Sat - 15 April

Good Morning & Happy Saturday! As always you can find your personal referral links at the bottom 🫡. All those who received your referral rewards, please tweet and tag web3samaj!

It’s an interesting news day today. India Is Building National Blockchain Infrastructure, India To Have A $1.1 Billion Web3 Marketplace, Kraken Will Unstake Over $1 Billion in ETH, and Silk Road Attacker Gets One Year Sentence.

⛓️ India Is Building National Blockchain Infrastructure: Several news outlets in India have reported that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is investigating the potential of web3 and developing a national blockchain infrastructure for India. Ministry has been working on this project since June 2022, after updating its blockchain strategy towards the end of 2021. The project, named the Unified Blockchain Framework for offering National Blockchain Service and creation of an Ecosystem, is aimed at providing a blockchain-as-a-service infrastructure. This will allow developers to focus on their applications instead of the complexities of setting up blockchain nodes, ensuring their security, and interoperability with other blockchains. The project will also offer smart contract templates for various use cases.

🇮🇳 India To Have A $1.1 Billion Web3 Marketplace: During the Entrepreneur Web3 Summit in Bengaluru, a whitepaper was presented that outlined the potential growth of the Web3 market. The report predicts that the Web3 market will experience a compound annualized growth rate of 57%, expanding from $0.0049 billion in 2022 to $1.1 billion in 2032. The metaverse market in India is currently valued at $0.28 billion, and the report predicts that it will grow to $4.3 billion by 2025, with a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 33.9%. The blockchain market value is expected to increase from $0.28 million to $4.3 billion by 2025, indicating a CAGR of 47.3%. The NFT marketplace in India is also growing and is projected to reach $8.6 billion by 2027, which is a $2.46 billion increase from 2022.

🤑 Kraken Will Unstake Over $1 Billion in ETH: After the latest Shapella upgrade on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, Kraken, a major crypto exchange, has taken a leading position in the queue for ETH unstaking. Market observers speculate that Kraken's legal troubles may have contributed to its dominance of the queue. As of 09:00 a.m. UTC, Kraken held approximately 63.2% of the ETH pending withdrawal, which is significantly more than its major competitors. Coinbase held 10.8% of the share, while Huobi maintained a 5.1% stake, according to data from the blockchain analytics platform Nansen. At that time, around 869,000 ETH, valued at over $1.8 billion, was awaiting withdrawal, and Kraken's share exceeded $1 billion.

💤 FTX May Restart Its Exchange After Recovering $7.3b In Assets: During an April 12 hearing at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell who represented FTX stated that the crypto firm had recovered liquid assets of approximately $7.3 billion. A March filing from the debtors revealed that the four FTX company silos had around $4.8 billion in scheduled assets as of November 2022, with an investigation into these assets still ongoing. The legal team added that FTX may consider resuming its crypto exchange operations sometime in the second quarter of 2024, with a possible restart as early as April. In a January interview, FTX CEO John Ray was reportedly contemplating reviving the bankrupt exchange.

🚔 Silk Road Attacker Gets One Year Sentence For Stealing $3.4b Worth Of Bitcoins: On April 14, the U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of New York announced that a Georgia resident has been sentenced to one year in prison for stealing $3.4 billion worth of Bitcoin. James Zhong was found guilty of committing wire fraud against Silk Road in 2012, which allowed him to steal over 51,680 BTC from the darknet market. To accomplish this, he created several Silk Road accounts and funded them with a small amount of Bitcoin. He then carried out over 140 transactions in rapid succession to force the system to release Bitcoin to his accounts. Zhong then transferred the stolen Bitcoin to multiple addresses to conceal his ownership of the funds and used Bitcoin mixers to impede tracking attempts. Zhong subsequently profited from the Bitcoin Cash hard fork in 2017, which provided him with additional funds, and traded all of the Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoin. The stolen amount was worth $3.4 billion in 2012 and is worth $1.57 billion presently.

Ethereum Staking: Staking is the act of depositing 32 ETH to activate validator software. As a validator, you’ll be responsible for storing data, processing transactions, and adding new blocks to the blockchain. This will keep Ethereum secure for everyone and earn you new ETH in the process.