Papa John's NFT Bag Giveaway
Papa John's is using the Tezos blockchain to give away free NFT bags designed by two talented NFT designers; Tom Hoff and Ash Sketch. One lucky winner given the chance to with a real-life version. The NFTs can be claimed here.

There are nine NFT bags from 19,840 to choose from and claiming a bag enters the owner into a draw to win a collectible real-life Papa John's bag, with the winner being chosen on the 14th April 2022. This will be the 'Papa 1984' yellow bag, by Ash Sketch.

The bag is worth £250 and users are able to mint one NFT bag per wallet in order to enter the draw.

Papa John's is the fourth-largest pizza delivery restaurant chain in the United States, operating over 5000 restaurant locations worldwide. The pizza bag giveaway will represent the company's first foray into the NFT market and for this they chose to utilize the environmentally friendly Tezos blockchain in order to distribute the offering.
Papa John's stated:

Most Proof of Work blockchains are very inefficient and wasteful by design. They can use millions of times more energy than modern Proof of Stake blockchains like Tezos. By comparison, creating and trading NFTs on Tezos takes around the same amount of energy as sending an email or a social media post.

Last year big rival Pizza Hut entered the NFT market with their pizza art NFT offering.

People will be able to buy the real-life versions of these bags in an exclusive drop of five real Papa 1984, Papa Cheese Melt and Papa Tag bags which will go on sale via Depop, the fashion marketplace, on 7 March 2022. 

Payvo is coming, and it is going to be our best wallet yet! Read on to find out everything that has changed since our last update, including the transition from a desktop app to a fully web-based application. There is a lot to cover, so let's get straight into it!

#Payvo is Now 100% Web-Based
When we set out to build a next-gen wallet, we had a few key goals in mind:

1. Payvo needs to be the best white label out-of-the-box solution possible.
2. Payvo needs to easily integrate with any ARK-based network.
3. Payvo needs to be user and developer friendly while featuring the intuitive interfaces we have become known for.
4. Payvo needs to be modern and future-proof.
5. If you have spent any time with Web3, then you are probably familiar with the major shift towards web-based interfaces for both DeFi and wallet management. The truth is, desktop applications are outdated, so we need to make sure that we keep up with industry standards and trends. There are a lot of benefits with a move towards a web-based application, so let's take a look at a couple of the most important ones.

#Payvo Will Always be Up-to-Date
One of the most frequent support emails we get is that someone cannot see their funds, or they stopped receiving rewards from their delegate, or that their wallet is, in some way, failing to properly update the network data. In almost all cases, the solution is to update the wallet to the latest version.

With Payvo, you will always be up-to-date, meaning you will no longer have to worry whether you have the most recent version or not—it will just work. Period.

This also means that it is easier for us to push regular updates and make changes without disrupting you as the user. This leads to a better development cycle and an ability to create a more seamless interface for the end user.

#One App, Multiple Operating Systems
With the shift to a web-based application, Payvo will effectively become 'one-size-fits-all.' Whether you are on a desktop, laptop, iPad, or mobile phone, Payvo will provide a unified experience across all of your devices. Simply access the URL, and you are off to the races!

This greatly benefits developers who no longer need to maintain multiple codebases or submit to Apple or Google for approval of the mobile app. This greatly reduces the time required to get your fork up and running and makes maintenance easy.

Not only that, but the web-based application eliminates some of the restrictions caused by the previous use of Electron. This will make some features more efficient and easier to work with (such as web workers). Payvo also loads faster, runs smoother, and generally provides a better experience for both users and developers.

#White Label and Built for ARK
The shift to a web-based application is merely one of the only major changes with Payvo. We have spent a lot of time looking at our goals as a company and have put significant effort into getting back to basics. While we originally envisioned Payvo as a multi-wallet that would support BTC, Ethereum, and other assets, we feel like we need to stay squarely focused on providing the best possible solution for the ARK Ecosystem and those who fork the ARK Blockchain Framework.

As such, our goal is to make Payvo the best possible white-label solution for ARK Based networks and focus on making it plug-and-play within the ecosystem. With this change, we will also be moving away from running 'Live Service' applications directly from the ARK Ecosystem, SCIC. Everything that we build will be freely available as open-source software for anyone to run. We do not want to be the single point of failure nor pick and choose which networks matter the most. We love all of our bridgechains and want to give each and every one of them the opportunity to provide a robust application suite and set of features to their communities.

All we ask is that you leave the license in place, give us credit where credit is due, and if you get famous, give us a shout and let us know all the cool stuff you are doing!

