The figures eclipsed the previous high of 200,000 in August, nearly a month after the collectibles went live. More than 98,000 avatars from “The Singularity” collection were produced, the most on that day, followed by 58,000 avatars from “Aww Friends.” The rapid minting followed a spike of interest in the collection last Thursday that gradually tapered off over the following days.

Minting refers to the creation of a new NFT on any blockchain. The Collectible Avatars can be stored and managed on Reddit’s own crypto wallet, Vault, which allows users to earn blockchain-based community points and spend them on in-app features such as badges. They are available to the platform’s users based on their activity.

In July, the company said users don’t need an existing crypto wallet to purchase the avatars but can use credit or debit cards to buy them. Reddit hasn’t identified the avatars as non-fungible tokens but stated at the time that blockchain technology remained part of its long-term plans.

As of Monday, data shows that more than 3.7 million Reddit users are holding a total 4.4 million of the avatars. Some 93,000 holders have sold their avatars in the past few months, making an estimated $11 million, the data shows.

Redit avatars from the “poieeeyee” and “The Senses” collections have seen the most transactional activity with over $3.2 million in total sales value. The entirety of Reddit avatars saw a single-day trading surge of $6.5 million in late October, as CoinDesk reported.

The post Minting of Reddit Avatar Tokens Climbed to Record High Over Weekend appeared first on Mighty Block.

According to the Society for HR Management (SHRM), A learning culture “consists of a community of workers instilled with a ‘growth mindset.’ People not only want to learn and apply what they’ve learned to help their organization, they also feel compelled to share their knowledge with others.”

How do we develop a culture of learning in Mighty Block?

Web3 has a singular environment: every day you are learning something new. We always stay up to date by focusing on cutting edge technology. This is the reason why learning must be present as the foundation of the company. Culture is the principal intangible enabler of learning.

When we designed our Core Values at Mighty Block the open attitude to learn was at the forefront of the process. We called it: “White Belt Attitude”. For us, it means that  the learning process never ends. The more we know, the more we acknowledge what we don’t know.

If you want to know more about our core values, our last blog article is here.

How do we implement the “White Belt Attitude” core value?

Peer Connecting: When we asked the Mighty Block team about the latest topics they actually learnt they answered that it takes place in informal conversations where they can debate and share about the projects that they are working on. No formal training, or tutorials. 

It’s possible because of the horizontal communication: On spaces and connections such as workshops, slacks channels, etc. everybody has their own voice, could ask and answer. No questions are silly questions. It helps people bring ideas and perspectives together. The output is always new learning, and the most important reason is the team: experienced and full of “servant heart” attitude. (Servant heart is also one of our core Values: Always ready to help attitude. Serving others makes us all better.)

The challenges of the product we are building: No matter how experienced they are, each new member takes a humble attitude -as a beginner to learn everything about our technologies and product. The kind of product we develop challenges us to be updated and always learning. It makes us reach out to learn, do research, ask questions and look for the best way to perform. It motivates us to be better. 

Recruiting Process: To ensure our learning culture over time each new hire should show the White Belt Attitude since the very first interview. Our recruiting process was designed to get to know each other. It means that at the end of the interviews, we will have a clear picture about the cultural fit with our Core Values. The interview set includes: Cultural Fit interview, Technical Interviews, Tech challenges, etc.

Activities at Mighty Block that incentivize the White belt Attitude

Crypto Research 

Every Friday at 12, Crypto Research meetings take place.

In each session, one team member presents a crypto related topic and shares what they have been researching as well as their findings and learnings. The rest of the team also participates in the presentation by asking questions and debating.

The first crypto research meeting took place within the initial weeks of Mighty Block.

The team investigated and did a lot of research on this topic every week, so we finally organised these meetings to share the discoveries.

Now, these meetings have become the perfect environment to learn something new every week. 

Defi Challenge

As well as developing web3 products, the entire team needs to have basic knowledge about Web3, decentralized protocols, NFTs platforms and token management.

So, we decided to make it fun and challenging. Every quarter a new level starts and it has different tasks to complete such as: Install a non custodial wallet, obtain a ERC 20 token, mint a nft, stake a coin, etc. The winner is whoever holds the most ETH at the time of the final settlement.

We identify a lot of learnings because of our mistakes: We spend unnecessary gass, be scammed, and obtain unuseful tokens. But we help each other when the inexperienced need a guide or a new task is very challenging, we share our learnings and new knowledge.

