Moon Mag #7

Bought To You By

gettingstartedincrypto.com

Editorial

A note from Lisa…

Sit back grab a coffee, beer, bourbon or your fav wine, this month will change the way you look at crypto, last month we brought you STRONGBLOCK this month we compound on that article with NAAS, and you really need to take note, and maybe get a node of your own! This is where the easy money is! And more importantly, you’re in control. We get completely RADICLE and look at this open protocol network - Think GitHub, but decentralised and on the blockchain. And we visit ARCADE! With everything that is going on in the world, this is a small escape into the future!

Peace & Love, Lisa

Yet another rocky month in the crypto markets caused by events both inside and outside of the industry. Volatility often has a direct correlation with how we are personally feeling and conflicting emotions tend to generate unrest. A cure often being to take some time out to rebalance and realign. It’s an oft overlooked strategy but one that complements the HODL’er who tends to move a little slower than the swing traders amongst us. This allows for consideration and reflection before investing into projects and a moment or two to weigh up the pros and cons, the ifs and buts and our true gut instinct.

A note from Josh…

A selection of projects await your perusal this month complimented with educational articles. Whatever your desire be, whether to find a gem or learn how certain nuances of crypto work, please do remember to step back and reflect. View it from the balcony of your mind as well as the front of your mind and ponder how you feel about the project as much as what you think about it.

Peace.

What do video games have to do with the metaverse 06

What Is Nodes as a Service (NaaS) and what this does for crypto Radicle Network

14

19

Arcade Fi 26

The Evolution of Internet Connectivity with Syntropy

32

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

CONTRIBUTORS

Aldrich Shillian Aldrich (or Rhys to those in the Signals group!) has been HODL’ing since 2017 and is proud of surviving bear markets, rug pulls and still trading successfully enough to have paid off all debts.

Recently, he’s jumped head-on into NFT projects - particularly ones that combine his love of gaming.

Daniel Dudek I am a Quantitative Biology PhD student with a small addiction to crypto. One of my favorite things about crypto is its ability to revolutionize everything we do, from payments to culture. Real implementation and interoperability between projects are what I am passionate about in this space.

Kel Udeala I’m a quantitative analyst and a mechanical engineer. I took an interest in crypto because my line of work led me down the financial trading and investment rabbit hole, and it’s only a matter of time before you reach crypto. I enjoy researching different crypto projects, and attempting to forecast their roles in the future financial and technology systems. I also find the volatility of the charts and the resulting crypto-Twitter posts very thrilling.

Daniel Jimenez Daniel has been a blockchain technology evangelist since 2012 and is a faithful believer in the Crypto ecosystem. Daniel also writes for Coin Telegraph!

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

written by Daniel Jimenez

Why the future of video games is in the metaverse Tech companies believe that video games are the way to move faster towards an immersive Internet. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard

by Microsoft is an example of this trend.

On January 18, the technology giant Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the company that develops video games such as Candy Crush and the Call of Duty franchise.

In total, Microsoft paid USD 70 billion, a significant sum even for a corporation as rich as the software giant.

But what does this mean for the gaming industry and metaverses, especially those decentralized virtual worlds based on cryptocurrencies and NFTs?

To understand the acquisition, we must first understand that the billion-dollar gaming industry has been in constant evolution and its recent growth has been closely related to the concept of virtual worlds. And even if you’re like me and don’t actually play, it pays to be educated about gaming metaverses to understand where investments in the sector are moving.

The history of the virtual experience in video games Throughout the short history of virtual worlds, their greatest exponent has been in video games since 1962, when Morton Heilig first described his idea for an immersive theater in 1955. The Sensorama was finally created in 1962 and is one of the earliest examples of an immersive multisensory machine. It is widely recognized as an early VR system.

Almost in parallel, in 1974 Maze Wars was released and this game can claim to be the first 3D FPS, first client-server networked game, and the first game to represent players as avatars.

Back in the 1980s, Pinball Construction Set was the first video game featuring UGC, created by Bill Budge in 1983 for the Apple II. It was followed by Excitebike and Wrecking Crew in 1984, and in 1985 the Nintendo Entertainment System made its debut.

With the advancement of computing, and entering the 90s era, the concept of “metaverse” introduced

by Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel was introduced more widely to the world of gaming, managing to generate the first MMORPG titles based on a virtual community including Habitat (1987), ActiveWorlds (1995), Worlds Chat (1995), and Animal Crossing (2001).

However, in the most recent evolution of this era, the pure concept of “metaverse,” as defined

by Zuckerberg with his presentation of Meta in October 2021, has gained mainstream attention.

Video game users and non-users alike are beginning to appreciate the more immersive experience earlier introduced by virtual worlds Second Life (2003) and Roblox (2006).

With these titles, gamers began to create true digital economies and real estate in what is recognized as the first metaverses of gaming. In these virtual worlds, the existing digital elements such as electronic commerce, information or the mini-games themselves are combined with elements that now belong to the physical material world.

The race to control the ‘next big trend’ If we closely observe the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on changes in people’s habits, and therefore the increase in the consumption of digital products in the last two years, such as Zoom Videoconferences, for example; we can understand the reasons behind Microsoft’s strategic decision.

Beyond the monopolistic tendencies that motivate these types of decisions, the average investor is able to see the greater trend followed followed by the big corporations like Microsoft, Apple or Nvidia, and more discreetly Google in this regard; without a doubt, the big technology companies are following blockchain startups into virtual entertainment — games related to metaverses where physical leisure plays a key role in the development.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

All of the above companies have also taken a strong position in the hardware for virtual worlds by developing VR/AR glasses.

While many changes are yet to come, there is no doubt that companies in the video game and virtual reality sector are watching the trends closely and doing everything they can to shape the future of the immersive internet that they want to sell us.

