August 21, 2020
This week in the landscape…the name of the game has shifted towards everything enterprise, but more on that in a moment. Making waves throughout screens throughout the landscape, we received our first look at China’s Digital Yuan in action thanks to a video share that has been circulated on WeChat to educate local citizens. A full break down below. Ok, back to the enterprise where we’re witnessing the shift not only in the growth of adoption (up, up, and up 🚀), but the redefining of the term beyond just a “private network.” Furthermore, SAP jumped in sharing details on its integration with Etheruem’s Mainnet. Not be to left behind, MetaMask adopts new software license eyeing commercial opportunities while Mitsubishi has launched a blockchain platform to digitize metal trades. But wait, there’s more! Standard Chartered Bank has successfully leveraged blockchain technology to conduct Bangladesh’s first blockchain trade transaction.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office made public a patent application from the USPS titled Secure Voting System that describes using blockchain technology to secure mail-in voting. Thailand is preparing to move its judicial system records to the blockchain. If that’s not enough for your week, we saw a depth of use cases and announcements around cross-chain interoperability, DAOs, Uniswap’s impressive growth, deep analysis of the NFT (non-fungible token) market and Axie Infinity (thank you Messari), along with Avalanche‘s (AVA Labs) mainnet release of Everest, AND MORE!
🚨BONUS🚨: State of the Industry Q3 2020: Blockchain
Join me on August 26th at 12:00 PM ET as I breakdown live and in-depth the shifting 2020 blockchain landscape and provide you with a roadmap to successfully navigate it and the months ahead. We’ll look at rising themes of DeFi, Tokenization, CBDCs, Oracles, Digital Identity, Storage, the Virtual Economy, and more. Don’t forget about all those ends of the year of the releases and what they mean for your business. Speaking of business, I’ll share active Enterprise use cases you need to be aware, and where venture capital is placing their bets. Plus I’ll get into the overall general activity, new business models, global data-driven trends, areas of opportunity, and more! See you there, but don’t forget to save your seat!
📮 U.S. Postal Service Counters Trump Attacks On Mail-In Voting With A New Blockchain Patent
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office made public a patent application from the USPS titled Secure Voting System that describes using blockchain technology to secure mail-in voting. The system separates voter identification and votes to ensure vote anonymity, and stores vote on a distributed ledger in a blockchain. The Postal Service is not alone in exploring the benefits of blockchain technology when it comes to voting…read more
Related: 🇹🇭 Thailand Is Prepping to Move Judicial System Records to a Blockchain
🏦 Standard Chartered Bangladesh’s first-ever blockchain LC
Standard Chartered Bank has successfully leveraged blockchain technology to conduct Bangladesh’s first blockchain trade transaction. The bank issued a Letter of Credit (LC) for the trade between garment exporter Viyellatex Ltd and Viyellatex Spinning on the Contour blockchain network. The entire transaction was reportedly paperless and completed digitally through the Contour network.…read more
Related: 💳 A Race To Dominate Crypto Debit Cards Has Begun
🚗 Mitsubishi Launches Blockchain Platform for Metal Trading
The metals and minerals subsidiary of Mitsubishi has launched a blockchain platform to digitize metal trades. Developed by Mitsubishi in partnership with the American blockchain company Skuchain, the platform is built on top of Skuchain’s EC3 platform for blockchain-based supply chain management and finance. Using the ECO platform, trading parties will sign trade documents and upload them on the blockchain. They can then share the signed documents with others in real-time and hide any commercially sensitive information that they do not want to reveal…read more
Related: 📖 IP Australia and NRL trial blockchain to combat counterfeits
💼 Global Enterprises Embrace Public Blockchains as Technology Mature
Some of the billion-dollar businesses across the globe have been embracing blockchain technology to efficiently share sensitive data between multiple parties across a single network. While the concept is welcome, early adopters of blockchain technology have often found themselves lured toward private networks due to security concerns and a greater need for control. Yet, as the blockchain space continues to mature, there has been a shift in the enterprise mindset. While “enterprise blockchain” was once defined by private networks…read more
Related: ⚙️SAP Integration with Ethereum Mainnet — Kevin Small
👾 Crypto Gaming Meets Governance: Examining Axie Infinity
DeFi isn’t the only sector finding a product-market fit in crypto. Gaming and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are shaping up to be the next trend to watch with the popularity of platforms like SuperRare and Axie Infinity continuing to grow. With an active Uniswap market, healthy secondary trading market, and pending governance token launch Axie Infinity is poised to take advantage of these trends in DeFi, gaming, and NFTs. The users of gaming and DeFi are starting to converge which could spark further growth for NFT games…read more by Mason Nystrom and Messari
💸 Digital Currencies/CBDCs:
Over the past few months and more specifically the last few weeks I’ve been keeping a close watch on the ever-growing Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) market. As there has continued to be an increase in global activity around this area of the blockchain landscape and there are no signs of it slowing down.
