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GMX v2 and Its Competitors: The New Wave In the Decentralized Derivatives Market And Its Impact

SINGAPORE, Singapore, April 3rd, 2024/Chainwire/-- Bitlayer Labs, the first Bitcoin Layer 2 solution based on BitVM, announced a seed round of $5M led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, participation by StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital and many more. The announcement comes as Bitlayer prepares the launch of its open-incentive program Ready Player One, inviting developers worldwide to augment, enhance, and build on the protocol. Bitlayer Labs, the developer of Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol , announced today the close of a $5 million seed funding round at an $80 million valuation, driving a vision to become the computation layer of Bitcoin. Bitlayer Investors & Ecosystem Partners Blockchain-based venture firms Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital led the round, with participation from StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital, Kenetic Capital, Kestrel, Global Coin Research, Pivot Global, and Web3Port. Many other incredible investors added value to the seed round. Prominent angel investors including Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, Messari co-founder Dan McArdle, Asymmetric Capital founder Dan Held, Hacken CEO Dyma, Sky Mavis CEO Trung and CTO Andy, and Kyber Network founder Loi Luu, among others, joined in capitalizing the round. Bitlayer’s seed round was delivered soaring value-add support from ecosystem partners including Hacken, AWS Cloud, Ankr, Polyhedra, Babylon, Particle Network, Meson, Nubit, BitSmiley, TokenPocket, Xverse, Flash Protocol, Umoja.xyz, RunesTerminal, and more. The Bitlayer Network Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, offering Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing completeness. The protocol aims to build a more scalable and interconnected Bitcoin ecosystem. The securing of new capital pushes Bitlayer's lead in paving the way for more Bitcoin Layer 2 use cases, a race that will propel Bitcoin to prevail over other blockchains in size, scalability, and security. The fund will also enable Bitlayer to grow its team by hiring across business development and engineering faculties to support global expansion efforts. Investment firms are increasingly optimistic about the Bitcoin ecosystem as Bitlayer is rapidly gaining prominence, capturing the industry's attention. Investor Remarks Roy Learner, partner at Framework Ventures, spoke on the augmentation of Bitlayer with BitVM: “We are excited to back Bitlayer as they launch the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM. Looking at the trade-off space, BitVM struck us as the most practical approach to bring scalability and expressiveness into the BTC ecosystem without sacrificing security.With over $1T of global wealth looking to productively utilize their BTC, Bitlayer opens up the design space to introduce novel DeFi use cases and applications. Led by a team of OGs, we've been impressed by Kevin and Charlie's blend of deep technical background and rich crypto experience and are excited to partner with them as they deliver on their vision of making Bitcoin a more productive asset.” Qiao Wang, co-founder of Alliance DAO, emphasized the future of Bitlayer and Bitcoin L2s in the emerging era: “I spent the vast majority of my intellectual, social, and financial capital in the Ethereum ecosystem in the last decade, but deep down I've always been a Bitcoiner. The possibility to enhance Bitcoin's expressiveness and scalability via L2s such as Bitlayer is the most exciting moment in the history of Bitcoin. That is because there's over $1T of wealth stored on Bitcoin, and the holders would want to do something productive with it. Greater expressiveness and scalability enable this. Bitlayer is one of the most experienced, passionate, and technically capable teams to tackle this problem.” In the midst of building Bitlayer, co-founder Charlie Hu shared his thoughts on the protocol’s milestone: "This support signifies investors’ and builders’ trust in Bitlayer and the team, and demonstrates a robust backing for the Bitcoin ecosystem and the future of Bitcoin DeFi at large." Bitlayer ventures into the future of Bitcoin with newly supplied capital, anticipating a rush of development activity and investor interest in the Bitcoin Layer 2 space. "Bitlayer is dedicated to bringing super scalability into the Bitcoin ecosystem, with hundreds of millions of potential users as an addressable market," said Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer. "We’ve created the best, easiest-to-use scalability product in order to give users better fee rates and faster actions, all based on Bitcoin’s security foundation." With the approach of the Bitcoin halving event, the need for a robust Bitcoin ecosystem becomes more important than ever. Bitlayer’s exacting design and rigorous security auditing in preparation for public mainnet launch primes the protocol for a flourishing builder ecosystem. Mainnet launches on April 5th, with more milestones arriving soon on the project’s development pipeline. Ready Player One– Ecosystem Incentive Program. To accelerate ecosystem development and incentivize projects to deploy on the Bitlayer mainnet, Bitlayer is launching a series of ecosystem incentive programs– starting with the first event, Ready Player One. The campaign is an open incentive program designed to distribute token rewards valued at over $50M to protocols and teams that deploy to the Bitlayer mainnet and demonstrate exceptional performance. Bitlayer’s growth is accelerating, urging strong projects to join its ecosystem to grow the protocol in exponential ways. Bitlayer commits to providing comprehensive ecosystem support for all projects, offering the following resources to builders: Potential investment from the foundation and institutions Initial liquidity support Comprehensive product development resources Mentorship and pitch opportunities from top-tier incubators Support from the Bitcoin community and OGs Ecosystem collaboration and co-creation Users can find the full article for more information. here About Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, offering Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing-completeness. Bitlayer is committed to becoming the computation layer for Bitcoin. It introduces ultra-scalability and inherits Bitcoin’s L1 security, providing users with high throughput and a low-cost transaction experience. Bitlayer Github Contact Digital Marketing Manager Sky Harris Bitlayer skyler@bitlayer.org This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here.

