Binance joins Neo Council, 2.1 million NEO used to secure two Top 21 positions



Binance Staking has secured two positions on the Neo Council. At the time of press, Binance has voted with approximately 2.1 million NEO to secure its places in the Top 21.

Binance is the world's largest custodial exchange with nearly US $9.07 billion in 24-hour volume, according to CoinCap.io. Binance Staking is a service that allows users to earn distributions offered on proof-of-stake or other networks that distribute rewards to participants.

The platform provides two types of staking: flexible and locked. Flexible staking offers fewer rewards but allows users to move the underlying assets at any time. Locked staking requires users to deposit a token for a specific time frame but provides higher yields. For example, a minimum of 0.01 NEO locked for 15, 30, 60, or 120 days will earn increasing yields of 5.79%, 7.49%, 8.79%, and 13.56% (made in GAS distributions), respectively.

In the announcement post, Neo Global Development said "Binance Staking's new membership in the Neo Council is expected to bring new diversity to the Neo community and increase cross-platform user engagement for both parties."

Under Neo's governance mechanism, NEO holders use their tokens to votes in 21 nodes that serve on the Neo Council. The Neo Council's task is to maintain the network's health and liveness. Council members vote on issues impacting the state of the Neo network, such as blockchain parameters (i.e., fees) and electing other onchain roles (i.e., oracle nodes, NeoFS ring nodes).

To vote, a wallet points its address to a candidate, and any NEO held in that wallet designates favor of the Council member. Neo Council members receive a proportional 10% share of the 5 GAS distributed in each new block. NEO holders that vote for Council members will receive 80%, and the final 10% is distributed among all NEO holders, regardless of if the tokens are used to vote or not.

Lyrebird launching Neo N3 stablecoin protocol on Friday, April 29



Lyrebird is launching its algorithmic stablecoin protocol on Neo N3. Lyrebird's dollar-pegged token, USDL, and the stabilization utility token, LRB, will be released through Flamingo's reverse liquidity pools and through upcoming "airdroplet" events. Airdroplet is a designated term to differentiate initial, smaller airdrops from general airdrops that will occur as the Lyrebird ecosystem matures. The FRP-FLM-LRB pool will launch between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. (UTC) on Friday, April 29, 2022.

The Lyrebird reverse pool will be seeded with 5 million LRB, which at an initial price of US $0.01 per LRB means it will have an equivalent worth of $50,000. The LRB will be paired against an equivalent $50,000 in FLM.

Approximately 1.5 million LRB will be released through Flamingo's reverse liquidity pools each year. Reverse pools allow users to stake LRB or USDL along with another token into a pool and, in return, receive LRB or USDL tokens as a reward.

Airdroplet Distribution
The first round of LRB airdrops will go to Lyrebird ecosystem participants for being early members in the Discord server or for testing the protocol on Neo N3 TestNet. The Lyrebird team anticipates distributing approximately 500,000 LRB through airdroplets, and there are no time-lock restrictions on any of these distributions. The snapshots for those who qualified have already been taken and will not be modified.

There are approximately 60 addresses on Neo TestNet that own LRB or USDL, and each address will receive an airdrop of 5,000 LRB tokens.

Roughly 260 Discord server members qualified for the airdrop and have already been whitelisted. Server members with green-colored handles have been approved, and those with yellow should be processed soon. Those who qualify will receive 1,000 LRB each.

Lyrebird Stablecoin Pool
The Lyrebird USDL stablecoin reverse liquidity pool will launch on Flamingo when the price of LRB shows signs of reduced volatility. The team states the purpose of the LRB token is designed to absorb USDL's volatility. Therefore, the pool will launch once the market has determined a relatively consistent value for LRB.

When the FRP-USDL-FLM reverse pool launches, there will be $50,000 USDL paired against $50,000 equivalent in FLM. However, rewards for the reverse pool will be distributed in LRB.

The Lyrebird team aims to incentivize on-demand minting of USDL through the Lyrebird website instead of releasing the stablecoin through reverse pool rewards. Therefore, the FRP-USDL-FLM pool will distribute LRB, with the goal that users will swap LRB for USDL, then provide it as liquidity in the reverse pool.