The “Mighty Blog”

Since the beginning the Mighty Blog purpose was to generate a space to share the team knowledge and learnings. Is a big opportunity to share with the world our expertise in the Blockchain space, leaving a mark in the ecosystem, and provide help to the community.

But blogging helps us to learn so many new skills and abilities (i.e: Writing for different audiences, choosing a topic). The process when we write and the content we research also builds our knowledge.

We have already published 9 articles from 8 members of our team. On October 31, we reached 999 views on our own content! We are very proud and excited about what’s coming on (new topics, new podcast episodes).

Conclusion

The Mighty Block team loves to learn and we try to  identify this attribute in all candidates since the first interview. Our challenge was to design a learning culture and strategies which works as an amplifier that encourages both the love of learning and the opportunity to learn.

Mixing creative spaces and activities with traditional training when needed was the strategy we implemented to keep the flame of curiosity alive.

The post Our learning Culture appeared first on Mighty Block.

MetaMask, the leading web3 wallet provider, has released MetaMask Bridges, a bridge aggregation service. This feature allows users to transfer their assets across multiple blockchains from within the wallet.

Bridges feature has been launched in beta and is a part of the newly-launched MetaMask Portfolio dApp.

Users can bridge assets worth up to $10,000. Initially supported assets include ETH, WETH, stablecoins, and native gas tokens like Polygon’s MATIC.

The feature currently supports Ethereum and compatible networks Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon. The team plans to expand to Layer-2 blockchains Arbitrum and Optimism.

MetaMask has integrated with bridge feature aggregators Socket and LI.FI, which will give users access to four individual bridge providers – Connext, Hop, Celer cBridge, and Polygon Bridge.

MetaMask will not charge any additional fees during the feature’s beta phase.

“Our team is committed to deeply understanding the evolving bridging space to provide the most secure experience possible so you feel confident when using MetaMask Bridges.” the blog post read.

In March, ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin confirmed the company’s plan to launch a MetaMask token, in a bid to decentralize the wallet provider.

Burning Bridges

In 2022, the number of bridge feature exploits has risen drastically, with many suffering nine-figure losses.

Harmony’s Horizon bridge was exploited for $100M. North Korea’s state-sponsored Lazarus Group is suspected to be behind the theft.

Wormhole, a protocol which allows users to bridge assets between Solana and other blockchains, was exploited for $320M.

Binance Smart Chain had to be paused after its official bridge was hacked and drained of $560M worth of BNB tokens.

The largest exploit of 2022 so far has been that of Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, which was used to connect its Ronin sidechain with Ethereum. Hackers managed to steal more than $600M in March.

The post MetaMask Launches Integrated Bridge Feature appeared first on Mighty Block.

Oasys Aims to Open Japan’s Gaming Markets to Developers Worldwide

Oasys, a gamefi-oriented blockchain (with “gamefi” meaning basically the intersection of gaming and finance), is aiming to leverage its stance as a Japan-based project to offer resources for foreign developers to access this significant gaming market. On Nov. 2, the company announced a partnership with YGG, a gaming guild, that will allow products built using Oasys’ services to enjoy specific marketing and promotional help to improve the performance of these products in Japan.

The goal of Oasys is to grow the blockchain gaming ecosystem in Japan, which is one of the leading gaming markets in the world. According to the “Global Markets Report 2021,” made by Newzoo, Japan is currently the third largest market in gaming revenue around the world, behind China and the U.S. The sector registered gaming revenues of $22.9 billion in 2021, with 75.62 million players actively enjoying these experiences.

Oasys founder and CEO Daiki Moriyama reinforced the importance of Japan as part of the future of blockchain gaming. On this, he stated:

As the third largest gaming market in the world, Japan’s gaming credentials are well-established. With the government continuing to invest in building the local Web3 infrastructure, there is now tremendous potential for blockchain gaming to grow globally with Japan serving as a launchpad.

Difficulties of Entering the Japanese Gaming Market

Oasys wants to capitalize on the difficulties that foreign companies face when trying to enter the Japanese market. Around 99% of the games played in Japan are local, and while the revenue made is huge, only 15% goes to foreign companies. This is because localization is more than just language translation, and can involve changes in games to better approach the Japanese user base.

