Day: January 21, 2022

TON Names Andrew Rogozov as Founding Member Heading Product Efforts

by CryptoPotato

The TON Foundation has announced the onboarding of Andrew Rogozov as a founding member. He will oversee Product Efforts at the blockchain project, initially launched by Telegram’s Durov brothers in 2018.

Increasing Interaction Between TON and Telegram Likely

The Ton Foundation announced a recent press release shared with CryptoPotato. The document informed that Rogozov will now contribute with his leadership experience to assist TON to reach its potential of creating an open-source, efficient, and widely used blockchain.

However, Rogozov, at the helm of Product Efforts at TON, may work to expedite the integration of its features and leverage Telegram’s over 500 million-strong user base.

“As we speak, multiple products have already been shipped that are at the intersection of TON and Telegram: the Tonkeeper wallet, the @donate inline bot in Telegram handling subscriptions to paid channels with Toncoin, and the wallet bot,” added Rogozov.

Rogozov is currently holding the position of Vice President Social at VK, which was earlier known as Mail.ru. He has overseen VK.com, which was acquired by Mail.ru in 2014 before the entire conglomerate rebranded itself as VK.

“In 2007, Andrew Rogozov joined VKontakte, the leading Russian social media company widely regarded as the “Russian Facebook” (later shortened to VK). Starting as an engineer, Rogozov climbed the ranks to become the CEO of VK.com, a position that he held from 2017 to 2021,” the release explained.

Besides his role as a founding member at TON, Rogozov will continue with VK in an advisory role.

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TON: A Successor of Telegram’s Blockchain Project

The Open Network came into being as Telegram Open Network, a blockchain system that promised to solve the issues of speed and scalability. However, Telegram withdrew from the project after the SEC raised red flags over the blockchain project and barred it from issuing tokens.

Even as Telegram backed out from the project, the TON community decided to continue and forked out the network into a new entity, The Open Network (TON). It was one of the first few blockchain projects that used proof-of-stake to validate transactions.

“I see huge opportunities at the intersection of the TON blockchain, the Telegram platform with its active audience of over 600 million users, and the community of world-class developers who have the potential to create a large number of next-generation global product companies,” said Rogozov.

Convergence of Interests Between TON and Telegram

Now that both Telegram and TON are in stable waters and the blockchain industry is more resurgent with increasing adoption and engagement of regulators, a convergence of interest can see TON’s integration with the Telegram platform.

“A key adoption strategy pursued by TON will be to integrate with Telegram platform, APIs and development tools leveraging its user base of over 500m monthly active users that heavily intersects with the audience of crypto power users,” the release said.

Featured Image Courtesy of KOD

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Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Details How He Dumped $6.7 Billion in SHIB

by Decrypt

Just how easy is it to get rid of nearly $7 billion worth of a cryptocurrency that you don’t want? Probably a lot harder than you might think, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

During a visit to the UpOnly Podcast yesterday, Buterin discussed several topics throughout the course of an almost two-hour interview with hosts Cobie and Ledger, including the time that Buterin dumped $6.7 billion (at one point worth much more than that) in SHIB tokens.

Shiba Inu, or SHIB, is a Dogecoin-inspired, Ethereum-based meme token that surged in value over the last year. At one point last year, SHIB was up by more than 40,000,000%, according to data from CoinGecko, making those who invested early in the cryptocurrency very rich within a very short period of time.

Last May, anonymous developers gifted Buterin 50% of the total supply of SHIB tokens, bringing the total held by Buterin to around 505 trillion SHIB, or roughly $8 billion at the time. The developers did this because they thought sending the tokens to Buterin would effectively burn the tokens (i.e. take them out of circulation), decreasing supply and increasing demand.

Later that month, Buterin sent SHIB and other crypto donations he received to various charities, including 50 trillion SHIB, around $1.2 billion at the time, to the India Covid Crypto Relief Fund. Buterin then burned about 90% of his remaining SHIB tokens. Why? “I don’t want to be a locus of power of that kind,” he said in a note attached to one of the transactions at the time.

But exactly how Buterin got rid of those tokens is arguably just as interesting as the who and why.

Buterin explained to Cobie and Ledger the complex process that he had to go through to access and then send out the SHIB tokens, including buying a new laptop to complete the transaction. “It was scary and fun at the same time,” Buterin said. “The scary part is this is more money than I’ve ever had.”

The funds, he said, were initially in a cold wallet in the form of two numbers written on separate pieces of paper. Buterin said he had to combine the two numbers to get the private key. “One of those numbers was with me; the other number was with my family in Canada,” he said. “So I had to call up my family in Canada and tell them to read their number to me.”