Bitlayer, a Leading Bitcoin L2, Nets $5M In Funding, Unveils $50M 'Ready Player One' Program

This paper is available on under CC 4.0 license. Arxiv Authors: (1) Md Masud Rana, Department of Mathematics, University of Kentucky; (2) Duc Duy Nguyen, Department of Mathematics, University of Kentucky & ducnguyen@uky.edu. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Datasets and Results Methods Conclusion, Data and Software Availability, Competing interests, Acknowledgments & References 4 Conclusion The study of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the prediction of mutation-induced binding free energy changes are of great importance in understanding the molecular basis of biological processes. The application of geometric graph theory and atom-level graph coloring techniques provides a powerful framework for analyzing biomolecules and capturing their intricate relationships. By utilizing the concept of geometric subgraphs and constructing multi-scale weighted colored geometric subgraphs (MWCGS), we can effectively represent the structural and functional properties of PPIs. The site-specific MWCGS features allow us to extract meaningful patterns and characteristics, shedding light on the effects of mutations and the underlying molecular interactions. In this work, we developed a mutation-induced binding free energy change predictor, called GGL-PPI, by incorporating site-specific MWCGS features for PPIs and gradient-boosting trees. Our method demonstrates superior performance compared to existing methods. The model was validated on three datasets: AB-Bind S645, SKEMPI 1.0 S1131, and SKEMPI 2.0 S4169 and S8338, showcasing its robustness and effectiveness. Furthermore, GGL-PPI was evaluated on a blind test set, the Ssym dataset. To prevent data leakage between the test and training sets, the model was trained on a homology-reduced balanced training set Q3488. This approach ensures the reliability and fairness of the evaluation process. GGL-PPI exhibits the most unbiased and superior performance in predicting binding free energy changes for both direct and reverse mutations, outperforming other existing methods, particularly for reverse mutations. Overall, the results highlight the potential of the GGL-PPI approach in accurately predicting mutation-induced binding free energy changes in protein-protein interactions, providing valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying protein-protein interactions and facilitating drug design and discovery efforts. 5 Data and Software Availability The source code is available at Github: https://github.com/NguyenLabUKY/GGL-Mutation. 6 Competing interests No competing interest is declared. 7 Acknowledgments This work is supported in part by funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF: # 2053284, # 2151802, and # 2245903), and the University of Kentucky Startup Fund. References [1] Dana Chuderland and Rony Seger. 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PPIs and the Prediction of Mutation-Induced Binding Free Energy Changes: What It All Means