#So When Can We Use Payvo?
We expect to have a public beta version available within the first half of March. The beta version will be fully functional and support the following features:

Fully Customizable Networks - Decide which networks you want to see inside the wallet as well as those you don't want to interact with.
Custom Networks - Add any v2.7+ Core-based network to the Payvo Wallet by providing a valid node address.
Server Management - Add your own custom nodes for interacting and/or broadcasting transactions. You are in full control (if you want to be).
Swap Integration - Payvo will come with built-in integration for both ChangeNow and Changelly at launch.
News Feed - Payvo will feature a news feed powered by FTX (previously Blockfolio) for relevant (listed) networks (only ARK at launch).
We could not be more excited to get Payvo into your hands. We believe these changes make for the best wallet we have ever produced and will provide for a more robust, futureproof white label solution for ARK Based Blockchains. Stay tuned to our blog so you do not miss out on the upcoming Beta. We cannot wait to hear all your feedback!

The Bollywood Industry's First-Ever NFT
US-headquartered Superstar Xchange, in collaboration with Tezos India and TZ APAC, is all set to launch Bollywood industry's first-ever NFT (Non-Fungible Token) ahead of the theatrical release of the highly anticipated upcoming Hindi Film 'Jhund'– which stars megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role and role and is directed by the iconic Nagraj Manjule.

Notably, Superstar Xchange is an up-and-coming NFT marketplace co-founded by Andrew Sternlight and Savita Raj Hiremath. It is a platform that dedicates itself to publishing NFTs on the Indian film industry and plans to expand into other parts of the Asian film markets in the near future; the platform has been built and developed on top of the Tezos blockchain.

Superstar Xchange is on a mission to help movie fans and enthusiasts own a piece of their favourite movies; it is the first and largest NFT platform for film collectibles and film memorabilia in India.

For their upcoming project for the Bollywood movie 'Jhund', they will be dropping 2 NFTs representing two unique posters from this movie on 3rd and 4th March 2022 respectively; the worldwide NFT drops will happen on Superstar Xchange's official website on both the days at 5 PM IST.

Each of the buyers of these 2 NFTs will own a piece of the movie via unique and exclusive movie posters, and these NFTs can then be traded in the secondary market and/or also be "flexed" on social media platforms.

Savita Raj Hiremath, Founder of Superstar Xchange, and a veteran Indian film producer, said:

"We are super excited and honoured to launch premium NFTs on Superstar Xchange for a big-ticket movie like Jhund starring the legendary Amitabh Bachchan.

Given that film NFTs range from old to new films, both innovation and creativity are critical for this domain; and furthermore the concept and uniqueness of a digital asset make NFTs stand out as an art form.

Being a part of the Indian Film Industry, the advertising business, and interacting with creative and innovative people from these industries for over 25 years, I believe I will be able to do justice to the emerging NFT space by adding value with the unique and artistic pieces on our platform.

Also, this is a great investment opportunity for the collectors and buyers who appreciate art in all forms, as well as for the fans to have a collective of their favourite films.

The USP and challenge for Superstar Xchange platform is to maintain the balance between both business and art, and we are certain that we will be able to succeed in doing that while reaching new heights and making us stand apart from the rest in the NFT space."

Notably, Superstar Xchange is a platform designed to publish film memorabilia from the Indian Film Industry, and has already acquired the rights to many Indian films and plans to have their respective assets as NFTs on their platform.

Whereas in the long run, they aspire to dominate the film NFT marketplace globally as well.

Andrew Sternlight, Co-Founder, Superstar Xchange commented:

"Through Superstar Xchange, we are crafting new opportunities for fans to connect with, even to participate in the inspiring stories that stir our imaginations and shape our lives.

From an investment perspective, we expect our new creative digital asset class to offer its collectors strong, diversified returns."

Om Malviya, President, Tezos India added:

"We are delighted and proud to join hands as a supporting partner with Superstar Xchange for the 'Jhund' NFT project.  We truly believe that green NFTs with low carbon footprint are the future, and Tezos is the leader in this space.

Being the leading force in terms of promoting the Tezos ecosystem in India, we at Tezos India foresee a huge potential for Tezos-based NFTs in the Indian film industry in the years to come."

How can one mint NFTs on Superstar Xchange?

Superstar Xchange will mint and create sales using the subset of the NFTs minted.

When a user registers on Superstar Xchange, they create a Tezos account (wallet) which will be handled at the Backend
The Buying process is simple; the buyer will enter their credit/debit card details, and after making a successful payment, Superstar Xchange will transfer the minted NFT to the buyer's wallet.

A Smart Contract Call Record
Contract calls are interactions with smart contracts in the form of transactions. This is an important metric to see growth in the adoption rate of mainnet smart contracts. Since July 2020, the amount of contract calls has increased to 1,209% of the July total.

Every month we've seen a new record in the number of contract calls (except for November, which had a 10% drop).

January saw a 22% increase compared to December. At 22% it sounds ok, but if put this growth into perspective, we see that that 22% is 2.2 times the total amount of contract calls in July last year. We're witnessing exponential growth.