GrantShares DAO launching to support ecosystem growth and grassroots initiatives



The GrantShares DAO is launching on Neo N3 to distribute funding to grassroots developers and ecosystem beneficial projects. The DAO will manage an initial treasury funded by the Neo Foundation.

As the first DAO to launch on Neo N3, GrantShares is designed to provide financial support to smaller initiatives that do not currently fit the scope of Neo's existing grant programs. Voting members of the organization include COZ, AxLabs, Red4Sec, NGD Enterprise, NeoResearch, NEXT, Neo SPCC, Neo Foundation, Neo Global Development, and Neo News Today.

Anyone is encouraged to submit a proposal for the members of the DAO to discuss and vote.

The initial funding limit for GrantShares is $50,000 per proposal, and can be used to fund local events, dApps, developer tools, education initiatives, and more. Projects seeking larger amounts should apply for grants through one of Neo's Eco Support tracks.

The DAO's smart contracts are developed and maintained by AxLabs and have already been deployed to the Neo MainNet. In the coming weeks, AxLabs aims to release the accompanying dApp for applicants to submit proposals. The dApp will create an issue in the GrantShares repository where DAO members can discuss the potential grantee's proposal before voting.

In addition to distributing funding, AxLabs designed the GrantShares smart contracts to serve as a reference implementation for other N3 developers. The DAO contracts are open-source on the GrantShares repository.

The GrantShares dApp is tentatively expected to launch in mid-April 2022.

Papa John’s Use The Tezos Blockchain To Give Away Free NFT


Papa John's NFT Bag Giveaway
Papa John's is using the Tezos blockchain to give away free NFT bags designed by two talented NFT designers; Tom Hoff and Ash Sketch. One lucky winner given the chance to with a real-life version. The NFTs can be claimed here.

There are nine NFT bags from 19,840 to choose from and claiming a bag enters the owner into a draw to win a collectible real-life Papa John's bag, with the winner being chosen on the 14th April 2022. This will be the 'Papa 1984' yellow bag, by Ash Sketch.

The bag is worth £250 and users are able to mint one NFT bag per wallet in order to enter the draw.

Papa John's is the fourth-largest pizza delivery restaurant chain in the United States, operating over 5000 restaurant locations worldwide. The pizza bag giveaway will represent the company's first foray into the NFT market and for this they chose to utilize the environmentally friendly Tezos blockchain in order to distribute the offering.
Papa John's stated:

Most Proof of Work blockchains are very inefficient and wasteful by design. They can use millions of times more energy than modern Proof of Stake blockchains like Tezos. By comparison, creating and trading NFTs on Tezos takes around the same amount of energy as sending an email or a social media post.

Last year big rival Pizza Hut entered the NFT market with their pizza art NFT offering.

People will be able to buy the real-life versions of these bags in an exclusive drop of five real Papa 1984, Papa Cheese Melt and Papa Tag bags which will go on sale via Depop, the fashion marketplace, on 7 March 2022. 

Tezos Records Highest Number Of Contract Calls In January With Several Dapps Set To Launch



A Smart Contract Call Record
Contract calls are interactions with smart contracts in the form of transactions. This is an important metric to see growth in the adoption rate of mainnet smart contracts. Since July 2020, the amount of contract calls has increased to 1,209% of the July total.

Every month we've seen a new record in the number of contract calls (except for November, which had a 10% drop).

January saw a 22% increase compared to December. At 22% it sounds ok, but if put this growth into perspective, we see that that 22% is 2.2 times the total amount of contract calls in July last year. We're witnessing exponential growth.

If we're looking at developer activity, we also continue to see growth in activity. In December, we saw an average of 700 daily new deployments on testnets. But in January, we see an average of 930 daily new deployments.

February is set to bring a lot of new launches and milestones.

Edo
The latest protocol upgrade will go live on mainnet in the second week of February. This is a feature-packed upgrade that includes privacy features.

This means that developers can easily integrate privacy into their smart contracts, which will enable them to provide private transactions and develop "privacy-conscious" applications.

Edo also introduces Tickets. Tickets is a convenient mechanism for smart contracts to grant portable permissions to other smart contracts or to issue tokens.

Tickets will be improving challenges like concurrency, which is a general issue developers face, especially in decentralized smart contract platforms.

Tickets also enable a more efficient way of interacting between contracts. It will enable self-custody of first-class coins/token permissions and improve the developer experience.

