NFT

NFT-based Fixed Lending Protocol Pledge Backed by Stanford Alumni Announces Successful Fundraise

press release

PRESS RELEASE. Pledge Finance is launching a cross-chain decentralized finance ecosystem, purpose-built for the financial sector following a successful private round in which it raised more than $3 million.

Hong Kong – Pledge Finance, an algorithm-driven, multi-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, is announcing the launch of an NFT-powered structured collateralized lending platform targeted at the traditional financial sector. The Binance Smart Chain platform (BSC), which is based on Pledge, will allow for interoperability with other public chains. This will enable other DeFi platforms to access Pledge’s many product and service offerings.

Pledge Bridges the Gap Between DeFi and Finance

Pledge Finance will include liquidity pools which will act as money markets so that users can exchange cryptocurrencies without the need for a centralized exchange. The supply and demand of cryptocurrencies in each pool will determine the interest rate.

Initially, these pools will be denominated by Pledge’s native token, PLGR, meaning users will need to purchase PLGR to make exchanges between stablecoins and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). This algorithm will allow Pledge users to exchange cryptocurrencies with PLGR at fair price with minimal friction.

In addition to using PLGR to facilitate exchanges between cryptocurrencies, Pledge’s native token will provide holders with a fixed interest rate payment if they choose to use their crypto-assets to provide liquidity for Pledge’s money, lending or derivatives markets. Pledge users have the ability to create multiple liquidity pools for different crypto-assets. Each pool will have fixed terms for loans and can be used for lending.

PLGR will have a total supply of 3 billion PLGR.

Pledge’s derivatives market is powered by unique derivative smart contracts, which swap fixed-rate interest payments for floating-rate interest payments, providing an essential tool for DeFi traders who might use them to hedge against speculative investments made in other pools. These pools can also be found on other decentralized platforms due to Pledge’s interoperability across all chains.

The Future is Bright for Pledge

Pledge Finance is leveraging NFTs to further differentiate itself from other DeFi protocols. Pledge will initially mint 50 NFTs, each representing a fixed-rate bond. These NFTs will be fully convertible in an NFT-based bond exchange market. Each NFT represents the ownership, obligations, and yield of a financial instrument. This tool can be used by financial institutions to perform refinancing operations and swap in and out credit obligations.

This approach capitalizes on the current excitement for NFTs, repurposing it to make financial products such as bonds, loans, and derivatives more accessible to the DeFi world. Pledge’s ultimate goal is to service the trillion-dollar financial supply market and bring the legacy financial sector closer towards the new, decentralized ledger space. This mission is further supported by the success of Pledge’s first private round which raised $3 million in December 2020.

About Pledge

Pledge is a trustworthy, transparent, and convenient cross-chain swap solution for decentralized financial assets. It is dedicated to combining NFT cross chain circulation and multi-asset trade to make it easier to transfer, expand the NFT market, speed up NFT valuation/pricing, and offer more convenience for all NFT users.

The platform itself draws upon the extensive technological and financial experience of its core management team. Tony Chan, the CEO, is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and a computer scientist with a Stanford University degree. In his past career, Chan helped to write part of Windows 95, which at the time of its release, became the most popular operating system in the world. Pledge’s CTO, Michael Ren, was chief artificial intelligence scientist for a Hong Kong-based peer-to-peer lending company, with revenues surpassing $10 billion annually. With 15 years of fintech, in addition, Ren is tasked with propelling the blockchain protocol, community experience, and partnerships for Pledge.

Pledge’s senior product manager, Douglas Hill will lead Pledge’s product development, ensuring its suite of financial products are operationally sound and in-tune with the needs of the market. Hill was previously involved in machine learning and augmented realities, and pioneered the first ML-based platform to support physical therapy and the sport industry.

Leveraging the support of such a competent team, combined with the prospect of interoperability, Pledge is definitely well-positioned to bring the financial sector into the future.

For more information about how Pledge Finance plans to use NFTs to revolutionize the financial sector, visit their main site here.

