Mark Long, a chief executive officer at Shrapnel, which is a gaming company that is entirely run on the blockchain platform, has prepared for the game’s release in 2025. In an interview with Jeff Wilser before his speaking engagement at Consensus 2024, Long gives a few glances into the Web3 gaming field and his dreams of the Shrapnel.
Decentralized games in the Web3, as Long explains, try to put the players in the driver’s seat by giving them shared ownership and a voice in the gaming community. Just the same Shrapnel aims to gamify the process by creating a player-centric environment and awarding the contributors. Long, who is a veteran of the gaming industry, stresses the need to build a game that is not only engaging to play but also one that allows players to tweak and mod the gameplay experience without limited options.
Shrapnel sees the player as the prime source of creativity and innovation, giving them the freedom to alter maps, create character skins, design weapons, and more, with the ability to mint and trade their products. Long believes that this is “the ultimate in modding,” because the game puts the player into the director’s seat and onto the stage.
Playing the game in Web3 eco-systems, Long recognizes the real problem of getting secure and trusted in-game items. He reinforces the importance of being scrupulous about the audit including random checks to avoid the potential exploits that may adversely harm the game’s economy.
To overcome the challenges web3 gaming models face, Long recommends making games with genuine utility and gameplay satisfaction as a primary concern. He feels that it would be Web3 games that would stay in the market only if they could attract and hold onto players by offering them immersive and entertaining games.
Long turns to Consensus when he ponders over the past and imagines vivid debates revolving around the future of the gaming industry and blockchain technology. Consensus is characterized by him as an academic gathering, respectfully known for its quality and strategy sessions.
Ultimately, Long brings a fresh perspective to the video game industry and explores how Web3 gaming will change the current face and create new ones in the future. Long and his team are interested in releasing Shrapnel now and bringing the market a game with new features that help in building a community of Web3 gaming.
Jail Time for the Crypto Billionaire? Changpeng Zhao Faces Prison Sentence After Guilty Plea
Despite the legal difficulties, CZ of Binance, which is the pioneer in the cryptocurrency space, is an individual who is widely known. The estimates released of late suggest that Binance generated around $9.8 billion in March revenue itself, highlighting the growth buying aroused around the world amidst the legal battles between Zhao and the Media.
Zhao’s capital, which reaches $43 billion, will make him recognizable not only in the private equity sector but also among the wealthiest people in the world. However, a judge of the Seattle Court might give his preferred leeway and send Zhao to prison, briefly making him the most prosperous person in the history of the US federal prison system. Notwithstanding the uncertainty as to when the regulatory framework will become clearer, Binance so far has kept its day-to-day operations normal and steady as a measure of assurance for its investors amidst this regulatory uncertainty.
However, Zhao has since voluntarily stepped down from his CEO post against the settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice, although his control over Binance is still in effect. He even adopted a lower profile when he pleaded guilty to several of the charges against him, which Binance allegedly participated in that had to do with sanctioned jurisdictions.
Only in November 2023, during the charges made by US authorities against Binance for sanction compliance, Zhao voluntarily replaced himself with the role of CEO. While the company agreed to pay significant amounts in fines to end the case, the founder, Zhao, had to pay $50 million by himself. The Department of Justice is seeking 36 months of sentence for Zhao, who will be sentenced in a Seattle court on April 30th.
Besides the legal issues and the ambiguities in Zhao’s future, Binance remains operational, with investors on close alert of the issues deciding the outcome of the case. As murky waters of a cryptocurrency market though keep the battle between industry leaders and government authorities, the case of Zhao serves as a reminder that the situation may get complicated and challenging.
Is Bitcoin Making a Comeback with DeFi? Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem thrives despite market correction
The DeFi ecosystem, powered by Bitcoin, did not shake after the recent market corrections and is the site of intensive development and emergence of new groundbreaking projects and tools.
An important enhancement in the Bitcoin DApp ecosystem is the arrival of native protocols like the Ordinals and Inscriptions protocols which boost the DApps on the Bitcoin network. By introducing such protocols, Bitcoin has been witnessing yield generation and liquidity provision within the network for some time.
Along with them, SolvBTC from the omnichain yield-generating protocol has experienced a growing popularity. What makes SolvBTC a trendy project is the fact that its total value locked at $700M has been made a target by up to 92,000 participants alongside 10,000 BTC already staked on the platform. Sean Chow, the founder, points out that Bitcoin is the most liquid one among all cryptocurrencies. He pictures SolvBTC as a tool linking BTC users, chains, and protocols in different blockchain networks.
Through BTC collateral, SolvBTC unlocks returns from blockchains like Ethereum, Arbitrum, Merlin, and BNB Chain, which are paid out at annual rates of 5-10 percent on BTC deposits.
Besides, the investment in the Chinese mining rig manufacturer Mitmain has been secured to support Bitcoin’s layer-2, BEVM. BEVM will embark on the quest to investigate the application of Bitcoin hash rate in the Proof-of-Work (PoW) ecosystem and this could provide the necessary platform to store the PoW assets and hash rate. The mainnet release of BEVM has brought close to 700,000 user addresses and more than 30 projects staging in its ecosystem.
Orders Exchange, which is a platform of Bitcoin decentralized exchange (DEX), and MicroVisionChain, which is a platform for sidechain, have announced their 2024 roadmap. A roadmap is intended, which involves integration with major Web3 wallets, the start of a non-custodial marketplace for Bitcoin NFTs as well as the interoperability among the assets that are built on top of Bitcoin.
However, the Bitcoin Ordinals market keeps growing, despite the high volatility of the global stock market, supported by the ecosystem development and exchange listing. The market cap of BRC-20-type tokens, or Bitcoin-based tokens, exceeded $1 billion in 2023, highlighting the increasing significance of Bitcoin’s exclusive tokens.
After the review, the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem’s stability and development demonstrate investor confidence and creativity amid the market turbulence, regardless of the information barrier effect. The system’s ecosystem’s upsurge by these changes causes an even more resilient and interconnected Bitcoin network formation.
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