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TOKYO, May 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 28th, 2023, Cryptogram Venture (CGV) announced that the second Tokyo Web3 Spring Hackathon (TWSH), is initiated by CGV and jointly supported by experts ...

The second Japan Web3 Hackathon competition, Tokyo Web3 Spring Hackathon, is about to officially begin

Yahoo Finance

Revenue growth: 35% increase in FY 2022 revenue to $23.8 million, as compared to $17.6 million in FY 2021. Strong gross profit margin: FY 2022 gross profit margin increased slightly to 42.4% from 42.2% in FY 2021. Strong cash position: cash and cash ...

WISeKey Reports Full Year 2022 Audited Consolidated Financial Results

TMCnet

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FOX 40 WICZ TV

But the databases are immutable, says Ashok Ranadive, director of professional services at the enterprise blockchain company, CasperLabs—which is a game changer. “The history is recorded in a ...

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CoinDesk

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The Bakersfield Californian

Ottumwa Courier

Likewise, CasperLabs, the startup formerly advised by Ethereum Foundation researcher Vlad Zamfir, is now partnering with the Singapore-registered exchange BitMax to conduct its token sale in the ...

CasperLabs Pivots Away From Ethereum to Fundraise With Its Own Blockchain

Get the most recent info and news about CasperLabs on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

CasperLabs provides enterprise solutions on Casper, an open source blockchain optimized for enterprise and developer adoption.

CasperLabs

CasperLabs Announces Node 0.5, Gets Ready for Public DevNet

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44,000 startups. 4,553 cities. “4 billion votes” It was such a blessing to get to know so many of your ideas and innovations from every corner of the world in 2021. The startup community amazed all of us with your hard work and persistence despite all of the challenges that we faced globally throughout last year. Not gonna lie, the competition got our hearts racing like Eurovision. We won’t let you wait for much longer, below are long-awaited results! ✨✨✨ To see who is a winner in each respective city, visit and pick a city. The name at the top of the list is the winner. (Compromised awards are under review.) startups.hackernoon.com The will announce the winners per region in their respective cities. Startups Winners Announcement Series 🔥 Central Europe Central Europe has always caught our attention with the talented pool of people in tech community. But were they able to get through 2021 despite the pandemic? Let’s cheers to the most outstanding amongst 4,500+ startups who have been working hard this year: Basel, Switzerland An overwhelming vote for ~ in their mission of helping machinery companies drive more service revenues from their installed base MachiQ Software Berlin, Germany We have with a whooping 538 votes! Let’s support Plan A with its mission to help companies to measure, monitor and reduce their environmental footprint. Plan A Düsseldorf, Germany It doesn’t get any easier with Kicking off in helping people organize online schedules more easily. EasyWeek! Geneva, Switzerland Manage code quality? We have to give props to for their startup! SonarSource Hamburg, Germany Taking over Hamburg is , an acoustic device to reduce noises in vehicle cabins. No more annoying sounds on the road 🚗 ReCalm Köln, Germany Small business? Hoping to manage your marketing campaign? is winning the vote! rankingCoach Lausanne, Switzerland is a Swiss-based company focused on cryptocurrency management solutions built for financial institutions. Metaco Leipzig, Germany empowers companies to operate and utilize drones for the most effective industrial data applications. FlyNex Mainz, Germany is growing sustainable digital mobility startups! Next Mobility Labs Munich, Germany wins for top-line, high-security international Identity Management! ORY Stuttgart, Germany Remote desktop application? Ask anywhere. AnyDesk Vienna, Austria , an IT company enabling privacy-preserving big data applications in the digital age. Mostly AI Zug, Switzerland Way to go 1762 votes for the first provably live pure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) CBC-Casper blockchain designed for real-world applications. CasperLabs! Nyon Calling for robust data solutions for impact-driven organizations! Havuta LLC Zürich is revolutionizing small business lending to give easy access to capital to those who need it most: SMEs ✨ Teylor Heidelberg, Germany is an innovative HR startup providing a solution for fast and efficient recruiting of employees with simple job profiles. Talk'n'Job Stuttgart, Germany Congratulations for winning this title! AnyDesk Moving on to our buddies in... 🔥 Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is home to many familiar big names in our start-up world. Trace history for Miro, Telegram, and Grammarly and you know where they are from. Who is the next generation for Eastern European startups? Budapest, Hungary is a platform for mobile app development, enabling tens of thousands of developers to automate integration, testing, and deployment. Bitrise I__ __ stanbul, Turkey Leading here is - a brand new software intelligence platform- helps organizations deliver faster, high-quality products by connecting their DevOps tools. Oobeya Kraków, Poland is a human cloud platform that connects global enterprises with European software houses, offering tech talent as a service. Talent Alpha Kyiv, Ukraine 281 votes for , an AI powered app where people can swap faces in the videos, GIFs and images in just a few seconds. Reface Sofia, Bulgaria 387 votes for __ __378, leading Blockchain and DLT solutions company that specializes in helping enterprises and blockchain startups design, build and scale innovative solutions using Blockchain & DLT! LimeChain Warsaw, Poland is a next-generation blockchain document management software (DMS). DoxyChain Yerevan, Armenia Whoever clicked to vote for was sure a vote, because it ended up winning as a full-service software provider delivering Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning solutions for businesses. SmartClick smart Almaty Just like the name suggested, provides one pass to dozens of gyms and studios. 1FIT Debrecen got all the coders ranked figured out! CodersRank Kharkiv is complete solution digital assets management! Pics.io Minsk, Belarus with 243 votes is the first blockchain-powered sports media platform. Scorum Moscow, Russian Federation 1 e-grocery company in Russia with 26 votes and #1 on our HackerNoon board for Minsk. SberMarket Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation leads this area as a personal finance application that rewards responsible spending and savings. CoinKeeper Kazan, Russian Federation Smelling a sweet victory? 3d App designers for flower bouquets is in the house! Flowito Western Europe 🔥 Brexit? Pandemic? It seems like startups in Western Europe still keep their spirits regardless. Startups in Western Europe that stood out in votes this year go to: Antwerp is on a streak! As a bug bounty platform, it ensures online security through a crowd-sourced platform for computer experts. intigriti Belfast A record-breaking 10,003 votes? is an independent coffee shop. Come grab a coffee! Bobs & Berts Birmingham What’s happening in Birmingham? We have , an innovative UK-based advanced lithium battery developer aiming to accelerate the global shift to cleaner. Aceleron Bordeaux 30 is an open-source web framework for building modern apps and websites with Vue.js. NuxtJS Boulogne-billancourt is a software company that provides an in-store analytics platform to optimize operations. DiGEiZ Brighton In for some jam? offers musical education services. BIMM Bristol Another tasty victory for Western Europe is enabling the strongest digital encryption on the internet. KETS Quantum Security Brussels A fashionable win for , a social fashion network. You scan barcodes in fashion shops and see every influencer wearing those outfits! Share your wishlist with your friends and earn cashback. SCANDALOOK Cardiff is a technology company developing end-to-end digital connectivity for the point-of-care diagnostics market. Bond Digital Health London A whooping number of 1085 vote__ __ offers hardware based cyber-security solution for authentication and encryption in a wired local network. Crypto Quantique Edinburgh Hopping up on the crypto movement, just launched last year but they are already rocking it at making crypto accessible to everyone. Zumo Ghent 5379 votes for ! A Belgian InsurTech startup that helps insurance providers all over the world to better connect with their digital customers. WeGroup Glasgow specializes in single-cell analysis transforming the life sciences. Biomage Paris Show some love in the city of love for , a sports platform that is connected to a mobile sports coaching application. AirFit Aberystwyth enables artificial intelligence, data science & digital innovation solutions for the agriculture, biotech & life sciences industries. Agxio Norwich Congratulations for the amazing win of 1124 votes! WATR Charleroi Congratulations for your amazing win! Hirering Gibraltar Give a round of applause to Fortknoxter! Waltham Abbey is ruling the area with its amazing 72 votes! RPAIR Antwerpen Rocking up Antwerpen area is the rising startup ! Willow Egham What’s happening in Egham? Proudly announcing winning the Noonies this year! ATA.ONE Leicester Leicester is calling the name of as the winner for the region! DeadHappy Macclesfield Who else but ? Congratulations on dominating the award! AeroCloud Northern Europe 🔥 Want to listen to some music? Spotify. Need some games to kill time? Candy Crush. What about a quick call to someone you haven’t seen in a long time? Skype. These are all startups that originated from Northern Europe! Noonies, let’s take a look at the upcoming generation of startups from Northern Europe that hopefully will see an even bigger and brighter future. Gothenburg, Sweden Shipping was never made for small shippers, so took on the mission to built an end-to-end logistics platform to empower small businesses to spend less time and money on shipping and more time on growing their businesses. Sendify The Netherlands provides a virtual platform for many kinds of conferences and events. Let's Get Digital Helsinki, Finland A curated collection of public basketball courts in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area called . Everyone is welcome to submit to their local court. Koripallopaikat Lund, Sweden develops an antibiotic-free, safe and effective treatment of vaginal fungal infections. Gedea Biotech Luxembourg, Luxembourg 🚀 is a job-matching platform that connects developers and tech experts with CTOs and team leads from the best tech companies across Europe. 👾 nexten.io Malmö, Sweden Feeling studious, Noonies? __ __e is a tool for Google Classroom, that enables formative matrix assessment towards course learning objectives directly. StudyBe Oslo, Norway is the platform supports a unified API across all connected device categories, removing significant friction for app developers. Domos Labs Reykjavík, Iceland __ __s is a mobile-first technologically advanced neo-bank. Indo service #S__ __ tockholm, Sweden is the biggest blockchain start-up in Sweden. Double winner of the most prestigious nomination in Nordics 'NyTeknik 33-listan', winner of the Deloitte Fast 50, and now Noonies Award! ChromaWay AB T__ __ allinn, Estonia Passing 1000 votes is a fully digital and decentralized ecosystem for all actors in supply chain. OBORTECH Vilnius, Lithuania is an easy-to-use money app for cards and accounts. Via Genome, users can open a business or a merchant account or a personal one with dedicated IBANs, access transfers, exchange currency, process payments, and manage the funds. Genome Aalborg Digura A legaltech offering tenants fast, digital and reliable legal assistance Aarhus Partisia Market Design provides secure, simple, efficient solutions for auctions and exchanges realizing the potential of the market. Helsingborg is a hi-tech company developing cardiac occlusion devices and other vascular implants. Occlutech Tallinna is an AI-powered system for marketing automation in social networks. POSTOPLAN 🔥 Southern Europe Southern Europe’s economy went through a hard time this year due to a huge reduction in tourism. But our startups are of course always headstrong, from Spain to Italy and all the way through Greece. Who are the heroes rising amidst changes of Southern Europe? Skopje is a versatile software development company that solves the business challenges of SMBs, big brands, and brave hearts with awesome ideas. CodeChem Sliema Sounds like just a relaxing exhale. is a holistic health and wellbeing app built to allow users work on the development of their physical, mental and spiritual health Few Tajonar is a company of experienced business & industry entrepreneurs offering solutions to industries based on cutting-edge technologies. das-Nano Tarragona is a technology-based company focusing on the production of integrated microsystems. IMICROQ Terni is an ICT-based integrated solution that is able to modulate, respond, assist and learn to control most home activities. Mind Tirana is a video content and e-commerce platform for the Balkans built on top of an Albanian language specialized search engine. Gjirafa Torino develops and commercializes algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence to increase the autonomy of small satellite missions. AIKO T__ __ orres Buy online groceries like you would buy offline with personalized picking as fast as in 4 hours with Vedras 360hyper! Trento is a music-based platform built around streaming platforms that allow users to discover new emerging artists and make new friends. Brots 2021, what a YEAR. Congratulations to all of the startups that made it to the top winning list for Europe! Stay tuned for Startup awards in 2022 and let’s cheers to a new year of more innovative ideas, bold innovations, and robust creations from you, Europe 🌷 More Information: If you’re a winner, please answer ! If you’re a reader, participant, just a curious individual, consider answering one of our interviews . this interview here Read the FAQs about or . Startups here here To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. this site If you’re interested in partnering with us, we invite you to look through some of these or reach out to our business department. unique sponsorship options Perhaps creating your very own tickles your fancy or maybe you have a whole new idea for how we can partner! writing contest Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! The Startups Awards are sponsored by: , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network This post was written by An Le and edited by Natasha Nel. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to report a discrepancy please email ellen@hackernoon.com.

