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The Blankos Block Party is on.

Andreessen Horowitz-backed Mythical Games has finally launched its first game, a milestone for the fledgling gaming company which achieved unicorn status late last year after hitting a valuation of $1.25 billion, according to a statement. 

The 3D multiplayer, which allows users to buy and sell non-fungible token (NFT) avatars, is the first metaverse game to land on the Epic Games Store, the company behind Fortnite. Blankos had previously been available on an early-access basis to a limited number of users, but Wednesday marked its official worldwide release.

Blankos represents a step forward for web3 games. The metaverse gaming space has yet to be populated by titles offering large-scale 3D gaming environments with complex graphics and gameplay on par with massively popular games like Fortnite, Crossfire and PUBG: Battlegrounds; platforms which boast hundreds of millions of registered users and act as online spaces where people can both play together and network.

Compared to most other metaverse games which have hit the market, like the two-dimensional web3 game Axie Infinity, with Blankos players can interact with one another through avatars operating in a 3D virtual space. Other existing web3 games like Splinterlands and Alien Worlds also lack the sophisticated gameplay which may be required to draw mainstream users unversed in web3 and NFT trading.

Early reactions to the game appeared largely positive on a Blankos Discord chatroom with more than 150,000 members although some commented on encountering some bugginess; a common occurrence when games are first launched online.

Los Angeles-based Mythical, which co-developed the game with Third Kind Games, calls Blankos a “free-to-play multiplayer party game set in a vibrant online world.” Playing Blankos users can race and spar with one another as they attempt to gain prestige. Additionally, players can earn, buy and sell playable digital assets, or NFTS.

Despite Axie Infinity’s relatively modest gameplay, its success spurred interest and investment into metaverse gaming projects. At one point, Axie not only boasted 2.7 million daily active users but was also home to more than $200 million in weekly NFT trading volumes. Though Axie Infinity’s daily active user numbers and weekly trading volumes have slid dramatically in recent months, that doesn’t appear to have scared off investors bullish on the long-term prospects of metaverse gaming.

So far this year $2.9 billion has been invested in both individual metaverse gaming projects and gaming studios (excluding virtual reality and sports-betting games) according to data compiled by The Block Research. The total investment since 2021 has hit $5.5 billion, it said.

The list of metaverse gaming investors has also become increasingly diverse over time.

Silicon Valley venture-capital firm a16z led Mythical Games most recent round of funding, worth $150 million, but the gaming company’s investors also includes illustrious names from the world of sports and entertainment, including NBA legend Michael Jordan, the National Football League’s investment arm 32 Equity, and RedBird Capital Partners, an investor in Skydance Media, the company behind the Terminator franchise.

Mythical Games co-founder and CEO John Linden has said players “spend billions of dollars on digital assets each year” but have so far been unable to unlock the value of the digital assets they acquire while playing.

Previous to Wednesday’s official launch, players granted early access to Blankos had already bought and sold more than $600,000 worth of in-game NFTs, according to the world’s largest marketplace OpenSea.

Mythical has three other web3 games scheduled for release next year including NFL Rivals, which it is creating in partnership with the football league, the company said in a statement. The company’s efforts are led by a team that includes gaming industry veterans who have contributed to the development of major franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.  

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Genesis co-head of sales and trading Matt Ballensweig has resigned from his role after five years.

Ballensweig will stay on as an advisor to the lending and trading firm “for the foreseeable future,” and remain in the crypto ecosystem, he said on Twitter.

“My mission will be to help facilitate the next cycle of growth and mainstream adoption through my expertise in capital and information flow, trading and lending, yield, venture and bridging institutional participants with crypto-native opportunities,” he said.

Ballensweig has for the past month started to transition his core responsibilities to a number of colleagues and plans to take some time off before jumping into his “own next chapter.”

The company’s former CEO Michael Moro also recently departed the firm, with the chief operating officer Derar Islim stepping into the top role in August.

