crypto ecosystem

Yakoa raises $4.8M to help detect NFT fraud for platforms and creators • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Crypto, crypto ecosystem, funding, NFT, startupNo Comments

Yakoa, an NFT fraud detection startup, has raised $4.8 million to build tools to fight intellectual property fraud in web3, the company exclusively told ZebethMedia. One of the most common attacks Yakoa sees is people making copies of NFTs and claiming them as their own work, Andrew Dworschak, co-founder of the startup, said. Yakoa provides tools and an indexer that detects copies or infringement probabilities on original NFTs, ranging from direct forgery to partial or stylistic forgery, which will then notify platforms, brands or creators of these fraudulent activities. The funding round was led by Collab+Currency, Volt Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital with participation from Data Community Fund, Alliance DAO, Uniswap Labs Ventures, Orange DAO, Time Zero Capital, gmjp, Sunset Ventures and FAST by GETTYLAB, as well as angel investors. The capital will be used to grow its machine learning and data engineering teams internally, according to Graham Robinson, co-founder of Yakoa. The platform identifies an NFT’s first existence across a number of blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon and more. “In terms of blockchains, having every blockchain is on our road map,” Dworschak said. “The belief we have is it doesn’t matter where you mint IP or publish an address, what matters is that it’s publicly verifiable.” Anyone can make “a quick buck off of anyone,” Dworschak noted. “It’s really hard to protect against this stuff ’cause there’s so many assets. In some cases [fraudsters are] photoshopping and cropping or changing colors, when they’re really using someone else’s IP.” “When we’re doing an attribution search, we’re trying to figure out where an asset might be derived from and give as much information as we can,” Dworschak said. “Two assets can be similar and not fraudulent and that’s completely appropriate. There’s a lot of edge cases we need to be aware of and other ones that pop up in a similar vein and some use cases we take on as a platform and give people the chance to record their opinion.” “The entire ecosystem is open and we want to continue to make sure it stays that way,” Robinson said. “We’re trying to create the tools for the industry to use and they can use it in their environment.” The name Yakoa came from the saying, “A-OKAY,” but backward, Dworschak said. “When you’re using the blockchain, you want to make sure it’s ‘A-OKAY,’ so that’s why we named it that.” Today, the NFT market has “already demonstrated a lot of potential,” Dworschak said. “It has created types of assets not bound to a specific platform that allows creators to publish their assets and trade them freely across platforms. It’s a brand new method of commerce and it’ll spill over to what’s unimaginable today.” Long-term, fraud protection will be something that can run in the backend for platforms, Robinson said. “There’s a bunch of services that can start from this IP protection.”

FTX and Avalanche co-led $5M round for Joepegs NFT marketplace • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in Avalanche, blockchain, Crypto, crypto ecosystem, FTX, NFT, NFT market, NFT marketplace, NFTsNo Comments

Although FTX collapsed last week, raises their ventures team contributed to are still being announced. Joepegs, an NFT marketplace on the Avalanche blockchain, raised $5 million in a seed round led by now-defunct FTX Ventures and the Avalanche Foundation, its co-founders who go by the pseudonyms Cryptofish and 0xMurloc, exclusively told ZebethMedia. “The funding from FTX Ventures was completed in June, and have since been transferred out of FTX prior to recent bankruptcy events,” the team said in a statement. The marketplace launched in May and has grown rapidly to the largest NFT marketplace on Avalanche with over $3.4 million in secondary NFT sales and 12,000 users. It also has an in-house production unit, Joe Studios, as well as an NFT Launchpad, which has on boarded over 50 projects to the Avalanche ecosystem, the company said. The co-founders also founded and remain involved in the operations of Trader Joe, a decentralized exchange on Avalanche (not to be confused with the American supermarket chain), which launched in early July 2021 and has a total trading volume over $88 billion. “As we started building this, we realized very quickly that in order to deliver a platform that really helps users discover great NFTs we have to invest in a lot more platform capabilities so that’s what the fundraise will go toward,” 0xMurloc said. “On top of that, we also create a lot of content on our end. We did this at the start to fill a need. Marketplaces are only as good as the content in the ecosystem.” Joepegs also invests in the operational side, beyond Avalanche, to partner with different traders, projects and artists “across the ecosystem,” 0xMurloc said. “That is something we do ferociously.” Earlier this year, Avalanche dove further into the NFT space after partnering with the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which now operates on the blockchain alongside other platforms like Joepegs and Kalao. With about $408.2 million in total sales, Avalanche is the seventh-largest blockchain by NFT sales volume, CryptoSlam data shows. “People are focused on what is happening to the greater market,” 0xMurloc said. “Yes, there are less people playing with crypto and the NFT market as a whole right now, but, we do see that the interest from creators, brands and projects to dive deeper into web3 and NFTs – that appetite is not softening.” There are a lot of companies, creators and artists who are “eager to explore this form of commerce and community building,” 0xMurloc added. “We’re very bullish on the future of NFTs and what it could bring,” Cryptofish said. “The idea that you can have clothing backed by NFTs is very bullish. You see that with Azuki with their skateboards and Nike sneakers and we want to be on the forefront of NFT innovation with digital stuff and clothing.” As more alternative NFT products come out, NFT markets will have to adapt to accommodate, Cryptofish added. “Our vision on NFT marketplaces will have to be like Amazon over time. Initially it was a bookstore and now they’ve branched out to sell everything. That’s how I see things going.” In the short term, the team plans to continue driving in-house content and has new collections coming up in the near future, 0xMurloc said. “Longer term, we want to branch into different flavors of NFTs and explore what Fish mentioned, whether it’s fashion, physical merchandise or gaming. We’re excited about what’s to come.”