These are just a few of the advantages Tickets will bring and you can read more about tickets here.

Kalamint
Kalamint is a platform that can be used to create, sell and collect NFT's. Besides the advantage of low Tezos fees over high fees on Ethereum-based NFT platforms, Kalamint will have a unique governance design that includes a Guild.

We'll do an extensive article on Kalamint before they launch the platform on the 18th of February.

TEZEX
TEZEX is a cross-chain gateway to Tezos. It will enable value to come from Ethereum to Tezos DeFi in a few clicks. After that, users can move away from the current fees on Ethereum, and experience a drop in costs that is on average 3,000 times cheaper on Tezos.

When TEZEX launches, another crucial instrument joins the Tezos DeFi landscape.

Quipuswap
This is the second Decentralized Exchange (DEX) that is built on Tezos. Chances are that it will launch in February. This does, however, depend on the progress of the external audit of Quipuswap.

Kolibri
Kolibri is an algorithmic stable coin, built on Tezos and backed by XTZ. A February launch of Kolibri could be a bit optimistic to expect, but a testnet was released in the beginning of January, so there has some significant progress.

1,000,000 accounts
In February, Tezos will quite likely reach the milestone of 1,000,000 funded accounts.

With currently 945,284 funded accounts, and  97,253 new funded accounts in the past 30 days, ~55,000 account are likely to get created this month and break the 1 millionth milestone.

Reinstating Smartphone Access with Lisk Mobile v2.0.0



On the 21st of August 2021, we migrated the Lisk Mainnet to v3 which introduced numerous improvements to Lisk, such as multisignature accounts, a new address system, a new DPoS consensus algorithm, and a dynamic fee system. In order to meet internal deadlines, we had to focus our development resources on delivering these new improvements. This resulted in moving all frontend development resources to Lisk Desktop, hence compromising the availability of Lisk Mobile on launch day.

Today, we are proud to announce the release of Lisk Mobile v2.0.0 which reintroduces the core feature of Lisk on smartphones. Namely, the convenient sending and receiving of transactions. More advanced features like voting or multisignature accounts are solely available on Lisk Desktop to give our community the easiest and most user friendly experience on their mobile devices.

The next release will be Lisk Mobile v3.0.0, and will provide access to the Lisk interoperability solution which marks the launch of the Lisk blockchain application platform later this year.

New Features in Detail
Lisk Mobile v2.0.0 focuses on four topics, the access to Lisk v3 and its various new features, user experience and design improvements, Bitcoin support removal, and finally the overall security enhancements.

Access to Lisk v3
The recent major update of our Mainnet to Lisk v3 brought a wide range of new features and improvements to Lisk. From improved scalability to much lower fees, including a more decentralized DPoS blockchain and network, to a completely secure address system. In fact, as these are such major improvements it is highly recommended to view our announcement blog post of the Lisk Mainnet v3 migration, also please make sure to read the linked articles.

Internally, Lisk Mobile has a special focus. To be the most accessible wallet for the Lisk ecosystem. Taking that into consideration we have purposely limited the available feature-set solely for the sending and receiving of transactions.

User Experience and Design Improvements
Since releasing the previous Lisk Mobile we have been busy collecting community feedback to enhance and improve it even further. With Lisk Mobile v2.0.0 we focused on delivering many improvements to make its usage even easier and more convenient, as well as more consistent with our brand as can be seen in the images below.

Dashboard
Send LSK
Bookmarks

Stratis Interflux



The further development of Stratis' InterFlux protocol has been quietly simmering, focusing on incorporating Token Swaps between Ethereum and the Cirrus Blockchain, enabling popular ERC20 Tokens to find their way to the Stratis Ecosystem. The added functionality within InterFlux is a critical development for Stratis, further bridging the gap between Stratis Blockchain Technologies and Ethereum.

Active projects, such as Opdex, the first wholly decentralized exchange on Stratis, benefit significantly from this further development. Providing the availability and access to popular and established tokens on Ethereum, such as USDT (Tether), Binance USD, SHIBA INU, Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), and many more. Testing has already begun internally, with deployment to Testnet expected to occur in the coming days. A two week testing period will be undertaken on Testnet, with the view to promote to Mainnet after successful test criteria is met.

