JERUSALEM — Israeli police stopped Muslim worshipers from entering the Aqsa Mosque compound early Sunday morning and brief clashes broke out in nearby side streets, two days after violence erupted at the holy site.
The police, seeking to prevent contact between Muslims and Jews who had entered the compound, confined Muslims who were already inside it to a central part of the site. They provided Jewish worshipers with a police escort as they walked around the perimeter of the site, known as the Temple Mount to Jews, which was the location of an ancient temple considered the holiest place in Judaism.
Earlier, Palestinians had gathered near the entrance used by non-Muslims to enter the site, blocking part of the route that is usually used by Jews to discreetly pray near where the ancient Jewish temple stood.
Clashes later broke out in the side streets around the mosque compound, as police used batons and sound grenades to force back Muslims who were trying to enter. Palestinians shouted, “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for Al Aqsa.”
Tensions are often high at the complex in Jerusalem’s Old City, which is sacred to both Islam and Judaism. But they are particularly tense at the moment because of a rare overlap between Ramadan and Passover, which has prompted more Muslims and Jews to enter the site than usual.
Muslims consider efforts by some Jewish activists to pray furtively at the site to be a provocation, because they violate the longstanding Israeli policy of allowing Jews to visit but not pray. They also fear that Jewish prayer there will give momentum to campaigns by small extremist groups to build a new Jewish temple at the site.
Many Muslims have also been angered by recent efforts by extremist Jews to enter the compound with young goats to make a Passover sacrifice. The police said last week that they had arrested some activists who were planning such a sacrifice.
On Friday, Israeli riot police, firing rubber-tipped bullets and stun grenades, stormed the main mosque on the compound to detain hundreds of Palestinians, many of whom had been throwing stones at them. More than 150 people were injured.
The recent clashes have followed a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis and deadly Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank.
Similar clashes at the mosque last year contributed to the outbreak of an 11-day war between Israel and militants in Gaza led by Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the strip.
This year, however, both Israel and Hamas have signaled that they are not seeking an escalation. Khaled Meshaal, a senior Hamas official, said on Saturday that both sides had conveyed through Qatari officials that they did not want a new conflagration.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a concept that has received a lot of attention since the so-called DeFi Summer of 2020 because its usage, often measured in total value locked (TVL), has risen dramatically since that time. In the last year alone, TVL rose by over 240% to a current $209 billion in “value locked” within DeFi projects, according to DefiLlama. Not only has it become interesting for investors to get into promising DeFi projects through their tokens (hoping for capital gains), but also to use these platforms to generate a regular and steady income through various activities. And, it’s been even more attractive in bearish markets.
It is exactly this appeal of solid risk-free returns uncorrelated to crypto market movements that lures many investors out on to the thin ice. Remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch. In this article, we will break down the concept of DeFi and go deep into its ecosystem, strategies and the risks all of which are relevant for private and professional investors considering allocating capital to this space.
Let’s start at the beginning by shedding some light on the transition (or disruption) from traditional finance, or TradFi, to DeFi. Explained simply, DeFi sets out to disintermediate processes traditionally run by banks and financial institutions like borrowing, lending and market making by cutting out the middleman. It allows investors to directly interact with each other on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis by providing loans or liquidity for trading and assume those roles/functions in return for generating fees, albeit while also carrying the risks. “The disruption of the banking sector, which we have seen in the recent years driven by FinTech players, has now escalated to the next level with DeFi laying the groundwork for a peer-to-peer ecosystem” states serial tech entrepreneur and AltAlpha Digital crypto hedge fund co-founder Marc Bernegger. We will explore the DeFi business model and ways to participate in it shortly.
Common factors used to classify the TradFi space include that it is trust based, as you need to trust your bank as the sole counterparty, large barriers remain for entering the system, as many emerging nations still have populations where 50-70% are still unbanked, and they are often slow, expensive and not very customer friendly. What can you expect if they are only open Monday-Friday, from 9:00 am to 11:00 am and 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm? This stands in strong contrast to the DeFi world built on code that removes the need for trusted intermediaries; the agreed-upon terms are recorded on and executed through blockchain mechanisms. Accessibility has drastically increased with the spread of internet coverage and cheap smartphones. The digital assets space can be accessed 24/7/365, with services and global network coverage being constantly expanded and improved.
