Most of us have seen dozens of "rebrandings" after which nothing changed except for the logo and loud statements. Usually, it's just a marketing riddle: old team, old problems, new name. But with Vanar, it turned out a little differently. The project started back in 2017 as Terra Virtua Kolect - a platform for NFTs and virtual collectible items. Then it became Virtua, focused on the metaverse, AR, brand experiences. The token was $TVK . Everything is typical for the crypto boom of 2021-2022: beautiful virtual worlds, partnerships with brands, promises of "the next Facebook in the metaverse". And then - November 2023. The team announces: "...we are no longer just a metaverse. We are moving to a full-fledged Layer-1 blockchain..." The name becomes Vanar, the token changes 1:1 with $TVK to $VANRY . Outwardly - a classic rebranding. But you need to look deeper. They didn't just change the sign. They rebuilt the entire stack: from ERC-20 token on Polygon/Ethereum to their own mainnet L1 with PoA + Proof of Reputation, a fixed fee of $0.0005, EVM compatibility, and built-in AI modules (the same Neutron and Kayon that I wrote about yesterday). This is not cosmetics, it is a transition from "selling NFTs in a virtual universe" to "building the infrastructure on which others can do PayFi, tokenized assets, games with real economies, and AI automation." Why is this important? Because many metaverse projects from 2021-2022 simply disappeared or turned into meme coins. Virtua/Vanar survived, gathered experience (and partnerships) from games, brands, entertainment - and used it to create not another "quick chain", but a specialized L1 for real applications. The name "Vanar" is not a random word: a combination of Virtual + Narrative + Revolutionary as CEO Jawad Ashraf explained in his video announcement. They consciously moved from the narrow niche of the metaverse to the broader "Intelligence Economy" But there are also doubts. The rebranding in 2023 was more than two years ago. The mainnet launched, products are growing, but will history repeat itself when the team promises a "revolution" and then quietly liquidates? So far, the numbers and updates look stable, but I'm not a fanatic - just observing. @Vanarchain bets on making Web3 useful, not just another casino. Whether it works out - we'll see. Tomorrow we will analyze the team, who these people with experience in gaming and brands are, and why their past may be more important than any whitepaper. @Vanarchain #Vanar $VANRY
The Developer Platform Powering Tomorrow’s Data Economy
(Walrus)
When you planning for the next great evolution of our digital world, you don’t look at the skyscrapers of today - you look at the foundations being poured for tomorrow. We are standing on the precipice of a radical shift, a transition from an era where data was a liability to be guarded by giants, to one where data is the lifeblood of a sovereign, decentralized economy. The architecture of the past is failing us; it is too centralized, too fragile, and far too expensive for the scale of innovation we envision. That is why we are here today to talk about Walrus: the developer platform that isn't just storing bits and bytes, but is actively powering the heartbeat of tomorrow’s data economy. The walls of the old garden are crumbling, and Walrus is providing the blueprint for a world without boundaries. Walrus redefines data as a governable resource. No longer is data siloed in centralized vaults, vulnerable to breaches or misuse. Instead, it's secured by Seal, a cutting-edge layer that ensures confidentiality, gated access, and decentralization. Developers can create custom data markets where AI agents thrive, tokenizing information through integrations like Itheum and powering intelligent systems with Talus. This isn't just technology; it's a paradigm shift, making data accessible yet verifiable, from code snippets to vast content libraries. With the introduction of "Seal," Walrus adds the final, critical piece of the puzzle: programmable privacy. Now, developers can build applications where sensitive data remains encrypted and decentralized, yet accessible only to those with the right on-chain permissions. This is the infrastructure required for the AI era—a place where models can be trained on verifiable, authentic data without compromising the privacy of the