Quick take:

The two companies will collaborate to advance crypto adoption on and off the pitch.

Kraken announced the partnership via X with a graphic of its logo emerging from Atletico Madrid’s Estadio Cívitas Metropolitano stadium.

The partnership covers both the men’s and women’s football shirts.

Kraken Exchange has announced a partnership with Atletico de Madrid Football Club. The partnership will see Kraken become the official crypto and Web3 partner of the Spanish football club.

Kraken also becomes the Official Sleeve Partner of Atletico Madrid’s men’s and women’s teams with its logo appearing on the teams’ playing kits starting from the 2024/2025 season.

We are excited to announce our partnership with @Atleti!Together, we are advancing crypto adoption both on and off the pitch. Starting from the 2024/25 season, our logo will proudly appear on the sleeves of Atletico Madrid's playing kits. pic.twitter.com/IJKiLhf5dl

— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) July 10, 2024

Kraken said the two companies plan to merge the worlds of sports and web3, as they seek to unlock great opportunities for both Atletico Madrid fans and the crypto exchange company’s clients.

Commenting on the announcement, Kraken Chief Marketing Officer Mayur Gupta said the two companies will use this opportunity to transform lives. 

“We’re proud to partner with such a distinguished football club, which equally recognises that success requires a meticulous focus on its own processes. We’ve put in nearly 13 years to become one of the most trusted crypto platforms and we look forward to collaborating with Atlético de Madrid to educate more people about the true potential and value of crypto.”

Atlético de Madrid Chief Revenue and Operating Officer Óscar Mayo echoed those remarks highlighting the common values that the two organisations share including innovation and technology. “We are sure that this partnership will ensure that our fans enjoy a digital experience which extends beyond matchdays at the stadium.”

This is not Kraken’s first collaboration with a sports team. Last August, the crypto exchange company teamed up with Formula 1 racing team Williams Racing to launch a campaign that allowed fans to vote on the NFTs they wanted displayed on F1 cars in the US Grand Prix that took place in October.

On the other hand, Atletico has been active in the world of fan tokens having collaborated with Socios.com to issue the Atletico de Madrid Fan Token (ATM).

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Quick take:

Eli Ben-Sasson announced the news at the Ethereum Community Conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

The program is optional for community members with rewards for stakers allocated proportionally to the STRK tokens staked.

Staked tokens will be locked up for 21 days before they can be withdrawn.

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson has submitted a proposal to the Starknet community as he seeks to open staking for the Ethereum layer-2 by the end of the year. Ben-Sasson announced the news at the Ethereum Community Conference in Brussels on Wednesday. 

According to the announcement, the program will be open for willing community members to participate, with stakers rewarded proportionate to their staked STRK tokens. They will also be required to keep their tokens locked for at least 21 days before they are allowed to withdraw them, CoinDesk reported.

StakeWare said the program will be rolled out in several phases with the first and main stage, requiring stakers to “connect to Starknet, interact with the staking contracts, and follow the proposed protocol rules to stake.”

StarkWare and Starknet Foundation plan to implement various improvements to the program upon studying the staking habits of members.

“In subsequent stages, stakers will need, in real-time, to provide attestations to the content of blocks,” StarkWare added. “Then in the final stage, stakers will be performing sequencing and proving activities to fully secure the network.”

Ben-Sasson sees the first phase of the staking program as an important step in building the staking community and technology for the Starknet ecosystem as it seeks to offer new opportunities for users and developers.

This announcement comes at a time when crypto staking and restaking protocols are growing in popularity as Web3 companies look to establish more feasible ways of securing their networks.

EigenLayer, the leading crypto restaking protocol on Ethereum has already surpassed $20 billion in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama data.

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Quick take:

Up Mobile uses biometric sensors and ZK-proofs to provide secure identity verification and enhanced user privacy on the blockchain.

The device features a Web3-centered OS and a DePIN Kit enabling the development of DePIN applications and localised LLMs.