While it might all sound wonderful, there is still a long way to go. The topic remains complex and hard to grasp for many. User interfaces and processes still have plenty of room for improvement and simplification, fees can vary, resulting in unreasonably high charges for smaller transaction amounts, DeFi hacks have been on the rise and being your “own bank” welcomes an entire slew of operational challenges and risks.
The elements involved in DeFi
Looking at DeFi as a whole, much like building a house, you have various layers that come together to form a new digital service offering.
Using the house as our example, the first layer, the underlying blockchain technology which could be Ethereum or Solana (layer-1 protocols), is like our basement or cellar. Depending on which blockchain is used, you will need to make certain trade-offs. This is known as the blockchain trilemma, a phrase coined by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Think of a triangle with security, scalability and decentralization at each of the corners. You can only optimize two corners while making a compromise on the third corner. Putting this into a practical context, Marius Ciubotariu, founder of the Hubble Protocol, states:
“Both Solana and Ethereum do not compromise on security, but as opposed to Ethereum, where almost everybody with a laptop can run a node, Solana nodes are much more demanding. However, in a world governed by Moore’s law, this doesn’t seem to be much of a trade-off anymore.”
He continues: “Solana, as a blockchain, was designed for high frequency (financial) activity. Everything in Solana’s design is geared towards performance, choosing to prioritize speed over cost.” This gives you more color for the nuanced views developers and investors must take when deciding for an ecosystem. To tackle these challenges, developers are working on either creating new “base layer” blockchains to solve these constraints, which you see with Polkadot and their layer-0 approach or by introducing layer-2 scaling solutions on top of layer-1 blockchains like with Ethereum using zk-Rollups smart contracts for cost reduction.
Then, on top of our basement, we have our walls, which are the respective protocols, also known as decentralized applications, or DApps, that offer their service as decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Curve or Uniswap, lending protocols like Aave or Maker, derivatives liquidity protocols like Synthetix and more. A space that is constantly growing and developing.
You have to put a roof on your walls, and for that, we have the “pools.” When using one of the DApp services like a lending protocol, you can choose which token you want to provide. For example, when using the service of Aave, you can decide to only provide a loan for USD Coin (USDC) stablecoins. Or, on UniSwap, you can act only as a liquidity provider for Ether (ETH) and USDC trading pools. Think of when going to a bank and saying you want to borrow money or trade stocks, you also have to say in which currency you wish to borrow or which stock you want to buy in which reference currency. We’ll cover these activities in more detail in the next section.
Finally, to plant a flag at the top of your roof, you also have the aggregators such as wallets like MetaMask, Trezor and Ledger, DEXs like Thorchain and 1inch, or Centralized Exchanges such as Kraken and Binance. They combine the services of the various platforms into one single entry point/user interface creating ease of access. Die-hard crypto fans will reject using centralized exchanges, as this goes against the entire point of decentralization and self-custody of your private keys, the password to your crypto wealth.
In comparing DeFi to the structure of a house, we aren’t doing so only for simplification, while, of course, omitting some nuances and details, but showing that if the foundation, or the layer-1 blockchain, has cracks, the entire house is at risk. Therefore, when doing your risk assessment, consider the stability of the entire house and not just the floor you are standing on.
How can you make money with DeFi?
Simply speaking, you can either invest in the DeFi projects/protocols by buying the respective tokens like SushiSwap (SUSHI), Aave (AAVE) or Maker (MKR) while expecting capital gains through price increase based on a superior platform offering, user and asset growth. Or, you can actually use these platforms as an “operator” and generate income from the various activities available.
You can also have your cake and eat it, too, by buying into high conviction projects and get some additional income through some of the following activities:
Staking. With staking, you are rewarded for participating in the consensus mechanism process, or how decisions are made, of a blockchain using your staked tokens like Tezos (XTZ), Polkadot (DOT) or ETH, de facto becoming a validator of the network. This is referred to as a proof-of-stake mechanism used by blockchains such as Tezos, Polkadot and soon, Ethereum 2.0 to secure transactions and the network. Notice how I use the “ticker” symbols when talking about the tokens and the platform names when referencing them as a protocol. With an increase of staked and, thereby, “locked” tokens, new concepts such as “liquid staking” have emerged, basically creating a derivative of the staked token, which then again becomes “liquid” and can be re-deployed while earning staking rewards.
