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Coinbase launches standalone browser extension for Coinbase Wallet

November 8, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Self-custody wallets have proven extremely popular among users looking to access decentralized exchanges and NFTs.

United States cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has rolled out a new standalone browser extension for its Coinbase Wallet, giving users the ability to more easily access thousands of digital assets on decentralized exchanges, commonly known as DEXs.

Beginning Monday, Coinbase Wallet will be available as a standalone browser extension, which means new customers can download the tool for free on Chrome. New users also have the option of importing an existing Ethereum-based wallet, such as MetaMask, the company said.

Existing customers who have been using the Coinbase Wallet through WalletLink will also have the opportunity to use the new feature by importing the wallet and entering their recovery phrase. Coinbase initially launched its downloadable browser extension for existing customers in May of this year.

Self-custody wallets like MetaMask have proven extremely popular in the era of DeFi and NFTs, also known as decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens, respectively. Self-custody wallets allow users to more easily transfer funds to decentralized exchanges and NFT marketplaces to buy assets that otherwise wouldn’t be available on centralized platforms.

Self-custody has become a hot-button topic within crypto as the industry seeks to onboard tens of millions of new users. A spate of centralized exchange hacks over the years, combined with the most recent DeFi exploits, has placed newfound emphasis on security. Efforts to introduce new self-custody services that prioritize ease of use have grown as a result. Earlier this year, the Jack Dorsey-led digital payments company Square announced plans to build a new Bitcoin (BTC) hardware wallet with “assisted-self-custody” features. The wallet is intended to “simplify custody” without compromising security.

Coinbase to Launch Standalone Browser Extension Wallet

November 8, 2021 The Crypto Briefing

Apple App Store removes crypto wallet TokenPocket after PayPal complaint

November 4, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Apple

PayPal’s lawyers informed TokenPocket about the dispute over the company’s trademark earlier this year.

Global payments giant PayPal is going after cryptocurrency wallet TokenPocket over an alleged trademark infringement.

Apple has temporarily removed the TokenPocket wallet from the App Store, the company announced on Thursday. According to the firm, the reason for removal was a complaint from PayPal concerning an alleged trademark issue.

TokenPocket said that it had received communications from PayPal over the dispute with the company’s trademark in a letter earlier this year. TokenPocket stressed that it is willing to resolve the issue in a friendly way and that PayPal “has no more replies to this.”

“We attach great importance to this and dispatched professionals to conduct research on both sides’ trademarks, sorting out, and communicating in detail in the form of pictures and texts to explain the differences on both sides’ trademarks,” the company wrote.

TokenPocket did not explicitly mention the exact reason for the complaint. Online users previously noticed that TokenPocket’s logo looked similar to PayPal’s, as it had two similar-colored letters placed next to each other. “I was about to open TokenPocket but accidentally click Paypal,” a Reddit user claimed three months ago.

*PayPal and TokenPocket logos compared. Source: Reddit*

PayPal and TokenPocket did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Founded in 2018, TokenPocket is a crypto wallet provider supporting major public blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, the Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Kusama and others. The firm claims to have “more than tens of millions” of users in more than 200 countries and regions.

One of the world’s largest payments companies, PayPal debuted cryptocurrency-related services in late 2020.

Facebook pilots Novi crypto wallet with Coinbase, Paxos

October 19, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The social media giant still intends to launch Novi along with its Diem payment network once regulatory approval is granted.

Social media giant Facebook has tapped Coinbase and Paxos for its forthcoming Novi digital wallet project, which kicked off its pilot testing phase in the United States and Guatemala on Tuesday.

Beginning Oct. 19, a small cohort of users in both countries will be able to download the Novi digital wallet app on iPhone or Android devices and add money to their accounts with a debit card. From there, they will be able to send and receive money using Pax Dollar (USDP), a dollar-backed stablecoin issued by blockchain trust company Paxos.

Facebook selected USDP in its pilot program because of its proven track record and “important regulatory and consumer protection attributes.” Because USDP reserves are fully backed by cash, Novi users will have the ability to withdraw their money in their local currency.

Customer funds will be custodied with Coinbase, which manages $180 billion in assets.

