DAY LONG NEWS ROUNDUP: LATEST NEWS 08/11/21

• Avinandan Banerjee
• November 08, 2021

Here are the top headlines which are affecting the blockchain and crypto space on 08/11/21 so you can stay informed on the latest updates.

Reddit to onboard 500M new users by tokenizing karma points

Reddit, the American social media giant might very soon convert the karma points of their users and turn them into ERC-20 tokens based on Ethereum and in due process, will invite 500 million fresh crypto users. 

Rahul, a new engineer hired by Reddit, highlighted through a series of tweets that Reddit is aiming to enhance customer interaction experience through several cryptocurrency initiatives. Back in July, Reddit had announced the launch of their layer two rollup through the Arbitrum technology aimed towards their reward points, which they have named as Community Points.

Reddit aims to create a separate blockchain instance through their collaboration with the Arbitrum Network. According to Rahul, the company plans to scale it towards gasless transactions. On top of that, communities on Reddit will be enabled to fork blockchain through community based consensus. They will also be allowed to explore newer strategies of monetization with the help of Web 3.0.

Reddit has been known for a number of crypto initiatives which are community based. For instance the Dogecoin Fundraiser, and even now, the platform caters to a giant crypto community around the world.

Soft fork days away for Bitcoin as it inches towards the Taproot upgrade 

For every crypto ecosystem, real world use cases become one of the most important drivers for adoption. This is also true for the network of Bitcoin, the oldest and biggest cryptocurrency in the world. In the upcoming seven days, the network will undergo the Taproot upgrade, which is basically a soft event. This upgrade will enhance the network’s efficiency, privacy and its capability for launching smart contracts.

Since 201, this Taproot upgrade will be the first major upgrade for the Bitcoin network. Back in the August of 2017, the BTC network was introduced to the SegWit or better known as Segregated Witness which eventually resulted in the launch of the Lightning Network. 

The previous upgrade was more focused on fixing the malleability issues in transactions on the network and thereby improving the scalability of Bitcoin. The Taproot upgrade however is willing to revamp the efficiency in transaction, support initiatives for smart contracts and upgrade privacy systems.

With this new Taproot upgrade, the BTC network will witness the MAST or the Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree. This new feature will introduce a condition wherein the sender as well as the receiver will be able to sign off a settlement transaction simultaneously at the same time.

Unparalleled investment potential for Blockchain based metaverse startups

The term ‘metaverse’ was first coined by Neal Stephenson in his bestselling book Snow Crash which was written back in 1992. The concept of metaverse is now becoming a reality and even more so, it is attracting a host of investments as well. Metaverse has gained popularity in popular culture also. Steven Spielberg in his film Ready Player One portrayed one such highly advanced metaverse.

Recently, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the social media giant is now turning their attention and focus to creating a metaverse where they are inclined to unify creators, communities and ecommerce under one roof. 

Already there are household names such as Fortnite and Roblox, where people are making serious amounts of money. These are completely virtual worlds where the players and users exist through avatars of themselves. Other names such as Sandbox, Decentraland and Upland are comparatively lesser known but even then they are emerging as big brands bolstering the metaverse universe. 

Some of the most famous brands such as Gucci, Nike and Coca-Cola are already selling their virtual products directly to the avatars residing in these virtual spaces and these virtual wearables and items are almost equally as expensive as their real merchandise.