Snapshot 70

Christie’s on-chain auctions, and Japan’s move into NFTs and the metaverse

Asset management giant Fidelity is rolling out an Ethereum index fund, further intertwining TradFi with crypto. The fund has already raised US$5 million since its launch a few days ago. Crypto adoption by the traditional finance sector certainly has become a staple of our newsletter.

Markets Spotlight

Note: Market prices captured in US$ at the time of reading. Explore more on Crypto‌.com/Price.

News Snaps

Christie’s launches on-chain NFT platform. Until now, the auction house has held its NFT auctions off-chain. But it has become the first global auction house to facilitate fully on-chain sales. Check out more details over at CoinDesk.

The Japanese government looks into NFTs and the metaverse. Cointelegraph reports that Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida spoke in front of Japan’s National Diet on the country’s investment into digital transformation, noting plans to issue NFTs to local authorities to expand the use of Web3 services.

Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity is on the rise. Bitcoin’s layer-2 Lightning Network has been busy recently, hitting a 5,000 BTC capacity. More BTC is hitting Lightning Network payment channels, as adoption worldwide soars. Visit Cointelegraph for more.

Web3 data startup Golden raises US$40M. Big gains in the Series B round were led by prominent venture capitalist firm Andreesen Horowitz. Golden protocol aims to use the funds for financial incentives to individuals who provide correct data and validators who verify that this data is accurate. See CoinDesk for more details.
Stems music platform raises US$4M. The Block reports that Stems, a decentralised music NFT platform, recently raised US$4 million in a pre-seed round. Stems wants to use Web3 tools to bring artists and fans together. Artists will receive royalties for sales and music NFTs.

What’s Ahead

Kava Network is ready to go. The layer-1 blockchain with a ‘co-chain architecture’ aims to offer features from both the Cosmos ecosystem and Ethereum. Kava 11 is set to launch on 12 October.

NFT Spotlight

With Halloween just around the corner, we start off the month with a particularly spooky NFT collection. George C. Romero, son of prolific filmmaker George Romero, attempts to resurrect the spirit of the zombie films his father created with “The Rise”. 
This collection is a prologue to “Night of the Living Dead” and is an introduction to the “Romeroverse”.

I love the excitement that bleeds from a Romero and Heavy Metal collaboration. Creating this with Matthew Medney has been one of the most rad-tastic projects I’ve had the honour of realising. I’m so excited to see the future hitting both of our legacy brands with such force.

George C. Romero on his NFT collaboration with Heavy Metal Magazine

Check out “The Rise”.

Product Picks

Target Price: Automatically trade 110+ tokens with precision 

APE, ALPHA, AERGO, BIFI, and more have been added to the growing list of over 110 supported tokens for Target Price Orders. Gain greater control over your trades when you buy and sell tokens at your preferred price. Find out how you can automate your trades here.

More rarity features added the Crypto.com NFT platformYou can now easily view a listed NFT’s rarity from the collection details page as well as the overall listing page. Furthermore, you can organise your NFT collection rarity, allowing you to easily identify your rarest collectibles. Lastly, official rarity ranks provided by creators are also supported. Visit Crypto.com NFT to check out these new features now.

Crypto Level Up

What is Delegated Proof-of-Stake?

You’ve probably heard about proof-of-stake, a consensus mechanism which Ethereum recently adopted. What about delegated PoS?

In a nutshell. In DPoS, you vote in delegates, also known as validators, to verify and produce blocks.

Pros. With a cap on the number of delegates, DPoS is faster. It’s also more democratic because the delegates are voted by you.

Cons. DPoS requires fewer delegates, so you might ask”: “Is it truly decentralised?”

Projects. EOS, BitShares, and TRON are just a few of the blockchains that use DPoS.

Learn more about DPoS.

Crypto IRL

Friends bring happiness to your life. Best friends bring beers, plus a Crypto.com Visa Card. – Our friend, @lexasmithx, with her Crypto.com Frosted Rose Gold Visa Card.

AMA With Polygon on Twitter Spaces

Catch the next episode of our Layer-1 and Layer-2 AMA series with Polygon, happening on Twitter Spaces next week. Listen to this week’s episode with Arbitrum: here. 

Want to learn more about L1 and L2 blockchains before tuning in? Check out this article by the Crypto.‌com Research Team.

Decoder

Arbitrage is a trading strategy in which a digital asset is bought in one market and sold in another to exploit the price difference for a profit. This trading strategy is generally regarded as a low-risk (not risk-free) strategy. 

An arbitrageur — a trader who engages in arbitrage trading — bases their decisions on the price inconsistencies among different markets instead of analysing or predicting the future prices of a digital asset.

This Week in Crypto History

Bitcoin’s big update. This time in 2018, Bitcoin went through a major upgrade known as Bitcoin Core 0.17.0, ringing in some of its biggest changes and improvements. 

This massive undertaking was overseen by the lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan, and achieved with 135 contributors and over 700 merged pull requests. Upgrades included an easier way to create new wallets, improved coin selection, and partially signed Bitcoin transactions.

That’s it for this week’s Snapshot. Want more? Head over to our Insta feed for bite-size crypto lessons.