Tetsuya Fujiwara, a co-founder of YGG Japan, seems positive about what YGG can offer to developers outside of Japan through this alliance. Fujiwara believes that YGG will help global developers to overcome the hurdles that the market presents by using its knowledge of gaming. He stated:

With these barriers to entry reduced, we can bring more users into the blockchain gaming space and enhance the ecosystem for all. Our partnership with Oasys will help us to reach even more developers that are building compelling blockchain games of the future.

This partnership comes after Oasys announced it was launching phase one of its mainnet on Oct. 25, with the support of companies like Bandai Namco, Square Enix, Ubisoft, and Sega.

The post Oasys Aims to Grow Blockchain Gaming in Japan Through YGG Partnership appeared first on Mighty Block.

What is Devcon?

Devcon is a global conference for Ethereum developers that was created in 2014 and is held every year in different countries and continents:

• Devcon 0: Berlin (2014)
• Devcon 1: London (2015)
• Devcon 2: Shanghai (2016)
• Devcon 3: Cancun (2017)
• Devcon 4: Prague (2018)
• Devcon 5: Tokio (2019)
• Devcon 6: Bogotá (2020)

2020? Well… It was planned for that year but you can guess what happened. Therefore, this edition was not just another edition: it also meant its definitive return. Because of this, people came from all over the world and that leads me to the next paragraph.

People from all over the world

The fact that it was the return to face-to-face was a great attraction for people from all over the world. Networking opportunities and meeting new people are for me the best things about attending this kind of conferences. You can have a coffee and also an interesting conversation with people who are not from your circle of acquaintances and may not even live on your continent. And there are also specific and funny spaces to generate new links and conversations…

Side events

These meetings are happening around the conference. Events can be from breakfast to after office and even rave parties. It is a great time to generate more informal and relaxed conversations, but it also provides opportunities to discuss technical details and do business. If you were busy watching presentations at the conference, side events are the right place to chat. Regarding presentations, if you were busy there it was because…

First class speakers

The best-known experts in the Ethereum world as Vitalik Buterin were on the grid of this conference. In addition to the technical content, it was very valuable to have the opportunity to approach a speaker and interact directly on the topic of the talk. This is clearly not an option in virtuality. Most of the experts have been present at events prior to the Devcon such as…

EthBogota and EthLatam

EthBogota is one of the hackathons organized by the Ethereum Foundation. It was the weekend before Devcon so the people could attend both events on the same trip. More than 1000 people participated in this competition with more than 500K USD in prizes. The day before the Devcon, a special event was held for the Latin American community that had already had an edition in the city of Buenos Aires: EthLatam. Both events added to the Devcon gave the opportunity to bring many experts closer to a region that seems to emerge as a point of interest…

Latam as a point of interest

Latin America is one of the regions with the highest adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based projects partially due to economic needs but mostly due to a high technical level and a great capacity to undertake. It is very interesting to see the projects that have come out of this region, such as OpenZeppelin. One of the remarkable progress was in digital identity, and one of the most interesting topics discussed in the conference was Zero Knowledge Proof…

ZK is the future

Something that surprised me was to see a lot of technical content on this topic. Undoubtedly, it is something that will be critical in the coming years and that all of the projects will adopt in one way or another. My recommendation if you are in the web3 industry: learn about Zero Knowledge Proof.

Personal opinion

Personally, it was a great satisfaction to attend the event, being face to face one more time with the community and of course meet new people. The technical content was outstanding, but I must confess that I have to rewatch a lot of the talks to get the most out of them (I think I should do it more often). If you haven’t had a chance to go, stay tuned for next year, and don’t forget to contact me for coffee and a chat there.

The post Why Devcon is the most important event for web3 developers appeared first on Mighty Block.

My attention was drawn to the lack of good user experience, and I couldn’t help but notice the similarity to what Web2 experienced in its journey to become the internet we know today. In the beginning, information was communicated one-way (from companies to users) through flat, non-structured and neverending HTML pages. Now, it has become conscious of its users’ needs, habits and ways of communication. It introduced mobile friendly solutions and orientation towards user content creation and participation. Web3 comes with really good technical advancements and social foundations, such as decentralization, ownership and control of our own data. However, we can realize how difficult it is for some users to navigate and understand these products.

Considering that Web3 still has a long way to go and that everything seems a mess today, it’s essential to start this journey by mentioning some issues that UXers should pay particular attention to. Some of these issues we are already capable of facing based on what we have learned with Web2, such as good practices in usability, accessibility and content writing. Other aspects will challenge us to find new design principles as UX maturity reaches this Web3 world.

