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DeFi has dominated the topic of conversation in the cryptocurrency space in 2020 with few signs of slowing down. Among its many innovations, the trend of liquidity mining has without doubt caused the largest stir and allowed investors to make massive gains reminiscent of the ICO days. But investors must assume a high risk for high reward and, in some cases, many have made staggering losses through scam projects, technical glitches, and unscrupulous project founders. Investing in DeFi, just like every area of investment, needs to be done with due diligence to ensure a quality project that will stay the distance rather than bootstrap liquidity from an existing protocol, hoodwink investors, and disappear pretty much overnight. Announcing DGTX Rewards Program on Uniswap Enter Digitex. As a high-quality project that has built up a large and active community of traders, investors, and speculators, the zero-fee exchange has been live on the mainnet since July 2020, building up popularity, liquidity, and userbase over this time. But as an innovative company that wants to offer its community access to the DeFi yield farming phenomenon while opening up its exchange to a broader user base, Digitex has decided to launch the DGTX Rewards Program in mid-November. Digitex Futures This will be done through Uniswap, the world’s largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. On Uniswap, users provide liquidity through a process called pooling in which they deposit (lock-in) cryptocurrencies in the liquidity pool to earn a share of the fees paid out in trading. Unlike on other DEXs that often suffer from a lack of liquidity, on Uniswap, pools are created using 50% ETH and 50% of the selected token to ensure liquidity is maintained. According to Digitex, allowing holders to pool ETH and DGTX will greatly incentivize on-chain liquidity of the DGTX token. Users receive DGTX tokens for providing liquidity on the DGTX/ETH market on Uniswap. The more liquidity they provide, and the longer they provide it, the greater share of the DGTX Rewards pool they receive. How the Rewards Program Works As described in a , the rewards program is designed to add liquidity into Uniswap, but then the DGTX rewards are collected by visiting the Digitex website. DGTX holders will, therefore, need to start by visiting Uniswap and creating a new “pool token” by locking away an equal amount of DGTX and ETH to create a new token called the ‘Digiteth’ token. This will allow them to then earn rewards from Digitex through its own DGTX Rewards Program coming soon via DigitexCity.com. Digitex blog post Token holders simply need to deposit their pool tokens into their staking rewards wallet on DigitexCity.com and collect their rewards when they withdraw their funds. 5 Million DGTX Rewards in First Month Kick-Off To mark the new initiative (which will coincide with the first unveiling of the DigitexCity.com domain) Digitex is allocating a massive 5 million DGTX for the first-month campaign and, rather than having to keep their tokens staked for long periods of time, investors will receive daily payouts in proportion to the number of pool tokens they have staked, upon withdrawal of their funds. Breaking that down, this means that the generous rewards program will be paying out some 166,666 DGTX tokens every day divided among pool token holders. The development of the DGTX Rewards Program is already underway and expected to launch throughout the second half of November. So, why is Digitex willing to pay such high rewards to participants in its program? According to CEO Adam Todd, it’s because they “see the value in terms of the liquidity” that the exchange will build on Uniswap. “This means that we can greatly increase the demand for the program, and the userbase for our exchange. The demand for the DGTX token will also go up and supply will constrict, which is a win-win situation for all.” The Pivot to Digitex City The original purpose of the DGTX token was for traders to be able to trade with zero commission fees in the Digitex Futures exchange. However, since the public launch, it became apparent that DGTX volatility on the exchange was a barrier for some traders, particularly those wanting to trade with larger amounts. Therefore, the company has since announced the launch of a new stablecoin, the DUSD token, to take over as the native currency of the exchange--as well as a pivot to Digitex City in December 2020. Digitex City is a massively ambitious undertaking that will offer futures, spot, and forex markets from one unique login with the company’s signature zero-fee and no house edge theme built-in. According to the , there will also be additional features such as an integrated social platform and entertainment in the form of gambling and gaming applications. Described as “crypto’s playground,” users will come to Digitex City to trade, play, and connect without having any volatility risk by utilizing the new DUSD stablecoin. DUSD will be pegged at $1 and is created from locking away DGTX as collateral, at a ratio of 5:1. Digitex City is set to open its doors on December 15, 2020. whitepaper Wrapping It Up This is certainly not the first time that the young company has surprised the crypto community with its ongoing innovation and refusal to rest on its laurels. Digitex City, meant to be a one-stop-shop for all things crypto and a place where people come to make money, connect, and play has the potential to draw large crowds. It will be interesting to see how the community and DeFi enthusiasts at large react to the DGTX rewards program. However, this timely rewards program with Uniswap, currently the world’s largest DEX, certainly has the potential to bring new eyes to Digitex City and zero-fee offerings, thus helping it achieve network effect faster. If you want to take part in this program or simply want to stock up on DGTX while it's at a knock-down price, be sure to visit the for an instant trustless transaction with zero slippage. Digitex Treasury

[Announcement] Mega Rewards on Digitex Program Coming Soon With Uniswap

Even before launch at the end of July, we'd already built a loyal and engaged community. Over the time it took to develop our zero-fee futures exchange, we reached a lot of people--and we've been learning from their feedback. One of the biggest things we discovered is that zero-fee trading is in high demand! After all, no trader wants to constantly give away part of their profits to the exchange. But we also learned that not everyone invested in our idea wants to trade futures. And that's OK. Many of our most loyal community members are not seasoned traders but speculators and HODLers who believe in the Digitex vision and the future value of the coin. That's why, beyond our ongoing work toward the pivot to , we're busy developing the that will reward a different sector of our audience, as well as introducing the Digitex . Digitex City DGTX Staking Program stablecoin DUSD Rather than merely making money from token price rallies, DGTX holders will soon be able to earn rewards on their DGTX, while traders on the exchange can trade bigger volumes without worrying about DGTX volatility. Both initiatives considerably restrict the supply of DGTX, thereby driving up its value. Find out more about both projects below. The Digitex Stablecoin DUSD In our run-up to launch in the past, the price of DGTX has always shot up all based on speculation but when we finally launched, many of those people sold off. We now understand this defect in our original plan, and the need to pivot from solely relying on the demand from futures traders. Combine this problem with another barrier to trading on the exchange that's keeping many traders away: the volatility of DGTX. After all, what's the point of making single-tick profits in DGTX if the token's value is going down? We have therefore improved on our plan moving forward to introduce to , launching December 2020. Digitex Stablecoin DUSD This will tackle these two large problems at once by eliminating volatility and increasing demand, at the same time as restricting supply and pushing up the value of DGTX. The DUSD is an that will become the native currency of the exchange and all the other venues in Digitex City. It maintains its value stable at $1 and is collateralized by DGTX at a ratio of 5:1. ERC20 token This means that five times the value of DGTX tokens is locked away to mint one DUSD. At the current demand from traders on the exchange, roughly 400-500 million DGTX tokens will be locked away at the start to create DUSD. We already have a solid userbase of traders and with the elimination of volatility, as well as the many initiatives we're working on for Digitex City, we only anticipate this to rise. And while we gradually build our userbase over the coming months, this 5:1 ratio of DGTX/DUSD will serve to take the DGTX token back to the price we all know it should be at. The DGTX Staking Program In tandem with the DUSD, the DGTX Staking Program will also be coming out at the end of this year. It will also have a very important bonus effect of restricting DGTX supply as we will be locking a significant portion of DGTX out of circulation. This means that we can at last break the cycle of downward price pressure on DGTX and bring the value and ROI for our investors, as well as allowing the sector of our audience that isn't interested in trading futures a chance to make money on their DGTX through staking. One of the things that we're most excited about with the DGTX Staking Program is that it allows us to reward our most loyal community members. They lock up their DGTX tokens into the program with no minimum amount and, in return, they are rewarded with their proportional share of the staking rewards, so they can make a passive income from their DGTX with minimal effort. As our CEO Adam Todd said in an AMA last Friday, “hundreds of thousands of people read our emails and are interested in the project but not trading futures, giving them a special program is an effective use of the audience that we already have.” According to a recent poll, around 30% of our community state that they will be participating in the DGTX Staking Program. By constricting the supply so much between the staking program and stablecoin system, there will be a limited amount of tokens available, thus pushing the price of back DGTX up to where it belongs. This means that anyone who wants to right now, can take advantage of its undervalued price. buy DGTX How the Staking Program Works Initially, the staking rewards will be funded through liquidations on the Digitex Futures exchange. However, as the first version of Digitex City is set to be released in December of this year, more revenue streams will be added for funding the staking program. These include ad revenues from the Digitex City social platform, listing fees, and a host of future revenue streams to come. Currently, we are making around $100,000 in liquidations each month. Therefore, we made our first deposit of $100,000 USDC to the DGTX Staking Program on the and will continue to allocate approximately the same amount each month until the end of the year when the DGTX Staking Program begins. Ethereum blockchain here By this time, there will be between $300,000 and $500,000 USDC in the wallet which will be distributed to stakers proportionately in the first month. What Kind of Returns Can Stakers Expect to Make? It's not possible to predict with 100% certainty the exact rewards that stakers will make as this is dependent on a few factors, including the DGTX price, how many people take part, and how many DGTX are locked up. But, if you take a read of our , you'll see that even with the most conservative estimates, stakers stand to make excellent rewards--as much as $750,000 per month by the end of 2021 thanks to the accompanying initiatives of Digitex City. whitepaper DGTX Staking Example Assuming that 300 million DGTX are staked in the first month, and based on today's undervalued token price of $0.035, that would be an approximate value of $10.5 million. Assuming a staking reward fund of $300,000-$500,000 USDC would equate to rewards worth between around three and five percent in the first month alone. Of course, this is a very high rate of return and it's likely that market forces will see the price of DGTX rise as more people want to get a share of the rewards. But even if the price rose to $0.10, the return in December could still be around 1.5% in a single month which equates to 18% per year; still an extremely attractive ROI. Keep in mind that this example is only taking into account the end of 2020 when the staking program is launched. During that same month, we'll also be launching our commission-free spot market, commission-free forex futures market, the social network, the DUSD, and many other initiatives. As we build throughout the rest of the coming year, the sky is really the limit. This is why we believe that rewards for stakers could reach as high as $750,000 per month by the end of 2021. Final Thoughts With these two initiatives working together, this locks away roughly 700-800 million tokens at the current rate. Moreover, any new traders coming will create upward pressure for the price. And, for traders who simply want an easy frictionless trading experience, they can purchase DUSD right away and trade, without ever having to know about the mechanisms of how the DUSD is created or about the staking program. But for our audience that want to make a passive income, they now have the means to get more out of their DGTX, while contributing to growing our user base, restricting DGTX supply, and helping to increase its value.

[Announcement] Digitex Is Building A City, A Stablecoin, And A Staking Program For You

Crypto Market Recap: 14, October 2018 The cryptocurrency markets have still not found it’s mojo as we enter this Sunday. The last dump seems to have pulled the market sentiment down further because there has been no change from yesterdays’ price action. The market capitalization is still just slightly above $200 Billion but the trading volume is not in a good position as it dropped more at $9.5 Billion. This is the first time it dipped below $10 Billion since August. Yesterday’s BTC dominance has dropped down a notch but now it has inched back to 54% which might not be a good sign for the altcoins. Bitcoin is still not moving since yesterday at its current price at $6370. Over the week, the Bitcoin price saw a rise to up to $6600 then declined drastically hitting $6400 and $6200 supports. Then it started a semi-recovery yesterday and it actually touched $6400 earlier in the Asian markets but the volume is just so low at $3.1 Billion. The chart is now slightly on a bullish zone with the MACD riding up on the four-hour chart. Come Monday, we might be looking at Bitcoin struggling to go forward or if the bears are strong, a drop at around the $6100 would not be too far fetched. Ethereum is currently facing a lot of stumbling blocks at the moment. It’s been stuck at $202 for the past three days and the volume is not moving at $1.1 Billion. The week saw Ethereum tumble down alongside Bitcoin from $234 down to as low as $185. It made an upward movement but it was capped at $200 where it is still on at the time of this writing. With its current volume, it might not be easy to cross the $207 resistance in the short-term even though it is slowly moving the bullish zones on the charts. The price action for the Top 10 is hardly noticeable. Cardano is the top loser today at -1.68% at the time of this writing. Next, we have Litecoin back at $53.30 with a -1.20% loss on the day. On the other end, we only have Monero which is barely positive at 0.24%. The rest are at 0–1% loss and flat this morning. TRON is still leading the Top 25 at 2.06%. Dash has been fighting back to start the recovery at 1.93% as well. 0x is back on the positive after a correction yesterday. NEO is also on the green at 1.26%. As you can see, the movements are quite small at the moment and it will take sometime before it recovers from the 10% drops it went thru last week. On the other side is Tezos correcting at -1.44%. The Top 100 are a mix of green and red but also pretty flat apart from the current fomo for Digitex Futures, an exchange planned for launch at the end of this year. It has jumped another 20.26% on the day after yesterday’s pump at46.15%. Aion is also surging at 17.62% and Digibyte rounds off our double-digit gains for the day. CoinDNA is an educational website that aids users in research, the first step of their investment journey, providing insights to help navigate investment decisions, including market data for individual tokens, a daily market report, and custom frequently-asked analytics.