Lending. Instead of receiving a loan from the bank, you can get it from a DeFi protocol, having fellow investors put up the funds or, in essence, peer-to-peer lending. In return, the investors receive part of the interest paid on the loan as their yield. Note that when you, for example, hold stocks with your bank, they are most probably lending those stocks, for which you are paying a deposit fee, to some financial institution like a hedge fund, again for a fee, which then can be used for short selling and other leveraged trades. Obviously, you don’t see any of that money.
Liquidity provision. When you buy and sell stocks on a traditional exchange, financial institutions act as intermediaries in coordinating trades, as well as providing liquidity through shares or cash. In the digital asset world, these activities have been disrupted by automated market makers (AMM) running and operating as decentralized exchanges on automated code. The missing liquidity is yet again provided by fellow investors who will receive income in the form of the fees generated by these liquidity pools. These pools consist of a variety of trading pairs such as crypto vs. crypto like BTC/ETH, crypto vs. stablecoins like DOT/Tether (USDT), or stablecoins vs. stablecoins like USDC/Terra (UST).
Yield farming. Imagine you lent money to a liquidity pool, such as SushiSwap, and started to receive your first rewards in SUSHI. You don’t want them sitting around. You could put them to work yet again through one of various opportunities and pile up more rewards. In short, yield farming is the activity of constantly putting your tokens to work — money doesn’t sleep — chasing higher and compounding yields across protocols, pools and others.
All these activities offer a respective annual percentage yield (APY) or fee share split which will vary depending on the platform like Curve or Compound, services such as staking or liquidity provision and underlying tokens like BTC or USDC used. These gains can come in the form of deposited tokens, referenced as “Supply APY,” as well as the platform’s native token, referenced as “Rewards APY.” For example, the SushiSwap protocol would give you SUSHI tokens and the Aave protocol AAVE tokens. Some of these platforms distribute governance tokens, giving owners the right to vote on the direction of the platform, such as receiving the optionality of becoming an activist investor.
What to watch out for
This could be an entire article in itself, so we’ll stick to some key highlights. First, use the house analogy to have a conscious awareness for your risk assessment across the layers and interdependency. With a focus on the protocols, or your counterparty risk, there are some specific levels you will want to review and ask critical questions on:
Team. Is the team known or an anonymous group? What is their technical and practical background? Are there any large/well-known backers of the crypto community involved?
Technical. Have there been any hacks, are there third-party smart contract audits available and do they have security bounty prizes posted?
Tokenomics. Are governance tokens awarded? What is the current total value locked and how are growth numbers regarding assets and active users? Is the project run through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a community-supported model?
Insurance. Is there a treasury to make investors “whole” again in the event of a hack? Are any insurance policies in place?
Pools. What are the APYs — are they insanely high? — has the APY been stable, how much trading liquidity is within the pool, risk of impermanent loss, lockup periods or transaction fees?
When you actively “use” your tokens to generate income, you generally are “hot” on these protocols/exchanges and, therefore, much more vulnerable to hacks or counterparty risk. There are institutional providers, such as Copper, offering secure custody not only for buy-and-hold investors, but also for staking of tokens at a cost. These security and custody concerns are a key difference between investing in DeFi through buying tokens, which can then get tucked away into cold storage vs. operating a strategy which is constantly and actively generating income.
In conclusion, this is an incredible space: We have been in and will continue to witness a new trillion-dollar industry being built right in front of our eyes. However, some final words of caution: Watch out for the too good to be true deals/APYs, as there’s usually a catch, for the fees that can suddenly explode, diminishing returns on an active strategy making smaller investments unattractive and be careful with the general safekeeping of your assets as loss of principle is possible.
