Lưu trữ cho từ khóa: Web3

NFT

Hyperbolic and Mintify raise over $10m in latest web3 VC deals

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So far this week, two web3 startups have collectively raised over $10 million in venture capital funding.

Hyperbolic raises $7 million

Hyperbolic, a blockchain-based artificial intelligence project, raised $7 million in a seed funding round, as the project reported on X yesterday.

The startup plans to develop an open-access AI cloud platform that aggregates GPU power and helps reduce computing costs for AI-based startups. The firm uses blockchain technology to maintain the security and transparency of its services. 

The funding round was led by Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction. Other notable participants included LongHash, Bankless Ventures, Republic Digital, Chapter One, Nomad Capital, CoinSummer Labs and Third Earth Capital.

The investment round also saw participation from angel investors, such as former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol. 

Besides using the fresh funds to develop its first product, an AI inference service, the startup will also allocate resources towards establishing an ecosystem for developers and strengthening its team with new hires.

Mintify raises $3.4 million

Mintify is an NFT startup developing an infrastructure to improve non-fungible token trading. As the project announced yesterday, it raised $3.4 million in a funding round led by ARCA, Cumberland, Psalion, Master Ventures, Zeneca, GM Capital, and Spencer VC. Additional participants included over 50 angel investors. 

The recent funding follows a $1.6 million seed round in 2022 led by ARCA, GSR, Psalion, Fasanara and Alchemy Ventures. This raises the firm’s total funds raised to $5 million.

According to Evans Varsamis, the project’s CEO, Mintify is designed both for “professional traders” and those wanting to “join the scene.”

Mintify supports Ethereum (ETH) and its layer-2 networks, Base and Blast. The project claims to have over 140,000 active wallets. It also plans to expand to support Bitcoin’s Ordinals and other blockchain networks and launch its token in 2024.

The announcement did not disclose what the funds would be used for.

Other funding rounds in July

In addition to these projects, notable funding rounds reported last week included mining giant Riot taking over its competitor Block Mining for $92.5 million and web3 gaming startup NPC Labs raising $18 million.

Prior to that, blockchain-based data platform Allium raised $16.5 million in a series A funding round.

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Bitcoin

AIOZ Network halts rally as cryptocurrencies mirror Bitcoin dip

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AIOZ Network, a decentralized crypto platform focused on integrating artificial intelligence into Web3 and storage solutions, has seen its upward momentum cool off amid broader crypto market declines.

The AIOZ Network (AIOZ) token traded to highs of $0.67 on July 29 before giving up some of the gains as the altcoin market pared gains alongside Bitcoin (BTC). The DePIN project’s slight dip at the time of writing meant AIOZ hovered just above $0.60, with 24-hour gains trimmed to around 10%.

However, AIOZ’s trading volume surged by over 570% to more than $32 million, indicating rising interest as it crossed into the top 100 coins by market cap. Despite this, profit-taking activities are likely as top cryptocurrencies shed recent gains.

Bitcoin plunge drags altcoins lower

Bitcoin’s recent plunge has significantly impacted altcoins, including AIOZ. BTC touched the $70,000 mark earlier in the day but fell to around $67,200 at the time of writing. This dip came after the U.S. government moved $2 billion worth of ‘Silk Road’ bitcoins, which caused a temporary market shake-up.

The top cryptocurrency reached lows of $66,700 before stabilizing, as on-chain data showed assets being transferred to two addresses. Blockchain intelligence platform Arkham suggested that one chunk of 10,000 BTC may have been sent to an institutional custody service.

AIOZ benefitted from Sei partnership

AIOZ’s bump followed the collaboration with Sei (SEI), a Layer-1 blockchain optimized for trading processes.

On July 25, the AIOZ Network team announced its collaboration with Sei to offer builders within the L1’s ecosystem access to key infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. These include AIOZ W3S, an S3 compatible object storage feature that leverages the AIOZ network of DePIN nodes.

Other products are AIOZ W3IPFS, which is a Web3 IPFS Pinning service; AIOZ W3AI, an AI-as-a-service platform that taps into the AIOZ DePIN GPU; and AIOZ W3Stream, an infrastructure that builders can leverage to host, share, and stream video (both on-demand and live-streaming).

