Gate.io Podcast |Russia-Ukraine War｜EU Crypto Vote｜SpaceX Starlink

War is tragedy, destruction, mayhem no matter the era. Russia’s attack on Ukraine stunned the world, and sent shockwaves through the Baltic countries. Lithuania’s president declared a state of emergency, and Latvia suspended the broadcast licenses of several Russian TV stations accused of spreading disinformation and propaganda.

We must always be aware of where we get our news from, and always try to get the full story and understand the perspectives.

In today’s headlines

---

- The Russo-Ukrainian War & How Cryptocurrency is helping Ukraine
- SpaceX Steps Up to Save Ukraine's Internet
- eBay May Accept Crypto As A Payment Method
- $70 Million Pixelmon NFT Project: “A Horrible Mistake”, Said The Founder
- Mitsubishi to Launch Digital Asset Wallet
- Sponsor : Astar Network
- Airdrop announcement
- Deep Dive: European Parliament PoW Crypto Ban

Introduction

---

Welcome back to the Gate.io Podcasts. I’m Peter, this is the show to get a neutral perspective on some of the latest headlines in DeFi, Metaverse, NFTs, and Big Tech. Today’s episode is sponsored by Astar Network and brought to you by Gate.io, a centralized exchange with a neutral stance on current events.

Before we get in, the information presented in this podcast is to help you stay up-to-date on the latest happening in the crypto space, and nothing presented hereby is financial advice. The news that I cover in this podcast will have the original source at your discretion. Stick by this podcast as I show you how to stay vigilant and learn to do your own research.

But, before jumping in, make sure to subscribe to this podcast or youtube channel and don’t forget to turn on the notification bell so you’ll not miss any info about the crypto space!

Now, without further ado.

News Updates

---

The Russo-Ukrainian War & How Cryptocurrency is helping Ukraine

Social Media: one of the strongest war’s modern weapons.
The conflict between Ukraine and Russia could be considered as an example of modern war, where clashes between military artillery no longer seem to be the main protagonist, but where a new means of struggle seems to play a central role in the conflict: the digital space.

Over the past few days we have seen how the internet has become increasingly central to the war that is characterizing the entire Europe.

Within the first week of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian government has reached out to the crypto community for raising funds to support its civilians and troops. According to blockchain explorer, the wallets have received over 208 $BTC, 2,663 $ETH, and 324K $DOT thus far, roughly $22M USD in total value received.

On the one hand, we recall the intervention of Anonymous who broadcasted on Russian television sequences of what was happening in Ukraine. While, on the other hand, Elon Musk sent Star Link satellites in the territory of war, to offer internet coverage across the country, as requested by Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov.

Social media seems to be an exceptional weapon for disseminating information, asking for help and getting support from around the world. Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister is well aware of this, that's why he continues to seek more and more aid and support for his country.

Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister wants Russian Crypto Addresses To Be Blocked.
On 27th February, Fedorov asked the major crypto exchanges to block all addresses of Russian users, by blocking those of Russian and Belarusian politicians but also to sabotage the addresses of ordinary users.

Some users, although supporters of Ukraine and against war, showed their disappointment at Federov’s request, considering it opposing the fundamental principles of cryptocurrencies, first of all decentralization, but also going against solid democratic values.

Ukraine Donates $45,000 In Crypto For White Flag Russian Soldiers.
Cryptocurrencies seem to be a medium that remains central to the conflict between the two countries: in fact, Masha Efrosinina, local television presenter and honorary ambassador of the United Nations Population Fund in Ukraine, announced on Instagram that the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine offers to Russian soldiers who surrender 5 million rubles of crypto or cash, an equivalent of about $50k USD.

Is A War Necessary To Show How Much CryptoCurrencies Can Improve the World Financial System?
So it seems that cryptocurrencies are proving to be one of the most useful and popular means within this conflict: will this be a way to incentivize their use and adoption around the world and is a war really necessary to demonstrate the efficiency of cryptocurrencies?

Useful links:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ukraine-accepts-bitcoin-ethereum-usdt-donations-to-fund-ongoing-war
https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-698763
https://decrypt.co/93898/ukraine-bitcoin-war
https://cryptopotato.com/ukraine-vice-pm-asks-major-crypto-exchange-to-stop-servicing-russian-customers
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-economy/3415433-ukraine-asks-cryptocurrency-exchanges-to-block-users-from-russia.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russian-soldiers-offered-bitcoin-exchange-054425507.html

SpaceX Steps Up to Save Ukraine's Internet

Since last Wednesday, western countries have come together to impose strict sanctions on Russia. After a move to block Russia from global banking system SWIFT on Saturday, President Vladimir Putin put the country's nuclear force on high alert.