Meet the Winners of Startups in Europe

Right now, NFTs are at the peak of hype: Bored Ape #8585 just sold for $2.7 million, the NFT NYC conference was attended by Quentin Tarantino and Busta Rhymes, and huge NFT-related billboards were hung at Times Square. But many people doubt that NFTs are nothing more than just a speculative asset with no real value, lacking any tangible use cases. Is that true? And what do the crypto space and blockchain technology have to offer in the near future other than NFTs? According to those who have heard about NFTs once or twice in their life, it’s just a funny meme or video backed by the hash and stored on blockchain. The hash is completely unique and one of a kind, which is why it is called a non-fungible token. It’s considered a certificate of authenticity of the asset you own, and the proof of your ownership is publicly available because it is stored on blockchain and it is decentralized. Basically, no one can steal it. In addition, NFTs have given graphic artists and content creators the chance to express themselves and earn money without getting involved with top galleries, auction houses, or other middlemen, which is pretty hard to do. However, this isn’t the only use case for NFTs. For example, NFTs can be implemented in the copyright and intellectual property industry. With an NFT, there will be no argument of the provenance.  At recent NYC NFT events, I met with some industry leaders to learn more about the active NFT boom. “We work with an intellectual property management platform,” says , Director of Professional Services at CasperLabs. “We have written the history of ownership on blockchain, so there are no questions. Also we are helping to extend the use cases. The technology where multiple patent owners pool-in their patents together.  For example, there is 5G technology and multiple companies have a patent for different parts of this technology.' Ashok Ranadive When there is such an advanced technology, all the patent owners can pool-in their patents, and that pool of patents can be licensed and royalties can be distributed to the pool of stakeholders. This is a very complex use case where NFTs and blockchain technology could be used. NFT space is a new market which is developing now and the enterprises have huge potential using these technologies. Existing operations and supply chains could use this technology. Nowadays NFTs can be even used as a proof of authenticity of the vaccination card for example and you can easily track vaccinated people.” Another huge advantage of NFTs is total transparency, since everything is stored on the blockchain that is accessible to anyone. “Our protocol allows any user to check who owns which NFT, get the whole metadata, search by NFTs and we try to make it open source and available for the whole market,” says CEO of Rarible Alexei Falin. “This open source protocol supports Tezos and Flow blockchain, soon more blockchains will be supported, like Matic (Polygon), Solana, etc.” The founder of one of the biggest NFT marketplaces sees NFTs not only as a tool for art collectibles rights and copyright issues. “I am sure that NFT has a big potential in the gaming industry," says . "For example, metaverse where you can collect and play with NFTs, play-to-earn where you can increase the value of your NFT during the game or yield-farm new NFTs. And those opportunities to earn money attract more and more people to the industry.” Alexei Falin However, according to Alexei, the industry has issues such as not having user-friendly interfaces for newcomers, no super-secure custodial wallets, complicated KYC procedures, and fiat-to-crypto purchases taking ages to complete. “I think if someone who has a huge base of people with verified identities like Coinbase would make payment options for NFT marketplaces that would be a new step for the whole industry,” Alexei continues. Payment is a huge concern affecting the entire crypto space. “RippleNet was a part of the company in 2013 as a new payment solution for enterprises,” says David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple. “Existing enterprise payment system couldn’t settle for cryptocurrency payments. Now we have RippleX to allow people to build solutions on the XRP Ledger blockchain, in particular things like NFTs and DeFi. Payments in blockchain should be as easy as sending the email. I do not want to write 17 rows of code to make a payment, so we want to make an open source solution to enable the whole NFT and crypto ecosystem to make the user experience as easy as ever.” Ripple itself is looking to be the leaders of the NFT space; they recently invested in Mintable, an NFT marketplace that allows users to create, buy, and sell digital items using fiat or cryptocurrency. Now Mintable will integrate XRP Ledger (XRPL) for NFT purchasing and selling. So long as all parts of the market, such as marketplaces, blockchain developers, and payment solution developers, see the potential in the NFT industry, it might have a bright future indeed and will not remain as the mere hype of 2020-2021. Celebrities as well see the NFTs as one more opportunity to interact with fans and collect royalty. As said, “I still work with labels, but with NFTs I see that I might not need that middle man.” Busta Rhymes It is hard to predict the future, but for now we can tell that NFTs truly became a big part of not only crypto, but art, gaming, and entertainment industries as well. Vote on New York City Startups of the Year!