The further development also lays the foundation for supporting the ERC721 standard. Enabling the transfer of NFTs on Ethereum to Stratis for listing on Stratisphere.com resulting in NFT sales incurring 0% Platform Fees and significantly reduced transactional costs. You should expect to see some high-profile transfers occur once the ERC721 becomes activated in the near future! Stratisphere.com is the worlds first zero-fee decentralized NFT Marketplace, offering ultra-low transactional costs and a great user experience. Hundreds of NFTs have already been sold by various content creators using the platform, some of which are established community members with hidden talents, and some are brand new to our ever-growing community!

As always, development progress and community participation requests can be seen within our Discord Server. Be sure to join to keep track of the progress and get involved with testing the new functionality on our Testnet.

Neo project wins second place in Metaverse Alliance hackathon with 3D world platform


Neo community developer Robert Oschler has won second place in the SocialFi category of the Metaverse Alliance hackathon. Oschler's project, Neo3D Live, is a 3D metaverse world that allows users to interact with one another's avatars and participate in events like real-time auctions.

Oschler developed Neo3D Live so that anyone in any part of the world can access the 3D world, regardless of their ability to purchase powerful equipment. Neo3D Live was designed for most of the world's internet users – those without VR headsets or high-end equipment. He said:

Let Metaverse residents form meaningful connections in a virtual world that will run on common hardware, including the millions of smartphones that may be the only link to the Metaverse a citizen in an economically disadvantaged region has. This is a link that has the true power to uplift the millions, if not billions of hard-working, intelligent, decent human beings who have the misfortune of being born in a region that is not economically gifted like other parts of the world.

The platform leverages the ThreeJS graphics library, a graphics engine that is widely accessible. Neo3D Live runs on almost any browser and device, so there is no need for high-powered computer setups.

The platform's beta version allows users to congregate in a digital 3D environment. Real-time video conferencing is embedded into the moveable characters, so participants can see those they're communicating with via live video feed. Oschler said, "By combining true video conferencing where participants can see each other's faces as they talk to one another and move about a fun virtual world, people can once again feel the natural human joy of forming groups based on both social and spatial relationships like they would at a party or a shopping mall."

Oschler also incorporated other elements to make the space feel more natural and interactive. In Neo3D Live, intelligent objects are embedded in the virtual world, responding to an avatar's presence. For example, walking up to a wall with an embedded YouTube video will trigger the video to begin playing. And to create a more real-life experience, a user can hear the sounds of their movements and that of others around them.

NFT Showcase
The first demo of Neo3D Live included the NFT Showcase, a custom room where an individual can purchase an NFT on auction. A demonstration of the live auction can be found below:

The NFT designer can determine who can participate in the Showcase by whitelisting public wallet addresses on Neo N3.

The Neo3D Live smart contract supports derivative commissions, so collectors can earn profits when they sell an artist's NFTs if the artist grants them that right. Further, Oschler intends the NFTs bought and sold through Neo3D Live to be viewable and transferable via third-party marketplaces (i.e., Sky Hut, GhostMarket).

Looking forward, he aims to develop and release a drag-and-drop toolkit (that doesn't require coding ability), so anyone can build a virtual world.

Tezos Seals Partnership With Esports Giant Team Vitality




Tezos has secured a partnership with French esports giant Team Vitality. The three-year deal aims to bring Team Vitality closer to its fans than ever before by leveraging Tezos' energy-efficient blockchain.

Tezos Enters Esports Space
Tezos has entered into another game-changing partnership.

The Layer 1 blockchain, which prides itself on energy efficiency, announced a three-year partnership with French esports organization Team Vitality Thursday. Although details about what the partnership entails are still vague, Team Vitality stated that the deal would "revolutionize" its fan experience.

As part of the new deal, Team Vitality explained that the collaboration would help educate their fans on the benefits of blockchain as part of the gaming experience and showcase the advancements of these technologies. Additionally, the organization's CEO Nicolas Maurer explained what the partnership would mean for the esports team, stating:

"This is truly a game-changing partnership for Vitality, which feels appropriate given 2022 is set to be the biggest year in our history. The opportunities Tezos can bring to strengthen the relationship between us and our fans is incredibly exciting, and we're immensely proud to have Tezos join us on this journey."

