Daegu Recruits First Cohort of Youth Blockchain Startup School

Pakistan Implements Ban on CryptocurrencyPakistan has moved to ban cryptocurrency once more, with the country’s Minister of State for Finance and Revenue, Aisha Ghaus Pasha disclosing the move last week.According to multiple local media reports within Pakistan, on May 16 Ghaus Pasha stated at a session of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, that cryptocurrencies are banned and “will never be legalized in Pakistan.”Photo by Hamid Roshaan on UnsplashFATF Grey ListGhaus Pasha supported this position by outlining that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had set the banning of crypto as a condition for Pakistan’s removal from its “Grey List.”FATF is an initiative of the G7 group of countries, first established in 1989. Its mandate is to develop policies geared towards combating money laundering, and most especially, terrorist financing. The FATF grey list includes those jurisdictions who are deemed to require increased monitoring relative to their efforts to keep money laundering and terrorist financing to an absolute minimum.Pakistan had found itself on the FATF grey list over the course of a number of years. That meant reputational damage on an international basis, together with loss of investor confidence. It also signals the likelihood of weaknesses in a country’s financial system and in its financial controls. The categorization would have had an impact on the country’s ability to access international finance, impacted trade relations, and involved increased compliance costs.Against that background, there may be a certain logic to the Finance Minister’s stance, despite it naturally being distasteful to those of us that support the development of decentralized systems, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. After an extended period on that Grey List, Pakistan was only removed from it in October of last year.Currency devaluationNotwithstanding that, governments in the developing world may have added incentives in banning cryptocurrencies. Their currencies are oftentimes unstable, and the Pakistani rupee is no exception. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin find their greatest use case in countries that have their currencies devalued or economies that fall into the trap of hyperinflation relative to the sovereign currency.In Pakistan’s case, the rupee plummeted to a record low against the US dollar in January. Naturally, that hurts ordinary citizens and provides the conditions under which people are more likely to investigate decentralized cryptocurrencies. On that basis, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Pakistani government’s decision to ban crypto was publicly supported by Sohail Jawad, Director of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).Pakistani banks are naturally following the government and the central bank’s lead, in implementing the ban. One circular obtained by CoinDesk stated: “As per regulatory instructions from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), any remittance of foreign exchange directly/indirectly outside Pakistan to overseas foreign exchange trading, margin trading, and CFD trading apps/websites/platforms through any payment channel is not allowed/permitted by SBP and such payments are inherently risky and illegal.”Community reactionNaturally enough, the crypto community internationally and locally, is not enamored by the move. However, people who have been in the space over the last few years are accustomed to ever-changing stances taken by governments as a reaction to a technology that they simply don’t know how to deal with.Waqar Zaka, a Pakistani who works within the Web3 space commented previously on a ban that was implemented in Pakistan in 2017, only later to be found to be unconstitutional. Another Pakistani community member took to Twitter in taking a stand against the decision. Others still immediately considered how they could circumvent the ban.Crypto has always benefited from jurisdictional arbitrage, and while bans are not in any way helpful, in the longer run, they will never stop the roll out and further development of this innovation.

NPIXEL Wraps Up 2nd Community Test for Web3 Game “Gran Saga: Unlimited”Korean game developer NPIXEL announced on Tuesday the successful completion of the second community test for its Web3-based PC massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called “Gran Saga: Unlimited.”The test — conducted over the course of two weeks with some 8,000 global participants — was aimed at enhancing the gameplay environment and strengthening community-based content ahead of the official release of the game.Photo by Andrey Metelev on UnsplashExploring game features and player-based developmentAccording to local news outlet ETnews, participants had the opportunity to try out various features within the game, including new dungeons, a 16-player raid, and a player-versus-player (PvP) battleground called “Chaos Field.” In particular, the “Idol & Fan” system garnered significant attention, where 100 global influencers who received soulbound tokens participated as “idols” to create diverse content with their “fandoms.”NPIXEL’s development team was actively engaged in the testing process, collaborating with users to strategize dungeon conquests and partake in community activities. They implemented real-time communication with users, gathering feedback and opinions to build a game that players directly contributed to.“Proof-of-Play”: The expansion of blockchain in gamingOne of the key features of Gran Saga: Unlimited is its Proof-of-Play technology, NPIXEL explained, much like the Proof-of-Work process used in cryptocurrency. Proof-of-Play involves recording all the in-game items and commodities that a player receives on a blockchain, thus proving and disclosing the items’ randomness of acquisition. The difficulty of obtaining certain items is determined based on in-game demand, and users can search and verify real-time information such as time of acquisition, ownership identification, and random probability.Upcoming launch and exclusive rewardsThe developer is also offering rewards to all 8,000 testers, including a Mount NFT when the game is launched and a chance to win a whitelist spot raffle of Catcha NFT with 1,000 open spots to all testers.NPIXEL will thoroughly review user feedback and opinions collected during the test to further improve the game, after which they plan to officially launch the game through the web-based premier gaming ecosystem, METAPIXEL.METAPIXEL will be developed on the Layer 1 blockchain network Aptos, which is based on NPIXEL’s partnership with Aptos established back in November of last year.

Bank of Korea Conducts Successful CBDC Pilot Test with Financial InstitutionsThe Bank of Korea (BOK) announced yesterday in a press release that its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program operated successfully in a practical setting involving multiple financial institutions.Testing environmentsPreviously, the CBDC system was tested in an isolated cloud environment. In this recent test, the system was installed on the servers of various financial institutions over a five-month period to evaluate its performance.The 1.2 billion KRW ($905,000) project included the participation of six companies, such as Kakao’s Krust Universe, KakaoBank, and KakaoPay, as well as 14 banks and the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute. Kookmin, Shinhan, and Woori were among the participating banks.Four scenariosThe BOK and financial institutions tested the system’s performance under four scenarios: increasing transaction requests per second, increasing the number of active users, reducing the transaction queue size, and adjusting the block generation time ratio.The increase in transaction requests led to a 10% decrease in transactions per second (TPS), from 2,100 TPS to 1,900 TPS, compared to the single cloud environment test. This result is still deemed acceptable, as the highest TPS recorded in the current small payment infrastructure network is 1,200, which occurs on paydays and other high-transaction days.Issues such as slower response times arose with higher transaction request volumes but were resolved by enlarging the transaction queue size and increasing the block formation time proportion in the block generation process. The block generation process involves two stages: block formation, where transactions are recorded, and block validation, where transactions are verified.Greater stabilityThe test demonstrated that transaction errors at individual institutions did not affect others, suggesting that a distributed ledger system offers greater management stability than a centralized system. However, institutional officers cited challenges in problem-solving and communication when using the distributed ledger system.The BOK plans to involve more institutions in ongoing experiments this year, supporting them in testing their smart contracts on the CBDC pilot system.Photo by Bundo Kim on Unsplash