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Morning Minute: CME & Fanduel Bring Prediction Markets to the Masses

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Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

  • Crypto majors mixed, ETH and SOL lead; BTC back to $113k
  • BNB hits fresh ATH at $880 overnight before retracing
  • Kanye tweets out YZY coin, briefly runs to $3B before falling
  • CME announces partnership with Fanduel to launch events contracts
  • Heaven notches first $1M revenue day, burns another $1M of its LIGHT token

🎲 CME + FanDuel Bring Event Contracts to the Masses

Wall Street is meeting Main Street in the betting arena.

And the prediction market boom is about to begin…

📌 What Happened

The CME Group and FanDuel are teaming up to launch a new event contracts platform, making it easier for everyday users to bet on markets like the S&P 500, oil, gold, and even crypto.

The two will create a joint venture that will offer fully funded, event-based contracts as a part of the initiative.

These simple yes/no markets will let FanDuel’s millions of customers trade on major benchmarks and economic indicators for as little as $1.

Expected to go live later this year (pending CFTC review), the platform will cover:

  • Indices: S&P 500, Nasdaq-100
  • Commodities: oil, gas, gold
  • Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more
  • Macro data: GDP, CPI, and other key releases

The contracts will run through a new non-clearing futures commission merchant (FCM) jointly operated by CME and FanDuel, and listed on CME’s regulated exchanges.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

  • Terry Duffy, CME Group CEO: “Together, our event-based products will appeal to the growing public interest in markets, and we will provide education to attract a new generation of potential traders not active in derivatives today.”
  • Amy Howe, FanDuel CEO: “Partnering with CME Group will unlock our ability to bring even more new and engaging products to FanDuel’s fast-growing customer base… combining innovation with best-in-class regulatory compliance and consumer protections.”

CME & FanDuel partnering on event contracts…

I’m serious.

Basically you can wager as little as $1 on S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, oil, gas, gold, crypto, & even GDP and CPI.

Yes, you’ll be able to place these bets via FanDuel.

Full gamification of markets.

What a time to be alive. pic.twitter.com/BMUgjgqWw4

— Nate Geraci (@NateGeraci) August 20, 2025

🧠 Why It Matters

This is a huge moment for prediction markets and retail access:

  • Mainstream on-ramp: Millions of FanDuel bettors will soon have a direct line into regulated financial products, essentially turning prediction rading into a mass-market consumer activity
  • Legitimacy & compliance: With CME as the partner, these contracts have instant credibility and regulatory cover, something platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have struggled with
  • Bridging speculation & investing: By blending sports betting UX with financial markets, CME and FanDuel are creating a product that sits squarely between gambling and trading
  • Crypto crossover: Including Bitcoin and Ethereum in the initial product set cements crypto’s role as a tradable benchmark alongside equities, commodities, and macro data

Assuming this is approved, this could be the biggest step yet toward mass adoption of event-based markets in the U.S. seen to date.

There were questions (and rightfully so) if prediction markets would make it post-2024 election.

Volumes boomed into the most hotly debated election ever, but then (to the surprise of many), volumes sustained.

Prediction markets have sustained well post-election (data from https://dune.com/fergmolina/polymarket-markets-data)[/caption]

Thanks to new styles of pop culture markets, leaning more into news and geopolitics and of course sports betting markets, prediction markets have kept volumes at ~50%+ levels of peak 2024.

That’s a huge win.

And the more progress made in 2025-2026 will lead for an even bigger 2028 election cycle.

Let the prediction market boom begin…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

  • Crypto majors were mostly green on the day; BTC even at $113,300, ETH +3% at $4,285, XRP +1% at $2.90, SOL +3% at $184
  • OKB (+60%), MORPHO (+12%) and LINK (+6%) led top movers
  • BNB briefly broke to a new ATH of $880 last night
  • OKB popped another 60% to $206 after its massive token burn
  • A judge unfroze $57.6M in funds tied to the Libra meme coin case (tied to Argentina President Javier Milei) after signs of compliance
  • Xapo sees a $200B Bitcoin inflow coming from the wealth transfer from boomers to their children over the coming decade
  • Ark Invest backed Bullish and Robinhood, with Cathie Wood’s firm buying $21.2M of Bullish and $16.2M of Robinhood shares in their market debuts
  • The Winklevoss twins funded a pro-Trump crypto PAC to the tune of $21M (188 BTC as it looks to launch the Digital Freedom Fund aimed at blocking CBDCs and supporting crypto-friendly policy
  • The New York lawmaker’s push for 0.2% crypto tax will also include stablecoin transfers

