Technology

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are digital assets that represent a wide range of unique tangible and intangible items, from collectible sports cards to virtual real estate and even digital sneakers. One of the main benefits of owning a digital collectible versus a physical collectible like a Pokemon card or rare minted coin is that each NFT

As massive protests sweep across the nation, activists fear Russia has been deploying facial recognition technology to clamp down on dissent.  Following nationwide protest rallies on Jan. 31, several people reported on social media they were detained by the police after subway and street surveillance cameras recognized them as protesters. Countries all over the world

Reddit is expanding its role in the Ethereum ecosystem, with the goal of building out scaling tools for the blockchain network. The social media platform announced Wednesday it was partnering with the Ethereum Foundation to increase its commitment to blockchain technology by providing development resources to scaling tools. In the announcement, posted to the Ethereum

When Elon Musk adds #Bitcoin to his Twitter bio, you know buying bitcoin is in vogue again.  The cryptocurrency is pumping, perhaps not-too-coincidentally, as investing app Robinhood faces criticism for censoring stock and crypto trading in response to the Wall Street Bets saga.  With Robinhood taking heat, Coinbase is basking in the glow. Coinbase’s popularity

“Are you running the numbers?” This is what Bitcoin Core developer Andrew Chow is trying to find out in a new survey.  Sponsored by a grant from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, Chow crafted the survey “to get answers from people who are not current users” about why they don’t run a Bitcoin Core full node,

Marathon Patent Group (MARA) announced Thursday it will bankroll the work of Bitcoin Core developer Jonas Schnelli. Previously, Bitmain funded Schnelli’s work before nixing the grant last year. “As one of the largest bitcoin mining firms, we believe it is essential that we do our part to help advance the Bitcoin network. Absent core developers

Right now, blockchains communicate via tacked-on solutions (state channels, sidechains, swaps, bridges and so on). With the Stargate update to Cosmos on Feb. 18, the tools for native blockchain interoperability will be live on mainnet.  “This is a long-awaited release for many Cosmos-based projects out there,” Band Protocol’s Kevin Lu told CoinDesk via email. “For

Farmers struggling amid Argentina’s hyperinflation and the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic may soon find relief through the tokenization of agricultural assets using blockchain technology. According to a press release on Thursday, blockchain infrastructure provider CoreLedger and soon-to-launch peer-to-peer marketplace Abakus are aiming to create a digital barter economy within the country. CoreLedger’s technology

While not many technical details of China’s plans for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) are publicly available, the digital yuan is already raising concerns around privacy, national security and political power. The Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DCEP) system would give the Chinese Communist Party the powerful ability to monitor in real time the minute financial

Eth 2.0 is looking at its first hard fork this year. The Ethereum Foundation-backed research team is currently organizing schematics for a  mid-2021 backward-incompatible change to the Beacon Chain, according to a Jan. 14 developer’s call. This hard fork is really not a hard fork in the traditional sense, Teku client project manager Ben Edgington

The Stellar Development Foundation has invested in blockchain payments company Wyre to boost support for financial applications in the Stellar ecosystem. The Foundation said the $5 million Enterprise Fund investment in Wyre will introduce a variety of payment application programming interfaces (APIs) that can be used by apps on the Stellar network. On/off ramps for

Trading venue dYdX has raised $10 million in a Series B funding round led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital. The platform, launched in 2017, offers a spread of decentralized trading products including both bitcoin and ether derivatives. The San Francisco-based startup plans to use the funds to increase its product offering, further decentralize

Recently, following a change to Whatsapp’s privacy policy, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world left for other services. Signal, an encrypted messenger service, saw so many sign-ups that it temporarily crashed. This was followed by a mass exodus from social media, as Twitter and Facebook became embroiled in a debate on

When it comes to the “next big thing” for independent platforms, the newsletter platform Substack has been at the forefront of the charge. The company has lured big-name independent writers such as Casey Newton and Glenn Greenwald to the platform to start their own newsletters.  Substack is now also being leveraged for its ease of

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” Those were the words pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto used to greet the world some twelve years ago in an email releasing the Bitcoin white paper. To this day, nobody still knows who he/she/they actually are. And since April

The fundamental flaws in modern social media infrastructure are nothing new, and nor is the idea of using blockchain and other decentralized technologies to help remedy them. But never before have these issues risen to the fore as they are currently. Never before have so many people been so aware of the ethical and practical