If you are new to the field, start off with some play money, testing and learning along the way. Alternatively, if you want to participate but not deal with the hassle, you can also invest in professional managers designing, execute and monitoring these strategies in an institutional setting. But, one should use the same nuanced assessment approach provided earlier in your due diligence process of selecting a manager.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Marc D. Seidel started exploring blockchain and crypto back in 2016. Besides starting the crypto hedge fund AltAlpha Digital, he heads up the Alternative Investment practice of the BFI Capital Group. He previously worked at Google and Facebook, where he led the go-to-market ads strategy for the Alpine region. He founded three companies, one each in the health care, law digitalization and sustainability ecommerce sector.
Harry Styles delivered his debut Coachella performance at the 2022 edition of the music festival and received support from his girlfriend Oliva Wilde for the same. The actress and director was seen cheering for Harry at the music festival where the singer was the first headliner on April 15. Wilde was seen in posts shared by attendees on Twitter.
At his Coachella 2022, Harry delivered an energetic performance as he performed his popular hits, as well as his newest release As It Was. In a surprise moment for fans, Harry was also joined by guest Shania Twain as the duo sang duets of the songs Man! I Feel Like a Woman and You’re Still the One on stage. As for Olivia, in a video posted on Twitter from the event, the actress was seen hanging out with l James Corden.
Also, a few videos showcased Wilde watching Harry perform whilst standing backstage. This isn’t the first time that Olivia has shown support for Harry’s musical career. Previously, she was also seen attending performances during his US tour.
Harry and Olivia started dating in late 2020 after working together on the film Don’t Worry Darling, which has been helmed by Wilde and stars Styles alongside Florence Pugh in lead roles. The duo sparked dating rumours after first being spotted holding hands while attending one of Styles’ close friend’s wedding. Following that the couple’s PDA-filled vacation in Italy confirmed their ongoing romance. The couple has managed to remain extremely private about it though.
Reli3f, a humanitarian initiative birthed upon the innate artistic commitment to narrate stories in times of hardship, launched their second nonfungible token (NFT) collection Thursday, raising over $300,000 for recognized Ukrainian charities and taking their total to over $1.5 million.
Founded by several esteemed Web3 entrepreneurs — Satvik Sethi, Andrew Wang, Giovanni Gussen, Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Raskalov, and developer SignorCrypto — in late February this year, Reli3f has unified the talents of 62 artists across the world to showcase the enormous philanthropic potential of NFTs for social good.
The team chose to distribute the first collection’s fund across a range of enterprises, including 46.25 ETH each to Razom Ukraine, Serhiy Prytula Foundation, Valery Sozanovsky Headquarters, and CEO Club — as evidenced by the Gnosis multi-sig wallet. An additional 40 ETH was also equally gifted to Outright Action International and Web3 For Africans in Ukraine via the royalties fund.
Reveling from the momentum and cultural advocacy of their inaugural collection — which included the likes of renowned artist fvckrender, co-founder of Cool Cats, Clon, and creator of Creature World, Danny Cole — the team reiterated their dedication to supporting the cause with the release of a second series.
Drop 2 featured Reli3f team member Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, alongside the creator of the Coolman Universe, Danny Casale, and music icon Sia under her alias Bianca ‘de Medici, among many others.
RELI3F 2 UKRAINE
We are so excited to announce our roster of 23 incredible artists from around the world who are joining us to raise money for humanitarian efforts for Ukraine!
According to Sethi, only five of the thirty-seven artists featured in the debut collection opted to retain their revenue royalties and, in those cases, solely to transfer funds to their loved ones in Ukraine or to elevate personal circumstances.
All other funds were redistributed back into the charitable treasury, a trend that was replicated in the second collection.
Drop 2 showcased a multitude of artistic disciplines from a generative algorithmic piece based upon the artist’s unique hash seed as in Gavin Li’s ‘Motherland,’ a defiantly symbolic photograph depicting a righteous protesterduring the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in Feb 2014 in Den Didenko’s ‘Ray of freedom out of darkness,’ through to a visually playful, thematically intricate wimmelbilderbuch as seen in Sergius’ ‘Revelation.’
Pictured: Gavin Li’s Motherland
Cointelegraph’s tech reporter, Tom Farren spoke to Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Satvik Sethi and Andrew Wang to understand more about the initial origins of the project, the receptiveness of artists to participate, as well as the future of Reli3f amid operationally agile models for the decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs).
