The Australian government has opened applications for grants up to $3 million each in funding to blockchain projects targeting supply chain tracking in the minerals industry and tax tracking in the food and beverage sector. Applications are open until April 29, with any sole trader, partnership, publicly-funded research organization, or entity incorporated in Australia that possesses an Australian Business Number eligible to apply. The money will be used to fund two distinct pilots. The Food and Beverage Provenance pilot hopes to support a team addressing the complexities associated with spirits…

The NFT exhibition will be part of the “Hermitage 20/21” project. Russia’s State Hermitage Museum, the second-largest art museum in the world, is preparing to host a digital art exhibition involving non-fungible tokens. Scheduled to take place in 2021, the Hermitage’s NFT project will be Russia’s first exhibition in the field of NFT art, the museum officially announced Thursday. The Hermitage’s contemporary art department is organizing the exhibition, which will be part of its “Hermitage 20/21” project. The announcement read: “Non-fungible tokens have become a new form of securing rights…

“We decided that additional time to conduct a more thorough code review and testing was important,” said Theta Labs. Crypto-powered esports streaming app Theta’s mainnet 3.0 launch has been delayed until June. In an announcement from Theta Labs, the company stated that its development team is still working “to incorporate some building blocks” for a non-fungible token, or NFT, marketplace for the Theta Mainnet 3.0. They are also working to ensure that the network functions when scaled to more than 100,000 Elite Edge Nodes. As a result, Theta needs more…

Polyient Games co-founder Craig Russo referred to the partnership as “a major step towards bringing mainstream adoption” to the crypto industry. Non-fungible token-focused investment firm Polyient Games is launching a new online tournament to introduce mainstream gamers to the crypto space. In an announcement today, Polyient Games said it would be partnering with esports tournament platform Community Gaming for a $100,000 series featuring games using non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The esports games will reportedly “function as a method of introducing mainstream gamers to the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain assets”…

Energy Web plans to use blockchain technology to help ensure an efficient future for Volkswagen’s electric vehicles. Automobile makers everywhere are betting big on electric vehicles as the world begins to push for environmentally friendly modes of transportation. For example, while fewer than 1% of cars on the roads in the United States today are electric, a number of automobile manufacturers are aiming to change this by stopping sales of gasoline-powered cars. At the end of January 2021, General Motors said it would stop selling gas-powered cars and trucks by…

The first Ethereum 2.0 hard fork is aimed to be a general test before introducing deeper changes. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a plan on Monday for the first hard fork of the new Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain, tentatively named HF1. The hard fork would allow the developers to introduce several key upgrades to the recently launched Beacon Chain, which would also serve as a useful test for deeper changes in the future. The biggest practical change is the support for light clients — nodes that would have minimal resource…