contributors. We are moving from a world of data silos to a world of data flows, where every sliver of information creates value. The brilliance of Walrus lies in its simplicity for the builder. By offering an S3-compatible interface and robust SDKs, it bridges the gap between the familiar tools of today and the sovereign possibilities of tomorrow. Whether you are building a decentralized social media platform that needs to host petabytes of video, a gaming universe with millions of unique assets, or an AI agent that requires a permanent, verifiable memory, Walrus provides the bedrock. It is a chain-agnostic powerhouse that invites developers from Ethereum, Solana, and beyond to anchor their data in a system that is faster, cheaper, and more secure than anything that has come before. We are no longer just building apps; we are building a distributed nervous system for the internet. Walrus ensures longevity through decentralization, where data remains immutable and ever-verifiable. It integrates seamlessly with AI tools, enabling markets tailored for machine learning models that crave high-quality, authenticated inputs. This platform doesn't just adapt to tomorrow's needs; it anticipates them, fostering innovation in fields like healthcare analytics, financial forecasting, and creative content generation. Unlock the vault of tomorrow - Walrus holds the key to data's golden age. Critics might say data economies are hype, but Walrus proves otherwise with real-world integrations and a growing ecosystem. It's where reliability meets revenue, verification meets vision. Developers flock to it because it simplifies complexity - monetize with a few lines of code, verify with blockchain certainty, and scale without limits. This platform isn't a tool; it's a movement, inviting all to participate in shaping the AI era's backbone. Finally, envision a world where data isn't hoarded but harnessed for good. Walrus propels us there, making every dataset a seed for innovation. It's the developer platform powering tomorrow's data economy, where trust is tokenized, value is verified, and the future is forged by us all. Join the revolution - dive into Walrus today, and let's build a data world that's not just smarter, but infinitely better! With Walrus, data doesn't just exist - it evolves, empowers, and endures. @Walrus 🦭/acc $WAL #walrus
Dusk Network: Gdzie Prywatność Spotyka Regulowane Finanse:- W świecie, w którym blockchainy często muszą wybierać między przejrzystością a poufnością, Dusk Network podąża inną ścieżką. Założona w 2018 roku, ta blockchain warstwy 1 została zbudowana specjalnie dla przypadków użycia w finansach, które wymagają zarówno prywatności, jak i zgodności z przepisami. Zamiast unikać nadzoru, Dusk go przyjmuje — jednocześnie chroniąc wrażliwe dane. Modularna architektura sieci pozwala programistom na budowanie aplikacji finansowych o standardzie instytucjonalnym bez wynajdowania podstawowej infrastruktury na nowo. Prywatność jest wbudowana na poziomie protokołu, a transakcje pozostają audytowalne, gdy jest to wymagane. Ta równowaga sprawia, że @Dusk jest wyjątkowo dobrze przygotowany do zgodnej DeFi, gdzie poufność i odpowiedzialność muszą współistnieć. Jednym z najbardziej przekonujących kierunków @Dusk jest tokenizacja rzeczywistych aktywów. Od papierów wartościowych po nieruchomości, instytucje mogą emitować i zarządzać cyfrowymi aktywami w łańcuchu, spełniając jednocześnie normy regulacyjne. To otwiera drzwi dla tradycyjnych finansów do wejścia na rynki blockchainowe bez kompromisów dotyczących wymogów prawnych czy prywatności. W miarę jak regulacje się zaostrzają, a instytucje szukają zaufanej infrastruktury, @Dusk wyróżnia się jako celowe rozwiązanie. To nie jest tylko kolejny blockchain — to finansowa warstwa operacyjna zaprojektowana na przyszłość prywatnych, zgodnych rynków w łańcuchu.
Różnica między infrastrukturą eksperymentalną a gotową do produkcji to dyscyplina. #Walrus demonstruje dyscyplinę poprzez swoją tokenomikę i architekturę. $WAL nie jest nieskończoność; jest ograniczone i deflacyjne. Nagrody są przesyłane, a nie wyrzucane. Kary palą tokeny, a nie tylko reputacje. Połączone z wydajnym kodowaniem i weryfikowalną dostępnością, Walrus tworzy przechowywanie, któremu deweloperzy mogą zaufać w poważnych aplikacjach. To infrastruktura zbudowana z zamiarem, a nie na skróty.