This paper is under CC 4.0 license. available on arxiv Authors: (1) Shreyash Mishra has an equal contribution from IIIT Sri City, India; (2) S Suryavardan has an equal contribution from IIIT Sri City, India; (3) Megha Chakraborty, University of South Carolina, USA; (4) Parth Patwa, UCLA, USA; (5) Anku Rani, University of South Carolina, USA; (6) Aman Chadha, work does not relate to a position at Amazon from Stanford University, USA, or Amazon AI, USA; (7) Aishwarya Reganti, CMU, USA; (8) Amitava Das, University of South Carolina, USA; (9) Amit Sheth, University of South Carolina, USA; (10) Manoj Chinnakotla, Microsoft, USA; (11) Asif Ekbal, IIT Patna, India; (12) Srijan Kumar, Georgia Tech, USA. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Related Work Task Details Participating systems Results Conclusion and Future Work and References 6. Conclusion and Future Work In this paper, we summarize the approaches used by the participants for the Memotion 3 task and analyze the results. Due to the multi-modal nature of the dataset, all teams use a pre-trained image and text embedding models. However, each team presents a novel model pipeline. The highest scores achieved in Task A, Task B and Task C of Memotion 3.0 are 34.41%, 79.77% and 59.82% respectively, which shows there is significant room for improvement. On analysis of the results and the mis-classified examples on the test set, we find that "Sarcasm" and "Humour" are difficult to identify, especially in code-mixed memes. While we address Hind-English code-mixed memes in this paper, future work could include exploring other languages/language pairs. A unified baseline model to analyze memes in multiple languages could also be an interesting possibility. References [1] R. Dawkins, The selfish gene, Granada Publishing Lim, 1979. [2] A. Marwick, Memes, Contexts 12 (2013) 12–13. [3] N. Akhther, Internet memes as form of cultural discourse: A rhetorical analysis on facebook, 2018. doi:10.31234/osf.io/sx6t7. [4] S. 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Overview of Memotion 3: Sentiment & Emotion
Analysis of Codemixed Hinglish - Conclusion