Users earn rewards for engaging with featured applications on Up Mobile.

Up Network, the Web3 abstraction layer connecting mobile devices to blockchain ecosystems has announced a strategic partnership with Movement Labs to launch Up Mobile.

Up Mobile is a Web3-first smartphone that features an ecosystem of proof-of-attention nodes and a comprehensive suite of decentralised applications. 

The device leverages biometric sensors and ZK-proofs to provide secure identity verification and enhanced user privacy on the blockchain. According to the press material shared with NFTgators, Up Mobile is powered by a Web3-specialised operating system and a decentralised physical network (DePIN) Kit enabling the development of DePIN applications and localised long language models (LLMs).

Users can earn rewards from featured applications by engaging in proof-of-attention activities. “Unlike traditional cloud-based solutions, these capabilities are fully localized, ensuring enhanced privacy and dependability for the highest standard user experience,” Up Network wrote in a statement.

Up Network is using Movement Labs’ MoveVM (move virtual machine) and EVM (ethereum virtual machine) to enable the onboarding of users through consumer Web3 applications, including DePIN, Defi, Gamefi, and SocialFi.

According to Up Network, users will be rewarded for engaging with applications, which is not possible with Google and Apple devices.

Commenting on the partnership, Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs said in a statement: “Up Network’s innovative approach to user engagement and rewards exemplifies the groundbreaking potential of Movement Labs’ infrastructure.”

“Having experienced the Up Mobile device firsthand, I can confidently say it not only surpasses anything in the Web3 space but also rivals, if not exceeds, the quality of well-known mainstream brands. This collaboration with Up Network perfectly demonstrates how our technology can empower truly transformative projects in the mobile blockchain sector,” he added.

Up Network claims to already have dozens of partners onboard including both mainstream IPS and Web3 IPS, as well as, traditional brands, which will power the rewards-driven ecosystem on the device.

Users will also be able to claim airdrops from Movement Labs, Sui, Aptos, and all EVM-based projects, the company added.

“Mobile phones are the first thing most people reach for when they wake up. That’s why bringing Web3 to mobile has always been our goal, and the timing is now perfect,” noted Roy Liu, co-founder of Up Network.

Liu who spearheaded the integration of TRON into Samsung Mobile in 2019 acknowledges that at the time, creating a fully mobile blockchain was premature due to infrastructure limitations. “We’re finally equipped with all the necessary tools and acceptance”, to make bring that vision to fruition.

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Quick take:

The network has already secured 5000 BTC commitments from institutional node operators.

GOAT Network will launch with a decentralised sequencer model, enabling sequencer node operators to secure the network.

It also allows them to earn a yield on their Bitcoin and fees from block production and transactions.

ZKM has unveiled GOAT Network, a decentralised Bitcoin layer-2 solution scheduled for launch in Q3 2024. The company is building what it calls a “Universal Layer-2” with the Bitcoin ecosystem as the first to be integrated. The network uses ZKM’s Entangled Rollup technology to enable the security features of Bitcoin’s Layer-1 blockchain. 

GOAT Network will leverage ZKM’s zero-knowledge-proof system that enables seamless interoperability between blockchains to integrate with more chains as part of its goal of building a “Universal Layer 2”. 

“GOAT Network’s launch of a Bitcoin L2 is a powerful first step in ZKM’s quest to unite the fragmented Web3 universe,” said GOAT Network Core Contributor Kevin Liu. “We believe strongly in decentralization, and we’re excited to enable a shared-ownership model from day one.”

According to an announcement on Monday, the company plans to add Ethereum, TON, Cosmos and many others following the integration of Bitcoin. “The goal is to solve fragmented liquidity issues in the blockchain world by enabling any L1 to seamlessly connect to any L2, without the vulnerabilities of a traditional third-party bridge.”

