OpenSea moves to Seaport Protocol

OpenSea has transitioned from using the old Wyvern protocol to the Seaport protocol to facilitate its trades, reports Decrypt. It is expected that with the more optimized Seaport contract, users are expected to save a rough 35% on gas transaction fees. Furthermore, with this upgrade, OpenSea has also since enabled trait-based collection offers - a feature that was widely requested, and a big step forward in improving its UX.

Browser Wallets patch Security Vulnerability

A security vulnerability was discovered by Halborn, a blockchain security firm, that under certain circumstances, meant that seed phases/secret recovery phases could have been stored unencrypted on your computer’s hard drive. There is currently no evidence that this vulnerability was exploited by any actors, due to the small possible attack vector where all 3 of the following conditions were met: 1. Your Hard Drive was not encrypted. 2. You imported your Secret Phrase into an affected Browser Wallet like Metamask on a device which is in possession of someone who is not trusted, or if control of your device is compromised. 3. You used the ‘Show Secret Recovery Phase” checkbox to view your phrase on screen during the import process.

At least 10 browser based wallets, including Metamask and Phantom contained this vulnerability, reports Coindesk.

Forta airdrops its FORT Token

Forta has taken steps to building a decentralized cybersecurity firm with alignment of benefits/incentives using its native FORT token. Airdrops are still claimable via its website, to users who either: 1. Joined the Community Early 2. Developed and helped to Grow Web3 3. Signers of active Gnosis Safes 4. Early Contributors Currently, Forta is being used by major blockchain projects, Lido, Compound and Polygon to monitor and highlight abnormal activities, reports Decrypt.

God's Unchained has achieved immense success with around 80,000 active players and the $GODS token sitting at the market cap of over US$10MIL as of January 2022 . Immutable is also prepping for the launch of their second blockchain game Guild of Guardians, which already boasts a community of over 400,000 people.

With the platform securing US$200 million in Series C financing earlier in March, led by Temasek and other investors including Animoca Brands and Tencent, Immutable has aggressive plans for expansion geared to take shape in the coming months.

"First, we have plans to more than double the size of our company to 400 people. This means hiring more than 200 new employees worldwide over the next year across many functions. From a cash perspective, we are fortunate enough to have more than four years’ runway projected, even with aggressive hiring. This means that we can expand our workforce even when other traditional tech and crypto companies have paused hiring – Justin Hulog, Chief Studio Officer at Immutable"

Engaging vs Addictive Games

There are 2 ways a game keeps its players hooked. The first way, would be using psychological tactics like daily Rewards, shaping behaviour patterns by using skinner boxes, resource decay design, etc. These tactics are meant to cause psychological addiction and not meant to engage the player. The second way, would be the FUN WAY! And there are several examples of how games use fun design tactics to keep the players engaged instead of getting them addicted

Pacing the Gameplay with different pillars: Pillars are when a game has a lot of different types of gameplay. Let's take Rise of the Tomb Raider as an example. There are sections of the game where there is intense combat, stealth-type combat options, puzzles, explorations, cinematic gameplay, and video cutscenes. Swapping between different sets of gameplay styles fluently and flowing into different intensity of the styles helps to modulate the pacing of the game. Regulating pacing using pillars keeps the fun intact as spending too long on just one gameplay pillar might leave the player bored and exhausted.

Introducing New Ideas: New ideas can be things like game mechanics, enemy types, new maps, and so on. When the player moves from stage to stage, they never know what new "prizes" they might uncover or what secrets might be revealed. Take Hades for example. When you move from room to room, you uncover a new god which will at first provide you with a unique set of boons. And as you progress, you have a chance for duo boons or legendary boons, which is a great new gameplay mechanic that is introduced to keep the game exciting for the player. New Ideas can also be teased, like how there is a locked room in Hades that cannot be accessed when you start playing, and the player is then itching to find out what's behind the room and is motivated to progress and they get closer to unraveling the mystery.

Providing Players with Long-Term Goals: Rogue-lite games execute this very well. In Dead Cells, players have the option to go all the way to Boss Cell 5 as well as unlock numerous types of weapons, costumes & collectible achievements along the way. Unlocking these weapon and skill milestones allow the player to have something immediate to shoot for as they progress towards more longer term ambitions. Players also need to practice careful planning as they try out the weapons they have unlocked and select carefully from the different maps to progress to ensure they keep moving forward to get the most cells that unlock the most upgrades and weapons.

META launches new Digital Hub, Crayta!

Crayta is a collaborative game creation platform built on Unreal Engine 4, allowing players to jump in and create games in the cloud regardless of experience. With a continuously growing library of user-generated multiplayer games across a huge variety of genres, there will be something for every player to dive into.

Metaverse is a term that has been around for a long time, even before Facebook changed its name to Meta. Why’s this point relevant? Just to showcase that Meta is attempting to be the central part of the Web 3.0 and Metaverse infrastructure.

However, Crayta is not an NFT Game. There aren’t tokens, cryptocurrencies, or collectibles available for Crayta users to transfer around or import/export anywhere. However, creators could monetize the game, but that has another set of policies and more for users to read and understand.

Signum Capital Provides Advice to Their Investees During Current Markets

Kyber Releases Article: “How to Survive Bear Market”

The tips are summarized as follows: Don’t Panic, DYOR, “Altcoins Bad. Stablecoins Good.”, “Don’t just #HODL. Earn.”, Keep Your Funds Safe, and Don’t Overdo It

Solana Marketplace “Magic Eden” Releases Mobile App Update

What’s new in Magic Eden Mobile App v2.7.0?

• In-app mobile notifications
• Integrated Price Alerts
• View all Collection-level auction

Mastercard Now Allowing Cardholders to Buy NFTs on Several Marketplaces

Payments giant Mastercard mentioned that its cardholders can now buy non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on various marketplaces without needing to first purchase cryptocurrency.

• Mastercard is working with NFT scaling platform Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web 3 infrastructure provider MoonPay on the new capabilities, according to the press release.
• “With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem,” according to Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products and partnerships.

SEC begins Investigation into Terraform Labs and Crypto Exchanges

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently ramped up investigations in the aftermath of the recent events surrounding the Crypto Industry. 1. They began to probe into whether Terraform Labs, the legal entity behind $UST and $LUNA had violated U.S. laws regarding how it marketed its tokens. This is in addition to the existing investigation behind Mirror Protocol, CoinDesk reports. 2. Likely in relation to the allegations behind insider trading via the opaque Centralized Exchanges, the SEC has also begun an inquiry into these exchanges to probe about the kinds of protections that they have against insider trading, CoinDesk reports.

Class-action lawsuit season begins

Multiple class-action lawsuits were filed this week, primarily driven by investor losses in the crypto markets. 1. Elon Musk, alongside Tesla and SpaceX faces a $258 Billion lawsuit, with claims that the defendants had ‘pumped’ Dogecoin via Twitter, and ‘falsely and deceptively claimed that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment’, Decrypt reports. 2. Binance faces a Class Action lawsuit of a yet-to-be-determined amount, which is to be based on US Citizens who were ‘affected’ by Binance listing and marketing $UST as a stablecoin, reports Decrypt. A copy of the case document can be found here. 3. Celsius and CEO Alex Mashinsky face a Class Action Lawsuit of a yet-to-be-determined amount, with Ben Armstrong (more commonly known as the KOL, BitBoy Crypto), as the plaintiff. Source