On Aug. 12, Cardano tweeted that the upgrade had been completed successfully at epoch 290, facilitating the creation and execution of smart contracts on the public blockchain for the first time. Despite celebrating the milestone, Cardano notes that it is still “early days for the project,” asserting that now is when "the mission truly begins” in a blog post published on the same day: Cardano has announced the completion of its Alonzo hard fork, ushering in its long-awaited smart contract functionality.

Ethereum layer-two rollup network Arbitrum One is beginning to see significant growth, with its total value locked (TVL) surging by roughly 2,300% this past week. According to L2beat, an analysis platform comparing layer-two protocols, Arbitrum’s TVL tagged an all-time high of $1.5 billion on Sept. 11 as DeFi degens rushed to invest in early farming DApps launching on the network. Off-chain Labs launched Arbitrum to mainnet following a $120 million funding round on Aug. 31. Since then, Ethereum transaction fees have surged to their near-record levels, driving a migration of liquidity to layer-two scaling solutions and rival layer-ones.

To celebrate the holiday season in India, cryptocurrency exchanges are looking to lure retail traders by launching aggressive marketing campaigns and giving away crypto. For this year’s Hindu holiday season, which kicked off on Sept. 10, crypto exchanges are encouraging citizens to choose Bitcoin as a gift instead of their traditional choice this time of year – gold. Sathvik Vishwanath, the co-founder of the popular crypto exchange Unocoin, told the Economic Times that if approached right, “Bitcoin and gift vouchers can be an interesting option for users to consider as more awareness activity is expected across the industry.”

Bitcoin (BTC) miners officially produced their 700,000th block on Sept. 11, marking a major milestone for a network whose detractors claim it has died 428 times since 2009.  It took Bitcoin less than two years to produce 100,000 more blocks after reaching the 600,000 milestone on Oct. 18, 2019. At the time of the last 100,000-block milestone, the BTC price was worth less than $8,000. Today, one Bitcoin is worth over $45,500. Happy 700000th block, #bitcoin! https://t.co/24mpVKXK8e

Trippy Bunny NFT, a new nonfungible token project built on Solana, has announced that it is donating all of its mint sale proceeds to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The announcement was made on Suicide Prevention Day, a global awareness event observed globally on Sept. 10. The annual awareness day was first organized in 2003 by the International Association for Suciide Prevention. Today, it has the support of the World Health Organization and the World Federation for Mental Health. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE TRIPPY BUNNY TRIBE!Today is National Suicide Prevention Day and we've decided, as a team, to donate ALL the mint sales raised to @afspnational thru @TheGivingBlock.THATS $220,886 $GUSD TO HELP PREVENT SUICIDE!FULL ETHERSCAN: https://t.co/n5N69KsadP pic.twitter.com/LBFwahSBGn

Decentralized lending protocol Pledge has secured $3 million in investments for its cross-chain ecosystem focused on long-term financing, highlighting continued innovation in the DeFi sector.  The investment round was led by DHVC, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, with additional participation from U.C. Berkeley professor Gary LaBlanc and Stanford University community members Ray Wong and Torsten Wendl. The raise will support Pledge's mission to become a premier crypto-asset lending platform that eventually paves the way for tokenized real-world financial assets. Pledge was created by a group of blockchain-focused researchers at Stanford University, including professor David Tse, Nicole Chang, Ray Wong and Torsten Wendl. Aforementioned professor Gary LaBlanc also contributed to the protocol.

Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) has launched a new blockchain-based platform that could potentially track one-third of shipping containers across the globe. The GSBN was founded in October 2020 by eight global national freight maritime cargo companies to build a blockchain platform that digitizes shipping processes, such as document issuance, clearance and logistics data. Members of the Hong-Kong-based nonprofit consortium GSBN are said to “account for one in every three containers handled in the world,” and this may soon be verifiable on the blockchain once the platform is fully utilized.

Crypto regulation has become an increasingly relevant topic over the past several years. To address these legal ins and outs amid the ever-changing regulatory waters, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has called upon a previous leader of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s, or CFTC, to join its team. “As part of our larger effort to make sure we have a world-class support system in place when it comes to policy and regulatory matters, I’m thrilled to announce that Brian Quintenz, a former Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is joining as an advisory partner on the crypto team,” Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun wrote in a Thursday announcement on the a16z website. The past year in particular has seen significant regulatory talk within the U.S. and abroad. In December 2020, the U.S. Treasury aimed to increase self-hosted crypto asset wallet surveillance and more recently, the U.S. infrastructure bill included terminology that could put considerable strain on the growing crypto space. Other countries have also made various regulatory moves, evident in their actions against digital asset exchange Binance.

Facebook’s ambitious digital currency payment project Diem is yet to get off the ground despite concerted attempts to win over financial regulators. According to The Washington Post on Friday, Diem is facing difficulties smoothening regulatory wrinkles with senior policymakers in the Biden administration. Even with the full weight of Facebook’s significant lobbying power in Washington, the digital currency project is yet to get off the ground.

According to local sources, the Chinese government has released a series of statements denouncing the value of the nonfungible token, or NFT, market, even though two of the nation’s major tech firms are pursuing the technology. The story was first released locally by the Securities Times — a news publication service acting as a spokesperson for the official Chinese Communist Party outlet People’s Daily — and reported by the South Morning China Post. The remarks claimed that “it is common sense that there is a huge bubble in NFT transactions,” and that most NFT buyers who acquire with a financial motive focus solely on the value of the assets rather than appreciating the visual qualities of the piece.