GOAT Network uses “recursive zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs” to sync the different states of L1s and L2s thus enabling the deployment of entangled rollups. 

According to ZKM, “This enables messaging and asset transfers across many different networks, without the use of a third-party bridge or any other cross-chain mechanism subject to the kinds of vulnerabilities typically found in bridges.”

GOAT Network is trying to address one of the most exploited vulnerabilities of blockchain interoperability networks, the use of bridges. Billions of dollars have been stolen by hackers over the past few years, including the “Ronin bridge exploit” where $625 million in ETH and USDC was reported to have been stolen in March 2022.

Explaining how entangled rollups address this problem, GOAT Network wrote: “Entangled Rollup is designed to roll up the transaction state, messaging and ZKP of a transaction from one source chain and verified in another chain. In this way, liquidity in different chains can be unified and leveraged by cross-chain applications. Since it is the roll-up smart contract that makes the cross-chain transaction happen, no bridge MPC will be needed.”

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The non-fungible token (NFT) market is barely crawling, waiting for some opportunity for revival. The second quarter of 2024 saw positive dynamics, but the increase was mostly driven by Bitcoin NFTs. The metrics for Ethereum NFTs suggest a grim picture.

For example, the number of unique Ethereum NFT traders on the top 15 marketplaces dropped for the sixth month in a row in June, reaching the lowest level since July 2021.

The metric is still dominated by OpenSea, which saw over 76,000 traders in June versus Blur’s approximately 24,000.

The number of Ethereum NFT trades on the top 15 marketplaces tracked by The Block declined last month to the lowest since May 2021. Out of the total 203,970 trades recorded by these exchanges, 106,100 were processed by Blur and 94,500 by OpenSea.

Meanwhile, monthly revenue on the top 20 Ethereum NFT marketplaces dropped to the lowest level since January 2021, according to data from Token Terminal.

June was the first month since early 2021 when monthly revenue on these marketplaces fell below the $1 million mark, declining to $950,000. For comparison, in January 2022, LooksRare, a decentralized NFT marketplace, saw revenue figures exceeding the $200 million level.

Coincidentally or not, some high-profile NFT holders are starting to dump their tokens. Billionaire Mark Cuban sold over a dozen of his NFTs for a total of about $39,000 at the end of June. This was his first NFT sale in two years. On top of that, two of his NFTs, worth a total of $66,000, are still available for sale on OpenSea.

Recently, DappRadar released its State of the Dapp Industry report for Q2, stating that the NFT sector had its best quarter since the first three months of 2023, with trading volume increasing to $4 billion. However, Bitcoin NFTs have been the main driving force.

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Quick take:

The integration is expected to help MetaMask detect potential wallet exploits better using transaction validation and client-side heuristics.

The entire Wallet Guard team will join ConsenSys as part of the deal.

In February ConsenSys also integrated Blockaid security alerts into MetaMask.

ConsenSys has announced the acquisition of the crypto security app Wallet Guard. The company plans to integrate Wallet Guard’s browser extension to further protect MetaMask users against exploits and scams.

Metamask will also leverage Wallet Guard’s security engine capabilities to improve wallet drain detection via transaction validation and client-side heuristics, The Block reported. ConsenSys said the integration will provide users with real-time protection against scams and malicious dApps.

Commenting on the acquisition, Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin said in a statement: “Wallet Guard has quickly become a premier security tool with advanced capabilities and constant innovation that strategically aligns with Consensys’ goal of putting user safety at the forefront. Their innovative security solutions will be instrumental in our mission to create a safer and more secure environment to continuously pave the way for the industry’s mass adoption.”

As part of the deal, the Wallet Guard team is expected to join ConsenSys as part of its MetaMask product safety department.

Wallet Guard co-founder and co-CEO Ohm Shah commented: “We’re thrilled at the opportunity to bring our knowledge and commitment to end-user security to millions of MetaMask users worldwide. Advancements in security, fraud and scam prevention are essential for the mass adoption of web3.”

