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.

Reddit’s NFT avatars are off to a surging start, with the collections driving $2.5M in trade volume over the past 24 hours, according to Dune Analytics.

And the performance is a boon for Polygon, which is supporting the NFT marketplace. The smart contract network’s native token, MATIC, has jumped almost 13% in four days compared to a 5% uptick for Ether in the same period. 

Avatars

Dune’s dashboard shows that more than 2.8M wallets hold Reddit’s NFT avatars. The collections drove $6M in volume and 22,229 sales since launching in July.

Floor prices for the collections vary significantly, ranging from 0.05 ETH to 1.73 ETH.

Skeptics believe the investors purchasing Reddit’s NFT avatars on the secondary markets may be setting themselves up for disappointment.

“NFT Twitter getting so excited they became exit liquidity,” said DanielitoG25, an NFT collector with a Bored Ape avatar on his Twitter profile.

Others are praising Reddit for driving NFT adoption among new users. “Reddit users are getting red-pilled on ‘digital collectibles’,” Lark Davis, a popular crypto influencer, posted. “NFTs will be bigger than most can imagine still!”

BAYC2745 of Psychedelics Anonymous chimed in: “NFTs will be mass adopted by hundreds of millions (e.g Reddit PFPs) of people who have no idea they are interacting with NFTs.” 

Polygon-powered Marketplace

Reddit launched its Polygon-powered NFT marketplace on July 7. The Polygon PoS Chain is the No. 6 smart contract network with a total value locked of $1.2B, according to DeFi Llama. 

The Reddit avatar NFTs went on sale for between $9.99 and $99.99 each. Reddit’s most active users were also eligible to receive an avatar via airdrop, although the freely issued NFTs are fetching lower prices on secondary markets.

The artists that designed the NFTs receive a share of secondary market sales. So far, artists have earned more than $103,000 in royalties from the collections.

MATIC’s surge comes as Polygon continues to ink partnerships with major enterprises. On Oct. 20, Nubank, a Latin American fintech servicing more than 70M customers, announced it will launch a blockchain and native token leveraging Polygon’s technology.

In September, Robinhood launched its Polygon-powered web3 wallet in beta to the first 10,000 iOS users on its waitlist. In April, Stripe also began processing USDC payments via the Polygon PoS network.

The post Trade Volume in Reddit’s NFTs Surges $2.5M in 24 Hours 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.