NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token – Non-Fungible meaning unique, and token meaning record of ownership stored on a blockchain. Put together, an NFT is a record of ownership of a unique item that’s stored on a blockchain. While NFTs had their start in generative art, their use cases have expanded to include other digital items like metaverse land, blockchain game characters, and music. Further, a process called tokenization allows the ownership of physical items to be encoded into blockchains, expanding NFT use cases even further to include things like merchandise, real estate, and physical art. Data stored on blockchains is immutable and transparent – immutable meaning tamper-resistant, and transparent meaning visible and verifiable by all. Because NFTs exist on the blockchain, they cannot be deleted, and their existence is publicly verifiable. This makes NFTs ideal for ownership rights management and securely storing important records. Their applications are limited only by the human imagination. The logic behind NFTs – their creation, how they are transferred between people, and their utility – is managed by smart contracts, bits of software that enforce digital agreements and run on decentralized networks like Ethereum. Combined with immutability and transparency, smart contracts make NFTs trustless, making it possible for people to transact directly without risk of fraud. Thanks to trustlessness, networks of anonymous individuals can use and transfer NFTs without centralized authorities or middlemen. This makes NFTs fair for all people, and makes self-management of ownership possible, bolstering the freedoms of those without equal access to opportunities and resources. For example, women in certain regions of the Middle East and Africa are not allowed to hold their own birth certificates and passports, making citizenship verification and travel difficult. NFTs stored on a secure and decentralized blockchain could be used as digital passports, empowering these women to control their own citizenship and travel rights. NFTs can be used for other important documents as well, such as IDs and proof of residency. Without documentation, individuals do not have access to financial services. NFTs fill this need by giving people control over their own documentation. Combined with DeFi platforms, networks through which individuals provide financial services to each other, NFTs could allow anyone with a smart device and internet to control their own finances. One DeFi platform that’s trying to make financial services more accessible is Konstellation Network, an ecosystem of several products that aim to offer all the benefits of traditional fintech and more. Konstellation Network is a blockchain protocol that’s creating a global infrastructure for the future of decentralized capital markets. Here’s a look at their products: DarcMatter is an investment platform that gives investors access to tokenized (NFT) versions of alternative investments, which can include items like art, antiques, commodities, and derivatives. VegaX is a digital asset management firm that gives investors access to crypto index strategies, allowing them to diversify by investing in groups of several cryptocurrencies at once. Taebit is a DeFi platform focused on bringing cryptocurrencies to the Korean market through ease of access and usability, including a DEX for liquidity within the Korean market as well Photon Gateways are cross-chain bridges created to make the transfer of assets between several blockchains seamless to open more investment opportunities. A recent NFT-based addition to the Konstellation ecosystem is Squid Squad OG, a game in which NFT holders compete in high-risk, high-reward Rock Paper Scissors. To be eligible to play, players must purchase lottery tickets — the proceeds of which go to a communal prize pool. Squid Squad OGs then face off, the losers being eliminated. Every time 32 players are eliminated, the games will be put to a vote on whether to continue the games or to discontinue. The form to join the Squid Squad OG whitelist is here. Conclusion Since beginning with generative art, NFT technology has come a long way. Today, NFTs have the potential to bolster freedoms worldwide and make financial services accessible to all. Through NFTs and DeFi protocols, the Konstellation Network enables users to create and stake stablecoins for easy payments and passive income; invest in both traditional and alternative markets, and transfer assets between blockchains.
Around the world, the fintech industry has been soaring, kept abuzz throughout 2021 with a continuous flow of technological advances, regulatory developments, and investors’ money. Fintech funding smashed records, pushing
Strengthens Board with Strategic, Corporate Governance and Financial Expertise ELMSFORD, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NanoVibronix Inc., (NASDAQ: NAOV), a medical device company that produces the UroShield® and PainShield® Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Portable Ultrasonic Therapeutic Devices, today announced its board of directors has appointed Ms. Aurora (Rori) Cassirer and Ms. Maria (Lulu) Schroeder to serve as independent directors […]
Key Takeaways
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky says that the hacking group BlueNoroff is primarily targeting crypto startups in a report released earlier today.
The group has...