Strategic decisions such as the acquisition of Activision Blizzard will show in the near future who will be the winners and who will be the losers of the new internet.

Video games have long offered a glimpse into what’s possible. Even before we spent hours on Facebook and YouTube, video game designers were creating worlds that didn’t exist, but felt real. Video games were among the first consumer products to prove that people would pay for virtual things (for example, weapons, clothing, or tractors in FarmVille).

Gamers already live in the metaverse, and tech companies essentially want to bring that sense of imagination to every aspect of life online, including friendships, shopping, and live theater.

The flow of money into video games and other immersive technologies indicates that the tech titans are both excited about the future and fearful of missing out. And there are plenty of reasons to consider not missing it.

A promising future A Market Research Future report pointed out that the value of the metaverse market reached USD 21,9 billion in 2020. And it predicts that it will grow 41.7% annually until 2030. The figures are dizzying, but they are not the only predictions in the same line.

Researchers from Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that this set of technologies could reach USD 800 billion in 2024. Part of this growth will be driven by entertainment. And within this category, physical leisure in the metaverse will play an important role.

“The interesting part of the metaverse starts with virtual reality games, which is the purest training we can have in a video game. We are talking about sports games, shooting games, gymnastics games”, commented Giovanni Cetto, CEO of the virtual reality company TwoReality in an interview with ThinkBig, the Telefónica blog.

And he adds: “We are all waiting for the entry of video games like Resident Evil, Halo, video games that we have played for 10 years. And the moment when these enter virtual reality within the metaverse will be very impactful.

Add to the above the numbers revealed earlier this year by Newzoo consultancy. The metaverse player is visibly younger than the average game player with an age of around 27. More interestingly, Gen Z and Gen Alpha players are already growing in proto-metaverses like Roblox, Fortnite and Minercraft; each spending an average of 2 hours and just over $1.28 more every six months.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

So far we have managed to understand the magnitude of the business that video games focused on virtual worlds represent today. It is probably one of the reasons that has motivated platforms like Roblox to move with ambitious plans to get a piece of the coveted ‘cake’ of the metaverse.

Roblox recently announced to the Wall Street Journal an investment of USD 10 million to develop three video games on their platform, being their first investment in this type of development.

And as we have seen, the market potential is in billions of dollars.

With a growing tendency to spend more time and money to acquire improvements for avatars in these virtual worlds, the strategies of large technology corporations and consolidated platforms such as Roblox undoubtedly involve the purpose of securing a place in an industry that generates much more revenue than the global film industry.

With the metaverse, one of the proposals that has been raised is the interoperability of games, more specifically that their digital assets be interchangeable between different games.

For example, that the skin that I bought for Fornite can be used, if I want, in Minecraft, Counter Strike or Phasmophobia. The concept is, without a doubt, very attractive, and with further development, even more interesting. For a moment I imagined myself with Doom’s weapons in Minecraft, or Minecraft’s netherite armor in Call of Duty. The idea is captivating.

Decentralized metaverses: The option capturing the attention of large companies

But as promising and exciting as these concepts of interoperable virtual worlds seem, the truth is that optimistically, the technical and development-level limitations are quite complex, especially in the centralized world.

Intel has already responded to the euphoria of the metaverse raised by Facebook with an argument so solid that it is indisputable: we do not have, nor will we have in the short and medium term, the necessary computing capacity so that what Meta tells us can become a reality.

Not to mention what we can read on Business Insider from game creators, who say it’s an unrealistic fantasy and that interoperability of games in centralized metaverses will most likely never happen.

However, despite the contradictory nature of these statements, in decentralized metaverses like The Sandbox, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Space VR, the reality is different.

The immersive experience is already being generated with the help of disruptive technologies such as VR/AR and the economy revolves around a world of possibilities powered by the use of blockchain technology through the tokenization of assets and decentralized forms of payment, which make it seem that the only limit is the imagination.

No less interesting, Microsoft’s recent participation in a funding round for a startup focused on creating NFTs is signaling the tech giant’s interest in using all available tools to win the race for the metaverse, alongside its Silicon Valley competitors such as Facebook and Google.

With NFTs booming across the industry and as the backbone of the economy in metaverses, we have seen giants like Microsoft recently signaling their intention to create NFTs and other tokens using proprietary templates registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (UPSTO).

In addition, another context that can be given to this whole movement is undoubtedly the intentions of the technological giants to be omnipresent in all aspects of the new virtual economy that is expected to revolve around metaverses.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Cryptocurrencies: Big potential in the gaming industry Taking into account the USD 2.3 billion revenue reported by the crypto gaming industry in 2021, and also its projection of sustained growth in this sector, the effect that decisions made by Microsoft, for example, may have on the sector is not surprising.

As reported by the Global Crypto Adoption report by TripleA, gamers are also much more likely to own crypto as compared to others—55% of Millennial gamers own crypto as compared to just 5% of all Millennials.

There’s an immense potential for crypto to be more involved in the gaming industry. Among gamers who own crypto, 80% of them are interested in using cryptocurrency for gaming purchases, and 67% hope there are more opportunities for using cryptocurrency in gaming.

The acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft may have a dual reading for the cryptocurrency sector. On the one hand, its potential could increase due to the injection of capital flow towards new developments that could finally be linked to NFTs and, of course, to the crypto ecosystem in general.

Greater fluidity of capital, and therefore of liquidity will always be a beneficial resource for a young industry such as the blockchain in general.

However, this benefit can be quite dangerous and surreal, if the next big trend called the metaverse fails to meet the expectations of large outlays of money and these new ventures fail, as we have seen in the recent past, with the acquisition and subsequent closure of the Lionhead developer studio.

Fortunately, beyond the monopolistic pretensions and the war waged for the conquest of the metaverse, a reason that is little discussed and that could well explain Microsoft’s movement, could in turn be an encouraging reason for the future development of the technology and the new era of immersive video games.

