Blockchain Expo: Maturing blockchain industry paves the way for enterprise adoption

A session at this year’s Blockchain Expo Europe highlighted that blockchain is reaching a stage of maturity that paves the way for enterprise adoption.

The session was presented by Pedro Lopez-Belmonte, Senior Manager of Web3 and Technology Innovation at Richemont, on day one of Europe’s leading blockchain conference.

One of the first charts presented during the session was Gartner’s hype cycle, which shows blockchain platforms now leaving the trough of...

20 September 2022 | Blockchain

OpenSea will not support forked NFTs after ETH Merge

Sailing

With the Ethereum Merge scheduled for 15 September, NFT marketplace OpenSea has said it plans to focus its support on NFTs that are on the upgraded proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.

The company took to Twitter to confirm that whilst the OpenSea team is not speculating on potential forks, they will not be reflected on the OpenSea marketplace as the platform will only be supporting the upgraded Ethereum chain.

The NFT marketplace also highlighted that its team is preparing...

2 September 2022 | Digital Assets

Meta expands its Instagram NFT features to 100 countries

Instagram

After launching a non-fungible token (NFT) pilot on Instagram for American users earlier this year, Meta has announced plans to expand its NFT features to as many as 100 other countries.

The test launch for the NFTs on Instagram went live in May to select creators in the United States.

The planned expansion will let users from the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific to get in on the action.

With the enhanced allowance, users will now be able...

5 August 2022 | Development

Nansen begins tracking Solana’s NFT ecosystem

Blockchain analytics firm Nansen now supports tracking Solana’s large NFT ecosystem.

Nansen says Solana has been one of its most requested chains and has a “thriving” NFT ecosystem.

The real-time, on-chain data provided by Nansen certainly shows the demand for Solana-based NFT projects. Nansen claims it’s tracking over 53,000 NFT collections.

As of writing, a couple of relatively new NFT collections (<48 hours) are vying for the top two most...

30 June 2022 | Digital Assets

Massive data breach leaves OpenSea users’ email addresses vulnerable

OpenSea, the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has warned its users after discovering an employee of email management platform Customer.io has leaked OpenSea customer’s emails to a third party.

Any user who has their email address registered with OpenSea, whether it’s for the platform or its newsletter, has been affected by the breach.

OpenSea has since warned all of its users to watch out for potential phishing attempts and has reported the incident to...

30 June 2022 | Cyber Security

OpenSea adds new security features amidst NFT market downturn

OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace, has announced a new security feature to protect its users from the growing number of scams in the NFT space.

It comes at a time when the company is under increasing fire for the proliferation of stolen and plagiarised NFTs passing through its site.

The feature will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from being viewed on the OpenSea marketplace. The company hopes this will help to protect users from falling for scam...

14 June 2022 | Cyber Security

Medha Parlikar & Niamh O’Connell, CasperLabs: Enterprise adoption in blockchain

CasperLabs is the overseer of the Casper blockchain, a proof-of-stake network optimised for enterprise and developer adoption that launched in early 2021.

The Zug-based company provides engineering and professional services to enterprise clients looking to migrate key business processes to a secure and scalable blockchain.

Following a recent partnership with Amazon Web Services and expansion into the Chinese market, The Block caught up with CasperLabs’ CTO and...

17 May 2022 | Development

Instagram to add NFT support in upcoming pilot

Instagram

Meta-owned Instagram is adding support for users to show off their non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from a number of the most popular blockchain networks.

In much the same vein as Twitter’s NFT integration late last year, users will be able to select their NFTs as display pictures, post their NFTs, and share them with their followers.

However, CoinDesk has confirmed that Instagram users will not be charged a fee for this service as Twitter originally did following its...

9 May 2022 | Ethereum

Standard Chartered buys into metaverse with The Sandbox partnership

Sandbox

Global banking giant Standard Chartered is following other major competitors journeying into the metaverse by partnering with decentralised gaming platform The Sandbox.

The company’s Hong Kong subsidiary (SCBHK) bought space in The Sandbox’s Mega City district, an area announced in January alongside a number of Hong Kong partners from various sectors.

Led by SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm, the partnership will seek...

27 April 2022 | Enterprise

Coinbase launches NFT marketplace with a focus on community

Coinbase NFT

Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, has finally launched the beta version of its NFT marketplace six months after announcing its impending arrival.

The creatively named ‘Coinbase NFT’ will have to compete with more established marketplaces, most notably OpenSea and LooksRare, and thus the company has sought out ways to differentiate its offering.

"We're building a marketplace where you can buy and sell NFTs, of course, but more importantly, you can engage,"...

22 April 2022 | NFT