The Waves Association announced on Wednesday a new grant program for cross-chain interoperability development.

The pool consists of 1 million Waves tokens, worth approximately $3 million as of press time. Projects will be eligible for grants of up to 300,000 Waves to develop solutions for interoperability and cross-chain communication.

There will be three separate types of grants: open grants, grants distributed through hackathons and Waves-focused grants. Sten Laureyssens, strategic advisor at the Waves Association, explained to Cointelegraph that open grants will have a wide scope:

"For the open grant category, the grants are open to a wide variety of interoperability projects, that don't necessarily have to be connected to Waves. We're looking for creative solutions to connect existing blockchains and dApps."
The latter two types of grants will have to adhere to certain requirements, which makes it likely that the Waves blockchain will be involved in some form. Nevertheless, Laureyssens said that the association is planning to sponsor blockchain-agnostic solutions as well.

Sasha Ivanov, president of the Waves Association, threw a subtle jab at certain types of interoperability solutions offered today:

"Waves Association aims to support independent developers working on interoperability solutions — especially those thinking outside the box. Solving interoperability by adding a dedicated blockchain and native token as an additional layer would only lead to more complexity, undercutting the potential of the proposed solution."
Grants will be stipulated and decided on by members of the Waves Association, though the disbursement of funds will be automated through a decentralized application.

Waves is a smart contract-enabled blockchain platform competing with the likes of Ethereum and EOS. Its developers have often criticized the mainstream approaches to certain tenets of blockchain technology, notably misleading claims of transactional capacity.

The Waves blockchain was recently used with apparent success in a Russian local election, following a disappointing performance by a similar system developed by BitFury.

Twetch, the social media app built on Bitcoin, exceeded 1 million transactions on October 27.

This is a remarkable and significant milestone for the company, its users, and the Bitcoin ecosystem. The 1 million transaction milestone makes Twetch one of the few Bitcoin companies to put 1 million transactions on-chain.

From the day Twetch launched to the 1 millionth tx, how long did it take to reach this milestone?

From the day that we started, it took about 18 months to get our 1 millionth transaction.

Is Twetch the first Bitcoin app to put 1 million transactions on-chain?

Twetch is the first and most active application to have 1 million transactions on-chain; Ethereum cannot even dream of such a thing.

Why should someone who has never used Twetch before give it a try and check it out?

Twetch represents the future of the internet. It is ad-free, you can profit off of it, you own your own data, and the user is in total control. In a world where these big internet giants are the ones that are in control, Twetch treats users and their ideas the way nature intended, giving users control of their property.

What would you say users like most about Twetch?
Twetch users like the money the most, they make a lot of money. There are people making thousands of dollars on Twetch. The other thing would be the culture. Bright gang represents a group of people who really are willing to go in the world and try to make a difference to see a brighter future, to really try and make things better in a world that is sort of doom and gloom. Bright gang stands out, we shine bright.  

Can you share any details regarding quarterly or YTD revenue?
I'm not going to go into specifics because the answer is on the blockchain. Twetch is on the blockchain, it's completely auditable on the blockchain, everyone can see the money going in and out on the Bitcoin blockchain.

But something that's really exciting about Twetch is that within the last 30 days, our revenue is more than last year's revenue. The revenue is really growing, people are coming back day to day to use Twetch, not just for our posts to the blockchain features and to profit from their content, but people are using Twetch DMs to do business and connect with new people. It's really about getting the world better connected on Twetch right now, and the culture is just really, really strong.

Joint work will be focused on developing a broader DeFi ecosystem using the Gravity cross-chain communication protocol.
We are excited to announce a collaboration between Waves and Fantom. Waves and Fantom are committed to building an open ecosystem between different chains, based on the Gravity protocol, which is essential to the DeFi industry's wider success.

Under the collaboration deal, WAVES, the native utility token of the Waves ecosystem, will join Fantom's DeFi ecosystem as collateral for minting synthetic assets, including fUSD, Fantom's stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
WAVES holders will be able to use fMint to access fUSD and other synthetic assets, which can be used with other Fantom DeFi products. Specifically, fLend allows users to lend and borrow assets, while fTrade allows users to trade them.

For instance, If you want to go long BTC (without losing exposure to your WAVES collateral), mint fUSD against your WAVES in fMint and use the fUSD to buy fBTC (synthetic BTC) in fTrade. Sell the fBTC for fUSD later to repay the minted debt. Once you've repaid any outstanding minted debt, you can unlock your collateral to withdraw.