NFT Marketplace Entrepreneurs Seek to Cut Out the Middleman

Top 15 Small-Cap DeFi Projects to Keep Your Eye On in 2021

Is it sacrilege to use the world’s most popular cryptocurrency as a currency? Bitcoin has had some significant troubles over the past month -- regulatory worries and a big dent in public sentiment have taken a delightful 15-month bull run and made a distinctly bearish turn. That said, there is good news for devoted Bitcoin HODLers -- even if we don’t see “laser eyes” in 2021 (Bitcoin reaching the $100,000 price point) you can use the world’s most famous cryptocurrency to rent yourself a superyacht. It is a currency, isn’t it? Ironically, one might track the first cracks in the impressive Bitcoin Bull Run back to an announcement by Elon Musk mid-May that Tesla won’t be accepting Bitcoin for purchases due to environmental impact concerns. However, there are more ways to off-ramp crypto and more things you can buy with Bitcoin than ever before. And now you can rent a superyacht. Last week, West Nautical announced that M/Y Lady Amanda, is now accepting Bitcoin as payment for charter fees. The press release explains, “With this high worth, it was only a matter of time before Bitcoin found its way into the Superyacht industry.” Well, the timing seems a bit tone-deaf -- BTC had reached $65,000 in April but at the time of writing it’s down to less than half of its high point, hanging around $32,000. At that rate, roughly 1.5 BTC will be enough to rent the Lady Amanda for 1 week. Built in 2006 by Couach, the 30-meter motor yacht Lady Amanda offers “leisure and entertainment facilities”, a superior range of “water toys”, and was refitted in 2021 with an impressively posh interior. Lady Amanda can sleep 10 guests, has outdoor deck space with several lounging and dining areas across the aft deck, foredeck, and large flybridge, and sun pads on the foredeck, and a Jacuzzi on the flybridge. Perfect for posh conversations with your friends about whether Bitcoin should really be used to make purchases -- like the currency it was always intended to be -- or whether spending it during a dip like this would be foolish. Would you rather have the boat or magic internet money? I put the question to two experts in cryptocurrency -- Saeed Hareb Al Darmaki, Founder of Sheesha Finance and Rachel Siegel, crypto influencer “CryptoFinally”. These two people come from very different backgrounds -- enterprise-level advocacy vs. grassroots advocacy in crypto -- but they have in common the goal of mass adoption. To them, it’s just a matter of time. Saeed is Managing Director of Alphabit Digital Currency Fund, Chairman of eGovern blockchain consultancy company, and Managing Director of MENA for CasperLabs. When asked Darmaki if he’d rather have the boat for a week or the equivalent Bitcoin. “I would rather have the 1.5 BTC and then BUY the same boat when the price appreciates to that level,” Darmaki said. “Over time BTC is becoming more a store of value rather than a currency. Many other crypto assets serve the purpose of being used as a currency better than BTC,” Darmaki said. Darmaki said the question of holding BTC has to do with one’s tolerance for risk -- though a higher risk, higher yield move would likely not involve a yacht. “Other people could either hold the BTC if their risk tolerance is low or they could invest in other crypto assets if it is higher and finally invest in early-stage crypto startups if they really have high risk tolerance,” Darmaki said. Rachel "CryptoFinally" Siegel Rachel Siegel, known as crypto influencer CryptoFinally (who has over 155,000 Twitter followers), is a speaker and vocal advocate of the blockchain space. Rachel believes in the demographic expansion of the blockchain industry and the mass adoption of common consumer culture through entertainment targeting millennial audiences. Rachel has a savvy-but-accessible style on social media, so her answers to the “Boat or BTC” question is unsurprisingly candid and pragmatic: “If you’re going to spend your Bitcoin on a yacht trip you should first consider if you’d spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a yacht trip at all. If the answer is yes, go for it. If the answer is no, remember that this isn’t just magic internet money anymore,” Siegel said. We asked if this isn’t a sign of progress toward mainstreaming of crypto -- after all, 3 years ago “What can you buy with Bitcoin?” was a major concern. “A yacht trip paid in Bitcoin is adoption, right? Maybe for existing millionaires. Everyday folks don’t rent 90-foot yachts for casual joy rides. Focusing on expanding the demographic of Bitcoin holders, payment processors & merchants is real progress. Let me know when I can buy a pack of gum with BTC. I'm in,” Siegel said. At this point, to get that pack of gum one might have to take the yacht and set sail for El Salvador.

Should You HODL Bitcoin or Rent a Superyacht?

