TLDR Crypto 2022-03-01

Dapper Labs recently opened its NFL All Day NFT marketplace to a closed beta. It saw over 90,000 transactions totaling $5 million in sales volume over three days. The company recently closed a $250 million funding round and has a reported $7.6 billion valuation. Dapper hired a pair of executives from traditional tech roles to manage its NFT ventures. The company has plans to create UFC and cricket marketplaces.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX has announced an up to $1 billion fund for ambitious projects that improve humanity's long-term prospects. The Future Fund will invest at least $100 million this year. FTX is looking for big philanthropic projects that can massively scale. Its areas of interest include the safe development of artificial intelligence, reducing the risk of biochemical disasters, and ending global poverty. Projects have until March 21 to apply for the first round of funding.

More than 170 teams competed for 30 prizes totaling $1 million in bounties, $2 million in investment capital, and an additional 1 million SPORK at ETHDenver 2022. Among the 30 winning projects, there were five infrastructure & scalability projects, six DeFi projects, five gaming & metaverse projects, and four DAO & community projects. This article contains an overview of the winning projects.

An on-chain identity is a digital representation of an individual stored on a blockchain. Using on-chain identities means that businesses can rely on verification instead of trust when hiring candidates. They could also be used to complement KYC compliance, for voting, deciding who to delegate tokens to within a DAO, and more. This article presents a meta-review of projects that are focused on putting work, professional identity, and reputation on-chain. It covers several areas of development in the space and provides links to projects.

Ethereum scaling solutions like Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism have quickly gained adoption over the last few months. These technologies allow developers to build the same apps as they would on Ethereum but with lower gas costs, faster transaction times, and other benefits. This tutorial teaches how to build full-stack applications using Polygon. It is part of a series that will build projects using various Ethereum scaling solutions.

Dark Forest is a massively multiplayer real-time strategy game that runs on blockchain technology. It is currently in a closed beta. The game was funded through community and non-profit funding sources without venture capital. Dark Forest is not a play-to-earn game. Players compete to win an NFT prize that they can sell if they choose to. This article explains the mechanics of the game and how it works.

MetaMask, an Ethereum wallet with more than 30 million monthly users, has so far resisted tokenizing its platform. The company's lead of operations stated that it aims to decentralize over time in a way that wouldn't be a cash grab. MetaMask is about creating a decentralized ecosystem to empower people, not greed. There are no set plans for when MetaMask will tokenize.

Axie Infinity is set to suffer its first decrease in monthly players since it exploded in 2020. As the game struggles to maintain its popularity, the guilds that drive players to the game are looking to diversify into other games to find the next big success. Guilds allow players to earn money and play games without having to own the NFTs required to play the games. Many guilds have received millions in investment funding, with investors expecting high returns on their investments.

Crypto exchanges Binance and Kraken have ignored calls to freeze Russian account holders' assets. Ukraine's vice prime minister asked exchanges to block all Russian and Belarusian accounts even for ordinary users. The exchanges stated that the freezes would go against the primary purpose of cryptocurrency, which is to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. Binance has pledged to donate at least $10 million to humanitarian efforts to address the growing refugee problem.