This Zoom interview has been slightly adjusted for clarity, and condensed to suit reading constraints.
“What’s interesting about this drop is that there are a lot of artists that haven’t minted works before, or don’t consider themselves traditional NFT artists. We tried to be really balanced and not just take famous people, but people who are from different regions and have different life stories.” – Artamonovskaja
Recognizing the occurrence of gas wars in drop 1, the team agreed to alter the mechanics for drop 2, deploying a blind-mint open edition whereby all interested parties had the opportunity to purchase as many as desired within a fifteen-min time period for a price of 0.05 ETH.
In total, the drop 2 raised 86 ETH, equivalent to $260,000, during the minting period, and has since traded an additional 21 ETH on OpenSea at the time of writing.
Artamonovskaja: “I was in Ukraine between mid-January to mid-February and was feeling a bit depressed because reading the news, and seeing the stuff people were writing would kind of scare you. And then I remember that one moment my dad came home and gifted me this set of pastels and black paper. I’ve minted photography before and done some glitch art, but I haven’t really drawn with pastels since middle school.”
“One day I was feeling sad, so I started drawing. I shared my art on Instagram, and one of the collectors that follow me said that if you mint this, I’ll buy it. I was like what, really?! [laughs].” Those two pieces subsequently sold for 0.25 ETH each on OpenSea.
Her piece for Reli3f’s drop 2, titled ‘Alba Dreaming of Home,’ was dually inspired by a stencil mural of a dog in her home city and Banksy’s infamous ‘Balloon Girl’ and sought to capture the sorrow of displacement and lack of belonging through the eyes of a domestic companion so integral to the lives of many modern families.
Speaking from personal experience as a Ukrainian citizen, Artamonovskajastated that“without having momentum, it can end up being a war that is stuck on our territory and just becomes a norm. We just want this to end, so people can go home and start rebuilding.”
Sharing some insights on the accomplishments of the first drop, Sethi revealed that they had “tons of artists that were reaching out to us saying ‘why didn’t you ask us to be a part of this, and we’d love to help’” after witnessing the viral exposure.
Sethi also detailed that drop 2 has been “a month in the making,” and that “we didn’t give ourselves a time constraint” like this first collection, but to allow the process of creation to occur organically.
The blossoming of Web3 digital communities, originally on Clubhouse and now predominately on Twitter, has empowered what Wang refers to as the “power of network effects” to occur. In other words, the easily-accessible and rapidly-scalable capacity for influencers and luminaries to catalyze social and cultural innovation within the space.
“I think what made Reli3f interesting to a lot of people was that it wasn’t just a use-case for freedom to transact via crypto, or even a use-case for using art to donate, but a use-case for how community can be called upon, almost at a moment’s notice, to act.” – Wang
Specifying the principles of both investment and social DAOs, Wang shared an insightful perspective that DAOs “don’t have to exist forever, or for the long-term,” continuing to say that “sometimes DAOs can be really effective at putting out a use-case or doing something towards a specific goal at a specific moment in time, and then afterward either disband or slow things down until they are needed again.”
He cited Constitution DAO as a prime example of an initiative founded solely to purchase the United States constitution. Although unsuccessful in their first endeavor, they could utilize the oscillating nature of their model to reform if and when required.
With that ideology in mind, he concluded the conversation by saying, “I think Reli3f can help build the future, but it doesn’t have to be the future.”
The F.A. Cup and the Conference League have meaning not because of tradition or design, but when the players, and particularly the fans, decide they are important.
Klay Thompson was splashing 3-pointers. Draymond Green was making stops and deftly finding open cutters. Stephen Curry drew several defenders any time he touched the ball.
The threesome who redefined basketball en route to winning a series of championships with the Golden State Warriors reunited in the playoffs on Saturday for the first time since 2019. And as in many games of that era, the high-octane Warriors were dominant, defeating the Denver Nuggets in the opener of their first-round playoff matchup, 123-107.
