This week in Web3: Ethereum merge soon, Mysten Labs secures $300M, Binance to convert stablecoins

Meet Kyra - India’s first virtual meta influencer!

When you first lay your eyes on Kyra, you are led to believe she’s just like anyone else. She holds herself in a strong, confident pose. Very quickly, you are captivated by her flawless complexion and picture-perfect body—finding yourself drawn to her expressive eyes.

But the more you linger, perhaps longer than a minute, it strikes you that she isn’t real. This intrigue is what draws users to virtual influencers every day.

Kyra is a virtual influencer created by Himanshu Goel and his colleagues at influencer marketing agency TopSocial India. She has been creating significant buzz across social media, with over 179,000 people flocking to her Instagram on a daily basis.

Top brands have taken note of this too. For example, boAt Lifestyle, which recently collaborated with her to market its products. She also became the first virtual influencer to grace the digital cover of Travel + Leisure Magazine.

In an exclusive interview, Kyra sits down with The Decrypting Story to answer all questions about her origins, interests and the Metaverse!

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Web3 startup Mysten Labs closes $300M funding at $2B valuation

Web3 startup Mysten Labs on Thursday announced that it has raised $300 million in a new funding round led by FTX Ventures at a $2 billion valuation. The firm intends to use the capital raised to build its Sui blockchain and expand to the Asia-Pacific region.

The Series B funding round saw the participation of industry heavyweights, including Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division, Jump Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Binance Labs and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others.

More on Mysten Labs:

The startup was founded by veterans of Novi Research—the crypto research division of Facebook's parent company Meta. The startup is working with existing networks to integrate Mysten's technology and create open protocols based on Mysten-designed components.

In December 2021, the startup raised $36 million in Series A funding round led by a16z crypto

Binance to convert users’ deposits into its own stablecoins

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, on Monday announced it will automatically convert user balances and new deposits into its own stablecoin, Binance USD (BUSD).  

The company blog post read, “This will not affect users’ choice of withdrawal: Users will continue to be able to withdraw funds in USDC, USDP and TUSD at a 1:1 ratio to their BUSD-denominated account balance.”

What does this mean?

The firm also stated that the conversion of users' deposits will take place on September 29, and as per the CoinGecko reports, BUSD is valued at about $19.4 billion.

As per the blog post, this decision was taken in order to enhance liquidity and capital efficiency for users. In addition, the firm also stated it is discontinuing its support for products involving spot trading, futures, and margin lending for stablecoins—USDC, USDP, and TUSD.

Final countdown to the Merge begins

Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus system seems to be within reach, as the Bellatrix upgrade was completed earlier this week. 

Bellatrix refers to the last upgrade before Ethereum completely transitions into a proof-of-stake mechanism sometime between September 13-15, 2022. This transition is referred to as ‘The Merge’.

What will be the impact of the Merge?

The Ethereum Foundation believes that after the successful completion of the Merge, Ethereum's carbon footprint will be lowered by over 99%.

This Merge is also expected to make the Ethereum blockchain faster, more scalable, and much more energy efficient. The merge will also pave the way for scalability upgrades like sharding, which could also improve existing inefficiencies in the system.

Your next event ticket could be an NFT

Bringing use cases beyond crypto and community projects, several startups are now actively leveraging NFT tech to provide blockchain-based asset ownership models to a wide range of industries, including events, real estate, music, ads, and more.

Metapass, conceptualised at a hackathon in December 2021 by 17-year-old developers Anoushk Kharangate and Daksh Kulshrestha, is one such startup.

What is Metapass?

Metapass provides tokenised, NFT ticket experiences to events, and allows organisers to token-gate these events and provide proof-of-attendance to participants.

In fact, the startup claims event organisers can create NFT tickets instantly on Metapass and make buying and selling fast and inexpensive for end users. It is built on Polygon with support for Solana.