Last summer, discovered that 80% of the financial institutions surveyed had an interest in crypto, though only 36% were invested in the industry at the time, primarily in Bitcoin-related products. Many of these institutions valued the benefits of this new asset class and the opportunities presented by blockchain technology but remained sidelined due to regulatory uncertainty and the lack of necessary tools and infrastructure. a report from Fidelity Asset Management Fast forward a year, and participation across the broader decentralized finance market has scaled up dramatically. DeFi Pulse reported , demonstrative of increasing adoption beyond hobbyists and into the institutional space. a total locked value (TLV) across DeFi platforms exceeding $85 billion at one point By leveraging smart contracts, DeFi is increasingly replicating a range of traditional financial services, delivering the high throughput transaction volume that institutions require, at low cost, and without the inefficiency of existing intermediaries. While it’s still early, the disintermediation of the legacy system through the development of new decentralized infrastructure rails is underway. Making Blockchain Work for Institutions Let’s dive deeper and explore some of the projects leading the institutional landscape for crypto solutions and what they are building. 1. Stratis - Easing Enterprise Blockchain Adoption was designed to make decentralized adoption easier for businesses by offering several products and services for enterprises that work seamlessly with their legacy operations. Boosted by a recent , these include private sidechains, running full nodes, developing and deploying smart contracts, token launches, and a proof-of-identity application at scale. Blockchain-as-a-Service platform Stratis investment from digital asset fund Alphabit The Stratis ecosystem enables global firms to adapt their existing IT infrastructure by integrating blockchain features in a familiar programming language for everyday developers. The Stratis Identity solution delivers a decentralized method of KYC and AML verification for businesses to comply with regulations, its STO platform provides a compliant digital launchpad for business security token offerings, and its auditable smart contracts are especially suitable for the development of enterprise blockchains that are compatible with the DeFi space. 2. Onomy Protocol - Sustaining the CeFi to DeFi Migration is based on the fundamental assumption that the world’s financial framework is destined to migrate on-chain within the foreseeable future. It therefore proposes a reserve-based migration of traditional financial markets to the DeFi realm by delivering an interoperable, composable, and scalable blockchain infrastructure. Through a multi-layered approach, Onomy allows the . These stablecoins may be traded cross-chain, but also exchanged within the Onomy DEX, emulating the $6.6T per day Forex market. Onomy Protocol minting, trading, and lending of tokenized fiat currencies Powered by the ONET, a Cosmos-based blockchain network with 100x the scalability of Ethereum, Onomy reduces the costs and delays in transacting globally and provides both institutions and retail users with a frictionless and intuitive gateway to the DeFi realm. 3. Algorand - Base Layer for Asset Deployment The self-sustaining and decentralized blockchain network allows centralized systems to create and deploy tokens, NFTs, stablecoins, securities, and currencies with a low-cost payment infrastructure that delivers throughput capable of 46,000 transactions per second. Algorand Having already partnered with HSBC, Diem (Facebook), and SWIFT regarding the future of frictionless payment solutions, institutions are increasingly building on Algorand and connecting with fintechs, startups and DeFi platforms on the network. For example, SIAE, one of the largest rights management companies, has launched 4 million NFTs on Algorand. More recently, a partnership with security platform allows institutions to build secure wallet functionalities into applications. Curv 4. CasperLabs - Converging Blockchain Models is delivering a blockchain developed explicitly for enterprise usage, lowering the barriers of entry to institutional adoption. Its unique protocol enables flexible finality and adjustable block times, allowing for faster transaction settlement to suit enterprise needs. Secure custody is also available via its BitGo partnership. CasperLabs Casper allows enterprises to choose between public, permissioned, or private network iterations without sacrificing security or performance, with upgradeable contracts to improve applications over time, predictable gas fees regardless of network activity, on-chain governance, and WebAssembly support to ensure quick onboarding. 5. Concordium - Permissionless Chains & User Identity offers a privacy-centric, public, and permissionless blockchain built for business. Its built-in user identity at the protocol level provides regulatory compliance by design, allowing institutions with previous privacy concerns to harness the power of blockchain technology for the first time. Concordium With high throughput transactions for a global scale, Concordium also provides provable and fast finality, white-label architecture, and easy-to-deploy smart contracts on a future-proof network that is interoperable with the broader ecosystem. Legacy Firms Get In on the Act Not to be outdone by the range of crypto-native solutions building out the infrastructure needed to boost institutional adoption, legacy firms are getting in on the act too, with companies like JP Morgan making its version of the Ethereum blockchain Onyx available to traditional clients. Goldman Sachs recently became the to its blockchain-based network for repurchase agreements using smart contracts. latest addition What’s Next? Challenges remain, with scalability, interoperability, and regulatory clarity being mandatory if the shift toward institutional adoption of decentralized finance is to be maintained. Regardless of how the institutional crypto space develops, it’s clear that the benefits of DeFi will continue to disrupt the financial systems of the past, disintermediating legacy infrastructure that fails to adapt.

