1. Home
  2. Partnership

Partnership

Polygon to help fight NFT scams with Web3 infra protocol partnership

Polygon partners with Wakweli, a Web3 infrastructure protocol that issues certificates of authenticity for NFTs to certify originality.

Wakweli, a Web3 infrastructure protocol that issues certificates of authenticity for nonfungible tokens (NFT), has officially partnered with layer-2 scaling platform Polygon to make NFT authentication possible.

The partnership between Polygon and Wakweli means all digital assets on Polygon will be compatible with Wakweli’s certification system. According to the announcement, every NFT project holder on the Polygon chain can request authenticity certificates for each asset. The collaboration generally aims to enhance the security of the digital ecosystem.

In response to the cost of the certificate authentication for users, Antoine Sarraute, co-founder of Wakweli, told Cointelegraph that staking WAKU — Wakweli’s utility token — is necessary to create a certificate request. The amount to stake in a request is dependent on and linked to the level of trust needed for each case.

The partnership agreement negotiations between the two companies began in August 2022, with the final details of the agreement concluded this March.

Wakweli’s testnet will be available in April and can be used with Polygon’s Mumbai testnet. Alpha testing with Polygon’s mainnet will begin in Q2 2023, with general mainnet compatibility is expected to be ready by Q3 2023.

By providing a medium for detecting counterfeit NFTs, the partnership between the two companies has unlocked a definitive way to fight these scam attempts, thereby creating more trust in the thriving ecosystem, Sarraute explained. 

Related: Polygon’s ‘holy grail’ Ethereum-scaling zkEVM beta hits mainnet

The Wakweli platform and application programming interface will offer developers access to advanced use case scenarios, including automatically generating certification requests when minting or accessing more detailed certification information.

In the past month, the Polygon Foundation has also collaborated with the South Korean multinational conglomerate Lotte Group to showcase the company’s NFT projects.

Polygon has gained significant traction through partnerships with major brands such as Starbucks and Adidas, leading to increased adoption of the network among cryptocurrency users. 

Magazine: Justin Sun vs. SEC, Do Kwon arrested, 180M player game taps Polygon: Asia Express

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Noble Partners With Circle Financial to Integrate USDC on Cosmos Blockchain

Noble Partners With Circle Financial to Integrate USDC on Cosmos BlockchainAccording to the token protocol startup Noble, the second-largest stablecoin, USDC, will be integrated into the Cosmos blockchain, as the company has partnered with Circle Financial for the rollout. Noble details that the integration will give access to Circle’s USDC stablecoin to more than 50 Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) networks. USDC Native Support Is Coming to […]

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Blockchain.com Shutters Asset Management Subsidiary Amid Crypto Winter and Industry Turmoil

Blockchain.com Shutters Asset Management Subsidiary Amid Crypto Winter and Industry TurmoilAccording to reports and a filing that shows its name struck off the U.K. companies’ register list, Blockchain.com is sunsetting its Blockchain.com Asset Management subsidiary. A company spokesperson cited deteriorating “macroeconomic conditions” and the “crypto winter” as some of the reasons for halting the institutional business. The Impact of Crypto Winter on the Cryptocurrency Industry […]

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Circle, Paxos, Bitstamp and Galaxy join Coinbase in scaling back partnerships with Silvergate Bank

Silvergate is reportedly facing an investigation from the United States Department of Justice over its alleged role in the FTX collapse, involving Sam Bankman-Fried's account.

Several crypto firms have announced they will scale back or outright terminate their relationship with Silvergate Bank following an announced investigation into its alleged involvement in the FTX collapse.

Amid news that crypto exchange Coinbase would no longer accept or initiate payments with Silvergate, companies including stablecoin issuers Paxos and Circle and Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital have announced similar actions regarding their partnerships with the crypto bank. Galaxy Digital announced on March 2 that it had stopped accepting or initiating transfers to the bank “out of an abundance of caution”.