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Công nghệ

Venture capital is flowing to Solana ecosystem | Opinion

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Solana has outperformed all expectations in the aftermath of the FTX black swan event, which saw the price of its native token plunge to single digits. Now, it stands as far more than the unlikely underdog. With VanEck’s recent filing for a Solana (SOL) exchange-traded fund, Solana is knocking on the doors of the big leagues.

But what makes Solana so powerful that Pantera Capital declared it the “macOS of blockchains”? It all boils down to the user experience. Solana is perhaps the most consumer-facing blockchain that seeks to meet users in the middle and even, sometimes, abstracts away its on-chain features.

Solana’s monolithic blockchain architecture

Unlike modular blockchains like Ethereum and Cosmos, the monolithic design of Solana’s network allows for vertical integration. It’s a design that optimizes every blockchain component, resulting in a seamless user experience, much like the one with Apple’s operating systems.

This architecture enables Solana to handle high throughput and low transaction fees. Both are crucial factors for decentralized finance applications, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs), and a host of other low-friction blockchain applications, such as the recently launched Blinks. Thanks to optimizing its entire stack, Solana is an attractive platform for developers and users alike, contributing to a surge in retail activity and decentralized exchange (DEX) volume on the network. As a result, Solana has seen growth spikes in both the number of active users and the volume of transactions, positioning it as a leading blockchain.

Growing on-chain activity

Solana’s growth is evident from its increase in unique active addresses from 14,000 in October 2020 to nearly 1.34 million today. Priority fees have also jumped from under $100,000 per month in mid-2023 to over $60 million in March 2024. The share of DEX volume on Solana has also risen significantly, from 0% in early 2021 to over 24% by May 2024, while 85% of all new tokens on DEXs as of May 2024 were based on Solana.

It’s fairly easy to explain these on-chain growth trends. Solana has become a popular favorite for creating new tokens and meme coins. The ease of use, combined with Solana’s speed and low transaction fees, have made it the destination of choice for casual traders. The rise in popularity of Telegram trading bots, no doubt, contributed to the on-chain explosion on Solana, with the market cap of community-driven meme tokens like Dogwifhat (WIF) having reached billions.

The world’s first mainstream blockchain

It would be short-sighted to attribute all of Solana’s growth and future promise to the money markets. Sure enough, platforms like MarginFi and Jupiter are pushing the envelope for simple defi products that don’t require users to have deep pockets in order to gain a meaningful edge in the trading experience. But Solana has proven itself to be capable of so much more.

Perhaps that explains why Pantera Capital just concluded a raise for a new fund aimed at purchasing up to $250 million worth of SOL tokens (at a significant discount since the tokens are from the FTX bankruptcy estate). This came on the heels of a mega investment decision in April by Pantera Capital and Galaxy Trading to buy around 30 million locked SOL tokens with a cumulative value of $1.9 billion.

Even though the price of SOL has risen over 723% in the past year, Solana provides many opportunities for venture capitalists outside of speculating on the SOL token. One thing has become clear: crypto-adjacent technologies and digital systems that otherwise integrate web3 functionalities are closer to home for the average user than blockchain-native products. Solana is already one of the most widely used blockchain networks and is firmly charting a course to take crypto products to mainstream consumers.

Why venture capital is bullish on Solana

If the Apple comparisons ring true, Solana would have succeeded in giving users refined web3 use cases that change how we communicate, transact, and create. From real estate to digital networks, from AI systems to identity verification services, there is no shortage of such projects being built on Solana. Privasea, for instance, is a technology that attests to human liveness to protect the digital presence of real people from bots and AI impersonations. With deep fakes, sybil activity, and other forms of digital fraud becoming more rampant than ever, solutions like Privasea are addressing a necessary aspect of daily life.

Another fine example is Grass, a layer built on Solana that is designed to give users control of the rails by which data itself is acquired for AI. The implication of its success would be to disrupt the billion-dollar AI industry, where only a handful of players have sufficient computing resources to crawl the entire internet. With over two million users already, Grass currently boasts the ability to fine-tune specific AI models and inform certain types of real-time inference. It is projected that, by the time Grass hits 25 million users, it will be capable of crawling enough data to train ChatGPT from scratch on a weekly basis!