Can proof-of-reserves prevent future crypto exchange collapses? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Binance, Chainlink, Crypto, crypto ecosystem, crypto exchanges, EC Blockchain, EC Cryptocurrency, FTXNo Comments

A number of crypto exchanges are rushing to publish proof-of-reserves in a seeming attempt to reassure investors their funds are safe as fellow exchange FTX melts down. Proof-of-reserves (PoR) are independent audits by third parties that aim to provide transparency and evidence that a custodian holds the assets it claims to own on behalf of its clients. Auditors then aggregate balances into something called a Merkle tree, which entails all client balances. FTX exploded this week following a CoinDesk report that showed a June 30 balance sheet of its affiliate trading firm, Alameda Research, was largely made up of FTX’s native token, FTT. This all could have been avoided with PoR, Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, said to ZebethMedia. “There was a balance sheet issue and it became known to many depositors all at once,” Nazarov said. “And because it was a surprise, there was a bank run that led to insolvency.” But imagine if depositors knew what FTX and Alameda Research’s balance sheets were from the beginning.

Binance’s plan to acquire FTX is ‘real-life Game of Thrones’ as crypto winter winds blow • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in Binance, Crypto, crypto ecosystem, crypto exchanges, cryptocurrency, EC Blockchain, EC Cryptocurrency, FTXNo Comments

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, has signed a letter of intent to buy its closest competitor, FTX, making huge waves in the crypto community after the putative billionaire CEOs of the exchanges engaged in a multi-day public dispute on Twitter. “It’s like real-life ‘Game of Thrones,’” Alex Taub, founder and CEO of DAO-focused platform Upstream, said to ZebethMedia in a message. Today’s acquisition news was bigger than the HBO show’s dramatic “Red Wedding” massacre scene. FTX was quick to spin the potential sale of its business as a win. “A *huge* thank you to [Changpeng “CZ” Zhao], Binance, and all of our supporters,” FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said in a tweet on Tuesday regarding the deal. “This is a user-centric development that benefits the entire industry. CZ has done, and will continue to do, an incredible job of building out the global crypto ecosystem, and creating a freer economic world.” But it’s a slam-dunk outcome for Binance after a heated spat. Investors, founders, and operators throughout the crypto community noted that the deal makes Binance appear strong amid a bear market for the sector while raising questions about FTX’s solvency and financial performance. “It’s crypto winter now, and it’s time when the market checks everyone for weakness,” Serhii Zhdanov, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange EXMO, said to ZebethMedia. “Exchanges as main players bear the main damage because of low liquidity, while their main income is from trading fees. It’s enough to check the change [in] trading volumes for the last year to understand how tough the situation is. “Naturally, it’s time of mergers and acquisitions,” Zhdanov said. “We might see more such stories in the near future.”