“We have a bright future with CEO @DerarIslim at the helm who I know will do a fantastic job institutionalizing and scaling our businesses into the next cycle,” Ballensweig said Wednesday.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Interbank messaging service SWIFT has linked up with Chainlink Labs on a cross-chain interoperability proof-of-concept project.

The proof-of-concept involves Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, which allows for token transfers across blockchains as well as the development of cross-chain applications. 

The tie-up was announced during an event in New York on Wednesday. During the panel, Chainlink co-founder and Sergey Nazarov and SWIFT strategy director Jonathan Ehrenfeld Solé framed the project with a focus on the difficulties in bridging the worlds of traditional and decentralized finance. 

SWIFT is no stranger to blockchain experiments. The messaging network operator announced a bid last year to test the tokenization of real-world assets, and the Chainlink Labs partnership fits within that framework. 

Cross-chain capabilities have been the focus of numerous projects in the past year, with development teams focused on developing secure ways to move assets from one chain to the next. But cross-chain mechanisms have proven to be a significant security challenge, with so-called bridges being targeted by hackers and code exploiters. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• The Block Research analyses activity on the Ethereum Proof of Work fork
• NFTs on the forked chain have been surprisingly popular

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Bitcoin mining difficulty fell by 2.14% on Tuesday following four consecutive jumps — one of them as high as 9.26% in August.

The change is reflected in data published by BTC.com, which tracks network mining difficulty and posts an update as adjustments take place roughly every two weeks.

The network’s hash rate has also fallen 2.04% since Sept. 13, the date of the last update, according to data compiled by The Block Research.

“Decreasing mining economics are leading to high-cost and low-efficiency miners shutting off,” Ethan Vera, COO of bitcoin infrastructure company Luxor Technologies, told The Block. “Hashrate will likely only grow as a function of increasing machine efficiency for the remainder of the year. As Bitmain S19 XPs get delivered to mining farms they will replace lower-efficiency machines, increasing network hashrate.”

Parallel to this, as some miners liquidate hardware amid the bear market, those machines are coming offline and being sent to new locations, according to Vera. “This is a temporary disruption of network hashrate, as these machines find a new home.”

One bitcoin miner that has made headlines for acquiring machines and facilities from other operators in the past few months is CleanSpark. Earlier this month, CleanSpark bought its second facility in Georgia from a competitor in the span of 30 days, agreeing to provide that company with up to 30 megawatts of temporary hosting while it transfers miners to another location. 

Mining difficulty refers to the complexity of the process behind mining, during which miners are repeatedly trying to find a hash below a set level. Miners that “discover” this hash win the reward for the next transaction block. The difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks or roughly every two weeks.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Lightning Labs announced the initial code for its new Taro protocol, which will allow users to issue and transfer assets on the bitcoin blockchain and Lightning.

“With this release, we’re one step closer to bitcoinizing the dollar, and the global financial system!” Lightning Labs wrote in a Wednesday tweet.

Taro will allow developers to “mint, send, and receive assets on the bitcoin blockchain,” according to Lightning Labs. 

“In talking to bitcoin and Lightning developers across the world, we’ve heard that users want to use stablecoins in the same way they’re using bitcoin on the Lightning Network: instantly settled, low-fee, peer-to-peer transactions without financial intermediaries,” Lightning Labs Product Growth Lead Michael Levin wrote in a blog post.

The company first launched Taro, a Taproot-powered protocol, in April. Taproot is an update to Bitcoin’s code that was implemented last year.

Lightning Labs was founded in 2016 and has raised money from Square CEO Jack Dorsey and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev in various funding rounds. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto indexing firm CF Benchmarks has launched a bitcoin interest rate curve in partnership with Chainlink. 

