✋Hey Nimbus community,

😌Nomura Holdings Inc. is planning to use its investment banking knowledge to help firms tap opportunities in the metaverse. The idea is to assist corporations within the digital house increase cash and advice on the way to navigate rules as they emerge.

😜 Two Israel-based credit card companies, Max and Isracard, have started working on Bitcoin investment and cashback solutions through a credit card. Isracard partnered with a crypto-focused subsidiary to allow purchasing Bitcoin directly through their credit card.

👍 The Biden administration is pushing for legislation that would fence off customer funds within crypto exchanges, keeping them safe in an exchange failure. It will require crypto firms to separate customers’ money from corporate funds.

🙃 Get ready for new updates: Ethereum’s public testnet, Ropsten, is set to go through “the merge” as one of the final preparations for the switch to proof-of-stake on June 8. The next step would be to launch PoS on the main Ethereum blockchain.

🤓 Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz presented a $600 million fund dedicated to gaming startups. As long as companies continue to bet on so-called Web3 technology, the market volatility shouldn’t be a reason to worry.

👋 Hey Nimbus Community,

The updated Lend and Borrow dApps guide 📔 is now LIVE!

It covers:
✅ The new updates on the dApps
✅ How to interact with the functionality
✅ What each function on the Lend and Borrow dApps achieves for the user
✅ How to deposit/withdraw tokens
..and more!

You can find the guide attached 😉

👋Hey Nimbus Community,

Let's dive into a problem that only a small percentage of the cryptoverse is aware of✨MEV✨ the invisible taxing problem that Ethereum and several other smart contract blockchains have to deal with.

MEV is used both by miners in PoW-based blockchains and validators in PoS networks.

It's right alongside scaling and hacks, with over $633 million already extracted since January 1st, 2021. That affects the user's experience, but it also puts pressure on the network's stability.

How does it work?

Since the protocol doesn't require transactions to be ordered based on fees, miners can reorder them because they are in charge of sequencing and can decide which to include in a block and in what order. 

It all starts with the use of bots and automated tools to close-monitor the blockchain. When an opportunity arises, they use different types of attacks:

▶️ Front-Running – getting a transaction executed ahead of another one because it has higher gas fees
▶️ Sandwich Attacks – they manipulate the price of a token the victim wants to buy by placing one transaction before and one after the victim's pending transaction, thus raising the price
▶️ Back-Running – they target pair listings and place a transaction right after the initial liquidity, buying as much as they can. The price goes up, and then the bot sells 
▶️ Liquidations – they aim to be the first to liquidate a particular loan with front-run or back-run transactions
▶️ Time-Bandit Attacks – only miners can do this by retroactively reorganizing blocks 

Multiple negative effects

By pursuing this illegal stream of revenue, miners create significant adverse effects:

📛The user experience is diminished
📛The stability of the network is affected
📛The creation of network congestion
📛Gas prices rise
📛Transaction finality becomes questionable

So far, an efficient solution hasn't been found. In fact, some voices actually state that MEV is inevitable. Until a breakthrough is made, the invisible tax remains a problem for DeFi users that interact with automated market makers and other dApps. 

✋Hey Nimbus community,

🤑 Netflix has embedded QR codes that allow users to mint NFT in episodes of its new show series "Love, Death + Robots". The bad news is that the feature is only available to US users through a MetaMask wallet or Coinbase account.

✅ According to JPMorgan, the fair price of bitcoin is 28% higher than its current level at $38,000. If institutional investors decide that the moment to enter has indeed arrived, then the market is in for another rally. Another question is how long it will last.

🤓 American investor Bill Miller stated that investors should "ignore" Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett's unflattering comments about Bitcoin as the main point of investing is to make money. Thus, productive assets shouldn’t be the only factor.

🧐 Guys from Circle believe that the Fed should refuse to launch a digital dollar, arguing that could strangle private-sector efforts to manage their dollar-based tokens. On top of that, USDC is already meeting “many of the potential benefits” of CBDC.

🥳 A group of former executives from Binance has created a $100 million venture fund. The fund will be mainly focused on the metaverse and bringing greater crypto adoption to emerging markets like Latin America and Africa. Would you get on the train?

👋Hey Nimbus Community,

Everyone wants to get their hands on the next Cryptopunks or Azuki's before it's too late to Ape. But how do you define a value of an NFT? How do you know that an NFT is even valuable?