A spokesperson for Facebook told Cointelegraph the pilot phase will allow Facebook to evaluate the wallet’s core functions and showcase operational capabilities, specifically around customer service and compliance. Novi is also being designed for interoperability with other digital wallets.

The spokesperson also stated that the company has not abandoned support for the Diem network, a permissionless payment system that is still awaiting the green light from Washington. “We intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live,” they said.

Despite significant lobbying powers in Washington, Facebook has run into obstacles convincing senior policymakers to approve Diem. The proposed payment network has gone through several design iterations since 2019, but concerns around money laundering and stablecoins have slowed the approval process. As Cointelegraph reported in September, policymakers have been encouraged by some of the design changes.

Browser-based DeFi wallet XDEFI launches public version

October 12, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Ape

XDEFI will challenge MetaMask’s dominance of the browser wallet space by offering a new user experience for decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens.

XDEFI Wallet, a browser-based wallet service for decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) users, launched its public version on the Chrome Store.

Similar to the widely-used browser extension wallet MetaMask, the XDEFI Wallet supports DeFi applications across multiple blockchains. According to the announcement, the browser wallet works with the Ethereum (ETH) network and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains.

Supporting THORchain and Terra, XDEFI Wallet has plans to include Avalanche, Solana and Arbitrum.

In a previous conversation with Cointelegraph, Émile Dubié, co-founder and CEO of XDEFI Wallet, argued that cross-chain compatibility was necessary to ensure better utilization of Web 3.0.

“No need to switch from a wallet to another, no need to deal with several seed phrases — just use the same vehicle to access different destinations,” Dubié told Cointelegraph.

XDEFI Wallet features an “Ape Mode” that reportedly utilizes a proprietary gas algorithm to offer faster transaction throughput for users. According to Dubié, Ape Mode will be an “indispensable edge” for DeFi and NFT users.

Given the focus on DeFi and NFTs as part of the strategy to challenge MetaMask, XDEFI Wallet also features some “built for NFT” features.

According to the announcement, XDEFI offers automatic in-wallet NFT detection capabilities as well as a grid display for collectibles.

As a wallet platform, XDEFI will also enable crypto trading with users able to make fiat purchases for cryptocurrencies via payment gateway service Ramp.

XDEFI Wallet previously received backing from investors like Mechanism Capital, Sino Global Capital, Morningstar Ventures, Alameda Research, CoinGecko and others to the tune of $6 million.

MetaMask pushes institutional offering with BitGo integration

October 5, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Wallet

The rise of crypto custody continues as more institutional investors seek exposure to Bitcoin, Ether and decentralized finance.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) wallet and browser extension MetaMask has partnered with three crypto-focused custodians as part of a broader effort to attract more institutional capital to the digital asset market.

On Tuesday, the company announced new partnerships with BitGo, Qredo and Cactus Custody centered around MetaMask Institutional — a new product offering that gives institutional investors access to the large sums of collateral in the DeFi market.

ConsenSys, the Ethereum developer behind MetaMask, introduced MetaMask Institutional in May. When asked about how MetaMask Institutional works alongside existing product functionalities, a spokesperson told Cointelegraph:

“MetaMask Institutional provides the same functionality and features as MetaMask — i.e. Connectivity to the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem spanning 10s of thousands of venues for trading, staking, lending, and borrowing across all EVM-compatible (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chains.”

The biggest difference between MetaMask Institutional and the company’s main browser and wallet extension is how private keys are stored. The spokesperson explained:

“Within MetaMask, keys are stored in the extension (unless a hardware wallet is paired with MetaMask). [MetaMask Institutional] has built an SDK (software development kit) and API (Application Programming Interface) that connects to qualified custodians and custody tech stacks. This offers organizations unrivaled access to DeFi with the most trusted wallet in DeFi along with institution-required storing of private keys.”

The institutional offering also has built-in compliance functionalities that perform Know Your Transaction analysis on DeFi pools.

Decentralized finance has emerged as one of the most promising use cases within blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. At the time of writing, nearly $195 billion in total value has been locked into the DeFi ecosystem. Ethereum-based protocols account for nearly 69% of the total, according to industry data. New research from DappRadar released last week shows that value locked in DeFi has grown 936% over the past year.