This announcement follows MetaMask’s integration with Blockaid earlier this year, which sought to improve the crypto wallet service provider’s security alerts.

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Quick take:

Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital led the round with several other Web3 VCs also participating.

Sreeram Kannan of EigenLabs, Balaji Srinivasan, Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox were among those who joined as angel investors.

The company seeks to address the issue of data in AI model training, which its press release states is the biggest challenge that many AI models face today.

OpenLedger, a blockchain data oracle for AI models has raised $8 million in a Seed round led by Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital. The fundraising also attracted participation from Finality Capital, Hash3, HashKey Capital,  STIX, TRGC, Mask Network, MH Ventures and WAGMI Ventures.

Sreeram Kannan of EigenLayer, Balaji Srinivasan, Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Sebastian Borget of The Sandbox were among several others who joined as angel investors.

OpenLedger believes the advancement of AI will be driven by three elements, computing, algorithms, and data. 

The company said in a press release on Tuesday that, while developers have figured out how to address the issue of computing with powerful computers and created complex algorithms, data remains the biggest challenge that AI model builders are facing today.

“Data is currently the biggest bottleneck in AI development, with the quality of AI models derived from the data the models are trained on,” OpenLedger wrote.

The company believes its fully permissionless and verifiable data-centric infrastructure could spur the growth and development of AI by enabling builders to create smarter and more performant AI models.

OpenLedger is leveraging EigenLayer’s crypto restaking protocol to secure its network and was alert to point out how the protocol has rapidly grown to a TVL of $20 billion, amid the rising demand for restaking services.

Kannan was equally optimistic about the collaboration, saying “Verifiable databases was the first category I wanted to see built on EigenLayer, as this category empowers a new category of developers who can work with verified data.”

OpenLedger plans to launch its testnet at the bigging of the fourth quarter in 2024 and is now expanding its team and operations to realise that goal.

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Quick take:

Polychain Capital led the round with participation from ABCDE, Bloccelerate, Generative Ventures, Robot Ventures and Samsung Next.

Ethereum Foundation’s Justin Drake and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kanaan also joined as angel investors.

Pi Squared is developing a technology suite that enables verifiable computing with zero-knowledge proofs.

Pi Squared a Web3 startup led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign computer science professor, Grigore Rosu has raised $12.5 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.

The fundraising also attracted participation from ABCDE, Bloccelerate, Generative Ventures, Robot Ventures and Samsung Next, with Justin Drake of Ethereum Foundation and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kanaan joining as angel investors.

Pi Squared is using zero-knowledge technology to build products for what it calls “trustless remote computing”. Its first product dubbed a ‘Universal Settlement Layer’ enables the settlement of blockchain transactions “claims” in any programming language, Rosu told CoinDesk.

In a nutshell, Grigore is building what he calls a “Universal ZK Circuit”. The product can also be used to enable ‘trustless remote computing’ in AI and interoperable smart contracts for any decentralised application or blockchain, according to information on the company’s website. Rosu said in a press release on Tuesday that he did the research over many years with his students.

According to Pi Squared, the technology creates a universal and disarmingly small ZK circuit that checks the integrity of mathematical proofs, which provide verifiable-computing correctness guarantees to all languages and virtual machines (VMs) alike directly from their formal semantics, without any translation to a common language, VM or instruction set architecture (ISA).”

Designed for builders, Pi Squared is still in its proof-of-concept phase but Rosu’s goal is to have the project in testnet by the end of the year.

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Quick:

Arrington Capital led the round with participation from Kraken Ventures, White Star Capital, Spartan Group, Amber Group, SevenX Ventures and IOSG Ventures.

The company offers a blockchain oracle that provides smart contracts with real-world data on-chain.

Its modularity brings flexibility and scalability whilst also being able to integrate with different blockchains.