Final Thoughts For now, current video games already have an important social component. Users play online, communities are created, and players participate in tournaments. But in virtual worlds this aspect will be deepened.

In the metaverse, the gamer is more casual and sociable, and wants to socialize with friends online. And he wants to have fun in a similar way to going to ‘DisneyLand’.

The ability to be part of an attraction and share in a moment of fun with the people around, whom you may not see again when you leave, are inspiring reasons that are driving the development of the new economy through virtual worlds.

Add to the above the fact that people, as a result of the recent pandemic, have decided to look for ways to monetize their own spaces and their own time and now they are aware that there is a technology that allows it, without depending on central entities, or monopolies that charge unfair fees for the effort committed.

As a consequence, there is immense potential for cryptocurrencies to be more involved in the gaming industry.

There are more than 41.9M gamers who own cryptocurrencies and among gamers who own cryptocurrencies, 80% of them are interested in using cryptocurrencies for in-game purchases, and 67% hope there will be more opportunities to use crypto in games.

Without a doubt, a promising potential market.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

written by Daniel Jimenez

What Is Nodes-as-aService (NaaS) And What Does This Do For Crypto?

One of the fundamental pillars for the operation of decentralized networks are undoubtedly the nodes. For the cryptocurrency ecosystem, these actors are vital for the correct functioning of all transactions supporting, for example, thevital function of generating trust in the ecosystem.

Their importance was made clear on November 11, 2020 when Coindesk reported that an ‘unannounced Ethereum hard fork’ caused an outage with Ethereum node provider Infura resulting in millions of dollars in losses and the chaotic downtime of several applications including Binance, Metamask, Uniswap and Compound among others.

The reason: stale nodes were to blame for the failure, an autopsy later published by Geth revealed.

Geographic distribution of Ethereum Nodes.

Source: https://etherscan.io/nodetracker

But what are nodes?

According to the Ethereum Foundation, “Node” refers to a running piece of client software. A client is an implementation of a blockchain network that verifies all transactions in every block, keeping the network secure and data accurate.

These nodes make the software on which the blockchain is based work and therefore the cryptocurrency deployed on it.

As the use of blockchain technology becomes popular in all latitudes of the globe, from startups to large multinational companies that wish to carry out their technological adaptation based on this distributed technology, the use of nodes becomes essential.

Why are nodes important in a blockchain?

As we have pointed out before, the nodes in the blockchain are the soul of a P2P network. They are responsible for the synchronization of transactions in the decentralized network while ensuring its proper functioning.

When deploying nodes we must be aware that, although the essence of the node is the same, there are 3 types of nodes that any cryptocurrency developer or user can run in the blockchain industry: light, full and file nodes.

In general, the nodes validate the blocks in the blockchain network, verify their states and store the complete data of the blockchain (full node); with which it is possible to avoid deviations such as double spending and malicious actors who want to take advantage of the network for their benefit to the detriment of the rest of the ecosystem.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Even more interesting, with light nodes it is possible to run from a smartphone, for example, decentralized applications such as wallets, exchanges, or gaming apps for example; totally synchronized with the data of the blockchain from where they operate, highlighting their relevance to the development of a growing ecosystem.

And without file nodes, the ecosystem of a particular blockchain network, Ethereum for example, would not be able to achieve proper synchronization in its block explorers, chain analytics, or wallet providers.

As we have been able to appreciate, the nodes play a fundamental role in any decentralized blockchain network; and their maintenance and updating is vital for the network to be secure and in good working order; thus avoiding possible hacks or the entry of malicious actors into the block validation processes that can generate the loss of millions of resources, as recently happened with Ethereum Infura.

For this reason, the concept of Nodes-as-a-Service (NaaS) gains more and more strength, as a form of management for professional developers and companies that do not have the technical or financial resources to manage their own nodes, once their distributed platform has been created.

Why Nodes-as-a-Service (NaaS)?

Node-as-a-Service (NaaS) consists of offering a comprehensive network infrastructure solution with connected nodes under subscription. In this way, companies no longer have to worry about the rapid obsolescence or maintenance of equipment. In addition, they make sure to always have state-of-the-art nodes.

As companies of all sizes race to urge their technology teams to “go blockchain” as an effective way to manage processes and cut costs, node connection demand is eminently higher for certain blockchain networks, especially those dedicated to the business field such as Corda, Hyperledger or Ethereum; to name a few.

In this context, the use of third parties to provide an effective solution within the decentralized framework of connection to nodes becomes more and more common in the blockchain industry.

Node-as-a-Service (NaaS) is a term that has emerged within the broad spectrum of software-as-a-service (SaaS) options and become popular since 2015 in the IT business field, which has allowed companies to decouple from their network the functionality of the physical infrastructure that used to be a prerequisite for decentralized enterprise networks.

With a short supply of specialist blockchain developers, who still struggle to understand the nuances of this nascent technology, and a lack of capital making it difficult for small businesses to recruit the right staff, NaaS providers are an excellent option to avoid being trapped when creating a business blockchain, as has been well demonstrated by large companies like IBM or Walmart, to name just a few examples.

StrongBlock: A NaaS Provider to Watch

Benefits of hiring a NaaS provider The benefits for any company or startup that wants to incorporate blockchain technology from hiring a NaaS provider are many and varied.

From securing the network to lowering costs, a NaaS provider enables any entrepreneur or established project to easily and effectively manage their blockchain applications.

Developers can deploy nodes in a matter of minutes and connect to blockchains that connect to their workflows without worrying about maintenance, the time invested to keep their nodes running optimally, or more interestingly, the economic consequences of node downtime that can occur in an ecosystem such as cryptocurrencies which has outdated and obsolete nodes.