In a surprise move, Curry began the game on the bench. In his place, Coach Steve Kerr started the third-year guard Jordan Poole, who is having a career year. The move appeared to be aimed at keeping Curry on a strict minutes limit. This was his first game since March 16, when he injured his left foot against the Boston Celtics.
The swap paid off. Poole was exceptional in his first career playoff game, scoring 30 points — a game high — on 9 for 13 shooting, electrifying the Chase Center crowd in San Francisco.
The last time Curry came off the bench during the playoffs was May 1, 2018, the second game of the Western Conference semifinals against the New Orleans Pelicans, when he was coming off a knee injury. Saturday against Denver was only the third playoff game of Curry’s career in which he played but didn’t start.
He entered the contest about halfway through the first quarter to a loud ovation. Almost immediately, Curry made his presence felt, finding Thompson for an open 3-pointer from the corner and sneaking a pass between two defenders to an open Green for a dunk. Otherwise, he struggled, shooting 5 for 13 from the field for 16 points.
Thompson, meanwhile, looked like the player he was before he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during the 2019 N.B.A. finals. He moved swiftly to find open looks for himself, en route to five 3-pointers and 19 points overall.
Golden State was able to flummox Denver’s Nikola Jokic, the favorite to win the Most Valuable Player Award, which would be his second. The Warriors constantly forced Jokic into difficult shots and frustrated him with a steady stream of double teams. They also attempted to tire him out defensively by setting up possessions with him as the primary defender on the ballhandler.
By the time the fourth quarter came around, Jokic looked exhausted. He finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds and 6 assists.
The playoff opener was a return to the postseason spotlight for the core Golden State players who won championships in 2015, 2017 and 2018. Curry, Green, Thompson and Andre Iguodala are the top four leaders in franchise history for postseason games played. But this was the first time, in large part because of injuries, that the Warriors had made the playoffs since 2019, when the team lost in the finals to the Toronto Raptors in six games. The only time all four of them played in the same game this year was on Jan. 9, Thompson’s first game back after missing two seasons with leg injuries. Green started that game only briefly, to support Thompson, before sitting the rest of the night.
Both teams had significant injury issues during the season. Green missed more than two months of the regular season for Golden State with a back injury. For Denver, Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Murray missed most or all of the season.
This was Denver’s fourth straight year making the playoffs; the team has made it out of the first round each of the past three seasons.
The Nuggets will attempt to tie the seven-game series at one game apiece on Monday.
Six weeks ago, life was easy for Yuliia, her husband Valerii, and their small son Artemko.
They had just moved into a new apartment in a quiet, green part of Bucha. She had a job as a hairdresser and loved nothing more than when a client left her salon looking beautiful and confident.
Everything changed one awful morning at the end of February. War – violent, loud and terrifying – roared from the north. With her neighbourhood in flames, Yuliia made the decision to flee.
She and her family, including her mother Zinaida, joined over 7.1 million (as of 1 April 2022) internally displaced persons (IDPs) across Europe’s largest country.
Violence ‘impossible to comprehend’
After four weeks on the road, they arrived in the western province of Zakarpattia, hundreds of kilometres from her shattered hometown.
When Yuliia saw the horrific pictures and videos of the slaughter and destruction in Bucha, she instantly burst into tears and remained speechless for a while. “This level of violence is impossible to comprehend,” she finally said. “That is not something you would wish on the enemy, but this is something that will never be forgiven nor forgotten.”
From her neighbours, Yuliia learned that after her family had left, their flat was taken over, and their belongings were looted. The factory where Yuliia’s mother worked was destroyed by bombs.
Even though Ukrainian authorities have regained control, people are still not allowed to come back home due to risks of mines, and other explosive remnants of war.
‘This is our home now’
Here in Zakarpattia, they can finally catch a break. Together with a hundred other IDPs, they found a temporary shelter in a school in the small town of Bushtyno. Volunteers from Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have done their best to turn impersonal classrooms into cosy bedrooms. The sports hall has become a central warehouse for all the necessities of daily life.
“So here we are. This is our home now. We have everything we need, and kind people are helping us in every way they can,” says Yuliia. “Even though we are sleeping on mattresses on the floor now, missiles are not flying over our heads and my child is safe. This is the only thing that matters now.”