Buterin said that he entered the numbers into the computer he purchased from Target after putting the two numbers together. “I sent my ETH out by generating a transaction and then on a computer that I bought from Tarjay [Target] for about $300 bucks for just this purpose.”

Before disconnecting the laptop from the internet entirely, Buterin said he downloaded a program to generate QR codes. After generating the Ethereum transaction, he scanned the QR code with his phone, copied it to the laptop, and then put it into etherscan.io/push Tx. Finally, Buterin said he began sending out the tokens.

“So it was scary and involved a procedure that would probably make a good plot for a James Bond movie eventually, but maybe not,” he said.

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Altcoin Roundup: 3 emerging P2E gaming trends to keep an eye on in 2022

by Cointelegraph

Blockchain-based play-to-earn (P2E) gaming had a breakout year in 2021, and as the cryptocurrency ecosystem evolves in 2022, the P2E gaming sector and those that invest in it will need to consider what the next steps are. During bull markets, vaporware, speculation and euphoria can lead to unrealistic valuations and expectations, and this appears to also have impacted the P2E sector.

Now that the hype is “over,” investors and developers will need to identify new value propositions that catalyze growth and steady investment into the blockchain gaming sector.

Here’s a closer look at some of the trends that could emerge in the P2E ecosystem in 2022.

Profit-sharing communities

The first trend to keep an eye on in 2022 is projects that are looking to harness interest in nonfungible tokens to create profit-sharing models and capitalize on the price appreciation of NFTs.

These projects aim to offer opportunities for gamers and investors by providing a platform where investors who are not interested in playing games can invest and provide NFTs for players who would not otherwise be able to afford them.

From there, players earn rewards for their gameplay, while investors earn a share of the profits.

One example of this type of protocol is Yield Guild Games (YGG), a P2E gaming guild and decentralized autonomous organization focused on creating a community that lets players earn via blockchain-based economies.

The DAO generates revenue through the sale of NFT assets or by renting them out to gamers as part of a profit-sharing model known as a scholarship.

Some of the current games and investments that YGG is involved with include Axie Infinity, Illuvium, Guild of Guardians, Star Atlas, Splinterlands and The Sandbox.

The most recent investment for the YGG community was a $50,000 investment in the seed round of Heroes of Mavia and a $330,000 purchase of NFT land assets in the game.

Communities with educational support

Another trend emerging out of the gaming and NFT sectors are communities that focus on educating community members on how to earn money through gameplay.

Blockchain-based gaming can be a challenge for newcomers to learn, and some games have upfront costs that prevent some players from being able to play.

To help simplify the process, a few protocols that invest in providing apprenticeships for players have come into existence. Merit Circle is a DAO project focused on developing its P2E economy by helping gamers transform their hobby into a steady stream of income.

At the time of writing, the Merit Circle community has 2,750 active gamers from regions all around the world — including Asia, Africa, Europe and South America — who earn rewards daily by playing one of the supported games.

Similar to YGG, Merit Circle also invests in community-held assets that can be used by gamers to earn rewards, with 30% of all proceeds being reinvested in the DAO or distributed to tokenholders.

The project uses educational content and one-on-one coaching sessions to help improve the performance of scholars on the platform. These players have earned more than $2 million through gameplay to date.

Related: New research expects a gloomy year for Bitcoin as DeFi and DAOs rise

DeFi combines with NFTs and P2E gaming

A third trend forming in 2022 is the development of projects and investment funds that aim to combine aspects of decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs and P2E gaming.

While the gaming sector only appeals to a niche crowd, NFTs have a wide range of capabilities that can be applied to many fields ranging from art to real estate by providing immutable proof of ownership.

As blockchain technology continues on its path to mass adoption, an increasing number of real-world items will be digitally recorded on distributed ledgers, ultimately providing interested parties with an easier route to investment than exists at present.

It also allows for the possibility of fractionally owning certain high-price items such as a hotel or the copyright to a popular movie or music album.

BlackPool is one such project that is currently run by a team of portfolio managers, traders and analysts with the long-term goal of becoming “a leading provider of financial derivatives in digital asset marketplaces, including asset valuation indexes, insurance mechanisms and actively managed strategies.”

Ultimately, the project is looking to provide democratized access to scarce NFT assets “that users might individually not be able to buy themselves.”

Through the development of its DAO structure, BlackPool is now in the process of decentralizing its current operation to allow all of the NFT assets held by the fund to be managed by its community of token holders.

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