Brookings, one of the most influential think tanks in Washington DC, is ringing alarm bells about privacy coins like Monero and Zcash.

The post Top US think tank warns Monero, Zcash could help evade sanctions appeared first on Protos.

NFTs have become the newest, hottest, and most powerful trend of the gaming world since the long-gone era of Pong and Galaxy Game. Gamers worldwide, for the first time, can now make real money with play-to-earn (P2E) gaming, and in-game assets (characters, land, tools, and more) have been turned into tradable tokens with actual monetary value. Large amounts of money from both investors and gamers are rapidly rushing into the sector: Sandbox, a virtual world development game, saw its sales of NFT land plots surge by over 1,600% in 2021, with sales peaking at over $3 million per day. Ember Sword’s NFT digital land sale in August 2021 raised an unprecedented $203 million. Investment fund Metaverse Group bought an NFT land plot on virtual platform Decentraland in December 2021 for $2.43 million – an all-time price record. Top NFT metaverse game Axie Infinity generated a record $3 billion in NFT sales in 2021. The explosion in NFT trading volumes ($41 billion in 2021) and the number of NFT game metaverses (rapidly approaching 500) are signaling a tectonic shift. Also, with Facebook’s name change to Meta introducing the term “metaverse” to the wider public, this seems to signal the beginning of the Web 3.0 era. PwC sees the metaverse sector being worth $1.54 trillion by 2030, with Goldman Sachs upping the estimate to a potential $8 trillion. This game-changing trend, however, has come with a significant challenge. The traditional channels for gamer communications, including Discord and Twitter, and NFT storage, have recently been the recent victims of high-profile hacks: In December 2021, hackers stole $2.2 million of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs from their owner’s wallet. Within hours of BAPE announcing it would launch NFTsand opening its Discord channel, users of the platform received fraudulent direct messages which cost 20 members their entire NFT holdings. A Discord server run by recently launched gaming NFT marketplaceFractal was hacked, scamming members out of $150,000 in cryptocurrency. Web 2.0 social media platforms (Twitter, Telegram, Discord) lack adequate mechanisms to support communications that are needed for the Web 3.0 era. Spammers, hackers, and bots, which generate misinformation and undermine the safety of users’ assets, often overrun channels on these platforms. There is an urgent need for a solution that enables reliable and seamless communications between gamers, and‌ the ability to exchange NFT assets safely and cost-effectively. The solution is here, and its name is Secretum. Built on Solana, the world’s fastest and lowest cost blockchain, Secretum aims to become the go-to platform for messaging and NFT trading for the global gaming community. The key pillar to Secretum is Public Smart Channels, where creators set certain rules for channel access based on subscriptions and proof of NFT ownership: Subscriptions – Channel owners can define a one-time fee or recurrent fees, paid directly to the connected wallet of the channel owner by staking SER tokens. This tool screens out less motivated and engaged channel members, including fictitious members (bots) and potential hackers. Proof of NFT ownership – Channel owners can request new users to prove they hold certain assets, tokens or NFTs, to access a channel. Only true gamers, which are actively involved in the ecosystem, can therefore take part. Secretum’s Public Smart Channels function is a first-of-its-kind revolution for gamers worldwide, creating the ideal conditions for: Messaging Safety – No centralized data storage, complete anonymity, no data transfers, no moderators, and complete end-to-end encryption. Strong Gaming Communities – Users will never again be spammed, phished, or harassed by malevolent actors. This means that, unlike Discord or Twitter, all community members are real and channel communications are always genuine and verified. NFT ownership becomes a tool for identity verification, while the SER token becomes the currency of a new messaging ecosystem. Strong Trading Volumes – Public Smart Channels lead to more communication, more connections, and consequently more trading of NFTs between channel members on Secretum. NFT owners can furthermore avoid the congestion, high fees, and liquidity issues affecting most crypto and NFT exchanges. Solana’s trading costs are as low as $0.00025 per transaction, stimulating Secretum users to invest in and trade NFTs. With a potential 65,000 transactions per second, Solana ensures that Secretum is built to scale. One of the Secretum’s goals is to create the NFT gaming world’s leading platform for trusted communications, cost-effective NFT trading, and community building – all underpinned by the power of the Solana blockchain. With the NFT sector booming, Secretum is positioned to satisfy a market need that is getting bigger by the day. The last round of Secretum Private Token Sale of 3,000,000 SER tokens at a rate of $0.50 will end on April 22, 2022, at 24:00 EET or before allocated SER Tokens are sold.  

Population: One's new Metropolis sector is easily its biggest and most complex map addition yet. Here's our impressions of next week's big update.

Ireland’s Central Criminal Court is currently overseeing the trial of a man who beat up another for his gambling winnings. What could have been a lesser crime became a murder charge after the man died as a result of his injuries. Almost four years ago, what should have been a joyous time for Ioan Artene […]

The post Man Faces Re-Trial for Beating That Led to Death of Gambler in Ireland appeared first on Casino.org.

Two crypto-friendly candidates fought in a very close election for the South Korean presidency, with Yoon Suk-yeol coming out on top.  S.K presidential candidate Yoon Seokryul is elected as president yesterday. As mentioned in the "startup policy talk" held on ICONLOOP Lounge in the past, we look forward to various policies for the regulation and […]

The post South Korea Becomes Next Country Led By A Pro-Crypto President appeared first on CryptoCoin.News.

The Prime Minister of Estonia has said cryptocurrencies must be restricted in order to address loopholes that may be used by sanctioned Russian entities to evade the punitive measures. In addition, the premier wants all Russian as well as Belarusian banks to be removed from the global payment network. Sanction Evasion Concerns The Estonian prime […]

Good quality data becomes imperative and a basic building block of an ML pipeline. The ML model can only be as good as its training data.

Not all SaaS products have to be platforms. There are countless definitions swirling around about what it means to be…

The post Devang Sachdev (Snorkel AI): Nailing Your Platform Go-to-Market appeared first on OpenView.

Describing the complex world of bonds with two distinct voices to set the stage for explaining why bitcoin is critical portfolio insurance.

Hawaiian Airlines has been rated the most punctual airline in the United States for the 18th year in a row by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). According to data given by the Department of Transportation last month, the […]

No longer a separate set of requirements, designers are prioritizing both power and performance in markets where performance has been the main goal.

The post Power Now First-Order Concern In More Markets appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Some designs focus on power, while others focus on sustainable performance, cost, or flexibility. But choosing the best option for an application based on benchmarks is becoming more difficult.

The post Why Comparing Processors Is So Difficult appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.