About Gravity
Gravity is a decentralized cross-chain and oracle network based on a truly blockchain-agnostic protocol for communication between blockchains and with the outside world, working with the native token economies.
Gravity provides multi-purpose cross-chain interaction without introducing a native token. The true blockchain agnostic no-token approach creates a more inclusive, open ecosystem, while addressing future scaling/stability issues.

About Fantom
The Fantom Foundation is committed to building technology that is open-source, decentralized, DAG-based distributed ledgers with aBFT consensus. Fantom aims to create fast, secure and scalable technologies across various industries, allowing organizations, businesses, and individuals to develop decentralized and secure applications, solving real-world problems.

The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted the operator of a BTC escrow on charges of defrauding two of his clients out of $7 million. Federal authorities said John Barry Thompson is charged with two counts of wire fraud and commodities fraud which collectively carry a maximum prison sentence of 60 years.

In its press release, the DoJ revealed that a grand jury in the Southern District of New York had returned an indictment charging Thompson with fraud. Thompson was the principal of Volantis Escrow Platform LLC and the related Volantis Market Making LLC.

In a separate action, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also filed civil charges against Thompson.

The charges are related to allegations that Thompson defrauded $7 million from two clients in 2018. According to the DoJ, the 48-year-old man made false statements to an unnamed company in 2018, convincing the company to send him $3 million to buy BTC. He assured the company that the transaction was guaranteed as "cash is with me, coin is with me." However, he didn't have the coins as promised and he ended up sending part of the money to a third party to purchase the BTC. He then lied for days about the status of the transaction and in the end, he never returned the funds.

A month after the debacle, he enticed yet another unnamed company with promises of a guaranteed BTC purchase. The company sent him $4 million, and just like in the first case, he sent the money to a third party and never refunded the company.

Geoffrey Berman, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, commented, "As alleged, Jon Barry Thompson repeatedly lied to investors in cryptocurrencies about the safety of their investments made through his companies. As a result of Thompson's lies, investors lost millions of dollars."

The Easton, Pennsylvania, resident is charged with two counts of commodities fraud, each of which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. He's also charged with two counts of wire fraud, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.

The DoJ was the first U.S. regulator to pursue Thompson, with the CFTC following that up with civil charges. However, in November 2019, the U.S. government intervened, requesting the CFTC to stay its charges against the alleged cryptocurrency scammer as they could interfere with a parallel criminal case against him.

A Technology Delivered
We're happy to announce that we've officially launched Lamden mainnet! Today marks a day of independence and new beginnings. Three years in the making, this milestone represents a culmination of intense efforts to deliver a novel blockchain with a revolutionary leap in performance, scalability and usability. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution to these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

What is Lamden Mainnet?
Lamden's engineers aimed to not only deliver on the original promises of blockchain but to revolutionize it. Lamden tackles the fundamental challenges of blockchain head-on, from high barriers to entry to poor performance and scalability.

Easy to Use
Lamden's open-source, Python-native platform empowers developers to focus on quickly building blockchain applications, instead of learning new programming languages and messing around with complex syntax and system architecture. This means easier development and faster revenue generation on Lamden.

Highly Performant and Scalable
Lamden uses an array of advanced algorithms to remain highly performant and scalable as demand increases for on-chain activity and large-scale applications. Lamden is engineered to achieve sub-second transaction finality and to scale linearly with additional CPU cores, as described here. There are no Ethereum-style "gas-wars" on Lamden because the system uses a first-in-first-out queuing algorithm which prevents people from paying more to get ahead of the line and further congest the network.

A Developer Incentives System
Lamden has a built-in rewards distribution system with voteable and configurable parameters. Developers who create applications on Lamden will be awarded a percentage of transaction fees processed through their smart contracts, thereby earning revenue automatically from their applications without relying on third-party payment services. Incentives are made with Lamden's native coin TAU and sent straight to the developer's wallet. Because revenue is tied to transaction volume, developers will earn more revenue as their DApps become more popular.
For an introductory period, developers will automatically earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contracts.

A Self-Regulating System
Lamden has a self-regulating governance system where the community nodes have direct voting rights on key decisions including rewards distribution, transaction rates, and platform functionality upgrades. The system naturally strives for an equilibrium where each network participant will act in their best interest to maximize their reward. No single party controls the Lamden network and no single party can monopolize it.

