Yahoo News The Crypto Mile: Polygon rise, crypto carbon emissions and non-transferable NFTs
Watch: The Crypto Mile weekly update from EthCC in Paris
The Polygon blockchain has attracted the eye of both retail investors and the world's largest corporations, but what explains its recent leap in value? The Crypto Mile speaks to its founder.
The side-chain's native cryptocurrency, MATIC (MATIC-USD) has surged by 40% in a week, touching $0.87, although it still has ground to cover to regain its all-time high of $2.88 seen in December 2021.
The Crypto Mile weekly update sees Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic explain why the cryptocurrency has surged in value and is vying to become the favoured platform for deploying NFT output from the world's largest companies.
Read more: Crypto live prices
Checking in from Ethereum's Community Conference (EThCC) in Paris, we also hear from Alan Chiu, the founder of Boba Network, about an exciting NFT development involving one of the world's leading universities.
And finally, after Europe baked in a record-breaking heat wave, we talk to Filecoin's Alan Ransil about how the blockchain can track carbon emissions.
The rise of Polygon
Mihailo Bjelic, the co-founder of Polygon, told Yahoo Finance UK: "In the last couple of weeks things are accelerating on the polygon side, which is quite interesting amid a bear market.
"On the adoption side, we have onboarded major projects from the biggest traditional companies.
"From Disney (DIS) to Instagram, from Stripe to Adobe (ADBE).
"We are excited to announce ZkEVM, which many people consider the 'Holy Grail' of Ethereum scaling and infrastructure in general.
Read more: Celsius bankruptcy, The Crypto Mile Weekly Update
"Full Ethereum compatibility, ZkEVM fully leverages Ethereum's security as the most highly secure blockchain in the world.
"Apart from the Ethereum (USD-ETH) merge we believe this to be the most significant tech milestone this year and will usher in a new era of mass adoption."
Polygon has been able to build some of the biggest Web3 projects and attract corporate giants such as Meta (META) and Disney.
In July, Facebook owner Meta announced it is rolling out Polygon-based NFTs for its users and Disney said it has chosen Polygon for its accelerator program.
The mass media and entertainment giant will aim to develop new technologies with Polygon, related to NFTs, as well as AI and augmented reality for its planned metaverse content.
Boba Network and non-transferable NFTs
The Boba Network (BOBA-USD) allows web2 data to become interoperable with web3 blockchains.
Web2 data such as university qualifications will become updated on decentralised blockchains, so that a verified NFT of a certificate of a qualification can be carried with a user as they journey through the metaverse.
Alan Chui, CEO of Boba Finance, said: "We are working with one of the top universities in the world to create NFTs that represent degrees granted by that university.
"These NFTs are non-transferable, so you cannot sell them, which makes sense, but more importantly, the NFT will verify that the holder actually graduated from that university."
This will become in important during future metaverse interactions, "where people will want to see verification of degrees, licences and certifications".
Filecoin Green and crypto carbon emissions
The Crypto Mile also spoke to Alan Ransil, the team lead for Filecoin Green, an initiative connecting the Filecoin Network (FIL-USD) to renewable energy.
Using Filecoin Green's dashboard, anyone storing data on the network can see how much energy it takes to store their data, where that energy comes from, and what renewable energy sources are used.
As a record heat wave sweeps Europe, Filecoin Green is hosting the Sustainable Blockchain Summit in Paris to work towards Web3 native tools for tracking carbon emissions like those recently announced for nodes on the Filecoin network itself.
Read more: Tesla sells most of its bitcoin holdings
These tools will increase the transparency of ESG data and the velocity of emissions data throughout supply chains, accelerating decarbonisation efforts.
But, can the blockchain issue in more efficient transfers of ESG data and especially environmental accounting, or is this a contradiction due to the energy-intensive "proof of work" consensus mechanism?
