The Japanese financial group Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC) is moving to explore the benefits of Web3 by issuing soulbond tokens (SBTs). Proposed by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, SBTs refer to digital identity tokens that represent the characteristics or reputation of a person or entity, or a “soul.” Such tokens are non-transferable and are designed for the decentralized society and Web3. SMBC officially announced on Dec. 8 an initiative focused on the practical use of SBTs in partnership with the digital asset firm HashPort. The companies plan to conduct research on SBTs to find out their practical uses for communities, …

The emergence of Web3 technologies has brought Web2-based companies to consider amendments to their current products and services. Many leading brands are using Web3 technologies such as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to promote their brand as well as show their affiliation with emerging tech. Social media is another domain where Web3 seems to have the biggest impact. Facebook rebranded to Meta and has shifted its whole focus from being a social media platform to becoming the future gateway of the metaverse. Meta-owned Instagram announced it would add NFT minting and trading services within the app. Reddit, another prominent social media platform, …

All revolutions have their dogmas, and the cryptocurrency/blockchain insurgency is no different. It’s an article of faith among crypto adherents that decentralization will solve many of society’s ills, including the problem of governance. Vili Lehdonvirta — an Oxford University social scientist, book author, and former software developer — disagrees. “The underlying technology will change and it’s already changing,” he told Cointelegraph last week. “It’s becoming less blockchain-like, less like the original idea of a trustless system,” especially after the Ethereum Merge, where corporate-like ‘staking’ entities will be needed to “uphold the integrity of the chain,” in his view. Indeed, crypto …

The crypto world is going through a transformative chapter that is bound to revolutionize how the internet works and how online communities interact, and social tokens are at the heart of the latest inflective developments. Their rise comes at a time when transactional frameworks, such as Web3, are gaining popularity, especially among crypto enthusiasts. Social tokens support the democratization of social networks by enabling brands, influencers and businesses to create and monetize their own online communities using blockchain technology. Daniel Nagy, vice president of Swarm — a decentralized data storage and dispensation firm — spoke to Cointelegraph regarding the new …

There is no shortage of visionary scenarios about how Web3 might unfold, but one of the latest, “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul” — a paper published in mid-May by E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver and Vitalik Buterin — is close to becoming one of the top 50 most downloaded papers on the SSRN scholarly research platform. The attention, one might suspect, has much to do with the participation of Buterin, blockchain’s wunderkind and the legendary co-founder of the Ethereum network. But it could also be a function of the paper’s ambition and scope, which includes asking questions like: What sort …

How can augmented reality be used in a classroom? How do teachers use augmented reality? As a teacher, you can enrich the curriculum and provide children with a valuable learning experience. Teachers can make the curriculum more engaging by using augmented reality, or mixed reality. Interactive experiences will help students maintain focus and improve their motivation. Student outcomes will also improve by applying AR and maybe even the Metaverse in the classroom. For teachers, it’s important to keep the “why” in mind. Why do we want to make AR part of the curriculum? How will augmented reality change education? There …

South Korea’s reputation as a trend-setter and leader in technological research is quickly spilling into the blockchain realm as nonfungible token (NFT) adoption has skyrocketed in the small East Asian country. As of 2020, South Korea has been among the top-10 countries in the world in the Global Innovation Index by the World Intellectual Property Organization. That level of innovation is made apparent to global retail consumers by tech giants such as Samsung and LG and to gamers through game maker Krafton. Those companies, and many like them, are now also delving into the NFT space by dropping new collections …

From the very beginning of the cryptocurrency movement, the societal potential of Bitcoin (BTC) has been one of the fundamental selling points. The decentralized design of crypto-based systems introduces the possibility of bringing individuals together to work toward shared goals, as well as enabling them to pool resources while remaining insulated from outside control. 2021 saw a number of cases that could serve as evidence of this emancipatory power of digital assets. ConstitutionDAO: $49 million raised in a few days Arguably, the most high-profile case of a massive fundraising effort enabled by a decentralized autonomous organization in 2021 was ConstitutionDAO. …

Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, such as Ether (ETH), all share a common goal: to decentralize the way people bank and to open up the under-financed and under-banked world to their own financial independence. Decentralization and accessibility are some of the key motivators in the crypto sphere. Crypto and blockchain were not made for a specific group of people, but for an inclusive group of people. Owning crypto is simply a caveat, an advantage of moving away from the centralized world, but it is not a necessity. It is perhaps worth starting small with accessible and useful ways to perpetuate …

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of blockchain-based payments firm Ripple, disagrees with Coinbase’s new policy restricting its employees from engaging in political discussions at work. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong first announced the ‘apolitical’ policy in a blog post on Sep. 27. He encouraged Coinbase employees to not indulge in political discussion and keep their focus on the company’s mission of creating an open financial system for the world. Garlinghouse disagrees, telling CNBC that technology companies have an obligation to contribute to solving societal issues. Garlinghouse said that tech companies and platforms have made some societal problems worse, so they must also …

Ever since the "decentralised borderless voluntary nation” Bitnation was founded in July 2014, a slowly growing raft of startups and organisations have been attempting to seize cryptocurrencies as an opportunity to build entirely new nations from the ground up. Whether it be the landlocked Liberland or the seaborne Floating Island Project, they've taken cryptocurrencies and blockchains as the basis for a new way of organising how people live, interact and work. And even if they've approached the same fundamental task from varying angles, they all regard the decentralisation of crypto as a potential liberator from the top-down control of central …

[Editor’s Note: Cointelegraph is happy to announce that the following article has been selected as the winner of the FinTech article of the Month Writer’s Competition and the prize of 1 BTC! We have received some great submissions but ‘People are Just Too Stupid to Use Bitcoin Right Now’ by Sam Higgins was by far the most popular article among the contestants. We’d like to thank everyone who took part. Stay tuned for more contests and prize giveaways in the near future at Cointelegraph!] The biggest obstacle for Bitcoin’s mainstream push is not the technology itself but rather the public’s …