Tempo’s new “Zones” feature offers private, permissioned stablecoin transactions on its layer-1 for enterprises, but critics warn the operator‑controlled design adds back centralized trust. Tempo unveiled a new “Zones” feature Thursday aimed at giving enterprises bank-style privacy on public stablecoin rails, but not everyone in crypto is convinced the trade-offs are worth it. The payments-focused layer-1, co-developed with backing from Stripe and Paradigm, said Zones will let companies run transactions in permissioned environments while still tapping public blockchain liquidity. The pitch targets a long-standing issue for institutions: sensitive data like payroll, merchant volumes or treasury activity being exposed on public ledgers. Some privacy-focused developers argue that the design sacrifices too much. Because each Zone is controlled by an operator that can see full transaction data and suspend a user’s ability to transfer or withdraw funds based on its own compliance rules, critics say it introduces ce...
Foundation is shutting down after a failed sale to Blackdove, having processed about $230 million in NFT primary sales since its launch in 2021. Foundation, one of the better-known Ethereum-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces of the 2021 boom, is shutting down after the sale that was supposed to keep it operating fell apart. Kayvon Tehranian, Foundation’s founder and CEO, took to X on Wednesday to announce the marketplace’s closure following a failed acquisition by the digital art distribution platform Blackdove. Although Tehranian did not directly mention Blackdove, he said the original goal of the sale was to ensure the platform would continue operating under new ownership. “That’s no longer possible,” he said, adding that Foundation is not in a position to bring the marketplace back online. Read more
Industry speakers at Paris Blockchain Week said tokenization can broaden access and issuance, but it does not by itself create active secondary markets for illiquid assets. Tokenization does not automatically make hard-to-trade assets liquid, industry executives said at Paris Blockchain Week, pushing back on the idea that putting private credit, real estate or other illiquid products onchain will by itself create active secondary markets. Speaking during a panel moderated by Cointelegraph CEO Yana Prikhodchenko, Oya Celiktemur, Ondo Finance sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said there is still a misconception that tokenizing illiquid assets can make them easier to trade. “I think there’s still this idea that tokenizing something illiquid will somehow magically make it a liquid asset, which is just not true,” said Celiktemur. She added that assets like real estate and private credit “were never that liquid” to begin with. Read more
Meta-1 Coin was sold and marketed from 2018 to 2023 as an investment backed by $44 billion in gold and $1 billion in artworks, which turned out to be fictional. A Texas man found guilty of helping orchestrate a cryptocurrency scam project that defrauded $20 million from nearly 1,000 investors has been sentenced to 23 years behind bars by a US judge on Tuesday. US District Judge LaShonda Hunt sentenced Robert Dunlap, who served as a trustee of the project that sold the fictional token Meta-1 Coin, to prison and ordered him to pay restitution to victims of the fraud, according to the Illinois US Attorney's office. Assistant US attorneys Jared Hasten and Paige Nutini said in the government’s sentencing memorandum that Dunlap was “unrepentant” and that his lies grew “over the years.” Read more