With January in full flow, let's take a look back the news stories from this week that dominated the worlds of Forex, Fintech and Crypto, in our best of the week segment.

While the crypto market mayhem might not be over, the OG non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea has been recording impressive volumes. However, OpenSea’s competitor LooksRare, which launched on 10 January, has been breaking its records with regards to sales. Dune Analytics recorded that since the launch, OpenSea has clocked total volumes of over $965 million. […]

The quickly expanding world of Web3 has grabbed the attention of investors and developers alike and FTX is looking to dip their toes in it too.  FTX Venture FTX’s new branch call FTX Venture has been created with $2 billion set aside for funding new and developing companies in the crypto market. In order to […]

Until now, NEAR Protocol has quietly grown as a scalable, proof-of-stake network.

The post The rise of NEAR Protocol as a project led ecosystem appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The software platform Cardano has entered the third stage of its roadmap, the Basho era. It promises to improve the network’s performance and scalability. Cardano’s roadmap is “a summary of Cardano development” divided into five eras to deliver improvements in diverse functionalities of the network that are “delivered across multiple code releases”. Now that the platform’s core smart contract capability Plutus has been deployed, the launch of the Basho era focuses on scaling Cardano, promising “Parameter adjustments, improvements, enhancements and other innovations” supposed to increase the network’s capacity. They also call it “an era of optimization”, promising to enhance the performance and interoperability “to better support growth and adoption for applications with high transaction volume.” It is supposed to bring high performance, resiliency, and flexibility to the network. Related Reading | Cardano Foundation Completes Funding To Plant 1 Million Trees Scalability And Interoperability Scalability and interoperability are some of the main solutions that Cardano wants to offer as the “ethereum killer”. While the Ethereum network is working to handle up to 100,000 transactions per second (tps), Cardano plans to reach millions of tps through the second-layer solution Hydra. On the interoperability’s side, the Basho stage will introduce the sidechains, “new blockchains, interoperable with the main Cardano chain”, which eventually intends to allow the blockchains, with different architectures and codes, to be able to communicate: interoperate. The Cardano Roadmap explains that “Sidechains can be used as a sharding mechanism by off-loading work from the main chain onto a sidechain to increase the capacity of the network. They can also be used to introduce experimental features without affecting the security of the main blockchain.” Similarly, this stage will also introduce parallel accounting styles: “the ability to support and switch between UTXO and account-based models will be added using sidechains.” This is also meant to enhance interoperability and “support new kinds of use cases on the network.” “Building on these foundations, and steadily increasing capacity and throughput to deal with the growth in the DApp ecosystem and onboard first hundreds of thousands, then millions of new users. From DeFi degens to citizens of developing nations.” Cardano has been widely criticized for its slow start. Many people thought the platform was lagging behind, noting it took a long time to deploy its first smart contract. However, the CEO of the Cardano Foundation Frederik Gregaard argues that they take a careful approach to launch functions, with rigorous testing and peer review. This time around, the Basho stage’s launch report noted that they expect “periods of high demand, network congestion at times”, but they see it as part of the ‘journey’ and added that they will be maintaining a “considered, safe approach”. “We’re on an exciting journey and usage will be high. While we may at times feel impatient, this is the way. Here’s how we will optimize and scale as we grow.” What The Basho Era Promises To Solve The optimization and scalability improvements have been divided in the report between “on-chain solutions” and “off-chain solutions”. Here is what they intend to solve: For on-chain solutions: Block size increase: the network recently increased the block size by 12.5% to 72KB and “further increases will be applied over time”. Pipelining: intends to propagate blocks “to at least 95% of peers within five seconds” to provide “the headroom to make more aggressive scaling changes”. Input Endorsers: “This improves the consistency of block propagation times and allows higher transaction rates.” Memory /CPU parameters for Plutus: improves the efficiency of memory usage across the chain. Plutus script enhancements: a “more effective usage of the powerful EUTXO model through smart contract optimization,” Node enhancements: intends to “help even distribution of stake and reward computations across the epochs”. The new node version “reduces peak load at critical points,” On-disk storage: “RAM-constrained systems will be able to run nodes (…) and memory will no longer be a bottleneck on scalability.” For off-chain solutions: Sidechains: “Assets can be moved between chains as needed.” Hydra: “provides a more efficient means to process transactions off-chain,” Off-chain computing: “Transactions occur outside of the blockchain itself, yet can offer fast, cheap transactions via a trust model.” Mithril: results in “Multi-signature aggregation that is fast and efficient without compromising security features.” Related Reading | Cardano’s Ecosystem Explodes, Why ADA Could Be Quick To Resume Bullish Trend ADA’s Price ADA trades at $1,28 at the time of writing, up 3.74% in the last 24 hours, but 59.1% down from its last peak in September 2021. ADA trading at $1,28 in the daily chart | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

Latin American payments company EBANX is doubling down on its commitment to its business in Mexico, opening its first office in Mexico City and introducing a range of solutions designed to help Mexican companies offer new payment experiences for their customers in-country. These solutions include credit and debit cards, installments, OXXO and OXXOPay, SPEI, and Read more...

The post Latin American Payments Giant EBANX Expands Operations in Mexico; Itaú Unibanco to Acquire Brazilian Broker Ideal appeared first on Finovate.

The year is just starting, but cryptocurrencies are moving boundaries and reaching new all-time…

The post Top 10 Best Cryptocurrencies to Buy in January 2022 appeared first on Coin Journal.

Why crypto investors are concerned about monetary tightening.

The Log4j vulnerability is only the latest security flaw to have global impact, prompting the Biden administration and software developers to pledge to produce more secure software.

Congressman Emmer says CBDCs could be a Fed "surveillance tool that Americans should never be forced to tolerate from their own government."

The post ‘Digital authoritarianism’: Congressman wants Fed banned from CBDCs appeared first on Protos.

From the company's CES news, to developing use cases, to working with other vendors, Travers has a lot to say about the past, present, and future of smart glasses.

Investigate The Source of The Sender’s Funds and Retrieve Crypto Transfers Sent in Error The beauty of cryptography lies in endless opportunities, and that’s attractive to many. Seeing the recent shifts in capital flow, we can track the interest switching in favor of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Although it is risky due to its high volatility,…

The post PureFi x Kirobo Are Going to Make an Offer You Can’t Resist appeared first on Bitcoin News Miner.