As a final note, critics point to Solana’s history of network outages as a bearish factor. This perspective, of course, fails to consider that a major upgrade called Firedancer is slated to go live next year. Already, lite versions are being rolled out to incrementally boost the network’s resilience against congestion. Circumstances are conspiring to make Solana the home of a fresh generation of blockchain users, opening up untapped markets and revitalizing prevalent ones. Therefore, it only makes sense that venture capitalists are swooping in early with strategic long-term investments.

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Công nghệ

Is web3’s innovative explosion constraining user adoption? | Opinion

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In the decade since Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood first coined the term “web3,” we’ve seen the promise of a new digital empire rise into reality. Cryptocurrency has become a trillion-dollar mainstain of the global economy; NFTs have entrenched themselves in high-stakes art and investment trades; blockchain-based financial services have transitioned from novelty to normal.

For all the above, we can thank the dreamers and developers who took it upon themselves to create solutions that consumers didn’t even know they needed. It’s not a stretch to say that their creative determination built our nascent web3 empire; today, the ecosystem encompasses tens of thousands of dApps and an expansive variety of defi services.  

The question is, will that same creativity topple it, too?

Web3 proliferation is undercutting user adoption

In theory, web3’s innovative explosion should accelerate user adoption. As offerings multiply and diversify, the ecosystem naturally becomes more intriguing. However, while user adoption has been respectable enough in recent years, the rates we see today are far disproportionate to web3’s apparent value proposition.

Why? We have a chain fragmentation problem. According to a report from CoinPaper, over 1,000 distinct blockchains were operational as of January 2024. The Ethereum ecosystem features over 50 L2s today, with another 50-plus anticipated to go live soon, all competing for users and liquidity. 

This fragmentation has an intense impact on experience. Users often need to manually switch between networks within their wallets or interfaces, which can be confusing and lead to frustrating (or even costly) errors. L2, L2, and L3 chain proliferation forces users to keep their available assets and gas tokens in their wallets if they want to sample emerging applications built on those chains. And when they do, they face a learning curve: each blockchain poses its own set of rules, transaction fees, and functionalities.

Given these challenges, is it any wonder that mainstream consumers have hesitated to leap into web3? To unlock widespread user adoption among mainstream consumers, we must deliver more seamless, intuitive user experiences.  

The intuitive answer would seem to be to encourage developers to improve cross-chain compatibility and interoperability. However, relying on individual developers to provide global interoperability is a bit like asking someone to empty the ocean with a bucket: the scale of the challenge renders the request laughable. 

Chain fragmentation is constraining blockchain developers

Today, the web3 ecosystem features a thousand active blockchains; we could see ten times more in five years. Blockchains are proliferating at an exponential rate as innovators build chains that cater to particular industries, interests, or business use cases—and given the early success and adoption of the blockchain modularity thesis, this fragmentation will likely intensify. 

But even if chain proliferation was a tenth as quick as it is today, developers could never keep up. Unlike web2, where innovators can build once and attract users from across the internet with few limitations, web3 developers typically need to deploy instances of their apps on multiple chains to chase users and liquidity. As a result, developers need to spend their time building insecure, inefficient, and inelegant cross-chain messaging solutions rather than elevating their core value proposition. 

To return to our empire metaphor: instead of expanding web3’s reach and resources, architects and builders are reduced to patching cracks and digging connective tunnels between city sections, exhausting themselves with work that most denizens will never see or appreciate.  

So, how do we alleviate web3’s user experience problems and give developers more time for value-adding innovation? The answer lies in chain abstraction. 

Chain abstraction is a necessity for users, developers, and web3 overall

Imagine a world where our fragmented chains were abstracted away. Developers might build a single instance of their app on the chain of their choosing and attract users across any chain without interruption or inconvenience; users would not need to know which chain that app was built on or worry whether their assets and gas tokens are compatible. 

To build this functionally abstracted ecosystem, web3 advocates would need to meet several requirements. First, user balances would need to be unified, aggregated, and accountable across all chains to ensure that users could spend their balances freely without hassle while preventing intentional or accidental overdrafts. Additionally, developers should not need to incorporate complex integrations into their solutions to facilitate cross-chain accessibility.  

