Bank of America Believes Solana Might Beat Ethereum To Become The ‘Visa’ of Cryptocurrency
Bank of America compared cryptocurrencies to the world’s largest credit card network, Visa, which is likely the most fantastic accolade a central US bank can offer on a cryptocurrency.
“Solana could become the Visa of the digital asset ecosystem,”
Alkesh Shah, global crypto and digital asset strategist at Bank of America, released a research note. He mentioned Solana’s network’s more than 400 decentralized apps, which run anything from peer-to-peer exchanges to NFT markets.
According to Bank of America projections, Solana outperforms both Ethereum and Visa, with a potential capacity of 65,000 TPS for fractions of a penny.
Meanwhile, he also added, Ethereum may emerge as the blockchain of “high-value transactions and identity, storage and supply chain use cases,”.
The Value of Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract Reaches $30 Billion
The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract has 9 million ETH locked in it.
Users can use this deposit contract to move funds from the Ethereum Proof-of-Work mainnet to Beacon Chain, a Proof-of-Stake version of the blockchain operating in parallel. In addition to the Proof-of-Work mainnet that now supports all Ethereum dApps, Beacon Chain has been administered by the Ethereum core team since December 1, 2020.
The much-anticipated “merge” refers to a future event where the Ethereum mainnet begins utilising the Beacon Chain for consensus, thus removing Proof-of-Work from the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to the most recent on-chain statistics from Etherscan, a total of 9,008,082 ETH has been locked in the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract. At current ETH values, the amount of the deposit reached around $30 billion stakes in the first phase of Ethereum 2.0–also known as Serenity.
More than 280,000 validators on Beacon Chain donated the 9 million ETH deposit. To become a validator, a user must deposit a minimum of 32 ETH, which is presently worth roughly $108,000.
Polygon (MATIC) Plans to Upgrade EIP-1559 Next Week
In a formal release on Wednesday, the India-based project stated that the upgrade; which would begin the burning of MATIC, is set to go live on the mainnet on January 18, 2022; at about 8 a.m. UTC.
The EIP-1559 update, often known as the London hard fork; dramatically transforms how the Ethereum network’s fee market operates; it does away with the first-price auction as the primary method for calculating fees and replaces it with a discrete base charge that is burnt rather than paid to miners.
While this improvement does not cut transaction fees determined by market forces; it improves user cost estimation and reduces the number of customers who overpays.
These developments, however, will have far-reaching implications for all Polygon stakeholders, including native token (MATIC) holders, validators and delegators; a decentralized app (dApp) developers, and users.
Fantico Introduces Bollywood NFTs Incorporating Physical Memorabilia
Fantico, a digitally licensed collectibles platform, stated on January 12, 2022; that it would launch a digital collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs); including multiple collectibles based on well-known celebrities from various genres. Collectors may also purchase them using the Ethereum (ETH) cryptocurrency token.
According to Abhayanand Singh, Vistas Media Capital’s group CEO and co-founder, “With this first of a kind NFT launch on our platform; which merges the physical and the digital world, we hope that we can bring in a new method of monetization for such creations. We are happy to add Bollywood celebrity-centric collectibles on our platform.”
What Else?
The autographed and handwritten lyrics of Javed Akhtar’s mega-popular song Khwaabon Ki Shehzaadi (princess of dreams) from Shekhar Kapoor’s Mr. India are among the items in the music-focused collection.
The jacket and harmonium of ghazal vocalist Talat Aziz. The ancient scale changer harmonium is aged Burma Teak wood and dates back at least 70 years. For about 32 years, Talat Aziz utilized this; and Ghulam Ali and Mehdi Hasan, among others, used this instrument to perform ghazals.
Chota Chatri, Natkhat Rani Badi Sayani, Pappi Anna; and Aslam Bhai are among the ‘bollypunks’ in John Prakash Rao’s collection, also known as Johny Lever.
Street Fights (Lever’s amusing views about street fights nowadays vs. the ancient days) and a rare movie depicting every household where individuals start chatting to cricket players during a match as though they’re listening are also available as NFTs. Fans may make a video call to the King of Comedy.
Bitso Becomes A Sponsor of Mexico’s National Soccer Team
Bitso, a Latin American cryptocurrency exchange, has become the sponsor for Mexican National Football Team (Selección Mexicana de Fútbol).
The soccer squad, which has 98,700 followers on its English-language Twitter account; will collaborate with Bitso to provide crypto education opportunities in Mexico and design a series of NFTs for distribution by the exchange. According to a spokesman for Bitso, the sponsorship value is not disclosed.
“Our soccer team constantly encourages us to dream about reaching new heights, so we could not ask for a better ally to promote access to technology and innovation throughout the region,” in a news statement, Bitso CEO and co-founder Daniel Vogel stated.
Bitso, a cryptocurrency exchange, has announced a sponsorship agreement with Sao Paulo Futebol Clube of Brazil. This is Bitso’s newest professional sports relationship, following a slew of contracts in recent months.
In Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia, Bitso has over 3.7 million users. The firm believes the crypto unicorn is worth more than $2.2 billion.