Welcome to this week’s article on the most relevant crypto news. Keeping up with the latest industry news is key to making strategic moves with your crypto assets. With this new article series, we hope to help users catch all the important information conveniently. For this first edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 19 – 23 September 2022, including the Cardano Vasil update, post-Ethereum Merge developments, industry and adoption news, and more. Let’s dive in!
The Long-awaited Cardano Vasil Update Was A Success!
The highly anticipated Vasil update for Cardano blockchain has been deployed successfully, and the start of its first epoch will be on 27th September 2022! The Vasil update promises to bring major performance and capabilities enhancements to the Cardano network. This includes higher throughput, more powerful functionality for Plutus smart contract developers, better efficiency, and lower costs. At the start of the first epoch, which is in 5 days, full Vasil functionality will be available on-chain for users and developers, boosting the user experience and growth of the network in both community volume and application development. It is anticipated that this major development milestone will reflect positively on ADA market price, so let’s wait and see!
Ethereum Merge Received Mainstream Recognition Despite Underwhelming Price Development
Ethereum price hasn’t been looking any better since the Merge, but it is getting acknowledgement from both tech giants and the mainstream media. A few days before the Merge, Google set up an official countdown for this event and just this weekend, Star Trek star William Shatner tweeted to congratulate Vitalik on the successful completion of the Ethereum Merge. As the shift to Proof-of-Stake demonstrates Ethereum’s commitment to reduce emission, the Merge has received noticeably support from the mainstream, as environmental impact is a hot topic amongst opponents of cryptocurrency and blockchain, and this could only impact the future of crypto acceptance positively, as outlined in our insight piece.
Meanwhile, Ethereum PoW Forks Are Seeing Significant Selloffs
Not everyone in the development community was thrilled with the Ethereum Merge. Many miners and PoW believers organized plans to create hard forks of the network to maintain the Proof-of-Work Ethereum because of this and received noticeable traction. However, it seems that these PoW forks are quickly losing steam.
The prominent ETHW ran into a brief technical issue during its hard fork resulting in some users not receiving free ETHW tokens and caused many scammers to sweep in to make a quick buck. As a result, its price has been dropping with no signs of recovery despite the issue having been fixed very quickly. Another major fork called EthereumFair (ETF) which claims to be the first forked PoW chain, experienced the same trading volatility shortly after the Merge, though seems to be seeing some recovery afterwards. Analysts concluded that this happened because these forks would produce free airdrops, many users only kept up with these forks to get the free money then quickly sell them off and tanked the price. It will be interesting to see if the demand for PoS Ethereum can keep up at this point, and our team will be keen to inform users of any developments for this community.
SWIFT Tapping into Blockchain for Corporate Efficiency
Global cross-border payment giant SWIFT has recently announced it is working with seven other securities companies to implement the enterprise blockchain solution of Symbiont in its corporate procedures. In particular, SWIFT is looking at maximizing the efficiency sharing information of events such as dividend payments, exchange offers, mergers, Dutch auctions, and others to investors, creditors and all other key stakeholders. The company also stated it is looking to eliminate the complicated chain of intermediaries involved in corporate actions, hence the interest in using blockchain technology. This is a major milestone for the growth and adoption of decentralized technology and something worth celebrating amidst the uncertainty of the current market situation.
Crypto Exchanges Are Expanding into Dubai, Signaling Strong Growth for the Market to Come
Binance recently disclosed that they have received an MVP License by Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority to offer their virtual asset services to qualified retail and institutional investors. This will also allow Binance to access local banking channels and provide open money accounts, virtual-fiat currency conversions, assets transfers, custody and management, as well as token offering and trading services. Other major exchanges like CryptoCom and FTX have also been granted provisional licenses and approval to open regional headquarters in the country. It seems that Dubai is trying to get ahead of other forward-thinking countries in the crypto adoption race with these recent developments, as long-time crypto-friendly nations such as Singapore, India, Estonia, has been tightening its grip on crypto regulation as of late. As always, increase global crypto adoption is welcome news for the industry and let’s all keep BUIDLing and expanding the uses cases, thus reach of crypto into the mainstream!
South Korea Looking to Relax Metaverse Laws to Foster Ecosystem Growth
Metaverse, play-to-earn, and blockchain gaming in general have always been topics of much debate in the mainstream in recent years with heated opinions from both sides. Just recently, the South Korean government has revealed plans to create special laws for the metaverse instead of imposing traditional video gaming laws for the industry. The goal of this decision is to incentivize growth for this budding ecosystem instead of deterring innovations, stated by the officials. This is great news for the crypto industry as the topic of metaverse can still be quite controversial amongst mainstream consumers and there are still many misconceptions being thrown around as facts. Receiving more regulatory support will do wonders for the development and eventually, acceptance of the metaverse and crypto gaming.
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We hope you enjoy this carefully curated news roundup by Moonstake, as our team strives to only bring the most relevant information for your crypto experience. See you next week!
About Moonstake
Moonstake is the world’s leading staking service provider that develops and operates decentralized wallet services for businesses and individuals.
Since its launch in April 2020, Moonstake has partnered with 27 leading platform providers, including Cardano’s constituent Emurgo, developer of the Polkadot-connected blockchain Astar Network Stake Technologies, and the TRON Network with over 50 million users. In May 2021, Moonstake further enhanced its corporate credibility by becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of OIO Holdings Limited, a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
Using blockchain technology, Moonstake aims to progress toward a world where anyone can easily make use of highly secure and reliable digital asset management tools.
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About Moonstake’s staking business
For the staking industry, which has grown into a 630-billion dollar market as of September 2021, Moonstake provides a decentralized staking service that does not require user deposits, and supports nodes around the world in addition to its own validator nodes. Moonstake currently supports the staking of 17 blockchains. With a total staking assets of 1.8 billion USD and a global user base, the company ranked third out of more than 10,000 providers worldwide in June of the same year.