Verifiable Privacy-Preserving Computing: Conclusion & References

This story was originally published on by . Co-published with . ProPublica Brett Murphy El Diario Senior prosecutors in one of New York’s largest counties have known for years that drunk driving convictions of Spanish-speaking motorists may have been tainted by faulty evidence. But the Westchester District Attorney’s Office failed to investigate until defense attorneys contacted the unit that reviews wrongful convictions. From at least 2014 to 2018, records show, New York State Police troopers gave some drivers mistranslated instructions about what it means to refuse a blood alcohol test. Legal experts, including three former prosecutors in Westchester, told ProPublica that those incorrect directions could, at a minimum, confuse or mislead drivers and may have pressured some into a decision that resulted in severe consequences. Westchester prosecutors were alerted to the issue at least three times, in 2018, 2019 and 2021, records show. “These are folks that are wrongfully convicted,” said Joseph Margulies, a government and law professor at Cornell University. He and others said the district attorney’s office — currently led by Miriam Rocah, who was elected in 2020 — should have been investigating every case that may have included the forms since its prosecutors became aware of the faulty instructions. Rocah declined requests to discuss what steps she’s taking to address the issue. Spokesperson Jin Whang said the office’s conviction review unit received a list of 263 DWI arrests from the police in February 2022. “We’re still combing through paper,” she said, acknowledging progress has been slow due to the unit’s small staff and more urgent priorities, compounded by tangled police records. Whang added that prosecutors recently decided, amid questions from ProPublica, that they will consider moving to vacate sentences. When a driver suspected of being drunk refuses a chemical test for alcohol in their system, police in New York, like in many other places, are required by law to explain that the motorist’s , whether or not they are found guilty, and that their refusal can be used as evidence against them. license will be suspended A chemical test typically measures blood alcohol content in someone’s breath, blood or urine. But some state police troopers in Westchester told Spanish-speaking drivers something different. Officers in Troop K gave those motorists a sheet of paper that described a refusal as tantamount to being found guilty for driving drunk. It told drivers that authorities “will punish you as being guilty” for not taking the test — which is a significant departure from the actual law, which only states the refusal can be used as evidence against them. The warning also falsely stated that officers “are going to examine your blood,” instead of requesting that drivers take the test, which is often a Breathalyzer. ProPublica consulted with Spanish-language and legal authorities at five universities, who said the mistranslated warning had several deeply flawed passages. “It looks like they’re really coercing a ‘yes,’” said Amber Baylor, a law professor at Columbia University who reviewed some of the records. She said immigrant drivers may feel especially susceptible to that kind of pressure given the potential consequences: “your job going up in flames, losing your livelihood, being separated from your family or losing your ability to stay in the country.” In an email statement, Beau Duffy, a state police spokesperson, said the form “was not an official document that was created, distributed or approved” by the agency, which means it cannot easily be tracked in department records. He said he didn’t know when the Spanish warning was first used or where it had come from but said it is no longer in circulation. “We believe they were used only in Westchester County,” Duffy said, adding that the state police do not currently issue written refusal warnings in Spanish. The agency tells troopers who don’t speak Spanish to use a telephone translation service contracted by the department. It’s unclear how many drivers have been impacted. For context, state police troopers arrested at least 56 Hispanic motorists on drunk driving charges in Westchester last year and 79 in 2021, according to . state court data (The state does not maintain local court records from previous years.) The data does not indicate whether or not those drivers spoke only Spanish. Around 65,000 adults in Westchester speak Spanish and limited or no English, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Whang said prosecutors didn’t believe that it was fair to cast all convictions involving the mistranslated form as wrongful. But blood alcohol content is typically the linchpin of successful prosecutions. Legal experts compared the pre-test warning to a Miranda warning, which allows suspects to make informed decisions. “That’s why we have a process,” said Cornell’s Margulies. Whang said the conviction review unit, which Rocah created shortly after she took office, first learned about the translation issue in late October 2021, when defense attorneys with the Legal Aid Society asked for help getting a list of potentially affected DWI cases from Troop K. The unit received information on about 260 arrests made between 2010 and 2019 and has so far reviewed 44 of them, according to Whang, all of which resulted in a conviction. Five of those 44 cases involved the mistranslated form. Prosecutors have not yet notified the attorneys in those cases. But Whang said the DA’s office intends to do that and to come up with a “remedial course of action” once the conviction review unit has gone through the remaining cases. She noted that there are only three attorneys in the unit, which is independent from the rest of the office and typically focus on cases of egregious misconduct and those where someone may be exonerated by new evidence, including DNA. In November 2018, a defense attorney for a Hispanic motorist accused of drunk driving discovered the mistranslated warnings and brought them to the attention of Livia Rodriguez, who was a senior assistant district attorney at the time and still holds that role. Rodriguez told a judge she thought the issues were valid and offered reduced charges, according to a transcript of the hearing. It’s unclear if Rodriguez alerted her superiors or the state police at that time. She declined ProPublica’s request for an interview and referred questions to Whang, who said she had no comment about how Rodriguez handled the situation at the time. The faulty forms appeared during a hearing in 2019 as part of another of Rodriguez’s prosecutions. Defense attorney James Timko noticed the incorrect language and told the court that his client’s refusal should be inadmissible. “The police have ‘muddied the waters’ by providing a defendant a woefully inartful, inaccurate and affirmatively misleading statement,” he wrote in a court filing. In an interview with ProPublica, Timko said, “It was a disaster.” Still, the judge allowed the driver’s refusal into evidence because, she said, he understood English well enough during his 2017 arrest that it didn’t matter whether the Spanish warning was defective. Timko wrote an email to Michael Borrelli, the DWI coordinator for the district attorney at the time, and said the judge’s ruling would likely be reversed on appeal because the refusal warnings were so badly mistranslated. Borelli agreed and offered less serious charges. “It wasn’t even close,” Borrelli said in an interview. “Even someone with a fourth grade Spanish would have been like, ‘What?’” Borrelli said he told state police personnel there that he never wanted to see those forms used again. (Duffy, at the state police, said the department had no documentation of that conversation and could not find anyone who recalled it.) “I’m sure I reported it up the chain of command and I’m sure I got orders,” Borrelli added, but he did not remember any internal effort at the DA’s office to look at past cases that may have been affected. Whang was also not aware of any such effort at the time. “We cannot speak for the decision making — the why or the how — prior to this administration,” she said, noting that Rocah took office in early 2021. Two years went by before the issue surfaced a third time. Katie Wasserman, a defense attorney with Legal Aid in Westchester, told the court in July 2021 that the state police had given the wrong translation to another driver in a case that dated back years. Duffy told ProPublica that by then the forms were no longer in use. “The District Attorney’s Office is aware of the improper warning as it had been brought to their attention on at least two documented occasions in 2018 and then again in 2019,” Wasserman wrote in the filing. The driver didn’t have correct information when he decided to refuse the test, Wasserman argued, so his refusal should not have been allowed to be used against him during the plea negotiations. “I would never have made the decision to plead guilty to a misdemeanor,” the driver, who has other drunk driving convictions, wrote in an affidavit. He wrote that he feared he may get deported and be permanently separated from his family as a result of the conviction. In the months that followed, senior officials in the DA’s office held a series of meetings about how to handle the problem. Whang said the conviction review unit didn’t learn of the issue until Wasserman called the division’s chief, Anastasia Heeger, in late October to ask for help getting information from the state police about other cases impacted by the faulty forms. “After [Heeger] got the call, she immediately said, ‘Yes I’ll join you,’” Whang said. Wasserman said in an interview that too much time has elapsed since then and something substantive should have happened by now. “It’s just not a priority,” she said. “Truth is, they've been sitting on it.” Photo by on Roman Koester Unsplash

