their apps to the latest version, 7.10.0, as a precaution. The wallet provider specified that the issue with the previous version had impacted a limited number of users in a posting on Nov. 14.