Digitex Futures Ramping Up Despite Market Turbulence, Sunday Crypto Market Still Down

The United States Securities Exchange Commission’s (SEC) eleven approvals, which took over a decade of efforts by fund managers to accomplish, have institutionalized Bitcoin, allowing digital assets to seep into investors’ portfolios in the US forever. Bitcoin ETF With the two largest digital asset exchanges— and — still battling in court with the SEC, digital asset investors should beware that to protect investors, federal agencies SEC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) during 2023 ramped up legal enforcement efforts against world’s largest digital asset exchanges reaching a wide range of misconduct, that occurred in both US and foreign jurisdictions. Coinbase Binance After all, the United States in traffic to digital asset exchanges, followed by India, Indonesia, and Turkey, to the latest Coincub’s report. leads according Erhan Kahraman, editor at Cointelegraph, explained the reasons for Turkish investors’ increased activity on digital asset exchanges—which are not yet within the country— to me: “The Coincub’s ‘Crypto exchanges traffic report 2023’ aligns with the overall narrative of cryptocurrencies as a hedge against inflation. In Turkey, crypto exchanges such as Binance, Btc Turk, and Paribu are adding fuel to the flames, ranked number one, two, and three, respectively, genuinely having a presence. Their advertisements are on billboards on highways. They have TV commercials. They have brand partnerships with major sports teams. That aggressive marketing feeds the Turkish population’s never-ending quest for get-rich-quick schemes due to the lack of a reliable economic structure.” As Erhan continues: regulated “Turkey has endured skyrocketing inflation rates, especially since the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inflation numbers went from 20%, which is already high, to the north of 60% in 2023. Bitcoin was around 400,000 Turkish liras at the start of 2023, and it closed the year at around 1.2 million Turkish liras.” Binance is the number one digital asset exchange in Turkey and the world, with over 1 billion visits. Coinbase ranks second in the world but number one in the US, with 549 million visits, attracting over 50% of the US traffic share, according to the . report Nevertheless, both the US and the world’s largest digital asset exchanges—Coinbase and Binance—are embroiled in lawsuits with the SEC for not abiding by a multitude of federal securities laws. The federal securities laws have two primary : (1) to require that investors receive financial and other significant information concerning securities being offered for public sale and (2) to prohibit deceit, misrepresentations, and other fraud in the sale of securities. As the SEC Chair Gary Gensler about the litigation with Coinbase, which serves as a custodian for most of the BTC ETFs: objectives explained “To the extent that crypto assets are offered and sold in the form of an investment contract, and to the extent that entities intermediate transactions in crypto asset securities, the federal securities laws apply.” In the US, digital assets—particularly after the 2022 bear market—have been the focus of much attention by both federal and state governments. At the federal level, most of the focus has been at the administrative and agency level, including the SEC, the CFTC, and the Department of the Treasury through the IRS, FinCEN, and OFAC. While there has been significant enforcement by these agencies to protect investors, little formal rulemaking has . occurred A look at 2023 federal enforcement actions against digital asset exchanges The 2023 federal enforcement action reports issued by the SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, IRS, and OFAC indicate that very few digital asset exchanges are actually abiding by applicable laws despite handling the world’s highest digital asset activity. The  SEC cryptocurrency report 46 enforcement actions against various digital-asset market participants—26 (57%) alleged fraud, 28 (61%) alleged an unregistered securities offering violation, and 17 (37%) alleged both. The Securities Exchange Commission: details The highest-profile digital asset exchange cases were the following: the SEC’s action against the former FTX CEO (who was charged with defrauding equity investors in FTX), Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken. The CFTC digital assert report a record-setting number of 47 actions involving conduct related to digital asset commodities cases and precedent-setting court decisions in complex litigations, its reputation as a premier enforcement agency in the digital asset space. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission: details cementing The highest-profile digital asset exchange case was the CFTC’s action against Binance. Sergiu Hamza, CEO of Coincub, explained Binance’s global regulatory problems to me: “In 2019, Binance they would block US customers and launched a separate US exchange, called Binance.US. Binance still faces a lawsuit from the SEC for 13 federal securities law violations. However, it was the biggest exchange in the US last year, still driving almost 34.5 million visitors from the US, and Binance.US  was the seventh biggest, with only 17.8 million visits.” As Sergiu continues: said second “Four years and four billion US dollars in fines later, Binance is still looking for trouble, not only in North America. Binance does not list any of its MSB in the US and Canada, and the exchange announced it would leave Canada, but it didn’t and got 14 million visits.  Of the top 10 crypto countries during 2023, Binance got banned in India and the Philippines but still had 75M and 2.5M visits, respectively. licenses “According to a 500-page report in Brazil, Binance and its leaders are , offering or trading securities without prior authorization, and operating a financial institution without consent. Yet, last year, 18 million Brazilians visited the exchange. Binance announced it would exit Russia in September, yet Russia is their fifth biggest market by traffic.  Binance was denied a license from the Netherlands but got 11.2 million visits in traffic. accused of fraudulent management “In the rest of the world, Binance established its headquarters in Malta and is suspected of evading taxes and faking accounts in Malta and Ireland by EU regulators. Yet, the company got 365,000 and 3.5 million visits in each country, respectively. Binance did monthly transactions worth $90 billion in the banned Chinese market, where the company got 4.4 million visits last year. Binance side the Belgium ban in June by redirecting users to Poland with 6 million visits. In September, Taiwan banned unregistered foreign crypto exchanges, including Binance, yet got 8.7 million visits from 2.2 million unique visitors last year.  SEC Nigeria banned the global crypto exchange Binance in July, yet it got 9.2 million visits last year. In 2021, Malaysia and South Africa’s financial regulators warned against Binance, saying the exchange is not authorized to operate in the respective countries, and took enforcement against Binance; the exchange still got 9.5 million visitors last year from Malaysia and 4 million visits from South Africa.” actions The FinCEN on Bitzlato Limited, a digital asset exchange, for facilitating illicit transactions linked to Russian money laundering. FinCEN also a $3.4 billion penalty on Binance, which represented FinCEN’s most significant penalty to date. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: placed restrictions imposed The IRS criminal investigation unit (IRS-CI) witnessed a notable increase in cases related to digital tax evasion, according to Jim Lee, Chief, IRS-CI, with approximately half of the active digital-asset investigations involving tax matters ranging from failure to report income from capital gains or mining activities to deliberate non-disclosure of cryptocurrency holdings. The IRS-CI’s top 10 high-profile cases for 2023 four involving digital assets. The Internal Revenue Service: included During the cyber challenge of the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (known as the J5), committed to combatting transnational tax-related crime, well over 50 leads on potential tax crimes and money laundering involving cryptocurrency were created using data mining and AI.  “These ‘Challenges’ have been incredibly fruitful for the J5 over the years, giving us sophisticated cases with large dollar amounts that affect multiple jurisdictions,” Jim Lee, Chief, IRS-CI. He continued: said “But the results should not be a surprise to anyone. When you put really smart people together from different backgrounds, give them the data and tools they need, and create an environment where partnerships are the priority, amazing results happen every time.” The OFAC issued 17 enforcement actions, with three involving digital asset exchanges totaling over $1.5 billion in civil penalties, nearly four times the level of OFAC’s civil penalties in 2022. OFAC’s $970 million with Binance marked the most significant penalty in its history. The Office of Foreign Assets Control: settlement Digital asset exchange enforcement by US regulators during 2023 SEC CFTC FinCEN IRS OFAC FTX Yes Yes Yes Yes Binance Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Coinbase Yes Bittrex Yes Beaxy Digital Yes Kraken Yes Yes Gemini & Genesis Yes Ooki DAO Yes Digitex Yes Deridex, Opyn & ZeroEx Yes 14 Crypto Exchanges Yes Safemoon LLC Yes Yes Poloniex & Circle Yes Yes CoinList Markets LLC Yes Bitzlato Yes Conclusion Coincub’s “Crypto exchanges traffic report 2023” that as we move into 2024, the digital asset exchange industry will navigate uncharted waters. Once dominated by giants like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, this sector will experience a paradigm shift. The landscape will develop rapidly with increased worldwide regulatory scrutiny, technological innovation, market competition, and evolving consumer trends.  Accordingly, investors should keep abreast of their regulatory compliance practices of digital asset exchanges. concludes For example, Circle, which is the issuer of the second largest stablecoin USDC and is backed by Coinbase as it prepares for a confidential IPO, and Kraken a letter to clients notifying them that after losing a lengthy court case, they will need to turn over sensitive client tax data to the IRS. Kraen submits Forms 1099-MISC to the IRS for US clients who earned over $600 in digital asset rewards or staking during a given year but does not report crypto capital gains or losses. The IRS investors facing an April 15, 2024, tax deadline to continue reporting their digital asset income on tax forms 1040, 1040-SR, 1040-NR, 1041, 1065, 1120, and 1120-S. And recognize that the IRS has taken several to centralize its approach to addressing the significant impact digital assets have and will continue to have on tax administration. sent reminds actions Also published . here

Does Your Digital Asset Exchange Follow the Rules?

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Top 5 AI-Enabled Content Generation Tools Be it healthcare, travel, fitness, finance, or any other industry, the advent of artificial intelligence has revolutionized almost all of them by enabling machines to act and behave like human beings. 35. "Never Be Afraid to Say: I Don't Know" — Vindhya C (2019 Noonies Winner: PM of the Year) Vindhya C won 2019's coveted Noonie Award for Product Manager of the Year. Nominations for the 2020 Award for Product Manager of the Year are OPEN UNTIL 12 AUGUST AT NOON! Nominate someone you admire for a Hacker Noon Tech Award and make a PM's day today! 36. Hey, Content Creator! Here are 7 Tools You Can't Do Without Ready to boost your content creation skills to the next level? Stand out from the competition with these 7 tools for content creators! 37. Our Storytelling Platform Built On ‘Kokorozashi’ Dear reader, Even though we do not want to believe that you do not know yet about HeadUP, we kind of understand this eventuality and the reason(s) why; and it is all fine, no hurt feelings (not like these guys below)... 38. Making Promotional Videos for Crypto Startups: Types, Strategies, Expectations, and Costs 39. How to Nail Your Content Strategy Using AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) has numerous business applications and is increasingly being adopted by companies worldwide. In fact, 37% of businesses leverage AI in some form or another. Content is one such area where AI can help brands and marketers get the
best results. 40. Top 10 Promising Platforms For Making Money From Your Content How do you earn as a creator in 2022? Here is the list of platforms that help every content maker transform this into real business. 41. Building a Relationship with your Fans will Mean Support, Even When Things are Tough Sophie Watts | Cultivating Success: The Importance of Community Within Content Creation 42. Every Career Starts with a Leap of Faith: Navigating a Career in Content Creation After being diagnosed with a chronic illness at the age of 14, she worked diligently to bring positivity to the world through her art, personality, and content. 43. What is B2B Content Marketing and How It Can Help Your Business Marketing to other businesses is no easy task. There are a lot of complexity, nuances, and processes that you need to follow to gain value for your efforts. Getting the attention of other businesses as a vendor in a crowded market place is getting harder every day — the reason why is that more companies have been adopting content marketing to gain visibility with their prospects. If companies do not innovate their marketing efforts, then they will be left behind. We will be doing a deep dive today into B2B content marketing. We want you to understand the basics of using this tactic to make your company more competitive in the B2B space. 44. 3 Marketing Strategies Delivering the Best Growth for Online Side Hustles Here's what I learned growing an online side hustle from $0 to $800 per month in 3 months: Growing an online side-hustle is not easy. Content, in particular, is a risky marketing proposition because of a steep learning curve, high labor and input costs, with very uncertain returns. Yet content forms the basis of pretty much any online marketing strategy — from email to blogging to social. It’s vital for online growth. 45. The Brain Power of a Headless CMS Headless Content Management Systems have several advantages over traditional content management systems. Read about them here. 46. How to write SaaS comparison pages that beat the competition Use research, SEO, and conversion copywriting to effectively position your SaaS against competitors 47. 13 Tips for Writing Better Content Than Others Learn about how to improve as a content writer and produce good copy with these 11 tips that cover how to find practice and the skill to focus improving. 48. 8 Great Alternatives to SharePoint in 2022 SharePoint CMS is a cloud-based, secure, and collaborative platform widely used today, but here are some alternatives that also work well. 49. Tom Ward, Forbes Contributor, Talks About The Rise of Influencers The content creator economy has grown by leaps and bounds since the world heard of it 5 years ago. 50. Why Clickbait Is Bad For You Clickbait helps increase click rate, but is it the best strategy for sharing content? Find out why clickbait is bad for you and how you can use it well here. 51. 6 Actionable Tactics to Improve Content Performance and Ace Content Metrics For content to be great, it should hit home with your readers, hook them in so they don’t leave your page, make a positive impact on them, and rank higher. 52. How To Stay Human in the Digital Era: A Series of Fortunate Tips for Shaping the Next Generation World Wide Webers, it’s 2019 and the talk of town are topics that so many of us interact with every day: conversational marketing, behavioural science, machine learning, process automation, productivity tools, chatbots, algorithms, artificial intelligence, big data, deep learning, accelerating digital transformation, and so much more. 53. Adrien Book : The Beautiful Humans Of Hacker Noon (Noonies Winner for Best AI Writer, 2019) The Backstory about the Internet’s most community-focused awards: 54. How Will Gen Z Pay for The Content They Consume? They never had to directly pay for the news, but Gen Z won’t kill off the digital publisher. Technology is giving publishers the tools to engage the ‘lost’ generation. 55. 5 Ways to Put Your Content Promotion on Autopilot Have you been sending out newsletters, launching social media campaigns, and doing content promotion work with age-old manual labor? 56. How to Write Things People Want to Read A checklist for writing good human-first content 57. 5 Ways To Conquer The Content Game As a SaaS Startup As a Software-as-a-Service business, building awareness is imperative for your endeavour. Content marketing has established itself as one of the most powerful tools a SaaS company can use to attract, educate and convert customers. 58. Deconstructing Content Marketing [Deep Dive] Before the SaaS revolution started booming, software companies used to be incredibly sales-driven, and the processes they focused on were plain old-school — aggressive engagement with customers and persuasive discussions centered around the product were known to be the norm. 59. 'The Word "Hacking" isn't Used Accurately Today' - Tom Rutka, '19 #Noonies Hacker Of The Year Hey there Hackers: it’s now August, the month of Hacker Noon’s 2020 Noonies Awards season! Visit noonies.tech before public nominations close at Noon MT on 12 August 2020 to nominate your Product Manager of the Year; best-in-class Blockchain contributors, analysts, influencers; Software Development innovators, and more. 60. Should Twitter Implement a Downvote Button? In this slogging thread, the technology channel took the chance to discuss the latest news about Twitter and how they're considering adding a downvote button. 61. Employee Training Amid The Pandemic: The Tools You Need to Succeed The idea of "employee training" is adapting to global pandemic working requirements using authoring tools, learning management systems & web conferencing tools. 62. How to Perfect Your Startup's Content Marketing Strategy You have started your new business, and you are ready to fly over the walls of your competitors. But wait, have you examined your content marketing strategy? Thank you for checking out the 62 most read stories about Content on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

