Meta to Launch Physical Store
Meta (formerly Facebook) is developing a physical metaverse-inspired store to sell its virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware tools.
Realty labs, a company department working on metaverse research and development, said the new brick and mortar store would debut on 9 May, 2022 on the company’s Burlingame campus.
The social media giant seeks to provide its customers with a glimpse of the metaverse future with the new initiative. The store will feature products like the Ray-ban Stories (smart glasses) and Facebook’s proprietary headsets like the Oculus. Previously, the company outsourced the sale of its VR headsets to retail chains like BestBuy.
As a result of its rebranding to Meta in 2021, the tech giant generated substantial press. However, despite the increased attention, its metaverse division Reality Labs suffered a loss of nearly $10 billion.
Sustainable Energy in BTC Mining Increased 59%
According to a Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) report released on 25 April 2022, the mining sector is adopting green energy expediently. The industry has increased its sustainability mix to 58.6% since 2021.
BMC is a collective of 44 mining corporations that reportedly contribute 50% of the network’s hash rate, i.e., 100.9 exa hashes (Eh). BMC asked its members how much power they consumed, what percentage was generated by renewable sources such as hydro, solar, wind, nuclear or geothermal, and how much hash rate they were developing. The council reports that the industry’s use of renewable energy has seen a 36.8% increase since the first quarter of 2021.
Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism often gets flak from critics for its use of energy. Bitcoin proponents have been shutting down these arguments by modifying their mining operations to run with sustainable energy resources. Bitcoin bull and Microstrategy founder Michael Saylor founded BMC in 2021 to help the industry deal with these concerns.
According to CastleVentures founder Nic Carter, miners have uncovered ways to maximize their profitability while upholding the industry’s sustainability standards. These measures include novel mining practices that could help drive a clean energy transition.
Bored Apes Hacked For $2.5M
Popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) official Instagram channel was reportedly hacked on 25 April, 2022 causing a loss of $2.5 million worth of NFTs.
The attackers shared a phishing link that redirected users to a scam website that read ‘BAYC’s developer Yuga Labs was conducting a free NFT giveaway for its upcoming metaverse project.’ The scam promised an airdrop of free cryptocurrency to anyone who connected their wallet to the site, but instead allowed attackers to steal $2.5 million in NFTs. Hackers took advantage of BAYC’s announcement of a new metaverse project called the Otherside to fool people.
Pseudonymous blockchain analyst zachxbt reports that 91 different NFTs were stolen including four original BAYC, seven Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), and three Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFTs along with other less popular tokens.
The NFT collection’s Discord channel was also hacked on 01 April, 2022, which resulted in the loss of a single BAYC NFT. Yuga Labs officially acknowledged the exploit and is investigating the issue with Instagram to figure out how the hacker got access to the account.
Bitcoin Core 23.0 Goes Live
The 23rd version of the original Bitcoin software client created by Satoshi Nakamoto went live on 26 April 2022.
One hundred thirty-two developers improved the wallet, which includes better backup and recovery, P2P communication, fee estimation, and many other features in the updated version.
The 23.0 release allows users to choose a Taproot address type while creating a wallet. Integrating native Taproot support into the new Bitcoin client will drive the adoption of this upgrade on the network. However, the functionality is not activated by default because many other wallet providers have yet to provide Taproot addresses.
The improvements in P2P communication enhance security and privacy, first by facilitating connections rather than preferring a fixed communications port and second, by allowing the software to use an encrypted version of IPv6, the latest version of the Internet protocol.