RedStone has completed a $15 million Series A round led by Arrington Capital, with participation from Kraken Ventures, White Star Capital, Spartan Group, Amber Group, SevenX Ventures and IOSG Ventures.

The fundraising also attracted Berachain’s Smokey the Bera and Homme Bera, Mike Silagadze, Jozef Vogel and Rok Kopp of Ether.Fi and Puffer Finance’s Amir Forouzani, Jason Vranek and Christina Chen as angel investors.

The token round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) RedStone founder and CEO Jakub Wojciechowski told The Block.

RedStone describes itself as a blockchain oracle, which is basically blockchain products that provide real-world data to smart contracts on-chain. However, its product is different from others like Pyth Network and Chainlink, as it leverages modularity to bring flexibility and scalability while the ability to replace different components of the Oracle means it can be easily integrated with different blockchains.

“Due to our modular architecture, our launch on new networks is significantly quicker and we can adjust our flow depending on the market needs, i.e., with the liquid restaking tokens wave, we were the first oracle to support projects like Ether.Fi, Renzo, Puffer and Swell,” Wojciechowski said.

RedStone is chain-agnostic, supporting over 60 blockchains. The platform is also among the largest data oracles with the current total value secured surpassing $1.3 billion according to DeFiLlama data. 

RedStone also plans to add Berachain and Monad to its list of supported blockchains and is preparing to launch as an actively validated service on EigenLayer.

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Quick take:

The fundraising also attracted participation from BabylonChain, Inc., dao5, Franklin Templeton, Foresight Ventures, Mirana, Mantle EcoFund and Nomad Capital.

The company offers a liquid and yield-bearing representation of staked Bitcoin powered by the LBTC token.

The company also plans to integrate LBTC across Ethereum DeFi protocols by the end of the year.

Lombard, a Bitcoin restaking protocol on the Bitcoin ecosystem has raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Polychain Capital. The fundraising also attracted participation from Babylon Chain, Inc., dao5, Franklin Templeton, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Mantle EcoFund and Nomad Capital.

The company plans to use the fresh capital to expand its Bitcoin restaking ecosystem by leveraging Babylon Chain’s Bitcoin staking protocol. In May, Babylon Chain raised $70 million in a round led by Paradigm. Polychain Capital was also among other Web3 VCs that joined the round.

“Lombard’s cross-chain LBTC product taps into the vast pool of parked Bitcoin liquidity, enhancing the supply-side into Babylon’s Bitcoin staking protocol. We are pleased that Lombard has received significant funding so we can continue our close collaboration, fill a critical void in the market, and drive substantial growth,” said David Tse, Co-Founder of Babylon.

Lombard’s fundraising comes at a time when Bitcoin is emerging as a major dApp ecosystem driven by the rapid rise of crypto staking and restaking protocols, most of which are powered by Babylon Chain.

According to the announcement, Lombard will use the BTC staked via Babylon to secure more protocols in the Bitcoin ecosystem by issuing the liquid and yield-bearing representation of staked Bitcoin powered by the LBTC token. According to the company’s website, LBTC is freely minted across chains and backed 1:1 with BTC, allowing users to stay liquid and carry their tokens wherever they go.

Lombard’s goal is to expand its service beyond the Bitcoin ecosystem with plans underway to integrate LBTC across Ethereum DeFi protocols by the end of the year.

Commenting on his firm’s leading role in the fundraising, Polychain Capital founder Olaf Carlson-Wee in a statement: “Our investment in Lombard demonstrates our belief in its potential to add immense value to the Web3 ecosystem by unlocking Bitcoin’s latent potential. Our commitment to Lombard represents a deeper belief in the leverage Bitcoin can have in catalyzing growth across the whole Blockchain space.”

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Quick take:

Sentient features Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal as one of its key contributors.

Nailwal sees Sentient as an avenue for Polygon’s expansion in AI.

Sentient allows contributors not only to use the model and build apps, but also contribute to the model itself.