What are the 5 aspects of UX that Web3 could improve?

1. Dev-centered content

The first UX aspect that web3 needs to improve is the technical acronyms and strings of alphanumeric information that are very common. This can be very difficult for a normal human being to read and understand. CeFi, DeFi, ERC-20, Smart Contrat, custodial, non-custodial and gas are some of the most popular terms, and if you are not an expert user or a developer you would most likely get lost and disorientated. It also may make you feel that you are not part of this world and demotivate you.

In this early stage, most product decisions are made by experts or developers, due they have spent more time working on it, defining and creating the technical foundations of Web3. But, it seems that the complexity that this technology brings cannot be easily hidden and is presenting many challenges to users. So, it’s our job as UXers to make it easier to use.

Of course, our first step is to understand what is this all about so we can be accurate in our decisions and solutions. We must be careful with the labels we use, make sure that we are naming the elements properly, and being specific about what task is going to be performed on each screen. We will need to add tooltips, explanatory text, guides or even a glossary with friendly information (see this glossary that helped me a lot on this journey). We just need to know what technical jargon is needed, what information is helpful at the right time and what users really understand, in order to define the content and be confident with the way we communicate.

2. Asynchronous experience

Asynchronous experience is another UX aspect that web3 needs to improve. Among new users, DeFi (decentralized finance) transactions appears to be a complex and overwhelming task to perform in Web3. A single transaction could require multiple confirmations, as well as several pending messages that need to be accepted, and can happen on two different platforms (on your wallet and the dApp) minutes apart.

In most cases, the platforms do not provide all the information that the user needs to calculate, verify and accept the transaction. So the users must also check several sources or platforms simultaneously, such as the gas rate (fee), their token’s market performance (Token = any digital asset, cryptocurrency or NFT), the reliability of the address you are interacting with and so on. Also, most of this information is changing every few seconds. 

All of this raises questions about what are we doing and where it comes from, which may be related to a lack of knowledge and trust. To help the user make an informed decision, we must understand what they need. So, we can provide links to the correct sources while being clear that we are redirecting them to an external tool. Also, we can provide the exact data they need in one place, as well as giving instant feedback to guide the user in this uncertain and asynchronous environment.

Nothing new, right? Nonetheless, since users are used to Web2 transactions, where it is rare for a payment to be canceled or for the user to remain unaware of a payment that has been made, we need to reduce the overwhelming feeling of Web3 transactions.

My last thought on this is about mobile usability, as these actions and queries happen across multiple apps, along with website changes, and the information we consult is usually complicated and full of data. It’s a big challenge to think in mobile-first solutions.

3. Response times for blockchain queries are slow

This is one of the aspects of UX that Web3 most needs to improve. Web2 users know that a 3 second wait for a system response is a long time, so we need to figure out how to handle waiting time on Web3. Now that we have gained trust and transparency, what about time waiting?

We need to take into account that if we are reading data that has already been written and confirmed in the chain it could be fast, but when we need to write data, it could be really slow. So, if someone expects to finish a transaction and then read it immediately after, the user will be disappointed. Depending on several factors (and the chain, not all of them perform the same way), the time frame can be from seconds to minutes or hours. Give you context, when a transaction is pushed to the blockchain, it does all the things that a traditional database does. However, it’s slowed down because of carrying more operations, including signature verification and tx validations with a consensus method that adds more time before a transaction can be processed.

Until now, it seems that this issue is just technical and, as UXers, we can’t do much. But, we know that people need to have information in seconds and Web3 products often appear to be broken or in an action that never ends. So, we need to be creative on how the users perceive the time. We need to be really clear about their actions status (ie. started, processing, finished), counters and loadings are a good tool to explain whatever the system is doing and how long it could take. Keep them on track!

4. New users mindsets are unknown

There is no doubt that Web3 brings with it major paradigm shifts, which will bring changes in the way users interact with it.

Decentralization will enhance the participation of the community in the development of this technology, which will provide transparency in the data and a sense of belonging. Taking the ownership of our own information will make us more aware of how and where to use it, and force us to take full responsibility for keeping it safe. Non-custodial wallets are already presenting these habit changes in the face of decentralized finances without knowing in advance if users will really get used to them and adopt them for good.