In Corporate Treasuries

  • Empery Digital holds $450M in BTC but its market cap sits at just $340M, trading well below mNAV
  • Windtree Therapeutics, a BNB treasury company, has been removed from Nasdaq for listing compliance issues

In Memes

  • Memecoin leaders are red on the day; DOGE -3%, Shiba -3%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -8%, BONK -4%, TRUMP -3%, SPX -3%, and FARTCOIN -4%
  • Kanye West tweeted out a memecoin YZY which briefly ran to $3B FDV before falling back to $1B
  • Heaven reached $1M in daily revenue on Wednesday (75% of Pump’s revenue) while also unlocking a new “golden twap” to account for some missed revenue that hadn’t gone to LIGHT buybacks

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

🤖 AI x Crypto

Section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:

  • Overall market cap down 2% to $12.2B, leaders were mixed
  • FARTCOIN (+1%), VIRTUAL (+1%), TIBBIR (-3%), ai16z (-1%) & VVV (-17%)
  • fxn (+24%), Simmi (+22%) and IRIS (+15%) led top movers

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

  • ETH NFT leaders were mostly green; Punks -2% at 46.5 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 12.6, BAYC +2% at 11.6 ETH
  • Moonbirds (+15%) and Mooncats (+17%) were notable top movers
  • Bitcoin NFTs were mostly red or even; Bitcoin Puppets +6%
  • Abstract NFTs were mixed, led by BUUMEE (+20%)

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.





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WP Engine's landing page
Product Reviews

WP Engine review | TechRadar

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

One in twelve people online visit a website hosted on WP Engine daily. They host over one and a half million sites across 150 countries and still maintain a customer satisfaction rate of 96%. That is reliable hosting.

WP Engine uses its own caching system and content delivery system (CDN) and your get your choice of data centers in North America, Europe, or Asia. Plus, your websites are hosted on the fast Google Cloud Platform. This all means your customers should have a better user experience because of faster loading times and reliability.

WP Engine manages your WordPress site for you making the day-to-day running of your site easier allowing you to focus on your business. In addition, WP Engine provides features like automatic plugin updates, malware detection, and automated backups. Although managed hosting comes at a higher cost than unmanaged, it’s not until a vulnerability is discovered at 2am on a Saturday that the value of having someone look over the security and updates of your server becomes really noticeable.

If you run a digital or marketing agency, WP Engine also offers a hosting solution to support managing multiple clients. Whether you have 5 or 50+ clients on your books, shared and container-based servers are available, complete with the same managed WordPress experience and updates to PHP, MySQL, and of course, WordPress itself.

The startup spec for these hosting plans is 25GB of storage, supporting 50,000 visits per month, two sandbox sites and five live sites. Various configurations can be selected, designed to enable easy scaling as your client base expands and your business evolves. Specific agency hosting features are included, such as bulk site management, Git integration and other developer tools, and as the plans increase in price, things like WooCommerce optimizations, Stripe Connect checkouts, data insights, and a dedicated WP Engine API.

The cheapest WP Engine plan starts at $25/month (Image credit: Future)

WP Engine Plans and pricing

WP Engine have three main types of hosting: WordPress Hosting, WooCommerce Hosting, and Headless.

WordPress hosting has five plans which are all on a shared infrastructure. The most basic plan is Startup which provides hosting for one site, 25,000 monthly visits (with a 50GB bandwidth cap which is enough for the average website), and 10GB local storage.

With this plan you get chat only support, security patching, plugin risk scans, daily backups, EverCache, and global CDN. This plan is $20/mo and refreshingly there are no confusing renewal prices.

From there onwards, the plans support 3, 10, and 30 sites and the bandwidth, storage space, and monthly visits increase as you would expect. There is also the option to completely customize your plan starting from $600/mo.

For WooCommerce, the plans are similar in their specs and what they support but they come with lots of features as standard such as elastic search capabilities, support for unlimited products, Live Cart, and more. These plans are slightly more expensive than the WordPress hosting plans and the custom plan costs a minimum of $800/mo.

You can use the Page Performance tool to diagnose issues with a slow-loading site (Image credit: WP Engine)

Features

The core reasons to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are hard to quantify. Some features stand out when you browse the interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service offered.

WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool designed to help you speed up your WordPress site by offering meaningful metrics on performance.

Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, how long it took to load in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historical data on your site’s performance over the past six months and recommendations on how you can reduce page load.

You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine)

Avoid embarrassing mistakes on your site by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make extensive changes to your site without affecting your customers.

WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine)

In a relatively unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those typically restricted are plugins that have been noted to cause performance issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives available that don’t put a high load on the server.

Interface and in use

WP Engine’s interface is professional and well laid out, but the powerful features might mean a steep learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the support site.

Creating a site in WP Engine is made simple, thanks to a straightforward process. Whether you’re hosting on a domain, or building a staging site, the process is automated, so you don’t need to do anything. Once the name of the site has been set, and you’ve decided on adding WordPress on its own, or Word Press with WooCommerce, it will self-install while you make a coffee.

Note that WP Engine doesn’t offer any AI-guided site generation tools here. Anything you create will have to be done manually through the current WordPress theme management environment.

One of the main attractions for many customers is promised easy migration. Intended to make it simple to move a WordPress site from one host to another, WP Engine offers a dedicated plugin specifically for this purpose. Using it is simple enough – you install the downloadable plugin on the source (old) web host, create a secure key when prompted, then paste this into the plugin on your WP Engine hosting. In testing, the migration of a site around 500MB in size was pretty slick, completing in just a few minutes.

The WP Engine support center has detailed guides on using each of the service’s key features (Image credit: WP Engine)

Support

A managed WordPress service should offer extra value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site includes videos and articles of a quality you’d expect from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts don’t go into.

There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response was quick and the agent knowledgeable. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.

While WP Engine has a strong collection of support resources, we found that its sales team were not as well-informed as they could be. Specifically on the topic of agency hosting plans, they seemed to be unaware as to some of the intricacies. We have been separately informed by WP Engine contacts that the agency hosting plans rely on shared hosting for the Agency Essential plans, scaling up to container-based hosting for Agency Plus and Agency Pro. However, two conversations via the online chat tool revealed that the sales team were under the impression that all agency plans use container hosting.

If you’re planning to use WP Engine for agency hosting, and as it isn’t easy to find the answer within the support resources, you might consider requesting a call or email conversation with their tech support to establish whether they suit your requirements.

Testing

Testing the performance of WP Engine – specifically, the Essential Startup – I was intrigued to find that while reasonably slick, it seemed slower than other hosts. Now, I’ll preface this with the knowledge that WP Engine specifically aims for efficient WordPress hosting. It is known to block some plugins that can affect performance; it opts for its own caching plugin, for example. So, gauging performance with benchmarking tools on WP Engine is a little different to other hosts.

However, the tests delivered results around 30% slower than other hosts. Given that the comparisons were with plans for a similar budget and server specification, I was surprised at how poorly WP Engine scored.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyWordPress Benchmark

Performance metric

Result

Operations with large text data

6.9

Random binary data operations

7.93

Recursive mathematical calculations

5.06

Iterative mathematical calculations

7.9

Filesystem

Row 5 – Cell 1

Filesystem write ability

7.79

Local file copy and access speed

8.25

Small file IO test

9.76

Database

Row 9 – Cell 1

Importing large amount of data to database

1.94

Simple queries on single table

6.66

Complex database queries on multiple tables

5.78

Object cache

Row 13 – Cell 1

Persistent object cache enabled

0

Network

Row 15 – Cell 1

Network download speed test

9.5

Server score

6.4

Swipe to scroll horizontallySiege

Performance Metric

5 concurrent visitors

9 concurrent visitors

Transactions

9583

17028

Availability

96.28

96.31

Elapsed time

299.70

299.33

Data transferred

106.33

189.25

Response time

0.15

0.15

Transaction rate

31.98

56.89

Throughput

0.36

0.63

Concurrency

4.84

8.15

Successful transactions

9578

17028

Failed transactions

370

652

Longest transaction

2.25

5.67

The competition

If it’s the higher level of customer support you value in a managed WordPress host, Liquid Web often tops customer satisfaction polls. It has a focus on high-end products like virtual private servers (VPS) and dedicated servers, so if your needs extend beyond a high-performance WordPress site into other software solutions, we recommend checking it out.

TsoHost is another managed web hosting provider we recommend. The price can ramp up, with even the most basic VPS options starting at $52 per month, but you get a level of on-hands customer support that’s virtually unrivaled.

If managed WordPress hosting is your primary motivation, however, one of WP Engine’s key competitors is Kinsta. Both offer a managed hosting environment specifically geared towards WordPress, along with a similar price point. However, Kinsta doesn’t allow manually migrated data, so if you prefer to be more hands-on, WP Engine is the better option.

You might opt for Kinsta in another scenario, however. While WP Engine has a solid set of agency hosting plans, we found that while it omits smaller scale agency plans, Kinsta bundles in more features and boasts superior performance.