62 Stories To Learn About Content

301 Stories To Learn About Cryptocurrency Top Story

416 Stories To Learn About Crypto Trading

95 Stories To Learn About Altcoins

Let's learn about via these 76 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Staking /Learn Repo 1. DAFI Protocol, the Chain Link of Staking Rewards An interview with Zain Rana, the founder and CEO of DAFI Protocol that brings new innovations to Staking in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies 2. Web3 Service Provider Ankr Integrates Staking with its Infrastructure Layer Ankr, a decentralised infrastructure platform announced the addition of token staking to its infrastructure layer, enabling Web3 users to profit from the fees. 3. Node Providers The node provider market is crowded. New players have few opportunities: support long tailed assets, better UX, lower price. 4. Generating Passive Income Through Filecoin Staking In this post, we'll explore the concept of staking and how will you benefit from Filecoin staking. 5. Is Regulation Really Needed in the Crypto Space? Despite all the talk of regulatory standards and bills, the questions of whether the cryptocurrency space really needs intervention has yet to be answered. 6. Introducing Compounding Rewards Feature For Dapp Staking Astar is introducing its new compounding rewards features which will allow users to claim their staked rewards which will automatically be restaked. 7. Coinbase Is About to Be Sued By the SEC Coinbase Lawsuit Incoming! 8. Independent Ethereum Staking in 2022 and How to Tie Validators to Beacon Nodes Independent staking is the gold standard of Ethereum staking. So today we investigate how to do it in 2way, simplifying validator and beacon nodes 9. Staking Vs Liquidity Mining Vs Yield Farming – An Unbiased Comparison Staking vs Liquidity mining vs Yield Farming are good methods to put your crypto assets in the protocol and facilitate trading, lending and borrowing. 10. How Can You Earn Interest with Cryptocurrency? In many ways, cryptocurrency is starting to replace the ways people increase their wealth, earn interest, and even earn a passive income! 11. Fomo3d on Solana: Making my Own Blockchain Game Factory This article is more of a how-to guide on the various ways one can play the current evolution of my blockchain game  fair3d.me 12. Can Uniswap Be Left Behind? With newly-launched DEXs, Uniswap V3 is running late. That’s the project that carved out a niche one day and conquered the crypto market. Let’s face the music - even titans can lose over time. The next-gen platform that looks ahead of the pack is Algebra.Finance. 13. OSWAP Token: Incentivizing Liquidity Provision in Oswap Pools OSWAP token reflects the success of the Oswap protocol and rewards the liquidity providers. It automatically appreciates at a rate that depends on Oswap TVL. 14. Staking NFTs – A Beating Heart Among Stillness or Clinically Dead? The genuine features of NFTs make them ideal for wait-and-HODL strategies but has the era of staking NFTs come to its end? Some don't think so. 15. Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade Set to Unlock Staked Ether and Boost Staking Ratios The widely anticipated Ethereum Shanghai upgrade is scheduled for early April 2023. The upgrade will unlock staked Ether that, for some, was inaccessible since December 2020. The results of the upgrade will have direct implications on Ether’s price, staking ratios, liquid staking and Proof of Stake community, and the industry as a whole. 16. Coming to Consensus: Proof-of-Work vs Proof-of-Stake An article that both explains and compares Proof-of-Work (used by Bitcoin and Ethereum) and Proof-of-Stake (used by many other blockchains) 17. How To Stake On The Top Layer 1s? Learn how to stake on the two blockchain protocols that call themselves the 'World Computers' -- Ethereum and the Internet Computer in a post-merge world. 18. The Ultimate Guide to Crypto Staking Crypto staking is taking world finance to a new level. When more people come on board to DeFi, it will start a Web3 revolution. 19. Introducing StakeBoard: a Beginner-Friendly Web3 Staking Dashboard StakeBoard provides a single dashboard that allows stakers to track their staking accounts in a single app. 20. [Announcement] Digitex Is Building A City, A Stablecoin, And A Staking Program For You Even before launch at the end of July, we'd already built a loyal and engaged community. Over the time it took to develop our zero-fee futures exchange, we reached a lot of people--and we've been learning from their feedback. 21. How Telecommunication Companies can Impact Defi and Staking In the presentation below, the Product Owner at T-Systems shares details about how the telecommunications company is providing blockchain infrastructure. 22. How Polygon Supernets and Ankr Help Build Modular Blockchain Apps Polygon Supernets is an EVM-compatible modular blockchain stack that enables developers to have a custom decentralized modular network. 23. Cryptocurrencies Should Serve The Real People, Not The Privileged Few MEME TAO is a DeFi-based hedge fund that empowers proven crypto investors to manage a set of pre-targeted crypto funds. 24. Bridging CeFi and DeFi: Better Risk Management and More Sustainable Wealth Generation Have you ever staked tokens on a large crypto exchange like Binance or Coinbase? 25. Is Yield Farming Still Viable in 2022? Let's look at yield farming, how it works and if it's still worthwhile for users in the Defi space during the current market conditions after the crash. 26. WTF is Exchange Staking? Introduction 27. Rules You Need to Know Before Staking Staking is like the treasury of the crypto world. It offers low-risk yield and is the best strategy in the bear market. Here are must know rules before staking. 28. Solo Staking on Ethereum and Earning Rewards Using Infura After The Merge How to solo stake on Ethereum after The Merge, considerations and things to be aware of leading up to The Merge, and how to stay up to date. Read it all here. 29. We're Making Your Crypto-Investments Smarter - Here's How Throughout the short recent history of the cryptocurrency revolution, everyone from the most dedicated technology evangelists to large institutional investors have been looking for ways to harness the stunning wealth-generation powers of this new financial instrument. 30. DeFi Lacked Cohesion and Automation - Until Now DeFi is finally providing viable use cases for cryptocurrencies beyond being a speculative value storage. 31. Everything Wrong with Proof of Stake Staking is another form of centralized control. 32. Cake DeFi has Given Out $317 Million in Rewards as of Q1 2022 CakeDeFi has paid around $317 million in rewards to its customers as of the end of Q1 2022 to become one of the fastest growing DeFi platforms in Asia. 33. Why Startups aren't Using Ethereum This interview talks about the rising ethereum transaction fees, cross-fi staking and cybersecurity for blockchain startups. 34. A Guide on Staking the Axie Infinity Sidechain This is a complete guide for those who play Axie infinity and know it well BUT also for complete beginners with no previous knowledge of staking and Axie Tokens 35. Staking, Yield Farming, Lending: DeFi Remains Crypto's Home for Passive Income DeFi has made access to financial services easier and with its farms, lending services and staking rewards, the ecosystem is a go-to for profit-hungry investors 36. How To Get Started On Staking Staking is a way to make money from your idle Proof-of-Stake (PoS) cryptocurrency without trading while getting genuinely involved with its network. 37. Why Liquid Staking Benefits the Crypto Ecosystem Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains are waiting for you to stake your crypto. Yet staking’s low participation — only 24% of the total market cap of staking platforms are locked in staking — means that crypto enthusiasts have yet to realize its benefits. 38. Blockchain Newsletter: Liquid Staking Protocol & Finance Derivatives & Future The ecosystem of staking is established. Big players have already gained a strong position in the market. The total staking market will continue to grow. 39. Understanding Staking and Generating Passive Income in the World of Cryptocurrency The recent trend of the cryptocurrency market seems to be on a replay: the prices of cryptocurrencies go up in a minute and in another hour, declines faster than it rose.  In recent times, individuals have made digital currencies, an alternative or additional source of income. 40. More Than Just HODLing: Under Discussed Aspects of PoS The benefits to staking are well-documented, but the risks of staking are less talked about. not 41. The Evolving Landscape of Prediction Markets An examination of how the cryptocurrency industry is revolutionizing the prediction market space. 42. How Ethereum Staking is Creating a $10 Billion Ponzi Scheme One of the Ponzi scheme in the history, no one is sounding the alarm! 43. Staking Tokens on the Bancor Network: A Step by Step Guide “Staking liquidity essentially gives token holders a passive income, while bolstering the overall health of the decentralized network.” -Cryptoslate 44. [Announcement] Mega Rewards on Digitex Program Coming Soon With Uniswap DeFi has dominated the topic of conversation in the cryptocurrency space in 2020 with few signs of slowing down. Among its many innovations, the trend of liquidity mining has without doubt caused the largest stir and allowed investors to make massive gains reminiscent of the ICO days. 45. DeFi’s Rise to Shame: Its Problems and How to Fix Them With the emergence of Bitcoin, a lot of financial experts predicted big changes due to the utilization of cryptocurrencies. 46. What if You Could Post on FB and Get Paid For it in Crypto? It’s not difficult to imagine what Facebook might look like today if a cryptocurrency had been embedded in the business plan from the beginning. 47. Proof of Stake (PoS): Staking as a Tool For The Passive Income Proof of Stake (PoS): Pros and Cons of Staking as a Tool For The Passive Income 48. How to Easily Create an NFT Collection with Staking in 10 minutes Create a new NFT collection, with custom Minting page, and Staking under 10 minutes. 49. Saving Your Money in a Crisis With Cryptocurrencies In DeFi, the yield on deposits in dollar stablecoins reaches 15-20%. I discuss the risks and where to invest for a conservated crypto-investor in 2022. 50. A Look at XDC Network & Delegated Proof-of-Stake in 2022 A Look at Delegated Proof-of-Stake in 2022 51. Crypto Staking: Assessing the Risks and Profitability of USD Neutrino, Cosmos and others Crypto industry keeps generating new investment tools – only to be discarded  in disappointment a year or two later. The latest trend is staking - delegating coins to to earn validation rewards on the blockchain. Is it a legitimate passive income scheme? And what should you choose - regular PoS coins like Cosmos or stakable stablecoins? 52. HotStuff: The Consensus Protocol Behind SafeStake and Facebook's LibraBFT With HotStuff, SafeStake governs the operator networks to determine the message content of the threshold signature scheme among the operator nodes. 53. From 0 to 1000 Nodes on a Testnet: Case Study on Avalanche Denali What is a testnet? 54. Earning passive income from cryptocurrency in 2020: Market Review While the lending market craze is plummeting and the “yield farming” opportunities are not as profitable as they were in the beginning, you might be looking for new ways to put your money at work. 55. Digital Assets: Are We Still Early? Over the past few weeks if you're in the digital asset space you've probably received texts or questions over the holidays on what to buy or if it's a good time to do so etc. etc. I'm writing this in an effort to give my opinion which is in no way shape or form financial advice. 56. How Does An Automated Staking Ecosystem: A MyCointainer Review A similar staking mechanism whereby you can run an automated staking and masternode operation and receive profits in return. 57. Tokenized Locking in an Algorithmic Backed Protocol When compared to other options, the idea of locking funds in any way costs the user, but it benefits both the user and the system in terms of stability. 58. Ethereum 2.0: An Overview Ethereum 2.0 will bring about a lot of changes to the Ethereum network. The main purpose of the upgrade is to make the blockchain FASTER (>15tx/sec), and more SECURE (51% attacks, centralization), while also saving energy (as opposed to mining with electricity). But this update will also imply a host of other changes, such as economic changes, which can also be seen as a way of responding to Ethereum’s stubborn critics, who keep pointing out its crucial issues, such as scalability (remember Cryptokitties?) and fees. Ethereum 2.0 shall lead the way for Ethereum to advance both its technological and economic structure in an attempt to better master the challenges of Blockchain in 2020 and beyond, as well as create new opportunities. However, the most important thing to note here is, that Ethereum 2.0 eventually aims to convert the ETH blockchain from Proof of Work to a PROOF OF STAKE mechanism, and introducing shard chains. 59. Ethereum 2.0 staking on AWS: Cloud Staking Matters Learn how to stake Ethereum 2.0 independently with non-custodial Launchnodes. We dive into Ethereum staking on AWS and benefits of having no intermediaries. 60. How To Build A Secure Eth2 Staking Infrastructure Ethereum 1.0 was a landmark moment in blockchain technology. Allowing for the trustless execution of code on a blockchain in its current form, however, it does not have the ability to scale to the level of computation that would be needed to disrupt current financial systems. 61. Here’s What's Coming Next for PrivacySwap 2.0 PrivacySwap 2.0 is now complete. Now that we are creating our DEX, here’s what we offer and our plans for our next migration 62. The Cardano Blockchain Review Like many other projects in the early days, Cardano was funded through a US $62.2 million initial coin offering. 63. Exploring Passive Income in Cryptocurrencies: Will 2020 be Year of Staking? The blockchain industry definitely looks like a blue ocean - there are a lot of opportunities, the wind changes fast, and the calm suddenly can be replaced by the storm. And, as in real sailing, to be successful it means to catch a wave and tailwind. 64. The Double-Edged Sword of Masternodes: What Happens When Inflation Surpasses Reward The Dash cryptocurrency network invented the masternode concept in 2014, and has recently come to an interesting conclusion: that masternodes heavily influence the coin’s market cap — both for better and for worse. 65. DAFI Protocol's Collaboration With Polygen Allows New Projects to Use Staking 2.0 DAFI announced a partnership with Polygen to enable new decentralized applications launching on the permissionless launchpad to integrate Staking 2.0. 66. Liquid Staking Options: Unlock the Potential of Your Digital Assets Cryptocurrencies offer a unique opportunity to monetize assets through Liquid Staking regardless of their nature, from NFTs to synthetic Forex derivatives. 67. How To Grow Your DeFi Staking Portfolio Safely One of the main drivers of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is that it can turn anyone with internet access into a virtual bank. And we all know how banks make their money — through interest rates set for borrowing and lending. On a DeFi protocol, from Uniswap and Aave to Compound, users become banks the moment they lock their funds into liquidity pools. 68. DeFi Projects That Offer Top Staking Rewards in 2021 When it comes to determining the best staking rewards, a lot comes down to your strategy. DeFi is diverse, and you can earn profits in many different ways. 69. What is Supernode Proof of Stake and Can it Replace Proof of Stake? One of the most important aspects of any blockchain network is the consensus algorithm that is used to validate transactions. In centralized systems like Visa and MasterCard, transactions are verified by a host of authorities. On the other hand, in a decentralized system like blockchain, the network nodes need a set of rules to help them arrive at consensus
regarding the authenticity of new transactions. This is where the  consensus algorithm comes in. 70. "The Need for Interoperability Is Becoming Increasingly Clear" - Jack Lu This article talks about blockchain interoperability and the early days of ethereum and smart contract development. 71. Crypto Staking in 2020: An Overview Public blockchains involve active participants (miners, validators, node operators etc.) to contribute towards the common goal of strengthening the network and confirming transactions through some sort of distributed consensus algorithm. 72. Can You Earn Crypto by Mining/Staking If You Are Not a Programmer? However, anyone can start investing and making a profit. In the long term, you can make cryptocurrency, which has been proven in practice. 73. Earning Passive Income with DeFi Staking: An Overview DeFi staking is one of the hottest trends in the cryptocurrency industry today. It is a simple yet powerful concept that leverages the benefits of decentralized finance. Moreover, staking is still considered one of the best ways to generate passive income from one's existing crypto holdings. 74. Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Cryptocurrency Staking Everyone and his grandma know what cryptocurrency mining is. Well, they may not indeed know what it actually is, in technical terms, but they have definitely heard the phrase as it is hard to miss the news about mining sucking in energy like a black hole gobbles up matter. On the other hand, staking, its little bro, has mostly been hiding in the shadows until recently. Today, with DeFi making breaking news across the cryptoverse, staking has become a new buzzword in the blockchain space and beyond, along with the fresh entries to the crypto asset investor’s vocabulary such as “yield farming”, “rug pull”, “total value locked”, and similar arcane stuff. If you are not scared off yet, then read on. Though we can’t promise you won’t be. 75. What Would Staking Look Like On Ethereum 2.0? Proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) are the two most widely employed blockchain protocols. Blockchain proponents often indulge in debates to prove which of the two is actually better, never really reaching a consensus (pun intended). 76. DeFi - Scratching The Surface To See What Lies Underneath The DeFi frenzy has got the crypto world in its grip. Recently listed DeFi projects, such as MantraDAO, DeFiPie and PlutusDeFi, have generated a significant amount of interest. Simultaneously, existing DeFi platforms like Uniswap, Compound and Aave, have seen a tremendous increase in usage. And it’s not just an increase in use cases that has fueled this DeFi frenzy; there’s enough theatrical in the world of DeFi to keep the crypto enthusiasts glued to their seats. Thank you for checking out the 76 most read stories about Staking on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