On Friday, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov asked Musk turn his attention away from space exploration for a bit to help his country stay connected to the internet as the ongoing Russian attacks threaten the nation's internet connectivity.

A few hours after Federov's tweet, Musk replied saying Starlink is now active in Ukraine, and that he was sending more terminals needed to use the service.

Musk is making good on his promise in more ways than one. Not only did the technology arrive in Ukraine in less than 48 hours, but there are already reports showing that it's up and running.

One Twitter user Oleg Kutkov tweeted that they were able to access Starlink internet with their iPhone with download speeds of 136.76 Mbps and upload speeds of 23.93 Mbps.

Starlink is a satellite-based internet system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world. It markets itself as “ideally suited” for areas where internet service is unreliable or unavailable.

This is achieved via a mega-constellation of Starlink internet satellites, which SpaceX has been routinely launching to low Earth orbit. There are currently over 2,000 functional Starlink satellites in orbit and SpaceX has clearance to launch up to 12,000 of the spacecraft.

Starlink's business is accelerating, as well. In February last year, SpaceX disclosed that Starlink was serving more than 10,000 customers. After expanding preorders to even more potential customers, the company released a second-gen home internet satellite dish and is exploring the possibility of providing in-flight Wi-Fi for passenger aircraft.

Musk says that Starlink has shipped more than 100,000 satellite internet terminals to customers in 14 countries. That list includes Ukraine, where Musk says additional satellite internet terminals are now en route amid the Russian invasion.

Useful links:
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/27/elon-musk-steps-up-to-save-ukraines-internet-but-details-are-sparse
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-terminals-arrive-ukraine-elon-musk-russia
https://www.channel3000.com/i/live-updates-un-to-hold-2-meetings-on-russia-ukraine-war
https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/starlink-satellite-internet-explained

eBay May Accept Crypto As A Payment Method

eBay focusing on GenerationZ & Millennials needs.
eBay, the well-known online marketplace, has been increasingly focused on becoming the trading hub of the future, by focusing its development and growth for the Z generation and millennials needs.


CEO Jamie Iannone, in an interview with TheStreet, has highlighted that the main goal of the marketplace is to adapt the platform to the new needs of young people, improving eBay’s payment methods and offering new sales opportunities.


NFT Trading On Ebay.
Surely, one of the most important improvements is the changing of policy regulation, in order to adapt the platform to NFTs trading, which are slowly becoming more and more popular on eBay.


Iannone pointed out that this trend reminds him of what happened a couple of years ago when users had started selling cars without the platform having a category based on that.

Thus, this demonstrates the company’s commitment is to offer more and more new services, by focusing itself on the new trends.

Is eBay Going To Accept Cryptos As A Payment Method?
TheStreet obviously asked eBay’s CEO if the platform is going to accept payments in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum. Iannone replied that, at the moment, the marketplace does not accept cryptocurrencies but that still more information about payment methods, advertising and other news will be spread on the 10th March, during a meeting dedicated to eBay investors.

However, the CEO has stated that the next strategy of the marketplace is to become the main digital platform of exchange assets, be they physical or digital.

From this statement it seems that eBay is going to get closer and closer to the crypto space, considering also the evolution and the enormous growth that the market is experiencing during the recent years and the enormous profits that could generate to eBay.

Will A Domino Effect Take Place All Over The Web?
From all of this a spontaneous question arises: if eBay, a giant of the online market, extends its payment methods to cryptocurrencies, could this be a move that will create a domino effect on competitors?

Useful links:
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/ebay-considers-crypto-payments-already-accepts-nfts-ceo-says

$70 Million Pixelmon NFT Project: “A Horrible Mistake”, Said The Founder

Throwback to Pixelmon Minecraft’s Mod.
Do you remember Pixelmon, the famous Minecraft mod that was popular among fans of the sandbox game, a few years ago? Well, recently, it has landed into the Metaverse, but we should go in order.


The famous mod of Pokemon had seen its development in 2013: immediately got a huge success, millions were the users who played it every day. The boom was under everyone’s eyes, including those of the famous video game developer as well as the Pokémon rights owner, Nintendo.

In 2017, Nintendo asked Pixelmon’s developers to withdraw the mod because it wasn’t officially developed by the Japanese company, marking the end of Pixelmon on Minecraft.

Recently, the hopes of the old fans seem to have been rekindled, given the fact the mod’s developers have announced their intention to land their project into crypto space.