Much like Rome, an abstracted web3 empire won’t be built in a day—but there’s little doubt that we need to start building today. Unless there is an ecosystem-wide effort to prioritize abstraction, we won’t have the opportunity to unlock mainstream adoption. We owe it to the web3 architects and innovators to ensure that their visionary work receives the acclaim, appreciation, and utilization it deserves. 

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NFT

From views to value: The future of blockchain innovation in social media | Opinion

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The age of direct-to-consumer is here in all aspects of the game. The $250 billion creator economy isn’t immune to this change either.

For long, traditional social media platforms have acted as gatekeepers of revenue flows, limiting ways in which creators, their followers, and unassuming advertisers engage with each other.

After seeing multiple web2-based iterations fail to balance these three pillars, it would seem the future is rightfully leaning toward web3 to democratize social media.

Empowering creators, users, and advertisers

According to a report from Mordor Intelligence, the impact of blockchain in the media, advertising, and entertainment market is expected to soar to $27.29 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 78.49%. This transformation, which we are witnessing live, has been made possible with the emergence of defi integrations, which cut out the middleman and lay the groundwork for a new era of creativity, engagement, and trust. 

From offering solutions to dated problems like digital piracy, skewed royalty distributions, and monopoly of user data, blockchain tech is now finding rampant use in redefining human interactions. It starts with empowering creators, without whom such platforms become just another community chat center.

By thinking beyond brand engagements, SocialFi platforms are helping create a model where loyal, paying communities sustain creative livelihoods. While existing solutions focus on only the creator, the other two legs of the system — users and advertisers — can no longer be ignored. 

Here is where a tokenized ecosystem comes into play. By enabling creators to earn directly through audience engagement and rewarding every user for their digital footprint, SocialFi’s next phase should create mutually rewarding processes for everyone involved. This approach not only democratizes earnings to ensure creators are compensated fairly but also boosts user engagement by blending the interests of creators and their audiences. 

Additionally, advertisers who are part of this ecosystem have greater control over their spending, getting to engage better with the entire user spectrum and thus projecting better returns on their investment.

NFTs for digital ownership

A few years ago, NFTs appeared with a bang but quickly sobered down as hype clouded their real-world applications in tokenizing digital assets. That being said, the sector continues to see healthy funding as investors bet on its applications in industries like art, real estate, photography, music, and social content — in essence, a connection with RWA.

We’re increasingly seeing that merely making content decentralized isn’t enough. There needs to be a way to stamp your IP on it, and monetize forever. In this regard, NFTs enable creators to have true ownership with the added prospects of merchandising and recurring revenue. 

Another point to consider is the emergence of short-form visual content as the most popular form of content on the internet today. Despite their popularity, copyright violations and lack of creator credits disregard the efforts of digital participants. By offering genuine scope for visual content to be instantly converted into NFTs, SocialFi platforms can add a layer of transparency and monetization, previously untapped. 

Despite such inherent potential, integrating blockchain into the media industry is not without its challenges. Issues like scalability and interoperability aren’t new, and much rides on emerging low-code solutions that enable developers to build scalable L2s, more effectively and at lower costs.

Several networks, like Sui, for example, provide a robust on-chain development environment and equip platforms with high throughput—a crucial factor in media applications that demand high transaction speeds for optimum user experience. 

Building on-chain also ensures that decentralized and mainstream fintech tools can be plugged into a common ecosystem. Not to mention the preservation of intellectual property and thwarting cyber attacks by governing such platforms on-chain. All these factors are especially useful for seamless real-time payouts, including for micro-payments, which traditional fiat based transfers cannot service due to high transaction costs. 

The complexity of web3 interfaces may be its biggest impediment for now, but with newer platforms incorporating the familiarity of web2 with the flexibility of defi, the opportunity to bridge two different worlds has never been more achievable. 

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NFT

The illusion of web3 innovation in large consumer brands | Opinion

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Last month, rumors swirled that Nike might shut down RTFKT, the innovative digital sneaker brand it acquired for a staggering billion in 2021. Although the speculation turned out to be unfounded, it triggered a deeper contemplation: Has web3, with its promises of decentralization and digital ownership, truly delivered for consumer brands? My answer is a resounding no. 