Odzyskiwanie prywatności i zgodności w erze zdecentralizowanych finansów:-
W nieustannie ewoluującym krajobrazie finansów cyfrowych i technologii zdecentralizowanej, dążenie do równowagi między absolutną prywatnością użytkowników a rygorystyczną zgodnością regulacyjną od dawna stanowi centralne wyzwanie. W miarę jak systemy blockchain przechodzą z eksperymentalnych placów zabaw dla hobbystów w fundamenty globalnych rynków finansowych, potrzeba solidnego rozwiązania tożsamości chroniącego prywatność staje się zasadnicza. W tę lukę wkracza Dusk Citadel, pionierski protokół Tożsamości Samoistnej zaprojektowany jako podstawowy filar sieci Dusk. Protokół ten stanowi znaczący krok naprzód w sposobie zarządzania, weryfikacji i wykorzystywania tożsamości cyfrowych zarówno w ekosystemach on-chain, jak i w tradycyjnych sektorach regulowanych.
Plazma stworzona z wyraźnym naciskiem na wydajność. Ewolucja blockchaina zależy od więcej niż tylko szybkości czy szumu, zależy od infrastruktury, która może rzeczywiście skalować, dostosowywać się i dostarczać rzeczywistą wartość. To właśnie tam plazma się pozycjonuje. Stworzona z wyraźnym naciskiem na wydajność, efektywność i dostępność dla programistów, plazma dąży do usunięcia tarć, które przez lata spowolniły rzeczywistą adopcję Web3. W sercu tego ekosystemu znajduje się $XPL, token zaprojektowany do zasilania transakcji, zabezpieczania sieci i dostosowywania zachęt wśród użytkowników, twórców i partnerów. Zamiast gonić za trendami, plazma koncentruje się na budowaniu fundamentu, który wspiera długoterminowy rozwój, kompatybilność między łańcuchami i przypadki użycia w rzeczywistym świecie. Takie podejście tworzy środowisko, w którym innowacje mogą rozwijać się bez poświęcania stabilności czy użyteczności. W miarę jak coraz więcej projektów szuka niezawodnych i skalowalnych rozwiązań blockchain, zaangażowanie plazmy w silną architekturę i postęp napędzany przez społeczność staje się coraz ważniejsze. Podróż w stronę bardziej otwartego, wydajnego i dostępnego Web3 wciąż się rozwija, a Plazma z pewnością buduje z myślą o tej przyszłości.
Delivering the Smooth Payments Most Chains Promise but Don’t Deliver
A payment failing at the exact moment you need it is a special kind of frustration. You are not trying to speculate, you are trying to settle. Maybe it is a supplier invoice, a freelancer payout, a top up for a card, or a checkout that has to clear right now. On most general purpose chains, that “simple transfer” is still a small obstacle course: unpredictable fees, wallets asking you to hold yet another gas token, confirmations that feel fast until they are not, and customer support tickets when someone fat fingers the wrong network. After a couple of those experiences, people do what they always do in payments. They leave, and they do not come back.
That churn is the retention problem in crypto payments. It is not mainly about ideology, it is about habit formation. Payments are a behavior, not a feature. If the first few attempts feel confusing or risky, users stop trying. If merchants cannot predict costs and settlement timing, they quietly switch back to rails that work. And if businesses cannot reconcile activity cleanly, they treat crypto as a side experiment rather than infrastructure.
Plasma is one of the newer chains that is explicitly trying to solve this by narrowing the mission. It presents itself as a Layer 1 purpose built for stablecoins, with an emphasis on near instant settlement and removing “extra steps” that normal users do not care about. The public docs highlight zero fee USD₮ transfers, support for paying transaction fees in whitelisted assets like USD₮ or BTC, and a roadmap that includes confidential payments and a native Bitcoin bridge.