China 🇨🇳, in particular, has further made aggressive developments on its Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DCEP) system with recent accountments on expanding tests into Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Additionally, we’ve also received our first look at the Digital Yuan in a video released on WeChat of the country’s digital currency in action w/ the Agricultural Bank of China:
As Maria Shen describes in her tweet, we’re shown a woman taking out 50RMB from her bank card & converting it into China’s new digital RMB. There are many questions that come from this first take. While Maria shares many great ones in her post, I’ll add that this is just the beginning of what we’re about to witness in this category.
Quickly financial systems and overall inclusion is being challenged and focused on more than ever better. Yes, we have all the activity around DeFi or Decentralized Finance, but keep a close eye on markets and such as LATAM, South America, India, and Africa. These regions are already seeing massive investments and developments around financial systems. I’m anticipating more to come that will further set the stage for an exciting decade of digitization ahead.
More For Your Week:
💸 Ripple Aims to Become the Amazon of the Cryptocurrency World
🚜 Businesses and Farmers Can Now Hedge Weather Risk Through the Arbol Platform and Chainlink Data
💸 BlockFi Raises $50M From Universities, NBA Star, Others as Crypto Lending Soars
🏔️ Unveiling Everest: Avalanche’s Mainnet Release Candidate — Ava Labs
🏦 Understanding Crypto Credit Markets — Meltem Demirors
📖 Cross Chain Is Here: NEO, ONT, Cosmos and NEAR Launch Interoperability Protocols
♎ Facebook’s libra could disrupt collateral markets
🧑🎤 Is Direct To Avatar The Next Direct To Consumer?
DApps (Decentralized Apps) Watch:
🦄 Unbundling Uniswap: The Future of On-Chain Market Making
Uniswap today is the single largest “exchange” on DeFi. It routinely posts volumes larger than most centralized exchanges. Uniswap has revolutionized DeFi, brought billions of dollars in trading volume, and sparked a Renaissance in AMM (automated market maker) design. In my previous post, I explained how Uniswap works and why AMMs are dominating DeFi trading volume. But I believe it’s inevitable that Uniswap is going to be unbundled…read more by Haseeb Qureshi
📖 Cardano Ranked As the Blockchain with Highest Development Activity on Github
Weiss Crypto Ratings, the independent rating provider of cryptocurrencies, has ranked Cardano as the “Best Technology in the Industry.” Cardano was ranked as the blockchain with the highest development activity on Github, beating the competition from top blockchains such as ethereum…read more
Related: 📖 Acala Launches the 1st Parachain on Polkadot Testnet — Bette Chen
📖 Hashed CEO Simon Kim Explains Why Consumer-Focused Apps are the Future of Blockchain
Korea’s preeminent blockchain venture firm HASHED CEO, and Softbank Ventures Asia venture partner Simon Seojoon Kim gave an opening speech at the Korea Blockchain Week 2019. He believes that the reason Klaytn and Chai have seen such significant success in terms of adoption in their strong focus on creating a smooth user experience from the point of onboarding. The common factor of Klaytn and Chai’s success is that users do not have to think about how to safeguard their private keys, said Kim…read more
📖 Develop Your First DApp Using the Public Chain Node Service Provided by BSN — BSN
📖Yifan He from Red Date Technology: How to Understand “Blockchain” in BSN — BSN
🦊Popular Ethereum wallet MetaMask adopts new software license as firm eyes commercial opportunities — MetaMask
🚨State of the Industry Q3 2020: Blockchain🚨
Join me on August 26th at 12:00 PM ET as I breakdown live and in-depth the shifting 2020 blockchain landscape and provide you with a roadmap to successfully navigate it and the months ahead. We’ll look at rising themes of DeFi, Tokenization, CBDCs, Oracles, Digital Identity, Storage, the Virtual Economy, and more. Don’t forget about all those ends of the year of the releases and what they mean for your business. Speaking of business, I’ll share active Enterprise use cases you need to be aware, and where venture capital is placing their bets. Plus I’ll get into the overall general activity, new business models, global data-driven trends, areas of opportunity, and more! See you there, but don’t forget to save your seat!
🎙️ 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!