The famous 
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Web3, Decentralization, DAOs
Vitalik: Designing Principles-based Stablecoins that (may not) collapse
Vitalik Buterin | May 25, 2022
The recent LUNA crash, which led to tens of billions of dollars of losses, has led to a storm of criticism of "algorithmic stablecoins" as a category, with many considering them to be a "fundamentally flawed product". The greater level of scrutiny on defi financial mechanisms, especially those that try very hard to optimize for "capital efficiency", is highly welcome. The greater acknowledgement that present performance is no guarantee of future returns (or even future lack-of-total-collapse) is even more welcome. Where the sentiment goes very wrong, however, is in painting all automated pure-crypto stablecoins with the same brush, and dismissing the entire category.
See: Stablecoins: What’s old is new again – speech by Christina Segal-Knowles
What we need is not stablecoin boosterism or doomerism, but rather a return to principles-based thinking. So what are some good principles for evaluating whether or not a particular automated stablecoin is a truly stable one? For me, the test that I start from is asking how the stablecoin responds to two thought experiments.
1. Can the stablecoin, even in theory, safely "wind down" to zero users?
First, the volcoin price drops. Then, the stablecoin starts to shake. The system attempts to shore up stablecoin demand by issuing more volcoins. With confidence in the system low, there are few buyers, so the volcoin price rapidly falls. Finally, once the volcoin price is near-zero, the stablecoin too collapses.
2. What happens if you try to peg the stablecoin to an index that goes up 20% per year?
there is no genuine investment that can get anywhere close to 20% returns per year, and there is definitely no genuine investment that can keep increasing its return rate by 4% per year forever. There's basically two ways for a stablecoin that tries to track such an index to turn out:
See:
How Stable is your Stablecoin?
IMF: Capital Flow Management Measures in the Digital Age: Challenges of Crypto Assets
- It charges some kind of negative interest rate on holders that equilibrates to basically cancel out the USD-denominated growth rate built in to the index.
- It turns into a Ponzi, giving stablecoin holders amazing returns for some time until one day it suddenly collapses with a bang.
But this also shows a deeper and more important fact about stablecoins: for a collateralized automated stablecoin to be sustainable, it has to somehow contain the possibility of implementing a negative interest rate, can be done in two ways:
- RAI-style, having a floating target that can drop over time if the redemption rate is negative
- Actually having balances decrease over time
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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‘Fearless Girl’ creator sells NFTs to cover $3M legal fees
New York Post | Jessica Cherner | May 23, 2022
The famous “Fearless Girl” statue has been touted as a unique symbol of inspiration for women’s equality. But, it turns out, she’s not exactly one of a kind.
Kristen Visbal, the artist behind the 50.4-inch-tall bronze sculpture — a young girl assuming Superman’s iconic stance, originally as she faced off against Wall Street’s charging bull — is facing a breach of contract lawsuit from State Street Global Advisors, the asset-management firm that commissioned the piece in 2017, for copying her own work. So she’s decided to double down and sell even more “Fearless Girl” replicas, as well as NFTs, to cover her reported $3 million court costs.
The NFTs, which feature “Fearless Girl” in different positions and sometimes with slightly varying hairstyles, are being sold in five stages on NFT marketplace OpenSea. The first, dubbed the “Interstellar Collection” and now available in a limited edition of 125, goes for 3.57 ETH ($7,235). It includes a short film of a comet racing through space, erupting on a city sidewalk and transforming into the “Fearless Girl,” as well as a 22-inch replica of the statue.
See: UK Court recognizes NFTs as ‘private property’
The artist was sued by State Street in 2019, after she created 25 full-size bronze replicas of “Fearless Girl” and sold eight of them for $250,000 each. Visbal also sold some 100 miniature versions for around $6,000 a pop.
