Tag: The Protocol

April 22: Web3 Foundation (W3F), the foundation behind the Polkadot ecosystem, has announced a 10 million DOT ($74.5 million) prize pool, “to foster diversity within the development of JAM, a protocol combining elements of both Polkadot and Ethereum,” according to the team: “Through the JAM Implementer’s Prize, W3F are seeking developers to diversify and strengthen network resilience. One of the key features of JAM is the guaranteed seamless compatibility for developers. W3F’s mission is to nurture cutting-edge applications for decentralized web software protocols.” JAM stands for “Join-Accumulate Machine,” and it provides a “global singleton permissionless object environment, much like the smart-contract environment pioneered by Ethereum, paired with secure sideband computation parallelized over a scalable node network,” according to the graypaper by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood, who was also a co-founder of Ethereum.

April 19: ORA’s OAO (stands for On-chain AI Oracle), describing itself as “the world’s first AI oracle,” is gearing up to launch on Polygon’s PoS network, according to the team: “OAO was called more than 10,000 times in under a month on Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet. In March, OAO was launched on Ethereum mainnet. Now, developers, protocols and dApps will be able to verify and use LLM inferences on Polygon. The OAO (Onchain AI Oracle) launch onto Polygon is critical for scalability, speed and convenience. Developers and users will be able to cheaply and efficiently access verifiable inference data on-chain.”

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

April 19: Telos Foundation, which supports the Telos blockchain, said it will work with Ponos Technology, a zero-knowledge-proof research and development firm, to develop an end-to-end optimized, hardware-accelerated Ethereum layer 2 network featuring SNARKtor, the Telos-developed decentralized recursive proof aggregator. According to the team: “Telos will also work with several other new partners during the L2’s development cycle, including Digital M.O.B. (Ethereum dev team), ATKA (Web3 incubator) and Cometh (dev team led by ETH France President Jerome De Tychey).”

April 19: Runes DEX, an automated market maker (AMM) platform for runes on Bitcoin, announced the successful closure of its $2 million seed investment round. According to a press release: “This crucial funding milestone has garnered support from prominent blockchain investors including Kenetic Capital, Mechanism Capital, Auros Ventures, Future Fund and Boosty Labs. Notable industry pioneers backing this round are Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger; 0xMaki, founder of SushiSwap; and AOI, founder of AOI.com.”

April 18: Safe, a provider of blockchain smart accounts, has “welcomed the senior leadership team of Multis to the Safe Ecosystem Foundation and completed the strategic acquisition of the Multis source code,” according to the team: “Thibaut Sahaghian, former CEO of Multis, will take on the role of network abstraction lead within the Safe ecosystem. Together, the Safe and former Multis team will collaborate to solve the complexities of cross-chain interaction through network abstraction, with the goal of enabling users to manage assets across diverse blockchain networks effortlessly.” Multis offers a crypto business wallet, according to its website.

April 18: Aethir, a leader in decentralized cloud computing, introduced the Aethir Edge device powered by Qualcomm, “a significant leap in edge computing with a decentralized infrastructure that enhances reliability by distributing capacity across peer nodes,” according to a message from the team. “Aethir Edge is the hardware component of the Aethir DePIN stack, and it is, in all aspects, a hardware device built to power the next generation of GPU cloud computing. Through Aethir Edge, we enable everyone to join Aethir’s network as a service provider who wishes to contribute their underutilized broadband, IP addresses, bandwidth, or GPU computing resources to our DePIN in exchange for 23% of $ATH token rewards,” according to a blog post published Thursday.

April 18: Nodle (NODL), a smartphone-based DePIN powering applications for authenticating media content, locating assets or proving location, announced it will be launching on zkSync Era, an Ethereum layer-2 network built around zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. According to the team: “The first initiative of Nodle’s DePIN launching on zkSync will be the deployment of its new Click camera app, the world’s first Digital Trust Network. This marks a significant advancement for Nodle by using blockchain technology for media authentication to fight misinformation leveraging the scalability and efficiency of zkSync.” Launched in 2017, Nodle was originally based on the Stellar blockchain and later moved to Polkadot.