The CF bitcoin interest rate curve will measure bitcoin borrowing and lending using three different data sources, transaction data from futures exchanges, DeFi lending protocols such as Aave or Compound, and OTC crypto lenders. Using this data the interest rate curve is created, with CF Benchmarks aiming to improve how borrowing and lending work in crypto.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), Bitmex, FTX, OKX, ByBit, Aave and Compound are among the firm’s contributing data to the interest rate curve, CF Benchmark’s head of product Ghando told  The Block.

The firm said it hopes to facilitate the creation of financial products, like interest rate derivatives contracts, by making each point on the curve “representative, replicable and efficient.”

CF Benchmarks has been working on the product since January, with Chainlink joining as a partner early in the process, Ghando said. In the intervening time, crypto credit lending has gone through a turbulent period.

Following the collapse of the Terra blockchain in May, crypto lenders faced extreme difficulty operating which led to a credit crisis for some in June. Firms like Voyager and Celsius have since filed for bankruptcy, with the former’s assets being purchased at auction by FTX while the latter’s CEO was forced to resign on Tuesday. 

During this time some lenders were forced to cut their rates to encourage more borrowing. However, this trend started to reverse in August, as lending rates became more lucrative.

Indeed, crypto lending platform Ledn is increasing the savings rate offered to customers from Oct. 1. The interest rate for bitcoin saving accounts on Ledn will rise from 5.25% to 6%, on balances up to 0.1 bitcoin. Meanwhile, the interest rate on USDC will rise to 8% from 7.5%.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Caroline Pham has proposed a new ‘Office of Retail Advocate’ for the CFTC, one that could factor into a broader push by leadership at the agency to more directly oversee crypto markets. 

“If there are areas of the financial system that are apparently outside and unregulated, such as a ‘shadow’ crypto financial system — shadow banking 3.0 — then the appropriate response is to bring them inside,” said Pham, in a speech given at an event hosted by blockchain project Corda in London yesterday, the latest stop in a digital asset outreach tour. “And while Congress continues its work on developing legislation, there may be other ways as well to make sure the CFTC and others are exercising the full extent of their existing market oversight, supervisory, and enforcement authorities.”

Pham cited in particular, “the crypto crash, risk management failures, and substantial retail losses,” as reason to launch a new office focused on retail investors at the agency. The CFTC commissioner also pointed to CFTC enforcements and current retail investor educational efforts as efforts to expand upon with the office. 

The CFTC’s push for more authority over crypto markets has picked up steam in Congress, particularly for legislation in the Senate Agriculture Committee that oversees the commission. The legislation could see a committee vote soon to grant the commission more direct oversight power over crypto markets, though it’s unclear whether that legislation could gain enough support to see a vote in the entire Senate before this current Congress ends.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto start-ups and stealth NFT projects aren’t the only ones professing to build in a bear market, as the toy retail staple Build-A-Bear has also taken up that mantle. 

Famous for its customized teddy bears and other stuffed characters, the company has announced its entry into web3 with the launch of three digital collectible projects with matching physical items. The series includes a Swarovski crystal-encrusted one-of-a-kind bear.

The mint comes in partnership with NFT platform Sweet and will be launched in three phases using Polygon. Customers will be able to pay with either fiat or crypto.

The Swarovski bear will be sold via auction between Oct. 4 and Oct. 6 with a starting price of $2,500. Ten percent of the final sale price will be donated to Build-A-Bear Foundation, its philanthropic arm. 

During the second auction in November, bidders will compete to win five unique silver-themed Bear NFTs that will also be accompanied by a matching physical Build-A-Bear. Then, in December, Build-A-Bear will launch 5,000 NFTs at a fixed price, with randomly generated features and rarity tiers. 

Build-A-Bear has a significant customer base to tap for this, with 10 million signed-up loyalty members.

The company feels that moving into the NFT space means tapping into a market of collectors, Jenn Kretchmar, Build-A-Bear’s chief digital and merchandising 0fficer, told The Block in an interview.

“We’re a personalization and creator company at heart,” Kretchmar said. “It’s so intrinsic to who we are, so web3 is the natural progression.”