The design choice here is worth spelling out in plain language. Most chains are designed to be general computers first, then payments happen to run on top. Plasma is trying to be a payments rail first, then smart contracts fit around that. In practice, that usually means you optimize for predictable user costs, fast confirmation, and fewer wallet states. Plasma’s chain overview describes PlasmaBFT consensus derived from Fast HotStuff, targets thousands of transactions per second, and lists block times under 12 seconds. The same page makes a pointed comparison with “$20 USD₮ transfer fees,” then immediately positions zero fee USD₮ transfers as the alternative.
Where this becomes more than marketing is when you map it to real world payment flows. Imagine a small e commerce operator in Dhaka who pays overseas suppliers weekly in stablecoins. On a chain with volatile fees and confusing gas requirements, the operator ends up holding multiple tokens, timing transfers around congestion, and paying enough in friction that the “cheap global money” story stops feeling cheap. On a payments first rail, the operator mostly wants three things: the transfer should go through quickly, the cost should be consistent, and the receiving side should not need a second lesson just to access funds. Plasma’s custom gas approach is aimed at that last part, because it explicitly tries to reduce the need for users to hold a separate native token just to move a stablecoin.
Now, traders and investors should separate product intent from market reality. A payments chain can have good UX and still struggle to keep activity sticky if liquidity, integrations, or trust do not follow. It is also normal for early networks to swing between hype and disappointment as expectations collide with usage. CoinDesk, for example, covered a sharp drawdown in XPL after launch period enthusiasm cooled. That history matters because payment rails win by consistency over time, not by one strong month.
This is where “today’s” data helps anchor the discussion. As of January 28, 2026, XPL is trading around the low to mid $0.13 range, with a reported market cap in the roughly $230 million to $295 million band depending on venue and methodology, and 24 hour volume commonly shown from about $60 million to over $110 million. On the network side, DefiLlama shows Plasma with stablecoins market cap around $2.0B and bridged TVL around $7.1B, while also reporting very low chain fees over the last 24 hours, on the order of a few hundred dollars. Those numbers do not “prove” product market fit, but they do give you a concrete lens: if the chain is marketed for high volume payments, you want to see stablecoin balances, repeat usage, and fee dynamics that stay predictable even as activity grows.
Plasma’s funding and partner narrative is also part of the adoption math. Coverage has described Plasma as a stablecoin payments focused blockchain effort backed by major crypto and venture names, and recent announcements emphasize integrations aimed at turning stablecoin balances into real spending.Rain, for instance, has published material about enabling card programs for Plasma builders, which is one of the more practical bridges between “on chain dollars” and everyday merchant acceptance. Plasma has also been tied to cross chain settlement improvements through an integration with NEAR Intents, which targets the annoying reality that moving stablecoins across ecosystems is still too many steps for most users.
My personal take is simple: payments are a ruthless product category. Users do not forgive friction, and they do not reward ideology. They reward reliability. If Plasma delivers fewer failed transfers, fewer “why do I need this token” moments, and smoother fiat adjacent experiences like cards and merchant tooling, then retention can improve because the product stops feeling like a test. If it does not, people will continue doing what they already do today: keep stablecoins where the paths are familiar, even if those paths are not elegant.
If you are evaluating Plasma as a trader or investor, treat it like you would any payments network thesis. Watch stablecoin balances and where they come from, track active addresses and repeat usage, and pay attention to integrations that shorten the time from “I have stablecoins” to “I completed a purchase.” Then actually try it with a small amount. Move USD₮, see what the wallet experience feels like, see how fast settlement is in practice, and check whether the ecosystem reduces steps or adds them. In payments, the truth shows up in the second and third transaction, not the first. If Plasma can earn those repeat transactions, it is doing the one thing most chains never truly solve: turning a crypto transfer into a habit. @Plasma #Plasma $XPL
Dlaczego Dusk Network dodał Moonlight do Phoenix Privacy? Dokumentacja @Dusk opisuje dwa środowiska transakcyjne: Phoenix, które wspiera poufne transakcje za pomocą prywatności kryptograficznej, oraz Moonlight, które wspiera przejrzyste wykonywanie inteligentnych kontraktów. Ten podwójny projekt jest wyraźnie przedstawiony jako sposób na wsparcie różnych potrzeb aplikacyjnych w tej samej sieci. Niektóre przypadki użycia wymagają prywatności, podczas gdy inne korzystają z pełnej przejrzystości i kompozycyjności.