The idea behind a NaaS provider is similar to that of the SaaS service: allow companies and developers to spend time on their innovation and leave the heavy lifting to a third party, which in this case lacks the correct update, maintenance and synchronization of nodes to blockchain networks.

The NaaS responds to the desire of companies to have a network infrastructure that can be deployed quickly and is “scalable” depending on its activity.

Founded in 2018 by prominent players in the blockchain industry (former members of the original EOS team), StrongBlock has been forging ahead as a benchmark for making it easy to add secure, decentralized blockchains to any application.

StrongBlock tries to solve the centralization problem in an industry that boasts of being ‘decentralized’, by bringing together groups of third-party nodes from various protocols from blockchains to oracles, in order to create trustworthy and decentralized networks.

With over 5,500 operators running over 21,000 nodes, StrongBlock allocates resources to networks seeking security, diversity, and decentralization.

At the beginning of December 2020, they launched their Nodes as a Service (NaaS) product, in order to allow any user in the crypto ecosystem and the blockchain industry to create a full Ethereum node in a few seconds without technical experience.

StrongBlock rewards registered nodes running the stable version of Ethereum 1.0 with its native STRONG token and plans to support Ethereum 2.0 nodes in the near future alongside Bitcoin and other industry leading blockchain nodes.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

StrongBlock as a NaaS provider rewardsblockchain nodes that transmit and store decentralized blockchain data, incentivizing them to continue securing blockchain networks.

Through improvements in its protocol to reduce ethereum gas fees and inflation, the developers of any blockchain company or startup do not have to worry about investing resources in maintaining and updating nodes to synchronize their use cases with the blockchain network.

In return, with StrongBlock it is now possible to delegate this hard work and receive symbolic rewards for delegating blockchain nodes connected to the largest network of decentralized applications in the crypto ecosystem.

StrongBlock is part of a growing list of NaaS providers emerging in the ecosystem, a rapidly growing segment as scalability becomes an industry norm, where node integrity will be crucial.

A Viable Alternative to Running Full Blockchain Nodes Nodes-as-a-Service represents a specific benchmark in the field of IT, whereby it is no longer necessary to have physical servers and hardware running out of a business location to enjoy all that those servers and hardware have offered businesses in the configuration of traditional networks.

With NaaS, much of the network management can also be outsourced, giving the business the flexibility and freedom to manage a network with less in-house technical expertise. This concept will continue to be one of the most exciting new IT options for companies that want to do more in terms of software architecture, without hiring engineers or building physical hardware configurations.

Many CEOs of companies of all sizes are aware of the importance of including blockchain in their structure, and NaaS providers are undoubtedly a vital point on the path to the technological adaptation that current times demand.

Radicle Network & The RAD Token written by Kelechi

Radical is a decentralised network built on an open blockchain protocol, which empowers developers to collaborate without relying on intermediaries.

Think GitHub, but decentralised and on the blockchain.

Radicle provides similar functionalities to other centralised collaboration platforms such as GitLab, SourceForge and Gitbucket, to name a few, but in a decentralised and permissionless manner.

It retains the peer-to-peer nature of such platforms, building on what made distributed version control so powerful. It is harder to take down because there is no central point of failure and is resistant to corporate and state capture and censorship. In summary, Radicle is an open-source, community-led, and self-sustaining network for software collaboration. Its token, RAD, in addition to governance via voting and proposals, can enable reduced or zero fees when interacting with Radicle smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Data All Data Is Current At Time Of Writing Max Supply: 100,000,000 Total Supply: 99,998,730 Current Circulating Supply: 36,863,926 Ethereum Contract Address: 0x31c8eacbffdd875c74b94b077895bd78cf1e64a3 Token Allocation 100M Radicle tokens (fixed) have been minted at genesis and will vest over the course of 4 years.

Community Treasury (vesting over 4 years): 50% Team (4-year vesting from join date, 1 year lock-up from genesis): 19% Early Supporters (1 year lock-up): 20% Foundation (1 year lock-up): 5% Seeders Program (1 year lock-up): 2% Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool: ~4%

Website https://radicle.xyz/

White Paper / Docs https://docs.radicle.xyz/docs/ what-is-radicle.html

Twitter https://twitter.com/radicle

Discord discord.gg/radicle

Where To Purchase the Token

Radical is available on the Uniswap decentralised exchange and major centralised exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gate.io, Gemini, Huobi Global, and MEXC Global.

Core Team

Abbey Titcomb Community & Governance

Eleftherios Founder

Abbey runs all things community and governance at Radicle and has done so since 2019. She is a technologist, governance researcher, product strategist, community developer, and community lead. Abbey likes to build and contribute to opensource technologies and grow the communities at the base of such projects. She is also the Co-Founder of the yet-to-launch Miri Studios, a guild-based metaverse project. Abbey describes herself as a pixel artist, gamer and dungeon master.

Eleftherios is the Co-Founder of Radicle. Before Radicle, Eleftherios built tech products, worked in technology strategy consulting, and led the Data Science & Engineering teams at SoundCloud, the popular online audio distribution and music sharing platform. In addition to founding and contributing to the development of Radicle, Eleftherios writes about the decentralized web, cryptocurrencies, technology governance and internet culture.

Brandon Oxendine Product & Brand Designer

Shelby Steidl Governance Facilitator

Brandon is a Core Team Product and Brand Designer at Radicle by day and a mixed media artist outside his career at Radicle. He describes himself as a digital product designer, design manager, art director, artist, illustrator, letterer, and developer. Brandon works between the lines of product design, branding, and art. Before joining Radicle, Bradon spent three years at Grover, a technology rentals platform enabling users to subscribe to tech products monthly instead of buying them. He held several roles at Grover, including the Head of Product Design, Product Owner and Senior Product Designer. Brandon also has previous experience in Design Consulting and co-founded Bingo Bango, a peer-to-peer delivery platform.