If we're looking at developer activity, we also continue to see growth in activity. In December, we saw an average of 700 daily new deployments on testnets. But in January, we see an average of 930 daily new deployments.

February is set to bring a lot of new launches and milestones.

Edo
The latest protocol upgrade will go live on mainnet in the second week of February. This is a feature-packed upgrade that includes privacy features.

This means that developers can easily integrate privacy into their smart contracts, which will enable them to provide private transactions and develop "privacy-conscious" applications.

Edo also introduces Tickets. Tickets is a convenient mechanism for smart contracts to grant portable permissions to other smart contracts or to issue tokens.

Tickets will be improving challenges like concurrency, which is a general issue developers face, especially in decentralized smart contract platforms.

Tickets also enable a more efficient way of interacting between contracts. It will enable self-custody of first-class coins/token permissions and improve the developer experience.

These are just a few of the advantages Tickets will bring and you can read more about tickets here.

Kalamint
Kalamint is a platform that can be used to create, sell and collect NFT's. Besides the advantage of low Tezos fees over high fees on Ethereum-based NFT platforms, Kalamint will have a unique governance design that includes a Guild.

We'll do an extensive article on Kalamint before they launch the platform on the 18th of February.

TEZEX
TEZEX is a cross-chain gateway to Tezos. It will enable value to come from Ethereum to Tezos DeFi in a few clicks. After that, users can move away from the current fees on Ethereum, and experience a drop in costs that is on average 3,000 times cheaper on Tezos.

When TEZEX launches, another crucial instrument joins the Tezos DeFi landscape.

Quipuswap
This is the second Decentralized Exchange (DEX) that is built on Tezos. Chances are that it will launch in February. This does, however, depend on the progress of the external audit of Quipuswap.

Kolibri
Kolibri is an algorithmic stable coin, built on Tezos and backed by XTZ. A February launch of Kolibri could be a bit optimistic to expect, but a testnet was released in the beginning of January, so there has some significant progress.

1,000,000 accounts
In February, Tezos will quite likely reach the milestone of 1,000,000 funded accounts.

With currently 945,284 funded accounts, and  97,253 new funded accounts in the past 30 days, ~55,000 account are likely to get created this month and break the 1 millionth milestone.

A federal grand jury in San Diego has indicted the founder of one of the largest scams in the digital currency space, charging him with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation, and international money laundering. Satish Kumbhani, the founder of digital asset mega scam BitConnect, faces up to 70 years behind bars if convicted of all the charges.

The San Diego court claimed in its indictment that Kumbhani misled investors about BitConnect's Lending Program. Under this program, the 36-year-old and his cronies allegedly told investors that they could generate guaranteed returns by using their investment funds to trade on the volatility of the digital asset markets, authorities said. They touted the 'BitConnect Trading Bot' and its proprietary 'Volatility Software' as being able to generate guaranteed returns.

The project collapsed in early 2018, and it was outed as a massive Ponzi scheme in which Kumbhani and his co-conspirators used later investors' money to pay off the early investors. They were able to raise $2.4 billion from investors before the project sank, according to investigators.

The indictment further alleges that after shutting down the Lending Program, Kumbhani directed his network of promoters to artificially and fraudulently manipulate and prop up the price of the BitConnect Coin (BCC), the project's native token. This gave the impression that the token was in high demand and increased its price.

To cover their tracks, the BitConnect leaders allegedly comingled and exchanged users' funds through their cluster of digital currency wallets, concealing the location and control of the funds.

Throughout the length of their operation, the BitConnect operators were aware but willfully ignored all the relevant regulations, authorities said. These include operating a money transmitting business through its exchange without registering with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which violates the Bank Secrecy Act.

In his comments, Eric Smith, the Special Agent in Charge of FBI's Cleveland Field Office, warned digital asset scammers that the FBI would pursue criminals who turn to digital assets to conceal their schemes.

"Dressing up a tried and true fraud scheme with a new twist and basing it overseas will not deter the resolve and dedication of the FBI to meticulously investigate and bring such fraudsters to justice."

The IRS, the Justice Department's Criminal Division, and the Southern District of California's Attorney's office all shot a warning to digital asset scammers as well, reminding them that the industry isn't beyond the scope of the law.

The indictment charges Kumbhani with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation, conspiracy to commit international money laundering, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Kumbhani, from Hemal in India, could spend up to 70 years behind bars if convicted of all the charges.

As CoinGeek recently reported, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently sided with victims of BitConnect, giving them the green light to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the project's promoters. The Southern District of Florida had tossed the lawsuit after the promoters had argued that the Securities Act of 1933 doesn't encompass solicitation conducted through online mass media means.

In its ruling, the appellate court pointed out that the Act doesn't impose a limitation on the means of solicitation, nor does any precedent ever set in the court.