76 Stories To Learn About Staking

283 Stories To Learn About Founders

Heyo Hackers! The Round 2 results announcement of is FINALLY Here! The DeFi Writing Contest by SORA & HackerNoon The rewards for this contest will be distributed in XSTUSD. Here’s a complete . guideline for you to get acquainted with XSTUSD Without further ado, let’s see who won: The Defi Writing Contest: Round 2 Nominees Like all other contests, we pick our winners by selecting the top 10 story submissions using weightage respectively to: 60:30:10 Number of hours read The number of people reached The freshness of the content The HackerNoon’s editorial team then vote, picking the top three stories among them and deciding which order to place the winners. The Defi Writing Contest by SORA: Round 2 Winners Here are the Top 10 nominees: by A Short Guide to DeFi and The Metaverse: What is it and Why Should You Care? @nonamec3po by The Native Stabila Crypto Wallet @digitec by Is It Worth It to Invest In Tech Right Now? @devinpartida by How Crypto Is Changing The Gig Economy @Gautam by Generating Passive Income Through Filecoin Staking @shounak by Is the Bear Market a Blessing for the Wise? @moderneremite by DeFi May Save The World Financially @mashacryptoprlab by Perpetual Swaps - Origins in CEX, with a Future in DeFi! @mickey-maler by DeFi Without Defiance. An Ode to Lost Crypto Culture @kellanjansen by Ownership, Authenticity and Cloning of NFTs for the Greater Good @dfxluna In the first place we have: https://hackernoon.com/ownership-authenticity-and-cloning-of-nfts-for-the-greater-good?embedable=true “As much as I dislike the current implementations of NFTs, they do accomplish one thing better than almost any other format has: artists get paid. Modern artists have to jump through so many hoops to get paid, and anything from shilling sponsorships to farming ad revenue or selling "fans only" content is on the table. Most of these methods leverage the artist's reputation and audience engagement as the product being sold rather than the art itself.” Congratulations ! You have won 2500 XSTUSD! @dfxluna The second place is won by: https://hackernoon.com/is-the-bear-market-a-blessing-for-the-wise?embedable=true “Bear markets give us time to look back at recent trends without the bias of emotion and information. We can conduct a ‘post-mortem’ analysis to look for common traits and mechanisms. The subject of our analysis should not be only the project or trend, but also the psychology of ‘investors’ and their market behaviours.” Congratulations @ ! You have won 1500 XSTUSD. moderneremite In the third place, we have: https://hackernoon.com/how-crypto-is-changing-the-gig-economy?embedable=true “The creator economy, emerging online trends, and new crypto economies are pioneering more opportunities for creators to capitalize. Various platforms, protocols, and digital marketplaces are all competing for the attention of users and the creativity they provide. This is spearheading a high level of independence and entrepreneurial mindset, especially within the younger digital-native Gen Z generation. Crypto economies are shaping the future of work for the next generations of creator economy participants.“ Yay, ! You’ve won 1000 XSTUSD. @Gautam Congratulations y’all! You can check out . XSTUSD use cases here We will contact all the winners shortly. For updates, keep an eye on ! contests.hackernoon.com HackerNoon and/or any of its employees, representatives, and/or contractors shall never ask for your wallet seed, your secret keys, private keys, and/or mnemonics to your wallet. Treat such emails with distrust - as you should any email/SMS that asks for such private information. Always remember, he/she/they who have your keys have your wallet. Do not hand out your wallet to internet strangers!!

The Defi Writing Contest: Round 2 Results Announced!

El concurso de escritura Defi: ¡Resultados de la ronda 2 anunciados!

Concours d'écriture Defi : résultats du deuxième tour annoncés !

डेफी राइटिंग कॉन्टेस्ट: राउंड 2 के नतीजे घोषित!

Defi ライティング コンテスト: ラウンド 2 結果発表!

Concurso de Escrita Defi: Resultados da 2ª Rodada Anunciados!

Cuộc thi Viết Defi: Kết quả Vòng 2 được Công bố!

Defi 写作大赛：第 2 轮结果公布！

Venezuela, like Uganda, is only democratic in the book. Under the presidency of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan government has enforced authoritarian laws that deprive citizens of their freedom of speech and democratic rights. The violation of human rights and introduction of impractical government and election process has affected citizens to a great extent. The citizens continually face gas shortages, power outages, transportation crises, and substandard public services. Yet, they have no way to voice their problems as the government has censored many media houses and news platforms. The Extent of Censorship in Venezuela The Venezuelan government has censored journalism and the internet to control population uprisings and political opposition. These censorships control how much the media shares and limit opposition politicians' rights. Censoring the internet enabled the government to control social media and other websites where people could criticize and question its actions. Access to certain content has also been limited. The following are online platforms blocked in Venezuela and how to access them. Independent Online Media The Venezuelan government has blocked several independent media platforms following their coverage of anti-government demonstrations and the killing of demonstrators by the state police. In 2018, Venezuela's National Telecommunications Commission blocked three media houses: Capitolio TV, VPI TV, and Vivo Play. Additionally, the three outlets of the El Pitazo news media have been blocked by Intercable, ISPs CANTV, Movilnet, Digitel, and Movistar. Independent news media like the investigative journalism website Armando.info, La Patilla, and El Nacional have suffered the same fate. Political Criticism Blogs and Websites Multiple political criticism websites and blogs have also suffered censorship by the Venezuelan government. Blogs run by activists and criticizers of the government who tried updating the public on police brutality and corruption got blocked by the four leading Venezuelan ISPs. Social media platforms such as Periscope, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, which provided an avenue for people to criticize the government, have also been censored. have verified the rumors that Movistar and CANTV use the Domain Name System to block access to varied social media platforms. Tests conducted by the Open Observatory of Network Interference Currency Exchange Websites Venezuela's economy largely relies on oil exports to sustain the country's high food and social programs subsidies. With the declining oil outflows, the Venezuelan economy is seriously affected, with its social programs and food subsidies suffering greatly. The government's effort to stabilize its currency forced it to reinforce an internal exchange rate system. That way, the government controls all the prices of essential goods and items and, subsequently, the currency's rambling hyperinflation. To sustain its internal exchange rate system, the Venezuelan government blocked access to over 100 currency exchange websites in 2020. However, all hope is not lost as Venezuelans can take advantage proxies. This tool allows businesses to scrape large volumes of data, operate several social media accounts, and analyze the markets to improve their marketing and keep their businesses afloat. With some effort, they will thrive despite the censorship challenges they face. Venezuala location Tor Network Hell-bent on actualizing its plans of preventing all attempts to circumvent censorships, the Venezuelan government also blocked the Tor network. The Tor network uses multiple relays to help users bypass blocks by generating numerous IP addresses to hide the user's identity. It uses the IP addresses of the supported countries to bypass the blocks. However, the Venezuelan government uses more advanced counter-Tor-network mechanisms to thwart all attempts to circumvent the censorships. By blocking Tor networks, it's now impossible for users to dodge censorship. The government-owned CANTV blocked the Tor anonymity network and related proxies. That means residents on blocked currency exchange sites and news media using the Tor browser. But that does not leave one with no option, as many high-quality proxies enable access to all blocked media websites and exchange platforms. cannot access the internet Conclusion The Venezuelan government has been in the limelight for its strict censorship and government-sponsored media and exchange blocks. Although the government has set robust and innovative mechanisms to block circumvention attempts from its citizens and outsiders, it does not mean these censorships are final. In fact, millions of high-quality and affordable proxy IP addresses generated by leading proxy providers can bypass these censorships. You only need to find the right proxy provider with a track record of offering high-quality Venezuelan proxies boasting high uptime and secure networks.

