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Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are evolving from a niche interest to a mainstream conversation. The variety of NFT art — from cuddly to edgy to menacing — is drawing in a new audience of enthusiasts. Beyond the art, NFTs are providing a glimpse into a new layer of social interaction. When framed as micro-social networks, NFTs could lead the way to a new form of social media based on creativity, ownership and contribution.  Groups serve as epicenters of NFTs projects Every week, dozens of Discord and Telegram groups appear in support of new NFT projects. These groups serve as the epicenter for a project and help people connect and learn about the NFT space. A quick listen to a Twitter Spaces conversation with one of these groups reveals a wide range of people interested in NFTs. Some member...

Facebook has been planning its foray into the metaverse for some time now — possibly even several years. But it’s only recently that its ambitious expansion plans have catapulted the concept into mainstream headlines across the globe. Renaming the parent company to Meta was perhaps the biggest, boldest statement of intent the firm could make. Suddenly, major news outlets were awash with explainer articles, while finance websites have been bubbling with excitement about the investment opportunities in this newly emerging sector.  However, within the crypto sphere, the response has been understandably more muted. After all, decentralized versions of the metaverse have been in development around these parts for several years now. Even worse, the tech giants’ cavalier attitude to user pri...

If you look at crypto assets’ price movements as a series of isolated events, the picture is messy. Sure, some traders can occasionally win big off one-time events or thanks to sensing a meme-inspired trend. In the long run, however, most of these “fortuitous” traders tend to lose. Why? Because they have to pick big-time winners to cover all the times they miss their targets. For every Shiba Inu, there were a thousand coins that didn’t moon. Which is why crypto traders who employ processes rather than try to predict events are more likely to fill their bags in the long run. They trade on probabilities rather than hoping that Token X goes parabolic next week. They win on aggregate numbers instead of sexy-looking one-offs. If you offered them average weekly returns of over 5% on trades…...

In a report aimed at assessing threats to Cloud users, Google’s Cybersecurity Action Team said that some attackers are exploiting “poorly configured” accounts to mine cryptocurrency. On Wednesday, the Google team said out of 50 analyzed incidents that compromised the Google Cloud Protocol, 86% were related to crypto mining. The hackers used the compromised Cloud accounts to access resources from individuals’ CPUs or GPUs to mine tokens or take advantage of storage space when mining coins on the Chia Network. However, Google’s team reported that many of the attacks were not limited to a single malicious action like crypto mining, but were also staging points to conduct other hacks and identify other vulnerable systems. According to the cybersecurity team, the actors usually gained access to...

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a new limit on the total transaction calldata in a block to decrease the overall transaction calldata gas cost over the ETH network.  Buterin’s post on the Ethereum Magicians forum, EIP-4488, highlights concerns regarding high transaction fees on layer-one blockchains for rollups and the considerable amount of time to implement and deploy data sharding: “Hence, a short-term solution to further cut costs for rollups and to incentivize an ecosystem-wide transition to a rollup-centric Ethereum is desired.” While the entrepreneur cited an alternative wherein the gas costs parameters could be decreased without further adding a limit to the block size, he foresees a security concern in decreasing the calldata gas cost from 16 to 3: “[This] wo...

Bitcoin (BTC) has stabilized at around $55,000 after dropping by $6,000 in a single day — but crypto market sentiment is still in shock. According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index as of Nov. 27, emotions are now at the most fearful since late September. Crypto sentiment dives into “extreme fear” Fear & Greed, which takes a basket of factors to compute a standardized sentiment score for crypto markets from 1-100, currently sits at 21. Friday took its toll on the metric, with the score more than halving in 24 hours from its previous position of 47. Those two readings correspond to sentiment going from “neutral” to “extreme fear” — missing out on the “fear” zone altogether. Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me While...

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance (DeFi) newsletter. Ether (ETH) is burning at a rapid rate. Read on to discover the statistics behind Ethereum’s pursuit of deflationary mechanics. What you’re about to read is a shorter, more succinct version of the newsletter. For a comprehensive summary of DeFi’s developments over the last week, subscribe below. $4.24 billion in ETH burned since EIP-1559 event Blockchain analytics platform CryptoRank shared quantitative data this week that revealed an excess of 1 million Ether, worth approximately $4.24 billion, has been burned since August’s implementation of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559. Also referred to as the London hard fork, the event marked a significant evolution of Ethereum’s fee structure...

DappRadar, a popular platform that provides analytics and portfolio tracking for the decentralized application (DApp) and nonfungible token (NFT) markets, has announced an upcoming company restructuring to a decentralized business model, in addition to releasing a native governance token, RADAR. Founded in 2018, the site currently boasts over 4 million global users, 600,000 of which are uniquely active on a monthly basis, as well as playing host to over 8,300 DApps and 27 protocols. The news was announced during a metaverse event in Somnium Space on Thursday. The purpose behind the evolution is to expand DappRadar’s ecosystem to a global audience and establish itself as one of the world’s leading DApp stores.  DappRadar co-founder and CEO Skirmantas Januskas shared his per...