Follow Pledge on Twitter

Join the Pledge community on Telegram

Subscribe to Pledge’s blog on Medium

Get involved with Pledge on Discord

Explore Pledge’s technology on Github

Media Contact Details

Contact Email: PR@pledger.finance

PLEDGE FINANCE is the source of this content. This Press Release is intended for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

This is a press release. This is a press release. Readers are responsible for their own research before making any decisions about the promoted company, or any of its affiliates. 72050

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

NFT

NFTs Enrich Gaming Communities, Drive Stronger Engagement, Says Gaming Veteran

According to Luke Paglia, the COO at AGMI Studios, while traditional non-fungible token (NFT) art has lacked real utility, which explains its declining popularity, NFTs still have an important role to play in the gaming industry. To back this assertion, Paglia cites game developers’ use of NFTs “to innovate and bring new forms of value [……
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NFT

Futurama’s new season struggles to make NFTs and AI funny

It only takes a few minutes before Futurama’s new season starts explaining non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, a concept most people probably haven’t thought about for more than a year.

Despite being set in the far future, Futurama has always been comfortable commenting on modern life. There have been episodes about smartphones and 3D printers that use sci-fi nonsense to complicate the concepts in a way that makes them funny. That has largely continued to be true over many years (and cancellations). But in its Hulu revival last year, the show really started to mess up the balance, and its topical jokes began to overshadow the sci-fi gags. The upcoming 12th season struggles even more to find a Futurama-style twist on absurd ripped-from-the-headlines storylines about NFTs and AI. It makes for an uneven season that often feels like it’s missing what originally made the show so special.

The NFTs are the most egregious example, and they also happen to be featured heavily in the debut episode, which makes for a terrible first impression. The convoluted plot involves Bender selling a CryptoPunks-style collection to make a quick buck, which somehow leads him on a quest to discover his origins in Mexico. Meanwhile, the rest of the Planet Express crew attempts a heist to liberate Bender’s NFT collection from an art museum, only to be thwarted by the complexities of the blockchain and digital ledgers.

The problem is that these aren’t some sort of quirky Futurama take on NFTs — they’re just regular NFTs as we know them now, terrible art connected to a digital receipt. The episode spends an annoyingly large part of its runtime explaining the concept — which, to be fair, is hard to do succinctly — without offering much by the way of jokes or commentary. It just assumes NFTs in and of themselves are enough to make people laugh.

More than a decade ago, when we all thought Futurama was really over for good, executive producer and head writer David X. Cohen explained to me how the show was able to successfully translate modern problems into its retrofuturistic world. “We always like it when the real world gives us ideas for episodes,” he said. “Setting the show 1,000 years in the future does not mean you’re not going to comment on society today, it just makes it one step removed.” As the NFT episode proves, it’s that “one step removed” part that’s so important. Without it, the episode is a bunch of dull jokes that are also painfully dated.

I’ve seen the first six episodes of the season (there will be 10 in total), and things fare slightly better later on. There’s a Squid Game spoof that explores Fry’s childhood through some kind of bizarre time travel and a fast-fashion episode that turns Cara Delevingne into Frankenstein’s monster and the professor into a style icon. I wouldn’t say these are examples of Futurama at its best — the jokes are hit or miss, and most are lacking the heart that keeps the show grounded. But they at least understand Futurama’s original premise: using this weirdo future as a lens to exaggerate modern issues.

This is less true in the most unoriginal episode of the bunch, when the show turns an AI chatbot into Leela’s jealous friend. It’s just about every AI movie trope rolled into 20 minutes of animation. It’s also pretty weird to tackle AI as a new thing at all given Futurama is swarming with sentient robots.

Maybe there’s more heart and wit in the later episodes, as Hulu does promise the season will explore “the next chapter in Fry and Leela’s fateful, time-twisted romance.” But from what I’ve seen, the balance is too far askew. There’s too much focus on being topical and not enough on the oddball humor, long-running characters, and warmth that has made it all work so well before. Like the rest of the world, Futurama should’ve left NFTs in the past.

Futurama season 12 starts streaming on Hulu on July 29th.

NFT

Trump Reaffirms Support for Crypto, Plans to Launch 4th NFT Collection

Former U.S. President and presidential candidate Donald Trump has reaffirmed his support for cryptocurrency, emphasizing: “If we don’t do it, China is going to pick it up” and dominate the industry. He revealed that he will launch another non-fungible token (NFT) collection. He stressed that almost all of his previous NFTs were paid in crypto…
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