Websites Censored In Venezuela And How to Access Them

STB is the native cryptocurrency issued by the Stabila POS blockchain. Many fintech applications are being developed on its open source code. It has high concurrency, low latency, and massive data transmission capabilities. It is a fraud/scam-free environment, allowing only licensed contracts. Stabila trades with the STB ticker symbol. As of June 2022, STB was listed on the Moneta Digitec cryptocurrency exchange, supporting more than 1 million transactions per day. So if you're new to cryptocurrency and are considering investing in STB? Read on as we break down what STB Coin is and how it works. What is STB Coin, and how does it work? STB is a cryptocurrency similar to BTC or ETH.  Its price rises and falls in value as traders, investors or individuals use and trade it. Holders can store the STB in wallets online or offline, on crypto exchanges, or on the native Stabila wallet. Users can send, or transfer the coin directly to other people at any time. What makes STB unique? As the native crypto it propels the functionality of Stabila blockchain. A brief history of Stabila Coin. in November 2021 via an initial coin offering or ICO. STB Coin was launched STB coins were dispersed among several participants, including the Stabila founding team and angel investors. Moreover, 1 million STBs were released to the crypto community. During the ICO, the first 100,000 coins were sold for $1 each.  STB price today is above $23 and is growing. STB Coin Use STB token is used for several things. It's used as transaction fees on the Stabila blockchain, payment processing, loans and transfers, stacking, etc. STB is a decentralized blockchain. It has smart contract functionality. It is also used in financial transactions as a digital currency. Proof of Stake STABILA enables large-scale development and engagement. It is ideal for building decentralized financial applications. Why Invest In STB? Let us look at the for and against. You may find it useful if one day you decide to invest in some STB Coin. STB is becoming highly popular with a speed of over 2500 transactions per second (TPS). STB offers low fees. Transaction prices are less than $2. STB is decentralized. For those who are on the risk side, cryptocurrencies are constantly at risk of regulations around the world. Stabila is a significant target for hackers. Competition from other smart contract blockchains. How do investors buy Stabila (STB)? For users to buy Stabila (STB), they need to seek out a crypto exchange. It is very easy to set up an account. Create an account. Complete the KYC process. Deposit crypto, fiat. Start trading. Withdraw your STB into a wallet. Can Stabila Coin be converted to cash? Stabila STB can be converted to cash, like any other cryptocurrency. Users need to sell their STB holdings to the crypto exchange and cash out in the fiat currency they desire. Who sets the STB price on the crypto market? The price of STB is determined by the market supply and demand. The increase in the demand for STB Coin will drive the price up. The increase in supply will drive the price down. STB wallet. To store STB, a user requires a Stabila wallet. These are digital wallets and can be accessed via the internet. The STB wallet stores the private key. If a user loses the private key, they will lose their STB. There is no customer service to recover the private key. The best advice I got from my parents was that knowledge is power. I guess it all ends up in doing more reading. No journey starts without proper knowledge, neither investing and trading with Stabila Coin. My advice is always to consult with an expert before you start investing. For real-time transaction reports or all things Stabila Coin or Wallet, visit their website. Disclaimer: Nothing in this article constitutes professional investment advice. Please do your own thorough research before making any investment decisions.

What Is Stabila Coin and How Does Stabila Work?

¿Qué es Stabila Coin y cómo funciona Stabila?

* * Achievement unlocked: With more than ‘4 billion’ in total votes -- almost half the population of earth voted for startups! JUST KIDDING! Some companies had a to accumulating their votes. unique approach In 2021, decided to host to highlight the backbone of the future - tech startups! for the first time in forever (make sure you sing it in Anna’s voice), HackerNoon.com Startups of The Year More than 44,000 startups were nominated all across the globe, spanning over 4,553 cities. That’s.Just.Spiffy! 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 We’d like to take a moment here and thank every single person who cast a vote and every single company, both nominated and not nominated yet this year. Furthermore, we thank you for existing and opening more opportunities for the wonders of the future to come. Even if you don’t win anything today, you’ve won something much more valuable - our hearts <3 Okay, sorry for the long introduction. Below are all the Startups Winners: Startups of the Year (SOTY) in Africa Johannesburg, South Africa With more than 900 votes cast, #SOTY calls.... MiBRAND Thank you for connecting businesses and consumers, great job! Lagos, Nigeria With 836 votes in the bag, let’s give it up for... Goodtalent Thanks for helping tech companies build great engineering teams. Cape Town, South Africa Want to learn more about finance and use that knowledge to make better financial decisions? Look no further. Introducing winner of Startups of The Year, Cape Town: Revix With 527 votes cast, it seems like a lot of people have more money in their pockets thanks to . Revix Mahé, Seychelles With around 515 votes cast, #SOTY summons... DAOLaunch Thank you for bridging the gap between investors and startups. Lusaka And the winner for #SOTY in Lusaka is... ComGrow Thanks to them, people here are getting closer to the reality of the digitization of village banking. Nairobi, Kenya With 252 votes cast, UTU came out top as the Startup of The Year. Thanks for building the trust infrastructure of the internet to help businesses and consumers engage and transact in a more reliable way. Yaoundé Accounting for more than 73% of total votes, CamPay won this award fair and square. Thank you for making sending and receiving payments easier between online merchants. Abuja, Nigeria A proud winner in the prestigious capital of Nigeria, Elesaro deserves all the plaudits it gets. is a suite crowdfunding protocol built on BSC, Reward, Equity, Lending & NFT Marketplace. Congratulations! Elesaro Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania Jamii Africa is the name that will always be engraved on the #SOTY trophy. As a mobile micro-health insurance, Jamii Africa has done a great job for the health sector in Tanzania. Kigali, Rwanda Another #SOTY medal in the bag for none other than …wait for it… BAG Innovation BAG Innovation applies Gamification to offer real-time access to experience-based learning for University students in East Africa. Everybody loves playing games, but using games to learn in school is on another level. Gauteng, South Africa And the award goes to... Planet42 Thanks for democratising mobility by enabling people ignored by banks to get access to a personal vehicle through a car subscription service. Once again, congratulations! Port Harcourt, Nigeria Cryptocurrency is the present and the future, as we’ve all come to know. FLITBASE makes these digital assets more accessible to everyone. #SOTY is proud to add you to our Hall of Fame. Cairo, Egypt With 18 votes won out of the 91 cast, it seems there was fierce competition. Congratulations to... SubsBase for winning Startups of The Year. SubsBase allows businesses to manage their subscribers, automate recurring billings, set pricing plans, and monitor subscription KPIs. Tunis, Tunisia Come one, come all! Witness the greatness of yet another wonderful startup in the #SOTY. Thank you... VYND for providing a fully integrated digital platform to help venue owners better serve their customers and grow their businesses. Stellenbosch, South Africa BankTech connects clients to a payment network where it provides a convenient interface to meet various payments needs. You’ve won #SOTY proudly! Pretoria #SOTY acknowledges... Grays Pharmaceuticals Thank you for all you do. Lekki, Nigeria Middletrust provides reliable escrow services in Africa. Congratulations on winning a #SOTY medal. Addis Ababa Thank you... Hello Solar for consistently accelerating sustainable energy solutions, especially for remote communities. With half of the votes cast, you beat the odds. Accra, Ghana UT Bank Ghana provides various commercial banking services to individuals and companies in Ghana. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of financial services to humankind. #SOTY is proud of all you do. Gîza, Egypt Big congratulations to... HOVO for winning this award. Your on-demand mobile app for ordering trucks is truly appreciated! Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo Congratulations for coming out on top of #SOTY, SillonBlue Technologies As an ICT Consulting and SaaS company, SillonBlue Technologies focuses on software and mobile app development, and data collection. Yaba, Nigeria With more than half of the votes cast, this nominee conquered undisputedly. Let’s give it up for... Kuda a no-fee full-service digital bank making banking affordable for all Africans on the planet. Morocco City Almes provides infrastructure and logistics services. Congratulations on earning a #SOTY medal. Dakar ShopMeAway provides families and businesses with new ways to shop around the world with reduced shipping costs. You deserve the plaudits you’ve received! Casablanca Sheaply provides crowd shipping and crowd shopping solutions. This reduces cost and improves efficiency on shipping and shopping. Congratulations on winning a #SOTY medal. Nguru, Nigeria Accounting for 88% of the votes, TradeBuza wins #SOTY almost flawlessly. TradeBuza is a tech-enabled commodities sourcing platform for commodities aggregators and out-grower schemes. Ikeja, Nigeria PropertyPro Nigeria is now pronounced Startup of the Year in Ikeja. Let’s admit, who doesn’t appreciate a platform built to search for real estate properties? Ibadan, Nigeria No Bank, No Problem! (That’s probably not their motto, by the way) Shield Finders is a fintech and financial service provider to the unbanked. Congratulation on winning most of the votes! 6 October City, Egypt Wuilt is a website builder where you can create your own Arabic website in under 5 minutes. Thank you for making this technology accessible to people. One #SOTY medal for you! Algiers The only nominee who outvoted all others, please give it up for... Yassir Thank you for providing convenient transport services using your app. Enugu In an area that usually suffers from inconsistent electricity, Greenage comes to the rescue with their green cape and spandex suit. Greenage Technologies is a Nigerian startup solving electricity problems in Nigeria using solar energy technology. Congrats, Greenage. Abeokuta, Nigeria A government organization creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and the unemployed - no one deserves the title Startup of The Year better than Ogun Innovate Congratulations! Ariana And the award goes to... E-Stores Factory a web platform that helps rent and manage e-shops for enterprises seeking to sell online. Thank you for making the (not a typo) more friendly! e-cosystem Benin City Health really is wealth. MOBicure provides mobile technology solutions for Africa's biggest health problems. Thank you for all you do. From #SOTY with love <3 Centurion GameZBoost offers white label gaming platforms, including online desktop solutions, fully responsive mobile and social platforms. Thank you for making the world a more fun place! Gaborone Augmenta Cyber Security provides services in cyber security, safe data storage, SCADA security, SAP Security, etc. Congratulations on winning 10/10 of the votes. You rock! Garki There can never be enough medical platforms in the world. Congratulations to... Wella Health an operator of a healthcare technology company intended to provide treatments and medicines for malaria. Thank you for all you do! Lilongwe Yellow is a digital platform enabling informal merchants in Africa. #SOTY welcomes you to its hall of fame. Make yourself at home ;) Luanda Access to finance is important for any company or sector to succeed. And no other company deserves the title Startup of The Year more than Deya the first Angolan and PALOP crowdfunding platform that aims to increase access to financing for social impact causes and entrepreneurs. . 10/10 will recommend Mombasa Life can be hard, and so a little humor helps ease these hardships. Congratulations to this political satire puppet show, The XYZ Show for winning #SOTY. Thanks for putting smiles on our faces. Port Louis Town Bet you’ve never heard of a Smartcup. Thanks to Intellicup that exists now, and therefore earns this startup a #SOTY badge.  Intellicup is a unique high-speed beverage dispensing solution with integrated smart technology. While this cup won’t be able to wake you up in the morning, you have to agree that it’s still pretty impressive. Rabat Atlan Space is a startup building AI to autonomously pilot any fixed-wing drone, to monitor and take measures over very large areas. You deserve the #SOTY medal. Réunion Imagine having the power to do ultrasound scans on your handheld device. OSCULT by Oscadi is a handheld ultrasound imaging device interfaced with the Apple iPad. Congratulations on making it into the #SOTY! Somerset West Winning the award fair and square is Sticitt a cashless payment platform that is also aimed at teaching learners at school the basics of finance. The future of the world would be in good hands when our children know how to adequately manage finances. Thank you for saving the world in advance. Thika Flowers make the world a beautiful place to live in. Wilmar Flowers exports summer flowers grown by small and medium-sized farmers from Kenya. Kudos for making the world beautiful, #SOTY is honored to have you in our Hall of Fame. Kampala, Uganda Yo-Waste Limited is an African startup that provides waste, recycling and “smart city” solutions to businesses and governments. Your #SOTY gold medal shines as much as you do <3 Harare, Zimbabwe The world is becoming more and more digital every day. Thanks to companies like Golix that provide services of digital currencies for people in Africa, the digitization of the world is becoming more robust. Freetown Easy Solar is a distribution company making energy, durable goods and financial services affordable and accessible through pay-as-you-go tech. Thumbs up! Kicukiro FOODLINE specializes in non-genetically-modified grocery farming and production lines. Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! #SOTY Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo Startups Nuru is a renewable and environmental company that specializes in the fields of storage micro-grids and solar energy. After racking up all the votes, #SOTY honors you. Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire Digitech provides a fully integrated and cloud-based InsurTech platform to incumbent insurance companies. You are awesome! Durban Security can never really be enough. We’d like to honor Blue Security the title Startup of The Year, for specializing in the installation and monitoring of intruder detection systems, and in providing armed response services. Ikoyi And the Startup of The year goes to... Winich Farms an Agritech Startup leveraging tech to connect rural farmers to Finance & Market, thus, increasing productivity and cutting post-harvest loss. You rock! Lomé The last recipient of #SOTY in Africa calls for... Gozem a transport technology platform for Francophone West and Central Africa. Thank you for providing a platform for transportation. We are honored to have you! *Winners missing from this list will be added accordingly. 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 and edited by Kien Dao and Joshua Omale. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to report a discrepancy please email ellen@hackernoon.com.