For Tezos, the partnership appears to include brand visibility, possibly in the form of sponsorship logos on Team Vitality players' jerseys. "Tezos will be represented by top-performing Team Vitality rosters and star athletes and through unrivaled brand visibility across the esports ecosystem," Team Vitality said in a press release.

Last year, Tezos signed several major partnerships to boost its visibility. In June, Tezos made deals with Formula One racing teams McLaren and Red Bull Racing to launch collectible NFTs. Both teams stated that Tezos' low carbon footprint factored into partnering with the blockchain.

Last month, video game developer Ubisoft announced it would be launching NFTs on the Tezos-based Quartz platform, only to be hit with severe backlash from the gaming community. Despite this, Ubisoft put out a statement confirming that it will still pursue non-fungible tokens, explaining that the move is "a major change that will take time."

Despite attracting a lot of attention from brands, Tezos has otherwise struggled to gain significant momentum in the crypto space in recent months while other competing Layer 1 blockchains have seen huge growth. Musicians, artists, and art collectors appear to be some of the blockchain's biggest enthusiasts (besides Ethereum, Tezos is arguably the biggest hub for digital art NFTs, and it's also hosted NFT collections from the likes of Mike Shinoda and Doja Cat).  

Through its new partnership with Team Vitality, Tezos will be hoping to attract a new demographic of esports fans. However, after how poorly Ubisoft's foray into NFTs was received, whether Team Vitality's fans will be receptive remains to be seen. 

Saffron Finance seeking beta testers for Neo N3, distributing 30 Neoverse blindbox NFTs




Neo users can beta test Saffron Finance V2 by staking and withdrawing SFI, NEO, and GAS on the N3 TestNet. Saffron is also giving away 30 Neoverse blindboxes to users who provide feedback.

To participate, beta testers must first acquire TestNet NEO and GAS from the Neo N3 TestNet faucet, which can distribute 50 NEO and 50 GAS per IP address every 24 hours. Then, testers need to request SFI TestNet tokens in the Neo Saffron Beta Testing Telegram channel. The NeoLine Chrome extension wallet is required to use Saffron.

The Saffron V2 beta platform currently offers a dashboard displaying the total value locked for each coin and APR rates for rewards (distributed in SFI). Additionally, users can deposit and withdraw NEO, GAS, and SFI from single-sided staking pools.

According to Psykeeper, Saffron founder, initial plans for the platform's launch on Neo include single-sided staking, followed by adding support for Flamingo. The Saffron development team plans to integrate with Flamingo on the N3 TestNet first, before MainNet.

At the time of press, there is a tentative late-Feb. 2022 timeframe for Saffron's launch on N3 MainNet.

Saffron is also giving away 30 Neoverse blindbox NFTs. To become eligible, participants need to email dingo@saffron.finance and share the N3 address they used for testing along with a minimum of one sentence of feedback about their experience.

About Saffron Finance
Saffron is a peer-to-peer risk management platform. It distribute yields according to liquidity deposits in particular tranches and offers an insurance fund that generates yields. Saffron offers its users a selection of risk profiles for its supported liquidity pools.

There are three tranches that depositors can utilize: senior, junior, and fee. If an event requires funds to be covered, such as a mass liquidation event, assets from the junior tranche and insurance fund will cover the senior tranche first, then the junior tranche. Junior tranche deposits receive a higher portion of the platform's earnings in exchange for their lower coverage priority.

Saffron joined the N3 Early Adoption Program in Oct. 2021, with the intention to launch a liquidity mining service on Flamingo Finance. The Saffron ecosystem utilizes a governance token, SFI, which liquidity providers must stake to gain access to higher-yield tranches. When Saffron V2 launches, SFI stakers will also receive fees from swapping and staking activities on the protocol.

NULS POCM Upgrade Announcement



NULS POCM (Proof of Credit Mining) platform was established in July 2019, the number of our SCO partners has increased 10 times within 2 years. Some of the SCO projects such as ALEPH, GGTK, SmaugsNFT have accomplished amazing progress with the community support provided by NULS in their early phase, our SCO investors also gained quite good profits participating in the SCO projects. We are very happy to witness this double win situation and we, the NULS team, will keep moving forward to provide more benefits for our SCO partners and NULS investors.
NULS POCM is probably one of the simplest ways to invest in the initial market without any financial risks. Investors stake NULS in our POCM platform to earn tokens from our SCO projects.

