USA, AI and developers: what does 2025 have in store for Web3?

Our predictions for this year and our review of last year’s forecasts

Our 10X recap of Web3 in 2024

GM, Happy New Year! We enjoyed a restful festive period here at SO WHAT and we are excited to be back. How excited you ask? Excited enough to 10X our annual recap, which includes 30 must-note topics from the year that was 2024. Stand by for our predictions, which will

Terminal 3 partners with Varmeta to advance Web3 identity solutions

We are excited to announce our strategic partnership with Varmeta, an end-to-end development studio building products with emerging technologies to revolutionize industries. This collaboration brings together Terminal 3's expertise in privacy-preserving verifiable identities with Varmeta's comprehensive capabilities in Blockchain and AI development. Together, we are set

How Bitcoin looks at $100K compared to $1K

GM, The world of Web3 is crazy at the best of times, but it’s been a particularly wild ride over the last few weeks since Donald Trump won the US Presidential election. The President-elect has said a number of positive things about crypto and Bitcoin generally—his win saw

Terminal 3 joins Soneium as an infrastructure ecosystem partner

Terminal 3 is officially live on Soneium to bring Web3 technologies to everyday users. As part of the Soneium community, Terminal 3 will support emerging Soneium-based projects with private, native digital identity, universal credentials, and decentralized storage solutions. By enabling seamless integration, Terminal 3 allows developers and builders on Soneium

Terminal 3 powers BuckID: Decentralized user profiles for gamers on BeraBucks

BuckID, powered by Terminal 3 Identity, is officially live on BeraBucks.com. BeraBucks is a decentralized gaming platform designed to connect the largest gaming communities in one place. Built on BeraChain, BeraBucks offers gamers a space to engage and compete, while offering community-driven gaming brands an unparalleled loyalty and questing

Meet Pump.fun, the memecoin factory making $1M a day

GM, One of the most lucrative companies in Web3 today may also be one of the most controversial. This is not a company aiming to build a new internet, democratize financial services, or pursue other lofty goals. In fact, critics accuse it of enabling gambling, although some have praised it

We will never know who created Bitcoin—and that’s a good thing

GM, This past week has been dominated by Satoshi Nakamoto, after HBO released its long-anticipated documentary aiming to answer the question of who created Bitcoin. No spoilers just yet, if you haven’t seen the show, but the truth is that we don’t need to know Satoshi’s true

Token2049: a Web3 carnival with 20K people and Ethereum-Solana showdown

This is probably the most important Web3 event in the world GM, It’s been a busy couple of weeks and we apologize for our absence. But we are back and recovered after a major week in Singapore. We returned to Token 2049 in the country known as Little Red

Terminal 3 joins Hedera in Building All-in-One Toolkit for Tokenizing Real-World Assets

At Terminal 3, we believe in the transformative power of Web3 technologies to enhance financial ecosystems. Since our inception, part of our mission has been to reduce friction between digital assets and regulated spaces by leveraging private identities and credentials. We aim not only to streamline processes but also empower

Prediction markets have blown up around the US election—are they here to stay?

GM, More than $1 billion has been wagered on the 2024 US election using a Web3 service that could break out into the mainstream. That figure is impressive, but it is even more notable considering the platform in question, Polymarket, is banned from offering bets on US soil.  Welcome to

Telegram is essentially a Web3 company now

GM, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest on August 24 in France has sparked major discussions across the Web3 space.  Governments across the world have raised their focus on Telegram and Durov, predominantly on the impact of its lack of content moderation, and the debate between privacy and anonymity. While

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Why crypto’s most polarizing figure is worrying Bitcoiners

GM, Bitcoin is the front door to Web3, but this month it has been a major talking point after one of the industry’s most controversial figures became involved in a key asset that bridges Bitcoin to the rest of Web3: that’s wrapped BTC, aka WBTC. This week we

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North Korea has made over $3B from Web3 hacks—here’s how

GM, $3 billion. That’s an estimation of just how much money North Korea has made from cryptocurrency hacks between 2017 and 2023. There’s no sign that the regime is slowly down, however. Last month, North Korea was thought to be the attacker that stole $235 million from India-based

SO WHAT?

Tokenized funds are on the rise—no wonder JPMorgan wants a piece of the action

GM, Earlier this month, 150-year-old bank Goldman Sachs said it plans to launch its first tokenized funds. The news generated plenty of attention—but why? The premise is that tokenized funds will knock down the walls and allow anyone to enjoy access to financial instruments that are currently only for

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Anonymous and accountable: how blockchain can change the game for polls

GM, Speaking your mind online can come at a price in some countries—even just indicating your preference can be costly in some, too. This week we are looking at how blockchain technology can have a tangible impact on free speech and opinion online. We’ve written about zero-knowledge proofs

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Farcaster, the billion dollar Web3 social project, has ambitious plans

It may not have huge user numbers but its goal to connect social networks and apps fulfills an ambition Twitter once held Web3 social media service Farcaster raised eyebrows in May when it announced that it had raised a massive $150 million round that valued its business at $1 billion.

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Telegram’s aborted blockchain project came back from the dead and is now the hottest platform in Web3

GM, Web3 is all about taking unfair advantages. Last week, we looked at how Coinbase used its position as an industry bellwether and public company to develop the second largest Ethereum layer-two platform in less than a year. On a related theme, today we are diving into TON, the blockchain

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Inside Base—the blockchain Coinbase launched to reach a billion users

GM, Coinbase is one of the leading names in Web3. When it makes a move, the industry sits up. In August 2023, it launched a layer-two (L2) blockchain—designed to help make transactions on Ethereum 10X cheaper and significantly faster.  The lofty goal is to onboard the next billion crypto

Verifiable Private Identity

Verifiable Private Identity: The One Thing Needed For Regulated Digital Assets to Scale

A Verifiable Private Identity (VPI) is comprised of self-sovereign data (stored and accessed via an identity oracle) and privacy-preserving ‘identity assets’ such as Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs).

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A controversial trademark claim may sour this year’s most-anticipated Web3 launch

GM, Matter Labs is the story of the year. Its zkSync platform is used by millions who enjoy faster and cheaper transactions on Ethereum. Oh, and it is about to launch the year’s most-anticipated token. But it became talk-of-the-town for all the wrong reasons last week when it emerged

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Tornado Cash brings privacy to Web3—legal cases against it could dampen future innovation

GM, The trial of the developers behind a Web3 platform called Tornado Cash is dividing public opinion. Tornado Cash is a service that brings privacy to the transparent world of blockchain-based transactions. One developer has been sentenced to five years in jail in The Netherlands, while another faces trial in

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Decentralized identification could fix the broken mess of secure data storage, but it’s a long road with many hurdles

GM, It’s been an eventful few weeks for the concept of decentralized, blockchain-based identification.  Worldcoin, the project co-founded by Sam Altman, last month announced plans to introduce its own chain. That was quickly followed by MicroStrategy—yes, the firm synonymous with buying loads of Bitcoin—revealing it is working

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Here’s what we learned from the first Bitcoin Asia event

GM, Bitcoin continues to be the story of Web3 this year, so you know we had to attend the inaugural Bitcoin Asia event which took place on SO WHAT’s home turf in Hong Kong. We spent the week at side events, dinners, drink meetups, breakfasts and, of course, the