What are the Top Startups in Africa?

Continuous Delivery is hard business! Especially if you're dealing with microservices. While Jenkins does work pretty well unto a scale by creating shared libraries of sorts for common builds, after a while when you're running your SaaS on microservices like we do at , managing the builds, and the infrastructure for CI/CD can get cumbersome. It is for both optimized Cloud Infra usage and the ability to easily write and maintain CD pipelines that we considered moving to . Digité Tekton Having said that, blocking two extra-large VM for the "what if there are too many jobs running in parallel?" does not appear natural to me; so I set out at making Tekton work in Fargate. The reason behind Fargate is the ease of server-less thereby letting us concentrate on managing our CI/CD pipelines without having to manage the Infrastructure for it. Hence, I'll share my experience on how to get a Server-less CI/CD Infrastructure for Tekton up and running quickly via Terraform in this post. Setup Let's start with creating a Terraform module for the installation of Tekton to Fargate, you can refer to for creating a basic setup of EKS Fargate Cluster. Assuming you have that in place, the next steps are as follows. this article Fargate Profiles We'll first create the Fargate profile for running Tekton, Tekton Dashboard and Tekton Triggers in the `tekton-pipelines` namespace resource "aws_eks_fargate_profile" "tekton-dashboard-profile" {
  cluster_name           = module.eks.cluster_id
  fargate_profile_name   = "tekton-dashboard-profile"
  pod_execution_role_arn = module.eks.fargate_iam_role_arn
  subnet_ids             = module.vpc.private_subnets
  selector {
    namespace = "tekton-pipelines"
    labels = {
      "app.kubernetes.io/part-of" = "tekton-dashboard",
      "app.kubernetes.io/part-of" = "tekton-triggers"
    }
  }
  depends_on = [module.eks]
  tags = {
    Environment = "${var.environment}"
    Cost        = "${var.cost_tag}"
  }
} EFS Setup EFS is the recommended approach by AWS when it comes to mounting PV for Fargate nodes; hence, we'll add EFS configuration in the next steps. It's a good practice to restrict EFS access to the VPC running EKS Cluster and your internal network for IAM controlled users to access it over AWS CLI. Declare a security group with Ingress rules for each of the subnet CIDR of the VPC running EKS Fargate to restrict access. module "efs-access-security-group" {
  source  = "terraform-aws-modules/security-group/aws"
  version = "4.3.0"
  create  = true

  name        = "efs-${var.cluster_title}-${var.environment}-security-group"
  description = "Security group for pipeline tekton EFS, created via terraform"
  vpc_id      = module.vpc.vpc_id

  ingress_with_cidr_blocks = [{ cidr_blocks = "172.18.1.0/24"
    from_port = 0
    to_port   = 2049
    protocol  = "tcp"
    self      = true
    }, {
    cidr_blocks = "172.18.3.0/24"
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 2049
    protocol    = "tcp"
    self        = true
    }, 
	// All Subnet CIDRs...
, ]
  ingress_with_self = [{
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 0
    protocol    = -1
    self        = true
    description = "Ingress with Self"
  }]

  egress_with_cidr_blocks = [{
    cidr_blocks = "0.0.0.0/0"
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 0
    protocol    = -1
  }]
} While Fargate auto-installs the , we still have to declare an IAM policy for the cluster EFS access. Here's how to do it in our Terraform module EFS CSI Driver resource "aws_iam_policy" "efs-csi-driver-policy" {
  name        = "TektonEFSCSIDriverPolicy"
  description = "EFS CSI Driver Policy"

  policy = jsonencode({
    "Version" : "2012-10-17",
    "Statement" : [
      {
        "Effect" : "Allow",
        "Action" : [
          "elasticfilesystem:DescribeAccessPoints",
          "elasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystems"
        ],
        "Resource" : "*"
      },
      {
        "Effect" : "Allow",
        "Action" : [
          "elasticfilesystem:CreateAccessPoint"
        ],
        "Resource" : "*",
        "Condition" : {
          "StringLike" : {
            "aws:RequestTag/efs.csi.aws.com/cluster" : "true"
          }
        }
      },
      {
        "Effect" : "Allow",
        "Action" : "elasticfilesystem:DeleteAccessPoint",
        "Resource" : "*",
        "Condition" : {
          "StringEquals" : {
            "aws:ResourceTag/efs.csi.aws.com/cluster" : "true"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  })
} With that done, we'll define the Cluster IAM for EFS Access. First the policy document which details access the policy statements for the role data "aws_iam_policy_document" "efs-iam-assume-role-policy" {

  statement {
    actions = ["sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity"]
    effect  = "Allow"
    condition {
      test     = "StringEquals"
      variable = "${replace(aws_iam_openid_connect_provider.tekton-main.url, "https://", "")}:sub"
      values   = ["system:serviceaccount:tekton-pipelines:tekton-efs-serviceaccount"]
    }
    principals {
      identifiers = [aws_iam_openid_connect_provider.tekton-main.arn]
      type        = "Federated"
    }
  }
  depends_on = [
    aws_iam_policy.efs-csi-driver-policy
  ]
} then we add the role resource "aws_iam_role" "efs-service-account-iam-role" {
  assume_role_policy = data.aws_iam_policy_document.efs-iam-assume-role-policy.json
  name               = "tekton-efs-service-account-role"
}

resource "aws_iam_role_policy_attachment" "efs-csi-driver-policy-attachment" {
  role       = aws_iam_role.efs-service-account-iam-role.name
  policy_arn = aws_iam_policy.efs-csi-driver-policy.arn
} And then we map it to a service account resource "kubernetes_service_account" "efs-service-account" {
  metadata {
    name      = "tekton-efs-serviceaccount"
    namespace = "tekton-pipelines"
    labels = {
      "app.kubernetes.io/name" = "tekton-efs-serviceaccount"
    }
    annotations = {
      # This annotation is only used when running on EKS which can use IAM roles for service accounts.
      "eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn" = aws_iam_role.efs-service-account-iam-role.arn
    }
  }
  depends_on = [
    aws_iam_role_policy_attachment.efs-csi-driver-policy-attachment
  ]
}

resource "kubernetes_role" "efs-kube-role" {
  metadata {
    name = "efs-kube-role"
    labels = {
      "name" = "efs-kube-role"
    }
  }

  rule {
    api_groups = [""]
    resources  = ["persistentvolumeclaims", "persistentvolumes"]
    verbs      = ["create", "get", "list", "update", "watch", "patch"]
  }

  rule {
    api_groups = ["", "storage"]
    resources  = ["nodes", "pods", "events", "csidrivers", "csinodes", "csistoragecapacities", "storageclasses"]
    verbs      = ["get", "list", "watch"]
  }
  depends_on = [aws_iam_role_policy_attachment.alb-ingress-policy-attachment]
}

resource "kubernetes_role_binding" "efs-role-binding" {
  depends_on = [
    kubernetes_service_account.efs-service-account
  ]
  metadata {
    name = "tekton-efs-role-binding"
    labels = {
      "app.kubernetes.io/name" = "tekton-efs-role-binding"
    }
  }

  role_ref {
    api_group = "rbac.authorization.k8s.io"
    kind      = "Role"
    name      = "efs-kube-role"
  }
  subject {
    kind      = "ServiceAccount"
    name      = "tekton-efs-serviceaccount"
    namespace = "tekton-pipelines"
  }
} With the IAM linked service account in place, we'll define the EFS file system resource "aws_efs_file_system" "eks-efs" {
  creation_token = "tekton-eks-efs"
  encrypted      = true
  tags = {
    Name                  = "tekton-eks-efs"
    Cost                  = var.cost_tag

  }
  depends_on = [
    kubernetes_role_binding.efs-role-binding
  ]
} And its mount targets and storage class resource "aws_efs_mount_target" "eks-efs-private-subnet-mnt-target" {
  count           = length(module.vpc.private_subnets)
  file_system_id  = aws_efs_file_system.eks-efs.id
  subnet_id       = module.vpc.private_subnets[count.index]
  security_groups = [module.efs-access-security-group.security_group_id]
}

resource "aws_efs_access_point" "eks-efs-tekton-access-point" {
  file_system_id = aws_efs_file_system.eks-efs.id
  root_directory {
    path = "/workspace"
    creation_info {
      owner_gid   = 1000
      owner_uid   = 1000
      permissions = 755
    }
  }
  posix_user {
    gid = 1000
    uid = 1000
  }
  tags = {
    Name        = "eks-efs-tekton-access-point"
    Cost        = var.cost_tag
    Environment = "${var.environment}"
  }
}

resource "kubernetes_storage_class" "eks-efs-storage-class" {
  metadata {
    name = "eks-efs-storage-class"
  }
  storage_provisioner = "efs.csi.aws.com"
  reclaim_policy      = "Retain"
} Note the EFS and access point IDs in the terrafrom output whne appying these changes, they'll be used in the PV and PVC definitions. My scripts gave the output fs-8a7eXXXX::fsap-0f60de28766XXXXXX Installing Tekton It's pretty simple from here on; the following command installs Tekton kubectl apply --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/pipeline/latest/release.yaml followed by Tekton dashboard (read-only install) curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tektoncd/dashboard/main/scripts/release-installer | \
bash -s -- install latest --read-only or kubectl apply --filename tekton-dashboard-readonly.yaml After downloading the Read Only YAML from . this GitHub link Next we setup the persistent volume, refer to the generated EFS IDs from Terraform run in your PV definition, here's an example for a PV and PVC that will be used by a maven task for running tekton pipeline apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
name: piglet-source-pv
labels:
type: piglet-source-pv
spec:
capacity:
storage: 1Gi
accessModes:
- ReadWriteMany
persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
storageClassName: eks-efs-storage-class
csi:
driver: efs.csi.aws.com
volumeHandle: fs-8a7e9a3d::fsap-0f60de28766b0e390
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: piglet-source-pvc
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
type: piglet-source-pv
storageClassName: eks-efs-storage-class
accessModes:
- ReadWriteMany
resources:
requests:
storage: 1Gi Conclusion While the Tekton installation itself doesn't change (you're using a kubectl apply command as always), we have to be aware of how Fargate profiles are applied for any workloads to run on EKS Fargate and thereby provision a Fargate profile using existing Tekton annotations as its selectors so that our tasks can run on Fargate. Other than that we have to provision and configure PV and PVC via EFS for tasks to use them at runtime. With those in place we have a working Tekton installation over EKS Fargate with a truly on-demand way of running builds and CI/CD Pipelines. Also Published Here

