Even in the face of pricing challenges, the Polygon (MATIC) project managed to attract a significant number of developers in 2023, further solidifying its position in the cryptocurrency market. Almost 6 months after the launch of Polygon 2.0 big results happened for this crypto. Polygon 2.0 was launched for building a Value Layer. It is a set of proposed upgrades that radically reimagine almost every aspect of Polygon, from protocol architecture to tokenomics to governance. The Polygon (MATIC) cryptocurrency has seen a recovery in its price in recent days following the recent market crash. Additionally, one of the key metrics on the Polygon blockchain has seen an increase recently. The Polygon network had the second-highest number of “superuser DEX swappers” last year. This new result could be a signal to relaunch the MATIC cryptocurrency. According to the data, superusers identified in the survey are users who have made more than 100 transactions on the network. Polygon recorded the second-highest number of “super user DEX swappers” in 2023, behind only the Ethereum blockchain. The data presented shows seven networks with super users, which are: Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Optimism (OP), Base; Arbitrum (ARB), Avalanche (AVAX), Solana (SOL).
This narrative is reinforced by the fact that a high percentage of these developers also work on Ethereum. Thus highlighting the close relationship between the two projects. According to Electric Capital's latest report, published on January 17, Polygon (MATIC) gained adoption from over 6,200 new developers throughout the year. This makes it the second project with the most additions, behind only Ethereum. This achievement puts Polygon ahead of competitors such as Solana, BNB and Arbitrum. It also highlights the project's strong appeal within the developer community.
SOURCES:
IMAGE CREDITS: Polygon
READ ALSO ---> "Google's Gemini enters the AI market with a completely new model" by Ilaria Vanni
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
MetaMask, the most popular crypto wallet on Ethereum, is testing a new "transaction routing" technology. The goal is to have major ramifications and improve user experience. MetaMask is testing this new tech that uses third parties to route user transactions. It will eventually be made available outside of MetaMask and will be closely scrutinized for how it manages to avoid centralization concerns. The protocols that Meta Mask wants to join are Uniswap X, CoW Swap, Anoma and SUAVE
The routing tech is built by Special Mechanism Group, which MetaMask owner Consensys bought last year, Coindesk reported.
SOURCES: Coindesk
IMAGE CREDITS: Dylan Callum
READ ALSO ---> "Google's Gemini enters the AI market with a completely new model" by Ilaria Vanni
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
2024 started with big news for metaverse and blockchain. One of the things we must analyze is the relationship between States, worldwide, and the new web technologies. If 3D experiences will be enabled for citizens to have public services, something will really change in daily life. And here come the States political decisions, with their strategies and their regulations of the Metaverse.
Finland has recently presented its Metaverse Strategy, which should lead it to become one of the global excellences of the metaverse by 2035. The Netherlands and South Korea are also investing on it. They will begin to seriously poke their noses into it with investments, regulations and long-term plans in general. Will Italy stand by and watch or play an active game? And finally, speaking of regulations, the first positive signs are already widely visible. Here once again the European Union demonstrates that it knows how to lead. In fact, with the recently ratified Digital Markets Act, which imposes the progressive opening of digital store monopolies, we will finally begin to get closer to the much desired interoperability of the various social worlds virtual, and therefore perhaps to the true Metaverse imagined by technology theorists.
The Finnish government report, entitled ‘Metaverse Initiative by the Finnish Ecosystem: Virtual Potential into Real-World Impact’, states that Finland would like to become “a global leader in the metaverse industry”. The country is home to leading companies in extended reality, such as Varjo, Dispelix, and Optofidelity, but also to important companies in the telecom sector, like Nokia and Cinia. Finland also ranks among the best in the world in several converging technologies. While China, Japan, the UK, and the United Arab Emirates have started to work on similar strategies, this is the first national metaverse strategy from an EU member state.
According to the Finnish report, as Euractiv reported, while there have been several definitions, today, “the term [metaverse] has been used to describe various visions of virtual worlds that are immersive and experiential, and that may integrate elements of the physical and digital worlds.”
For users, it is also possible to socialise, communicate, or trade in the metaverse and move between virtual worlds and platforms while transferring their data. According to Patrick Grady, editor at policy hub Metaverse EU, Finland’s “definition for the ‘metaverse’—and not ‘virtual worlds’—helps to clarify rather than confuse key elements of new immersive technology”.
In the report we can read: “Finland’s geopolitical position between superpowers of the world allows it to balance its interests between different actors and regions and to create mutual trust in other countries”.