Knowing that Web3 is still in its discovery phase, no one knows what they want or how they want it. Even the market price hasn’t been set yet! It’s constantly changing at a speed that is difficult to follow, creating a sense of madness and stress. Will people adapt to this, or will this technology adapt to its new users mindsets?

To improve the UX aspect that Web3, It is necessary to keep our users close to us, to get to know them and to be aware of their needs and expectations, even if they don’t know it yet. But, it will be better if we discover the path together. Including user research, usability tests, metrics and other research methods that suit us, it will help us discover step-by-step the new mindsets and behaviors on which Web3 will be based.

There are plenty of active users who love to share information, whether openly or anonymously, on Twitter and Discord. There are even some Web3 projects for this; for example, there is a nice tool to obtain user insight, called Early Ones, that offers feedback and opinions from users that already are consuming Web3 products in its early stages. We just need to look around, find our target participants and do our research.

5. Lack of education to the newbie user

The last aspect of UX that Web3 needs to improve is the lack of education of the novice user. Newcomers can feel overwhelmed and disoriented when landing on a Web3 product for the first time. This happens especially on the first few screens of the product, which show all the information, features and options at once. There seem to be no instructions and the user is expected to figure out how to use it on their own.

And this is not so trivial, everything you do in blockchain/DeFi is on you. You are fully responsible, but also the one to blame. The users must pay attention and be aware of all their interactions. There is no going back in blockchain matters, here is no customer support to solve the mistakes. Your tokens, keys, or other assets could be lost forever if you don’t know what you’re doing. And keep in mind that nothing on Web3 is for free.

Thus, a newbie faces a high barrier to entry and is prone to mistakes when it comes to niche knowledge. Is the UXer that should prevent any kind of undesirable mistakes where possible.

It is clear that the blockchain itself is a complex theory and challenges the user to be informed, to study new concepts and to be in the flow. But, it takes a lot of learning to fully understand it, and it shouldn’t be this hard for newbies. We need to educate, motivate and guide them. 

To engage new users smoothly and faster in this world, we need to devote resources and efforts to educate them and provide friendly and digestible information. Detailed manuals are not necessary, who needs to know everything all the time? But the use of FAQs, help docs and walkthroughs could be good options, as well as paying special attention to our onboarding flows. Also, we can add goals for users to achieve as they progress from newbies to advanced users, to become more and more proficient in the use of dApps. Therefore, this learning process can be simplified and more gradual.

This has been just a glimpse of some of the aspects UX that web3 needs to change. But, I know there are a lot of other aspects that we could improve to make our new users’ lives much easier.

Good UX practices haven’t yet emerged and we have many challenges to overcome. The expectation and the high bar that Web2’s users left us, will turn these challenges into a real statement as something to motivate us to improve ourselves. We are at a time when we need to use the best of web2’s design and mix it up with the best UX solutions that this new era will bring. Based, for sure, on new users.

The post 5 UX aspects that Web3 needs to improve appeared first on Mighty Block.

The city of Rio de Janeiro is seeking crypto firms to operate its tax property seasoning in 2023, according to a decree published on Oct. 11, allowing taxpayers to use crypto alongside fiat currency to pay tributes. The move makes Rio the first Brazilian city to accept digital assets as payment for taxes.

It is expected that taxpayers will be able to pay with more than one crypto asset and that other types of taxes will be enabled in the future, the city stated. The decree also states that companies willing to provide the services must be registered with the city and comply with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements.

The hired companies will provide cryptocurrency payment services and convert crypto into fiat currency. Funds will be transferred to the city in local fiat currency without any additional cost to taxpayers. Mayor Eduardo Paes said in a statement:

“Rio de Janeiro is a global city. Therefore, we are following  technology and economic advances in the universe of digital financial assets. We have a look to the future and we want to become the country’s capital of innovation and technology. Our city is the first in Brazil to offer the taxpayer this type of crypto payments.”

Similar actions have been taken around the world. In September, the United States state of Colorado started accepting crypto payments for any taxes owed. The legislatures of Arizona, Wyoming and Utah have all introduced bills to accept tax payments in the form of digital currencies to varying degrees.

Rio de Janeiro’s initiative is another example of the efforts being made in the country to broaden adoption. Recently, the number of companies holding cryptocurrency in Brazil has reached record highs as of August, as the local taxation authority, Receita Federal do Brasil, recorded 12,053 unique organizations declaring crypto on their balance sheets in August, up 6.1% over July.