The growth of DeFi has been captured by the surge in active users on MetaMask and other browser extensions. As Cointelegraph reported, MetaMask surpassed 10 million active users in August, having grown nineteenfold in just over a year.

XDEFI CEO wants to disrupt MetaMask’s domination of browser wallets

September 30, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Emile Dubié, CEO of XDEFI, is building a new browser wallet with Web 3 capabilities. XDEFI currently has nine blockchain integrations.

Due to the enormous growth of DeFi and a lack of direct competitors, Ethereum wallet and browser extension MetaMask recently surpassed 10 million active users, a major milestone for the ConsenSys-led protocol. Now, a new browser wallet is looking to provide an alternative to MetaMask by doing something that most developers are shying away from — creating a web-based experience as opposed to a mobile client.

Emile Dubié, the CEO of XDEFI Wallet, explained to Cointelegraph why MetaMask’s growth has previously gone unperturbed by competitors:

“I think developers decided to get on mobile being the next client for blockchain users while the reality is that most of the volume in DeFi is still going via web client. Why? Because you have more real estate from a UI point of view and browser wallets give much more flexibility to users.”

This flexibility, Dubié said, eliminates the need for native integrations with specific protocols within the mobile wallet, making any decentralized application accessible with an extension.

So, whereas most developers are placing the future of DeFi growth in the mobile experience, Dubié said web-based extensions currently offer more usability.

XDEFI Wallet, which operates a browser wallet that seeks to integrate with Web 3 technologies, recently concluded a $6 million funding round backed by some of the biggest venture funds in crypto. The investment round was led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from DeFiance Capital, Alameda Research, Sino Global Capital, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures and CoinGecko.

Dubié explained to Cointelegraph how XDEFI plans to fully utilize the Web 3 experience:

“If you want to unleash the full potential of Web 3 you need to have a wallet that allows [you] to interact with web applications built on different blockchains. No need to switch from a wallet to another, no need to deal with several seed phrases — just use the same vehicle to access different destinations.”

XDEFI currently integrates with nine blockchains: Ethereum, Polygon, Terra, THORChain, Bitcoin, Binance chain, Binance Smart Chain, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Support for Arbitrum, Solana and Avalanche are coming next, the CEO said.

Polkadot Web3 wallet Talisman closes $2.35M seed funding round

September 29, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Polkadot Web3 wallet Talisman closes .35M seed funding round

Coin Telegraph

Talisman plans to release an early version of its Polkadot wallet extension before the end of November.

Talisman, a Polkadot Web3 wallet platform, has raised $2.35 million from early backers including Hypersphere Ventures, Koji Capital and Advanced Blockchain AG as well as several anonymous Flex Dapps investors.

According to an announcement issued on Wednesday, with the funding round closed, Talisman is looking to launch a wallet extension by Nov. 22.

Billed to be a DotSama — a portmanteau of Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) — wallet, Talisman reportedly aims to enable cross-compatibility across the Polkadot and Kusama “paraverse.”

Commenting on the decision to support the project, Jack Platts, partner at Hypersphere Ventures said, “Talisman is aiming to become the Paraverse gateway for everyday crypto users.”

Talisman is reportedly building the first DotSama asset dashboard with features such as staking of KSM and other parachain assets, Karura integration for decentralized exchange swapping and Polkadot Crowdloan support.

Other core features in the planned Talisman roadmap includes NFT support, Shiden Dapp staking, and third-party fiat on-ramps.

The announcement also stated that with the seed funding secured, the team is looking to expand while adding more essential features to help users interact with the DotSama paraverse ecosystem.

Talisman’s launch is coming as the DotSama ecosystem begins to take shape with the ongoing Kusama parachain auctions.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the first round of parachain auctions was completed back in June with round two currently ongoing.

Kusama DeFi platform Altair became the ninth parachain auction winner overall and the fourth in round two on Sept. 29. One more slot auction will take place over the next seven days before a temporary pause that will precede round three of the process.

These parachain auction winners will connect to the Polkadot Relay Chain possibly kickstarting the bootstrapping of liquidity across the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems.

Wallet

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