Author: Jeremy Ryan

Member of Parliament Natalie Elphicke called for the U.K. government to do more to take advantage of blockchain technology. The U.K. government wants to be a crypto hub but has said little about how it plans to regulate the blockchain industry. U.K. Member of Parliament Natalie Elphicke called for the government to do more for blockchain on Thursday at an event conducted in the Thames Pavilion which resides in the House of Commons where lawmakers meet. “Now, I want to see the U.K. doing more to harness the power of blockchain technologies, to be that leader, to mark that step…

Farcana, a third-person multiplayer shooter game, has secured $10 million in seed funding from a broad consortium of investors. Lead backers include Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Merit Circle, among others—an impressive list reflecting the substantial potential seen in Farcana’s future.Farcana’s GameplaySet in the near future, Farcana’s storyline sees an Earthly populace relocating to Mars. At the core of the gameplay is a substance known as “Acceler” that imparts superhuman abilities to the players. The game, which resembles popular titles like Overwatch and Valorant, invites players to take part in competitive tournaments named Farcana.As Animoca Brands spearheads Web3 expansion…

Japanese electronics company Casio has launched an exclusive collection of digital art collectibles featuring its iconic G-Shock brand of watches, with a fresh set of incentives tied to the Ethereum NFTs. The limited-edition set of 2,000 NFT art pieces in a pair of futuristic “Virtual G-Shock” designs went on sale at 10pm ET Thursday. This marks Casio’s second foray into the NFT space following September’s debut of free G-Shock Creator Pass NFTs on Ethereum scaling network Polygon. Owners of the Ethereum NFTs will gain access to exclusive behind-the-scenes experiences with Casio, including a tour of the G-Shock Endurance Test Laboratory…

Moonlit Games has announced a collaboration with Merit Circle’s Avalanche subnet, Beam, for its action RPG, “Rogue Nation.” This partnership aims to redefine gaming experiences in the blockchain domain, combining Moonlit Games’ expertise in game development with Merit Circle’s technological framework.A New Era of Action RPG“Rogue Nation” is a Rogue-lite Action RPG that offers users a free-to-play, cross-platform, and mobile-centric gaming experience. It features a range of characters, pets, weapons, dungeons, and raids, along with competitive gameplay.By integrating with Merit Circle’s Beam, “Rogue Nation” expectes to significantly enhance its gaming experience. Beam is a multi-chain platform that focuses on simplifying…

The first-ever sale by Sotheby’s of “inscriptions” created using the Bitcoin blockchain’s Ordinals protocol – from a pixelated collection known as “BitcoinShrooms” – drew about $450,000, or five times the highest estimates, potentially revealing a mainstream fervor for the tradable digital images colloquially referred to as “NFTs on Bitcoin.” The auction, which concluded on Wednesday, consisted of three of the images, including a pixelated avocado that fetched more than $100,000 and a design that appears to be derived from a mushroom in the Super Mario franchise that sold for north of $240,000, according to Derek Parsons, a spokesman for the…

AxLabs has released Neow3j 3.12.2, bringing the development framework up to speed with the recent updates in Neo’s 3.6.2 version. This update introduces new features such as transaction cancellation and transaction signer retrieval at the VM level. In the SDK, two new methods have been integrated into the native PolicyContract interface. These methods allow for the setting and fetching of GAS fees required for transaction attributes, although setting these fees is restricted to the Neo Council. Another significant addition is support for the new canceltransaction RPC method. As the name suggests, this function allows users to cancel transactions that have…

Crypto custody firm Copper on Thursday launched a new settlement network for institutional clients involved in trading and holding digital assets. Called the Copper Network, the platform is custodian-agnostic, scalable, and private, and one that the crypto custody firm said is “an industry first.” The digital assets firm added that the new network will give a growing number of institutional clients the ability to settle their OTC trades with all their counterparties, regardless of where they custody their assets. A gateway for institutional finance Copper Founder and CEO Dmitry Tokarev said the new platform will allow the firm to continue…

Immutable’s recent update on the Immutable zkEVM platform brings a breakthrough for developers, allowing them to create gaming experiences that eliminate the need for players to pay gas fees. In doing so, this Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proof-based platform for games, developed alongside Polygon Labs, aims to enhance the user experience and make onboarding for new players easier.Overcoming Gas Fee BarriersHistorically, gas fees, essential for maintaining blockchain security and decentralization, have been a barrier to the widespread adoption of decentralized gaming. They’ve especially been a roadblock for gamers transitioning from traditional platforms. For example, players must ensure enough of the blockchain’s specific…

When four former Facebook engineers started Mysten Labs two years ago, one of their motivations was completing the work they had began while they were still at the social media giant started by Mark Zuckerberg. Part of that body of work included finding a way to make sending money, or crypto, over the internet as simple and basic as the most basic of online communication. “While we were at Facebook, our goal was to make sending money as easy as [sending] email,” Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun told The Block in an interview. That dream, which according to Abiodun was…

The network of Ethereum layer-2 rollups using zkSync’s ZK Stack got a new addition Thursday, with the launch of the Cronos zkEVM testnet. Blockchain developer Cronos Labs is developing its third blockchain, which is the first to use ZK Stack hyperchain to reach a live testnet. The first chain in the Cronos ecosystem was a Cosmos appchain developed in partnership with the Crypto.com exchange and launched in 2021. Cronos then followed up with an EVM-compatible chain, also built using the Cosmos SDK in 2022. This new effort augments, but does not replace, the prior two chains. Cronos’ zkEVM is the…