Analyzing the Institutional Landscape for Blockchain Solutions

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is one of the most transparent forms of modern finance with immediate oversight of the total value locked. Whether collateralized lending or automated trading pairs, the number of assets in each DeFi protocol can be traced, verified, and evaluated for trends. The in Ethereum-derived DeFi protocols is now close to $60B, with up to 90% of DeFi still hinging on the Ethereum network, according to estimations of the largest projects and the value locked within them. total value locked DeFi projects have a total market cap of $125B. Of those projects, the most popular ones such as Uniswap, Maker, Wrapped Bitcoin, Aave, and Compound still lock in a significant portion of collaterals. But among the , there are alternative networks already taking a significant chunk out of the DeFi market. top 10 projects Pancake Swap is quickly gaining new token pairs and has become one of the fastest-growing projects on the Binance Smart Chain. Recently, price appreciation led the CAKE token to line up among the top 5 DeFi projects by . market capitalization But Binance Smart Chain is not the only alternative to Ethereum that has appeared in the past few months. Newer chains like Terra (LUNA) and THORChain (RUNE), and Solana (SOL) are starting with the idea of a whole new ecosystem for staking and decentralized finance. These blockchains still have to gain new users, and so far the bulk of users are counted toward , but lucrative incentives are quickly raising the number of new wallets for alternative DeFi networks. Ethereum-based protocols Will Alternative Blockchains Remain Relevant? shows Ethereum-based DeFi is still not at its peak, as protocols keep adding new traders or lenders every day. But with time, the pace of expansion may stall. DeFi is still highly dynamic, with new protocols constantly adding both new users and new features. User analysis Even without Binance Smart Chain and other new networks, older crypto projects are trying to gain market share from Ethereum. Projects like IOST, NEM, EOS, and TRON have offered various DeFi elements, but for now they remain less popular in terms of launching top decentralized exchanges or distributed apps. The newly launched networks, especially created with DeFi in mind, will have to prove their relevance and longevity. One of the challenges they face is the ETH 2.0 network, which will add faster transactions and lower gas fees for trading. Currently, automated swaps are not cheap on Ethereum and it may discourage some users from DeFi trading. High gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain also triggered the trend of Binance Smart Chain tokens and pairs, seeking the same high turnover with lower fees. But there is another fundamental difference in terms of project success. ETH and BTC have been used as collateral for multiple DeFi projects. These large-cap coins have a vast network of exchanges, and their liquidity extends to the mainstream financial sector, with new fiat inflows from corporations and retail buyers. New crypto projects, however, are just beginning to build up their value and their liquidity. The native tokens used as collateral are still in the price discovery stage, and the communities supporting the coins are fairly niche. There are multiple examples of new projects fueling social media hype, only to lose most of their liquidity within hours in events known as “rug pulls”. With the growth of the alternative ecosystem, however, these events become rarer. New token-based DeFi pairs are creating mechanisms to lock in liquidity and prevent rug pulls. I’ve asked some project leaders about their views of the DeFi world, and here’s what they had to say: Matthew Niemerg, Ph.D. - President of the Aleph Zero Foundation and CEO of Cardinal Cryptography “DeFi is for those without lots of capital to deploy is expensive on Ethereum. Alternative platforms, like Binance Smart Chain, Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot, etc., offer a more cost-efficient option. Part of the DeFi story is retaining control over your assets—which includes deciding if you want to move assets on Ethereum to more capital-efficient platforms. We will see competition and liquidity move from chain to chain as bridges are built, but user acquisition will be aimed at those seeking safer, more secure, lower-yield projects. These other platforms have native coins that are walled off from most DeFi products. I predict we will start seeing protocols design their codebase and product with the multichain world that is coming in mind.” Chris Wang - CEO and Co-Founder of ThunderCore - A leading public blockchain with its own native currency “ ThunderCore is very different from Ethereum. The current Ethereum blockchain still uses the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism while ThunderCore’s Proof of Stake (POS) has been live for more than two years! Since it is ThunderCore’s mission to bring blockchain to the masses, we provide a one-of-a-kind blockchain, which not only provides lower gas fees than Ethereum but also better throughput and performance that supports 4,000+ TPS. We know that Ethereum is gradually shifting towards PoS, but there’s still work to be done. On the contrary, ThunderCore’s PoS consensus has been running and battle-tested for well over two years now so we are very confident that we have an edge. With the development of blockchain technology, PoS becomes more popular to address energy consumption issues and scalability issues. In addition, PoS blockchains allow token holders to stake their tokens so that they can run validators and earn staking rewards in return. What’s great is that ThunderCore is EVM compatible, meaning that developers can move their dApps from Ethereum onto ThunderCore with ease. Even though Ethereum has market dominance now, we believe that by allowing developers and users to shift onto ThunderCore so they can enjoy low gas fees and little to no network congestion is something they can’t ignore. On top of that, ThunderCore also has cross-chain services with Binance Smart Chain (BSC) through ThunderCore Bridge , making ThunderCore interoperable between two of the most prominent chains within the industry. This means your assets on BSC and Ethereum can be bridged onto ThunderCore and swapped with other assets through our DEX TTSwap without being victimized by high gas fees. This is just one example; the possibilities are endless. Recently, BSC has gained a lot of traction and as a result, BNB’s price hit a new all-time high. This means BSC will gradually be more expensive and congested, therefore, highlighting ThunderCore’s low gas fees and fast confirmation times once again!” Maximilian Rang - Head of Token Strategy at Threefold - The world’s largest peer-to-peer Internet, formed by people who want to make a difference, by people who care, by people just like you. “There's a huge and under-discussed issue with DeFi – an elephant in the room, if you will. While the core functionalities for DeFi reside on blockchains, what about the front end, websites, apps, and databases? Deploying these more centralized parts on ThreeFold capacity would make any DeFi project not only more resilient but also immune to censorship from cloud providers, like in the case of Parler. Considering that a large percentage (70% [https://decrypt.co/44321/70-of-ethereum-nodes-are-hosted-on-centralized-services]) of Ethereum nodes – and blockchain nodes in general – are running on top of centralized cloud services, the current risks of DeFi seem to be overlooked. While the whole DeFi ecosystem is taking off in parabolic growth, the demand for proper security and reliability of the infrastructure increases. The ThreeFold Grid provides decentralized internet capacity with Blockchain-like reliability and security. Data is spread across many storage locations and secured by efficient algorithms. Through ThreeFolds “Smart Contract for IT”, all workloads running and all data stored on the grid are monitored and secured by a blockchain. The ThreeFold Token (TFT) is the currency of the peer-to-peer Internet, used to reserve storage and compute capacity on the ThreeFold Grid. Existing partner communities of ThreeFold like CasperLabs, DigiByte, Polygon, and Presearch can already run their nodes on the ThreeFold Grid, with many more partners and applications to come this year.” Alternative blockchains, however, are one of the answers to the uncertain future of Ethereum’s network. For one, this blockchain still relies on miners who have an effect on overall market prices. Projects like Maker and Compound allow miners to deposit their block rewards and receive passive income instead of selling during a bull market. It is also possible that some form of mining and gas fees will always remain on the Ethereum network, thus making DeFi usage more expensive. Making a complete hard fork, where miners refuse to accept the new network rules, would wreak havoc on the entire DeFi space, potentially breaking down the value locked due to loss of trust. Additionally, there is the question of the total cap of the ETH supply. Despite a lower block reward, there is still no end to the creation of new ETH tokens. Alternative blockchains, on the other hand, have a more detailed roadmap about the planned