Large consumer brands are simply too rigid and risk-averse to innovate effectively within this new paradigm. They have adopted web3 mechanics superficially, driven by short-term financial gains rather than genuine technological integration. Consequently, they’ve failed to find meaningful product-market fit.

The failure of large brands to innovate

Large consumer brands are notoriously slow to adapt to new technologies. Kodak, a pioneer in digital photography, clung to its film business and missed the digital revolution. Blockbuster ignored the rise of online streaming and paid the ultimate price. Similarly, big brands today are repeating these mistakes with web3. They dabble in NFTs and blockchain not out of a genuine desire to innovate but as a reactionary move to market trends. This superficial adoption lacks the depth and understanding necessary to leverage web3’s full potential.

From a philosophical perspective, this failure to innovate stems from the very nature of large corporations. They are, by design, hierarchical and centralized structures that prioritize stability and predictability over experimentation and risk-taking. In a Deleuzian sense, they are striated spaces that are rigidly organized and resistant to change. Web3, on the other hand, represents a smooth space, a realm of decentralization and fluidity. The inability of large brands to navigate this space is not surprising; it goes against their very essence.

The superficial adoption of web3

Nike’s acquisition of RTFKT was heralded as a bold move into the digital realm. Yet, despite the initial excitement, Nike has struggled to integrate its innovative spirit into its broader strategy. The recent shutdown rumors underscore the broader issue: large brands adopt web3 technologies for their financial potential, not for genuine innovation. The result is a series of half-hearted projects that fail to resonate with consumers.

This superficiality extends beyond Nike. Louis Vuitton’s foray into blockchain for product authentication, while aligning with the brand’s emphasis on luxury and authenticity, has not significantly impacted consumer engagement. The use of blockchain here is more of a marketing gimmick than a transformative tool. It’s a simulacrum of innovation, a hollow signifier devoid of true meaning.

Louis Vuitton’s NFT ventures

Louis Vuitton has launched several notable NFT initiatives, most prominently the “Louis: The Game” mobile app, which celebrated the brand’s 200th anniversary. In this game, players help the mascot, Vivienne, collect NFTs designed by renowned artist Beeple. The game aimed to educate and entertain while connecting players with the brand’s rich history. Despite achieving over two million downloads, the impact on consumer engagement remains questionable, as the NFTs are non-transferable and primarily serve as collectibles without broader utility​.

In a more recent venture, Louis Vuitton introduced the “VIA Treasure Trunk” NFTs, each priced at approximately ,000. These NFTs, tied to physical trunks, offer exclusive access to customizable products and early releases, targeting the brand’s elite clientele. However, this approach highlights the brand’s focus on exclusivity rather than democratizing access to digital ownership​.

The true potential of web3

Web3’s promise lies in its ability to democratize digital interactions and ownership. However, this potential remains largely untapped by big brands. The true pioneers of web3 are smaller, more agile companies that can take risks and innovate without the burden of bureaucratic inertia. Brands like 9dcc and RTFKT (in their original form) are at the forefront of this innovation. 9dcc, founded by crypto entrepreneur Gmoney, integrates NFTs into high-end fashion, creating a seamless blend of digital and physical experiences that genuinely resonate with consumers​. These companies are experimenting with new models of ownership, community engagement, and digital experiences that large brands can’t or won’t pursue.

In a sense, these smaller players are the nomads of the digital realm, traversing the smooth space of web3 with ease. They are not bound by the striations of corporate structure and can thus explore the full potential of this new frontier. They embody the Deleuzian concept of the rhizome, a decentralized, non-hierarchical system that can grow and adapt in any direction.

The future of web3 and consumer brands

For web3 to reach its full potential in consumer applications, the lead must come from these smaller innovators. They are the ones pushing the boundaries, experimenting with new technologies, and finding genuine ways to engage with consumers. Large brands, on the other hand, need to recognize their limitations and perhaps look to these smaller players for inspiration.