Tainted DWI Evidence Was Ignored for Years by New York Prosecutors

নিউ ইয়র্ক প্রসিকিউটরদের দ্বারা কলঙ্কিত DWI প্রমাণ বছরের পর বছর উপেক্ষা করা হয়েছিল

Verfälschte DWI-Beweise wurden von der New Yorker Staatsanwaltschaft jahrelang ignoriert

Los fiscales de Nueva York ignoraron durante años pruebas contaminadas de DWI

Les preuves entachées de CFA ont été ignorées pendant des années par les procureurs de New York

न्यूयॉर्क अभियोजकों द्वारा वर्षों तक दागी डीडब्ल्यूआई साक्ष्यों को नजरअंदाज किया गया

汚染されたDWI証拠はニューヨーク検察によって何年も無視された

뉴욕 검찰은 오염된 음주 운전 증거를 수년간 무시했습니다

Evidências contaminadas de DWI foram ignoradas durante anos pelos promotores de Nova York

Прокуратура Нью-Йорка годами игнорировала доказательства, подтверждающие факт вождения в нетрезвом виде

Kusurlu DWI Kanıtları New York Savcıları Tarafından Yıllarca Göz Ardı Edildi

Bằng chứng DWI bị nhiễm độc đã bị các công tố viên New York bỏ qua trong nhiều năm

