decentralized finance Archives

Renee Francis, Take3: The transformative potential of Web3

The Block caught up with Renee Francis, Founder and Director of Take3, to discuss the transformative potential of Web3.

With a background in marketing and extensive experience with platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google, Francis offers a unique perspective on the issues that Web3 aims to address.

In this interview, she shares insights into the benefits of Web3, the challenges it faces, and her excitement for various projects in the space.

Data...

15 September 2023 | Altcoins

DappRadar: Dapps industry grew almost 10% in May

According to the latest report from DappRadar, the decentralised apps (dapps) industry is picking up pace.

This May, the industry saw an almost 10 percent increase in daily unique active wallets (dUAW), averaging an impressive 1,967,051 dUAW.

Key sectors, like gaming and decentralised finance (DeFi), continued to exhibit promising signs of growth and stability—further asserting the importance of this thriving industry.

The gaming sector continued its reign as...

5 June 2023 | Altcoins

Visa will ‘actively contribute’ to web3 development

Visa refuses to become a dinosaur and will “actively contribute” to developing the web3 and crypto ecosystem.

Aside from maximalists, few experts believe that crypto poses an existential threat to fiat currencies. Legacy payment processors like Visa and Mastercard have increasingly been joining the web2-era disruptors like PayPal and Square in supporting the web3 and crypto ecosystem.

Greater public adoption of “crypto” will likely come through CBDCs (Central...

20 December 2022 | Altcoins

Jeremy Epstein, RDX Works: On the ‘practically unlimited scalability’ of Radix

Radix claims it will offer “practically unlimited scalability” with its novel consensus algorithm, Cerberus.

In 2019, Radix set a record for decentralised ledgers when it demonstrated the ability to process over one million transactions per second. For the demonstration, Radix replayed 10 years of Bitcoin’s transaction history in under 30 minutes. That demonstration used Cerberus’ predecessor, Tempo.

Despite the record-breaking demonstration, it was...

2 September 2022 | Altcoins

Aave bans Justin Sun for receiving funds from Tornado Cash

DeFi protocol Aave has banned Tron founder Justin Sun for receiving funds from sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

Tornado Cash enables criminals to launder cryptocurrency. Differing reports by crypto analytics platform Elliptic and the US Treasury estimate the mixer has been used to launder anywhere between $1.5 billion and $7 billion worth of digital assets, including by North Korean hacker group Lazarus.

While that’s no small figure, it’s a drop in the ocean...

15 August 2022 | Blockchain Applications

Ripple: Most financial institutions plan to use crypto within three years

A report by Ripple suggests that most financial institutions plan to start using crypto within the next three years.

Despite the bear market, financial institutions remain interested in the cryptocurrency space. Just this week, $10 trillion asset manager BlackRock launched a spot Bitcoin trust while saying that it’s also exploring “permissioned blockchains, stablecoins, cryptoassets, and tokenization.”

While BlackRock is exploring the potential financial benefits...

12 August 2022 | Altcoins

‘Free-for-all’ Nomad exploit drains $190M of crypto

Cross-chain bridge Nomad has fallen victim to a “free-for-all” exploit that drained around $190 million in crypto.

Just last week, Nomad announced that it had secured $22.4 million in seed funding from high-profile backers including Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, and OpenSea. The company emphasised its focus on security following a spate of bridge hacks.

“With $1.5B in bridge hacks happening within the last 12 months, many people, protocols, and DAOs are...