Serverless Tekton Pipelines on AWS EKS Fargate

Fargate is service by AWS to run serverless workloads in Kubernetes. With Fargate you do not have to manage VMs as cluster nodes yourself as each of the pods are provisioned as nodes by Fargate itself. It is different from Lambda in the sense that you're still self-managing the Kubernetes cluster or the runtime for all the workloads you run in that cluster. Having said that, I believe it's more suitable for teams that are running containerized microservices and want to do away with managing Kubernetes infrastructure themselves. While Lambda prices on a combination of requests, CPU and memory; Fargate pricing is just the CPU and Memory of the nodes running in the cluster in addition to a fixed monthly cost of the Fargate service itself. If you want to go serverless without Vendor lock-in, Fargate is a good option. Hence we at prefer running our microservices in the Fargate model. Digité Managing such an infrastructure is certainly not a feasible manual job, hence we rely on IAC to manage and operate our Infrastructure. Here has been our tool of choice for various reasons from the ease of learning to its robust design. Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure As Code tool by Hashicorp that lets you define AWS Infrastructure via a descriptive DSL and has been quite popular in the DevOps world since its inception. Terraform In this blog, I'll share how we've used Terraform to Deploy an EKS Fargate cluster. VPC We'll start with deploying the Amazon VPC via Terraform. There are three recommended approaches for deploying a VPC to run EKS Fargate, let's look at each of them: Public and Private Subnets: the pods run in a private subnets while loadbalancers, both Application or Network are deployed in the Public subnets. One public and private subnet is deployed to each of the availability zones within the region for availability and fault tolerance, this is the deployment model we will follow for this blog Public Subnets Only: both the pods (or nodes) and the loadbalancers are in public subnets, here three public subnets are deployed in three different availability zones within the region. All nodes have a public IP address and a security group blocks all inbound and outbound traffic to the nodes. To be honest I haven't ever figured out why would anyone need this :-) Private Subnets Only: both pods and loadbalancers run in private subnets only, three of which are created in each Availability zone of the region. Quite naturally we have to configure additional NAT Gateway, Egress Only Gateway, VPN or Direct Connect to be able to access the cluster. There's an additional configuration on the `kubectl` side as well,  which we will skip in this blog VPC subnets should have certain tags which allow EKS Fargate to deploy internal loadbalancers to them and provision nodes; let's look at the tags first Key: kubernetes.io/cluster/cluster-name Value: Shared The following tags allow EKS Fargate to decide where auto provisioned Elastic loadbalancers are deploy and also allows you to control where the application or network loadbalancers are configured Private Subnets: Key: kubernetes.io/role/internal-elb Value: 1 Public Subnets: Key: kubernetes.io/role/elb Value: 1 The VPC configuration, therefore, is as follows, we'll use the AWS VPC Terraform module for this purpose as it provides easier configuration via declarative properties instead of having to write all the resources yourself. } } }

} module "vpc" { source = "terraform-aws-modules/vpc/aws" version = "3.4.0" name = "vpc-serverless" cidr = "176.24.0.0/16" azs = [ "us-east-1a" , "us-east-1b" , "us-east-1c" ] private_subnets = [ "176.24.1.0/24" , "176.24.3.0/24" , "176.24.5.0/24" ] public_subnets = [ "176.24.2.0/24" , "176.24.4.0/24" , "176.24.6.0/24" ] enable_nat_gateway = true single_nat_gateway = true enable_dns_hostnames = true manage_default_security_group = true default_security_group_name = "vpc-serverless-security-group" public_subnet_tags = { "kubernetes.io/cluster/vpc-serverless" = "shared" "kubernetes.io/role/elb" = "1" private_subnet_tags = { "kubernetes.io/cluster/vpc-serverless" = "shared" "kubernetes.io/role/internal-elb" = "1" tags = { "kubernetes.io/cluster/vpc-serverless" = "shared" There's a single NAT gateway for managing all traffic to the Nodes running in the Private subnet, we also have to ensure we keep the option set to true so that any ALBs that we configure in the future can be assigned hostnames for Canonical DNS mapping. enable_dns_hostnames EKS Cluster We'll use the AWS EKS Terraform module to deploy the EKS Fargate Cluster. A basic configuration for it is as follows } module "eks-cluster" { source                        = "terraform-aws-modules/eks/aws" version                       = "17.1.0" cluster_name                  = "eks-serverless" cluster_version               = "1.21" subnets                       = flatten([ module .vpc.outputs.public_subnets, module .vpc.outputs.private_subnets]) cluster_delete_timeout        = "30m" cluster_iam_role_name         = "eks-serverless-cluster-iam-role" cluster_enabled_log_types     = [ "api" , "audit" , "authenticator" , "controllerManager" , "scheduler" ] cluster_log_retention_in_days = 7 vpc_id = module .vpc.outputs.vpc_id fargate_pod_execution_role_name = "eks-serverless-pod-execution-role" // Fargate profiles here Fargate Profiles and CoreDNS A basic configuration like the one above will deploy the EKS cluster; however, you need to create Fargate Profiles that allow you to define which pods will run in Fargate. These Fargate profiles define selectors and a namespace to run the pods, along with optional tags, you also have to add a pod execution role name, for allowing the EKS infrastructure to make AWS API calls on the cluster owner's behalf. You can have up to 5 selectors for a Fargate profile. While Fargate takes care of provisioning nodes as pods for the EKS cluster, it still needs a component that can manage the networking within the cluster nodes, coreDNS is that plugin for EKS Fargate, and like any other workload, needs a Fargate profile to run. So we'll add both the plugin and profile configuration to our Terraform code. First, let's update the profile configuration coredns-fargate-profile = { selectors = [
        { labels = { }
        },
        { }
      ] }
  } fargate_profiles = { name = "coredns" namespace = "kube-system" k8s-app = "kube-dns" namespace = "default" subnets = flatten([ module .vpc.outputs.private_subnets]) We're essentially saying, select the pods with label to run in the namespace. Let's also add the CoreDNS plugin to the configuration k8s-app kube-system } resource "aws_eks_addon" "coredns" { addon_name        = "coredns" addon_version     = "v1.8.4-eksbuild.1" cluster_name      = "eks-serve" resolve_conflicts = "OVERWRITE" depends_on        = [ module .eks-cluster] Conclusion At this stage, it's a simple module so you can bundle all of it into a single one. Here's what the file structure looks like. ├── main.tf
├── outputs.tf
├── providers.tf
├── terraform.tf
├── terraform.tfvars
├── variables.tf cluster The file defined AWS provider along with AWS CLI credentials as variable that you can read from variables defined in the file providers.tf variables.tf If you're saving TF State in a remote backend you can define the configuration for it in the file. terraform.tf }
} terraform { backend "s3" { bucket         = "swiftalk-iac" dynamodb_table = "swiftalk-iac-locks" key            = "vpc/terraform.tfstate" region         = "us-east-1" encrypt        = true That's it! Run to get an EKS Fargate Cluster up and running in minutes! terraform init Also Published Here

Building an AWS EKS Fargate Cluster with Terraform

Question: Hi Adam, How’d you explain Blockster to your mom? How’d she react? The key takeaway about Blockster is that it’s a social platform for cryptocurrency users, and for those interested in learning more about cryptocurrency and finding ways to earn cryptocurrency. It’s powered by user-generated content and comes complete with a news feed so that users can stay up to date on all the latest action, a blog where they can consume and create content, a cryptocurrency price aggregator so they can track the top coins, and plenty of other features that can be found in other platforms, like group pages, conference calls, videos, etc. The simple description is that it’s a hybrid between Facebook, Medium, and CoinMarketCap. When I told my Mom that, she understood it at once. It just makes sense right now with so many fragmented social media platforms to consolidate everything crypto under one roof. Question: You’re a veteran of crowdfunding from the 2017 heydays via Digitex. How would you say the industry has changed as you gear up to begin another token sale? It was a lot easier to raise money back then. When I started the Digitex token sale, I had no team and no experience and yet I still raised over $5 million dollars in 17 minutes. But when over 90% of the ICOs from that time failed it sobered everyone up and, nowadays, the average investor wants to see more than just a whitepaper and a website before throwing money in. Digitex was a rough ride but I never quit and the hard lessons I learned will directly benefit the Blockster project. And unlike Digitex, Blockster is starting out with a working platform and a full-strength team, and a CEO who has already made all the mistakes and learned things the hard way. That’s what today’s token investors want to see and that’s why the Blockster token sale will be a success. Question: Blockster aims to be ‘the only social media platform dedicated to cryptocurrency users’. How would you compare Blockster to platforms such as Dragonchain, Hive, and Uptrennd? The key selling point with us is content. High-quality, curated content in combination with user-generated content. And it’s the quality of the content that is of most importance to us - not whether that content is stored on a blockchain or whether it comes from someone who was allowed to say whatever he or she likes without being censored. Those other decentralized social networks are more interested in how the content is stored than in whether it’s actually good or not. Blockster is more like a content publication with a bunch of social features where the substance of the content is much more important than the manner in which it is stored. Question: A common problem we see in the crypto-industry is the scourge of vested interests polluting the space with shilly stories that hoodwink readers. In that context, do you think Blockster would have an editorial policy OR would it prefer to be community-driven OR, is there a middle ground? More of a middle-ground. The platform is designed to be driven by user-generated content, but initially, we’re partnering with some of the best industry writers to set the standard and to populate our blog, called Blockdesk, with the highest quality content. We’re creating the graphics and visuals and we’re also editing all the content internally because we want to create a certain level of standard for the quality of content we produce. This is the same with influencers, eventually, influencers will flood this space, but in the beginning, we’re working closely with them to set the tone for the content they produce and, more so, the direction we would like to take Blockster in is more on the professional side. We want the professionals who work behind the scenes of the top cryptocurrency businesses to be on Blockster. Of course, there will be users who will try to scam and shill as you have in any other platform, so we will be actively moderating. We have an experienced team managing this side of our business. Question: Coin-Listings and Business Pages are cool and allow crypto-companies to get a leg-up in their seemingly never-ending uphill battle. How does Blockster aim to help such companies while also ensuring that the scammy/shilly ones are weeded out? Will there be a team to review every coin listing across preset parameters? Yes, we have a dedicated moderation team very experienced with such work. Blockwatch and data feeds are an interesting addition to Blockster. Given the recent price oracle attacks, how does Blockster protect the integrity of its data feed? Blockwatch pulls its data from the APIs of CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. Also, our users are not doing transactions on our platform based on this data, it's merely a display of current market prices for the top 500 coins. So it’s unlikely that attackers would want to mess with Blockwatch. But as an added layer of protection, we will soon be partnering with a well-known supplier of decentralized price feeds to act as a backup feed should anomalies be detected. Question: Groups and Messaging truly help build communities. Glad to see Blockster offer that. However, given our politically charged atmosphere and the shitposting subculture, how would Blockster combat online harassment and takedown illegitimate content? Blockster aims to become the place where professionals from the cryptocurrency industry come to learn, share, and network. Harassment and shitposting do not fit into that culture and our moderators will be working actively to maintain a culture that is conducive to our users’ goals. We do not have clear policies yet on what action we will take in certain circumstances because we want to react to what is actually happening and make informed decisions at the time but know that we aim to create a certain type of professional culture and we will work tirelessly to achieve that. Question: Advertising Blockchain projects has always been done by traversing the seedy underbelly due to the powers-that-be, like Google, controlling advertisements on their network. In that sense, what will Blockster do to ensure that the crypto-companies get the advertisements they’re looking for, at a price that does not break the bank? I know from first-hand experience how difficult it is to buy quality traffic and advertise as a crypto company. It’s almost impossible to reach a quality audience because every major source of traffic treats us like a pariah. Blockster will change that with our self-serve ads platform that allows any legitimate cryptocurrency project to advertise to our users. There’s massive pent-up demand from crypto companies for access to an audience like ours. Regarding pricing, advertisers will bid for the ad spots they want, meaning that market forces determine the cost per click or cost per impression. The important thing for us to get right is that we show relevant ads that our users will actually find interesting or informative and that aren’t seen as intrusive or annoying. Users can easily sign up to and use our platform completely anonymously so our ads platform will not have the same level of targeting sophistication that the major social networks have. Question: What activities can I expect to do with a BXR token? The primary utilities of the BXR token revolve around advertising. Crypto companies interested in reaching our crypto-focused audience need to buy BXR because it is the only accepted currency for buying ads. And users who are interested in receiving a 20% share of all our ad revenues will buy BXR to stake it into our ads revenue sharing program. In this way, these two large and distinct groups of users will constantly be competing against each other for an ever-diminishing supply of BXR (diminishing because 5% of all BXR spent on ads are burned every month). You can also tip content creators using BXR, you can send it instantly and at no cost to other Blockster users and, in the future, you can participate in community governance decisions about the platform. Question: Are there any plans to extend support to other Blockchains such as BSC, Polkadot, Solana, etc? Yes. Question: Where can interested individuals/companies sign up for the beta? When can we expect the launch? You can read more about the Blockster platform at blockster.com/about-us and from there you can signup to join our waitlist. The waitlist just went viral and over 60,000 people have already joined :) At the end of June we will be opening up the platform to the first 1000 users and then shortly after that, we’ll be opening it up to more and more users as we fix whatever small bugs and issues are discovered during this onboarding process. But if you’re a crypto company or a content creator/author/influencer please contact us directly and we’ll let you in ahead of the crowds.