Final verdict

WP Engine is not the cheapest hosting around and it doesn’t seem to be the fastest either. It’s also not the first WordPress host we’d recommend to newcomers, as the breadth of tools can be intimidating.

WP Engine used to be the champion of WordPress hosting but I think that’s starting to change with hosts like SiteGround and Kinsta taking over.



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Herdling Review - Companion Quest
Game Reviews

Herdling Review – Companion Quest

by admin



About a week ago, on the same day I started playing Okomotive’s Herdling, I accidentally hit a squirrel with my car. The critter darted into the road, and I tried to evade them, but I failed.

They died. It devastated me.

I called my wife, physically shaking and tearful, to tell her what happened. I sat in my car for a bit when I got to my destination, needing to regain my composure. Though I knew my intent was pure, I found it hard to accept that I had taken their life away. To no one’s surprise, if you’re familiar with my work, I saw them not as “roadkill,” but as a being with their own interests and goals, however simple those may seem compared to those of humans. It wasn’t an ideal starting point for heading into Herdling, a game about trying to guide a family of vulnerable animals out of the city and return them safely to their natural habitat. But I’m sure, even on a normal day, Herdling was going to connect with me deeply on account of its moving depictions of human-animal kindness and companionship.

In Herdling, you play a nameless, voiceless, apparently homeless child who awakens one day in their bed under a bridge and encounters a large, hairy creature with their snout stuck in a bit of litter. You’ll learn this animal, resembling something like a buffalo, is called a calicorn. Paintings on the wall nearby indicate that the calicorn doesn’t belong in the city. Instead, a far-off mountain range seems to beckon them to return home. Removing the litter from their face, you tame them with a kind petting, then you give them a name of your choosing–my daughter chose Sonic for our calicorn. Picking up a makeshift staff made of a stick lined with vibrant flowers, you’ll find that you can then begin guiding the creature home by gently herding them ahead of you.

Like Okomotive’s past games, Far: Lone Sails and Far: Changing Tides–but perhaps most of all like Journey–Herdling’s story is told without words and relies on environmental clues. The minimalistic approach works well; all you really need to understand is that the calicorn wants to get home. The game illustrates this well by making the city feel dire. Flipped cars, dilapidated buildings, and a palette of greys and other stormy colors make it feel unwelcoming not just for the calicorn, but for you, too. Maybe the quest to get the calicorn to safety can also be your salvation.

Though the story is not without hardship, the relationship between the child and the calicorns is always one expressing kindness.

That connection between human and nonhuman animal is the focus of the game, and Okomotive does wonders with this core idea. It doesn’t take long before your sole calicorn becomes two, then three, and eventually perhaps even a dozen. Each time, you’ll tame the calicorn by showing them they can trust you, warmly welcoming them into the pack, and giving each a name. Because each calicorn has a unique look–like different fur patterns and differently shaped or sized horns–and can express their own personalities, it’s gratifying to get to know each of them. As humans, we understand each of us is unique in our world, and we have the same understanding of animals we keep as pets. But sometimes people seem to feel as though a group of, say, cows or chickens, isn’t more than a herd of animals that all behave the same. It’s never true, and why would it be? The calicorns express their differences so beautifully, illustrating the universal truth of animal personhood.

Giving them names is such an exciting, repeatable moment for this reason. Having met one calicorn on a boat, my daughter suggested we name them Captain. Another looked especially cranky due to how their brow hung over their eyes, so we named them Grump. Each animal had their own name, which brought us closer to them. Periodically, we’d come upon resting places, and I’d need to gather firewood to create a cozy campfire for myself and the herd. At that time, one of my calicorns, Melody, really loved to play fetch with a clump of colorful vines formed into a sphere we’d found. Others, like Benson, were more restful, waiting by the area where we’d soon sleep. Sonic, meanwhile, tended to follow me around, like a family dog who never leaves their favorite companion’s side.

It’s a heartwarming joy to get to know each of the calicorns I found on my journey to the mountain, and it’s because of the loving bonds I’d formed with each of them that its central gameplay mechanic works so well, both in my hands and in my heart. As the herd grows, leading them from the back, like a shepherd, becomes more cumbersome. The group gets wider, a bit more unpredictable, and difficult to steer. Some may occasionally lag behind or run ahead just enough that I’d quickly call them all to a halt so that I could redirect all my furry friends into a more tightly knit huddle.