受污染的酒驾证据多年来一直被纽约检察官忽视

On 11 March 2020 - three months after the first human coronavirus cases were identified in Wuhan, China - the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the outbreak of COVID-19 had become a global pandemic. As of September 2023, there have been over confirmed cases of COVID-19 and over 6.9 million deaths. However, Juliet Bedford, founder and director of Anthrologica, said: “ ” 770 million No epidemic is ever just a health issue in isolation, and COVID-19 has emphasized this on the global stage. We need to be looking at it in terms of an economic issue, a livelihood issue, a social issue, and a political issue, too. So, in this article, I look at the lasting impact of the and how it has changed for better and worse. COVID-19 pandemic our world Education Education technology Let’s start with a positive. The global education technology market is expected to be worth a whopping by 2025, which is $221 billion more than what it was worth in 2019, the year before COVID-19 forced students into the world of online learning. $404 billion Following the return to classrooms, technology has been actively integrated into lesson plans, and education facilities continue to adopt digital teaching methods because using technology for learning has many potential for students, such as: benefits Improves engagement Makes collaboration easier Offers flexibility Increases productivity Encourages creativity Prepares students for future Enables automation Promotes inclusion Closures Primary, secondary, and tertiary schools were forced to close in 2020 in hopes of slowing the spread of the virus during the first wave. Shutdowns soon affected nearly students in 200 countries, 94% of the student population. 1.6 billion These closures had adverse effects on students and are predicted to have substantial long-term implications for education and earnings. An published in November 2020 found that whilst some children living in England had coped well with lockdown, others had struggled, regressing academically and losing basic skills. Ofsted report The report indicated that the pandemic had badly impacted children with special educational needs. Poverty Within a few months of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning, extreme poverty went up by , ending a 20-year streak of progress. 7% In October 2020, President David Malpass said: “ ” World Bank Group In order to reverse this serious setback to development progress and poverty reduction, countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-COVID, by allowing capital, labour, skills, and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors. \Research found that the pandemic disproportionately impacted low-income countries, with of workers in low and lower-middle-income countries losing jobs or businesses, compared to just 10% in high-income countries. 45% High-income countries such as the UK, Australia, and Switzerland had the means to intervene early to protect people and businesses. However, low- and middle-income countries were unable to do the same. Figures estimate that the UK’s government Covid support measures totaled since 2020: £100bn of this went to individuals, while the remaining £69bn was spent on business support schemes. £169bn (Image Source: ) Institute for Government Climate During the pandemic, many nations restricted local, national, and international travel, which resulted in positive climate news when global energy-related CO2 emissions fell by , the largest-ever decline in global CO2 emissions. 5.8% However, this historical decline was a short-term positive of lockdown restrictions, not a sustained change. In 2021, the global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion rebounded by , returning close to worrying pre-pandemic levels. nearly 6% Research shows that global carbon dioxide emissions are still rising but may at least reach level ground, with CO2 from energy only increasing by 0.9% in 2022 despite the turmoil in energy markets caused by the Russo-Ukrainian War. Unfortunately, though, a is needed each year to halve emissions within this decade, with biologist Hans-Otto Pörtner saying: “ .” 7% reduction The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future Economy The UK entered a six-month recession in 2020. The economy plunged by between April and June 2020 as businesses closed and people stayed home. 20% However, as businesses and consumers adapted to restrictions, the second and third wave in autumn 2020 and winter 2020/21, respectively, did not lead to as much of a decline in economic activity. At the time, the ONS said: “This is the largest quarterly contraction in the UK economy since ONS quarterly records began in 1955, and reflects the ongoing and forms of voluntary social distancing that have been put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic.” public health restrictions In 2023, the UK’s economy grew by - faster than expected - in the second quarter, and data also showed that the country may avoid another recession. In the announcement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the economy is forecast to grow by 1.8% in 2024 and 2.5% in 2025. 0.2% Spring Budget Social Media Social media engagement increased by between March 2020 and May 2020, when people were made to stay at home during the first wave of the coronavirus and use their to connect with friends and family. 61% smartphones Firstly, social media platform TikTok can thank the pandemic for its success. Despite launching in 2016, it was the when it became the birthplace of many global trends, including dance challenges, push-up challenges, and the infamous ‘head clap challenge.’ third fastest-growing brand of 2020 TikTok’s growth was beaten by video chat platform Zoom - which was used across the globe for parties, quizzes, and business meetings - and streaming service Peacock. Social media messaging platform Whatsapp and multiple delivery services, including DoorDash and Instacart, were also among the brands to see significant growth in 2020 due to people staying at home. (Image Source: ) Marketing Charts Across all stages of the pandemic, WhatsApp was the social media app experiencing the greatest gains, with a increase in usage, as people wanted to stay connected with those they couldn’t see in person. 40% Jobs Business closures The UK’s first national lockdown, which saw most businesses close their doors, started in March 2020 and lasted over three months. Similar restrictions took place worldwide, resulting in the loss of equivalent to in terms of global working hours compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. 