Author: Matthew Willemsen

Matthew Willemsen is an Australian-based news journalist who covers the latest advancements relating to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Business from Monash University - majoring in both accounting and economics - Matthew soon grew fascinated in blockchain technology, becoming enthralled by its potentially disruptive social and economic implications. You can reach him at willemsen.mb@gmail.com or on Twitter @mwill_crypto.

Coinbase Ventures Backs Matic Network Plasma Project

April 30, 2019, GMT+0000, 6:43 am Matthew Willemsen

Ethereum-powered layer-two scaling solution Matic Network (MATIC) has today announced Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital arm of top-tier cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, as an investor in its seed round. Matic Network – which utilizes sidechains for off-chain computation while ensuring asset security using the Plasma framework and a decentralized network of proof-of-stake validators – announced the Coinbase Ventures investment news via…

Crypto Investors Bet $1.1M on Guesser Prediction Market Startup in Historic Fundraise

April 26, 2019, GMT+0000, 9:35 am Matthew Willemsen

A tree growing from pile of coins / CSR and green business / business ethics

Guesser, a user-friendly interface built atop the Augur (REP) decentralized oracle and prediction market protocol, has secured $1.1 million in seed funding from several crypto-friendly venture capital funds. For Guesser, whose team works out of the Spanish capital of Madrid, the injection of capital provides them with “the opportunity to build a top team of highly driven people, define market…

Block.one U.S. Hiring Spree: #B1June Just the Beginning?

April 17, 2019, GMT+0000, 16:24 pm Matthew Willemsen

Washington DC Capital detail with american flag

It appears Block.one – the publisher of the EOSIO blockchain protocol tied to the popular EOS cryptocurrency – is planning a longer stay at the U.S. capital than its mysterious one-day #B1June event leads on. Indeed, looking to Block.one’s careers page, it appears the well-resourced, Hong Kong-headquartered blockchain software company is preparing to open an office in Northern Virginia, the…

Rockefeller New York Lead Joins Quant Network Board

April 12, 2019, GMT+0000, 9:30 am Matthew Willemsen

Quant Network (QNT) – the project best known for developing the first-of-its-kind Overledger blockchain operating system – have announced the appointment of Guy Dietrich (Managing Director, Rockefeller Capital Management) to its board of directors. Dietrich – as Quant Network’s blog post states – brings “over 35 years of investment experience” to the Quant Network board. In his capacity as managing…

OmiseGO’s OMG Network Goes Public in Plasma Breakthrough

April 9, 2019, GMT+0000, 8:14 amApril 9, 2019, GMT+0000, 8:14 am Matthew Willemsen

The team behind OmiseGO (OMG) have today realized a major milestone; enabling public access to the alpha release of its so-called OMG Network – a proof-of-stake and infinitely scalable Plasma blockchain with a decentralized exchange built into its core consensus layer – for the very first time. The network’s alpha version, which the OmiseGO team are calling Ari – the…

BlitzPredict (XBP) Unveils 0x-, Augur-Enabled Prediction Exchange

April 5, 2019, GMT+0000, 19:25 pm Matthew Willemsen

BlitzPredict (XBP) has today released the alpha testnet version of their BlitzPredict Exchange, a peer-to-peer, non-custodial betting exchange built on Ethereum and utilizing each of the Augur (REP) and 0x (ZRX) protocols. Announcing the news through a blog post on Thursday, the Las Vegas-based BlitzPredict – which completed an initial coin offering (ICO) in March 2018 for its ERC-20-compliant XBP…

Clearmatics Duo Publish ZETH Research Paper, PoC Implementation of Zerocash on Ethereum

April 3, 2019, GMT+0000, 14:22 pm Matthew Willemsen

Antoine Rondelet and Michal Zajac – blockchain research firm Clearmatics’ cryptography lead and cryptography researcher, respectively – have published a research paper and proof-of-concept implementation of Zerocash on Ethereum called ZETH. Explaining the purpose of the paper in their abstract, Rondelet and Zajac point out that while Zerocash – a protocol utilizing succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge (i.e., zk-SNARKs)…

Australia’s First End-to-End STO Platform Launched by Nugget’s News, Konkrete

March 29, 2019, GMT+0000, 5:28 am Matthew Willemsen

Friday saw Australia’s leading crypto- and blockchain-related educational platform and consultancy, Nugget’s News, partner with security tokenization startup Konkrete to launch the country’s first end-to-end solution for security token offerings (STOs). In an announcement published by Nugget’s News, the partnership with Konkrete provides Australian entrepreneurs with the opportunity “to create a compliant security token issuing for investors in Australia, New…

Bitcoin Gambling Game Lightning Spin Becomes First-Ever LApp to Sell

March 28, 2019, GMT+0000, 7:18 amApril 15, 2020, GMT+0000, 19:51 pm Matthew Willemsen

Roulette wheel in motion with a bright and colorful background

The creator of one of the Bitcoin Lightning Network’s pioneering lightning applications (LApps) has today announced its sale. The LApp, known as Lightning Spin – a bitcoin gambling game powered by the Lightning Network – was launched roughly nine months ago by Portuguese web developer Rui Gomes. For many, Lightning Spin represented “one of the first Lightning apps where you…

Polkadot Ecosystem Primed for Growth as Web3 Foundation Grantees Unveiled

March 28, 2019, GMT+0000, 4:33 am Matthew Willemsen

Thursday saw the Web3 Foundation – a non-profit stewarding technologies and applications in the fields of decentralized web software protocols – unveil its first wave of grant recipients; an announcement set to bolster the rate of the Polkadot ecosystem’s growth. All up, there were ten projects comprising wave one of W3F Grants. Among them were wallet-oriented projects – Polkawallet, Enzyme,…