Web3 is not just about slapping an NFT on a product and calling it a day. It’s about rethinking the entire consumer experience, from ownership to engagement to value creation. Until large brands understand this, they will continue to miss the mark, and the true potential of web3 will remain unrealized.

The philosophical implications are clear: the future belongs to those who can navigate the smooth space of web3, not those who cling to the striated structures of the past. It belongs to the nomads, the rhizomes, and the innovators who are not afraid to experiment and fail. It belongs to those who understand that true innovation is not about financial gain but about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

In conclusion, the failure of large consumer brands to drive web3 adoption highlights a fundamental truth: innovation requires more than just financial investment. It requires a willingness to take risks, to experiment, and to truly understand the technology. Until big brands embrace this mindset, the future of web3 will be shaped by the bold, the nimble, and the genuinely innovative. 

The question is not whether web3 will transform consumer experiences but who will be at the forefront of this transformation. The answer, I believe, lies in the decentralized, fluid, and endlessly creative realm of the small and agile. The future is theirs to seize.

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DeFi

Web3 games must focus on quality over tech hype to succeed, claims Aphone CBO

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William Paul Peckham, chief business officer at APhone, recently sat down for an exclusive interview with crypto.news, offering his insights on the intersection of Web3 and the mobile gaming sector. 

Mobile gaming is booming. It’s a .74 billion market, commanding half of the global gaming industry. With the core appeal of the sector being accessibility and convenience, it has become a dominant force in the entertainment business.

But innovation never rests. Enter Web3, the game-changing catchall phrase promising decentralization, security, and true ownership of digital assets. With it comes the promise to empower players, giving them control over their in-game assets and creating new economic opportunities.

Yet, this revolution faces hurdles. Developers struggle with blockchain integration, and user adoption remains slow. 

So, what’s holding back Web3’s entry into mobile gaming? Peckham believes that the main barriers are restrictive app store policies and hardware limitations that hinder broader accessibility.

What are the main barriers to entry for new users in Web3 gaming, and what steps are being taken to simplify the onboarding process for a broader audience?

Hardware is probably the biggest one. We’re seeing plenty of AAA Web3 games hit the market or getting ready for launch. These games require a certain level of GPU spec to run, which means they are targeting a specific type of gamer. For the mobile gamer, there is now a rise in mobile Web3 games, but they’re accompanied by a misconception that to play these games, you need the latest iPhone or Samsung. It’s just not true. APhone lets anyone run Web3 games on even the most basic old smartphone for just a year, lowering the barriers in a major way. 

What challenges do mobile game developers face when integrating blockchain technology to support live, dynamic Web3 gaming environments, and how can these challenges be mitigated?

Players are naturally drawn to the allure of immersive graphics and gameplay experiences and seek the thrill of cutting-edge advancements. But, these elements are also a real problem when it comes to potentially limiting the available player market. Whereas many PCs can support these abilities, gamers – especially those in developing nations – simply don’t have the latest hardware. To ensure these players aren’t missing out on the action, it’s important for developers to be aware of solutions that can use the decentralized cloud to handle the CPU and graphics requirements so that players can log in regardless of the hardware device they own.

Given the current landscape of mobile gaming and its rapid growth, how can developers ensure that Web3 elements do not compromise the accessibility and user-friendliness that mobile gamers are accustomed to?

I think the key thing is to focus on the quality of the game and make the Web3 elements secondary. Not many players are choosing games because of NFTs or because they like a Web3 wallet design. They’re choosing games because they like the graphics, the premise sounds interesting, the lore is well-designed, and the gameplay is engaging. Also, if Web3 games require too much knowledge or too many setup steps, they’re going to alienate less technical players who just want to get straight into the game. 

How do you envision Web3 technologies altering the traditional revenue models in mobile gaming, particularly with the introduction of microtransactions and tokenization?

Incentives are key. Web3 has proven that if you design an intelligent incentive system, you can attract users and earn their loyalty. This is the complete opposite of mobile gaming, which traditionally has required users to pay to play, pay to unlock features, or basically spend to get beyond the freemium version. If mobile games were to instead incentivize their users rather than looking for ways to exploit them financially, they can tap into a whole new type of user and unlock a new wave of gamers. For all of this to be successful, however, we need to get past Apple and Google app stores, which aren’t amiable toward Web3 technologies, for the most part.