A $70M Metaverse Project.
The new Pixelmon project, which aims to be the first AAA game in the metaverse, was announced about 3 months ago, and although the game’s creatures are no longer the real Pokémons, this has not stopped fans from supporting the project’s idea: managing to raise $70M in Ethereum from its genesis mint.

Many were the users who participated in the NFTs auction of the project, each digital asset being sold at an initial request of 3ETH.

As stated by Syber, the founder of the project, these NFTs represent the first generation of creatures and cannot be captured in-game. Therefore they can only be used in game by those who have already purchased them.

However, the excitement quickly declined a few days ago, as a consequence of the first NFT’s screenshots published by users.

Expectation Vs Reality
People immediately started to complain that the creatures' design was completely different from what the Pixelmon’s Twitter account had previously shown.

In fact, the differences were quite evident…

Syber immediately answered to the controversy, trying to reassure fans about the development of the game. He admitted that the reveal was unacceptable and published some in-game footage that showed how the creatures should have appeared in the final version of the game.

Moreover, the scandal didn’t stop there:

Creatures' assets weren’t developed by Pixelmon’s Devs.
Other users argued that the creature’s assets published by the official profile of Pixelmon were actually purchased assets and not made by the developers of the game.
The founder replied that the assets were acquired only for their prototypes on Unity but would not be used to make Pixelmon’s NFTs.

Will Pixelmon Gain Its Fans’ Trust Again?
Further on, in an AMA, released on their Discord server, Syber stated that there is still time to develop the entire game but the intention is still to publish the alpha version this year.


Thus, It seems that the Pixelmon project, in addition to focusing on the total realization of the game, must be able to earn again trust and interest from a slice of users disappointed by the recent news.

Useful links:
https://decrypt.co/93964/70-million-pixelmon-founder-calls-artwork-reveal-horrible-mistake
https://cryptobriefing.com/metaverse-that-doesnt-exist-yet-bags-70m-ethereum/

Mitsubishi to Launch Digital Asset Wallet

ProgmatUT: UFJ’s Digital Wallet
Japanese financial giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group plans to create a wallet capable of storing and using blockchain-based digital and NFT assets, although its main focus appears to be the security token market.


As stated by the Tokyo-based company, the new project would have been approved following the proposal by its subsidiaries, the Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation.

The company said the wallet, called ProgmatUT, will be based on utility tokens that guarantee the storage of different types of digital assets, including security tokens and stablecoins.


The UFJ added that the wallet will enjoy a new blockchain protocol, for the company and its partners to issue the first asset-backed security token in Japan.

This project has been in development since November 2019, when Mitsubishi UFJ announced an agreement with Japanese securities giants SBI and Nomura, who have been increasingly interested in offerings of cryptocurrency and blockchain-based tokenized securities in the years to come.


In any case, it appears that the new UFJ project has as its goal the publication of a beta version by the end of the year, with the official launch in 2023.

UFJ Closes Its Blockchain-Based Payments Project
Finally, the Japanese financial giant has declared its intention to halt and liquidate Global Open Network Japan, a blockchain-based payments project, created following the agreement with Akamai Technologies, which took place in April 2019. The project was born with the goal of building an open platform with highly scalable data processing as a response to the rise of the IoT.

MITSUBISHI UFJ’S SUPPORT OVER TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
Mitsubishi UFJ concluded by noting that the company will continue to include support and adaptation to new demands from the technology industry in its development strategies.

Sponsor Summary

Astar Network (Formerly Plasm)
Before I continue with a deep dive on the EU’s decision to postpone a key vote on crypto regulation and its stance on the PoW consensus, I must tell you about today’s sponsor, Astar Network, formerly known as Plasm.

Astar Network is a dApp hub on Polkadot that supports Ethereum, WebAssembly, and Layer 2 solutions like ZK Rollups. After developing Plasm for more than 2 years, the team decided to rebrand to Astar for the expansion of their mission.

Astar Network secured a Polkadot Parachain slot last December and launched its mainnet on January 17th. The Polkadot Relaychain, by design, does not support smart contracts. This allows Astar the opportunity to fill in this gap. Since Astar Network is built with Parity’s Substrate framework, it can be a future Polkadot parachain that also acts as a scalable smart contract platform.

Becoming a Polkadot parachain was a huge milestone for the team, but this is just the first step. Astar is supporting both Ethereum Virtual Machine and WebAssembly. Developers can deploy existing Solidity contracts as well as Polkadot native smart contracts. In addition to that, Astar supports multiple EVM and non-EVM L1 bridges. Currently, Ethereum bridges are already delivered by Multichain and Celer Network, and Cosmos Bridge is planned to be delivered in Q1. And by Q4 this year, Astar targets to connect all major chains.