Ponieważ Dusk ma dwa tryby transakcji, projekty nie są zamknięte w jednym podejściu. Mogą korzystać z prywatności, kiedy jest to wymagane, i przejrzystości, kiedy jest to konieczne—przydatne w prawdziwych finansach, gdzie różne sytuacje mają różne potrzeby zgodności.
Dusk and the Release That Stayed Open — Even After Finality:- What makes this idea interesting is that Dusk’s “finality story” is not just a consensus feature. It is a product posture. The network’s mainnet rollout schedule, shared publicly in December 2024, aimed for the first immutable block on January 7 after a staged sequence of on ramping stakes and deposits and switching the cluster into operational mode. That is the part where people expect the credits to roll. In practice, mainnet is when the retention problem starts.
Retention is not only a social metric. It is operational and economic. Users churn when bridging is flaky, wallets confuse them, or fees feel unpredictable. Builders churn when nodes are annoying to run, indexes break, and “finalized” data is hard to query reliably. Liquidity churns when access is interrupted or when traders cannot move capital where it needs to be. You can have a chain with clean finality and still lose the room if the surrounding experience cannot hold attention for months.
This is where the “release that stayed open” becomes more than a slogan. In January 2026, Dusk published an incident notice describing unusual activity tied to a team managed wallet used in bridge operations. The important line for market structure is not the drama. It is the split between protocol finality and surrounding services. DuskDS mainnet was described as not impacted, with bridge services temporarily paused while hardening work continued. If you trade or invest in the asset, that is the real world version of “finality does not equal finished.” The base system can keep producing final blocks while the user facing rails are still being tightened.
Now put today’s market tape around that reality. As of the latest aggregated pricing, DUSK is trading around fifteen cents, with roughly mid thirty million dollars in 24 hour volume and a market cap in the mid seventy million range depending on the tracker and methodology. The token supply structure commonly reported is about 1 billion max supply with about half circulating, again depending on the data source. Holder counts also vary by venue and chain representation, but public dashboards put it in the tens of thousands, which is meaningful for distribution but not automatically meaningful for retention.
If you are a trader, the temptation is to treat that as the whole picture. Price, volume, maybe a volatility burst, then move on. The quieter question is whether the ecosystem is building a habit loop. Do users do a second transaction a week later. Do developers ship a second app after the first integration pain. Do operators stick around when the novelty is gone.
One place to look for that is not social feeds. It is the cadence of unglamorous engineering that keeps a chain usable. In Dusk’s Rusk node releases, you can see changes that are explicitly about how finalized data is served and how the node behaves under real querying patterns, such as pagination defaults for large finalized events requests and other operational hardening. This kind of work rarely moves a chart on its own, but it directly affects retention because it reduces the background friction that silently drives people away.
Here is the real life version that resonates with finance people. Imagine you run a small discretionary crypto fund and you participate in a private allocation for a tokenized security style product. You do not want your entire position size and counterparties broadcast to the market, because that becomes information leakage and, frankly, a safety issue. At the same time, you need the ability to prove settlement and ownership if your administrator asks, if a counterparty disputes a leg, or if your jurisdiction changes its reporting expectations. That is exactly the narrow corridor Dusk is trying to walk: confidentiality by default, verifiability when required. If that corridor becomes boring and dependable, users stay. If it becomes stressful, they leave, even if the chain is technically “final.”
So what should an investor or trader actually do with this, without turning it into a narrative trade. Treat Dusk like infrastructure under construction that is already carrying weight. Watch whether operational issues are disclosed quickly and closed cleanly, because that is correlated with long term trust. Watch whether developer facing releases keep removing friction around finalized state and indexing, because that is correlated with builder retention. And keep market reality in frame: liquidity and volume can be healthy while user retention is weak, so do not confuse a busy tape with durable usage.