Traversing narrow bridges, creeping around and barely avoiding the nests of large, territorial birds, and dodging cracks in ice all contribute to the game’s puzzle-platforming loop. The imprecise nature of the herd’s movement patterns is made manageable thanks to the game’s controls. In the most life-threatening of situations, you can tell the herd to walk especially slowly, granting you and the herd the ability to more carefully dodge hazards. In several sections, the opposite is in order, and you have to instruct the herd to form a stampede, quickly getting up an icy slide or escaping predators.

Traversing the world involves clearing obstacles that can sometimes threaten the well-being of the calicorns.

Calicorns may or may not die in the story; it depends on how well you do to keep them safe. I felt the weight of this responsibility intensely. I’d gotten to know each of them so well. The game allows you to pet any of them whenever you’d like, and regularly, you may find it necessary to clean them, as twigs and brush get stuck in their fur. These mechanics were sometimes tricky to use because the prompts to perform such actions were often missing, seemingly because the game couldn’t always distinguish which of the many huddled calicorns I wanted to target with my hugs or brushstrokes. It was a small technical hiccup that thankfully didn’t ever sabotage the more life-threatening moments. When they’re injured, they limp or bleed, and in those moments, I’d panic to find them the healing berries that are sometimes scattered around the world. It was my impassioned intent to get every one of them home safely. Anything less was going to devastate me.

As burdensome as that was meant to feel, there are even more moments of elation and beauty. Sometimes, it’s the calicorns who do the saving, reminding me that we are friends. I am not their “owner.” They are my allies. One of the game’s best moments, which thankfully can repeat a few times during your travels, is when the herd makes it to an open space free of hazards, allowing you and your calicorns to run freely. It reminded me of those videos of formerly factory-farmed animals who are rescued by a sanctuary and see grass for the first time. It means something very special to them, and I’m just glad to witness it.

As the calicorns pass through tall, colorful grass, they gain a speed boost that lets them really run ahead. Their fur healthily changes color, matching the vibrant brush. Without words, the story makes it certain: They love this. And because they do, I grow closer to all of them. I’m happy for them. If only for a short while, I’ve helped them find something like home, and together we’re overjoyed. This drives me to continue onward toward our final destination.

You can almost feel the breeze when you and your animal companions scurry across an open field.

The incredible soundtrack feels dynamic, often playing off of your own pace, picking up or slowing down as your herd does, but it’s in these stampede moments where the emotions really swirl, thanks to how the music crescendos when you and the group move swiftly. If you slow down, so too will the music–which for me always meant speeding up to really feel the moment when space allowed. Herdling’s soundtrack is the best I’ve heard, not just this year, but in some time. It wonderfully matches the spirit of the gentle creatures, inviting them back to nature with its blend of percussion, wind, and string instruments that embody the feelings of escaping a concrete jungle and galloping through a liberating plain.

For me, Herdling is a game about rediscovering one’s purpose. It is not the purpose of the calicorns to be stuck rudderless in a dying cityscape, where litter and neglect team to wear them down to nothingness. Neither does it seem to be the protagonist’s purpose to be there, based on the sad squalor they’re found in to start the game. Together, the child and their ever-growing herd of companions–not pets–go on an often heartwarming, sometimes heart-wrenching, adventure back to nature. It’s a journey I’ll remember for a long time thanks to its depiction of animals as unique individuals who, very much like us, are chiefly seeking love and safety. It was one of my favorite experiences in video games to help them find that safety and to feel that love.



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Margaux Nijkerk
NFT Gaming

Optimism Taps Flashbots to Supercharge OP Stack Sequencing

by admin



Optimism is teaming up with Flashbots to revamp how transactions get processed across its OP Stack ecosystem, aiming to make some of Ethereum’s most popular layer-2 networks faster and more customizable.

The partnership centers on sequencing, the behind-the-scenes process that determines how quickly a transaction confirms, which trades are prioritized, and how much users ultimately pay. Optimism says Flashbots’ infrastructure, which is already responsible for building more than 90% of Ethereum’s blocks, will now bring near-instant confirmations and user-friendly transaction ordering to every chain in the so-called Superchain.

This matters because the OP Stack underpins more than 60% of all Ethereum layer 2 activity, the Optimism team claims, including some of the most well-known layer-2 chains like Base, Unichain, World Chain, Ink and Soneium. Until now, advanced sequencing features such as ultra-fast settlement, frontrunning protection and custom compliance rules were only available to the largest chains with resources to build them in-house. With Flashbots on board, those features will be available via tools for any project building on Optimism’s OP stack.

Flashbots is best known for its work on MEV, or maximal extractable value, where its MEV-Boost tool has reshaped how blocks are produced.

