It’s Saturday, which means it’s time to take out a microscope from the shelf, slip the week’s NFT news into a petri dish and see if we can discern any signs of life. Science.
Ronin Bridge Reopens for Traffic
The Ronin Bridge, which has been inactive for over three months following the gargantuan hack on its network back in March, is finally open to traffic again. On March 23, $540 million worth of tokens were stolen from the bridge when its validators were compromised, leading to owner Sky Mavis halting the blockchain while it sorted itself out.
After several audits and months of careful development later, the Ronin Bridge is once again in operation, meaning that tokens can once again be moved on and off the network by users of the company’s primary game, Axie Infinity.
Sky Mavis has added additional safety measures to boost the number of validators and enhance overall security; it has limited daily transactions, added a human overseer to approve large transfers, and backed all funds with the bridge 1:1 to ensure safety.
Sky Mavis can now start to look towards the future, in particular Axie’s new features, such as the massive opportunities provided by LAND staking, which is soon to arrive.
Read the full announcement here.
The Ronin Bridge is open!
• All user funds are fully backed 1:1 by the new bridge.
• The bridge has undergone an internal audit and two external audits.
• We are still on track to release Land Staking this week.📝 : https://t.co/ZRqslOwXpo pic.twitter.com/xOgsZHvVGc
— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) June 28, 2022
Bored & Hungry Denies Crypto Payment Rumours
The owners of Bored & Hungry, the first NFT-themed restaurant in the world, were this week forced to deny that the restaurant has stopped accepting crypto payments following a report in the Los Angeles Times. Reporter Brian Contreras visited the restaurant and noticed that the prices were only listed in dollar terms, leading to him drawing the conclusion that the crypto crash had led to Bored & Hungry halting crypto payments.
However, it turned out that the reporter had, shock horror, got the story wrong – the restaurant was undergoing upgrades, which caused the restaurant to temporarily pause crypto payments while they were being carried out, but customers could always pay in APE and ETH if they wanted.
Our developers are constantly optimizing our POS to better serve our community but we assure you that we do take crypto as payment, just as we do credit card and fiat payments. We look forward to feeding you soon! pic.twitter.com/h10SsVFg4n
— Bored & Hungry (@BoredNHngry) June 26, 2022
The Sandbox Launches its Polygon LAND Bridge
More bridge news this week, with The Sandbox expanding its offering by including the crucial Polygon LAND bridge. Any virtual real-estate investors who currently own property in The Sandbox can now transfer their holdings to the Polygon network, where they can take advantage of the network’s faster transactions and megre gas costs.
This update will move all LAND multipliers into the existing Polygon staking infrastructure, along with the impending deployment of LAND staking and further updates.
🌉 We are ready to deploy LAND to @0xPolygon 🌉
🔸Each LAND bridged grants a 10 mSAND cashback!
🔸LAND multipliers on both mSAND staking programs are back!
🔸LAND sales and LAND staking features (on Polygon) are coming soon!BRIDGE NOW ➡️ https://t.co/jlcSKxuBWh pic.twitter.com/1tuAAsqEZP
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) June 28, 2022
Holograph Integrates LayerZero
Holograph, an interoperability protocol for NFT minting, this week announced integration of LayerZero, an omnichain interoperability protocol that unites dApps across blockchains. The integration means that users will be able to abandon the current antiquated method of bridging, leaving behind the old structure which involves duplicating an NFT, wrapping it in a separate smart contract, and attaching it to the original locked item.
In addition to creating a cumbersome digital trail that becomes longer every time an asset is transferred to a new location, the former process also requires frequent bridging events that require rewriting the token ID and smart contract address.
However, with the new integration, Holograph will use LayerZero’s lightweight cross-chain messaging service to beam an NFT to a new chain while preserving data integrity, resulting in fewer transactions and the preservation of the original smart contract address and token ID. This results in streamlined bridging where wrapping is unnecessary and requires payment of gas fees on just one chain.
And if you understood all that then you deserve a damn award, ‘cos most of it went totally over our heads. We’re just here for the monkey jpegs, not gonna lie.
Holograph is excited to announce our partnership with @LayerZero_Labs to launch our protocol & deliver a giant leap forward in blockchain interoperability#LayerZero cross-chain messaging will enable holographic omnichain NFTs to beam across chains with all data left intact pic.twitter.com/wjzRarIN8q
— Holograph… is hiring! (@holographxyz) June 28, 2022
Facebook Adds NFT Support
Meta rounded off the month by announcing that it is spreading its NFT contagion to Facebook having already populated Instagram with the ability for NFT profile pictures. Meta told Decrypt that it has begun rolling out NFTs for some U.S. creators on the social media platform of yesteryear, starting with Ethereum and Polygon NFTs but promising to add support for Solana and Flow pieces soon in the future.
The move went down extremely well with Facebook users, with compliments ranging from “useless” to a “massive fail”. Aah, bless.
We’re launching NFTs on Facebook! Excited to share what I’ve been working on with the world. pic.twitter.com/TaV66zRanV
— Navdeep Singh (@navdeep_ua) June 29, 2022