Although evaluating an NFT is complex as it depends on many factors, including utility and other factors. This is where the metric ✨The Floor Price✨ comes into play. 

🧮 Who sets the floor price? The creator is usually the one who sets the floor price. It can also be set by someone who owns an NFT in a particular project and decides to list it for sale on a secondary market at a lower price than the other sellers in that project.

⚠️It’s important to note that the floor price is volatile, which means that you should be prepared for unexpected rises and drops. In time, as a collection becomes famous, the floor price rises as well. As the lowest asking price you can pay for an item in a collection (unlike the average price), provided it’s not in auction at that time, the floor price is updated in real-time. 

💡Tracking floor prices is important and challenging, especially if you want to flip NFTs. NFT floor price tracking tools can help with that.

Here are some NFT evaluation tools that should help you keep on top of your game:
☑️For checking the floor price of your NFTs (Opensea) all at once: https://floorchecker.com
☑️For finding the latest NFTs that are being aped on the most: https://www.apefinder.app
☑️For researching/tracking the rarity of an NFT: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rarity-tool-researcher/gagfonbgflhdcnlefcmlpcblpkflkafl

✋Hey Nimbus community,

🌴 Arthur Hayes, one of the three co-founders and the CEO of BitMEX, published a new essay, confirming his prediction on Ethereum for $10,000. In his opinion, the market is already at the bottom, and the new ATH is only a matter of time. For BTC he forecasts $70 000.

🌚 One of the world's largest fast-food restaurant chains, Chipotle, will accept cryptocurrencies at 3,000 locations across the US. Customers will be able to buy a conditional burrito for one of 98 cryptocurrencies. Reminds us of the pizza for BTC story.

🔥 Binance is launching its own casino venture capital fund. According to Binance Labs, around $500 million have been raised for its debut start-up fund. Binance Labs plans to use the capital to invest in projects focused on infrastructure, NFT, and DAOs.

🏋️‍♀️ The manager of the George Soros fund said that digital assets are gradually becoming mainstream, and believes that ETH will become more in demand than Bitcoin after the transition to PoS. When do you think "The Merge” will finally take place?

🧗 In order to prevent negative effects on the economy, the UK Treasury might give the BoE authority to address the collapse of failed systemic stablecoins, under proposals being drawn up by the government to mitigate future fallouts in the cryptomarkets.

👋 Hello Nimbus Community, 

The development roadmap and strategic planning of the Nimbus Platform have evolved significantly over time. One of our key goals in 2022 is to accelerate the project growth by actively bootstrapping a community that truly believes in the project’s vision and prospers while doing so. 

Hence, the roadmap and each reward are designed to incentivize long-term protocol holders to create a flywheel where utility and incentives drive long-term participation, which further drives utility and attracts even more incentives. 

Nimbus token stability is one of the many parts of this new chapter aimed at accelerating protocol growth. In the spirit of that sentiment, we’re happy to announce that Nimbus Affiliate program V3.1 is to be updated to version 4.0 very soon, i.e. within one month. Here are 4 steps underlying the Nimbus Affiliate program that will help in promoting the stability of NBU and GNBU tokens:

✅ The Hard Staking period for the Nimbus Affiliate Program will be modified to 90 and 365 days

✅ Three rewards to Affiliate Program stakers will now accrue in NFT tokens, which will remain vested in the platform's liquidity pools for 90 or 365 days depending on the chosen staking pool

✔️One time Airdrop bonus will be distributed as Smart Staker NFT
✔️10% Staking amount given to users who join using referral links will be distributed in NFT tokens
✔️12% cashback will be distributed as Smart LP n-NFT

What does that mean for the community?

Users who truly believe in the Nimbus Platform vision can reap more rewards for their loyalty by participating in the Nimbus Affiliate Program 4.0. This long-term incentives relationship between the protocol and the users promotes Nimbus token stability. 

We're constantly working to push forward, and the Affiliate Program 4.0 is one of the steps to help improve the project's performance and ensure benefits for the Community. More details on the AP 4.0 will be published soon, so, stay tuned 😉

👋Hey Nimbus Community,

Terms like content creator, influencer, or blogger have been trending for a while now. 