A spokesman for State Street Global Advisors said, “In short, the allegations of breach include Ms. Visbal’s sale of a ‘Fearless Girl’ replica to a class action law firm and two financial companies in Australia, all of which is a breach of a clause in the contract that requires both parties’ approval before sale. The sale also violates SSGA’s exclusive intellectual property (copyright and trademark) rights.” In its court filing, the company claims that the artist has caused “substantial and irreparable harm” to both “Fearless Girl” and to State Street by creating and selling copies.
But a defiant Visbal, who lives in Rehoboth, Del., told The Post: “I didn’t make her for any company. I made her to celebrate women and for the public at large.”
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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UK Court recognizes NFTs as ‘private property’
CoinTelegraph | David Attlee | May 15, 2022
At the beginning of May, the British Web3 community celebrated an important legal precedent — the High Court of Justice in London, the closest analog to the United States Supreme Court, has ruled that nonfungible tokens (NFT) represent “private property.” There is a caveat, though: In the court’s ruling, this private property status does not extend to the actual underlying content that NFT represents.
The theft of Boss Beauties
In February 2022, Lavinia D. Osbourne, founder of Women in Blockchain Talks, wrote on Twitter that two digital works had been stolen from the Boss Beauties — a 10,000-NFT collection of empowered women that was created by “Gen Z change-makers” and featured at the New York Stock Exchange. The tokens came with a number of utility points, such as access to exclusive events, free books, and licensing fees. Osbourne claimed that the pieces, stolen from her MetaMask wallet, later emerged on the OpenSea market. She traced down the NFTs with the help of the security and intelligence firm Mitmark.
See: NFT Boom Will Surely Lead to Questions Over Copyright, Control and Plagiarism
The matter was brought to court in March, and on April 29, The Art Newspaper reported on the ruling of the United Kingdom’s High Court, in which the judges have recognized NFTs as property protected by law. The court issued an injunction to freeze the assets on the accounts of Ozone Networks (the host of OpenSea) and compelled OpenSea to disclose information about the two account holders in possession of the stolen NFTs. Shortly afterward, OpenSea halted the sale of these NFTs — Boss Beauties number 680 and 691.
As the identities of the wallet holders remain uncertain, the injunction was granted against “persons unknown.” In its comment on the decision, Stevenson Law firm called a freezing injunction “quite a draconian (i.e. old fashioned and harsh) remedy,” describing it as a “nuclear weapon” of law.
The token versus the asset
Racheal Muldoon, the counsel on the case, highlighted “the utmost significance” of the ruling, which, she said, “removes any uncertainty that NFTs are property in and of themselves, distinct from the thing they represent, under the law of England and Wales.” But it is exactly the aforementioned detail that made other experts skeptical of the groundbreaking importance of the court’s decision.
See: 7 Essential Ingredients of an (Open) Metaverse Framework
While the NFTs are already enjoying the status of property in their treatment by the U.S. IRS, the proclaimed difference between the token and the underlying asset does little to fill the current legislative vacuum in the U.K. and United States. “So if you have a token, you have a token. But not necessarily any rights in anything else,” as Juliet Moringiello, professor at Widener University Commonwealth Law Schoo, noted to Artnet News.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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EBay Scores NFT business with an assist from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky
CNBC | Riley de León | May 23, 2022
EBay is getting into NFTs — with an assist from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.
The company announced Monday that it's launching 13 limited-edition digital collectibles in partnership with Web3 platform OneOf, each of which contains a 3-D animated rendering of Gretzky making one of his signature moves on the ice.
See: Meta to Start Testing NFTs on Instagram (Facebook and Other Apps To Follow)
During the recent collectibles boom, Gretzky trading cards have set records for hockey memorabilia, with a rookie card selling for $3.75 million in 2021. In 2020, another Gretzky card became the first hockey card to sell for over $1 million.
Wayne Gretzky 'The Great One':
I'm honored to bring this collectible experience to my hockey fans who have followed my career for decades.
Dawn Block, VP Collectibles, Electronics and Home, eBay:
NFTs and blockchain technology are revolutionizing the collectibles space, and are increasingly viewed as an investment opportunity for enthusiasts. Through our partnership with OneOf [green energy efficient tech], eBay is now making coveted NFTs more accessible to a new generation of collectors everywhere.