Shelby helps organise and coordinate Radicle’s decentralised, community-led governance processes. Before governance facilitation at Radicle, she worked as an Executive Assistant & Office Manager at BlueYard Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm investing in a decentralised future through projects such as Protocol Labs, Filecoin, Open Zeppelin, Decred and Radicle. Shelby also applies her venture capital experience and undergraduate studies in international relations to drive operations at the Berlin chapter of Techfugees, an organisation supporting and helping to deploy responsible technology products and services for and with displaced persons across the world.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

What Does Radicle Do For Investors?

According to the co-founders of Radicle, they created the project to develop and support a resilient collaboration infrastructure that respects users’ freedoms, without a reliance on trusted gatekeepers nor on corporate or state overlords. Furthermore, they sought to use the newly developed sovereign financial infrastructure (Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi) to create new value flows for developers and grow the digital commons. As such, the RAD token is a way for users and investors to capture the value within the rapidly proliferating Web 3.0 infrastructure.

Radicle is on the Ethereum blockchain; hence the RAD token is an ERC20 token powering interaction with its various smart contracts.

Token holders can avoid fees or have discounted fees when interacting with these smart contracts. Additionally, it is a governance token that enables several Ethereum-based features, the communal ownership, collective governance, and long-term sustainability of the Radicle network. More so, token holders maintain governing control over the Radicle Treasury, which holds more than 50% of the total token supply, determining the project’s direction and how this treasury benefits the holders themselves. Radicle token holders entirely control the treasury via the Radicle DAO, coordinating the distribution of the treasury’s supply via community programs and initiatives such as developer mining, contributor rewards, and grants.

The project and its rapidly expanding ecosystem do not only immensely benefit both Web2.0 and Web3.0 developers, but investors with conviction in the Web3.0 narrative can also benefit. As the ecosystem expands and more developers, designers, and general project collaborators adopt Radicle, the RAD token will become even more valuable. In summary, there is a significant potential for value accrual via the RAD token if the project realises its potential within the decentralised web paradigm.

Market Opportunity Blockchain technology and projects leveraging the technology has shown significant maturity since the ICO-era mania of 2017. Though the technology is still nascent, it has drawn increasing attention from technology firms, venture capitalist firms and various kinds of asset management firms.

There is still a long way to go, but the technology has significantly matured. One only has to look at the talent migrating from Web 2.0 incumbents like Apple, Google and Facebook to work in Web 3.0 development.

Even Facebook changed its name to Meta to capture some attention from the metaverse narrative.

As recently as February 2022, KPMG Canada announced that it had added Bitcoin and Ethereum to its balance sheet. When traditional finance - BoomerFi, Tradfi or TardFi, as such firms are called in the crypto universe - begin investing in blockchain technology, one only has to see that the ecosystem still has significant potential and upside. There has been a wave of high profile exits from Silicon Valley, with top executives leaving to find work in crypto and decentralised tech. As more and more talent move to web 3.0 development, it only makes sense to adopt a decentralised alternative to Github as a tool for project development.

Hence, Radicle should see more adoption in line with industry growth. Developers have already published over 1000 projects to the network, with an average growth rate of 8% week-to-week in its public beta.

As a comparison, in June 2018, Microsoft said it was purchasing Github for $7.5 billion, and a similar offering - GitLab - debuted on the Nasdaq in 2021 at a valuation of about $14.9 billion at market open. As Web 3.0 eats Web 2.0 for lunch and given Radicle’s unique value proposition, it is fair to reason that Radicle’s fully diluted market valuation of about $540 million at the time of writing is nowhere near its full potential. Hence, the RAD token could benefit immensely and see significant upside if this current narrative holds, and given the current trajectory, it is highly probable.

The RoadMap Radicle’s roadmap is significantly dynamic because it comprises various communities working on numerous projects with direction from its DAO structure. Hence its roadmap can change yearon-year though it maintains an overall goal of decentralisation and collaboration.

In the past year, Radicle focused on maturing the Radicle stack and having more decentralised communities and DAOs leverage Radicle for community-critical operations.

The project has focused on improving its infrastructure and tooling while embracing decentralisation and reducing coordination bottlenecks between contributors and teams from a technology perspective.

The overall goal in the past year was to scale the development process to welcome a much wider group of contributors and operate as a new kind of open-source project built, governed, and financed on the internet.

Given the above, Radicle’s roadmap then can be split into ‘High-Level Objectives’ and ‘Product & Technology Objectives.’

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Conclusion More than ever, it is now certain that Web 3.0 is here to stay. With high-profile brain drain from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and wildly successful legacy finance firms experiencing FOMO, how could we not be bullish?

Radicle is a first-mover in creating a collaborative environment for developers similar to what GitHub and GitLab have done, albeit decentralised and on the blockchain. We are witnessing a similar paradigm to when Ethereum revolutionised the decentralisation of information technology with its smart contract concept. If you had the opportunity of early participation in Ethereum, what would you do? If Radicle achieves its vision, there is no doubt it would achieve a similar feat given that Web 3.0 development is here to stay.

Furthermore, Radicle has support from outstanding firms and individuals known for their foresight in the industry. Such backers include Placeholder, Galaxy, NFX, Electric, Parafi, Hypersphere, BlueYard, 1kx and more. Additionally, individuals like Balaji Srinivasan, Naval Ravikant, Fred Ehrsam, Meltem Demirors, and project founders from Aave, The Graph, PolkaDot, Coinmarketcap, and CoinGecko have also supported the project. Given the past successes of these firms and individuals, perhaps this is a project to watch.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Play-to-earn and GameFi: the next big thing? written by Rhys

Play-to-earn is already a booming sector of the crypto industry. Early projects are starting to take shape and deliver their products, while newer upstarts’ riff off those early successes in a race to overtake them and improve the quality of gameplay, graphics, and economics for players.