"Because the Securities Act provides no free pass for online solicitations, we reverse the district court's dismissal of the section 12 claim," Judge Britt Grant ruled.

Follow CoinGeek's Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groups—a from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, ShapeShift, Coinbase, Ripple, Ethereum,
FTX and Tether—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.

Neo community developer Robert Oschler has won second place in the SocialFi category of the Metaverse Alliance hackathon. Oschler's project, Neo3D Live, is a 3D metaverse world that allows users to interact with one another's avatars and participate in events like real-time auctions.

Oschler developed Neo3D Live so that anyone in any part of the world can access the 3D world, regardless of their ability to purchase powerful equipment. Neo3D Live was designed for most of the world's internet users – those without VR headsets or high-end equipment. He said:

Let Metaverse residents form meaningful connections in a virtual world that will run on common hardware, including the millions of smartphones that may be the only link to the Metaverse a citizen in an economically disadvantaged region has. This is a link that has the true power to uplift the millions, if not billions of hard-working, intelligent, decent human beings who have the misfortune of being born in a region that is not economically gifted like other parts of the world.

The platform leverages the ThreeJS graphics library, a graphics engine that is widely accessible. Neo3D Live runs on almost any browser and device, so there is no need for high-powered computer setups.

The platform's beta version allows users to congregate in a digital 3D environment. Real-time video conferencing is embedded into the moveable characters, so participants can see those they're communicating with via live video feed. Oschler said, "By combining true video conferencing where participants can see each other's faces as they talk to one another and move about a fun virtual world, people can once again feel the natural human joy of forming groups based on both social and spatial relationships like they would at a party or a shopping mall."

Oschler also incorporated other elements to make the space feel more natural and interactive. In Neo3D Live, intelligent objects are embedded in the virtual world, responding to an avatar's presence. For example, walking up to a wall with an embedded YouTube video will trigger the video to begin playing. And to create a more real-life experience, a user can hear the sounds of their movements and that of others around them.

NFT Showcase
The first demo of Neo3D Live included the NFT Showcase, a custom room where an individual can purchase an NFT on auction. A demonstration of the live auction can be found below:

The NFT designer can determine who can participate in the Showcase by whitelisting public wallet addresses on Neo N3.

The Neo3D Live smart contract supports derivative commissions, so collectors can earn profits when they sell an artist's NFTs if the artist grants them that right. Further, Oschler intends the NFTs bought and sold through Neo3D Live to be viewable and transferable via third-party marketplaces (i.e., Sky Hut, GhostMarket).

Looking forward, he aims to develop and release a drag-and-drop toolkit (that doesn't require coding ability), so anyone can build a virtual world.

The Indian government has proposed taxing income from cryptocurrencies and other digital assets at 30%. India's finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, said: "There's been a phenomenal increase in transaction in virtual digital assets … The magnitude and frequency of these transactions have made it imperative to provide for a specific tax regime."

30% on Crypto Income
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed taxing income from cryptocurrencies and other digital assets at 30% while presenting the federal budget Tuesday. She said:

I propose to provide that any income from transfer of any virtual digital asset shall be taxed at the rate of 30%. No deduction in respect of any expenditure or allowance shall be allowed while computing such income, except the cost of acquisition.

"There's been a phenomenal increase in transaction in virtual digital assets," the finance minister added. "The magnitude and frequency of these transactions have made it imperative to provide for a specific tax regime."

The tax proposal puts cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in India's highest tax band.

Harish Prasad, head of banking, India, FIS, was quoted as saying: "This has been a much awaited announcement in the context of the interest and growth in investments into these assets. The uncertainty and concerns on the legal, regulatory and taxation status of cryptocurrencies are addressed to a reasonable extent by virtue of this announcement."

Avinash Shekhar, the CEO of crypto exchange Zebpay, commented:

Thirty percent tax on income from virtual digital assets, while high, is a positive step as it legitimizes crypto and hints at an optimistic sentiment towards further acceptance of crypto and NFTs.

Nischal Shetty, the CEO of crypto exchange Wazirx, commented: "We also hope this development removes any ambiguity for banks and they can provide financial services to the crypto industry."

However, tax consultants warned that individuals could end up paying more than 30% of their crypto profits in tax and other charges. Amit Maheshwari, partner at tax consulting firm AKM Global, told Reuters: "If you made a profit of 100 rupees then including the 30% tax bracket, plus surcharge and cess the total tax outgo will be around 42 rupee."

Another announcement the Indian finance minister made Tuesday was about the launch of the country's central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee. She said the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), will introduce a digital currency starting in the financial year 2022-23, stating:

The introduction of a central bank digital currency will give a big boost to the digital economy. Digital currency will also lead to a more efficient and cheaper currency management system."