The company says each NFT is "priced for the everyday fan" starting at $10 each.
See: a16z Releases 2022 State of Crypto Report: 5 Key Takeaways
NFT collections have experienced a significant slide in value this month. Some of the more prominent collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Crypto Punks, saw prices fall 28% and 32%, respectively, according to CREBACO research.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Sounds like a DAO, Looks like a DAO: Introducing the Modern Digital Organization
Institute of Corporate Directors | Chami Akmeemana | Mar 14, 2022
Source: Convergence.Tech
New era, new capabilities
Modern, digital organizations are adopting new approaches to establish the capabilities needed to solve their most significant problems. They are using the power of these maturing emerging technologies coupled with advanced process engineering to design solutions with people at the centre, using anthropological techniques, such as behavioural science and human-centred design.
See: Arca Report: DAOs – Institutional Guide to Decentralized Governance
We have defined 10 key capabilities that are essential for modern, digital organizations.
- Credential-based Digital Identity – the evolution of traditional centralized identity solutions, such as Identity Access Management (IAM), to enable a more decentralized, self-sovereign identity (SSI)-based solution. This is the new entry point for organizations that are increasingly aware of the risks and obligations of safeguarding personal information. It is also important for participation in the open ecosystems, marketplaces and platforms that make up web 3.0 and government identity frameworks that aim to empower their citizens with portable identities.
- Decentralized & Open Systems – as the world moves toward more open, transparent platforms, organizations will shift from closed, linear relationships to being a part of a broader ecosystem. To do this, they must adapt to a more decentralized model. This involves shared networks, distributed ledgers and finance, edge intelligence, and the extension and opening up of internal systems through open application programming interfaces (APIs) and industry standard protocols. This evolution requires change beyond technology, and calls for operating models, processes and governance structures to shift to more decentralized authorities and shared control.
- Digitized Assets & Services – traditional assets, services, products and experiences need to transition to a digital form, one that is codified, machine-readable and virtual. Through this transformation, new types of data are created, events and processes can be simulated at ‘real-life’ scale, new insights can be developed, greater assurance and authenticity can be provided, and new opportunities identified.
See: VC-backed DAO Startups Racing to Define What DAOs Actually Are
- Augmented Digital Intelligence – the ever-expanding list of challenges modern organizations are facing requires a highly effective intelligence layer to improve operations, enhance decision-making, uplift functions, redesign processes, and deliver more relevant and meaningful interactions. In effect, this becomes a digital intelligence backbone running throughout the whole organization, designed to improve the decisions, tasks and interactions people perform every day.
- Complex Decisioning – although there is merit in pursuing a strategy centred on simplification, rationalization and cost efficiencies, leading organizations are realizing complexity is not something that will go away, and is in fact continuing to increase. Therefore, the need to have an ability to manage this complexity through a sophisticated decisioning capability becomes an essential part of a high-performing digital organization. These capabilities combine advanced knowledge systems with AI and machine learning, business rules and policy management, alongside modern governance approaches providing clear guardrails and parameters for execution.
As directors of Canada’s organizations, it will be important for you to understand the risks and opportunities that may be presented by these new technologies. Here are some key questions for directors:
- What are the opportunities? Are there ways to streamline operations, enhance new strategic initiatives, cut costs, build customer trust, develop new markets, and refocus and enhance employee development?
- What are the risks involved not only in implementing these new tools but also in not being aware of the opportunities and taking appropriate advantage of them?
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Onchain Blockchain Visual Analysis Tool Designed for Web3
Chainanalysis | May 18, 2022
How Storyline reinvents investigations for web3
When Chainalysis invented blockchain analysis tools in 2014, very few people understood what was happening on Bitcoin blockchain. Transaction records were difficult to interpret and it was hard to distinguish between addresses in a private wallet and an address on a custodial exchange. Reactor solved this problem by providing an easy way to visualize relationships between on-chain transactions and real world identity. Our goal with Chainalysis Storyline is to bring this same simplicity to the more complex multi-chain world of DeFi, and make it easy for our users to comprehend the blockchains of the web3 era.