In separate posts on Twitter on March 2, Paxos said it had already “discontinued all [Silvergate Exchange Network] transfers and wires” to the firm’s account, but would continue to process outgoing payments. Circle added it was “in the process of unwinding certain services” with Silvergate, and Bitstamp said its bank transfer services would be provided by “other global banking partners”.

“Please be aware that Bitstamp cannot be responsible for any funds deposited into the Silvergate bank account,” said the firm. “If you do choose to deposit funds into this account, you do so at your own risk.”

The termination of partnerships with Silvergate followed reports the bank was facing an investigation from the United States Department of Justice over its alleged involvement in the FTX collapse. Former FTX chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried — also the target of a criminal investigation — held an account with the crypto bank.

Related: Crypto bank Silvergate ranks as the second- most-shorted stock on Wall Street

Silvergate announced in a March 1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it did not expect to submit its report on the 2022 fiscal year by March 16. Shares of the crypto bank’s stock have already fallen more than 55% in the last 24 hours, reaching $5.97 at the time of publication.

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Report Claims Visa and Mastercard Plan to Pause New Partnerships, Visa’s Head of Crypto Insists ‘Story Is Inaccurate’

Report Claims Visa and Mastercard Plan to Pause New Partnerships, Visa’s Head of Crypto Insists ‘Story Is Inaccurate’According to a recent report from sources familiar with the matter, Mastercard and Visa, the credit card and payment services giants, are halting new partnerships with cryptocurrency firms. This news comes after the collapse of several cryptocurrency ventures that offered crypto debit cards and failed due to financial difficulties last year. After the report published, […]

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Canadian University Dubai backtracks on accepting crypto via Binance Pay

Before hitting a technical roadblock, CUD was seemingly interested in collecting tuition and course fees in cryptocurrencies from both domestic and international students.

Not even 24 hours after the Canadian University Dubai (CUD) announced its partnership with Binance Pay to accept course fees in cryptocurrencies, a technical roadblock watered down the excitement behind the short-lived initiative.

CUD, a private university in Dubai, was seemingly interested in allowing students — both domestic and international — to pay their tuition and course fees in cryptocurrencies. This initiative would have allowed students from varied backgrounds easy access to the Canadian curriculum in Dubai.

Binance Pay, a payment gateway service launched by crypto exchange Binance, allows businesses to integrate support for cryptocurrency payments. According to the university’s initial announcement, the Binance partnership allowed the institution to “have adapted to the transforming digital payment space.”

Binance Pay supports over 200 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Ethereum (ETH), and charges 0 fees per transaction. On Feb. 7, Binance hosted a cryptocurrency workshop and information session for CUD wherein students were taught about blockchain fundamentals, crypto fundamentals, web3 and metaverse.

Canadian University Dubai total number of students. Source: topuniversities.com

As shown above, CUD is home to over 1800 domestic and international students — enrolled in one of the 25 undergraduate and six graduate programs — who pay a yearly tuition fee of $18,000.

Canadian University Dubai has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Related: Crypto projects respond to privacy coin ban in Dubai

Right when Binance was eyeing a partnership with CUD, Dubai released crypto regulations for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) on Feb. 7. The Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) issued its “Full Market Product Regulations,” which include four compulsory rulebooks and activity-specific rulebooks that lay down the rules for operating VASPs.

“Regulatory certainty is very good for business. It is good for consumers, investors and for the Emirate of Dubai. The regulations are long-awaited and mostly welcomed,” said Irina Heaver, a crypto and blockchain lawyer based in the United Arab Emirates, speaking to Cointelegraph.