DISH Network and Sling TV are homing in on the alleged operators of SportsBay.org, SportsBay.tv, Live-NBA.stream, and Freefeds.com. In an amended complaint filed this week, the companies now name two defendants who were unmasked after Google, Cloudflare, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, domain companies and others complied with subpoenas.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
A real-estate flipper and crypto scammer named Danial Howe has been forced by Iowa regulators to cash in his crypto savings to pay back a couple he victimized. The Torics are from the European nation of Bosnia and have been calling Iowa their home for the past several years. Not long ago, the couple was...
Stardock Software's Start11 utility is shipping today as a 1.0 release, and if you hate the reductionist new design of the Windows 11 Start menu and taskbar, you'll want to check it out. Start11, among other handy tricks, lets you move the taskbar around your desktop and configure the Start menu to emulate Windows 10's look and feel.
Update: On Jan. 13, Stardock shipped Start11 1.1, whose most significant addition is the inclusion of folders, something that Windows 11's own Start menu lacks. You can also add “fences” to the Start menu, Stardock says, with support for its Fences app.We haven't tested these new features.
Start11, priced at $4.99 as a standalone utility, doesn't offer everything: it can't create any dynamic Windows 10 Live Tiles, for example, and your ability to move and resize the Windows 11's taskbar icons is still somewhat limited. But if you'd like a more gentle transition between Windows 10 and Windows 11, Start11 certainly helps.
Start11 is the latest iteration of the “StartX” utilities from Stardock, which shipped similar Start8 and Start10 utilities as throwback UIs to earlier versions of the Windows operating system after Windows 8 and Windows 10 launched, respectively. Start11 simply installs over the top of Windows 11, presenting a more familiar way to interact with the operating system. The program itself consists of a straightforward settings menu, where you can tweak things as you'd like. After that, Start11 makes Windows 11 look as you please and then simply gets out of the way.
As our Windows 11 review highlighted, Windows 11 doesn't let you to resize the taskbar or move it around your screen. Start11 does, though not with the full flexibility of Windows 10. Start11 allows you to move the taskbar to the top or bottom of the screen — not the sides — and resize the icons. (Doing so within the Start11 Settings menu requires you to click a button to manually restart the Windows Explorer process manually.)
You can tweak the location of the taskbar on each individual display, and resizing the icons certainly helps to maximize usable screen space on both tablet-sized and 4K displays. It's a big improvement over the default Windows 11 experience. But Stardock has yet to fix a key annoyance of Windows 11 — the Windows system clock still only appears on a single display. Start11 also doesn't yet allow you to resize the taskbar, nor drag and drop files on a taskbar icon to launch the application, though those limitations no doubt come from Microsoft more than Stardock.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Nevertheless, it's a solid start, even if it's not all that you might hope for quite yet. If it was, Stardock may have named it Taskbar11 instead.
Supercharging the Start menu with Start11
Windows 11's Start menu is one of the more controversial aspects of Microsoft's new operating system, but Start11 allows a number of tweaks to make it more familiar. You can use the Windows 11 Start menu if you'd like — but opt to let Start11 allow you to resize it or open it in a full-screen mode, which Windows 11 doesn't yet do. Handy!
Mark Hachman / IDG
However, Start11 also lets you open Start as a Windows 7-like interface, or use the more tiled
approach of Windows 10. In the latter environment, you can move and group icons, resize them, and generally make Start look like Windows 10, but without the animated “Live Tiles” that Windows 10 supported. Stardock also has its own “modern” style, which shrinks down the Start menu into an ultracompact layout, and points to your most recently-used files on an app-by-app basis, rather than the OS at large.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Start11 also provides some additional options for managing search, as well as some additional tweaks to launch Windows 11's own Start menu versus Start11's own. Still, if the operating systems's native look and feel caused you to hold off on upgrading to Windows 11, Start11 indeed eases the transition.
This story was updated on January 13 with additional information.
Any modern company of any significant size around the world has a data science department, and a data engineer at one company might have the same responsibilities as a marketing scientist at another company. Data science jobs are not well-labeled, so make sure to cast a wide net.
A decision from the Circuit Court of Appeals may prompt a re-evaluation on how e-signatures – the use of which has seen a significant uptick due to lockdowns and remote working – are accepted in assignment agreements and other trademark contracts.
Raising capital for real estate investing is a far more useful skill than most people realize. If you have a strong knack for networking and the social skills to connect […]