Blockchain Development | Blockchain Technology News

Polygon decentralised apps increase to 37,000, up 400% in 2022

Layer 2 Ethereum scaling platform Polygon has seen more than 37,000 decentralised applications (dApps) developed on its network, a 400% increase since the start of 2022.

The figures were sourced from partnered Web3 development platform Alchemy and represent the cumulative number of applications ever launched on both the Polygon testnet and mainnet.

In terms of active developer teams, Polygon reached 11,800 at the end of July, up 47.5% since March.

The project...

11 August 2022 | Blockchain Applications

Meta expands its Instagram NFT features to 100 countries

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

Millicent Labs demos full-reserve digital currency for UK government

Blockchain fintech company Millicent Labs has completed a sandbox test for a full-reserve digital currency (FRDC) with co-funding from the UK government’s Research and Innovation branch.

An FRDC is a privately issued digital currency pegged to a fiat currency, according to Millicent. The company believes it avoids the pitfalls of central bank digital currency and stablecoins while bridging blockchain technology with traditional finance.

Millicent plans to introduce a...

14 July 2022 | CBDC

Vietnam Blockchain Association partners with Binance to drive innovation

The Vietnam Blockchain Association is collaborating with the world’s leading crypto exchange, Binance, on the exchange of research and application of blockchain technology in Vietnam.

Newly formed in May, the organisation will also cooperate with Binance on human resource training to promote blockchain and build bridges with other global technology corporations. The news was announced at the Vietnam NFT Summit 2022 on June 4.

With seven of the top 200 blockchain...

7 June 2022 | Blockchain Applications

Singapore launches DeFi project with JPMorgan and DBS Bank

Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), is joining forces with JPMorgan, DBS Bank, and Marketnode to launch Project Guardian.

The project, which is led by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, will pilot use cases of digital assets in tokenisation, using the three financial institutions as “trust anchors”.

Announced on 31 May at the Asia Tech X Singapore Summit, Project Guardian hopes to eventually explore decentralised finance (DeFi)...

1 June 2022 | Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

Ethereum Ropsten testnet planned for June 8 marks “huge milestone”

The Ropsten public testnet, a testing environment that is the closest replication of the Ethereum mainnet, is set to undergo its long awaited merge on June 8.

The merge will mimic Ethereum’s upcoming transition from using a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake one. This allows developers to test and finalise adjustments for Ethereum’s mainnet merge later this year.

Ethereum DevOps engineer Parathi Jayanathi submitted a pull request for the Ropsten...

19 May 2022 | Development

A16z State of Crypto: “It is still early days for web3”

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a prominent venture capital firm investing heavily in the web3 sector, has published its first “State of Crypto” report exploring current trends in the market.

The overarching takeaway from the report is that web3 and the crypto market develop in cycles.

As prices climb, interest in the sector grows to the point where it can no longer be sustained. Following a (usually steep) falloff in prices, innovators develop new projects that revive...

18 May 2022 | Blockchain Applications

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

ETH2 sentiment grows bullish as Q2 consensus layer merge awaits

Excitement surrounding ETH2, a series of upgrades designed to improve the Ethereum blockchain, is building as the network prepares to transition from mining to staking.

Last week Ethereum developers successfully tested the long-awaited merge of the blockchain’s proof-of-work and proof-of-stake chains.

Ethereum currently runs on a proof-of-work mechanism, similar to Bitcoin, in which new transactions are verified by computers solving complex mathematical...

21 March 2022 | Development

StarkWare set to reach £4.5bn valuation for its blockchain scaling solutions

StarkWare, an Ethereum Layer 2 start-up, is on track to close a $100 million (£76m) funding round, according to Israeli news source Calcalistech.

Whilst not yet announced, the funding will follow a $50 million (£38m) Series C from November last year that pulled in investors such as Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Three Arrows, and more. Back then, the company was pegged at a $2 billion (£1.53bn) valuation.

Now expected to push for a $6 billion (£4.57bn) valuation,...