Some of Flashbots’ sequencing technology is already live on OP Stack chains: Base and Unichain use “Flashblocks” to deliver block times as low as 200 milliseconds, while Unichain and World Chain are experimenting with verifiable transaction ordering and priority blockspace, which proves transactions are ordered fairly and prevents frontrunning.

In the coming months, Optimism and Flashbots plan to roll out the flashblocks and advanced sequencing R&D to Optimism’s mainnet and other chains using the OP Stack.

“With Flashbots as a core technology partner, we’re accelerating the roadmap for fast, cheap, and customizable sequencing across the OP Stack,” said Sam McIngvale, head of product at OP Labs. “This is part of our broader mission: giving builders the freedom to design their chains their way, with infrastructure that’s open, flexible, and battle-tested in production.”

Read more: Optimism’s Jing Wang and the Widely Adopted OP Stack



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The Graph enables cross-chain transfer of GRT with Chainlink’s CCIP
Crypto Trends

Can LINK price surge to $50 after the Chainlink Endgame release?

by admin



LINK price continued its strong surge this week, rising to its highest level since January after the developers published the Chainlink Endgame vision and as whales continued accumulating. 

Summary

  • Chainlink published the Endgame document highlighting its vision for the future.
  • Whales have continued the LINK accumulation this year. 
  • LINK was the most bought token by smart money investors in the past 24 hours.

Chainlink (LINK) token jumped to  $28.85, up by 165% from its lowest level this year. Its 24-hour volume jumped to $2.9 billion, while its market capitalization hit $17.5 billion.

Chainlink Endgame launch

The main catalyst for the LINK price surge was the release of the Chainlink Endgame, a lengthy document detailing its vision and position in the blockchain industry. 

At the core of its vision is becoming the industry-standard oracle platform that powers advanced blockchain transactions. It sees itself playing the role that Windows did for the PC industry, iOS for mobile, and AWS for the cloud industry.

Chainlink then hopes to power transactions in the trillions in industries like real estate, debt markets, stocks, and derivatives.

Chainlink also sees its technology helping financial institutions speed cross-border payments and reduce the cost of transactions through tokenization. It highlighted its partnership with UBS and SWIFT, a society that handles trillions of transactions.

The Chainlink Endgame document also highlighted how ANZ Bank and Fidelity used its technology to enable cross-chain settlement of CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenized assets. 

The document came a few weeks after Chainlink launched the Strategic LINK Reserves. In this, it has started channeling the fees it generates onchain and off-chain to accumulate LINK tokens. It has already bought tokens worth over $2.8 million since its launch. 

Meanwhile, LINK was the most bought token by smart money investors in the last 24 hours. Nansen data shows that these investors bought tokens worth over $1.5 million in this period.

Whale investors have increased their LINK holdings by 66% in the last 30 days to 5.49 million, a sign that they expect it to keep rising. 

Another potential catalyst is that at least one company may decide to file for a spot LINK ETF with the Securities and Securities and Exchange Commission. 

LINK price chart analysis points to a surge ahead

Chainlink price chart | Source: crypto.news

The daily timeframe chart shows that the LINK price has been in a strong uptrend in the past few months. It has now moved to the third phase of the Elliott Wave pattern, which is normally the most bullish. Chainlink is also slowly forming a cup-and-handle pattern whose depth is 67%. As such, measuring the same distance from its upper side points to more gains to $52.



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Whisper of the House
Gaming Gear

Whisper of the House takes the cosy isometric decorating of Unpacking and unleashes it upon an entire town like an ultra-relaxing endless mode

by admin



Unpacking is one of my favourite videogames, where you grab things out of boxes and neatly pop them around an isometric home. It’s pretty linear though—not a complaint, it needs to be to serve its excellent narrative—but I’ve longed for a similar game with fewer shackles ever since.

Whisper of the House is that exact game, if my time with its demo is anything to go by. It takes the same cosy isometric vibes with wee pixel art decor as Unpacking, but gives me that bit more freedom to decorate however I want.

(Image credit: GD Studio)

Instead of following one character’s life as told through the places they live, Whisper of the House plonks me in a town where I can rearrange both my own space and the spaces of villagers who reside there. I’m first tasked with getting my own place in order, before mail requests come through each morning from folk who want my help moving in.


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A wee robot helps me pull items out of a moving box one by one, and I can rotate objects and place them on top of each other—plants that go on shelves, boxes that perch atop refrigerators, plushies that adorn an otherwise plain bedspread. Each location has multiple rooms, but I’m not actually confined to placing the objects inside each one.