255 million full-time jobs These working-hour losses in 2020 were approximately four times greater than those during the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, referred to as ‘The Great Recession.’ The pandemic also welcomed a for hybrid- and remote-workers. In 2019, 12% of the UK workforce worked at least one day from home, and only 5% worked mainly from home. However, by June 2020, 11% worked from home at least one day a week, and 38% worked from home exclusively. substantial shift Following the end of pandemic restrictions, these numbers have gradually decreased but remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. In September 2022, 22% of the Great Britain workforce had worked at least one day from home in the previous week, and 13% worked from home exclusively. The Great Resignation The Great Resignation, also known as The Great Reshuffle, is an ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs simultaneously, beginning in early 2021 during the pandemic. Most likely to quit have been hospitality, healthcare, and education workers. The most mentioned reasons for resigning include: Wage stagnation despite rising living costs Limited opportunities for career advancement Hostile work environments Lack of benefits Inflexible hybrid and remote working policies Job dissatisfaction However, workforce participation in some regions, including the USA, has returned to or even exceeded the pre-pandemic rate, which suggests that instead of remaining out of the workforce, many workers have been simply swapping jobs - which is why it’s also known as The Great Reshuffle. Anthony Klotz, a professor, predicts that 2023 will see the end of the Great Resignation with the quit rate set to level out. University College London’s School of Management Businesses The five industries most affected by COVID-19 between 2 January 2020 and 15 January 2022 were Airlines, Automobiles, Energy Equipment and Services, Hotels, Restaurants and Leisure, and Specialty Retail. The five industries least impacted were Communications Equipment, Health Care Equipment and Supplies, Life Science Tools and Services, Pharmaceuticals, and Real Estate Investment Trusts. Meanwhile, the number of UK start-ups grew by during the pandemic, and more than £20 billion could be added to the nation’s economy in the future thanks to these additional businesses. 22% Travel On 17 March 2020, then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced that British nationals were advised against non-essential foreign travel for 30 days, which was later extended indefinitely. \ However, against all expectations, most of the travel companies trading in 2019 survived the pandemic, and the aviation industry became profitable in 2023 for the first time since before the pandemic. On another positive note, the pandemic gave authorities time to reconsider the value of mass tourism and introduce measures to stop overtourism. In 2024, Venice will introduce a long-threatened for day-trippers to help prevent overcrowding in the city. entry fee Meanwhile, Amsterdam’s city hall : “We do not want to go back to what we saw before the pandemic, where massive crowds in the Red Light District and the city’s entertainment areas caused a nuisance to residents.” released a statement Some destinations, however, can’t wait to welcome tourists back, with Siem Reap in Cambodia spending on infrastructural improvements during lockdown with aims to attract 7.5 million foreign visitors a year by 2035. £115 million Business travel on airlines is still below pre-pandemic levels and is predicted not to recover. Health Mental health Loneliness, fear of infection, grief of a loved one, financial issues, and the unknowns of the economy are all factors that affected people’s mental health throughout the pandemic when government restrictions stopped them from seeing their family and friends or going to work. The worldwide prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. 25% However, this must be accompanied by a worldwide investment in mental health services. In 2020, governments across the globe only spent just over 2% of their overall health budgets on mental health. By the end of 2021, the situation had somewhat improved, but too many people still remain unable to get the care and support they need for pre-existing and newly developed mental health conditions. Dévora Kestel, Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at , said:” While the pandemic has generated interest in and concern for mental health, it has also revealed historical under-investment in mental health services. Countries must act urgently to ensure that mental health support is available to all.” WHO Health care burnout In the early days of the pandemic, healthcare employees were praised as heroes and honored with military flyovers, fire department drive-bys, meal donations, and colorful signs expressing thanks. (Image Source: ) Unsplash However, the recognition, whilst appreciated, didn’t fix the burnout. In October 2021, a survey by the Royal College of Nursing showed that of respondents were either thinking about leaving or actively planning to leave their jobs as nursing staff. The primary factors were feeling undervalued, exhausted, and unable to give adequate care. 57% Medical advancements Amazingly, the COVID-19 vaccine development took 11 months, humbling the five-year record for the mumps vaccine. The work previously done with mRNA vaccines was a significant factor in the timely development. This led to advancements across multiple scientific fronts, which means developers and researchers are in a much better position to develop vaccines rapidly and respond better to future epidemics and pandemics. Paul Goepfert, MD, director of the , said: “ ” Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic at UAB Hospital We demonstrated that we can quickly test drugs to help treat patients in the outpatient and hospitalized settings. The learned lessons can apply to future infectious and even non-infectious diseases. Conclusion Despite the noticeable detrimental effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the economy, poverty, and the workforce, it is also important to remember the positives. The pandemic resulted in much-needed medical advancements, the rise of beneficial education technology, and the fixing of over-tourism. As our society continues to adapt to changes, we must remember how far we have come since March 2020 and be glad we made it through the first pandemic of the 21st century.