"Decentralized Social Networks Are More Interested in How To Store Content Than Quality" Adam Todd

Stablecoins are digital currencies developed to minimize the volatility of the price of set stable coin. Stablecoins can be pegged to fiat currency, like the US Dollar, another cryptocurrency, like USDT, or to exchange traded commodities, like precious metals. As such, stablecoins are not intended as an investment vehicle, but rather a safeguard towards the underlying value of the pegged asset (b.g. US Dollar, gold, USDT). The Bitcoin and cryptocurrency market cap has been quite ever since the initiation of the Bitcoin Genesis block, back in 2009. In its ten-year odyssey, the market has gone through a few bumpy market cycles. volatile Bitcoin broker fees can add up, especially when you are entering in and out of investments at a fast pace. Buying and selling real-world items with Bitcoin still has its setbacks, when you look at the number one cryptocurrency from an investment perspective, because Bitcoin might be worth a fortune in the future and you end up like Laszlo Hanyecz, who paid which is now, ten years later, the equivalent of $70,000,000. 10,000 BTC for two pizza’s Stablecoins are digital currencies developed to minimize the volatility of the price of set stable coin. Stablecoins can be pegged to fiat currency, like the US Dollar, another cryptocurrency, like USDT, or to exchange traded commodities, like precious metals. As such, stablecoins are not intended as an investment vehicle, but rather a safeguard towards the underlying value of the pegged asset (b.g. US Dollar, gold, USDT). The history of stablecoins Back in 2014, Steem and EOS founder, Dan Larimer launched , the first stable cryptocurrency project, to provide investors with a safe hedge against the highly volatile cryptocurrency price swings. launched USNBT in that same year. BitShares Nubits Moving forward to 2015, RealCoin was introduced, which has since rebranded to , the coin most people know, either because it is available for trading at all the major exchanges or for its controversy and initiated by the US government. Tether pending legal action Tether is built on the OMNI blockchain and has been a stablecoin market leader since 2015. In 2019, Tether started mitigating from OMNI to the Ethereum blockchain. In 2016, USNBT lost its peg against the US Dollar. Steemit introduced SteemDollar (SBD), to stabilize the rewards system on social blockchain platform Steemit. SBD pegged 1:1 to USD. In December of 2017, SBD reaches its all-time high price of $13.81. Currently trading at $0.69 (during the blood-bath of March 12). Tether (USDT) allegations started to surface in 2017, where, rumor has it, Tether isn’t fully backed 1:1 with the USD. Only recently Tether representatives admitted the stablecoin is only backed by around 74% making it a fractional reserve stablecoin. , the company behind Tether reports an $850 million loss in Tether funds that they plan to supplement by using funds they raised for its . Bitfinex new asset exchange token LEO Over the past few years, stablecoins have been a trending topic in the cryptocurrency industry, with a peak in 2019. Comparing the data, in March of 2018, Tether was the only stablecoin in the market cap top 30, while in March 2019, there were 3 stablecoins or stablecoin projects in the top 30. Recently we have 2 stablecoins in the cryptocurrency marketcap top 30. In 2019 a lot of “Tether-Killers” emerged, but there has not been a project able to dethrone the company behind USDT. What is a stablecoin? A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset, which is most often the US Dollar, but it can also be pegged to gold, other fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies. Pegging the value against the US Dollar might seem strange as the value of the US Dollar isn’t fiduciary anymore. While a commodity doesn’t back the US Dollar, the value has remained semi-stable over the last decade, so it seems a favorable option to be backing a stablecoin. An ideal stablecoin is fungible, meaning it acts as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. A recurring fundamental base for stablecoins is that they hold their specific value against their peg, and fluctuations are minimal. Currently, the fluctuations for the stablecoins with the highest valuations do not exceed the 3% mark. What are the benefits of stablecoins? Reducing price volatility If at some point in the future, the tokenization of real estate, art, collectibles or assets reaches mainstream adoption, high-volatility in the prices of widely used cryptocurrencies is not an option. A solution can be using a stablecoin for transactions. Recently, Blockimmo, a real estate company focused on tokenizing real estate, initiated an , where investors could buy a piece of the building. Blockimmo used XCHF, a stablecoin version of the Swiss Franc (CHF) as a payment option, keeping the price steady during the entire transaction process. The XCHF has a peg of 1:1 to the Swiss Franc (CHF). online property sale Hedge A stablecoin can offer a safe hedge against fiat currency in countries with challenging economic conditions. This does not work if the fiat currency is the Dollar. Remittance market Paying a family member, that resides on another continent, or transferring a business payment to an international customer, most commonly is done through a bank, PayPal or Western Union. Downsides to these mediums of exchange can be the timeframe, security, or the costs. Cryptocurrencies solve this to a certain point. The price can fluctuate between the moment of purchase and the actual transaction. Using a stablecoin for the remittance market solves the issue of price fluctuations as well as gives the added benefits of time and cost efficient and secure. dApps Using a stablecoin for in-app purchases can be perceived as a better option than using a utility token that is either low in volume, volatile in price or a combination of both. What types of stablecoins are there? Three types of stablecoins are generally grouped: Fiat collateralized These types of coins are fully backed by fiat, which is mostly the USD. For each stablecoin, one dollar is locked away as collateral in reserve. Most of the stablecoin projects are being monitored and audited by specialty firms with a good track record. A commodity collateralized stablecoin functions roughly the same as a fiat collateralized stablecoin. The main difference is it is backed by gold, silver or another precious metal or commodity. An example of a commodity collateralized stablecoin is DigixDao, which is backed by gold. Crypto collateralized Stablecoins that are crypto collateralized have specific cryptocurrency in a reserve fund to back the coin. Because of the volatile price action of cryptocurrency, the peg ratio isn’t 1:1, but it is kept higher to cover large price swings. An example of a crypto collateralized stablecoin is MakerDAO’s DAI coin. Non-collateralized / algorithm backed A non-collateralized stablecoin functions similar to a central bank. In essence, fiat money keeps its stable value, because the central bank is monitoring the asks and demands. If the asks for fiat go up in amount, the central bank prints new money, hence more money in circulation that supplies the asks for that money, keeping the price steady. When the demand decreases central banks step in and buy back fiat money to keep in the reserves, hence money out of circulation. has launched a stable and decentralized currency, specifically designed to reduce financial instability in countries with a high inflation rate. Reserve will launch a pilot in Venezuela and Angola, two countries facing economic turmoil. Reserve Protocol Stablecoin trends and developments The 2019 surge in the creation of new stablecoins, led by digital asset exchanges, like Gemini, Circle (Poloniex) and Digitex, put stablecoins back on the map and raised discussions about the benefits and drawbacks of using a stable coin on a large scale. One of the oldest and the biggest stablecoins, initiated by an exchange, in terms of volume and market capitalization at the moment is Tether. Tether endured some scrutiny over the years, and it seems like its reaching its pinnacle soon. The digital asset exchange stablecoin Global financial service providers, in the digital asset industry, like OKCoin (USDK), Huobi Group (HUSD) and Binance (BUSD), have all launched a stablecoin. The coins are tradeable at their parent company’s asset exchanges as well as other platforms that list an array of stablecoins. USDK, HUSD, and BUSD are all based on the Ethereum blockchain, issued as an ERC20 token, is pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar. Tether the first fractional reserved stablecoin Bitfinex and Tether are under discussion regarding the reserve funds, either fully backing USDT or not. that the stablecoin is only backed by 74% by US Dollar. Hence, there is not enough currency in the reserve fund to ensure all token holders can convert their USDT to US Dollar. Legal documents state Tether terms were also adjusted, stating that token holders are not guaranteed a conversion of one USDT for one US Dollar. Digital asset exchange Digifinex has it is favoring Trust Token’s TrueUSD over Tether and has listed TUSD to replace USDT. announced Bank-issued stablecoin JP Morgen introduced as a solution to improving international payment settlements. By using JPM coin, large institutional clients, transferring significant sums of money, will see the transactions executed, faster, more secure at a lower cost. JPM coin Facebook Facebook is to be used on messaging platform WhatsApp. It will be called Libra Coin. They have set up shop (the Libra Association) in crypto-friendly Switzerland to continue the development of what will be a dollar-backed digital currency for in-app payment transfers. creating a stablecoin Initially, the Libra Association announced some large global payment providers like Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, PayU and Stripe as its founding members. Over time, many founding partners (Visa, PayPal and Stripe) revoked their membership. Recently the association added and crypto broker as their newest partners. Shopify Tagomi There is no set release date for the launch of Libra. Originally, Facebook planned to launch Libra in 2020, but it seems that this is no longer achievable. XRP-backed stablecoin In May 2019, news emerged that Kava Labs started creating an , called USDX. Kava Labs is backed by Ripple’s initiative Xpring. XRP-backed stablecoin The stablecoin as a central bank digital currency (CBDC) Central banks around the world are exploring cryptocurrency as an official payment gateway. As we are moving towards a cashless society, real-world adoption for digital currency doesn’t seem too far out of reach. The Republic of the Marshall Islands is creating a fully compliant digital currency that will be legal tender on the small Pacific Island. The plan is to issue SOV, in addition to the USD, which is an official fiat payment solution in the Marshall Islands. the Sovereign (SOV), The Swedish central bank, Riksbank, is also pretty far along in doing on launching the e-Krona, a digital form of the fiat currency the Krona. research The has been researching and unofficially developing a digital version of the renminbi since 2014. Public Bank of China (PBOC) Read more about it in my article about central bank digital currency on Hackernoon: https://hackernoon.com/the-future-of-central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc-64797b645887 Stablecoin overview It is nearly impossible to write about all the different stablecoins projects in one single article, as there are over 57 different ones at the moment. Some of them have already launched, while others are in the development stage. The six stablecoins that have the highest market cap will be briefly discussed. Tether (USDT) The most well-known stablecoin is probably Tether or USDT as its ticker goes. Tether has been around since 2015 and has been added to many exchanges as a separate trading pair that can be transferred against most mainstream cryptocurrencies. USD Coin Launched by , the parent company of Poloniex, USD Coin (USDC) is a fiat backed stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar. It runs as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Circle Gemini Dollar (GUSD) The Gemini Dollar is a project related to digital asset exchange , which is founded by the Winklevoss twins. A New York regulator from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) approved this USD-backed stablecoin, called GUSD. Gemini Paxos (PAX) is a stablecoin introduced in September of 2018. PAX is one of the stablecoins that is officially approved by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), like Gemini’s GUSD. Paxos started the process to migrate to Ontology’s OEP4 standard, from Ethereum’s ERC20. This partnership will help Ontology execute atomic swaps with a more stable unit. PAX TrueUSD (TUSD) launched TUSD as an alternative to USDT. USD-backed stablecoin that is 100% collateralized by USD in legally protected escrow accounts. TrustToken MakerDAO (DAI) created the DAI stablecoin. DAI is an asset-backed, decentralized currency that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. MakerDAO Stablecoin drawbacks Anonymity Official companies behind stablecoin projects need to be compliant with governmental authorities. This enables a lack of anonymity because customers need to go through a KYC/AML process before they can buy a stablecoin. In some countries, it is difficult to buy a stablecoin directly with your bank account. Centralization Centralization all backed by a central authority similar to traditional financial institutions like banks. There is a risk that the custodian is going bankrupt. This single point of failure is not what blockchain is about. Hyperinflation If a stablecoin is pegged to the USD and that coin faces hyperinflation then so does the stablecoin. Necessity As with all assets, over time, markets tend to decrease in price volatility. If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies stay relatively stable in price, the need for a stablecoin might no longer be there. This decrease in volatility, however, can still be years away. Concluding remarks As history showed us, only one stablecoin has officially kept its dollar-peg for a continuous number of years. Despite the news that indicates only 74% of USDT are fully backed by reserves. And that same stablecoin is currently under investigation by the US authorities. While I believe a stablecoin can be a solution to help struggling economies and protect traders against cryptocurrency price volatility, in essence, they are just ‘crypto’ banks with centralized authorities, and it is not yet moving us towards a world of decentralized autonomous organizations. Full disclosure : This article is not intended as investment advice. It is just my personal opinion about stablecoins. You should always do your own research, before investing in a project and never invest more than you are willing to lose. Subscribe to my channels , , and if you like my articles and would like to be informed about Blockchain, cryptocurrency projects and news. You can also read my articles on . If you have any questions about this article, please comment in the comment section below. Thank you! LindaCrypto Steemit Medium Twitter LinkedIn

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