Sentient has raised $85 million in a seed round co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Framework Ventures and Pantera Capital. The fundraising also attracted participation from Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, Canonical Crypto and Foresight Ventures.

Sentient is being developed by Polygon co-founder and chief business officer Sandeep Nailwal, joined by two university professors, Pramod Viswanath, the Forrest G. Hamrick Professor of Engineering at Princeton University and Himanshu Tyagi, a Professor of Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science.

The company is building what it calls open-source AI models, a potential competitor to Sam Altman’s OpenAI. According to the announcement, unlike OpenAI, which only allows users to access the model and build apps, Sentient will also allow the community to contribute to the model itself.

“AI today is becoming incredibly centralised, and the safety and ethics of AI are also questionable,” Nailwal told The Block. “So community-built AI models are the key.”

The open-source AI startup said it plans to launch “Campaigns” for contributors, with specific rewards for each campaign, including “co-ownership of the AI model they help create and future rewards on its usage,” Tyagi said.

Commenting on his firm’s leading role in the fundraising, Joey Krug, partner at Founders Fund, said in a statement: “Currently, anyone is able to just copy models without paying for them, and Sentient aims to solve this incentive problem which disincentivizes open source AI. This is a really interesting research area and we’re thrilled to support the team at Sentient as they make this vision a reality.”

Sentient plans to launch in testnet in the third quarter of 2024 and Tyagi believes the capital raise will play a crucial role in achieving that goal. “AI is capital-intensive, and talent is very costly.” With a workforce of less than 20, Tyagi said the company is planning to hire 10 people soon to join its research and engineering teams.

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Quick take:

The announcement follows Sony subsidiary Quetta Web’s acquisition of Amber Group the parent organisation of WhaleFin last August.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

WhaleFin said in a notice on Monday that the acquisition will also see it collaborate with various businesses of the Sony Group.

Sony Group is accelerating its Web3 strategy after revealing plans to relaunch crypto exchange platform WhaleFin. Quetta Web, a subsidiary of Sony Group acquired WaleFin parent Amber Group last August, which is now being rebranded to S.BLOX Co., The Block reported.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but WhaleFin put out a notice on Monday stating that the acquisition would see its platform renewed, while there are also plans to launch a new app after that.

According to the announcement, some of the features scheduled for improvement on the platform include the overall service offering and the UI screen design.

“In addition, by collaborating with various businesses of the Sony Group, we will work to create new added value in cryptocurrency trading services,” WhaleFin said.

This acquisition adds to Sony’s expanding Web3 strategy, which has seen it launch various products this year. 

In January, at CES 2024, Sony introduced digital birth certificates for images, which were immediately likened to NFTs. The in-camera digital technology enables the verification of the origin of the content captured with Sony devices.

In April, the company also announced it was using Polygon to test a proof-of-concept to issue a stablecoin pegged to fiat currency. Sony plans to plans to adopt the stablecoin as a payment method across Sony Group’s gaming and sports IP.

Last June, Sony Network Communications invested $3.5 million in Startale Labs as part of a deal that will see the Japanese technology giant build its own blockchain.

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Raydium’s influence across the Solana ecosystem and beyond it is expanding. At the end of June, the decentralized exchange (DEX) accounted for a record volume share of 62.8% on Solana, according to data shared via Dune.

Orca, which previously dominated DEX volume on Solana, currently handles about a fifth of all trades on the chain.  

One month earlier, we reported that Raydium was expanding its market share to a record 53%. The DEX has consolidated its position by winning another 10% of the Solana ecosystem, becoming the go-to venue to swap tokens.

Raydium has also become a leading DEX outside the Solana ecosystem. On June 29, it was the third-largest DEX by daily trading volume with a 10% market share, after Uniswap V3 and PancakeSwap. However, in weekly and monthly terms, Raydium has become the second-largest DEX after Uniswap V3, followed by Orca.