COVID-19: How Has The Pandemic Changed Our Society?

কোভিড-১৯: মহামারী আমাদের সমাজকে কীভাবে বদলে দিয়েছে?

COVID-19: Wie hat die Pandemie unsere Gesellschaft verändert?

COVID-19: ¿Cómo ha cambiado la pandemia nuestra sociedad?

COVID-19 : Comment la pandémie a-t-elle changé notre société ?

कोविड-19: महामारी ने हमारे समाज को कैसे बदल दिया है?

COVID-19: パンデミックは私たちの社会をどう変えましたか?

코로나19: 팬데믹이 우리 사회를 어떻게 변화시켰는가?

COVID-19: Como a pandemia mudou nossa sociedade?

COVID-19: как пандемия изменила наше общество?

COVID-19: Pandemi Toplumumuzu Nasıl Değiştirdi?

COVID-19: Đại dịch đã thay đổi xã hội của chúng ta như thế nào?

COVID-19：疫情如何改变了我们的社会？

To describe decentralized finance’s (DeFi) rise as anything other than meteoric would be a gross understatement. DeFi burst into the limelight in 2020 and has moved from strength to strength since then, seeing its total value locked (TVL) grow from around $600 million in 2020 to well over $40 billion at the time of writing. DeFi initially emerged as an alternative to legacy investment markets, one that leverages blockchain technologies and crypto assets to provide investors with better experiences. So, for much of its existence, it has centred around cryptocurrencies and other native blockchain assets. But while the crypto space remains a seat of invention and innovation, DeFi may stand to benefit more by opening up to include traditional investment vehicles. Why Does That Need To Happen? DeFi’s current environment can be accurately summed up as crypto-heavy. The scene is dominated by crypto-based financial services, which for a long time, has meant it correlates with crypto prices. This is where the problem lies. Crypto prices are volatile, a volatility that given DeFi’s link to crypto assets, has created a seasonality upon which the success of the underlying idea and technologies is judged. DeFi is vibrant and promising during a crypto bull market, with lots of activity, growth, and investment opportunities, but quickly falls into a slump during bear markets. But that need not be the case. Regardless of the performance of crypto assets, DeFi’s tools, protocols, and smart contracts are still revolutionary technologies. Their successes should, therefore, be independent of crypto price cycles. This is where real-world assets (RWAs) come into the picture. DeFi and Real-World Assets Eliminating DeFi’s seasonality doesn’t mean abandoning cryptocurrencies. Instead, it involves the space expanding to include a broader range of financial applications and services, and in doing so, dilute its link to the crypto market. The only way to do that is to bring RWA,s, like stocks, real estate, commodities, and bonds on-chain. Having this many financial products makes cryptocurrencies only one variable of a broad equation, ensuring DeFi will no longer be affected by seasonal changes in crypto prices. This will bring some much-needed stability and consistency to DeFi. But that’s not the only benefit– RWAs on-chain create a much-needed avenue for hedging and risk management. Investors will have alternative opportunities to the risky and volatile opportunities, making the space more appealing to risk-averse investors while also allowing for more sophisticated investment strategies. RWAs on-chain will also allow DeFi to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the decentralized world, which will go a long way in securing the future of the space. How? Well, for one, tokenizing products like stocks, bonds, and commodities allows DeFi to tap into already-established markets and reach a wider pool of investors and traders. If these assets are available on-chain, many of their existing investors will be drawn to DeFi platforms thanks to the efficiency that blockchain technology enjoys over legacy investment channels. Such an inflow of new users will mean higher trading and investment activity in the space, which translates to more liquidity. This is important because a lack of liquidity has been one of the main things holding back the space. Onboarding traditional investment vehicles will also help with regulatory compliance. Having a clearly defined regulatory framework plays a crucial part in the mainstream success of any market. Unfortunately, DeFi is a largely unregulated space. This is due to the fact that crypto assets remain in regulatory limbo in many parts of the world. In comparison, traditional investment instruments are already subject to regulatory frameworks in pretty much every jurisdiction. So, incorporating these vehicles into DeFi in a compliant manner can help DeFi projects navigate the regulatory landscape more effectively, reducing legal risks and increasing its legitimacy as a financial market going forward. All these factors combined will create a stable, liquid, and more compliant space with the added advantage of being built on blockchain technology. This will make DeFi appealing to all kinds of investors – not only the crypto-savvy ones – allowing the space to achieve mainstream adoption. So who are the rising stars currently working to implement these types of use cases? Projects bringing TradFi to DeFi KUMA Protocol, is one project using RWAs to make DeFi investing less risky. The protocol accepts NFTs backed by traditional real world assets such as government bonds or corporate assets. Additionally, users will be able to mint composable interest-bearing stable tokens backed by these NFTs, providing users worldwide with accessible, low-risk investment opportunities. There is another benefit to onboarding traditional investment vehicles– it provides an avenue for collaboration and synergy between the two sectors. This can lead to innovative financial products and services that leverage the strengths of both systems, creating a more efficient and comprehensive financial ecosystem. TrueFi, a lending protocol that brings real-world debt infrastructure on-chain, is a good example of this. By bringing asset management on-chain, the project removes intermediaries. This has created capital markets that expose users to both crypto-native and real-world financial lending opportunities worldwide in a more efficient manner. It's the same for Maple Finance. The protocol was founded by a team of former bankers and credit investment professionals that used blockchain technology to create a capital network that provides infrastructure for existing credit experts to run on-chain lending businesses and connect them to institutional borrowers and companies seeking capital on-chain. Kwenta is another DeFi protocol that has leveraged RWA on-chain to offer more innovative financial products. The decentralized derivatives trading platform provides investors with exposure to cryptocurrencies, forex, and commodities with up to 50x leverage. And thanks to a proprietary margin engine, users can trade any market with a single account. Where does it all go from here? DeFi is often seen as competing with existing investment markets. However, the two don’t have to be entirely separate spaces. Through tokenization, traditional investment instruments can exist within DeFi, and to the great benefit of the space. Onboarding traditional investment vehicles will make DeFi less vulnerable to crypto price cycles with the added benefits of being more liquid and more compliant with regulation. This makes it crucial to the space’s long-term success and broader adoption in the global financial landscape. The good news is, the space is increasingly aware of this fact. This has made real-world asset (RWA) protocols a growing trend in DeFi. If you’re new to crypto, you’re getting in at a great time. If you’re already a crypto investor, hang on because new advances in blockchain technology are dropping every day.

Why Onboarding Traditional Investment Vehicles Is Integral to the Success of DeFi

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