The growing popularity of play-to-earn gaming – dubbed “GameFi” – has resulted in not just an expansion of gameplay experiences available, but also spinoff and interlinked projects that allow players or investors to capitalise on this new frontier in different and interesting ways.

As with many emerging crypto areas, launchpads, crowdfunding, IDOs, IGOs and other investment vehicles have sprung up to support the growth of the sector, offering good rewards to those who are willing to take early investor risk. But it’s not without risk, and it is difficult to know which products will make it to market, over what span of time, and whether they will have the desired impact at that point in an everchanging landscape. A promising growth sector, not without risk, but a worthwhile addition to any diverse portfolio.

GameFi, as with many projects, promises the best returns to early investors who manage to spot the diamond in the rough which goes on to be the next Axie Infinity, all the while taking on the risk that a project will or will not perform well as an investment over that period.

All the while you may compete with those early adopters or whales who have time, money, and energy to throw into the game and maximise their return. Not everyone wants to play games full-time, no matter how immersive they might be. Some people just want to invest in something that puts their money to work in a growth market.

But not all of us can afford to invest in multiple projects with decent allocations, waiting it out to see which one blooms. We might only be able to afford one or two projects and look to invest in those who are already delivering on their roadmap and might even be in full release, to reduce our downside risk. The trade off ends up being more limited growth opportunities.

But how do you then realise that return? In established projects, play-to-earn mechanics mean just that; you need to play to earn. Established projects often end up having a higher barrier to entry with playable NFTs, in-game currencies and stakeable tokens all adding up to an expensive starter pack, in addition to the time investment required to then start making money out of the games.

Arcade – a new GameFi project – sees the difficulties in meshing all this together.

Late adopters may never catch up without substantial investments of time or money, while careful investors might not want to take on early-project risk. Instead, Arcade looks to offer investors exposure to established projects in play-to-earn without having to invest directly into the game itself – like investing in managed portfolios or ETFs in traditional trading. Initially, Arcade allows you to back missions in Star Atlas (a previous Moon Mag pick) and Illuvium, two of the highest-profile upcoming Playto-earn games. By this, you could be supporting some of the biggest players of the game without having to spend the substantial time and money yourself, and still making a return.

In doing this, Arcade seeks to add value to the three different stakeholders in their system; investors in Arcade via the $ARCADE token, guilds in-game, and NFT holders who could lend out their assets when they don’t have time to maximise their usage. Each one of these can derive a benefit from Arcade’s clever ecosystem, with the collective working to produce gains that otherwise might not have been available to each individual group.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

$ARCADE Tokenomics Project links Arcade LIT Paper PDF https://drive.google.com/file/d/10gp_ G4cWawXj4jryFRFoy3ThyrQPykMF/view Arcade Website https://www.arcade2earn.io/ Official Twitter https://twitter.com/arcade2earn Official Discord https://discord.arcade2earn.com/ Official Telegram Channels Main Group: https://t.me/arcade2earn Announcements: https://t.me/arcade2earnannouncements Official Medium https://arcade2earn.medium.com/

The $ARCADE token As is usual in crypto, the key to Arcade’s system is their Solana blockchain token - $ARCADE. The token is the gateway for players to access NFTs and for investors to take a share in the earning power of the players. For the average hodler, price will be driven by the demand from players accessing NFTs using the token, as well as those choosing to use $ARCADE to back missions via the Arcade Mission Pool concept. If nothing else, for early buyers, $ARCADE features favourable tokenomics against the private and strategic round sales, with cliffs of over half a year.

For players, $ARCADE represents their ticket to the platforms’ NFTs – provided either by Arcade itself, or later, by other players who may not have time to maximise the use of their NFTs in-game. Players can buy and stake $ARCADE in exchange for borrowing NFTs for missions. Think of it like Blockbuster rentals, but with spaceships or dragons! Players can then take those NFTs and conduct missions or activity that might’ve been otherwise out of their reach normally. In gaming, bigger missions normally means bigger rewards… So, getting access to these other tools for players would be a huge boon to further their in-game play. And those missions they carry out generate the profits to feed back to Mission Pool Contributors!

Which brings us on to those Contributors. Mission Pool Contributors (MPC) are the DAO-like element of Arcade. They get to decide which missions are backed by the platform, and therefore which players get to use NFTs available through Arcade.

MPCs swap their $ARCADE token for $xARCADE and use this to stake into missions they want to take place. When players propose a mission, they do so by outlining what activity is taking place, over what period of time, and what return could be expected for backing that mission. MPCs can then choose which mission to support, lock up their tokens, and at the end of a successful mission retrieve rewards in the form of $xARCADE – generated by players swapping in-game currency into the token.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Mission Pools

To show how this works in practice, let’s take an example from Star Atlas.

GSIC Guild in Star Atlas decide they want to do a two-week mining run in a new part of the game. To maximise their return, they want to “hire” a big ol’ freighter from the Arcade NFT pool, provided by a player who is inactive now. They buy some $ARCADE, stake it to start a mission pool, and provide their plan to the rest of the Arcade community. As GSIC has a great track record of making good returns on mining rewards, the Arcade community pitches in with plenty of $xARCADE and the mission pool is filled.

The NFT gets released to GSIC Guild in Star Atlas, and they get on with playing the game, earning in-game currency by the bucketload with the freighter’s huge capacity.

Two weeks later, GSIC return from their successful mining run, bringing back the promise in-game currency as a return to the community for the NFT loan.