April 18: Tom Couture, vice president of crypto strategy at the analysis firm FundStrat, writes in a quarterly report out Thursday: “The crypto industry saw over $2.3 billion in private funding across 367 deals, marking a significant increase in activity and the first time total funding has surpassed $2 billion since Q2 of 2023. Infrastructure remained the most popular investment category, attracting nearly $1.1 billion across 141 deals, reflecting ongoing industry efforts to enhance scalability and user experience.”

April 18: Ordz Games said its new GameFi-meets-DePIN handheld device, “BitBoy One,” sold out its first 1,000 units in two minutes during a public sale, after launching in Paris, Hong Kong and Dubai. The device was featured in Protocol Village on April 7.

April 18: ARPA Network, a secure computation network for blockchain-adapted cryptography, said its Randcast, an on-chain verifiable random number generator, has launched on the testnet for Redstone, an optimistic rollup layer-2 framework crafted by the Ethereum-focused engineering company Lattice, built on the OP Stack, according to the team: “The integration of Randcast with Redstone pushes more seamless and enriched on-chain gaming experiences. Together, this streamlines the developer experience for those crafting ambitious applications, games and worlds. Randcast’s dev-friendly Smart Contract SDK allows for the effortless integration of randomness, so with the Redstone integration it pushes the limits of what is possible to build on the EVM.”

April 18: Nym Technologies, a blockchain privacy infrastructure project, has joined the Liquid Federation to help secure and scale the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem to meet global demand, according to the team: “This is the first step in a deeper partnership between Nym, the Liquid Federation and Blockstream. The next step will be the integration of Liquid on the Nym mixnet, extending Liquid’s default confidentiality to also protect the patterns of transactions in transit, and enabling strong network level privacy to Bitcoin users who are using layer-2 protocols to stack sats to save on fees and for greater confidentiality.”

April 18: Matter Labs, the main developer behind the Ethereum rollup zkSync, hired Nana Murugesan, former vice president for business development and international at Coinbase, as president. At Coinbase, “he oversaw global business development and partnerships, international operations, and asset listings,” according to a press release. “Prior to his time at Coinbase, he served as Managing Director at Snap Inc., where he led Snapchat’s global expansion and strategic partnerships.”

April 18: Nibiru, a new blockchain backed by Tribe Capital and led by ex-Google, IBM, and JP Morgan execs, is “launching a $15M program, aiming to prevent a potential talent drain amid the crypto market recovery. The initiative, includes a $5M allocation for Asia, will offer financial incentives and funding to developers driving the adoption of a new L1. The goal is to keep talent building in the Web3 space as the industry struggles to retain skilled developers tempted by opportunities in other sectors.”

April 18: Aptos Labs, the developers behind the Aptos layer-1 blockchain, said it is collaborating with Microsoft, Brevan Howard and South Korean wireless telecommunications operator SK Telecom to offer institutions a gateway into decentralized finance. The partnership will offer Aptos Ascend, a suite of end-to-end institutional solutions like regulatory requirement help, tools to maintain account and transaction privacy and embedded features for know-your-customer (KYC) checks. (APT)

April 18: P2P.org, a provider of non-custodial staking services for professional investors, introduced “restaking with DVT on staking infrastructure SSV Network, recently surpassing 500,000 ETH staked. The new offering leverages EigenLayer technology to provide institutional clients a secure, decentralized staking option. With an APR exceeding 5.6%, it taps into Ethereum and layer-2 chains, endorsed by flagship client crypto financial services platform Matrixport.”

April 7: Obol Labs, a developer team focused on proof-of-stake blockchain infrastructure, said its distributed validator clusters are ready to be activated in the Lido Simple DVT Module on Ethereum Mainnet, after a period of testing and evaluation. According to a proposal voted on by the Lido community in October: Distributed validator technology, or DVT, “represents the fastest way to add many new Node Operators to the Lido Node Operator set with a more diverse profile of solo and community staker participants while benefiting from the technology’s inherent benefits such as increased resilience, distribution, and security. The Simple DVT module is intended to demonstrate that utilizing DVT on mainnet is possible, while furthering the diversification of the Lido Node Operator set on Ethereum and setting the stage for more scalable and permissionless DVT-based modules in the near future.”

April 7: Blockchain-based gaming platform Ordz Games has unveiled its revolutionary handheld gaming device, BitBoy One, at Hong Kong Web3 Gaming Expo, followed by a launch event at Paris Blockchain Week, according to a press release. “Inspired by the first-generation Nintendo Game Boy from 1989, the BitBoy, a portmanteau of ‘Bitcoin’ and ‘Game Boy,’ rocks a sleek translucent orange design, aims to bring Web3 gaming to the new age of DePIN, offering a unique blend of nostalgia, innovation and community. Players can earn Bitcoin through retro-style play-to-earn games, diving back into their childhoods.”

April 4: Ellipsis Labs, the core developers behind the on-chain Phoenix exchange, today announced $20 million in Series A funding, according to the team: “Led by Paradigm with participation from Electric Capital, the funding will accelerate Ellipsis Labs’ efforts to build DeFi products that can rival the performance of traditional finance. This is part of Ellipsis Labs’ mission to create a new financial ecosystem that offers competitive financial products on top of high-throughput blockchains, pairing the accessibility and transparency of decentralized infrastructure with the efficiency of traditional markets.” According to the project documentation, Phoenix is a decentralized limit order book on Solana, with instant settlement and all market events written on-chain.

April 4: Manta Network, Celestia, Ora and Hyperbolic Labs are “bringing on-chain access for artificial general intelligence (AGI) models to Manta Pacific,” according to the team: “Developers and users can build and access information through AGI models in a cost-effective and scalable way. AGI tools like Stable Diffusion (world’s most powerful AI media generation tool) and Llama 2 (Meta’s language model) can be used to generate images, audio, video, interactions. Manta Network offers the largest modular L2 ecosystem to deploy AI apps to a large base of users, and Celestia powers data availability for high-performance AI apps.” (Manta Pacific is an Ethereum layer-2 network optimized for ZK applications, according to the project documentation.)

April 4: Web3Firewall, a risk and compliance platform, announced Thursday that it has successfully closed a $2.5 million pre-seed investment round led by Laser Digital, Nomura’s digital asset subsidiary, gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) and SPEILLLP, a member of Susquehanna International Group. According to a blog post: “Web3Firewall was founded in 2023 by Dr. Samer Fayssal, who was previously CISO and Head of Security at digital asset custodian BitGo. Fayssal and team recognized that Web3 and blockchain technology companies require a next-generation cybersecurity product rather than the fragmented solutions currently available. The product, Web3Firewall Enterprise, addresses increasingly sophisticated risk and compliance demands in one seamless platform, which is equipped to handle the unique risk profiles of DeFi, NFTs, DAOs and other emerging Web3 applications, providing a security layer that will be able to keep pace as the tokenized economy develops.”

April 4: Ripple, the enterprise-focused blockchain service and creator of the XRP Ledger, is introducing its own stablecoin pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar. The company said the token, which it plans to release “later this year,” will be “100% backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government Treasuries and other cash equivalents.” The stablecoin will be deployed onto Ripple’s institution-focused XRP Ledger along with the Ethereum blockchain to start out, and it will be based on Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard. CoinDesk 20 asset: (XRP)

April 4: Celo Foundation and Rarible on Thursday introduced “Celosphere,” a new NFT marketplace powered by RaribleX and platforming digital ownership, according to the team: “Built on Celo, an emerging Ethereum layer-2 and mobile-first blockchain network, the Celosphere provides creators with the tools to bring their diverse digital collectibles to communities around the world.” In a blog post, the foundation said: “The launch of Celosphere is a continuation of Rarible’s collaboration to empower creators, following the March 7th integration of Rarible API on Celo. Through the integration, builders of decentralized applications (dApps) leveraging NFT technology on Celo gained access to robust toolkits including a real-time NFT indexer, multi-chain support, and more.” The foundation also announced the launch of “Celo Creators Fund, distributing 150,000 Celo-native USDC for creators, with inaugural community partners Refraction, Boys Club, Rug Radio and HUG.” (CELO) (RARI)

April 4: Redstone, an on-chain games and autonomous worlds OP Chain built by Lattice, said it’s coming to mainnet on May 1. According to the team: “Redstone is the home for on-chain worlds, games and apps built with the MUD on-chain application framework. In April, Redstone is launching a developer preview, giving space for the launch partners, including GG Quest, Small Brain Games, to deploy smart contracts ahead of time, test things out.”

April 4: Velodrome, an AMM-based decentralized exchange on Optimism, officially announced their second major deployment onto the BOB (Build on Bitcoin) network, a Bitcoin layer-2 network with EVM compatibility. According to the BOB team: “The Superchain is a network of interoperable layer-2 chains that will share bridging, governance, upgrades, a communication layer and more, all built on and powered by the OP Stack. Velodrome will be the primary MetaDEX of the Superchain. The MetaDEX acts as the liquidity and volume hub, and this integration seamlessly unlocks BTC DeFi and fosters innovation for all Bitcoin use cases through EVM contract deployments.”

April 4: LightLink, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain that lets dApps and enterprises offer users gasless transactions, announced the close of a $6.2 million extended seed round with participation from MH Ventures and NxGen. “The company also saw participation from several notable crypto personalities, including ANBESSA, Eric Cryptoman, Satoshi Stacker, That Martini Guy and Zoran Cole,” according to the team. “LightLink will use this additional funding to integrate millions of users into the digital economy, offering dApps with gasless transactions. The company will also use this funding to further its partnerships with enterprise businesses, such as Animoca Brands.”

April 4: ORA, an oracle protocol designed to bring AI and complex compute on-chain, is releasing “Onchain AI Oracle” (OAO) on Optimism’s OP Mainnet, according to the team: “Developers and users can now cheaply and efficiently access verifiable inference data onchain. OAO is the world’s first AI oracle, enabling AI on any chain. ORA invented the opML framework to verify LLM inferences onchain. It is analogous to optimistic rollups on Ethereum L2s. Grok, Stable Diffusion and Llama2 are now accessible for use on Ethereum in one location: ORA’s OAO. ORA breaks down the limitations of smart contracts by offering AI, richer data sources and arbitrary compute so developers can innovate freely.”

April 4: The team behind Vana, a decentralized network for user-owned datasets and models, notes that Reddit Data DAO has launched atop the network. According to the team: “It is a community-owned data treasury where users can join with their Reddit account and receive governance rights based on how much data they contribute. Users can then vote to sell their data to other AI companies or vote to delete it if Reddit agrees to pay them directly. The DAO demonstrates the power of user-owned data, the potential for user-owned foundation models, and the sorts of applications Vana is making possible.”

April 4: Drife, a Web3 decentralized ride-hailing platform that uses blockchain technology to create a peer-to-peer network for drivers and riders, is migrating to the Sui blockchain. According to the team: “This is the first decentralized mobility infrastructure platform to integrate on Sui. The Drife platform offers a zero-commission fee structure which allows drivers to earn more income and pass on the benefits to riders in the form of savings. Sui is the optimal blockchain platform for Drife as it offers low network fees, reduced transaction costs, and enhanced overall affordability for users.” According to the project’s documentation, it was built on Polygon.

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

March 2: Babylon, builder of protocols for Bitcoin blockchain timestamping and bitcoin staking, announced a collaboration with Ankr, a Web3 infrastructure company, to bring security and liquidity to proof-of-stake (PoS chains), according to the team: “Ankr will create liquid staking tokens (LSTs) for the bitcoin staked via Babylon. The LSTs will then be issued on PoS chains secured by the BTC staking protocol. For stakers, this means their BTC will be locked on the bitcoin blockchain while new LSTs are minted on the PoS chain they chose to provide security for. Ankr will also run validators on Babylon’s testnet and build advanced security infrastructure to support Babylon’s nodes and finality providers.” CoinDesk 20 asset: (BTC)

March 2: Ottr, a crypto wallet powered by Solana, announced its team is joining Tools For Humanity (TFH), a primary contributor to the Worldcoin project, to lead development of TFH’s user-friendly mobile wallet, World App, used by over 3 million people monthly, according to the team: “Since launching Ottr Wallet 18 months ago, the Ottr team developed a self-custody wallet with seamless integration with U.S. bank accounts, gas-free transfers and trading, passwordless cloud backups and a comprehensive dApp store. Now, they’ll bring their expertise to TFH to help provide more people with access to the digital economy.”

March 2: Wormhole, a protocol for communication between blockchains, just revealed “Wormhole Native Token Transfers,” a new framework for making any token multichain, securely and efficiently, according to the team: “NTT introduces an open, flexible, and composable framework for transferring native tokens across blockchains while preserving their intrinsic properties. Compared to wrapped assets, NTT is simpler, decentralized, marking a significant stride forward for interoperability. Projects built on NTT retain control over their tokens’ behavior on each chain, including customizability, metadata and ownership/upgradeability.” According to a blog post, NTT is “powering natively multichain tokens for industry-leading projects like Lido, ether.fi, Puffer Finance, PIKE and Wormhole.”

March 2: BOB, a Bitcoin layer-2 blockchain project, announced its innovative hybrid solution between Bitcoin and Ethereum at their “Bitcoin Renaissance” event, a side event of ETHDenver attended by 1,500 individuals, according to the team: “This solution introduces an ETH-settled rollup that leverages an advanced merged mining technique to inherit Bitcoin’s PoW security. Looking ahead, BOB plans to enable settlements on both Bitcoin, via BitVM, and Ethereum. The project also revealed that its mainnet launch is timed to coincide with the upcoming Bitcoin halving.” CoinDesk 20 asset: (BTC)

March 2: Taiko, a layer-2 scaling solution provider for the Ethereum blockchain, has raised $15 million in a series A funding round, adding to the growing amount of investment allocations to crypto projects from venture-capital firms. The fundraise was led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures and Token Bay Capital, according to a press release. Other investors in the round included Wintermute Ventures, Presto Labs, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures, GSR and WW Ventures. The latest round brings Taiko’s total fundraising across three rounds to $37 million.

March 2: Clone, an open-source protocol for trading non-native tokens on the Solana blockchain, has announced the public mainnet launch of Clone Markets and Clone Liquidity launched on March 1, according to the team: “The launch will introduce highly liquid markets for non-native assets via Clone’s innovative “cloned assets” (clAssets), creating a more seamless, efficient and accessible trading environment for Solana users. Arbitrum, Optimism and Sui’s network tokens will be available to trade with deep liquidity on Solana for the first time.”

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

March 1 (PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE): Renzo, a liquid restaking protocol, has partnered with Connext to bring cross-chain restaking for Arbitrum, according to the team: “This now enables cross-chain restaking for multiple L2 networks, including BNB Chain, Linea, Base and now the Arbitrum network. Due to the lower fees rollups provide, users on L2s that have partnered with Renzo now provide restaking at a fraction of the cost while also allowing users to restake ETH on their supported network of choice. Renzo and Connext achieve this with ezETH, with EigenLayer leveraging Connext’s bridging and message-passing protocol to transfer ERC-20 with no slippage.”

Feb. 29: Metis, an Ethereum layer-2 network, plans to integrate Chainlink’s interoperability solution, Chainlink CCIP, “as its canonical token bridge infrastructure, enabling the Metis ecosystem to expand its cross-chain footprint, enhance user and developer experience and accelerate adoption,” according to the team. “As a part of this integration, the Metis bridge interface will be upgraded to leverage Chainlink CCIP as the official cross-chain infrastructure to power the canonical Metis token bridge, with an initial focus on bridging leading stablecoins from Ethereum mainnet onto the Metis network.” CoinDesk 20 asset: {{LINK}}

Feb. 29 (PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE): Alchemy is launching Embedded Accounts, “the easiest way to onboard users to Web3, according to the team. “It’s a simple all-in-one solution to:

1. Onboard users with Web2 login (email, passkeys, and soon social auth)

2. Transact with zero friction. One-click checkout by sponsoring gas and batching tx

3. Build custom smart accounts with account recovery, multisig, session keys and more

Our mission at Alchemy is to onboard the whole world to self-sovereign Web3 accounts. To achieve this mission, wallets must become invisible by abstracting away the tech such that the user doesn’t even know they’re using a wallet.”

Feb. 29: Tea Protocol, founded by Max Howell, the creator of Homebrew’s open-source software package management, said that his “latest project leverages blockchain technology to address longstanding challenges in OSS development, marking a significant step towards a more sustainable and equitable ecosystem for software creators.” According to the team, Tea is “at the forefront of supporting OSS development through Web3 technology. This innovative approach ensures transparent and fair compensation for developers, enhancing collaboration and innovation within the open-source community.”

Feb. 29: QuickNode, a Web3 development platform, is launching “Streams,” a real-time blockchain data streaming solution, aiming to revolutionize blockchain infrastructure by providing instant access to historical and real-time data from Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, according to the team: “Streams empowers developers with popular programming languages, bridging the gap between blockchain data and conventional tools, reducing operational costs and expediting time-to-market for decentralized applications (dApps).”

Feb. 29: Immunefi, a bug bounty and security services platform for Web3 protecting over $60 billion in assets, released its “Crypto Losses in February 2024” report, showing a loss of $200.5 million to hacks and rug pulls in 2024 year-to-date, a 15.4% increase when compared with the same period in 2023. For the month of February alone, some $67.1 million was lost due to hacks and rug pulls, with the most targeted chain being Ethereum. Hacks continued to be the predominant cause of losses, accounting for $65.4 million, compared to fraud.

Feb. 29: Marathon Digital Holdings, a publicly-traded bitcoin mining firm, disclosed it has been incubating Anduro, a new programmable, multi-chain layer-2 network atop the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s a “platform built on the Bitcoin network that allows for the creation of multiple sidechains,” according to a press release. “Marathon is already developing the first two sidechains on Anduro, Coordinate and Alys, which can be further developed by open-source contributors. These chains demonstrate Anduro’s flexible programmability. Coordinate offers a cost-effective UTXO stack for the Ordinals community, whereas Alys is an Ethereum-compatible chain for institutional asset tokenization. Anduro’s sidechains utilize a process called merge-mining. Participating miners, like Marathon, may be able to earn Bitcoin-denominated revenue from transactions that occur on Anduro’s sidechains while continuing to mine bitcoin on the base-layer uninterruptedly.”

Feb. 29: The team from ZkLink, a multi-chain ZK rollup and layer-3 protocol, announces that zkHub has built a multi-rollup orderbook decentralized exchange (DEX) based on ZK technology, to address difficulties when navigating between layer-2 rollups, such as high transaction costs, security issues and operational complexity. “ZkHub is Ethereum’s first multi-rollup DEX to offer users a high-performance Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) with multi-chain native asset support, low transaction fees and Ethereum grade security,” according to a blog post.

Feb. 29: Coinbase, the publicly traded U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, is coming out with two new wallet solutions that are supposed to make the onboarding of new users into crypto easier. The features, known as their smart wallet and embedded wallets, aim to overcome hurdles that often come with the clunky user experience when creating crypto wallets.

Feb. 29: Shiba Inu plans to introduce a new privacy-focused network on top of the Shibarium blockchain in a move that boosts the value proposition of SHIB tokens, a representative shared with CoinDesk in a release on Wednesday. Shiba Inu is working with open-source cryptography company Zama on the as-yet-unnamed network. The network will use Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) – a privacy tool that lets developers use data on untrusted domains without needing to decrypt it. (SHIB)

Feb. 29: Rarible, a provider of real-time infrastructure for NFT wallets, games and marketplaces, launched “Rarible API,” which is “designed to simplify the complex nature of building in the NFT space,” according to the team: “It offers a comprehensive set of features, meeting the ever evolving needs of the Web3 ecosystem, including a real-time NFT indexer, aggregated order book, multi-chain support and trading SDK. Built with developers and creators in mind, Rarible API provides a robust infrastructure, enabling and inspiring the invention of future NFT experiences.

Feb. 22: Researchers at Telos Foundation, supporting the Telos blockchain, and Input Output Global, known for its work on the Cardano blockchain, have teamed up to publish a white paper revealing a new protocol, “Snarktor,” that developers can leverage to scale blockchains more efficiently and securely across millions of use cases via the integration of zk-SNARK technology. According to the abstract for the paper, published in Cryptology ePrint Archive: “We present a new protocol for decentralized recursive proof aggregation allowing one unique proof to aggregate many input proofs to be efficiently verified on-chain, increasing the throughput and cost efficiency of SNARK-based blockchains. The protocol is designed for decentralized environments where independent actors (provers) can join and contribute to the proof generation process.”

Feb. 25: Vibrant Finance DEX, backed by Izumi, deployed its DL-AMM-modeled DEX on Neon EVM to expand into non-Ethereum-based DeFi ecosystems, according to the team: “Integrating Vibrant Finance into Neon EVM gives users an enhanced trading experience and increased capital efficiency, signifying a substantial advancement in DeFi that combines the strengths of Ethereum’s framework and Solana’s performance.”

Feb. 23: Flare, describing itself as a layer-1 network for data, has raised $35 million in a private round that included investment from Kenetic, Aves Lair and others, according to a press release. Flare supports the creation of smart contract protocols and focuses on pricing oracles, which relay asset prices to and from various decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

Feb. 22: Vault, an assisted self-custody wallet by the global Web3 financial platform Uphold, is exiting the two-month beta phase on Thursday. According to the team: “The previous beta phase has seen a significant volume of $33M in assets traded amongst the select group of beta users. Following a diligent community feedback session, the Uphold team saw roughly 80% of surveyed users found Vault easy to understand and simple to use when moving and managing funds.”

Feb. 22: Helius on Thursday announced the successful closing of a $9.5 million Series A round, according to the team: “Helius, founded by former Coinbase and Amazon Web Services software engineers, has built a suite of tools designed to enhance the developer experience on Solana. The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures and Solana ecosystem founders, among other funds and investors.” CoinDesk 20 asset: {{SOL}}

Feb. 22: Alchemy just launched Modular Account, “a bold step forward in making the Web3 ecosystem more broadly accessible to non-technical users through dramatically improved UX,” according to the team. “Imagine trying to onboard the layman with no prior blockchain exposure and describing the various nuances of cold wallets, private keys, gas, nonces, etc. Modular Account is a new contract account implementation designed from the ground up for ERC-4337 and ERC-6900 compatibility. Modular Account provides enterprise-grade security, best in class cost, and robust account extensibility to developers building on Ethereum L2s.”

Feb. 22: Eigen Labs, the developer behind EigenLayer, the crypto restaking project atop Ethereum that is shaking up the decentralized finance landscape before it’s even gone live, raised $100 million from venture capital investor a16z crypto. Eigen Labs confirmed the investment in a thread on the social media platform X.

Feb 22: POKT Network, describing itself as the “RPC base layer,” says its Morse protocol has received its final update, marking a shift towards the Shannon upgrade. According to the team: “Launched on July 28, 2020, with Ethereum and POKT Network, it quickly advanced decentralized infrastructure. This update introduces AI support and improvements in non-custodial staking, reflecting Morse’s evolution and community contributions. Achieving over 700 billion relays across 60+ chains, Morse sets the stage for Shannon, enhancing network sustainability and capacity.”

Feb. 22: Astar Network developer, Startale Labs, a developer of Japanese Web3 products, Aiming to accelerate the mass adoption of Web3, has raised an additional $3.5 million from UOB Venture Management and Samsung Next, according to the team: “This brings the total seed round funding to $7 million, combined with a $3.5 million investment from Sony Network Communications in June 2023.”

Feb. 22: DWallet Labs announced the testnet launch of dWallet Network, a first-of-its-kind composable modular signature network. According to the team: “The dWallet Network introduces a new primitive for multi-chain collaboration in Web3 – dWallets – a noncollusive and massively decentralized signing mechanism that can be used as a building block on L1s and L2s to sign native transactions to all chains. With assets always staying on their native chains, eliminating the cross-chain risks of wrapping, bridging or messaging. It’s the first-of-its-kind composable modular signature network built on dWallet’s new protocol 2PC-MPC.”

Feb. 22: Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, has invested in Renzo, a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) and strategy manager for EigenLayer, built to promote the widespread adoption of EigenLayer. “Renzo Protocol, an EigenLayer restaking hub, consists of Ethereum smart contracts that facilitate trustless collaboration between stakers, node operators, and Actively Validated Services (AVSs),” according to the team.

Feb. 22 (EXCLUSIVE): Clave, a fintech dApp start-up aiming to provide an easy user experience for everyone to accelerate their on-chain journey, has raised $1.6M in a pre-seed funding round led by Matter Labs, the developer behind the layer-2 network zkSync. “The round also saw participation from Safe, Lambda Class and Mirana Ventures, as well as angel investors Sandy Peng of Scroll, Raj Parekh of Portal, Anurag Arjun of Avail, and many more industry leaders.”

Feb. 22: Arbitrum Foundation, supporting the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum, announced a partnership with OpenZeppelin, a smart-contracts code auditor, “to enable next-generation development on Arbitrum Stylus,” according to the team: “What is Arbitrum Stylus? Stylus is an upgrade to Arbitrum Nitro, the tech stack powering Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova and Arbitrum Orbit chains. It opens the door for developers to write smart contracts in various languages, such as Rust, C, and C++, that compile to WebAssembly (WASM). OpenZeppelin Contracts and Defender will be getting expanded to Arbitrum Stylus while supporting builders in the ecosystem with best-in-class security services.” (ARB)

Feb. 22: Aave, the largest DeFi money market protocol, “with strong governance support from the community, is coming to BNB Chain,” according to the BNB team.

– “This move further expands the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem, joining other industry heavyweights like Uniswap, Ambit Finance, PancakeSwap and Lista DAO.”

– “BNB Chain users will now have access to an industry leading lending platform and with strong liquidity on FDUSD, will be able to engage in more DeFi related activities.”

– “Aave users will benefit from being integrated with one of the largest DeFi ecosystems and have access to BNB Chain’s low fees.”

Feb. 22: Wormhole, a blockchain interoperability platform, announced a collaboration with microprocessor maker AMD that will make enterprise grade AMD FPGA hardware accelerators available to the Wormhole ecosystem, including the AMD Alveo™ U55C and U250 adaptable accelerator cards. AMD will also lend its deep hardware acceleration expertise to help deliver speed and scalability to multichain applications being built with Wormhole. “AMD offers enterprise-grade FPGAs that are based on the most advanced architectures for scalable compute and flexibility for a breadth of applications. FPGAs can parallelize massive workloads, such as processing millions of multichain messages on Wormhole,” according to a blog post on AMD’s website.

Feb. 22: Inco, leading developer of a universal confidentiality layer for Ethereum and other networks, has secured $4.5 million in a seed round led by 1kx, and launched its testnet Gentry. According to the team: “The testnet addresses Web3’s confidentiality challenges, blending EVM with FHE and secured by Ethereum via EigenLayer. With native on-chain confidentiality and randomness, Inco empowers diverse dApps including gaming, DeFi, private lending and blind auctions.”

Feb. 22: Meso, a payment platform connecting banks and blockchains, announced it has raised $9.5 million in a seed round, co-led by Solana Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from 6th Man Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Phantom Co-Founder Chris Kalani, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready and Archie Puri of Bodhi Labs. According to the team, “the network was launched by veterans from PayPal, Venmo and Braintree. Apps can integrate Meso to onboard users without first sending them off to a centralized exchange to fund their wallets.” Meso currently supports Ethereum, Solana and Polygon, and will add Arbitrum, Optimism and Base by the end of Q1.

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