Features

Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra hard fork brings huge improvements for users — but the single most important scaling upgrade has been left out.

The Ethereum roadmap has been under attack from all sides recently, with even ETH researcher Dankrad Feist and Base creator Jesse Pollak agreeing the existing scaling plan is “unambitious” and not “even close to aggressive enough.”

The community consternation appears to have lit a fire under some leading figures.

Over the weekend, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin released a new post calling for the roadmap to accelerate and quickly scale up from the current three data availability blobs per slot to 128 blobs and beyond. L2s use blobs to store data and need as many as possible to grow affordably. Crypto investment firm Paradigm laid out its own plan that basically says: “Stop dicking around and ship scaling upgrades faster.”

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Crypto has finally become user-friendly thanks to intents, chain abstraction, passkeys and other new tech — and it’s already live.

For the past 15 years, crypto has struggled to gain mainstream adoption because its difficult to use. The benefits of decentralized and uncensorable money are clear, but the janky user experience posed a very high bar to entry.

Working out how to use seed phrases and hardware wallets, the gut-churning unease felt in the 15 minutes it takes for a large amount of crypto to land in a 34-character address that may have been mistyped the UX sucks for ordinary people.

And once youve figured out Ethereum or Bitcoin, there are a million other blockchains, each with its own unique rules and features, with no easy way to transfer assets or actions between them.

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AI models are a privacy nightmare that are often borked by the safety team. Here’s how to get around the censorship and use AI anonymously.

In early 2024, Googles AI tool, Gemini, caused controversy by generating pictures of racially diverse Nazis and other historical discrepancies. For many, the moment was a signal that AI was not going to be the ideologically neutral tool theyd hoped.

Introduced to fix the very real problem of biased AI generating too many pictures of attractive white people which are over-represented in training data the over-correction highlighted how Googles trust and safety team is pulling strings behind the scenes.

And while the guardrails have become a little less obvious since, Gemini and its major competitors ChatGPT and Claude still censor, filter and curate information along ideological lines. 

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“We are cleaning the environment, because without us, the city will be too dirty,” explains Jane Mago, a waste picker from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Her words underscore the environmental challenges bedeviling much of Africa—from polluted oceans and the menace of plastic bottles to poorly managed waste. These issues are not just local but reflect […]

We are cleaning the environment, because without us, the city will be too dirty, explains Jane Mago, a waste picker from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Her words underscore the environmental challenges bedeviling much of Africafrom polluted oceans and the menace of plastic bottles to poorly managed waste. These issues are not just local but reflect a bigger, global crisis.

In a world where the devastating effects of climate change and pollution are being witnessed on a regular basis, cleaning up the planet is no longer an option but a responsibility we owe to ourselves and future generations.

But what if caring for the planet didnt just feel good or seem like the right thing to do, but also had the potential to support yourself or your family?

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2025 is shaping up as the most important year ever for crypto regulations. Here’s how laws and rules are set to change worldwide.

Everything looks set to change for crypto regulation and legislation in the United States in 2025.

Token Alliance co-chair Paul Atkins has been nominated to replace crypto antagonist Gary Gensler as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), signaling a major shift in how crypto is regulated in the United States. 

Genslers tenure, though instrumental in laying regulatory groundwork and case laws, drew heavy criticism for its reliance on enforcement-driven regulation.

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The dream of a peer-to-peer electronic cash network has been realized… but with centralized stablecoins based on USD, dammit.

Down the road from Piccadilly Circus and up Shaftesbury Avenue, The Century Club in London is one of the private members clubs that are dotted around Soho and the rest of the UKs capital.

For many, they are an outdated tradition of this most ancient of cities, a status symbol of privilege and an elite that was based on colonialism and slavery. For others, they are an intelligent place to do business away from the disruption of co-working spaces and noisy offices.

Traditionally slow to be innovative, it was refreshing to see last month that the Century Club has installed BTC terminals so members and their guests can settle their bills with cryptocurrency.

Founded this century in 2001 for the creative industry, the club has engaged payment provider Musquet to provide the terminals, and they have already proved popular with members, many of whom are of the demographic that has invested in cryptocurrency.

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Memecoins are criticized for being useless, despite being heaps of fun and a path to riches. Here are the 5 real uses for useless memecoins.

Memes are crypto distilled to its essence: social trends, wry humor and the lure of ridiculous profits all wrapped up in a token that doesnt do anything. Its not for Warren Buffett, but it is for a huge range of ordinary people looking for fun, community and a lottery ticket out of the backwater they live in.

The meme is the alpha, says Danny Yang, founder of OnChainMonkey, referring to the insane returns against other metrics. Memecoins gamify the investment process as investors swoop in to follow intangible trends from election results or jump on the latest coin minted 10 minutes after the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect was arrested. Very 4Chan-esque. 

Building communities, social bonds and having fun are all part of the attraction of memecoins. Humans are social creatures, and memes are about people who find entertainment in the same thing, Yang says.

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13 crypto gift ideas from SOL and ETH phones, to NFT picture frames and Sui gaming handhelds. Hint: You could also just buy them for yourself.

Forget ugly sweaters and fruitcakes. This Christmas, its all about the Bitcoin bling and blockchain delights. 

Whether your loved one is mining crypto under the mistletoe, flexing their non-fungible tokens like Christmas ornaments, or staking tokens while sipping eggnog, Cointelegraphs 2024 holiday gift guide has the perfect presents to light up their holiday.

Here are 13 Web3 gifts to wrap up for crypto enthusiasts this holiday season.

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