The NFT is returned to the Arcade platform, while the $ATLAS (in-game currency) is exchanged for $xARCADE, and the $xARCADE is then distributed to the NFT owner and MPCs, proportionately to their original stake in the mission – plus all their original stake back. This means more funds for GSIC than they could’ve ever secured themselves, more $xArcade for Mission Pool Contributors, and a nice little return for the NFT holder who doesn’t have time to give the freighter a run out.

In this, asset owners, investors, and players of the game can work in tandem to generate returns for each other. As the platform develops, more games come to fruition, and ultimately join Arcade, the need for $ARCADE will grow. With a limited max supply, this could lead to some significant price spikes when big games join – early adopters or whales may see this as a prime space to loan out their idle assets, while gamers who missed the boat will see getting access to them as a great trade-off for exchanging a cut of their earnings. All in all, Arcade helps to link those with assets with those who need them, and potentially generate a great return to all involved.

Coinclusion Arcade is shaping up to be a unique, DAO-esque economic concept that could help level the playing field in blockchain gaming. By offering multiple income options to different types of stakeholder, Arcade strikes a fine balance in providing what is almost a decentralised lending platform for in-game assets. It will give whales and early adopters a way to generate returns while holding onto their assets, rather than purely waiting for prices on their NFTs to spike. It will give players more tools to use in-game, and keep in-game economies ticking over by ensuring that the maximum number of assets are being used in that world over time, rather than gathering dust in wallets. Arcade is a look at what the future of GameFi could look like, removing expensive barriers and significant grinds to get ahead for the casual and the super-invested alike. In doing so, Arcade could place themselves in pole position at the forefront of GameFi – and I for one cannot wait to see how it will shake out.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

The Evolution of Internet Connectivity with Syntropy This month we are diving into the transformative technology Syntropy is developing enabling the public internet to evolve into a more secure and user-centric public good. Their technology is all open source, allowing a diverse ecosystem of applications to be built upon Syntropy. Along with this, the $NOIA digital asset enables the ecosystem to host its own decentralized economy. The Syntropy technology is compatible with the current internet infrastructure and aims to solve issues regarding security, privacy, governance, reliability, ineffective resource utilization, and performance.

Token Information $NOIA All Data Is Current At Time Of Writing: 2/10/2022 Circulating Supply: 518,836,953.67 / MC = $77,191,157 Max Supply: 1,000,000,000 / MC = $148,777,291 Current Price: $0.1502 Ethereum Contract Address: 0xa8c8CfB141A3bB59FEA 1E2ea6B79b5ECBCD7b6ca

Token Allocation

Website https://www.syntropynet.com/ Economy One-Pager https://www.syntropynet.com/docs/ onepager Open Internet Economy Paper https://www.syntropynet.com/docs/ tokenomics Where To Purchase $NOIA *Markets in in descending order according to volume* Kucoin: NOIA/USDT Uniswap (V2): NOIA/WETH

Internet Blockchain Paper https://www.syntropynet.com/docs/ internetblockchain Twitter https://twitter.com/Syntropynet Telegram https://t.me/Syntropy_Ann

Gate.io: NOIA/USDT Kucoin: NOIA/BTC Gate.io: NOIA/ETH

Reddit https://reddit.com/r/SyntropyNet Medium https://medium.com/syntropynet

Bancor Network: NOIA/BNT Discord https://discord.com/invite/jqZur5S3KZ

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

Core Team

William B. Norton Co-Founder, Chief Technical Liason Dom Povilauskas Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer https://www.linkedin.com/in/domas-povilauskas-763aa3112/ Dom has had ample experience in finance since 2013. He’s worked for Orion Securities UAB FMI, Value Square, and as a self-employed trader.

In 2016, his path shifted to co-founding his first company called Tellq where they focused on developing next generation call center software.

Lastly, he co-founded Syntropy with William and Jonas in 2017.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/williambnorton/ William is an expert in network infrastructure.

He was a contributor to the early core of the internet (NSFNET). He co-founded Equinix, now valued at $60 billion, where he developed 13 widely cited industry white papers on BGP peering. BGP peering is critical network infrastructure protocol which, at a high level, is a standardized protocol enabling the exchange of information between routers in a network. He served as CEO, Chief scientist, and other higher strategic roles at various other large companies but his foundational understanding of network infrastructure since the beginning days of the internet makes him an invaluable asset to Syntropy.

Jonas Simanavicius Co-Founder, Chief Technical Officer https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-simanavicius/ Jonas brings extensive financial technology application development to the group of founders. He worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a little over three years throughout his life developing equity derivatives pricing technology and other applications. Before co-founding syntropy he also worked as a mobile application developer, an algorithm, javascript, and data structure educator, and co-founder of Clouder, a small e-commerce platform.

What Can the $NOIA token do for you?

Syntropy has developed an outstanding user interface to enable staking for holders. Follow this link to go directly to the staking dashboard: https://staking.syntropynet.com/ For any investor, participating in network security is an easy way to build your position. An individual can participate in the Syntropy ERC20 staking process two ways, through Validator and/or Nominator staking.

Validator Staking is the process by which someone runs the Syntropy node software to enable the Proof-of-Authority Amber Chain. On the Amber Chain, as of right now there are 500 validator whitelist positions. To start, the minimum staking size for the validator node smart contract is 20,000 $NOIA and the maximum is 200,000. Along with the staking requirements, if you are to run a validator you will need to meet hardware requirements and maintain uptime of your validator. The technical requirements once your node connects to the network are at minimum: 2 Core CPU / 2 GB RAM / 1 Gbps Network Interface / >200 GB Storage. If you meet these requirements, then you need to become whitelisted on the network. This is ultimately based on the stake size of the validators in the pool. Since there are only 500 validator positions available, only the validators with the highest stake will be whitelisted. Also, all validators need to go through a KYC process and are limited to 10 validators per KYC. The rewards for completing this process are quite favorable. At the moment, each validator will receive 25% apr on their stake and will decrease as capacity fills. This is what typically happens. Since a percentage of the reward pool is dispersed among the validators in the pool, the fewer participants in the pool, the higher the reward.