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Moonpay and Looksrare Partner to Bring Convenient NFT Purchasing to the Masses

Moonpay and Looksrare Partner to Bring Convenient NFT Purchasing to the MassesOn Thursday, the fiat-to-crypto onramp business Moonpay announced a multi-year partnership with the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Looksrare. According to the deal, Looksrare will allow marketplace users to buy and sell crypto assets through Moonpay’s services. Moonpay and Looksrare Join Forces to Streamline NFT Transactions Moonpay, the fiat-to-crypto service founded in 2019, revealed that it […]

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

File Transfer Giant Wetransfer Joins NFT Industry, Partners with Blockchain Platform Minima for March Launch of Minting Product

File Transfer Giant Wetransfer Joins NFT Industry, Partners with Blockchain Platform Minima for March Launch of Minting ProductFile transfer service giant Wetransfer announced Monday it is collaborating with blockchain platform Minima to offer a non-fungible token (NFT) minting product in March. Wetransfer’s announcement details that users leveraging the Minima cooperative will be able to mint NFTs from a mobile device or computer. Wetransfer and Minima Partnership Aims to Bring NFT Minting to […]

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Google Backs AI Firm Anthropic With $300 Million, Following Series B Investment From Controversial FTX Co-Founder

Google Backs AI Firm Anthropic With 0 Million, Following Series B Investment From Controversial FTX Co-FounderAs the artificial intelligence (AI) wars intensify, the AI firm Anthropic has raised $300 million from Google and sources say that the tech giant will get roughly a 10% stake in the AI company. Interestingly, in April 2022, Anthropic raised approximately $500 million from sources including Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), co-founder of FTX; Caroline Ellison, former […]

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why

Stablecoins and CBDCs might play ‘meaningful role’ in payments — Visa CEO

Visa began working on a blockchain interoperability project in Sept. 2021 to support CBDC and stablecoin adoption but few updates have been made since.

The chief executive of credit card giant Visa remains confident that blockchain-powered solutions can be integrated into its services and offerings to power the next generation of payments.

Speaking on a call at Visa’s annual stockholder meeting on Jan. 24, outgoing CEO Al Kelly — who will officially step down on Feb. 1 — briefly shared the firm’s plans for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins.

According to a Jan. 24 report from San Francisco Business Times, Kelly said:

“It’s very early days, but we continue to believe that stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies have the potential to play a meaningful role in the payments space, and we have a number of initiatives underway.”

“We’ve had an immaterial amount of investments in crypto funds and companies as we seek to invest in the payments ecosystem,” the outgoing CEO explained.

Kelly also confirmed that Visa’s balance sheet hasn’t been impacted by some of the “high-profile failures” that rocked the cryptocurrency space in 2022:

“We’ve had no credit losses related to these failures [...] In everything we do, please know that we’re extremely focused on maintaining the integrity of Visa’s payment system and the payment system in totality and of course, the reputation of our brand standing for trust.”

Over the years, Visa has worked on a number of crypto-related initiatives.

Its research team began working on a blockchain interoperability project in September 2021, named the Universal Payment Channel (UPC) initiative, the project was designed to establish a “network of networks” for CBDCs and private stablecoins to pass through various payment channels.

Visa hasn’t provided an update on the UPC in over 12 months, however.

More recently, the payment giant announced on Dec. 20, 2022, that it was chalking up a plan to allow automated bills to be paid out from a user’s Ethereum-powered wallet.

Visa has also rolled out several “zero fee” cryptocurrency debit cards of late including a now-terminated agreement with FTX and a partnership with Blockchain.com on Oct. 26, 2022, which is still in effect.

A sample Visa-FTX debit card before Visa ultimately terminated the partnership agreement. Source: Yahoo Finance.

While Visa’s 2022 annual report only included data up until Sept. 30 — about five weeks before FTX collapsed — more information may be revealed in Visa’s Q1 2023 earnings call on Jan. 26.

Related: Bitcoin Lightning Network vs Visa and Mastercard: How do they stack up?

Visa President Ryan McInerney will officially replace Al Kelly as CEO on Feb. 1, while Kelly will remain on board as executive chairman.

McInerney appears to be equally, if not more bullish on blockchain-powered payment solutions too.

In an interview with Fortune in November 2022, McInerney said Visa still has “$14 trillion of cash out there being spent by consumers that can be digitized” and that they’re continuing to explore where crypto payments may be best leveraged.

New Altcoin Season Now in Sight, According to Crypto Strategist – Here’s Why