July 24, 2020
This week in the landscape…following last week’s major announcements of Beijing’s 145-page blueprint (EN translation) to become a global hub for blockchain technology by 2022 and JP Morgan’s announces of ‘Project Ubin,’ with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Temasek the industry decided to take things a whole other level as The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announcing that all nationally chartered banks can provide custody services for cryptocurrencies. Mastercard and Visa shared more news of their efforts to offer digital currency and payment solutions globally to their customers, with Visa revealing more of their bigger plans. Shortly after the OCC, the total DeFi value reached over $3.6B…Billion ($3.66 at time of writing). Let that sink in as it was just earlier this year we crossed $1B.
Things didn’t’ stop there…Indian PM backs blockchain as ‘Frontier Technology’ another achievement for the country’s efforts in the space. Ready or not Ethereum 2.0 is coming, and fast — on pace for release by end of year 2020. Dr. Seuss fans can now own a piece of the incredible Dr. Seuss universe as a digital collectible on the Flow Blockchain (Dapper Labs). NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are quickly building microeconomics in many areas from individuals, to fashion, to fan engagement and contacts. Decentraland and Samsung Blockchain team up to accelerate NFT adoption. The NBA’s Spencer Dinwiddie raises $1.3 million in token sale. Plus trends & insights from investors, an interview with Oracle, funding reports, production deployed enterprise use cases, tons of research, and more! Enjoy!
💳 Mastercard announces expansion of cryptocurrency efforts, inks card deal with Wirex
Mastercard has unveiled its plan to expand its cryptocurrency program, bringing more cryptocurrency and fintech companies into its card-issuance network through supercharging the partnership experience. The company is inviting cryptocurrency, fintech, and crypto partners to join Mastercard’s Accelerate program, which is considered akin to Visa’s Fintech Fast Track program, giving them access to everything they need to grow quickly. To bolster its efforts, it has inked a deal with Wirex, which has already provided Visa cards in Asia and Europe…read more
Related: 📖 Visa — Advancing our approach to digital currency
👩🏫 Prometheus School partners with ValidateMe for blockchain digital storage and verification
An IB candidate school “Prometheus School” has partnered with the blockchain platform ValidateMe to enable access to student records anytime. The partnership will allow the school to validate the authenticity of academic certificates, school reports, and feedback consolidation along with school transfer certificates, to name a few while considering data and data security very seriously. The other parties involved, like parents and students, will be having access to current digital records, entire educational journey, and transfer process status…read more
Related: 🏴 US State of Texas Saddles Up to Become the Next Blockchain Capital
🇨🇳 Beijing unveils plan for blockchain-based government
Beijing’s local government has released a blueprint of its plan to implement blockchain deployment, integrating the transaction data technology into the city’s operations. The 145-page blueprint (EN translation) encompasses the first steps in achieving the most ambitious blockchain project in a megacity like Beijing and deliberation to choose the 12 application cases to spearhead the project began in November. However, there are already 140 government services integrated with blockchain technology for data sharing, linking businesses to save time and epidemic control…read more
Related: 🇸🇬Temasek Backs Efforts to Commercialize Blockchain Projects
Digital Currencies/CBDCs:
Following last week’s news out of China and Singapore, the region is continuing to show massive strides as projects unite adding fuel to the growing ‘Cold War’ for blockchain dominance. Additionally, finance giant Ant Group launches a new blockchain brand ‘AntChain.’ BSN (Blockchain Service Network) pushes forward for as they announce support for six more public chains — Tezos, NEO, Nervos, EOS, IRISnet, and Ethereum.
