Today in Crypto: WeChat & Alipay Enable Foreigners to Pay at Chinese Retailers, ETH 699,816 Paid as Royalties to NFT Projects on Ethereum, Hana Bank & Woori Bank ‘Interested in Certificate of Deposit’ Tokens -TGN

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Payments news

• China’s two mobile payment giants, pay WeChat And Alipayannounced that foreign users can now pay at Chinese retailers by linking their foreign credit cards, including Visa, MasterCardAnd To discover, whereas previously they required a local bank account. “At the same time, foreign card users can also use various payment methods such as scan and be scanned, mini-program payment, passwordless hold, and in-app payment,” says WeChat. said. Alipay mention that, “as the official payment partner of the Hangzhou Asian Games, Alipay has completed the service support for foreign users to make mobile payment in China.”

NFT news

• A total of 699,816 ETH has been paid as royalties for non-fungible token (NFT) projects on Ethereum, of which 25.9% in 2021, 64.1% in 2022 and 9.4% in the first half of 2023. according to to the latest Nansen report. The NFT volume this year is approaching half of the 2022 level, but the royalties received by projects are much lower than before: YTD as a percentage of 2022, the volumes are 50.6%, while the royalties are around 14.7%. The report added that the effective royalty compensation rate trended significantly downward, from an average of 2.5% in 2022 to 0.6% in July 2023, adding that Yuga Labs‘ projects collectively received 9.4% of all royalties earned.

Bank news

• South Korean Hannah Bank And Woori Bank have expressed interest in “certificate of deposit” tokens (CDs) as an alternative to stablecoins, Maeli Business News Korea reported, citing industry sources. A senior banker said that “CD tokens are considered stable from the banks’ perspective as they are not significantly different from the current system.” No solid plan is available until ongoing discussions on the CBDC system are concluded, it said, but “Hana Bank’s move is believed to show interest in the central bank’s blockchain-based monetary system.” Also, Woori Bank recently released a report related to CD tokens through its investigative body.

Wallet news

• Self-custodial crypto wallet Zengo introduced new features in conjunction with a premium subscription called Zengo Pro, TechCrunch reported. The optional plan offers additional security features and costs $20 per month, while basic accounts remain free. The app has also been redesigned, it said. CEO Ouriel Ohayon was quoted as saying, “What we’ve learned over the years is that there were plenty of use cases where security wasn’t solved. (We decided to) launch a suite of security services called Zengo Pro, which is a paid subscription that brings these innovations to all blockchains. This can be solved by certain services on certain blockchains, but in our case it’s bundled,” said Ohayon.

• blocka cross-chain wallet application and multi-chain Web3 ecosystem, announced a $1 million grant program to “accelerate users’ onboarding to Web3” by enabling wallet creation on the Polygonprotocols. According to according to the press release, the grant enables decentralized applications (dapps) to integrate Blocto’s coinless, 30-second user onboarding experience directly in-dapp with just two lines of code. Available exclusively for projects building on Polygon, construction incentives of up to $1 million will be deployed over a 3-month engagement period, and selected projects will also receive developer marketing and operational support, it said.

Security news

• Blockchain intelligence agency Chain analysis also published a report present The operations of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan: how the husband-and-wife duo’s money laundering strategy evolved in the years following the Bitfinex hack, with more information on how the police solved the case. “This case illustrates how blockchain analytics combined with traditional financial investigative techniques can enable law enforcement to solve cryptocurrency-related crime, win convictions and seize stolen funds – in this case for more than $3 billion at the time of arrest,” the report said. archived in the case of Lichtenstein and Morgan for their role in laundering the more than 120,000 bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex in 2016, suggesting the pair will plead guilty at a hearing scheduled for August 3.

Blockchain News

• Blockchain interoperability protocol Connext labs announced xERC20, a mechanism for Web3 projects to bring their token to any chain, which is live on the mainnet and fully ready for projects to be released today, said a press release. As part of the launch, Connextis announced a partnership with Alchemix, a DeFi protocol for future yield synthetic assets, as the first flagship user of xERC20. The launch follows co-founder Arjun Bhuptani’s ERC-7281 standard, which aims to solve the fragmented liquidity and security problems of token bridging by shifting ownership across supported bridges and security to token issuers, it said. While the proposed ERC-7281 standard is still under public review, Connext aims to be the first protocol to support the deployment of these types of tokens.

DeFi news

• Iakov Levin, founder of now-defunct crypto investment platform Midas Investments, launched a new decentralized finance platform, Locus Finance. Per a press release shared with Crypto news, Locus Finance announced the launch of its DeFi investment platform for retail investors worldwide, featuring yield-bearing tokenized vaults that allow users to access the DeFi market without extreme transaction fees, it said. Locus went live with three initial products: Locus Yield ETH, DeFi Core Index, and Arbitrum Yield Index. “The pinnacle of Locus’ development lies in Locus’ creation of Omnichain vaults,” which integrate strategies from each blockchain, monitor them based on market conditions, and provide diversified exposure to DeFi, it added.