In absolute terms, DEX trading volume has been declining for the fourth consecutive month as of June, but Raydium is defying this correction. At the beginning of June, the Solana DEX had its third-best day on record in terms of trading volume, processing about $800 million worth of trades, according to data from DefiLlama.

Meanwhile, June is Raydium’s second-best month, with over $13 billion in volume. Last March, the DEX crossed the $16 billion mark.

Interestingly, DEXs are increasingly preferred by traders. The Block shows that monthly DEX volume versus CEX volume is at a record high of almost 20%.

The increasing activity on Raydium is also driven by meme coins, which continue to make waves across Solana and Ethereum ecosystems. DEXScreener data shows that out of the top 10 most traded tokens during the last 24 hours, eight of them are traded on Raydium and two on Solana. All of them are meme coins, including WATER, BILLY, and POPCAT.

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Quick take: 

The SEC claims ConsenSys wallet offering MetaMask is an unregistered broker that “engaged in the offer and sale of securities.”

The wallet is also accused of offering an unregistered securities program through its staking service.

MetaMask is alleged to have supported staking services for Lido (LDO) and Rocket Pool (RPL) as investment contracts.

Ethereum software provider ConsenSys has become the latest company to be sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) amid allegations related to breaching securities laws.

According to the lawsuit filed Friday, the SEC claims ConsenSys’ crypto wallet offering, MetaMask is an unregistered broker that “engaged in the offer and sale of securities.” The U.S. securities regulator also claims that MetaMask offered an unregistered securities program through its staking service.

According to the lawsuit, MetaMask supported liquid staking services for Lido (LDO) and Rocket Pool (RPL) as investment contracts, implying they are also unregistered securities.

The SEC said in the press release that ConsenSys helped distribute the staking programs and operated as an unregistered broker for the LDO and RPL tokens.

Commenting on the filing, Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement said in a statement: “By allegedly collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in fees as an unregistered broker and engaging in the unregistered offer and sale of tens of thousands of securities, Consensys inserted itself squarely into the U.S. securities markets while depriving investors of the protections afforded by the federal securities laws.”

The SEC also alleges that ConsenSys has brokered transactions in crypto asset securities since 2020, including — “soliciting investors to trade crypto asset securities, providing pricing and other investment information regarding crypto asset securities, purporting to provide investors with the “best” quote, accepting and routing customer orders, facilitating order execution, handling customer assets, and receiving transaction-based compensation.”

The lawsuit has been filed in the federal district court in the Eastern District of New York and is charging Consensys with violating the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 seeking injunctive relief and penalties.

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Quick take:

The three YouTube videos branded the failed CryptoZoo project as “Logan Paul’s biggest scam”. 

According to Paul, Findeisen purposely omitted information that showed he was fully committed to the CryptoZoo project.

Paul blames “several of the project’s trusted advisers who turned out to be conmen” for CryptoZoo’s failure.

Logan Paul has filed a defamation lawsuit against YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, popularly known as CoffeeZilla on YouTube.

Filed on June 27, the lawsuit claims that Findeisen “maliciously and repeatedly” made false statements that included three YouTube videos about Cryptozoo. The social media influencer turned professional wrestler claims purposely omitted information that showed he was fully committed to the CryptoZoo project.

“Paul brings this defamation suit to hold Findeisen accountable for his actions and to hold him liable for the immense harm that he has caused to Paul’s reputation through the intentional and reckless dissemination of defamatory falsehoods,” the filing states.

According to Paul, “several of the project’s trusted advisers who turned out to be conmen” are the ones to be blamed for CryptoZoo’s failure.

In December 2022, the CoffeeZilla YouTube channel released three videos branding the failed CryptoZoo project as “Logan Paul’s biggest scam”.

According to the filing, Findisen “perpetuated the false narrative that Paul scammed and defrauded his own fans in connection with the CryptoZoo project, despite “despite knowing it to be completely and utterly false, in order to enhance his own profile and increase his viewership and income in the process.”