“We see web3 as a journey we’re on,” she added. “This is a long journey.”

The company has also said in previous quarterly statements it is also looking to explore gaming.

“This announcement speaks to our future in a world that is increasingly about the physical blending with the digital,” Sharon Price John, president and CEO of Build-A-Bear said in a statement. “Every aspect of this multi-dimensional collection is designed to capture the appeal of our brand and the collectability of our furry friends.”

Build-A-Bear’s move follows a number of other custom NFT projects promising physical items into the market. Earlier this year, jeweler Tiffany & Co. partnered with Chain to create custom CryptoPunk pendants based on the coveted NFTs. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Serial entrepreneur Karn Saroya has raised $14 million in a seed round for his new decentralized reinsurance protocol called Re.

Saroya previously co-founded insurtech provider Cover and fashion app Stylekick, which was acquired by Shopify.

Cover launched in 2016 with the goal of using data to underwrite customers in a better way. The startup raised a total of $27 million from backers like Exor, Tribe Capital and Sand Hill Angels, according to data from Crunchbase. In June of this year,  the company terminated “all but a handful” of employees as funding and acquisition efforts were unsuccessful, Coverage reported. 

“We were underwriting profitably, we distributed through 5000 independent agencies, but ultimately decided to wind the business down and transition all our policyholders to another insurer,” said Saroya in an interview with The Block. “So born out of us building Cover really came Re and Re is a licensed reinsurer.” 

Cover is in the process of transitioning policyholders to other insurance companies and Saroya is assisting with this process.

Investors in Re’s seed round include Tribe Capital, Framework Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital and SiriusPoint, said Re in a release.  The startup is valued at a $100 million post-money valuation, said Saroya in an interview with The Block. 

“The opportunity set for a decentralized approach to reinsurance is immense – there’s nearly a trillion of existing insurance surplus to be tokenized, and a huge amount of capital on the sidelines that will start to earn reinsurance premiums in the near future,” said Arjun Sethi, co-founder and partner at Tribe Capital, in a statement. Tribe Capital incubated Re under its crypto labs umbrella. 

A ‘decentralized Lloyds of London’

Reinsurance transfers the risk from one insurance company to another to reduce the likelihood of a large payout. The reinsurer will receive a cut of the insurance premiums but will also bear a portion of the losses when a claim is made. 

Saroya describes Re as a “decentralized Lloyds of London,” referring to the specialized insurance and reinsurance market in London. 

“We own a commercial reinsurer and if you think about what Lloyds does it takes a risk from other insurance companies that are looking to offboard certain concentrated risk,” Saroya said. “And it works with large companies, it also works with governments [and] works even with individuals to be able to back specific esoteric risks.” 

Built on the Avalanche blockchain, Re will enable reinsurance brokers to bring business to clients via the protocol, Saroya said. Distributed syndicates on the protocol will be able to underwrite the claims, he added. 

Syndicates can earn yield in return for supplying capital. Members will also be able to earn yield by supplying capital to an index of insurance programs across a range of industries. This will be separated into different tranches, and the member pool will be the senior tranche, according to the whitepaper. 

To join as a member, an individual will need to be an accredited investor and be willing to undertake know-your-customer and anti-money laundering checks, Saroya said. He hopes to eventually have the platform enable retail investors to also gain access to insurance premiums. 

“From my perspective, this is one of the very few use cases where we’re directly correlating yield generated via crypto asset holders to real-world economic activities and real-world risks and so that’s particularly exciting,” Saroya said.

The protocol’s whitepaper outlines that Re will be ceded with millions in premiums generated by auto insurance policies written by Cover. Another $50 million to $100 million will then be ceded by partner insurance companies and reinsurers over the next 12 months. 

Re recently partnered with Joe Gaito and Jason Hoffman of Freedom Re Underwriters as the protocol’s first independent syndicate and is now inviting underwriters and actuaries to apply for syndicate roles. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.