Callisto Monthly - October 2022
Last updated
Last updated
Welcome to your November issue of Callisto Monthly, a look at what has been happening in the world of Callisto over the last month.
This month, we start with…
October saw a shake-up in the Callisto C-suite.
At the top, Callisto’s current fearless leader, Vladimir Vencalek, stepped down as CEO of Callisto Network and took on the role of Chief Operating Officer … which was once the roost for Dexaran, who stepped aside from the COO role to take on duties of Chief Technology Officer.
And at the very top now sits Michael Broda, the new Callisto CEO.
Michael has been connected to Callisto for several months now through Esports Innovation Group, which he has been running for a while and is a leader in the esports industry. Michael brings to Callisto deep ties to the venture capital world and of course, equally deep ties in eSports, which is where much of the crypto industry really began last decade.
Pairing Vladimir’s strength in blockchain with Michael’s strength in marketing and growing esports gaming and working with VC firms and investors will result in a stronger, more nimble company with many more opportunities it can pursue.
Already, Michael is looking for ways to take Callisto’s technology into a host of new arenas that offer explosive growth as crypto and particularly the NFT space, grow toward mass adoption.
Next up, another day, another hack…
The TempleDAO DeFi protocol was hacked in early October for $2.3 million, or 4% of the funds locked into TempleDAO, which the hacker quickly moved to Tornado Cash to wash the funds.
Callisto’s Security Department dove into the smart contract to figure out where the weakness was hiding.
And the team found it in a single line of code.
A snippet of the Solidity code specified an onlyOwner modifier used to restrict access. However, that same modifier was missing elsewhere in the coding. If not for that missing modifier, the hacker would not have been able to make off with the cash.
Just another example of the strength of the Callisto Security Department in its forensic abilities to pull apart the hacks that happen. Ultimately, it makes the Callisto Network stronger because these exercises keep our security team actively engaged in rooting out fraud. That can only make Callisto Network stronger.
Moving on to gaming…
Esports Innovation Group has partnered with German Bundesliga football club VfL Wolfsburg to launch an industry-first gamer identity and esports platform. And it all rides atop the Callisto blockchain.
Through this new platform, Wolfsburg will host 10 online and offline esports tournaments for fans in games such as FIFA, Rocket League, and Fortnite.
Wolfsburg has been a pioneer in eports gaming, dating to 2015 when the club became the first in the Bundesliga to sponsor a professional esports gamer – Benedikt "SaLz0r" Saltzer, who spent seven years on the esports circuit.
Wolfsburg’s esports platform is white-labeling an Esports Innovation Group solution known as “Gamers Passport.” This passport, which Wolfsburg will call “VfL Gaming Pass,” will effectively work as a membership card for esports tournaments. The pass will allow Wolfsburg fans to store and manage in a central location all their important tournament information, such as name, age, email, previous esports successes, and their social media accounts.
In an upcoming expansion, the VfL Gaming Pass will offer gamified Web3 tools that will allow pass holders to:
Host their own esports tournaments, or what EIG calls "User Generated Tournaments."
Earn discounts for other VfL products, such as tickets, merchandising, etc., via play-and-earn features
Acquire Non-Fungible Tokens.
And because the pass is built atop the Callisto Network and uses the CallistoNFT Standard, users can interact directly as buyers/sellers without going through a third-party marketplace.
Expect to see many more opportunities like this arise.
So-called 1-of-1 art is an increasingly popular and important part of the NFT ecosystem as artists, galleries, and art collectors move beyond traditional, generative NFTs minted in the hundreds of thousands and instead look for truly unique art.
To this end, iMucha has launched a series of posters based on the work of world-famous Czech artist Alphonse Mucha. The NFTs are, of course, housed on the Callisto blockchain.
The collection of five NFTs reflects some of Mucha’s most famous art-nouveau posters, but each has been animated to include twinkling stars, fluttering butterflies, or even shifting sunbeams. These Mucha NFTs are available on the iMucha website, which chose the CallistoNFT Standard because of the Callisto blockchain’s security and its low transaction costs.
Each of the five NFTs comes in three editions, ranging from Emerald (a 1-of-1) to Ruby (247 copies) to Amethyst (1,860 copies).
The various editions come will additional benefits beyond ownership of the NFT itself. The Emerald edition, for instance, provides access to the Emerald Club, where owners can attend all exhibitions and events organized by the iMucha project free of charge and will collect discounts on purchases in the iMucha e-shop.
Callisto’s work with iMucha is just an early example of where the NFT division is headed in terms of bringing real-world artists and galleries onto the blockchain and into Web3.
And finally…
A few small bits of information from across Callisto to share…
New CEO Michael Broda recently participated in an AMA hosted by Unstoppable Domains, which allows users to create Web3 blockchain addresses similar to a Web2 URL.
Michael and a lineup of guests from Fantom, Gnosis, and Callisto spoke to understand EVM, or Ethereum Virtual Machine, a software platform developers use to create decentralized applications (dApps) that run atop EVM-compliant networks, such as Callisto’s.
SOY Finance, meanwhile, celebrated its first birthday. In its first year:
SOY deployed on the Callisto, Ethereum Classic, and BitTorrent blockchains.
Saw total value locked, TVL, surpassing $2.5 million.
Integrated bridges that now connect SOY to four other networks.
And airdropped SOY tokens to the community.
Over at Absolute Wallet, the community has voted to add two new blockchains.
The two winners were Acala and Ubiq. Absolute will be running a new poll soon as it seeks to expand the number of blockchains integrated into the wallet.
With that, we wrap up the November Callisto update. Talk to you again next month.