Finland city Tampere has a pioneering position among metaverse cities and smart cities innovation. Many of the metaverse themes where at the center of Tampere Smart City Expo & Conference in Finland. By seamlessly combining the digital and physical worlds, the metaverse creates a vibrant digital environment that enhances the lives of city dwellers. It fosters and promotes a hassle-free everyday experience for citizens and provides a favorable platform for businesses to thrive. As Business wire reported, with its forward-thinking approach, Tampere is setting the stage for the future of urban living.
"We invite companies to test their solutions in Tampere. The city acts as a testing platform and an open partner for businesses and research. Through intelligent solutions, our goal is to enhance the well-being of citizens, provide a positive urban experience, and create favorable conditions for people's everyday lives", listed Teppo Rantanen, the Executive Director of Growth, Innovation and Competitiveness at the City of Tampere.
Tampere's metaverse development is a result of collaborations with industry-leading companies. Through partnerships with VTT and global technology giants such as Microsoft and Nokia. Revolutionize the urban planning and create intelligent solutions has to be mixed with the well-being of its residents.
2035 is the year, according to the report, that the annual metaverse industry turnover will be more than €30 billion. Finland aims to become a global leader by achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal and this would be translated in "reducing emissions, enhancing circularity, improving wellbeing, and fostering social cohesion”.
Finland’s Metaverse strategy highlights a firm commitment to protecting digital rights and ethics, placing premium importance on user privacy, security, and independence. The Finnish metaverse idea is shaped to connect “different actors, sectors, and domains” and to ensure an environment “for standardisation, regulation, cybersecurity, and education”. Metaverse has to be designed as "inclusive and accessible for all people regardless of their background, location, or abilities”. The other aspect that is underlined in the Finnish strategy towards metaverse is to become a “global advocate for digital rights and ethics in the metaverse”, making sure that the “users’ privacy, security, and autonomy are respected and protected” so to create transparency, and accountability in the governance and development of the metaverse.
Let's say in the end that step by step Finland could contribute to create a global model for States that wants to use web at the top of its potential, with the new immersive experience.
SOURCES: Euractiv, Businesswire
Read also: Metaverse: how many inhabitants?
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
The price of Bitcoin reached $45,045.36, reflecting a decrease of -5.68% in the last 24 hours. This was a highly volatile day for Bitcoin, it briefly surged above $49,000 before retracing to the $46,000 range by evening. Interestingly, the focal point of the day wasn't solely the cryptocurrency's price movement. The spotlight was on the impressive trading volumes generated by the first 11 Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) introduced on Wall Street. The SEC's long-anticipated approval on Wednesday paved the way for these historic funds, mirroring the spot price in the United States
The immediate impact at Wall Street was evident, described as a "Bitcoin fever." In the initial 30 minutes, last Wednesday, investments in these ETFs reached a substantial $1.2 billion. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust led in transaction volume with $446 thousand, followed by BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust with $388 thousand and Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund with $230 thousand. Volumes doubled to $2.3 billion after the first hour, and by the day's end, the total numbers and contracts surged to almost $4 billion. When considering the combined performance of the 11 ETFs, this marks an all-time high for the debut of a thematic ETF on Wall Street.
SOURCES: Coindesk, Il Sole 24 Ore
IMAGE CREDITS: Stephen Dawson
READ ALSO ---> "Google's Gemini enters the AI market with a completely new model" by Ilaria Vanni
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
The Metaverse is a big sea where every technology can have its place, most of all the artificial intelligence. For understanding the importance of this market let's underline four key aspects of the Metaverse: the virtual economy, urban planning and architecture, artificial intelligence, and gamification.
The metaverse economy offers the potential of a wide range of revenue streams, with some estimates predicting it could become an 800 billion dollar market and that it could contribute $3 trillion dollars to the global economy in the next decade. It’s not all games and metaverse. The vast world of virtual reality can also offer companies opportunities to find solutions online to apply to the real world, such as simulators, but let's also think about the cryptocurrencies that existed before the metaverse exploded.
2024 began with good news for cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investors: Bitcoin surpassed $45,000 in the second day of the new year. That has been the first time since April 2022, marking a recovery after a period of volatility and uncertainty. The value of Bitcoin, the most famous and widespread of cryptocurrencies, reached a peak of 45,532 dollars, with an increase of 156% compared to the previous year, its best annual result since 2020. It remains far from the record high of 69,000 dollars which touched in November 2021, but shows resilience and sustained demand in the global market.
According to experts, one of the factors that made the difference for the rise in Bitcoin's price is the optimism around the possible approval of Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States. ETFs are financial instruments that allow investors to buy and sell shares of a fund that tracks the performance of an underlying index, sector or asset, such as Bitcoin. As Wired analyzed: "Bitcoin-based ETFs could make it easier and safer for institutional and retail investors to access the cryptocurrency market, increasing the liquidity and legitimacy of Bitcoin. However, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US financial market regulator, has so far rejected several requests to launch Bitcoin-based ETFs, citing concerns about market manipulation, custody of funds and investor protection".
