Integration

Canadian University Dubai backtracks on accepting crypto via Binance Pay

Before hitting a technical roadblock, CUD was seemingly interested in collecting tuition and course fees in cryptocurrencies from both domestic and international students.

Not even 24 hours after the Canadian University Dubai (CUD) announced its partnership with Binance Pay to accept course fees in cryptocurrencies, a technical roadblock watered down the excitement behind the short-lived initiative.

CUD, a private university in Dubai, was seemingly interested in allowing domestic and international students to pay their tuition and course fees in cryptocurrencies. This initiative would have allowed students from varied backgrounds easy access to the Canadian curriculum in Dubai.

Binance Pay, a payment gateway service launched by crypto exchange Binance, allows businesses to integrate support for cryptocurrency payments. According to the university’s initial announcement, the Binance partnership allowed the institution to “have adapted to the transforming digital payment space.”

Binance Pay supports over 200 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Ether (ETH) and charges zero fees per transaction. On Feb. 7, Binance hosted a cryptocurrency workshop and information session for CUD where students were taught about blockchain and crypto fundamentals, Web3 and the metaverse.

Canadian University Dubai total number of students. Source: topuniversities.com

As shown above, CUD is home to over 1800 domestic and international students — enrolled in one of the 25 undergraduate and six graduate programs — who pay a yearly tuition fee of $18,000.

Canadian University Dubai has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Related: Crypto projects respond to privacy coin ban in Dubai

On Feb. 7, when Binance was eyeing a partnership with CUD, Dubai released crypto regulations for virtual asset service providers (VASPs). The Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority issued its Full Market Product Regulations, which include four compulsory rulebooks and activity-specific rulebooks that lay down the rules for operating VASPs.

Irina Heaver, a crypto and blockchain lawyer based in the United Arab Emirates, told Cointelegraph, “Regulatory certainty is very good for business. It is good for consumers, investors and the Emirate of Dubai. The regulations are long-awaited and mostly welcomed.”

Solana-based market maker integrates Stripe for fiat-to-crypto transactions

The Solana-based automated market maker Orca has opened up fiat purchases and fiat-to-crypto transactions through a new integration with Stripe.

As the Solana ecosystem comes back from the aftershocks of the FTX liquidity earthquake, one of its leading automated market makers (AMM), Orca, has announced a new integration.

The AMM revealed an integration with Stripe that will power its new fiat-to-crypto on-ramp, making decentralized finance (DeFi) more accessible to users both in and out of the existing ecosystem. This new integration now enables fiat purchases along with fiat-to-crypto transactions.

Users can now purchase the blockchain’s standard native SPL tokens, including USD Coin (USDC) and SOL (SOL), with fiat currencies.

According to Ori Kawn, the co-founder of Orca, the new integration helps create wider access to economic tools:

“With this new integration, we hope to make participating in the DeFi ecosystem even more accessible to the entire Solana community.”

The Orca integration marks one of the first blockchain-based integration from Stripe as it continues to venture into the crypto space.

Back in March of this year, it announced fiat payment support for cryptocurrencies and NFTs, in addition to partnerships with FTX, FTX US, Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway and Just Mining to launch a crypto business suite.

A month later, it worked in collaboration with Twitter to create a USDC-based payout program for creators via the Polygon network.

Related: BlackRock CEO: FTX Token caused downfall, but tech still revolutionary

This comes as the entire crypto industry picks itself up after the collapse of the former powerhouse crypto exchange FTX.

Solana was one of the many in the space that felt the effects of the market chaos. Its native token, SOL, was heavily hit, plummeting 32.4% on Nov. 10.

Nonetheless, the ecosystem received encouragement from major players in the space, such as Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwa, to continue building on the value of the Solana network.

Prior to this Solana unveiled its roadmap, which includes a major partnership with Google Cloud, new decentralized application stores and smartphone plans.

Crypto Twitter shares security concerns regarding Meta’s recent NFT integration news

Meta recently announced its latest NFT feature will allow users to connect their digital wallets to Instagram and Facebook.

On Monday, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, announced that its users will now be able to post digital collectibles and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) across both platforms by simply connecting their digital wallets to either site.

While Meta’s announcement may have seemed to some like a mass adoption win for some digital asset enthusiasts, not all members of Crypto Twitter were thrilled by the news.