The post Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro will accept crypto payments for property taxes appeared first on Mighty Block.

Apple has green-flagged new apps selling NFTs as well as developers of the existing apps listed on the App Store. But the catch here is that Apple will be charging a 30% hefty fee for all NFT transactions made through the apps.

This hefty fee will also deter projects, game owners, and apps from using this feature on the App Store. This is because other typical NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea and Magic Eden often take only 5% commission which is very negligible.

As reported by The Information, NFT startup Magic Eden has decided to withdraw its services from the App Store. This happens even after Apple reduced its commission to 15% for companies with annual revenue of less than $1 million. Web3 CEO Gabriel Leydon sees the overall positive side of the situation noting:

“Everyone is focusing on apple wanting its 30% cut of each transaction without realizing this could put an ETH wallet in every single mobile game onboarding 1B+ players!” He added, “I will HAPPILY give Apple a 30% cut of a free NFT.”

Apple Says No To Crypto

Although Apple is currently allowing apps on the App Store to sell NFTs, the company shall still not be accepting crypto yet. Also, Apple is refraining from getting directly involved with the crypto and NFT space. One of the obvious reasons would be they don’t want to draw the regulatory ire as faced by Meta, previously Facebook.

Earlier in June this year, there were some rumors though about Apple possibly releasing NFT trading cards at one of their developer conferences. However, it never came to fruition.

The post Apple App Store To Allow Apps Selling NFTs appeared first on Mighty Block.

User activity on blockchain gaming decentralized applications (DApps) surged in September, with a host of games posting significant increases in the number of active users.

According to data from DappRadar, seven out of the top 10 games in terms of the number of “unique wallet addresses interacting with dapp’s smart contracts” increased over the past 30 days, with all of the top five games being in the green during that time frame.

At the time of writing, the DApps registering growth in the period include Web3 gaming platform Gameta, and blockchain-based games Alien Worlds, Solitaire Blitz, Benji Bananas and Splinterlands, Farmers World and Arc8 by GAMEE. 

In a Sept. 27 blog post, DappRadar noted that eight of the current top 10 blockchain games are mobile-first, which could eventually “bring millions of users to the blockchain,” noting: 

“Dapp games like Gameta, Benji Bananas, Upland, and Trickshot Blitz let anyone with a mobile device earn crypto with little prior knowledge, investment, or risk.”

“Using daily activities like hyper-casual mobile games as a hook ensures users find fun once they interact, while solid tokenomics can encourage everyday use and retention,” it added. 

DappRadar said one of the possible reasons for a rise in popularity of blockchain games despite the bear market, is the idea of “bleed in the bear and run in the bull:”

The biggest uptick in users came from Animoca Brands’ Benji Bananas (Polygon), which saw a 2016.54% increase over the past 30 days. Notably, this game was a Web2 mobile app until March this year. Animoca then introduced play-to-earn (P2E) elements via the Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated Ape Coin (APE).

While it is unclear what specifically saw the number of Benji Bananas users increase by so much, it did host a P2E gaming event this month that offered a series of valuable in-game NFTs to the winners.

Out of the top 10 games, only Axie Infinity, Trickshot Blitz and Upland saw decreases over the past 30-days.

The increase of blockchain gamers this month comes as publications such as Bloomberg note in a Sept. 28 article that the highly correlated NFT market trading “frenzy is almost dead.” It points to overall NFT trading volumes dropping 97% since January as evidence of such.

As Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu pointed out via Twitter on Sept. 30, purely looking at the metric of NFT sales volume doesn’t necessarily paint the whole picture in NFTs or gaming.

Siu highlighted that NFT prices have generally declined in accordance with the price of their paired assets such as Ether (ETH), while many games — that don’t often grab the headlines — require NFTs that are relatively cheap. He instead emphasized that user activity and the number of people entering Web3 is where the focus should be.

Gods Unchained breaks 10 top NFT sales

Meanwhile, NFT-based card battle game Gods Unchained has seen its NFT sales volume creep into the top 10 in NFT sales volume over the past 30 days, according to Cryptoslam.

Gods Unchained has seen a 373.25% increase over the past 30 days to sit at $10.8 million at the time of writing. This marks the first time the game has seen NFT sales top $10 million since January, and after a very slow February to August period.

Reasons behind this could be due to discussions of a “Season 2” upgrade to improve the game and lore in the works and GameStop offering free NFT packs to Pro members this month. Meanwhile, an esports tournament with a $70,000 prize pool was also announced at the start of this week.