If you want a practical next step, make it disciplined. Pull up DUSK’s live market page, note the current liquidity and volume relative to market cap, then read the most recent protocol and infrastructure updates and incident notices like you would for an exchange or a prime broker. The edge in this kind of trade is rarely “knowing” the future. It is staying close to whether the release is still getting better after finality, because that is how retention is earned, and retention is what turns a one time launch into an asset that keeps a market.
Walrus organizes decentralized blob storage in epochs, using an active committee of storage nodes to hold and serve data during each period. Committee membership can change at epoch boundaries based on delegated stake, so control over storage isn’t meant to be permanently concentrated in the same hands. When you upload to Walrus, your blob is encoded into redundant “slivers” using erasure coding (Red Stuff) and distributed across the committee, so the system can still recover data even if some nodes fail or act maliciously. Availability is enforced through quorum-based certificates: stores collect a supermajority of acknowledgements, and a Proof of Availability is posted on Sui so the network has a verifiable record that the blob was accepted for storage. This design is less about marketplace bidding and more about predictable, protocol-defined guarantees and incentives—nodes are selected and rewarded through stake and fees rather than winning individual storage deals. Walrus has been positioned as especially useful for Sui ecosystem apps that need reliable hosting for on-chain-linked assets like NFT media and other blob-backed data without falling back to Web2 storage.
Why Web3 Can’t Scale Without Walrus Programmable Storage? Blockchains learned how to move value early. Walrus is teaching them how to store meaning. Web3 began as a revolution of transactions. We optimized blocks, fees, finality, and throughput. Tokens could move globally in seconds, and smart contracts could enforce logic without trust. But while value moved fast, data stayed fragile. Storage was outsourced, fragmented, or treated as an afterthought-an invisible weakness hiding behind beautiful decentralization narratives. This is where scaling quietly broke. Not because chains couldn’t process more transactions, but because they couldn’t remember more meaning. Storage was static, expensive, or disconnected from logic. Web3 could compute-but it couldn’t truly own its data. Walrus changes the conversation by making storage programmable, native, and composable. Instead of treating data as a passive blob, Walrus treats it as an active participant in the system. Data can be versioned, referenced, reused, verified, and evolved-without losing decentralization. Storage stops being a cost center and becomes infrastructure. This matters because scale isn’t just about volume; it’s about continuity. When data is programmable, applications can grow without breaking their past. Developers don’t have to rebuild context every time users arrive. Protocols can evolve without erasing history. Meaning persists, not just execution. More importantly, Walrus unlocks a new design space. AI agents can reason over decentralized datasets. Games can store worlds, not just scores. Social protocols can preserve narratives instead of feeds. Web3 stops being transactional and starts becoming experiential-at scale. When we talk about the "AI Era," we are talking about a hunger for data that would starve any current blockchain. AI requires massive datasets that are verifiable and untampered. If we feed our models centralized data, we get centralized intelligence. Walrus provides the first "Trustless Data Lake" where AI can graze on terabytes of information with cryptographic proof of availability. This is the infrastructure for a world where your data isn't just a file on a disk, but a "Wealth Engine"-a programmable gold mine that you, and only you, control. The cost of decentralization has historically been a "poverty tax" on developers. To stay decentralized, you had to be small. Walrus breaks this curse. By reducing storage overhead by up to 80% compared to legacy competitors, it makes it cheaper to be decentralized than to be centralized. It turns the "AWS Killer" from a slogan into a mathematical reality. We are moving toward a "Full-Stack Decentralization" where the frontend, the backend, the assets, and the history all live in the same trustless logic. Walrus doesn’t just store data - it protects the soul of Web3 as it scales. Fellow visionaries, the future isn't written in code alone; it's etched in the data we dare to decentralize. Without Walrus, Web3 plateaus - a promising tech trapped in adolescence. With it, we soar: A scalable, meaningful ecosystem where value moves freely, and stories endure eternally. @Walrus 🦭/acc $WAL #walrus