Wanna stick a microwave in the hallway? A little weird, but sure thing. You’re the interior designer. Want to keep every photo in one specific location? You can easily bring items between rooms as you please. It’s not quite as tactile as Unpacking—I can’t open every single cupboard and drawer to store things out of sight, which bummed me out a little—but every item is gorgeously crafted with a wee description when you hover over it.

(Image credit: GD Studio)

There are some loose parameters around each villager request. My first job is the dog-loving Luna, and while I’m given free reign across most of her house, her one request is that I create a gallery of photos in her hallway. My second task is a little more out there, requiring me to literally go back in time and help my client clean up his move-in day mess, which I guess makes things better in the future. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but having to tidy up everything scattered across a tiny apartment broke up the standard “grab item from box, place item” pace.

One of my favourite little additions in Whisper of the House, though, is being able to roam around the town and rummage in various dumpsters for trinkets and doodads. I am an absolute clutter fiend in The Sims—if it doesn’t look majorly lived in, I don’t want it—so grabbing random Ramune bottles and snacks to adorn my tiny loft apartment with was a real treat.

Even more furniture can be unlocked through nabbing vouchers by completing tasks or picking them up out in the world and then spending them on decor loot boxes. Normally I’d much prefer to pick and choose items myself, but being given random pieces encouraged me to think outside the box and use items I would have normally condemned to my storage for all eternity.

The demo is pretty short overall, but thankfully it’s not a long wait to dip my toe into the full thing, as Whisper of the House launches on August 27.



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Diceless story engine Enclave soon funding a new edition
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Diceless story engine Enclave soon funding a new edition

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On September 23, a new diceless roleplaying game is set to Kickstart a renewed, refined edition, beefed up with much more content. It’s already got a surprisingly active following, with a Discord community of about 400 members running games on a daily basis.

I have complained before about how limiting categories and taxanomies can be for discussion, so let me be clear when I say that Enclave doesn’t really follow the Game in RPG in the traditional sense. It’s more a structure for stories, dealing little with traditional ideas like game mechanics and damage systems. There are diceless games that lean more heavily into those ideas, like Amber or Nobilis. But where Nobilis retains an economy of Miracle points and its own godlike power scale, Enclave is more interested in the story itself. The rules, such that there are, are as light as possible, built more to facilitate improvisation than to drive decisions. They lean on logic, negotiation, and storytelling. If your character should reasonably be able to do something, then they can. For moments where the outcome is more uncertain—or even a little over-the-top—the game uses a Luck mechanic. Luck lets players “pitch” something into the story, with more outlandish ideas requiring a higher Luck score. Pitching is tied into other stats, with Luck granting options your innate abilities don’t cover.

The overall play experience depends on conversation between players and the Conduit (the game’s facilitator/GM). Combat and other challenges are framed around what makes sense narratively rather than strict rules. If an outcome is unclear, what in other games would be determined by a dice roll, the Conduit is the deciding factor. Players can always ask for clarification on the Conduit’s rulings, though the Conduit ultimately makes the call.

Mechanically, the system remains fluid. Stats are being reworked; some are being combined or refined. One of the most interesting additions in the upcoming edition is a system of inferences. Players can ask yes/no questions about a situation, and depending on their stats, they may get additional insights. A character with high Intelligence, for example, might uncover more detail than one with low Intelligence. Spirit, among other stats, ties into this inference system as well.

Enclave also includes 12 base classes, some of which have been designed directly by players. 6 of those classes come from the base game Advent, with 6 more coming in Aspirant. The design philosophy behind classes is simple: they should be recognizable archetypes, to make clear to other players how your character functions within the narrative. There’s also a kind of “meta” progression, where creative work you do outside of sessions—such as art, writing, or other contributions—can feed back into small in-game benefits.

The setting, called Manifold, is described not as a single world but as an entire universe containing many different worlds. This approach is meant to support multiple genres, so a group could explore fantasy, sci-fi, or anything in between. Characters can even move between different groups while retaining continuity, which opens up opportunities for shared play across the community.

Game designer Robby Howell, has a track record of experimenting with unusual RPGs—one of his past designs, Homonculus, tasked each player with controlling a different part of a body as it moved through situations. This new project is his most ambitious yet, aiming to blend collaborative storytelling with player-driven creativity in a highly flexible framework.

You can find out more information at the Kickstarter page or jump into the action now on the Enclave Discord.


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Dow retreats 200 points amid Walmart earnings miss
GameFi Guides

Dow retreats 200 points amid Walmart earnings miss

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average wavered on Thursday as investors reacted to retail giant Walmart’s quarterly miss, with stocks opening lower as Wall Street turned its attention to the Federal Reserve’s key symposium at Jackson Hole.

