Asset management firm Ark Invest has acquired over 225.000 shares of Square for over $50 million. Ethereum scaling network Polygon wants to bridge Web 2 and Web 3 gaming with blockchain and NFTs. These and more news in this practical daily summary so that you are always informed with the most recent events that occur within the crypto world.
Bitcoin and Blockchain Adoption
📍ARK Invest buys more Square shares after announcing its new products. ARK Invest, the asset management company founded and led by Cathie Wood in 2014, is increasing its participación in Square with the purchase of 225.937 shares. The purchase of the new shares comes after Square CEO Jack Dorsey announced the company's plans to offer decentralized products. Last week, Dorsey wrote that Square is creating a new division of labor that will focus on building a development platform for programmers, where they will be able to create new products and services focused on decentralization.
📍The Axie Infinity platform is being overwhelmed by its own success. The high level of user demand for Axie Infinity caused the server to crash, something that may take several days to fix, according to its developers. Through Twitter, the Axie developers shared a statement informing that the exponential growth of the platform is what is causing the problems with the server. They also clarified that the team is working on solving the problems and errors detected but that this may take some time.
📍The documentary “Ethereum: The Infinite Garden” raised almost $2 million in 3 days. On Twitter, the creators of the documentary inspired by the second cryptocurrency largest on the market, revealed that they had raised more than 1.030 ETH for the development of the documentary in just 3 days.
The documentary is set to premiere in 2023, the producers said, to showcase Ethereum's potential as a living ecosystem rather than a mere machine.
NFT and DeFi Markets
📍Polygon, Ethereum's scalability solution, is also making its entry into the world of NFTs. On Monday, the network's developers announced the creation of a new platform focused on video games, blockchain and NFTs. Polygon Studios, as their new unit is called, will bridge the gap between Web 2 and Web 3 games. This new division already has more than 100.000 active players.
📍China's Taobao Maker Festival will be celebrated this year alongside NFTs. Alibaba, the organizer of the event, will exhibit real estate based on non-fungible tokens for the first time at the Taobao Maker Festival. NFT, designed by artist Huang Heshan, depict different themes in the real estate and construction sector. The tokens were designed in conjunction with Web3Games and NEAR Protocol and showcase representations of hundreds of digital buildings, such as 10 luxury single-family villas, 300 high-end buildings and much more, within the virtual community of Bu Tu Garden.
The purchase of these digital assets will be available with China's digital currency, the DCEP or digital yuan.
📍The South China Morning Post, China's leading newspaper with more than a hundred publishers, will launch NFTs to commemorate its history. The Hong Kong-based newspaper is partnering with The Sandbox, one of the industry’s leading metaverses, to launch collectible tokens inspired by “the factual accounts of history and authentic historical assets” the publication has collected over its 118-year history.
The South China Morning Post will launch its own NFT standard, called “ARTIFACT,” to represent its story on the blockchain. The goal is to make all those moments that are part of our collective human experience decentralized and accessible to everyone, it explained.
Miners
📍Crypto mining firm Iris Energy is raising nearly $200 million in a new funding round. According to report Iris Energy is raising about $200 million in a new funding round involving several major industry investors, according to Bloomberg. The company is seeking a direct listing on the Nasdaq, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
📍Black Rock Petroleum Company will start mining bitcoins. In a release The firm recently announced that it is partnering with Optimum Mining Host Limited Liability Co to host and operate nearly 1 million Bitcoin mining rigs, which will be relocated from China to Canada. The mining machines will be located in gas production areas to ensure their operability.
Development and Technology
📍Neon Labs launches the Neon Ethereum Virtual Machine on the Solana testnet. The Neon EVM was designed to allow any developer to execute smart contracts (smart contracts) of the network Ethereum directly on the blockchain Solana. Neon Labs is committed to developing interoperable solutions that allow different blockchain networks, such as Ethereum and Solana, to connect to each other in order to offer more efficient and accessible products. Solana offers a faster and more scalable blockchain than Ethereum, which improves application performance and reduces gas costs when interacting with them.
Rules and Regulations
📍Tianjin Natural Resources Protection Association launched China's first blockchain-based carbon offset certificate. According to reported According to a local media outlet, the certificate was launched on Ant Group’s AntChain enterprise blockchain. According to the release, blockchain technology has enormous potential to offer immutability and traceability in the issuance, trading and auditing of carbon offsets to the environment. The launch of this first certificate on blockchain corresponds with China’s plans to become a greener country, with a significant reduction in its energy consumption and carbon emissions to the environment by 2050.
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