In what ways can Web3 mobile gaming platforms leverage blockchain technology to enhance security and trust, particularly in peer-to-peer transactions and the ownership of digital assets?

Gatekeeping and censorship are huge issues that stand in the way of a lot of innovation this is partly why we created APhone. The fact that app stores can delete apps or users that don’t align with arbitrary policies or some political change is a gross misstep. Web3 mobile games put the power to choose in the hands of the user. You are human, and you want to play a game. Why does it matter where you come from or if you can earn tokens from the game? The new internet is a more freeing place. I also think the transparency of interactions between players and the immutable nature of digital asset ownership will prove to be must-haves for players. Being able to store assets in your wallet on the blockchain means that even if something goes wrong with the game, like bugs, lags, freezes, or whatever, you still have the asset under your ownership and control.

How is APhone navigating these waters?

Unless Apple and Google change their policies on Web3 technology and crypto over the next years, I foresee a battle taking place between virtual cloud phones and Web3-enabled handsets. Our approach is to give developers more of an incentive to deploy apps and users more sovereignty over their data and abilities to access Web3 technology. APhone’s Web3 virtual cloud smartphone app is a more viable method of getting gamers into Web3 games, as they don’t need to buy a new device; they can just use their smartphone and access APhone through that. There’s no need for them to be concerned about hardware limitations based on their smartphone – they can leverage RAM and GPU via the cloud. 

Based on current trends, what are your predictions for the integration of Web3 technologies into mainstream mobile gaming over the next five years?

Mobile gaming has grown in popularity. In 2024, the mobile gaming market is projected to generate a revenue of US .74 billion worldwide, and mobile gaming makes up 50% of the global gaming market. The entire Web3 gaming market, regardless of console or device, is worth bn or so by comparison. So, over the next five years, Web3 is going to take a large percentage of that, but for it to work in this growing space, I see the need to make use of existing hardware instead of requiring people to buy new devices.

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Công nghệ

Sharding tech makes 100x scalability and seamless interoperability a reality | Opinion

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On the first Prime Day of 2023, Amazon facilitated the sale of 375 million items. Just one store, during one of its busiest days of the year, provides the ultimate convenience for its users—a testament to the decades of infrastructure development in web2.

Contrast this with the never-ending possibilities of a unified web3 ecosystem, which, although spoken of widely, seems increasingly challenging to achieve, characterized by fragmented systems, prolonged transaction times, and prohibitive costs.

Advocates of web3 have long sought to accelerate efforts to mirror web2’s seamless experience and benchmarks. The biggest impediment to this dream is ensuring scalable networks that retain decentralization with growth. 

Enter sharding tech. It has spoken widely and been experimented globally, and now, finally, it is a reality. From what the developer community has seen of it so far, it may well be the messiah the web3 community has been long waiting for. And rightly so!

Sharding tech at work

Let’s accept it. The existing web3 model is relatively slow, inefficient, and costly. It’s difficult to convince the majority of the world’s internet users, let alone companies and even the developer community, to make a fast switch from the simplicity and convenience of web2.

Sharding tech’s newfound emergence now makes it more than an urban myth. While the tech has been spoken of quite a bit by the industry’s titans, the launch of the recent Sovereign Chains is the first-of-its-kind application incorporating this groundbreaking tech. One that is bound to advance the use cases of the top L1s and hundreds of L2s looking to solve for scalability and interoperability. 

At its core, sharding involves splitting the network into smaller, more manageable pieces, maintaining security, speed, negligible costs, and energy efficiency even at times of exponential activity. Theoretically sound, its practical implementation in Sovereign Chains now proves that it can solve web3’s most pressing challenges, in a way that’s economical, developer friendly and extremely resource efficient. This means creating a blockchain capable of 100X scaling compared to Ethereum or Bitcoin, at a fraction of time and energy. 

One of the biggest sectors that will benefit from sharding tech is decentralized finance. It’s no secret that to compete effectively with the current financial system, web3 must offer solutions that are tenfold superior in every measurable way. By deploying sharding tech, it’s possible to ensure that end users not only achieve parity with the legacy system but also enjoy improvements such as globally fair access, open playing fields, transparency, value creation, privacy, and security. 