There are 2 ways to participate in our SCO projects now:
Stake in SCO projects on web wallet（https://pocm.nuls.io）
Stake in SCO projects on Nabox mobile Wallet. Download Nabox: (https://nabox.io)

We have been continuously receiving suggestions and feedback from our community members and SCO partners and investors ever since the POCM platform was established, to provide a better user experience, we have now updated our product in the following aspects:
Crossed-chain assets will be able to create POCM directly. New SCO projects investors no longer need to swap tokens on NeerveDEX (https://nervedex.com)
SCO projects creators give extra rewards to node owners according to their own wills.
SCO staking APR will be seen on the POCM page.

POCM page will show the current staking details such as the amount of NULS staked, the profits earned, etc
We reconstructed the staking logic.
Useless nodes will be deleted automatically to improve user experience.

NULS POCM staking platform now supports projects from ETH, BSC, NULS, Heco, OEC, Polygon, KCC, Tron, Harmony. We will be adding more diversities in the future to meet various needs from users.
About NULS POCM

POCM (Proof of Credit Mining) is an SCO Platform that allows projects to use smart-contracts to issue and distribute project tokens on blockchains. Got NULS? Stake into a project's nodes and earn their token as reward, while the project earns NULS as reward. Projects can use the NULS consensus rewards to bootstrap and help fund development. Unlike IEOs and ICOs, stakers never risk their principal, and NULS never leave their wallet. Earn project tokens while your device is off! As a universal SCO Platform, POCM can be used to issue and distribute tokens and assets from any public chain in any blockchain ecosystem.

Join The Stratis Build Hackathon with $100,000 USD in prizes



Stratis is genuinely excited to launch its third hackathon, bringing in new talent and blockchain solutions, demonstrating the power of Stratis Blockchain Technologies. At Stratis, our mission is to simplify the adoption of blockchain technology within existing computing environments. We have built a platform written entirely in C# and based on the Microsoft .NET Core framework to deliver on this mission. The Build – Stratis Platform Hackathon is Stratis' third virtual hackathon.

$100,000 USD has been allocated to the Hackathon Prize Pool, with a $30,000 USD Grand Prize and several other prizes to entice developer engagement. Stratis has also brought in some of its partners to sponsor the hackathon, including CMS, Triad Group Plc and the APPG, with CMS and Triad awarding a $5,000 bonus for those who deliver a submission that meets some of their defined requirements.

The Stratis Build Hackathon will launch on the 29th November 2021 and run for just under nine weeks, ending on 30th January 2022. This will be followed by a judging period, with winners being announced on 23rd February 2021.

The entry criteria are limitless; the only requirement is that your submission utilizes Stratis Blockchain Technology. An example of some submission types can be found below:

Blockchain Gaming Submission
Gaming submissions should include an end-to-end game, incorporating Blockchain Technology in some respect. This can be through the employment of an earn to play model, the issuance of non-fungible tokens or utilizing Smart Contracts to offer a genuinely trustless experience for the gamer.

Stratis provides Software Development Kits for both the Unity Gaming Engine and the Unreal Gaming Engine to assist with the game integration process.

DeFi Submission
A DeFi submission can implement a lending protocol, trade management solutions and anything related to financial services on the blockchain.

NFT Tooling Submission
An NFT submission should focus on tooling around the management, creation and utilization of NFTs. For example, an NFT Platform, NFT Creation Tooling and anything related to the management of NFTs. An NFT Collection can also be submitted but must stand out and be highly unique to pass judging criteria.

Stratis Platform Tooling Submission
A tooling submission must focus on bringing additional tooling to the Stratis Platform, such as an SDK that caters for an alternative programming language, or as another example, a wallet implementation.
The judges will be asking: does the tool provide a useful function, is it accessible and engaging to use, is it doing something innovative, how well does the product function? Submissions can cover any software application, such as the web, cloud, personal computer, mobile device or console, but they must utilize Stratis Smart Contracts in C#.

Now is the time to gain some inspiration and think about solutions you can build on the Stratis Platform, utilizing Stratis Blockchain Technologies, in readiness for the Stratis Build Hackathon launch. The launch of the hackathon will detail full judging criteria and getting started packs to assist those new to Stratis Blockchain Technologies.
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