Ultimately, it rewards participants who take the capital risk in supporting the project in early stage development.

For those who don’t want to participate in the validation process, you can become a nominator staker. In this situation, you simply connect with your metamask and bond/delegate your $NOIA to a validator.

There are an unlimited number of nominators who can participate, with a minimum and maximum stake of 100 and 100,000 $NOIA, respectively. Because Syntropy is in the Amber Chain/testnet phase of network development, you simply stake your tokens. When the mainnet launches, your stake will need to be bound or delegated to a validator you trust, else you could potentially lose a portion or all of your stake. Right now, the APR for nominator staking is 16.34%.

This is obviously lower than the validator APR, as the capital and hardware requirements to meet are far less.

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

What does the Syntropy network do?

Market Opportunity

As much as I want to use sexy buzzwords from the crypto space to describe what this project solves, I really cannot. This project exists in the core infrastructure realm of crypto and will likely ellude the spotlight that NFTs get, as an example. What is important to note is that Syntropy is offering absolutely transformative technology to improve the public internet. At a high level, the syntropy overlay network integrates into the existing internet infrastructure as a base layer on top to enable secure and private value transactions, while optimizing bandwidth between all participants. Right now, the demand for internet traffic and quality of service is exponentially increasing as we continue to migrate into this digital age. Whether it’s mobile connectivity, 4K streaming, Internet of Things (IoT), or more complex developments like 5G and edge computing. The demand and complexity are ever increasing but the performance and security criteria are difficult to meet in a cost-efficient way. Syntropy enables Cloud VPS and Data links of any kind to connect to the overlay network and contribute bandwidth. The overlay network enables optimization of bandwidth between ISPs and devices. All of this is paid for with the $NOIA token. It is analogous to gas on Ethereum.

Syntropy offers an opportunity that very few individuals get to witness in their lifetime.

It’s difficult to compare this project with others because I don’t believe any project is addressing the issues that Syntropy is addressing with such strong support from tech behemoths like Microsoft and Oracle.

When blockchain companies have strong projects like this, it puts them in a league of their own. This is not a developer team trying to create something unique. This is a group of extraordinary computer, software, and network engineers who have experience contributing to the early stages of the core internet developing the next layer of internet infrastructure.

Through the Syntropy stack, they are optimizing information routing between ISPs, securing information sent through the network, and creating a decentralized economy at scale. All of which is able to integrate with the existing internet infrastructure. I could attempt to compare this project with others but Syntopy is in a separate league and it would be disrespectful to the development team and the technology to do so.

The RoadMap In previous deep-dives I have written, typically the projects are in the early phases of development. Maybe they are trying to build their blockchain technology, user-product, list future potential partnerships, attract more users through marketing, etc. I’m going to keep this section simple.

Looking forward, their goal is the Syntropy Blockchain Launch and migration from their testnet, Amber Chain, as well as expand and integrate their technology into more blockchain projects, games, companies, etc. This project has ALREADY achieved monumental accomplishments.

Current integrations include Minecraft, CS GO, Terraria, Elrond, Polkadot, Chainlink, Ethereum, Ethereum 2.0, Bitcoin, FiveM, Team Fortress 2, ARK, and Filecoin. The Syntropy team expanded to 30 full-time developers, poaching the best talent from AWS, Google, and parity.

If you’re curious as to what lies on the roadmap, it’s expansion. Follow Syntropy on Twitter, join their Discord, or keep up with their website blog for the most recent news.

Below are some of their tech highlights and the previously mentioned integrations. Wait! I forgot to mention, Syntropy is partnered with Microsoft, Oracle, Invictus, Maven 11 Capital, and e-shelter. Probably nothing.

Too often do people try to compare project to project because they see buzzwords that are shared between projects. Very few people actually take the time to understand the technology being developed and how important the partnerships are for the project to succeed.

With Syntropy, you aren’t just investing in another blockchain network, you are participating in the next evolutionary stage of the internet.

Conclusion Let me clearly state this. This article is not financial advice. It’s just to educate.It’s my opinion, this deep-dive may be one of the most significant projects, MoonMag and GettingStartedInCrypto.com has ever exposed you to. As of right now, this project is still in it’s Amber Chain/testnet phase. Yes, YOU ARE EARLY. At the time of writing, the market capitalization is $77 million. To me personally, this project with its partnerships and technology stack will no doubt be a top 25 project when it migrates to mainnet and starts integration with the existing internet infrastructure.

This is not a “pump and dump” or meme play. Some may even think that the technology is boring because it would be the equivalent of a “picks and shovels” play, but infrastructure is incredibly important. The strength of the team is unlike any other project. Do you know of other projects that have the support of a core contributor to the early internet? I highly doubt that you do. If we think of how crypto project evaluations follow Metcalfe’s law where the value of the network is derived from the number of participants, think about the quality and size of the networks partnered with this project. Nearly every company in the world uses products developed

by Microsoft or Oracle. Once these companies begin to integrate this technology and push it to their customers, you will wish that you were strapped in for the ride. I encourage all of you to take the time and read the research publications to gain further understanding of what Syntropy is developing. I encourage all of you to observe how beautiful and smooth the User-Interface is to participate in the network and the technology itself is to use. Of course I am boasting and clearly very excited about this project. When you discover something as incredible and foundational as this is to the internet, it’s difficult to unsee. The countdown to ignition has begun.

Are you prepared for what’s next?

This magazine is sole property of gettingstartedincrypto.com and is not to be redistributed in any form anywhere else.

CLICK HERE TO COME AND JOIN US! https://gettingstartedincrypto.com/paid-signals/