Dunamu’s Q1 Revenue Drops 28.6% Amid Global Liquidity Contraction

IOTA accelerates Middle East expansion with $100M foundation launchIn a move aimed at catalyzing the adoption of its distributed ledger technology (DLT) in the Middle East, the Berlin-headquartered IOTA Foundation, the developmental force behind the IOTA-directed acyclic graph-based ledger network, unveiled a $100 million foundation in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.Photo by Imtiyaz Ali on UnsplashTokenizing real-world assetsThe IOTA Foundation announced details of the initiative, known as the IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation, via a blog post published on its website on Wednesday. The new foundation is designed to facilitate the transformation of tangible assets into digital entities, marking a significant stride in the convergence of real-world assets with the digital realm, according to IOTA Co-founder and Chairman Dominik Schiener.Taking to the X platform, Schiener wrote:”We will double down on our efforts to bring the real world to Web3. We will pave the way to tokenize RWA [Real World Assets] assets on #IOTA and work with the governments in the UAE, across the Middle East and Africa to digitize their trade infrastructure and tokenize assets. We will make Blockchain real, with real use cases, real adoption, real yield and real assets.”IOTA is not a blockchain, but a related distributed ledger technology. DLT has garnered attention for its diverse applications over the past decade. IOTA’s digital tokens will serve as the financial backbone for this substantial investment, signaling a strategic move amidst recent setbacks in the cryptocurrency sector.Regulatory first in Abu DhabiThe IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation stands out as the first blockchain-focused foundation sanctioned by the regulatory authorities of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a key financial hub within the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The ADGM solidified its blockchain regulations in early November, creating a conducive environment for innovative blockchain-focused entities. The regulatory framework was crafted to offer a comprehensive structure specifically for DLT foundations and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).Schiener expanded further on plans for the DLT Foundation:”With a new headquarter in the UAE, we are positioning IOTA from being an Enterprise Blockchain in Europe, to becoming one of the largest, global Crypto ecosystems. We will fully support Web3 and DeFi use cases on IOTA with the #EVM launch in Q1.”Endowed with over $100 million in IOTA tokens, the foundation’s funds will be gradually vested over the next four years.The financial infusion is earmarked for the development and expansion of the IOTA network. Additionally, IOTA will embark on asset “tokenization,” a process involving the representation of ownership rights for land or buildings as digital tokens stored on a blockchain. These tokens, akin to digital certificates of ownership, extend to virtually any valuable object.IOTA launched in 2015, and within its first two years, it rose to be a top-ten crypto project on the basis of market capitalization. Over the course of the last six years, the project has struggled to make the network less centralized. There have also been internal conflicts, which resulted in a number of the project’s co-founders stepping away from the project. With this latest development, Schiener suggested that IOTA could work its way back to being a top-ten project once again.

Singaporean Researchers Devise More Effective DAO VotingResearchers at the Singapore University of Social Sciences have come up with a more efficient governance model for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).Photo by Shubham Dhage on UnsplashDAO governance reviewThe scientists presented their work via a paper titled “Voting Schemes in DAO Governance,” which was published earlier this week. The paper is due to appear in the Annual Review of Fintech in due course.The research paper initially sets out with a review of the different forms of voting currently used to affect DAO governance in the various early stage projects that are already up and running. Having taken a deep dive into existing approaches, the research team of Qinxu Ding, Weibiao Xu, Zhiguo Wang and David Kuo Chuen Lee decided that they could go one better themselves.Their review encompassed eight current approaches including the following: token-based quorum voting, knowledge-extractable voting, conviction voting and reputation-based voting. Each voting scheme was then evaluated based on the following factors:Efficiency: An assessment of the speed at which proposals are selected and approved.Fairness: Each voter should have equal rights to vote.Scalability: The degree to which storage, computation and communication needs can be adjusted relative to the number of voters.Robustness: An assessment of the relative resistance of the voting scheme to attacks and collusion.Incentive Schemes: The extent to which DAO members are motivated to vote.Following on from that analysis, the scientists put forward a hypothetical voting mechanism with design considerations relative to fully decentralized and permissionless DAO governance. When it came to ratings, the holographic consensus approach scored highest, with a “high” rating in the categories of efficiency, fairness and robustness, dropping down to medium when it came to scalability. None of the other approaches came close.In trying to go one better, the team took the holographic consensus approach and set out to create their own hypothetical voting mechanism based on this model. As evidenced from the paper, they tried to effect improvements to this approach:“We know that the downside of the conviction voting mechanism is that it takes time to approve an urgent proposal. To address this concern, we introduce a blind betting mechanism: each member could choose whether to bet on any proposals with a certain number of their tokens.”The researcher’s hypothetical model allows stakeholders to gamble their tokens on the likelihood of a proposal passing or failing. The logic with this approach, they claim, is that it would speed up the governance process, while making it more robust at the same time.In concluding remarks, the researchers acknowledged that all approaches were not without their pros and cons. They point out that the further development of DAOs shouldn’t be confined to a static organizational future. While they believe that their own hypothetical scheme is in theory superior, they acknowledge that it too has flaws. With that, the realities of implementing it in the real world may be a challenge.

Korean Telecommunications Firms Ramp Up ESG Efforts with NFTsSouth Korea’s top three leading telecommunications companies — SK Telecom (SKT), KT, and LG Uplus — are using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to boost their corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and engage younger audiences in their initiatives.Photo by Noah Buscher on UnsplashKT’s Raon NFT projectEarlier this year, KT launched an internal collaborative project between its device division and its blockchain division, KT MINCL, to issue profile picture (PFP) NFTs of its intellectual property — the feline character Raon. The project consists of four editions of NFT mintings, each with a different concept promoting mindful consumerism. 3,000 NFTs each were minted for the first two editions back in December and June, and KT is gearing up to release the third edition soon, according to industry reports on Sunday (local time). A portion of the proceeds from the upcoming third edition sale will also be donated under the project’s name. Notably, all 3,000 NFTs from the first edition were sold out in just a minute.KT has designed the NFT purchase system to encourage ESG-related activities. Buyers can receive items that reflect ESG values, such as bags from The Fair Story, a company that promotes fair trade products made by brands from developing countries. “We will continue to work with companies related to our ESG values to develop household products, miscellaneous goods, and more that are linked to NFTs,” KT said.LG Uplus and SKT’s ESG-led collaborationsLG Uplus and SKT have followed suit by incorporating eco-friendly themes into their own blockchain technologies. In particular, SKT recently signed a business agreement with WinCL, a carbon credit marketplace encouraging carbon offset efforts. The deal aims to combine SKT’s NFT marketplace, TopPort, and WinCL’s carbon credit system to issue NFTs for companies that need help managing their ESG performance indicators.On October 18, LG Uplus announced that a select number of holders of its Moono Crew NFT will be the first to purchase NFTs from the Incheon Heroes NFT collection — a collection launched on the Klaytn Mainnet as part of Incheon City’s Incheon Universe Project, aimed at introducing Incheon’s natural, cultural, historical, and technological heritage, and motivating participation in eco-friendly activities from younger generations. The company had collaborated with Incheon and Lotte Home Shopping to promote and expand the ecosystem of the collection.