She hopes that her son will not have any memories of those terrifying weeks of fear and flight. “We do not have many personal belongings but what really breaks my heart is that we were not able to take any toys for Artemko. He loves cars and, at home, he had a lot of car toys, which he misses very much, and asks all the time when he can come back home to play with them again.
I want him just to be a child, play games and spend time with other kids. If he could have some toys or a bike, he would be really happy. And it would make me happy too.”
After nearly two years, Sucker Punch has released what appears to be the final planned patch for Ghost of Tsushima and has said it is not “actively working on any additional patches at the moment.”
As reported by PlayStation LifeStyle, Sucker Punch shared the news on the notes for Patch 2.18 of Ghost of Tsushima, indirectly teasing that they are full steam ahead on what is undoubtedly its next, unannounced project.
“While we aren’t actively working on any additional patches at the moment, we will continue to monitor feedback on the community-run Gotlegends subreddit and messages sent to @SuckerPunchProd on Twitter for any high priority bugs or issues that emerge,” Sucker Punch wrote. “We want to say a huge THANK YOU to the entire community for the incredible amount of support and feedback we’ve gotten since launch.
“When Legends launched in October 2020, we never expected to have such an active community more than a year and a half later, and we could not be more thankful to everyone who has been with us on this journey!”
Ghost of Tsushima was released for PS4 on July 17, 2020, and the Director’s Cut for PS5 and PS4 followed on August 20, 2021. While it began its life as a single-player game, Ghost of Tsushima: Legends brought a well-received multiplayer component to the title on October 16, 2020.
Vicky Kaushal is either travelling for his shoots, thanks to his hectic schedule or working out even on holidays. The actor makes sure to stay on the top of his fitness game. How do we know that? Well, Vicky loves to keep his fans updated with photos from the gym as he dishes out some motivation. Not just the gym, Vicky also enjoys the occasional candid photoshoot outdoors.
Over the weekend, the actor served a lesson in clicking aesthetic sunkissed photos and not the usual ‘smiling in the sun’ style. Taking to Instagram, Vicky shared a couple of picture in which he can be seen taking in the majestic views of the sunset. Wearing a crisp white shirt and buzzed hair look, Vicky looked all things smart.
Standing on the balcony, overlooking the hills, Vicky stared into the sunset in one shot. In another, he dreamily looked out towards the sky with his equally dreamy eyes. One fan commented, “How are you more beautiful than the sunset?”
Well, now you know some poses you can take inspiration from for the gram next time.
Vicky Kaushal has been juggling multiple projects. He will be seen with Kiara Advani and Bhumi Pednekar in a comedy film. He has also been working with Sara Ali Khan on another project.
People interact with open-source applications like MetaMask, Web3 games, the metaverse and DeFi protocols every day but don’t often stop to think about what happens in the background for it all to work. If we think of Web3 as a burgeoning new city, node infrastructure providers are the underlying power grid that makes operations possible.
All DApps need to communicate with blockchains, and full nodes serve billions of requests from DApps to read and write data to chains every day. We need a huge node infrastructure to keep up with vastly expanding DApp ecosystems and serve all of the requests. However, running nodes is very time and capital intensive, so DApp builders turn to providers for remote access to nodes. There is a massive monetary incentive for infrastructure providers to power as many of these Web3 ecosystems as possible, but who is winning this race so far?
The centralization problem
The fastest way to provide reliable infrastructure to power DApp ecosystems is for centralized companies to set up a fleet of blockchain nodes, commonly housed in Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers, and allow developers to access it from anywhere for a subscription. That is exactly what a few players in the space did, but it came at the price of centralization. This is a major issue for the Web3 economy, as it leaves the ecosystem vulnerable to attacks and at the mercy of a few powerful players.
Consider that over 80% of Ethereum nodes are located in the United States and Germany, and that the three largest mining pools could come together to 51% attack the network. In many ways, today’s blockchains are a lot more centralized than we’d like them to be, in stark contrast to the ethos originally set out in Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin (BTC) white paper.
If large node providers collude, Web3 would lose all the advantages it has over Web2, from censorship-resistance to trustworthiness, and be stuck with only its disadvantages, from relatively high fees to low transactional throughput.
