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Warren Buffett-backed neobank picks Polygon for Web3 token — MATIC price eyes 100% rally

October 24, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain development

MATIC has painted a bull flag setup with a profit target sitting nearly 100% higher than its current price.

The price of Polygon’s MATIC (MATIC) coin could double by the end of 2022 or early 2023 due to a mix of extremely bullish fundamental and technical indicators.

Polygon wins high-profile clients

MATIC rose by nearly 6.5% four days after Nubank, a Brazilian fintech company backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Softbank, confirmed that it selected Polygon’s “Supernets technology” for its blockchain and digital token, dubbed Nucoin.

“Nubank plans to airdrop the digital token to its customers in the first half of 2023,” the official announcement read, adding:

“These tokens will serve as the basis for its customers loyalty rewards program and will have benefits such as discounts and other advantages.”

#Polygon is taking @Nubank from #Web2 ➡️ #Web3!

In a strategic partnership with Polygon, Nubank is launching its own chain using #PolygonSupernets & thus its digital token Nucoin #onPolygon

This move will open the gateway for 70 mn+ Nubank users to the #Web3 space pic.twitter.com/Fu06Vi7IpV
— Polygon - MATIC (@0xPolygon) October 19, 2022

As a result of the rally, MATIC was changing hands for $0.90 on Oct. 24, its highest level in three weeks.

Polygon Supernets is an enterprise-level solution that removes the complexity of blockchain development for companies looking to build their native chains. Interestingly, before Nubank, gaming company GameSwift employed the product to launch its custom blockchain.

The growing demand for Polygon products may bring a similar boom for its native token, MATIC, which serves as a utility and staking asset within the Polygon blockchain ecosystem.

MATIC eyes bull flag breakout

The Nubank news surfaces as MATIC paints what appears to be a bullish continuation pattern on its lower-timeframe chart.

Dubbed a “bull flag,” the pattern emerges when the price consolidates inside a parallel, descending channel after a strong move upward. As a rule, it resolves after the price breaks out of the range to the upside and rises by as much as the previous uptrend’s height.

*MATIC/USD 3-day chart featuring bull flag breakout setup. Source: TradingView*

Therefore, MATIC’s breakout above the flag’s upper trendline could have it test $1.85 as its primary upside target. In other words, it could see a 100% price rally by the end of 2022 or at the beginning of 2023.

Conversely, a pullback from the flag’s upper trendline could lead MATIC toward the lower trendline near $0.67.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Weekly active crypto devs drops over 26% over the last 3 months

September 9, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Artemis

Blockchain developer activity is one of the most crucial metrics in measuring the success of a smart contract platform — one that lacks developers will struggle to grow.

The crypto industry has seen more than a 26% reduction in weekly active developers over the last three months amid a prolonged market slump, the latest data shows.

According to Blockchain data aggregator Artemis, the four leading smart contract platforms — Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, and Cosmos experienced even higher drop-off, clocking 30.5%, 43.6%, 48.4%, and 48.9% reductions in developer activity respectively over the last three months.

Interestingly, decentralized data storage protocol Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and blockchain network Internet Computer were among the few top smart contract platforms to have seen growth throughout this period, with increases of 206.6% and 21.7% respectively.

Blockchain developers are primarily responsible for designing blockchain architecture, maintaining and upgrading infrastructure, and building smart contracts that power decentralized applications.

Blockchain developer activity is considered one of the most important metrics for the success of a smart contract platform, as one that lacks developers will likely struggle to grow.

Crypto researcher and founder of Tascha Labs, Tascha Che told her 173,700 Twitter followers on Sept. 8 that she doesn’t believe the trend is of much concern, as the fall was attributed to the exit of “tourist builders” and “tourist investors,” which will now allow legitimate builders to “have peace and quiet to get real work done.”

Active developers across all crypto protocols have dropped 30% this yr.

Tourist builders are leaving along w/ tourist investors.

Finally the industry is having some peace & quiet to get real work done.

h/t @Artemis__xyz pic.twitter.com/PAGi6Yh7eo
— Tascha (@TaschaLabs) September 8, 2022

Another Twitter user, identifying themselves as a Binance research analyst didn’t comment on the downward trend but said developer activity will be an “important metric” to consider in the years to come because of the “flywheel effect” it has on the industry.

The fall in developer activity follows a crypto market downfall from April to mid-June, which saw the entire crypto market cap slashed from $2.1 trillion to $890 billion.

Cardano’s Vasil hard fork proposal submitted: Countdown commences

June 30, 2022 Coin Telegraph

ada

From July 3 the four-week window for application developers and exchanges to test the upcoming Cardano upgrade begins before it's launched onto the mainnet.

Cardano (ADA) blockchain developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) has submitted an update proposal to hard fork the Cardano testnet, kicking off the countdown for the network's Vasil mainnet upgrade.

The Vasil upgrade is slated to bring “significant performance and capability upgrades” to the blockchain, with IOHK describing the fork as the “biggest and best upgrade to date” providing a higher throughput, improved script performance for developers and lower costs.

One of the most significant updates pointed out by the team is the implementation of diffusion pipelining aimed at improving the blockchains' scalability for decentralized applications (DApps).

The update will allow faster block creation as they can be transmitted without full validation.

If everything goes smoothly, the upgrade to the testnet will take place July 3, with the mainnet upgrade scheduled for roughly around the end of July. The Cardano community requested four weeks minimum to allow time to test and upgrade applications on the testnet, and IOHK says the hard fork for the mainnet will take place “once everyone is comfortable and ready.”

The Cardano mainnet upgrade was previously supposed to take place on June 29 but was delayed by a month on June 22 citing several outstanding bugs. IOHK has called the project the “most complex program of work we’ve undertaken”.

IOHK’s “prime concern” is ensuring the upgrade is managed in a “safe and secure” manner. It reports the Vasil node is creating over 75% of the testnet network’s blocks and believes there is “good chain density to proceed safely.”

The last significant upgrade to the blockchain was in September 2021 with the Alonzo hard fork which brought in long-awaited smart contract functionality for the first time using Plutus scripts, a smart contract development language purpose built for Cardano.

The upgrade was widely considered to be a disappointment as Cardano still only has 11 DApps according to DeFi Llama. The co-founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson previously predicted there would be “thousands of DApps” on Cardano by 2021 and believes developers are waiting for the Vasil upgrade to launch their projects.

The Vasil node is named in honor of Vasil Stoyanov Dabov, an artist and Cardano community member and ambassador who passed away in December 2021 after a diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.

Cardano is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain and touted as a so-called “Ethereum Killer” which aims to beat Ethereum (ETH) by providing better scalability, transactions per second and lower fees.

Currently, its native coin ADA sits in eighth position with a $15.7 billion market capitalization at a price of around $0.45, down 85% from its all-time-high of over $3 in September 2021 according to data from CoinGecko.

Blockchain development