scarcity of their native assets. Some projects have looked ahead into the future. Binance Smart Chain, for instance, is created with the potential to . is the tool to perform cross-chain operations, communicating with multiple smart contracts. This technology may be one of the ramps to move DeFi value from Ethereum and into alternative blockchains. Even with ETH 2.0, the cross-chain capability will be key to establishing new DeFi platforms and attract more liquidity and quality projects. communicate with the Ethereum Virtual Machine Binance Bridge As the DeFi ecosystem grows, it is possible more projects will offer some forms of cross-compatible moves. Currently, it is possible to wrap BTC or ETH on multiple platforms, and this is perhaps one tool for liquidity and compatibility. The appeal of DeFi remains in the possibility to gain passive income instead of selling the coins outright. Who Chooses Alternatives to Build DeFi? The popularity of DeFi has led to the creation of platforms that are built from scratch to solve some of the most pressing issues in decentralized lending, trading, and other financial operations. The central platform quickly gathers its own flock of token issuers. Even relatively new blockchains, like Solana (SOL), already . Despite criticism that some new networks are just the new batch of projects is quick to host new startups. host 126 various decentralized projects “ghost chains,” Here is the opinion of one service company owner: Anton Dziatkovskii, Co-Founder of Platinum - A  dApp and crosschain solution developer for Polkadot, Kusama, Ethereum, etc. “It's hard for a single project to overturn the whole market and remove Ethereum’s dominance. But we, as a crypto sphere, are slowly moving to a gradual distribution of funds across multiple networks. Binance Smart Chain is eating into Ethereum’s market share. In Q1 2021 alone, the TVL in BSC has grown by more than 100% month-to-month and the number of unique active wallets has sky-rocketed. Then there's the example of Aavegotchi, which launched on Polygon and sold out of all its NFTs in under one minute. Our recommendation is to focus on the technology and unique features that a project can offer and users will come over to Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, HECO, or any other blockchain. If you browse through the top 10 projects on Q DeFi Rating, you'll see that three of them operate only on BSC and two of them are multi-chain. Find the pain points of crypto users and solve them; it could be high gas fees, lack of interoperability, scalability, high risks of impermanent loss, etc. In this paradigm, the service provider and the blockchain development company's advice is to concentrate on solving the user's problems rather than hype up new tech implementations.” The growing adoption of alternative DeFi blockchains has also led the project to aggregate access to Binance Smart Chain with a dedicated liquidity pool, as well as governance and project curation. Launchzone even performs its own curated token offers, or IDOs, offering either a centralized exchange approach or the creation of a liquidity pool. Launchzone The Ethereum network currently has access to , still far ahead of the tokens using alternative blockchains. However, some of these tokens are older and not active, as there are only a few thousand usable ERC-20 assets. The growth of active addresses on newer blockchains suggests the possibility for users to shift to new networks while using the basic liquidity pool approach of DeFi to raise and lock value. 391,865 token contracts Alternative Blockchains Attract Builders The attractiveness of Binance Smart Chain is already reshaping the balances of DeFi and pulling projects not only from Ethereum, but from its older competitors. chose to relocate its project to BSC from EOS, citing problems with its legacy platform and choosing a DeFi-tailored blockchain. Effect Network Other projects, which initially started on the Ethereum blockchain, are pivoting to make use of the legacy chain’s power as well as the new opportunities of alternative blockchains. , a startup offering DeFi as a service, is also . TosDis building a bridge between Ethereum and BSC The strongest attraction of alternative blockchains is that projects are quickly riding on the social media meme trends, and are able to draw in traders and liquidity with great speed. Recently, the SAFEMOON token, launched on BSC, set out to reach peak prices. The token, although turbulent, managed to attract the attention of Twitter and added to the enthusiasm for new BSC tokens. Jordan Beauchamp Chief Technology Officer at CENNZnet . At CENNZnet we see things from the point of view of DApp devs. Ethereum has been revolutionary by allowing DApps to tap into the blockchain using smart contracts, but now the stage is set for more interesting interplays at a protocol level. CENNZnet, built on substrate, provides devs with a set of protocol-level runtime modules which provide the key functions for any DApp (identity attestation, currency (generic assets), and NFTs). By taking these functionalities to a protocol level devs can make more interesting interactions and have higher privileges than simply smart contracts. For example, our recent exchange module CENNZX is part of the CENNZnet protocol, while uniswap is a 2nd class citizen on Ethereum. Carl Ulvinen - Vice President, Project Hydro . “The main differences we have been experiencing so far is that of throughput and lower fees, which has made for a much smoother user experience overall. While Ethereum enjoys the privilege of being fully decentralized, there has been a lot of friction arising from having multiple swaps/dexes/dApps running on top of its network. To alleviate these issues within our project we came to the conclusion that deploying our protocols on multiple blockchains would give our users the choice of leveraging different chains for different purposes.The future of DeFi, we believe, is about connecting chains so that they may interact with each other seamlessly to create the freedom of choice for the user.” Another success story is that of Terra (LUNA), which runs both its own separate blockchain and a bridge to Ethereum and BSC. The Terra protocol, with its own LUNA staking, also gives access to liquidity on the two other blockchains with access to some of the largest exchanges, like Uniswap and SushiSwap. wants to expand on cross-chain capabilities and move beyond the wrapped asset technology. RUNE will run on a proprietary blockchain which bridges the biggest DeFi ecosystems, similar to Terra. The recently launched blockchain also built a significant social media presence, adding to the interest in decentralized trading. THORChain (RUNE) Solana (SOL) is also finding its array of projects, while join the DeFi world. SOL also gained visibility as a top-15 digital asset by market capitalization, showing that new platform coins could have rapid success with the current DeFi climate. helping older ICO token KIK It’s important to realize that alternative blockchains are not directly threatening Ethereum; they are instead choosing to bridge the network as in the case of the recently popular . Despite setbacks, DeFi seems to be learning from its mistakes in preventing smart contract flaws and rug pulls, and it is improving both the underlying technology and the tokenomics for a thriving crypto financial system. Adding new tokens to the liquidity pools also means less reliance on the price of ETH and more stability during market corrections. Avalanche blockchain Tom Tirman, CEO & Co-Founder, PARSIQ - a blockchain-based data-analytics platform, pioneering the concept of Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) in both the DeFi and mainstream application space Whilst Ethereum has established itself as the launchpad for new projects relying on decentralized applications (dApps), the increasing cost of development and app usage has prompted development teams to start exploring other dApp-compatible platforms. PARSIQ is no different on this front. Originally launched on Ethereum, it has explored and implementing a number of integrations in recent months, including making several of its workflow applications compatible with Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Solana. The justification behind those decisions was two-fold: reducing cost (development and usage) and increasing access for newly established communities building on Ethereum alternatives. Indeed, PARSIQ’s latest major development saw the launch of IQ Protocol, a pioneering new platform with a subscription-based model for token utility at its core. The launch was PARSIQ’s first fully-fledged attempt to enter the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. With the DeFi space being notoriously transaction-heavy, the integrations with BSC, which was 49 times cheaper for dApp transactions in 2020, and Solana, which boasts a $0.00001 transaction fee, reduce costs significantly at a time when Ethereum is seeing record-high transaction fees. Moreover, both the BSC and Solana communities have a plethora of development teams operating DeFi-focussed projects in these ecosystems. Therefore, the integrations also serve as a method for expanding IQ Protocol’s reach to potential users as well as other developers and projects PARSIQ might collaborate with in the future.

