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Vladimir Zhuravlev, a Gravity Tech and Waves Association developer, notes that for several years, the Odyssey hackathon (held in the Netherlands) had offered opportunities for software engineers to collaborate on various projects. Zhuravlev revealed that this year, Odyssey was hosted online for the very time (due to COVID). The event's team tried to ensure that the hackathon would be a unique experience for all participants. They introduced a 3D online arena that connected all 105 teams, jedis and challenge hosts in one virtual space, Zhuravlev noted. He added: "The Waves Association was honored to participate in the event in several aspects. First, the Waves protocol was suggested as a building block with support from Waves Jedis: Rob van de Camp and Inal Kardanov. Second, the Waves platform was used for issuing awards to winning teams. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for digital art were created on Waves and sent to participants as a special prize." The Waves team took part ...

The Reserve Bank of India is exploring the need for a digital version of its fiat currency. In a recent outlook on payments in the digital era, the bank justified its earlier apprehension, but revealed that it's now open to the possibility of a digital rupee. The RBI has come to be seen as one of the greatest impediments to digital currency adoption in India. It has previously banned commercial banks from processing digital currency-related payments. This decision was overturned in March 2020 by the Supreme Court, however. In a new report, the regulator has now revealed it's warming up to the possibility of a central bank digital currency. The report stated that digital currencies have gained great popularity in India. Regulators in India have taken a keen interest, while at the same time being skeptical about the associated risks. It added: "Nevertheless, RBI is exploring the possibility as to whether there is a need for a digital version of fiat currency and in case ther...

Ripple's XRP has lost almost 40% of its value after the token price dropped from $0.51 on December 21 to $0.31 at the time of writing. The token's plunge appears to be the result of legal proceedings initiated against Ripple by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At the time of writing, the fourth-ranked crypto token had seen traded volumes of $4.85 billion recorded in 24 hours. $1.3 Billion Lawsuit As data on markets.Bitcoin.com suggests, the sell-off of the XRP token appears to have been sparked by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's warning that the SEC was about to launch legal proceedings against the company. A day later, the SEC announced the $1.3 billion legal action against Ripple and two of its executives for allegedly conducting an unregistered security offering. Meanwhile, as the XRP token continues to plummet, an angry Garlinghouse has accused the US regulator of being biased against Ripple while appearing to give a free pass to BTC and ETH. In its dete...

Trezor has warned users of its hardware wallet about a phishing scam it said was related to an earlier hack on one of its competitors. The company said the attackers claim a user's wallet has been disabled, before redirecting to a clone site to steal their credentials. In a blog post, Trezor revealed that the attackers have been sending its users emails claiming they need to pass verification due to new KYC regulations. It then provided a website that's a replica of wallet.trezor.io on which the users can supposedly verify their identity. This site requests the users to key in their recovery seed, giving the attackers full control of the wallet. Trezor reminded its users that they "will not be asked to enter their seed anywhere other than on their Trezor device." It also assured its users that all their funds are safe and that no Trezor customer data has been leaked. "We continue to operate under a policy where we anonymize all customer data from e-commerce with...

As Ark approachs the launch of MarketSquare, we want to give our community an inside look at some of the partnerships we have formed. These strategic partnerships will not only help make MarketSquare the new homepage for the decentralized web but will also create inroads between ARK and other projects looking to build and collaborate together. Today we would like to introduce you to Magic.Link! What is Magic? Magic is a developer SDK that can be integrated into applications to enable passwordless authentication using magic links - similar to systems used by Slack and Medium. Once a developer integrates Magic into their application a user is able to sign up or log in by doing the following: A user requests a magic link be sent to their email address. The user clicks on the magic link The user is securely logged into the application. #Saying Goodbye to Passwords You may have noticed that this process occurs without the need for signing in or registering with a password. The benefits of p...

Digital currency holders in South Korea have been granted an extra three months before a new taxation rule is implemented. The rule was to be implemented in October 2021, but will now be delayed until January 2022. South Korea finalized its digital currency tax proposal in July, with the Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-Ki revealing it would take effect in late 2021. The rule requires Koreans to pay a 20% on digital currency profits above KRW2.5 million ($2,259). Soon after the government revealed the rule, several stakeholders in the digital currency industry were up in arms against it. Some felt that the industry was still too young to face such a huge tax cut. Yonsei University economist Sung Tae-yoon stated at the time: "It is premature for the government to impose cryptocurrency taxes at a time when the market has not developed enough in a stable manner. Any rash taxation or introduction of regulations can be a stumbling block for sustainable growth of the industry." The K...

The Waves Association announced on Wednesday a new grant program for cross-chain interoperability development. The pool consists of 1 million Waves tokens, worth approximately $3 million as of press time. Projects will be eligible for grants of up to 300,000 Waves to develop solutions for interoperability and cross-chain communication. There will be three separate types of grants: open grants, grants distributed through hackathons and Waves-focused grants. Sten Laureyssens, strategic advisor at the Waves Association, explained to Cointelegraph that open grants will have a wide scope: "For the open grant category, the grants are open to a wide variety of interoperability projects, that don't necessarily have to be connected to Waves. We're looking for creative solutions to connect existing blockchains and dApps." The latter two types of grants will have to adhere to certain requirements, which makes it likely that the Waves blockchain will be involved in some form. Nev...