Category: Blockchain

Italian carmaker Alfa Romeo has unveiled its latest vehicle, the Tonale SUV. The firm claims that it is the first in the industry to connect each vehicle to its own blockchain-based token, which can keep track of the car’s whole life cycle. One of the most distinctive features of this SUV is that each car is linked to an accompanying nonfungible token (NFT). The Tonale NFT, according to Alfa Romeo, certifies a car upon purchase and then simply records and keeps data during the vehicle’s lifespan. Francesco Calcara, head of…

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Recent Chainalysis data showed that users moved over $40 billion worth of crypto to Ethereum’s nonfungible token (NFT) smart contracts in 2021. While this reflects the rapid growth of NFTs, there are still many obstacles when it comes to minting these tokens, and one startup is addressing this problem by doing all the behind-scene processes. NFTs have been all the rage during the last few months, and most experts agree that the trend is here to stay given the transformative potential for a lot of industries, from digital art to…

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The partnership will see Coinbase expand on purchasing options for Coinbase NFT — its upcoming NFT marketplace. At present, to purchase an NFT, users require a Web3 wallet and a cryptocurrency such as Ethereum, and must then spend those on NFTs in an online marketplace. By teaming up with Mastercard, the exchange hopes to reduce friction in the NFT buying process. “Coinbase wants to simplify the user experience to allow more people to join the NFT community. Just as we helped millions of people access Bitcoin for the first time…

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Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter will be launching a new company that will eventually see its website move to a blockchain-based system on Celo. In a Wednesday blog post, CEO Aziz Hasan and co-founder Perry Chen said Kickstarter would be developing an open-source protocol that will live on the Celo blockchain. The two execs cited the blockchain’s efforts in minimizing its environmental impact — being carbon negative — in addition to the fact it was open source. “We are entering a significant moment for alternative governance models, and we think there’s an…

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Although the project was a success, the central banks warned that significant rulebooks, contingency procedures and monitoring capabilities were needed to ensure the success of a CBDC. On Wednesday, the Banque de France (BdF), the BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced the success of a pilot run of a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC), titled Project Jura. The project, which aimed to investigate cross‑border settlement with euro and Swiss franc wCBDCs, was launched on a third‑party distributed ledger technology platform. The experimental technology explored…

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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…

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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…

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“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…

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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”…

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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…

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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…

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Mitsubishi Electric has teamed up with researchers from the prestigious Japanese university, Tokyo Tech, to jointly design a blockchain-based trading system that can support more flexible, peer-to-peer energy trading. Announced on Jan. 18, the new system is intended to support the efficient use of surplus electricity that is generated from renewable energy sources. In particular, it is hoped that the trading system can ensure that at any given moment, there will be the maximum available amount of surplus electricity accessible on the market for consumers. Peer-to-peer energy trading set-ups allow…

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A fledgling blockchain-based game project called Illuvium has already managed to attract support from major industry backers — a development owed in part to the fact that Illuvium co-founders Kieran and Aaron Warwick are the brothers of Kain Warwick, the co-founder of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Synthetix. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Kieran Warwick clarified that development work has only been underway since September, and that the “two years” refers to the length of time Kain had been badgering Kieran to re-enter crypto full time. “I left to found a…

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