A new poll has found that 27% of United States residents support the government recognizing Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. According to a poll from research and data analytics firm YouGov, 11% of respondents “strongly support” the idea that Bitcoin should be used as legal tender in the United States, and a further 16% of respondents would “somewhat support” it. The poll, which surveyed 4,912 U.S. residents, indicated that a larger number of Democratic respondents support the proposition than Republicans. Around 29% of Democrats stated they either strongly or somewhat support recognizing BTC as legal tender compared with 26% of Republicans.

The governor of the Bank of Mexico, Alejandro Díaz de León, dismissed Bitcoin’s (BTC) position as a reliable legal tender, citing price volatility as a major roadblock toward full-fledged adoption.  Díaz de León said in a Reuters interview that Bitcoin’s position in today’s financial system resembles “a dimension of precious metals” when compared to the central bank’s fiat money. In stark contrast to El Salvador’s mainstream Bitcoin adoption that requires businesses to accept payments in Bitcoin, Mexico’s central bank chief questioned Bitcoin’s position as a viable legal tender:

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, has developed significantly over the past two years. The Algorand Foundation has unveiled a new fund positioned to allocate money toward certain DeFi projects looking to build on its native blockchain.  The pool of capital is called the Viridis DeFi fund and is headed up by the Algorand Foundation — a group that was responsible for the Algorand blockchain and its ecosystem development. “This fund will provide 150 Million Algo to fuel the significant early growth of the DeFi ecosystem on Algorand,” according to a Friday post on the Algorand Foundation’s website. “The fund will fuel the growth of decentralized exchanges, money markets, options markets, synthetic asset applications, and NFT platforms, all running on the best blockchain network for the future of finance,” the statement continued. 

Following a colossal surge of $4B sales volume throughout the month of August for the leading nonfungible token, or NFT, marketplace OpenSea, recent figures indicate a metaphoric return to earth after propulsion to the mighty heights of the moon. NFT marketplaces have largely paralleled the bearish momentum witnessed across the cryptocurrency markets across the last week, as platforms, collections and floor prices all suffer corrections. Analytical data from DappRadar reveals that over the last seven-day period, the sales volume on OpenSea has fallen sharply by almost 50% to $792.23M from a pool of 156,811 traders, 10% less than registered across the previous week.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA, announced their approval for regulated Swiss exchange SIX to launch a digital asset marketplace and central securities depository built on distributed ledger technology on Friday. Initially intent on launching in the latter half of 2019, the Six exchange was slowed from progressing its ambitions by regulatory hurdles. Although no specific date of launch was announced on Friday, it is expected that after this challenge has been negotiated, customers will be able to experience the exchange's offerings in the near future. In February this year, 21 Shares launched the world’s first Polkadot exchange-traded product, or ETP, on the SIX exchange after recognizing rising demand for the asset within the region.

Tokenized stocks have had a shaky few months from a regulatory perspective, but that seemingly hasnt stopped legacy financial giants and decentralized finance (DeFi) advocates from inking new deals.  Bloomberg reported today that Nasdaq, Finnhub and Tiingo will be providing their price feeds to DeFiChain, a DeFi platform built on the Bitcoin network. DeFiChain offers trading in tokenized stocks that correspond to the underlying price of major listed firms such as Tesla, Amazon and Apple. The tokenized stocks, similar to a now-retracted offering rolled out by Binance earlier this year, can be purchased in fractions without requiring investors to purchase a full, traditional share, for which custody of a physical share certificate is required. 

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, newsletter. In a week where the crypto market bears returned for blood, DeFi enlisted an army of lobsters to fight its feuds. While we ponder a feasible battleground for that mammalian–invertebrate combat, feel free to scroll on and read the top choices for the week’s most impactful stories.

The governor of Sweden’s central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, has dismissed Bitcoin (BTC) as an altogether far-fetched alternative to government-backed fiat currencies.  Speaking at a banking conference in Stockholm, Sveriges Riksbank governor Stefan Ingves argued, “Private money usually collapses sooner or later.” In a further disparaging remark, he claimed, “Sure, you can get rich by trading in bitcoin, but it’s comparable to trading in stamps.” Notwithstanding Ingves’ view of Bitcoin’s weaknesses as a currency, he has taken its popularity among investors seriously. Highlighting consumer interests and money laundering as being of particular concern, the central banker conceded this June that the cryptocurrency had gotten “big enough” to merit close attention from regulators, central bankers and lawmakers across the globe.

A fintech firm from Pune, India has launched a blockchain-based registry system named RealX that allows Indian citizens to purchase fractional ownership in properties.  A report from The Economic Times states that RealX has partnered with Tripvillas, a holiday home rental service, to blend ownership of holiday properties in accordance with usage and yield. Tripvillas will also be responsible for managing the basket of holiday properties intended for co-investment. According to RealX chief operating officer and co-founder Neera Inamdar, the COVID-19 pandemic was a key driver for the platform’s launch, as the real estate market’s instability concerned both property developers and investors. Citing the return of a comparatively stable market, she said: