Bessie Liu

Metaplex, a company that creates NFT tools for creators and developers on the Solana blockchain, introduced protocol update plans for its token metadata program yesterday, drawing community backlash.



This latest update will introduce immutability to token metadata but will ensure that its key characteristics are preserved. It will also introduce network fees of around 0.01 to 0.001 SOL to the token metadata program on select instructions.&nbsp;



Stephen Hess, the CEO of Metaplex, told Blockworks that “the goal of adding small transaction fees on Token Metadata is to align the protocol with the success of the community it serves and to fund on-going innovation including the completion of the Token Metadata program and continued development of new technology like Compressed NFTs, which we introduced late last year.”



Unlike on the Ethereum blockchain, where ERC (Ethereum request for comment) represents a blueprint of how contracts should function on the network, Solana does not yet have these interfaces, Mert Mumtaz, the co-founder and CEO of Helius, a Solana infrastructure company, told Blockworks.



This means that a single program owned by a single team will set the standard, Mumtaz said.



According to a <a href="https://www.metaplex.com/posts/expanding-digital-assets-with-compression-for-nfts">blog post</a> from November 2022, Metaplex states that it accounts for over 99.9% of the Solana NFT market.



Considering Metaplex’s importance in the Solana NFT market, Mumtaz notes that program freezing —&nbsp; the process of permanently locking metadata in decentralized storage so that the information will never go lost or missing — should be necessary.



This ensures that users will always have access to their NFTs and that a single for-profit entity does not have control over the entire network’s NFTs, Mumtaz explains.



“I think the problem is it was assumed this was public infrastructure, like roads in a city, and now there’s taxes or tolls being added to the roads in the city,” Mumtaz said.&nbsp;



The tolls — or in this case the network fees — Mumtaz emphasizes, are not the biggest problem.



“The biggest problem is usually, if there’s fees, we can just fork the program and people can choose to use a different program with no fees, but Metroplex changed their license such as their program is not open source anymore and you can’t legally fork it past a certain point,” he said. “Now we&#8217;re essentially forced to pay a tax to use that program.”&nbsp;



Mumtaz notes he does not believe the amount of tax that must be paid is the problem but the ethics behind the decision.&nbsp;



In response to these concerns, Hess highlights that it is important to note that it is still possible for anyone to fork Metaplex programs.



“​​It’s acceptable under the license for anyone to fork Metaplex programs even for a competitive use case, provided the fork isn’t removing, replacing or modifying the fees,” Hess said.&nbsp;



The code can also be forked and fees can be removed under the circumstances that a program or product is non-competitive, he notes.&nbsp;



“We implemented the license in response to third parties forking our open source code, closing source and making the forks their proprietary businesses…The license aims to strike a balance between protecting our ability to economically benefit from our code while also ensuring transparency, composability and freedom for developers to build on top of it,” he said.&nbsp;



Hess confirms that there are no plans for Metaplex Foundation to change its license for now. He notes that important updates in response to the community’s feedback will be published later today.&nbsp;



“[We] are committed to iterating to find the right balance between sustaining protocol innovation long term,” he said.



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Metaplex’s Latest Updates Have Community Members Riled Up

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_627eaa8f4a75f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Blockchain platform Infinite Arcade hires Visa’s former senior director of global marketing</li>
 <li>Bitstamp promotes its Europe chief executive to global CEO</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Binance hired Joshua Eaton, a former deputy US attorney in the Northern District of California, as its deputy general counsel.



Before becoming an attorney at the Department of Justice, Eaton was a line prosecutor and senior staff advisor in the US Army. In both roles, he offered counsel on a range of complex operations, investigations, litigation and policies.&nbsp;



Eaton said he became interested in crypto while working at the US attorney’s office, where he realized the importance of preventing bad actors from abusing blockchain technology for personal gain.



He will now lead the largest crypto exchange’s legal affairs group, supporting global compliance, investigations and law enforcement coordination activities.&nbsp;



Binance also revealed its appointment of Jarek Jakubcek as the company’s head of intelligence and investigations for the Asia Pacific region.&nbsp;



Jakubcek previously worked for seven years as a cryptocurrency specialist in Europol Cybercrime Centre’s dark web team. Prior to Europol, he spent about five years at An Garda Siochana, Ireland’s National Police and Security Service.



At Binance, Jarek will work with law enforcement agencies to coordinate the takedown of malicious crypto actors.



The US affiliate of crypto exchange FTX hired Marissa MacDonald to be the chief compliance officer of FTX Trust Company — FTX.US&#8217;s New York division that’s pending regulatory approval.&nbsp;&nbsp;



FTX.US also disclosed it applied for a trust charter with the New York Department of Financial Services to operate in the state.



MacDonald most recently worked as chief compliance officer at Fidelity Digital Assets. She began her career at Ernst &amp; Young.



Metaplex Studios hired former Paxos interim chief marketing officer Julie Mossler as its chief marketing officer to expand the range of projects built on the <a href="https://www.metaplex.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Metaplex protocol</a>. 



In less than a year, the Metaplex protocol has been used to mint more than 11 million NFTs, which have generated $2.6 billion in sales, according to the organization.



Before working at crypto company Paxos, Mossler was head of global marketing and brand at Waze and also served as head of global communications at Groupon.



Crypto exchange Bitstamp appointed JB Graftieaux as its new global CEO after he joined the company in May 2021 as its Europe chief executive.



He succeeds Julian Sawyer, who decided to pursue other opportunities, the company said Monday.



Graftieaux previously held executive roles at eBay and PayPal. He was also Bitstamp’s chief compliance officer between 2014 and 2016, helping the company obtain regulatory licenses. &nbsp;



Asia-based digital asset financial services group HashKey Group appointed David Leahy as chief operating officer of the company’s exchange business and WK Chim as senior advisor to the board.



Leahy joins from JPMorgan in Hong Kong, where he was most recently a managing director and head of the Financial Sponsors Group for Asia. He previously worked in senior alternative investments roles at Credit Suisse.



Chim, who will focus on providing independent assessment and advice on the risk frameworks and policies across HashKey, currently serves as independent non-executive director of OCBC Wing Hang Bank and chairs the bank’s risk management committee.



Blockchain platform Infinite Arcade, which is focused on bringing the mobile games industry into the metaverse, appointed Andrew Dubatowka as a core contributor of product marketing.&nbsp;



Dubatowka previously spent four years as a senior director of global marketing at financial services giant Visa and has also worked in senior roles at IPG Mediabrands and AdColony. He has worked with brands and clients such as Intel, Johnson &amp; Johnson, Google, Pandora, Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo.



“The project is all about a firm belief in two things: the benefits that blockchain technology can bring to the games industry; and, through these benefits, that gaming will be the ramp that onboards hundreds of millions of people into web3,” Dubatowka said in a statement.



Canada-based virtual currency brokerage Secure Digital Markets (SDM) said this week Wall Street veteran Alan Mittleman joined the firm on May 2 as chief operating officer.



Mittleman most recently worked at NatWest Markets as its global head of USD fixed income trading. From 2011 to 2015, he was global head of USD rates trading for Société Générale. He held other roles at Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston and Price Waterhouse.



Zachary Friedman, SDM’s co-founder and former COO, is now the company’s chief strategy officer.



Crypto financial services company EQONEX hired Daniel Ling as chief financial officer and a member of its executive committee.



The move comes as Paul Ewing, the company’s previous CFO, was appointed as chief operating officer (COO) following former COO Andrew Eldon’s resignation to pursue other opportunities.



Ling had recently been appointed to EQONEX’s board of directors as part of the company’s strategic partnership with payments technology company Bifinity, where Ling was director of strategy.&nbsp;



Before Bifinity, he was CFO at Pujiang International Group and also previously worked at Bridgewater Associates, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Singapore Exchange and ShoreVest Capital.

Latest in Crypto Hiring: Binance, FTX Make Key Additions

Morgan Chittum

<div id="highlights-block_61e6b12ac2634" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Investors include celebrities Michael Jordan and Kevin Love</li>
 <li>Metaplex Foundation previously launched an NFT marketplace in June 2021</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Metaplex Foundation announced a $46 million funding round on Tuesday, co-led by Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto. The fresh raise will go towards “expanding support for gaming and metaverse applications,” the company said in a statement to Blockworks.&nbsp;



Metaplex, the Solana-based protocol developed by the firm, is commonly used in minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as well as an infrastructure for creators to launch self-hosted NFT storefronts. The protocol has minted over 5.7 million NFTs since its inception, according to the startup.



Stephen Hess,&nbsp; director of Metaplex Foundation, told Blockworks that there will be a “few key areas of development that the Metaplex Foundation will initially focus on.”



“This includes introducing an open NFT standard and minting program, tools that further enable peer-to-peer commerce and Web3 identity systems using an on-chain social graph,” Hess said. “We believe these elements are core to the metaverse, and we are keen to support the projects and developers who are expanding the functionality of the Metaplex protocol.”



Other investors in the round include big names like Michael Jordan, Kevin Love, Ndamukong Suh, Obi Toppin, Allen Iverson, Arnold Poernomo and Lily Liu, with participation from Alameda Research, Solana Ventures and Animoca Brands.&nbsp;



“NFTs introduced millions of people to crypto in 2021 and showed the world a new way to build relationships directly with fans,” Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, said in a statement.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Metaplex accelerated that trend by radically reducing minting and trading costs, which made NFTs more accessible to a long-tail of creators, each with their own true fans.”</blockquote>



Metaplex Foundation previously <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/06/02/metaplex-foundation-launches-solana-based-nft-marketplace/">launched</a> an NFT marketplace in June 2021, partnering with Solana Labs and cryptocurrency exchange FTX.



The funding announcement follows a historic year for NFTs. The ten largest marketplaces for the blockchain-based digital collectibles notched almost $24 billion in total trading volume in 2021 alone, according to <a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/nft-market-report-preview-2021/">a report </a>by Chainanalysis.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



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