See: Hong Kong’s Web3 ‘Mr. Metaverse’ vs. Mark Zuckerberg
How exactly does DeFi make cryptocurrency transactions more complicated for investigators? The core issue is chain hopping. DeFi protocols have made chain hopping easy, allowing users to switch between several different kinds of cryptocurrency in a single transaction. Cross-chain graphing in Chainalysis Reactor can mitigate much of that complexity, but tracking funds across blockchains to separate destinations can still be time-consuming.
Another issue is that many seemingly simple DeFi transactions actually involve multiple smart contracts, making them appear more complex on the blockchain than they really are. For example, below we see what a typical NFT transaction looks like in a standard blockchain explorer.
Even though at its core, this transaction represents one wallet selling an NFT to another, there are multiple other smart contracts involved, which will therefore be reflected on the blockchain: OpenSea as the NFT marketplace, the NFT collection’s smart contract, both users’ proxy contracts, and a few others. While an investigator following the NFT is likely only interested in the wallets belonging to the buyer and sellers, they would still have to parse the other entities to follow the funds.
Chainalysis Storyline solves these complexities with a new, web3-native blockchain analysis tool that provides a holistic view of the movements of all funds an address has transacted with across blockchains, but still allows investigators to concentrate on the transactions and funds that matter most to them.
See: Last year, illicit crypto addresses received all-time-high $14 billion but that was only 0.15% of total volume
With Storyline, a user constructs a new story by starting with a transaction hash. The easy-to-use interface allows you to focus on the transactions, assets and related wallets that are of most interest. With a few clicks you’ve built a timeline of the most important interactions that clearly illustrate the movement of tokens.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Underground bitcoin mining operations in China lead to resurgence
Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance | May 17, 2022
New mining map data, spanning the period from September 2021 to January 2022, included shows that the US has remained at the forefront of Bitcoin mining and extended its leading position (37.84%) amidst the global hashrate recovery. Following a sudden uptick in covert mining operations after the June 2021 government-mandated ban on Bitcoin mining, China has re-emerged as a major mining hub (21.11%). Kazakhstan (13.22%), Canada (6.48%), and Russia (4.66%) have been relegated to more distant places.
See:
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Bitcoin Mining Council Protest ‘Misleading’ Letter Sent to EPA
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Bitcoin mining is worse for the environment since China banned it
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Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI): China’s crackdown puts US in pole position and Canada in 4th
When we released the last update of the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), mining map in October 2021 (covering data up to the end of August 2021), the Bitcoin network was grappling with the consequences of the Chinese ban on domestic mining activities. The government crackdown immediately resulted in a harsh decline of the total hashrate – the network’s aggregate computing power – which bottomed at 57.47 Exahashes per second (EH/s) on 27 June 2021.
A new global bitcoin mining landscape
- Kazakhstan emerged as a popular destination for miners leaving China and quickly turned into a major Bitcoin mining centre, hosting about 18.10% of the network’s total hashrate in August 2021.
- China: Recent research has suggested that the Chinese decision to ban Bitcoin mining has worsened (rather than improved) Bitcoin’s environmental footprint.
- Russia on the other hand not only experienced a substantial drop in relative hashrate share from 11.23% in August 2021 to 4.66% in January 2022. One deterring reason could be perceived political risk given the vocal opposition of the Russian central bank to Bitcoin mining, going as far as lobbying for outlawing this activity.
- Canada experienced only a moderate increase in its hashrate from 11.54 EH/s in August 2021 to 12.15 EH/s in January 2022, which resulted in a loss in market share from 9.55% to 6.48% as total network hashrate was growing significantly faster.
- Iran has seen a severe drop in reported hashrate from 3.75 EH/s (3.11%) to 0.23 EH/s (0.12%) in January 2022, making it join the long tail of other countries with sub-1% shares.
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View visual mining map --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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