Skeptical users took to social media to express concerns surrounding the security and privacy of the data disclosed when digital wallets are connected to these social media platforms.

Twitter user and Web3 community member NPC-Picac tweeted, “I don’t think entrusting digital collectibles to connect to ‘Meta’ is in any way smart.”

Another Crypto Twitter community member, CryptoBartender, raised concerns about what Meta could possibly do with the data they access from digital wallets, tweeting, “So they can figure out which wallets are yours and keep tabs on you and your crypto activities?”

Some users felt that publicly attaching valuable digital assets to one’s identity could turn users into targets for fraud and theft. A user operating under the handle famousfxck questioned, “This is great for adoption. But isn’t it also dangerous?”

Others shared their thoughts on individuals broadcasting even more personal data for the benefit of companies that have long histories of abusing users’ data and privacy.

In the announcement, Meta disclosed that, as part of keeping its platforms safe and enjoyable, “people can use our tools to keep their accounts secure and report digital collectibles which go against our community guidelines.” Meta has not yet shared any concrete plans it has to keep its user’s digital wallet-related data safe.

Ankr partners with Optimism to provide a fast and reliable RPC service for users

Ankr also said that it will incentivize independent Optimism node operators to add their nodes to the load balancer in return for ANKR tokens.

Ankr, a company that provides one-click node deployment and Web3 infrastructure, has announced that it will become a remote procedure call provider for Optimism.

Optimism is an open-source layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum that focuses on speed and efficient transactions across the network. It has caught the eyes of many in recent months, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Ankr has assisted many industry leaders such as Solana and Avalanche by running their blockchains faster, allowing for better Web3 experiences across the globe. Matthew Slipper, head of engineering of OP Labs, stated:

“Adding Ankr as an infrastructure provider helped fulfill the desires of our community members who want to build with robust and reliable services. Apps and integrations choose to build in our ecosystem because they feel aligned with our values and appreciate the breadth of tooling and technical options available to them.”

This partnership will allow decentalized application (DApp) developers from all parts of the world access to Optimism’s public and premium RPCs. “We love what Optimism is building for the future of Ethereum. Ankr is happy to do our part to provide a fast and reliable RPC service for their users,” said Greg Gopman, chief marketing officer of Ankr.

Ankr also said that it will incentivize independent Optimism node operators to add their nodes to the load balancer in return for ANKR tokens.

Back in November 2021, Ankr Network co-founder and CEO Chandler Song wrote about multichain technology as a necessity for the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) products. At the time, he said that projects that support multiple chains gain larger audiences and increase their liquidity:

“This means that at a minimum, your DeFi product needs to support Ethereum and a “niche” blockchain — there are established leaders for trading, staking, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and more. And the more chains with which you can interact, the better.”

Alchemy announces support for Solana Web3 applications the day after blockchain halted

The Web3 development platform and infrastructure provider will support Solana-built applications, despite the blockchain halting multiple times in 2022.

In an announcement published by Alchemy just one day after the Solana network temporarily halted on June 1, the Web3 development platform and infrastructure provider announced its support for the controversial blockchain.

Caused by a bug that made it impossible to reach network consensus, the Solana blockchain was halted for approximately four hours on Wednesday. This isn’t the first time the system has been compromised, as normal functionality has been halted five times already this year.

That didn’t seem to be a problem for Alchemy, which gives developers the ability to use its software and infrastructure in Solana-built applications. Now reportedly valued at $10.2 billion, the company is the creator of a Web3 API called Alchemy Supernode and a development suite used for monitoring and debugging called Alchemy Build.

This software has proved itself useful in the past when scaling and monitoring, with some of the company’s biggest partners including projects like nonfungible token marketplace OpenSea and liquidity protocol Aave (AAVE).

Francesco Agosti, chief technology officer and co-founder of Phantom, said his firm is excited about Alchemy’s Solana integration. “Their infrastructure and product suite has a proven track record for performance benefits,” he said. “This will be a game changer for Phantom and any other Solana developers who choose to start using Alchemy.”

Related: Chainlink launches price feeds on Solana to provide data to DeFi developers

This new integration goes to show that, despite recent outages and the price of Solana’s native SOL token falling 85% from its all-time high, it seems like the blockchain didn’t lose developers’ trust and so continues to be a valuable resource when building efficient Web3 applications.