Landing on "chapter ChatGPT", we need to say that the Open AI arrival, a year ago, has captured the collective imagination with 100 million users per week, according to its creator. The great potential here is to help people finishing more complex tasks with limited human intervention, an habit that could radically change the day-to-day experience of work.
As Julia Hobsbawmt underlines on Bloomberg: "The impact of AI on how we work and the jobs we do is as revolutionary as the internet". Companies will have benefits with AI leading them to many priorities: hybrid working and creating flexible work environments. The sectors where AI will be more useful will be logistic, cybersecurity, healthcare, finance, advertising, e-commerce, public transport, media but also manufacturing and industry. The real estate sector too is discovering a knowledge gap about 3D systems. For example, Wipro, an Indian IT company, has committed $1 billion to training its 250,000 workers, both to help them understand generative AI but also to integrate it into its product offerings.
In one hand we can partially agree with Elon Musk that job can became something that we just want to do and don't have to do, but we do have to say that every technology is, for human beings, a facilitator. AI is also a facilitator. A balanced forecast has to deal with the mix between human intellingence and artificial intelligence. In other words AI tasks and AI use in the job market will give birth to new job titles and new companies experiences.
SOURCES: Bloomberg, Forbes, LineaZero, Wired
PHOTO CREDITS: Laurens Derks
Read also---> Walmart and Unity collaboration in the metaverse https://themetaeconomist.com/walmart-metaverse-experience-an-immersive-e-commerce-and-the-collaboration-with-unity/
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
Walmart Inc. is using metaverse since a couple of years, bringing different perspectives and using new tools. “As we began to craft this experience, we listened to our growing community on the platform and found that they were seeking easier ways to discover experiences and virtual items,” Walmart Chief Marketing Officer William White said after the release of a collaboration with Roblox in September 2023.
Walmart, which initially debuted in the metaverse by launching two new metaverse experience on the popular Roblox immersive gaming platform in September 2022, announced in September 2023 that it would deepen its commercial activity in “virtual worlds.”
Over the past year, Walmart has tested immersive commerce in a variety of online worlds. Three of these experiences were made with Unity and integrate Walmart commerce APIs:
According to Unity, more than 1.1 million developers use the Unity editor monthly, supporting an average of 3.6 billion downloads each month of Unity-developed apps worldwide.
"We have an opportunity to connect the physical and digital realms in a way that only Walmart can, meeting our customers and members with authentic experiences where they already are," said to VentureBeat Tom Kang, VP and GM, metaverse commerce, Walmart's Store No. 8 tech incubator. "By opening up Walmart’s commerce APIs to the Unity development community, we’re empowering developers to offer a new mechanism to further drive user engagement while making it easy and convenient for players to complete a transaction for physical products without leaving the game, virtual world or app."
The company is now partnering with a platform for developing real-time 3D content to offer immersive shopping opportunities. Walmart and Unity have partnered to integrated immersive commerce into games and apps. With it, players can buy Walmart physical goods from directly within games. The discount giant will provide developers in the Unity real-time 3D development environment the ability to integrate its commerce application programming interfaces (APIs) directly into their games and apps. This will enable Unity creators to sell physical items in real-time 3D experiences across more than 20 metaverse platforms. This enables creators to sell physical items in real-time 3D experiences across more than 20 gaming and interactive platforms, unlocking a new way for developers and creators to connect customers’ virtual and physical lifestyles and establishing a new monetization channel for developers.
It’s a collaboration that enables the world’s biggest retailer to make headway in digital commerce in collaboration with game engine maker Unity, which has more than 1.1 million developers using its Unity editor each month.
The integration means that Unity developers can use Walmart’s commerce application programming interfaces (APIs) and enable players to make purchases inside games, buying Walmart merchandise that they can then pick up in a store, said Tom Kang, vice president and general manager of metaverse commerce for Walmart.
Walmart sees the growth and expansion of virtual worlds as not only a chance to develop new ways to meet and engage with its customers, but also an opportunity to experiment with a new type of commerce — virtual commerce — one where customers can not only continue buying virtual goods, like clothing for their avatar, but now their real-world counterpart.
“It is really about meeting customers where they’re spending a lot a lot of their time,” said Kang - VP and Officer at Walmart. “I don’t have to tell you there are over 3 billion people playing games, and they’re doing digital commerce. They’ve been buying digital goods in those spaces for years and years. Walmart, as a commerce company with over 11,000 physical locations, believes it’s an opportunity to invent a new type of experience for our customers that evolves the physical to digital, with ecommerce to social and now immersive — we’re calling it immersive commerce, which is the virtual worlds, games and apps and connecting the physical and virtual lives.” It’s part of a strategy of making the metaverse for everyone, or immersive commerce for everyone.
