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Solana Labs partners with Google Cloud to launch Web3 API

The new “Gameshift” service will serve as a Web2-to-Web3 bridge for developers. 

Solana Labs and Google Cloud recently launched Gameshift, a gaming development API that aims to bridge traditional Web2 experiences with Web3 services such as blockchain technology and digital asset management.

The new suite of tools was announced at the 2024 Solana Breakpoint conference during the “Gamer Village” side stage events. Gameshift is the next stage of the two companies’ extended partnership and is currently available on the Google Cloud Marketplace. 

According to a blog post from Google Cloud, Gameshift is an API that provides a full suite of foundational Web3 services to projects hosted within the cloud ecosystem. 

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Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Labs debuts blockchain customer loyalty platform Bond

Solana Labs has launched Bond, a new platform that will let non-crypto brands leverage the power of blockchain tech to engage with customers.

Solana Labs, the company behind layer-1 blockchain Solana, could soon be bringing many more non-crypto native brands and their customers into Web3 without many of them even knowing.

As of June 12, the firm has officially launched Bond, its new blockchain-based customer engagement platform aimed at helping brands “drive long-term loyalty.”

Solana Labs says the new platform will address “critical limitations” in today’s loyalty programs, namely, losing connection with the end customer if a product is ever resold or gifted.

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Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Labs Launches Bond, a Blockchain Digital Customer Engagement Platform

Solana Labs Launches Bond, a Blockchain Digital Customer Engagement PlatformSolana Labs announced the launch of Bond, a platform that uses blockchain and cryptocurrency structures to establish links between brands and their customers. Bond will offer different features, including digital collectives, authentication of luxury goods, and digital passports for products, all built on top of the Solana blockchain for low costs and scalability purposes. Solana […]

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko Thinks Crypto Has a Shot at Disrupting the App Store Duopoly

Solana Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko Thinks Crypto Has a Shot at Disrupting the App Store DuopolyAnatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, believes that crypto can have a shot at disrupting Google’s and Apple’s app store duopoly. He criticized the state of the software distribution on mobile devices, lamenting that the two stores collected over 30% of all earnings just to display a top 10 list of the most downloaded apps. […]

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Integrates Filecoin to Enhance Historic Data Accessibility

Solana Integrates Filecoin to Enhance Historic Data AccessibilitySolana, one of the top proof-of-stake blockchains, has integrated Filecoin, a decentralized file-saving blockchain-based system, to make its block history accessible for third-party apps. According to Filecoin, this will allow Solana to achieve improved redundancy and scalability for part of its data set while leveraging a decentralized solution like Filecoin. Solana to Integrate Filecoin to […]

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Mobile Processed Over $20 Million in Payments Using USDC With No Processing Fees

Solana Mobile Processed Over  Million in Payments Using USDC With No Processing FeesSolana Mobile, Solana Labs’ smartphone subsidiary, processed over $20 million in payments in alliance with Shopify and USDC, the second-largest dollar-pegged stablecoin. Anatoly Yakovenko, a co-founder of Solana Labs, explained that 51% of Chapter 2’s payments were completed using USDC, with no payment processing fees associated. Solana Mobile Processed Over $20 Million in USDC Payments […]

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana wind down ‘deemed a necessity’ after low fees, says Lido Finance

Unsustainable financials and low fees generated by Lido on Solana were two of the main reasons for the sunsetting.

Decentralized liquid staking protocol Lido Finance has announced a decision to cease operations on the Solana blockchain following a community vote in Lido’s decentralized autonomous organization.

The proposal to sunset Lido on Solana was first put forward by Lido’s peer-to-peer team on Sept. 5, citing unsustainable financials and low fees generated by Lido on Solana. Voting commenced on Sept. 29 and finished a week later on Oct. 6.

“After extensive DAO forum discussion followed by community vote, the sunsetting of the Lido on Solana protocol was approved by Lido token holders and the process will begin shortly,” Lido explained in an Oct. 16 post.

Lido will not be accepting staking requests as of Oct. 16. Voluntary node operator off-boarding will begin on Nov. 17 and Lido users will need to unstake on Solana’s frontend by Feb. 4.

“After this date, unstaking will need to be done using the CLI,” Lido added.

The earlier proposal saw Lido seeking $20,000 per month from Lido DAO to support technical maintenance efforts involved with sunsetting operations on Solana over the next five months.

Lido’s statement on terminating services on Solana. Source: Lido.fi

Lido’s P2P team has been working on the Lido on Solana project since acquiring it in March 2022 from Chorus One.

Since the takeover, the P2P team has invested about $700,000 into Lido on Solana and made $220,000 in revenue, resulting in a net loss of $484,000, according to the mediakov, the author of the proposal.