Not only that, but reliance on centralized providers also leaves the door open to outages. For example, anInfura outage actually forced crypto exchanges and wallets, like Coinbase Wallet, Binance and MetaMask, to suspend Ethereum and ERC-20 token withdrawals, since they couldn’t fully rely on their nodes.
It’s also worth noting that Amazon, which is the backbone of many of these centralized providers, has suffered a number of outages in the past, creating another layer of vulnerability. Ethereum’s Infura outage isn’t the only one. More recently, Ethereum’s move to Ethereum 2.0 was set back with a 7-hour outage due to the hardware failure of a single node on the network. This is a risk that truly decentralized networks don’t have to worry about.
Decentralization is a key tenet of the Web3 economy, and centralized blockchain infrastructure threatens to undermine it. For instance, Solana has suffered multiple outages due to a lack of sufficient, decentralized nodes that could handle spiking traffic. This is a common problem for blockchain protocols that are trying to scale.
And it’s not just Solana. Many of the top blockchain protocols are struggling to find a way to scale and become more decentralized. In fact, while large blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin have remained steadfast in the war for decentralization, smaller blockchains have lost the battle, suffering 51% attacks at the hand of overly-centralized node providers.
For instance, on June 8, 2013, Feathercoin (FTC) suffered a 51% attack. This means that a single entity was able to control more than half of the total processing power of the FTC network. This allowed them to reverse confirmed transactions and even halt new transactions from going through.
At the same time as the FTC attack, the website suffered a DDoS attack. This made it difficult for users to access information about the attack or to try and get their money out of the network. Since then, FTC has fallen into obscurity. Its price has plummeted and it is no longer listed on any major exchanges.
This historical centralization owes to the over-reliance on Web2 cloud providers, like AWS and Infura, which have been the primary providers of infrastructure for the Web3 economy so far. But now, to avoid centralization and blockchain’s proverbial “single point of failure,” decentralized infrastructure providers are gaining a great deal of steam. This is good news for the prospect of Web3 ecosystems remaining healthy and decentralized.
Thankfully, recent innovations are giving rise to a new breed of provider that is much more decentralized. These providers run nodes on-premises, or even in users’ homes, rather than relying on centralized cloud providers.
While centralized providers have a head start, decentralized providers are emerging as an extremely viable alternative. Their key advantage is that they can’t be taken down by a single point of failure, and in many cases provide faster connections to global users. Also, decentralized node infrastructure providers create new economies where independent providers serve requests for data and earn rewards in their native tokens. This new type of provider is quickly gaining market share, and may even eventually supplant the current incumbents of Web3 infrastructure.
There are a number of different providers in the space, such as Ankr, Flux and QuickNode, that are competing for market share. This competitive environment is good for the Web3 economy, as it leads to innovation and drives down prices. It also ensures that providers are constantly striving to improve their services and provide the best possible experience to their customers.
Even more importantly, decentralized infrastructure competition results in greater decentralization of the Web3 economy. This is a good thing, as it makes the economy more resilient against attacks and censorship. The 51% attacks of the past should stay in the past, with infrastructure providers spread out among different geographies.
This competition among providers will be vital to maintaining a healthy and decentralized ecosystem.
Realizing the promise of Web3
The promise of Web3 isn’t just to build a better internet, but to build a better world. Decentralized infrastructure providers are building the foundation for a new internet, one that is more equitable, secure and censorship-resistant.
By maintaining the status quo, centralized hosting providers fail to provide true innovation and are susceptible to censorship. Decentralized infrastructure providers, on the other hand, are incentivized to push the envelope and provide the best possible service with a democratic structure, which ensures that they are more resistant to censorship and attacks.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Gregory Gopman is a tech entrepreneur working in the blockchain space, where he serves as chief marketing officer at Ankr, and runs a blockchain consultancy called Mewn that helps launch projects and grow their valuation. Greg has worked in startups for 15 years — 10 years with Silicon Valley tech companies, and 5 years building crypto projects. He’s best known for co-founding the Akash Network and AngelHack, and helping Kadena grow from $80 million to over $4 billion in 100 days.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
