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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

Matthew Willemsen
handshake

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…

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

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…

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

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…

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Rockefeller New York Lead Joins Quant Network Board

Matthew Willemsen
hands putting gears together

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…

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OmiseGO’s OMG Network Goes Public in Plasma Breakthrough

Matthew Willemsen
Elephants in Ayutthaya

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…

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

Matthew Willemsen
Evening stadium arena soccer field

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…

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

Matthew Willemsen
Circuit and Lock

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)…

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

Matthew Willemsen
flag of Australia

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…

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

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…

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Polkadot Ecosystem Primed for Growth as Web3 Foundation Grantees Unveiled

Matthew Willemsen
seed

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,…

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