Mainnet Token Swap
Now that mainnet is live, a token swap from Ethereum ERC20 TAU to Lamden Mainnet TAU will commence. The swap period will be open for approximately 6 months and is mandatory. If you do not swap your ERC20 TAU tokens during the 6 month swap window, you will be unable to do so afterwards.

IMPORTANT: Do not send ERC20 tokens to the Lamden wallet or they will be lost forever! ERC20 tokens are not compatible with the Lamden network. The only way to get your ERC20 TAU onto the Lamden network is by following the wallet token swap process.

The swap process is built directly into the Lamden wallet, which you can download on the Lamden website..

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), an organization of state financial regulators, will make it easier for financial technology payment firms and cryptocurrency exchanges to prove they're in compliance with U.S. state laws.

The CSBS announced a "One Company, One Exam" plan Tuesday whereby states will coordinate their supervisory exams for the nation's largest payment firms in an effort to reduce the costs on both state regulators and the companies they oversee. Essentially, the exam is how these regulators will make sure regulated entities are still in compliance.

What this means for cryptocurrency companies – such as Coinbase – is their compliance costs will drop. Rather than work with more than 50 different state and territory regulators, the exchanges only need to check in with the one group. The group of regulators includes every state but Montana, which doesn't have a money transmission license.

Crypto exchanges need money transmission licenses to legally operate within most states, with the state banking or financial services regulator overseeing this form of regulated activity.

"For the industry that means there's going to be a reduction in regulatory burden," said Matt Lambert, nonbank counsel for CSBS.

However, new exchanges will still have to apply for, and secure, a license for each state in which they hope to operate. While the CSBS is working on a potential standard for applications, there's still a long way to go.

At present the move also only applies to the 78 largest money transmitters in the U.S. – those operating in at least 40 states. While Lambert declined to identify which crypto businesses fit into this category, a search of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry database indicates this could include Coinbase, Circle Internet Financial and Square.

The list of firms that will benefit from CSBS' announcement could still grow. While there aren't any plans right now to add to the list of companies, Lambert said more could be added later on.

'Strictest standards'
The CSBS announced its effort to consolidate supervision at least partly as a result of soliciting feedback from the crypto industry, and finding that regulated entities believed "there is too much supervision that is accomplishing the same thing," Lambert said.

"Overall I think this process will lead to high standards, the strictest standards," he said. "This is not going to be a means of defaulting to the lowest standards, this is going to be a method of raising the bar for everyone."

Each exam will be conducted by a group of state regulators, and the makeup of the group will change on an exam-by-exam basis. This lets the regulators coordinate among themselves to find the best fit for each company's evaluation. 

The Moment of Truth
The wait is almost over; Lamden's mainnet launch is fast approaching. September 16th, 2020 will be an inflection point, marking the transition from a technology promised to a technology delivered.

We at Lamden have been working nonstop to deliver on the unfulfilled promises of blockchain. Instead of modifying an existing technology, we decided to design and build a novel blockchain architecture from scratch. As a result, our Python-native modular blockchain delivers a revolutionary leap in performance, efficiency, and usability.

The moment of truth and the reveal is drawing near. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution upon these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective. One day, we will look back and remember September 16th, 2020 as a pivotal moment for blockchain and its revival.

The Road Traveled
We at Lamden took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. The imminent release of Lamden blockchain is the culmination of two and a half years of nonstop development and testing, and pushing the limits of what blockchain can do. We have worked hard to make life easier for developers by creating a Python-native platform that simplifies development and testing, and accelerates product deployment and monetization.

We have set our goals sky-high and refused to take a shortcut or compromise, and achieved results beyond our wildest expectations. We are deeply grateful to our amazing community for their unfailingly generous and enthusiastic support over the years. The mainnet would not have been possible without our team of developers and their unwavering commitment to deliver something extraordinary.

The Road Ahead
In the coming weeks, we will share more details on mainnet and exciting new plans with our community members. Our roadmap includes a developer on-boarding campaign, exciting new DeFi products, and a specification for Lamden version 2.0.

Lamden mainnet is just around the corner, but community members can start developing their ideas now using Lamden's Python-based smart contracting system. For an introductory period, developers will earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contract.

To our existing community members and those new to Lamden, we extend our warmest welcome to the Lamden Legion.

For more information, please visit:
https://lamden.io/  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLtqJQ5LRc