Summary

  • Dow fell 200 points and S&P 500 and Nasdaq shed gains amid stocks retreat.
  • Walmart shares dipped after the company’s earnings report.
  • Investors are eyeing the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 200 points at open, leading the pullback after bouncing to a record high on Wednesday. As the blue-chip index flipped lower, the benchmark S&P 500 shed 0.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite trimmed 0.3%.

Stocks dip amid Walmart earnings miss

While the bloodbath for mega-cap tech stocks cooled, a dip in Walmart (WMT) shares after the retail giant missed quarterly profit forecasts pulled the Dow lower. Walmart, however, raised its full-year sales and profit outlook.

Meanwhile, shorts have taken a rare edge in the stock market since the rally began in May, with sentiment down after sellers scored big on the sharp sell-off in tech stocks.

Analysts have pointed to Palantir Technologies’ streak of six losing sessions as a slide that has erased tens of billions in market value. Although the company’s stock ticked higher on Aug. 21, it remains more than 17% down from its Aug. 12 peak.

Bearish momentum across risk assets has also weighed on cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin down over 4% in the past week to hover near $113k. Despite the dip, Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong has predicted BTC could reach $1 million by 2030.

Jackson Hole in focus 

As stocks struggle and investors retreat from risk-on assets, all eyes are firmly on this week’s key event, the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium. The gathering of policymakers and economists has the market focused not only on what Fed Chair Jerome Powell will say on Friday morning, but also on what his remarks signal about the future of interest rates.

That focus has sharpened after the Fed’s July minutes revealed the central bank is more concerned with sticky inflation than with weakness in the labor market.



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Black Myth: Zhong Kui Announced
Game Updates

Black Myth: Zhong Kui Announced

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Game Science managed a rare feat in 2024 – introducing a new action game to the market to significant commercial and critical success with Black Myth: Wukong. It’s clear the studio isn’t resting on its laurels, as the final game shown at this year’s Opening Night Live show aims to continue the story. Black Myth: Zhong Kui is the new entry in the burgeoning franchise.

The debut trailer certainly doesn’t reveal much. We see two down-on-their-luck men who appear to be on the run, but they quiet down as they realize someone is outside who may be chasing them down. The visuals pan over to a figure riding a massive tiger, revealed to be Zhong Kui.

In following up on the trailer, Opening Night Live host Geoff Keighley offered up that the game follows the “ghost-catching god who wanders between hell and earth.” The game appears to be early in development (not unexpected given that the last installment only released a year ago), but the game will be a single-player action/RPG rooted in Chinese mythology.

Check out the full trailer below. 

 



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Genshin Impact's IRL event at gamescom teases Nod-Krai, Version 6.0, and yet another handsome anime man you'd better start saving your Primogems for
Game Reviews

Genshin Impact’s IRL event at gamescom teases Nod-Krai, Version 6.0, and yet another handsome anime man you’d better start saving your Primogems for

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Genshin Impact’s big annual update is not far off. Thanks to this year’s gamescom, we’ve got our first look at one of the new characters joining the game’s roster with the upcoming expansion: Flins, the latest in Genshin’s long line of eligible-and-they-know-it husbandos — and if you’re a longtime player, you’ve probably been expecting him.

The other highlight of the next version, of course, is the new Nod-Krai region, which is something those in attendance at the show will get to experience first-hand.

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Genshin Impact is hosting an offline experience at its booth at gamescom to show off the new Nod-Krai region. We sadly can’t experience that from the comfort of our homes, but this fresh look at Flins is nothing to scoff at.

Flins is a warrior from the Lightkeepers, a faction that hails from Nod-Krai, and he’s part of a new story chapter that will kick off with the game’s annual major version update. Today’s trailer teases a bit of that narrative, too. Version 6.0 is set to arrive in September, which is when we’ll be able to get our hands on all that.

There’s clearly a lot more that’s being kept under wraps, but we won’t have to wait too long to learn all remaining details. The next Genshin Impact livestream will be taking place on the last Friday of the month, and that’s when all will be revealed.

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In case you missed it, Genshin Impact’s developer recently announced plans to drop support for PS4, and raise system requirements on PC and mobile. Not all of these changes will take place at once, but you should probably prepare for that day if your device is affected.

If you’re looking for some guidance on how to complete the Traces of Chroma quest, or need help reaching Tenochtitlan Harbor, hit up those links for our detailed guides. As ever, the massive Genshin Impact codes page is never not useful.



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