Gods Unchained has also seen a significant increase in active users over the past 30 days, gaining 28.50% to sit at around 14,180 according to DappRadar. The game still has a long way to catch up to the top 10, however, as its user count places it at twenty-eighth.

The post Blockchain gamers surge as users attempt ‘stacking crypto’ — DappRadar appeared first on Mighty Block.

We must be extremely careful with the code we use: if we make one simple mistake it could be extremely expensive. That’s why we consider alternatives as a way to avoid this limitation. Let’s see how we can use an upgradeable contracts.

Contracts Old School

The simplest thing we can do is upload a new version of the contract (and thus a new deploy and a new address). But this has its issues, for example let’s think about what it was like to have a shop a few years ago (before the internet). If we wanted to move to another address, we had no way of notifying all our clients and potential future clients of this change. The same thing happens in smart contracts, all users must know that the address has changed, but not having a user registry makes it very difficult.

Ways to create a upgradeable contracts

There are currently 4 ways to create an upgradeable contracts.

Using an interface / proxy

Taking advantage of inheritance and polymorphism, an interface with the contract structure can be exposed. So now we have two contracts: one with the contract definition (and external calls) and the other with the function’s implementation. The user interacts with the contract through the interface and if an update is required, the address of the contract is simply changed for the new version in a simple variable inside the contract.

It is not possible to modify the contract’s structure since we MUST respect its interface, but its main disadvantage is that the stored values ​​will remain in the contract that has the logic, and if we want to update it with that of another contract, we will lose the storage state.

What is done to solve the storage issue is to have a “proxy” contract that has the same structure as the one with the logic, and it is accessed through the delegatecall instruction. It is SUPER IMPORTANT to keep the same variable structure in the contracts since we will be sharing the storage, and if both do not have the same variable structure, a collision could occur. A possible solution for this is that they both inherit from a base contract that sets the same variable-structure for all of the contract versions.

It seems to be a better alternative but in terms of gas it is expensive: we are always adding variables that we will most likely never use in every logic contract we implement. This can be improved if a third-party storage contract is used, for this, we can use solutions such as OpenZeppelin or combine it with an unstructured storage.

OpenZeppelin Transparent Proxy

If you are a user of the OpenZeppelin contracts you have noticed this plugin for sure. Inside, it uses a mechanism known as Transparent Proxy, which uses unstructured storage to avoid collisions (as long as we add the variables at the end and never at the beginning). This proxy is already integrated as a plugin and is compatible with Hardhat and Truffle.

Link here

Diamond Pattern

This is one of the most popular and most complex, since we have an intermediary contract, but instead of aiming for a single final contract, each function will be implemented in a different smart contract. In addition, each “Facet” contract (as they are called) will have a fixed memory space to avoid collisions. A major advantage is, a whole contract deployment is not required, just a contract with one function implementation. That’s cheaper than deploying a complete-structure contract with all of the functions and also as there is just one function per contract, the size limit is very hard to reach. It is undoubtedly the favoured solution for the complex scenarios that are created today and there is even an EIP that refers to it.

Link here

Syntethix Router Proxies

At ETH Latam event, Alejandro Santander (known as The Ethernaut) presented a solution called Router Proxies. It is quite similar to the Diamond Pattern, but simpler. I recommend watching this talk!

Link here

Video here

Metamorphosis Smart Contract

What? Well, we are not actually modifying the contract, but if we had the ability to remove the contract from storage, we could force a deployment to that same address, then replace one contract with another. And this is how this technique works. Through the selfdestruct() statement, it is possible to remove a contract from the blockchain storage, and using the create2 operation, a new version of the contract is deployed to THE SAME ADDRESS.

Link here

Ok, but… is it okay to modify a Smart Contract?

In centralized software, not only is this not a bad thing, it is a necessary thing. What happens in decentralized projects? Who should update the code? Is a DAO reliable enough? On the one hand, an immutable contract seems more reliable than an upgradeable contracts but it also makes it more vulnerable to attacks. In my opinion, it is good to consider all these alternatives and use them if the project requires a sophisticated architecture. Making a contract upgradeable makes its code much harder to understand and trace, but improves its resistance to attacks. If the strength of a project is its simplicity, I would not work on making the contract updatable, but I would do so in complex projects with multiple contracts.

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