• 🖼️ Instagram joins de NFT space
• 💸 Singapore’s DeFi experiment
• ⛓️ Is Arbitrum the top L2 Chain
• 🦹‍♂️ OpenSea Feature detects stolen NFTs and Scams
• 💰 Coins of the week
• 📰 Top Reads
• 🙏🏻 Grateful for…

Instagram said that starting this month it will begin allowing a select group of digital creators to mint and sell non-fungible tokens (NFT) directly from the social media platform.

The image-focused app recently launched its Digital Collectibles feature in 100 countries, allowing users to connect to their digital wallets and showcase NFTs that they either created or bought. The connected NFTs can be shown in your feed and include a shimmery effect to indicate authenticity. Mints will happen in the Polygon chain.

Why is this important: Meta, Instagram’s parent company, has lost $9.4 billion so far in 2022 in their desperate pursuit of building a metaverse and monopolizing web3 tech. Not surprisingly, they are hurryingly offering NFT minting and products to their more than 2 billion user base. But people are quickly catching up on Meta’s monopoly goals and know that there are real web3 alternatives to monetize their art and create a following that they can own and take with them.

Nevertheless, IG’s user-friendliness and the large user base and art that has been shared on the platform, make it very attractive for users to at least try the new feature, even if it costs them more than 30% of their proceeds.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) decentralized finance pilot program just executed “the first real-world use case for institutional-grade DeFi protocols,” According to Aave founder Stani Kulechov.

J.P. Morgan, DBS Bank and SBI Digital Asset Holdings yesterday used the Aave protocol on Polygon — a layer-2 scaling solution — to complete foreign exchange and government bond transactions on the Ethereum network. The banks exchanged tokenized versions of Singapore government securities bonds for Japanese government bonds, and Japanese Yen for Singapore Dollars as a test.

“We look forward to welcoming more innovation that leverages composable DeFi protocols to provide access to many underserved markets and enable a more inclusive system,” Kulechov told Decrypt over Telegram.

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Why is this important: As more governments and institutions join the DeFi space and more money flows on-chain. More adoption will be seen making blockchain digital transactions the new normal. This brings more emphasis on cybersecurity (especially when bridging funds), user-friendly DeFi platforms, and composability among chains.

On another note, As Vitalik shared, the integration of Institutional and Government Capital May Bring Onerous Regulation.

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum has seen a massive surge in activity since its Nitro update in August, having just clocked around 62% as many transactions as the Ethereum base layer.

In a Nov. 1 report, crypto research firm Delphi Digital noted that as of the week ended on October 24, Arbitrum’s total transactions have increased by 550% since August, citing data from Dune Analytics.

Arbitrum is an optimistic roll-up built by blockchain development firm Offchain Labs, aimed at scaling Ethereum smart contracts. It uses Optimistic Rollup technology to bundle large batches of transactions off-chain from Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized applications before submitting them to Ethereum.

A number of well-known protocols use Arbitrum, such as decentralized exchanges SushiSwap, Uniswap and GMX, lending protocol Aave and liquidity transport protocol Stargate. According to L2Beat, at the time of writing it has a current total-value-locked (TVL) of $2.59 billion.

Why is this important? Arbitrum aims to reduce transaction fees and congestion by moving as much computation and data storage off of Ethereum’s main blockchain (layer 1) as it can. Storing data off of Ethereum’s blockchain is known as Layer 2 scaling solutions, challenges are security and reliability, as well as competitors.

OpenSea, the top NFT marketplace by trading volume, has launched new theft detection and prevention features.

One feature detects and disables scam links shared on the platform, while the other identifies stolen NFTs and blocks their resale.

Why is this important? Right-click and you stole (saved) the image. Anyone can do that, but with the ability to register ownership of a digital asset on-chain, we should be able to avoid scammers and thieves at least to a certain extent. It is great to see features moving in that direction for the sake of web3 adoption, safety, and credibility

Polygon (formerly Matic Network) is a Layer 2 scaling solution backed by Binance and Coinbase. The project seeks to stimulate the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies by resolving the problems of scalability on many blockchains.

Polygon’s MATIC is up 40% since the chain announced on Thursday it would partner with Instagram to mint and sell NFTs through its platform, rallying up to $1.27. MATIC extended its gains on Monday even as the overall crypto market was pressured by an apparent feud between the CEOs of the Binance and FTX crypto exchanges.