DeFi on Alternative Blockchains Differs Radically from Ethereum

The go-to blockchain for decentralized finance is still Ethereum (ETH). It has the great advantage of being a first mover, so plenty of investors are already aware of ETH and its use cases. ETH tokens also played a role in the tokensale bonanza of 2017 and 2018, and are now becoming highly in their new role as the backbone of the DeFi market. active again The DeFi market has grown by leaps, increasing the by more than 50 times in the past 12 months. This market, however, is not a single entity but a loose structure of interconnected projects, including lending, algorithmic trading, and yield farming. Projects like Maker and Compound emerged as leaders in the lending market. The Uniswap exchange is the leading hub for automated market making. Yield-farming projects are still competing for a clear leader, but the collection of tokens has grown in value to . value locked above $19 billion It is precisely the scale and rapid growth of decentralized token-based projects that add to the hype of DeFi. Not only are active users growing, according to , but they are also users highly active on social media. This adds to the visibility of DeFi; its outsized yields for some. The problems also don’t remain hidden, especially when it comes to the high that come with using ETH or sending tokens. DappRadar statistics gas fees Ethereum Rules DeFi As of 2021, about 90% of transfers on the Ethereum network come from only the top 10 DeFi distributed apps, showing that in 2021. The Ethereum ecosystem holds roughly 10 times more compared to its competitor, EOS. Ethereum is mostly solely about DeFi projects It must be noted that the DappRadar report notes Ethereum is still the leader in total value locked. One of the reasons for this is the bull market in Q1, which took ETH above $2,000. The value locked is also instrumental, as it is collateral to lending projects and a source of stability for the DAI dollar-pegged asset. But as of Q1, there are signs showing that Ethereum has growing competitors in the DeFi space. Most notably, Binance Smart Chain has started hosting DeFi projects and growing both its active users and the value locked. As Binance Coin (BNB) grew in value, so will the . More , and Pancake Swap is already becoming a high-publicity trading hub. value locked on Binance Smart Chain projects are joining this alternative blockchain DeFi Adoption Still Mostly Retail Institutional interest is still slow to adopt an approach to DeFi. Trading ETH is well known, and there are already instruments such as Grayscale’s funds or the exchange-traded notes of XBT Provider, which give mainstream buyers exposure to ETH price fluctuations. But so far, there are no indications of large institutions backing collaterals or participating in DeFi projects. One of the reasons for this is DeFi’s reputation as a space for almost unlimited gambling. Liquidations and losses are also sources of extreme volatility, outside the range of traditional investors. But the tools being developed on Ethereum are attracting the attention of mainstream investors. The Ethereum ecosystem is converging on the rising interest in , where pocket investment apps are gathering a new cohort of tech-savvy buyers looking for higher returns. fintech Ethereum Flaws Persist Despite the indicators of growth, the Ethereum project still has flaws inherent since its inception. The network is designed to raise its fees with more users. What’s worse, a feature of pre-buying gas to pay fees in the future in the summer, leaving Ethereum users open to unpredictably high fees. Vitalik Buterin has proposed to remove the SSTORE and SELFDESTRUCT options, thus closing the opportunity to pay for gas in advance and use it to make a transaction when fees are high. may be disabled Because of how gas fees work, Ethereum is not scalable. There may be immense demand from users to dip their toes into DeFi, but it turns out the network is not so democratic, running up fees of hundreds of dollars even for trivial token swaps or transactions. Is ETH 2.0 Ever Coming? The proposed ETH 2.0 network has been promised for years, and it always seems to be 12-18 months into the future. High fees became a hurdle already in 2017, as mainstream interest in crypto made traders flock to the network. In 2021, the fees remain the elephant in the room. But for now, Ethereum has not managed to transform itself into a proof-of-stake network and still relies on mining. One of the reasons is that miners are putting pressure on the developer team, and may stop updates on the path to ETH 2.0. Hypothetically, miners can simply refuse to mine the new network, and there is a campaign to , the proposal to drastically cut gas fees. The proposal, if implemented, is one of the ways to solve the . gather hashrate against EIP-1559 gas fee problem The potential miner revolt is an unresolved issue in Ethereum, which may affect the DeFi market due to uncertainty. In the most catastrophic scenario, the Ethereum network splits again, with one version supported by miners. This will create immense problems of duplication and legitimacy for all DeFi projects and token-based economies. One workaround is the latest proposed to ETH 2.0. In this scenario, the developer team will launch the Beacon Network, which will, for a while, coexist with the current network. Beacon Chain is live, but it has no effect on the current usage of the Ethereum network. It is mostly used to test out propositions and new technologies. Next, developers will deploy shards, or side chains, which will also carry some of the traffic. The most unclear element of Beacon Chain, however, is the Docking stage, when it will have to synchronize with the mined Ethereum 1.0 chain. The estimated date for this event is some time in 2022. roadmap Are There Alternatives to Ethereum? Over the past few years, multiple projects launched with the aim of becoming the “Ethereum Killer.” Some of those networks indeed boasted higher speeds and lower fees. The list of projects with a similar idea is long, with a few notable networks. NEO, setting out to become “the Ethereum of Asia,” is currently attempting to re-launch for better scalability. Networks like EOS encountered their own problems of scarcity but still managed to become a platform for distributed apps and a nascent DeFi industry. IOST, Stellar, and TRON also line up as widely used networks. All of those networks have dApps that resemble DeFi in some ways, though at a much smaller scale and adoption rate. So, What’s Next for Ethereum? The Ethereum DeFi ecosystem has proven exceptionally resilient. Despite liquidations, high fees, and outright scams, the network remains attractive. But the market has voted with its wallets, as evidenced by the rise of Binance Smart Chain. The approach to DeFi and algorithmic trading is already well known and can be implemented on any other network. Even older projects, like VeChain, Steem, Ontology, and IOTA, are pivoting to build a DeFi component. So while Ethereum is in the lead right now, its competition is thriving. Projects like Binance Smart Chain, purposely built to host DeFi and fast dApps, are even ahead of Ethereum, as they avoided the mining stage and started off with various forms of proof-of-stake. The only element remaining is DeFi investors realizing the same returns can be achieved on alternative networks, so they can abandon Ethereum-based DeFi for newer projects. Here are some thoughts of the market players who are building alternative solutions: Matthew Niemerg, Ph.D. - President of the Aleph Zero Foundation and CEO of Cardinal Cryptography "Recently, DeFi has seen a shift of users moving away from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain as a respite from gas fees. Other platforms such as Secret, Avalanche, or Tomochain offer other additional alternatives for DeFi users seeking yields via liquidity mining. As the distributed ledger space continues to move toward a multi-chain world with the adoption of various interoperability standards like Interblockchain Communication (IBC) spearheaded by the Cosmos ecosystem, when parachain slot auctions become live on Polkadot, and when bridges to other blockchains like Near, Solana, CasperLabs, are built, DeFi users will be able to move assets between different blockchains and choose the ones that satisfy their own preferences—whether this be low fees, fast confirmation times, high yields, a better user experience, or any combination thereof. DAG-based consensus protocols that use Proof-of-Stake are no different than other hybrid PoS + Byzantine Agreement solutions. The end goal is the same -- reaching agreement on valid transactions and putting them in a linear, or total, order and then having each server apply the state transitions locally -- all while doing so in a secure way. In this sense, Aleph Zero plays the role of other layer 1 platforms, albeit with a consensus protocol that has been formally proven to be fully leaderless and achieve both optimal communication and latency in a fully asynchronous setting. In other words, no bottleneck exists by having a leader choose the order of transactions which in turn increases efficiency and enables the protocol to be able to handle high transaction throughput without drastically increasing the confirmation time. Many of the existing protocols use well-understood 20-year-old algorithms that are widely deployed by industry.  Our solution, while newer and not as visible or understood by the industry, is incredibly more efficient and can be adapted for both decentralized or permissioned architectures. We have been working on the second (and improved!) iteration of the protocol for quite some time. The implementation is written in Rust and will use the Substrate framework for all of the account and smart contract layer logic. Our testnet is coming soon and be on the lookout for news on this!  In the end, we will develop a dedicated high throughput sovereign chain with a parachain bridge to the Polkadot relay chain for developers to deploy dApps with private smart contracts using our MPC technology.” Tom Tirman, CEO & Co-Founder, PARSIQ - a blockchain-based data-analytics platform, pioneering the concept of Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) in both the DeFi and mainstream application space “The sophistication and complexity of today's DeFi applications result in enormous gas fees and scalability issues when executed on the Ethereum blockchain. DeFi projects are looking at alternative chains, or even layer 2 solutions, for the more effective deployment of their protocols. The solution might be not full migration, but creating bridges between Ethereum and their various alternative networks like Binance Smart Chain, Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot for these DeFi protocols. Indeed, PARSIQ has taken several steps in the recent past to integrate with alternatives to the Ethereum network. The current platform recently integrated with the Solana ecosystem , which boasts an average transaction fee of just $0.00001 per transaction. Moreover, we also integrated its network with Binance Smart Chain (BSC) - a popular DeFi-targeting blockchain ecosystem hosted by cryptocurrency exchange Binance that was up to 49x cheaper for layer 2 applications than Ethereum. Both integrations will allow their users to build blockchain to off-chain applications in their respective ecosystems at a fraction of the cost compared to Ethereum and in PARSIQ’s easy-to-use scripting language. This only strengthens PARSIQ’s accessibility for mainstream developers who will be the next big players in the DeFi market and are the principal customers for PARSIQ’s Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) effort. The future of DeFi is a multi-chain reality, that allows seamless interoperability between these decentralized networks in addition to minimizing costs. But this future also involves taking a new approach to BaaS offerings, including moving away from collateral-based utility models to a more business-intuitive subscription model. On this front, PARSIQ’s IQ protocol introduces Power Tokens - its iteration of the concept of tokenized subscription to utility. Rather than the traditional stake-to-use model employed by most DeFi platforms (which requires an up-front investment in usually volatile tokens), Power Tokens generate utility over time, effectively giving holders a subscription to IQ’s features. This mirrors the model already used in mainstream development, allowing seamless integration into existing business models. Combining a reduction of the cost of development with easy integration to existing business models is the key to blockchain’s widespread adoption in the mainstream world as well as the future of DeFi space.” Chris Wang - CEO and Co-founder of ThunderCore - a leading public blockchain with its own native currency The ThunderCore public blockchain is built on fundamental research and designed by the best consensus algorithm researchers. Previously, ThunderCore’s consensus algorithm was called Thunderella and it used to give us ~1200TPS, which was in itself very impressive. However, the team just kept innovating and we soon designed a new and better consensus algorithm called PaLa. We realized the potential of PaLa, which now gives us 4000+ TPS.We believe that PaLa is the most simple, elegant, and optimal Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm for Blockchains. DeFi services and DApps deployed on Ethereum will soon become unsustainable due to the chain’s high gas fees and slow confirmation time. A better solution is needed. Hence, we provide a one-stop solution to developers to migrate and develop their DApps on the ThunderCore blockchain; which is not only fast but also much cheaper than the gas fees on Ethereum. Cheaper gas fees allow developers to maximize their profits. Since DApps deployed on the ThunderCore network require Thunder Token (TT), our native token, as gas fees, developers and users will need to hold them to pay for gas fees themselves. As TT’s applicability increases, its demand and value will also increase. Similarly, part of the demand for TT also derives from the fact that you can earn a yield on your TT through a variety of ways such as TT Mining, SuperNode staking, and credit market services (borrowing and lending) we’re currently working on that will be released soon. ETH is a big driving force for miners, but for users, it's a big pain point. As a user-centric company, ThunderCore decreases the cost for users dramatically. We believe that when users experience cheaper gas fees through our DeFi services, more transactions will follow as users will benefit greatly from the practicality of lower fees. With an accumulation of multiple transactions, developers will also benefit as more users join our ecosystem and enjoy our services, ultimately driving up the demand for TT. Analogously, stakers of the ThunderCore network also get rewarded for maintaining the security of the system. The ultimate design goal is for the ThunderCore network to have many stakers securing the network just like how miners are mining on Ethereum 1.0. ThunderCore is an EVM-compatible, high-performance public blockchain. Developers can move their DApps to our chain with ease and enjoy 4,000+ TPS, sub-second confirmations, and low gas fees. Performance-wise, our technology and our edge are undeniable. As for liquidity concerns, ThunderCore’s DEX TTSwap recently reached more than $4,800,000 in liquidity ($3M increase in just 20 days) and $2,200,000 in daily transaction volume after launching cross-chain services with Binance Smart Chain. This stark increase is projected to continue as we set to roll out more products and services in the upcoming months. On top of that, ThunderCore Bridge , our cross-chain mechanism, allows users to transfer their digital assets between ThunderCore, Ethereum, and BSC with really low fees. Paired with multiple third-party DApps such as Egg DEX and TT Roll , developers will not only be able to avoid liquidity problems but also have multiple ways to increase their income. We are excited for what’s yet to come and we’re confident that developers will benefit tremendously by migrating their DApps onto ThunderCore .

Can Alternative Blockchains Save the DeFi Market?

Metis, a decentralized framework to support the creation and management of decentralized companies, has announced that Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of CasperLabs Medha Parlikar is joining the team as an advisor. The partnership comes ahead of the launch of the Casper network mainnet scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. The Casper Protocol is a layer one public blockchain designed to support the governance of protocols through a range of features. Through the partnership with Parlikar, Metis will help bring various use cases into the Casper ecosystem by enabling them to create their decentralized companies and providing blockchain-based tools to organize and manage their projects in a decentralized way. In her advisory role, Parlikar plans to support Metis in pursuing their shared goals. "[I see my role as] definitely getting [Metis] to work with the Casper protocol, we have great alignment because they want to support the scaling out of the adoption of decentralized organizations and enabling those organizations to use blockchain technology, and we have the exact same goal we want to scale out the adoption of blockchain technology by making it intuitive," Parlikar said. By making it easy to utilize blockchain, Metis and CasperLabs plan to spur mass adoption of the technology. "Metis is to build a decentralized framework on top of the Layer1 network like Casper. We will do most of the technical and communication work with the blockchain layer and erase the difficulty for end-users or builders to use blockchain technology." Co-founder and product lead of Metis, Kevin Liu, said. Metis is using the DAO mechanism to construct the structure of decentralized company. Like an ordinary company in the real-world, this decentralized company is not just for voting, but will also conduct and manage collaborations, in a decentralized way, which is via the mechanism and tools provided by Metis to incentivize community members' involvement and contribution. Collaborative economy is the niche market that Metis focuses on, such as the open-source projects, Defi, freelancers, sharing economy, affiliate groups, or various interest groups on Facebook or WeChat, which is a huge market with over tens of billions of market size. When organizers of an open-source project want to use Metis, they register their decentralized autonomous company (DAC), and an Ethereum address is assigned to the decentralized company. Community members can then join and connect with the address with little to no knowledge of the blockchain technology underpinning the product. "They can use the blockchain-based tools, such as tasks management, knowledge base, event management, accounting, etc., to manage all the collaborations, just like using any internet applications," Liu said. "Metis is the Enabler," Parlikar said. "As you can see, we spend a lot of efforts to make the framework easy-to-use and cater to the user experience of internet applications, so you don't have to worry about MetaMask, private key, public key, and other complex on-chain operations. Metis will do it for you. Due to the layer2 construct, the framework is also highly scalable and low in cost to operate." CEO of Metis, Elena Sinelnikova, said. The two companies each have independent reputation tracking systems, creating decentralized business credentials within each decentralized company. "A lot of these governance protocols today they have this notion of a whale effect where you can just buy a bunch of governance token and sit on it," Parlikar said. "We have a very different way where you can earn reputation through actions, and that's stored in your keys separate from your tokens, so it's a great way to reward contributions, but you separate the monetary aspect, the token aspect, of it from reputation." The Metis protocol has its own reputation system where users earn points for their collaboration efforts or through staking. Sinelnikova and Liu see lots of potential applications for the points, to act as the social contract to prevent destructive behaviours, or to use similarly to credit scores to connect with Defi and determine who is most likely to pay back loans. "The alignment is in goals because we're all working towards mass adoption, Sinelnikova said. "We believe with more and more applications adopt blockchain, the decentralized company will become as important as the company in the real world. And Metis will become a decentralized platform for builders to easily create, run, and manage decentralized companies." Contributed by Emily Mason and Kevin Liu

Everyone Should Have A Decentralized Company On The Blockchain

No system is perfect. Some flaws are small, and some are dramatic, but every system breaks down at some point. This is also true in the technology world—no matter how ingenious, eventually problems are bound to appear. One such example is the trifecta of struggles with blockchain technology—the programming infrastructure that supports Bitcoin. While clearly a , building the perfect blockchain network seems to be something of an impossibility. disruptive technology Blockchain’s ‘Achilles heel’? The three issues that make up the problem are decentralization, scalability, and security. Each of these are required to build a useful blockchain platform, but linking all three is challenging. —the removal of centralized governance—is the foundation of blockchain technology. However, with decentralization and the increased number of user entry points, security becomes an issue. To create secure systems, various forms of consensus are required for block generation. Decentralization Bitcoin, for example, uses Proof of Stake (PoS) to protect block security. However, this system slows block generation dramatically, causing a far slower transaction processing time. The results in troubles with scalability to enterprise levels. In other words, it's relatively simple for platforms to offer any combination of any two of these three features, but connecting all three is challenging. Some have said this is blockchain’s proverbial ‘Achilles heel’. And, if a platform could find a way to obtain all three links in the chain, success would still not be assured. The platform would also require a developer-friendly interface and the ability to build and deploy dApps with ease. Ethereum’s Shifting Goalposts While this structural flaw may appear concerning at first glance, some platforms are seeking to create solutions that bring all three together. The first to offer a blockchain system for deploying dApps was Ethereum, founded by Vitalik Buterin. The platform’s ingenious design made it an explosive front runner, but within a short time, challenges began to appear. With huge numbers, transaction times began to slow dramatically, revealing that scalability was a massive issue. And recently, the original commitment to scalable dApps in the ICO whitepaper was withdrawn by the cofounders in an interview. Joseph Lubin told the interviewer that the platform was , leaving current users stinging with bitterness. never designed to provide scalability However, Vitalik Buterin has stated that new upgrades to the system will provide scalability solutions. These may come in the form of ‘sharding’—a newly designed process to split transactions and increase speed for greater transaction numbers. But a solution still remains elusive, particularly as upgrades away from Proof of Work (PoW) consensus appear difficult. Better consensus, better solutions The blockchain infrastructure is built with a modified Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus system called correct-by-construction, or CBC for short. Simply put, rather than requiring tedious solutions to math equations like PoW consensus, the blockchain network reserves its computation capacity for actual computational work. This solution allows for the same level of security as legacy blockchain networks, but with a far faster throughput transaction time. Additionally, the blockchain execution engine allows for multiple dApps to be executed concurrently. In simple terms, there are more channels for transactions to take place on, making scalability a viable reality. And for dApp developers who are experts in certain coding languages, CasperLabs allows for compilation in nearly all high-level programming languages. This feature allows developers to step onto the blockchain and begin creating dApps almost immediately without learning a new proprietary code. Taken together, the features of the platform seem to offer a viable solution for the blockchain trilemma. Other solutions have come online as well. Consider, for example, . The platform also uses a variation of the PoS consensus protocol called Delegated PoS, or for short. EOSIO blockchain DPoS The DPoS system functions in a similar way to PoS, but allows for community reputation to play a role. Users are allowed to stake tokens and then vote on who is allowed to create a block of transactions, creating a decentralized system for block approval. Security is maintained through the decentralized nature of the network, and transaction times are an order of magnitude faster than legacy systems. While certainly an ingenuous solution, the company has gotten some pushback from the community regarding the voting nature of the blockchain. The controversy is based on the observation that the voting mechanism has caused the platform to drift toward centralization over time. Consensus Rules? These new solutions appear to offer a meaningful way forward for the blockchain community. As with any other new technology, change is slow, and bugs are discovered only through trial and error. As the blockchain community continues to make new systems to provide consensus, the apparent ‘Achilles heel’ of security, scalability, and decentralization may be solved. Whether Ethereum is able to accomplish this remains to be seen, but new consensus solutions from companies like CasperLabs and EOSIO appear to offer the most realistic way to move in that direction.

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