SOURCES: Venture Beat, Chain Storage Age
Read also: Metaverse: how many inhabitants?
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
A blockchain explorer, in short, is an online tool that allows you to view and analyze information relating to a blockchain, such as the blocks that compose it, transactions, addresses and related statistics. By blockchain explorer we mean a tool now considered indispensable for all those who intend to trade cryptocurrencies with well-founded hopes of not succumbing to market volatility. In fact, it is a real search engine that dedicates its efforts to the myriad of transactions that involve virtual currencies every day. Transactions which, when carefully analysed, can help provide a clearer picture of the situation and help traders to better direct their investments.
Blockchain expolrer reference model is Microsoft explorer, with the difference that in this case the research work is limited to the universe of DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) technology.
Thanks to its use it is possible to analyze and verify transactions, addresses, blocks and all other relevant data that refer to a specific cryptocurrency. In this guise it can be considered as a bridge between the data of a blockchain and its users. Within each of the blocks there are transactions, to be recorded and validated, a task that falls to the nodes. In order to be truly usable by everyone, however, it is necessary not only to analyze, but also to organize the data in question in a coherent manner. This is the task performed by a blockchain explorer.
The information analyzed in particular concerns the following aspects:
Having good informations is pretty important for those who trade cryptocurrencies. Let's say that having information is essential. The data, however, is contained in the blockchains, within the blocks that compose them. The analyzes conducted on a public blockchain are widely exploited by many traders, even non-institutional ones. An approach based on data coming from the chain, similar to the fundamental analysis used in classical finance, combined with the observation of the graphs typical of technical analysis, can actually prove decisive for quality crypto trading.
SOURCE: TAG24
IMAGE CREDITS: Shubham Dhage
READ ALSO ---> "Google's Gemini enters the AI market with a completely new model" by Ilaria Vanni
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
In 2023, blockchain gaming recorded investments of 2.3 billion dollars. Those data, provided by DappRadar, a monitoring platform for decentralized apps, shows that $600 million was invested in the blockchain gaming sector in the third quarter of 2023.
Among investments in Q3 2023, $213 million went into the development of games and technologies related to the metaverse, despite some declaring it dead. According to DappRadar, the remainder of the quarter's investments went to gaming infrastructure and Web3 investment firms.
The unstoppable growth in the Blockchain gaming market tells about a well-stocked duo: video games and blockchain technology. Hard data collected by Fortune Business Insights indicates an annual growth of the blockchain gaming market between 2017 and 2021 of 21.8%, confirming not only the current robustness of the sector, but also a constantly rising trend. The outlook for 2030 promises an era of unprecedented innovation in the gaming world.
Growing interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the ever-widening adoption of blockchain technology in gaming is driving a wave of growth. Regions such as North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific, especially China, Japan and South Korea, are set to play a leading role in this development. North America Leads the Blockchain Gaming Field. In 2022, there was generated over $30 billion from industry sales, capturing approximately 24% of the global market share. This dominance seems destined to persist over time, keeping North America as the undisputed leader. Role Playing Games thanks to their immersive worlds and distinctive characters integrate perfectly with blockchain technology, offering innovative opportunities. In 2022, they accounted for more than 33% of the blockchain gaming market's total sales. The conclusion we have to underline is that this growth shows an important way of using blockchain for free time purposes and this means a new revolutions are coming with the web 3 as protagonist.
SOURCES: Cryptonews
Read also ---> Google's Gemini enters the AI market with a completely new model by Ilaria Vanni
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
A look from Scott Newton's point of view about the digital transformation that companies are living in the last decade. Scott Newton is a company advisor, he is also The Managing Partner of Thinking Dimensions, and a member of the Board of Directors at Strategy Tools.
Mr. Newton works with Boards, CEOs, Private Equity, and senior leaders on Strategy, M&A, Value Creation, and Digital Transformation with an emphasis on embedding sustainability into their business models today and for the future.
His experiences have taken him to North America, Latin America, Europe, MENA, and Asia Pacific regions assisting global organizations in major change. Scott and his teams focus on building new business model portfolios, future proofing the organization, and linking impact to sustainable growth and profitability opportunities.
ESG is a major point of attention in the board room and the C- Suite, and with more than 25 years of international experience in advisory activities balanced between both multinational and family- controlled enterprises, Scott has had the unique opportunity to assist more than 250 CEO’s and Senior Business Leaders.
The organizations Scott works with achieve speed, alignment, and most importantly sustainable results by focusing on the necessary competencies to develop with a long-term view in mind.
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