More For Your Week:
🏦 Banks Won’t Rush to Hold Crypto — But OCC’s Regulatory Approval Makes It Harder to Ignore
📖 Wyoming-Based Avanti to Open in October With a New Bank-Issued Digital Asset
📖 Indian PM Backs Blockchain as ‘Frontier Technology’
📖 Venturing Deeper into the Crypto (DeFi) Idea Maze — Sunny Aggarwal📖
💸 Avalanche Raises $42M in 4.5 Hours for Its First Public Sale — Ava Labs
📖 The Alchemy of Hashpower, Part I. — Leo Zhang & Karthik Venkatesh
📖 How Usage-Based Payments are Enabling Blockchain-Based Integrated Business Ecosystems
📖 Figure’s Mike Cagney: How to Build a Business in Blockchain
📖 Crypto Needn’t Fear GPT-3. It Should Embrace It
📖 Why We Shouldn’t Have AI Without Blockchain
📖 Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems Is Now a Chainlink Node Operator
📖 [Report] The Best Analytical Brains in Blockchain
DApps (Decentralized Apps) Watch
📖 Everything You Need to Know About Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0 is coming. The yearslong upgrade — intended to radically transform the world’s largest smart-contract platform — is inching closer to deployment. The Ethereum Foundation recently announced “Medalla,” a final testnet before the mainnet launch of the Eth 2.0 beacon chain. As of July 10, some developers, including ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, estimate the oft-delayed Eth 2.0 will launch by the end of this year…read more
Related: 📖 [Report] Ethereum 2.0: How It Works and Why It Matters — CoinDesk
📖 Dr. Seuss digital collectibles on Flow, by the creators of CryptoKitties — Roham Gharegozlou
Dr. Seuss on Flow lets fans own a piece of the incredible Dr. Seuss universe in a way never before possible — as digital collectibles created and secured with smart contracts on the Flow blockchain.
Fans compete to collect these limited edition Dr. Seuss World items in surprise drops, using them to complete sets that unlock new and hidden exclusive content. If a fan misses out, they have to trade with other fans to complete their collection, building engagement in the ecosystem and pushing fans to broaden their knowledge of the IP universe…read more by Dapper Labs
📖 NFTs: Tokenizing the (virtual) future
The parallel digital reality has started to seep into our physical world, via gaming, mixed-reality art, and crypto-economics. It also raises new ethical dilemmas where our social, legal, economic, and behavioral rules and conventions are easily transported wholesale to our parallel lives. Another issue comes with notions of identity and ownership in a two-dimensional virtual world. At the same time, it solves many real-world problems like just as Bitcoin solves the double-spend problem. The significant challenges for developers of these virtual worlds include reconciling ideas of privacy, identity, and ownership, varying widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and agreeing on governance structures for resolving disputes…read more
Related: 📖 NBA’s Spencer Dinwiddie raises lackluster $1.3 million in token sale
📖 Crypto Will Change Value, NFTs Will Change Society
📖 How bots helped take $8M from Ethereum’s biggest DeFi app — Decrypt
📖 Why I Turned Myself into an NFT — Marguerite deCourcelle
📖 Decentralized fashion brands are turning consumers into creators
📖 ChainLink-A Decentralized Blockchain Oracle network-Part 2 — Ruma Das
📖 Decentraland and Samsung Blockchain team up to accelerate the NFT space — Decentraland
📖 How you can build powerful Web3 apps for the data economy
📺 Knowledge Drop on The Baseline & #VCTV:
This week in our second episode of The Baseline, John Wolpert and I break things down with Ian Keane of Oracle on their blockchain and business automation efforts. Turn in weekly, Wednesday, 12:00 PM ET, live on YouTube. Each week we speak with guests about mainnet, The Baseline Protocol, blockchain in the enterprise, AND their insights on business automation.
🎙️ Research: State of the Blockchain & DApps 2020:
Available now, for free is my latest research on Decentralized Applications or DApp “Stack” Landscape Map— the Q2 2020 edition. This map provides a full overview and taxonomy of the emerging DApps industry highlighting over 400 global companies teaching playing a vital role in building next-generation applications. As a bonus, I’ve included some of the ecosystem players and groups you need to be familiar with as you prepare to release your applications. If this is the first version you’ve seen of the landscape, consider it your guiding roadmap to further understanding not only the industry but all the core technology required to build a full or partial Decentralized Application (DApp).
Additionally, you can find my Q1 2020 research on the entire Blockchain Landscape. This is now the fifth edition of the landscape. You’ll find over the map includes 747 companies (900+ total unique + broader key Ecosystem players) that have seen $22 bn+ USD in funding raised from 2010–2020 — over $18 bn invested alone since 2017!
📣 Want to stay up-to-date with all the headlines, investments, in-depth research, and latest landscapes on the Blockchain, DApps, DeFi, and FinTech industries? Subscribe and follow me on Twitter for weekly updates and more!