The alternative in the Sept. 5 proposal was to provide more funding to Solana from Lido DAO — however 65 million (92.7%) of the 70.1 million LDO tokens (voted by token holders) were in favor of sunsetting operations on Solana instead, according to open-source voting platform Snapshot.

Lido explained the decision was a difficult but necessary one to make:

“Whilst this decision was difficult in the face of numerous strong relationships across the Solana ecosystem, it was deemed a necessity for the continued success of the broader Lido protocol ecosystem.”

Lido confirmed that staked-Solana (stSOL) token holders will continue to receive network rewards throughout the sunsetting process.

Related: Lido Finance discloses 20 slashing events due to validator config issues

Lido’s staking services are now only supported on Ethereum and Polygon, where $14 billion and $80 million are staked, respectively, according to Lido’s website.

Lido launched on Solana on Sept. 8, 2021, when SOL was priced at $189 — an 87% fall from its current price of $24, according to CoinGecko.

Despite the news, SOL is up 8.6% over the last 24 hours.

SOL’s price movements over the last seven days. Source: CoinGecko

Magazine: DeFi Dad, Hall of Flame: Ethereum is ‘woefully undervalued’ but growing more powerful

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Labs’ ChatGPT plugin allows AI to fetch blockchain data

The plugin will allow the AI chatbot to check wallet balances, transfer tokens and purchase NFTs when OpenAI makes plugins more widely available.

Solana (SOL) users will soon be able to interact with the network through an open-source plugin enabled on OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT.

The plugin will allow ChatGPT to check wallet balances, transfer Solana-native tokens and purchase nonfungible tokens (NFTs) when OpenAI makes plugins available, according to an April 25 tweet by Solana Labs, the development firm behind the Solana blockchain.

Solana Labs is also encouraging developers to test out the open-source code to retrieve on-chain data that they may be interested in.

The screenshot shared by Solana Labs shows that ChatGPT can retrieve a list of NFTs owned by a particular Solana address, which shares an attached metadata link to the NFT — presumably sourced from Solana Labs' block explorer.

Solana Labs did not mention whether the plugin would be launched when OpenAI makes the plugin feature available to all.

The new ChatGPT plugins work by retrieving information from online sources and interacting with third-party websites to respond to commands requested by the user. The feature is currently being rolled out to all users.

However, not everyone is satisfied with the development.

One Twitter user asked Solana to firstly focus on developing a “working block explorer” while another questioned what benefit it would bring to the ecosystem.

It appears as though Solana Labs is now placing more focus on AI, having also announced on April 25 that it will provide $1 million in funding towards projects that build AI tools on Solana:

ChatGPT users can now delete chat history

On the same day, OpenAI announced ChatGPT users can now “turn off” their chat history, thanks to a new privacy feature.

The team announced the rollout of the new feature in an April 25 statement, which was launched to provide users with more control over their data. The firm added:

“Conversations that are started when chat history is disabled won’t be used to train and improve our models, and won’t appear in the history sidebar.”

The feature can be found in ChatGPT’s settings, which can be changed at any time, OpenAI said.

OpenAI explained that deleted conversations will be retained for 30 days for the purposes of reviewing them to monitor abusive material. Once that is cleared, conversations will be permanently deleted.

Related: First of many? How Italy’s ChatGPT ban could trigger a wave of AI regulation

The AI firm also added in a new “export” option for users to download their data and make more sense of what information ChatGPT stores.

The new privacy feature comes as Italy recently became the first European country to ban ChatGPT until it complies with the European Union’s user privacy laws pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Magazine: NFT Creator, Emily Xie: Creating ‘organic’ generative art from robotic algorithms

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana’s Crypto and Web3 Smartphone ‘Saga’ Available to the General Public on May 8

Solana’s Crypto and Web3 Smartphone ‘Saga’ Available to the General Public on May 8Solana’s cryptocurrency and Web3 smartphone, Saga, will be available for purchase on Monday, May 8, 2023. Crafted by OSOM, the Android smartphone is designed specifically for Web3 applications and enables users to self-custody crypto assets using its Seed Vault feature. Solana Smartphone Saga Ready for the Masses Solana Labs, Inc., the company behind the Solana […]

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back

Solana Faces Renewed Criticism After 10th Downtime and Bumpy Restart, but Developers Remain Optimistic

Solana Faces Renewed Criticism After 10th Downtime and Bumpy Restart, but Developers Remain OptimisticFollowing the initial incident on Feb. 25, Solana resolved the blockchain’s performance degradation after validators decided to restart the network. According to an outage report following more than 24 hours of downtime, Solana developers detailed that the “root cause is still unknown and under active investigation.” Social Media Mocks Solana’s 10th Downtime, Supporters Defend Project […]

Quantum computing will fortify Bitcoin signatures: Adam Back