The tech is built in a way that allows premier defi platforms to no longer be bound by blockchain-specific limitations, enabling interoperability with other defi products on any major chain, eliminating liquidity fragmentation, and unlocking significant capital efficiency improvements.

Beyond defi, the applications of sharding-tech-powered Sovereign Chains extend to gaming, healthcare, supply chain, education, government, and enterprise sectors. In gaming, for example, high throughput and low latency, combined with adjustable transaction fees, enable radically different business models and gameplays. Developers can introduce innovative in-game reward structures, new economies, auctions, time-sensitive airdrops, and more, ensuring seamless user experiences regardless of scale.

Understandably, all this leads to the foundation for the first-ever interconnected web3 ecosystem, inheriting capabilities such as on-chain 2FA, native standards, user-friendly aliases and more, to address critical challenges hindering widespread adoption of web3.

Driving adoption from the ground up

To gain mileage for any major breakthrough in the web3 world, the first step is to take the developer community into confidence. Almost the opposite of how consumer products in the traditional world target end consumers. What’s common, though, is the purpose to simplify people’s lives by acting on the needs of early adopters.

Composability of digital assets and unbreakable security are other key advantages that come with sharding tech’s scalable architecture, enabling developers to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure.

Sharding tech provides a robust and scalable foundation for building the next generation of dApps and interoperability of L2s with major crypto chains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Something that’s much needed for developers to leverage multiple ecosystems’ strengths to create more versatile and powerful products for last-mile user consumption. 

The merging of various chains into an ecosystem goes beyond the traditional bridging of assets. Enhanced smart contract capabilities, custom VM environments, and comprehensive SDKs empower developers to create, test, and launch solutions that natively work on multiple chains more efficiently. This holistic approach lowers barriers to entry, inviting more talent, including the current web2 dev community, to explore blockchain tech without the limitation of past iterations. 

Advancing the case of Sovereign Chains

As the spotlight shines on the need for scalable web3 infrastructure in a world where security and data concerns are fast imploding, expect to see network features such as parallel processing, confidential transactions, or VM-specific improvements that can extend the inherent functionalities.

Achieving the seamless and expansive reach of existing web2 technology while fostering collaboration between chains is an ambitious yet attainable goal. Through sharding technology and the introduction of Sovereign Chains, it is now possible to not just dream but actually build a scalable, secure, and cost-efficient architecture that can support the creativity of current and future web3 developers.

Tổng hợp và chỉnh sửa: ThS Phạm Mạnh Cường
Theo Crypto News

DeFi

Space and Time debuts sub-second ZK prover

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California-based crypto startup Space and Time has released a new high-performance ZK prover to improve on-chain transactions and defi growth.

Space and Time (SxT), a custom-built compute layer, granted public access to its sub-second zero-knowledge (ZK) prover stack, dubbed Proof of SQL. The ZK-proof system was previously made available to a few SxT clients in alpha last August.

ZK provers were necessitated by privacy needs, a cornerstone of cryptographic technology. The fundamental thesis of ZK models allows users to demonstrate that data or transactions are valid or true without revealing additional information. 

Several web3 developers, including Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, have stressed the role of ZK stacks in building reliable decentralized finance (defi) ecosystems. The technology is viewed as crucial for ensuring safe on-chain interactions for smart contract protocols and end-users. However, ZK proofs have been known to sometimes slow down execution. 

SxT co-founder and head of research Jay White, PhD, said his team developed the Proof of SQL program “so that smart contracts and AI agents can ask questions about a chain’s activity, as well as off-chain data, and receive back trustless SQL query results on-chain during a transaction without having to wait for 30 minute proof times.”

The web3 data warehouse said its Proof of SQL delivers better-optimized processing architecture for large-scale operations compared to generalized zk-Virtual Machines and co-processors. 

According to SxT and White, the ZK prover executed queries for over 100,000 row tables in under one second on a single GPU united. The model can be integrated into zkVMs on blockchains like Ethereum (ETH) for faster speeds and bigger tasks.

Tổng hợp và chỉnh sửa: ThS Phạm Mạnh Cường
Theo Crypto News