The pandemic has led a larger public to various platforms, looking for digital experiences instead of real-life ones. And there’s a term encompassing all this, one that deserves a closer look from the viewpoint of the crypto world: ✨Creator Economy✨

Li Jin, Co-founder of Variant Fund,  Atelier Ventures, and a creator economy pioneer breaks the concept into four different cycles:

✔️Creator Economy 1.0 - The launch of the internet that enabled individuals to become creators

✔️Creator Economy 2.0 - Creators leveraging their following and outreach to monetize their work via advertisements and brand sponsorships 

✔️Creator Economy 3.0 - Creators became independent, being able to monetize their work directly from their audience/fans. 

✔️Creator Economy 4.0 - Creators and their audience/fans can create wealth together, where the future of the creator economy is headed, or it might actually already be here! Take NFTs, for example - the creator being able to sell their NFTs, and collectors being able to earn by holding, flipping, or leveraging the latest yield mechanics.

The intersection of the creator economy with blockchain enables the creators and the communities to realize collective potential and growth.

How?
The creator economy, or content economy, needs tools that surpass the limitations of platforms that don’t offer various options for creators to earn an income.

Blockchain and Web3 development are the next logical step. Here is how blockchain technology can help the creator economy:
✅NFT – Provided exclusivity. NFTs can be used to grant access to an event or an enhanced experience that would otherwise be unavailable
✅Asset ownership for fans, beyond traditional centralized platforms
✅Reduced streaming costs, paired with Web3 features – tipping, paid entry, live shopping
✅Incentivizing interactions with users without affecting their privacy
✅Smaller niches become viable. Blockchain makes that possible by reducing costs and censorship and increasing security.

👋 Hey Nimbus Community,

Just a small remind for you all 😉

Whenever you have certain issues or questions relating to the Platform's functionality, you can address them to the tech support team 👉
https://nimbusplatform.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals

✋ Hey Nimbus community,

🤝 The merging of PoW and PoS in the Ethereum Ropsten test network has been successful. That means that the Vitalik Buterin team can move forward with the transition to the PoS algorithm on the main network, which is scheduled for this summer.

💪 According to a Forbes survey, 30% of the "world's richest people" invest in crypto-assets. About 18% of those surveyed said they hold at least 1% of their wealth in cryptocurrencies. Curios fact, most of them are investing in the industry as an experiment.

👽 Chainlink developers announced the introduction of the LINK token-staking mechanism. Thus, the team looks forward to improving the security of the ecosystem. On top of that, the scope of staking will expand, and its structure will become more complex.

👎 One of South Korea's largest crypto exchanges, Upbit is delisting Litecoin (LTC). The main reason is that the recent update includes an option that allows users not to disclose transaction information. In other words, we are living a decadence of decentralization.

😎Talking about the NFT market, the Yuga Labs team has revoked the smart contract that allowed it to release unlimited NFTs of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection. According to EmperorTomatoKetchup, this update eliminates cybersecurity breaches.

👋Hey Nimbus community,

As you know, the Nimbus Affiliate Program is an essential part of our roadmap. We are grateful to you for helping us grow our community. The upcoming AP 4.0 will bring some changes to our referral structure, so we feel it’s important to review them and highlight the main points.

Read all about it right 👉 Here!

Less than three weeks remain until the Affiliate Program fully transitions to the new version i.e. AP 4.0. Now’s the time to make the most of AP 3.1 😉

👋Hello Nimbus Community,

Data has always been extremely valuable, with an intrinsic value that must be kept private. In the age of crypto and NFTs, metadata has become increasingly relevant. Why? 

Let’s figure out!

While the data you see is regulated direct information, metadata is unregulated abstract information about the original data. Here’s a perfect illustration to help you understand and think about metadata more clearly.  

How is metadata relevant to blockchain? Every block contains a block header or metadata that ensures the validation of the block. 

To get an idea of block metadata, here is what it contains:

✔️The current version 
✔️The previous block header hash
✔️The Merkle root hash
✔️The time when the block was created
✔️nBits
✔️nonce – a random value that the creator of the block can manipulate

In order to put metadata on the blockchain, especially large amounts of it, while maintaining privacy, a hash is created to reference the file holding the actual data.

The importance of metadata

Metadata is crucial in transactions, as it can contain instructions on managing a particular asset. It can certify the ownership and exchange of assets, the amount of assets transferred, and their value.

Metadata is also extremely important for NFTs because it describes their essential properties, like identification elements and other aspects that the creator considers important. An NFT’s metadata is its core, and It can be developed according to the ERC721 or ERC1155 standard, is pinned to the protocol, and returned to the smart contract as a hash.