Astar is the first multichain smart contract platform that allows developers to earn tokens for building smart contracts or infrastructure, namely Build2Earn. Build2Earn protocol distributes basic income to developers on Astar Network. By building a product on Astar, developers can earn $ASTR tokens as basic income from block rewards based on their performance and decentralized voting.

$ASTR is the utility token for Astar Network that has the following 5 roles: dApps Staking, NPoS Staking, Transactions, On-Chain Governance and Layer2. It has a total token supply of 7,000,000,000 and a yearly inflation rate of 10%.

Entering 2022, Astar has been developed at a high speed with uninterrupted good news. Last month, it successfully raised $22M in a strategic round led by Polychain. Other participants are also big names such as Alameda Research, Alchemy Ventures and Crypto.com Capital. Dr. Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot, is one of the angel investors.

On February 28th, Astar's TVL exceeded $800M according to Defi-Llama.

For those of you interested in the airdrop, my question for you is “When will we see $ASTR’s TVL hit the $1 Billion mark?”

I’ll link the relevant must-reads in the de_script_ion below, always remember to do your own research folks.

Deep Dive

European Parliament PoW Crypto Ban Postponed

European Union Concerns Over Crypto Mining Environmental Impact
The environmental problem is one of the main reasons why many countries look at cryptocurrencies with skepticism. Indeed, PoW damage is remarkably high, since in recent years demand for mining has increased dramatically.

2021 was the year in which the crypto industry reached record levels, despite the ban on crypto and mining by China, one of the largest and most important cryptocurrency markets in the world.

This is why European institutions, in particular the European Securities and Markets Authorities, are worried about the environmental impact caused by the mining of cryptocurrencies.

The European Institutions have stated that they are concerned about the environmental risks of bitcoin mining, accusing the PoW of not meeting the objectives agreed in the Paris agreement.

As reported by the Financial Times, Erik Thedéen, the vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), has said he’s aware of the continuing efforts dedicated to the use of renewable energy for cryptocurrency mining, adding that the goal isn’t to completely ban mining but rather to prohibit the use of the PoW, thus encouraging a faster adoption of the PoS.

The debate regarding the ban on the use of the PoW mechanism began when it was found that the total amount of energy required for mining BTC is as much as that used by some countries over the course of a year. This is the reason why, in January, Erik Thedéen backed a draft for a PoW regulation.

European Parliament Postponed The Vote On Crypto Legislation
Despite agreeing on having an initial vote on the PoW ban, the EU decided to postpone the new Crypto legislation that should have been voted on Feb.28th, as requested by Stefan Berger.

The reason behind this is to make sure that the legislation won’t be misinterpreted as a PoW mining prohibition and a ban on coins based on this technology, such as bitcoin.

On the other hand, President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde urges to quickly approve the regulation in order to prevent Russia from using cryptocurrencies as a mean to evade international sanctions imposed after the military invasion of Ukraine.

PoW vs PoS
Even if the PoS offers lower energy consumption and causes less damage to the environment, there are still significant differences with the PoW mechanism.

While on the one hand the PoS uses tokens as validators and the mechanism is easily scalable, thus requiring therefore little energy: on the other hand the main issue is security. In fact, given that control of the network is based on the amount of tokens a user possesses, the risk of an individual taking control remains high; basically, the more token someone has the more decision power he has.

The PoW, on the other hand, has a remarkably high level of security, this is because someone, to be able to gain control of the network, would have to hold more than 51% of the resources of the entire platform. The downside therefore remains the very high costs necessary for scalability and the continuous increase in requirements for the mining process.

Useful links:
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/24/eu-parliamentarians-push-to-limit-bitcoin-use-over-energy-concerns
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/24/eu-wants-new-anti-money-laundering-authority-to-have-crypto-oversight-report
https://news.bitcoin.com/european-parliament-to-cancel-vote-on-crypto-assets-framework

Conclusion

It therefore appears that both consensus mechanisms are characterized by pros and cons that affect both the digital and the real world. Despite this, they continue to be one of the pillars of the crypto space and one of the most innovative technologies in the IT domain, which have occurred in recent years.

Therefore, the next few months will be essential to understand how governmental institutions will be able to cope with the rapid development of the domain and if a new vote for crypto mining regulation will take place. Still, one thing is sure, I will keep you informed about how things will develop from here on!

Listen the whole episode
https://gateio.buzzsprout.com/1825729/10172665-russia-ukraine-war-eu-crypto-vote-spacex-starlink
https://web02.gate.io/podcast

Featured article:

Gate.io Podcast | Weekly Altcoin News | Sponsored by Ternoa