Stablecoin demand maintains pace as other cryptocurrencies tumble • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Crypto, crypto ecosystem, cryptocurrencies, EC Blockchain, EC Cryptocurrency, stablecoin, stablecoinsNo Comments

More investors are swapping cryptocurrencies for stablecoins, signaling a potential shift toward the less risky asset. Stablecoin dominance is near 16%, about 2.7 percentage points away from an all-time high set in mid-June. (This percentage is determined by how much of the total crypto market capitalization is made up of stablecoins; it is, from one perspective, a bearish indicator the stronger it becomes.) “Stablecoins have been growing independently of market cycles simply because of their ability to improve financial inclusion,” Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of the world’s largest stablecoin by volume, Tether, said to ZebethMedia. “Stablecoins are also created based on market supply and demand, so when some crypto prices fall, traders may see this as a buy opportunity to use stablecoin to move in and out of positions.” The total stablecoin supply peaked in early April around $182.6 billion but has since fallen about 22% to $141.3 billion as of October 18, data from The Block shows. Even with that said, stablecoins have expanded in volume vastly over the years, and will continue to grow as the crypto market develops, Ardoino added. “Stablecoins are able to make the economy much more efficient by bringing digital dollars to the real world, putting U.S. dollars on a blockchain, attracting liquidity to the currency and allowing it to increase its dominance.”

Solana’s web3 phone is an ‘opportunity’ against Google and Apple, co-founder says • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Crypto, crypto ecosystem, cryptocurrencies, smartphones, SolanaNo Comments

It’s been almost four months since the layer-1 blockchain Solana announced its web3-focused smartphone Saga and as the phone is approaching its official release date, the plan has shifted. “Our goal isn’t to sell 10 million units,” Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, said onstage at Disrupt 2022. “We would be very happy with 25,000 to 50,000 units sold in the next year, that would be awesome.” While it’s not easy to launch a new phone successfully — as we’ve seen with countless other companies’ efforts — Solana is looking to approach the launch differently, Yakovenko hinted. This is a tool to attract developers, Yakovenko added. “This is a developer play.” Prior to launching Solana, Yakovenko spent most of his professional career at Qualcomm and has helped other major tech companies like Facebook and Windows create mobile phones. It’s worth noting a bunch of those failed. But the main difference now is it’s not as capital intensive, Yakovenko said. “This is one of the moon shots,” Yakovenko said. “The reason why we can do this is because it’s cheap enough to try. It’s not going to break the bank or anything like that.” The phone market has matured to a point where teams can build a device quickly with small modifications to an Android so it can enable a web3 experience, Yakovenko noted. “The opportunity exists right now because we don’t need to get $10 million sales off the bat. We can actually target a very small niche audience which is crypto-heavy web3 users.” If there’s a web3 distribution channel for mobile crypto developers, it can open up opportunities for them to build experiences outside of the laptop-centric digital asset ecosystem, Yakovenko said. Users won’t have to sign into four different applications to create a crypto transaction, he joked. “Those are the flywheels we need for the next cycle.” “Imagine you have 50,000 to 100,000 people who trade daily on Magic Eden,” Yakovenko said. “That’s a more lucrative distribution channel for developers than the app stores with hundreds of millions of users. For web3 all the money is in these small niche groups right now.” Separately, the web3-focused phone will allow content creators and platforms to enable digital ownership rights to both organizations and users – opposed to handing over the 30% tax Apple and Google have for in app sales. The idea of true digital ownership means the digital items have to be treated like physical ones, and this isn’t something Apple or Google are built around, Yakovenko said. “They’re built around a rent-seeking model where all the content is owned by the creator and you as a user rent it. When you buy a video from Amazon, you don’t actually own it; everyone realizes that you don’t own it.” So neither Google nor Apple want to really take on web3 because true digital asset ownership disrupts their business models, Yakovenko said. “When you’re the content creator and you have an app on the iOS store, you can take the 30% fee and eat it and give it to Apple. Magic Eden can’t sell a $10,000 NFT for $13,000 on the iOS app, they can’t tack on tax nor can they eat it because that’ll destroy profits.” “The opportunity is here right now,” Yakovenko said. “Both Google and Apple, I don’t know what’s going to have to change internally for them to give up the 30% tax on apps. It’s just too good for them to give it up in the next five years.” So while those two mega companies continue implementing their 30% tax, there’s a “wedge that exists.” Saga plans to implement digital asset products and services, so users can transact with their cryptocurrency through the device, opposed to a laptop browser. In addition to the announcement of Saga, it is also launching Solana Mobile Stack, or SMS, which is a web3 layer for Solana built on the phone. “Let’s say crypto actually grows from 10 million monthly active users to 100 million monthly active users in the next five years I would imagine so does the SMS stack or the phone itself,” Yakovenko said. Then, maybe Google or Apple might change their mind on the tax and would allow for similar web3 experiences that Saga is hoping to have. “That would be a win,” Yakovenko said. “We would have won for everyone in crypto. That would be awesome.”