The filing also claims that “Findeisen knew full well that Paul had never set out to scam anybody, but to the contrary had always intended to build a legitimate blockchain-based game.”

Paul instead blames Eduardo “Eddie” Ibanez, who he says “turned out to be a charlatan” after he found out that he lied about his credentials, while Jake Greenbaum, an adviser to the project is described as having been “more interested in trying to personally profit than in helping to create a legitimate project.”

Logan Paul now seeks damages in excess of $75,000 plus interest, with the social media influencer also expecting the defendant to cover all legal fees and additional damages and relief as determined by the court.

Earlier this year, Logan Paul announced he was buying back CryptoZoo NFTs on the condition that holders waived any potential claims against him. Paul offered 0.1 ETH for each eligible NFT as reported.

The lawsuit stated that he ended up spending $1 million in the CryptoZoo NFT buybacks between January and March, whilst earning nothing from the project.

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The post Logan Paul Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Coffeezilla in CryptoZoo Saga appeared first on NFTgators .

Blur, the largest non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace by trading volume, experienced its highest three-week market share among platforms that support Ethereum NFTs, according to data from TheBlock.

During the three weeks from June 2 to June 23, Blur’s market share was 77.86%, 81.39%, and 79.44%, respectively. In the first week of 2024, Blur’s weekly volume share reached a record high of 82.78%. However, its three-week dominance peaked in June 2024.

Blur has become the largest NFT marketplace on Ethereum since the first half of 2023, dethroning OpenSea, which had been dominating the market for years.

However, despite gaining market share, June is poised to be the worst month of the year so far in terms of USD sales. As of this writing, Blur has handled $214.5 million worth of NFT trades, TheBlock data shows. This is down 24% from $282 million in sales registered in May.

Starting with January, when Blur experienced its best month in almost a year, monthly volume sales have never increased so far, with the indicator dropping for the sixth-consecutive month.

Can OpenSea Recover Market Share?

Interestingly, while Blur remains the dominant force, OpenSea is showing its teeth at the end of the month. On June 26, OpenSea surpassed Blur in 24-hour volume for only the third day during the last three months.

In an unexpected turn of events, Opensea is back to being the #1 NFT marketplace on Ethereum pic.twitter.com/lkI30IPYd2

— wale.moca (@waleswoosh) June 27, 2024

This may not be an occasional occurrence. Recently, Blast, a fast-growing layer 2 for Ethereum, launched its Blast token.

Blast is a crypto project backed by the Blur team, and the marketplace users have been attracted by generous incentives before the launch of the token.

With Blast now live, rewards on Blur have declined, potentially prompting users to explore other NFT platforms like OpenSea. Meanwhile, OpenSea continues to have the highest number of traders.

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Quick take:

Stripe will add support for Base across its crypto product suite to offer users faster and cheaper money transfers.

The online payment provider will also add USDC on Base to their fiat-to-crypto on-ramp to enable customers in the US to convert fiat to crypto faster.

Coinbase will add Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto on-ramp into Coinbase Wallet, enabling instant crypto purchases with credit cards and Apple Pay.

Coinbase and Stripe have announced a partnership to accelerate the global adoption of crypto. The two companies are teaming up to provide faster, cheaper financial infrastructure globally.

As part of the partnership, Stripe is adding support for Base across its crypto product suite to offer users faster and cheaper money transfers in 150 countries. The online payments company will also add USDC on Base (Coinbase’s L2 built on Ethereum) to its fiat-to-crypto on-ramp, enabling customers in the US to convert fiat to crypto faster.

On the other hand, Coinbase will Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto on-ramp into Coinbase Wallet, enabling instant crypto purchases with credit cards and Apple Pay.

According to Coinbase, this partnership is bound to bring several benefits associated with crypto to millions of businesses and people around the world.

Stripe’s vast user base will benefit from gaining access to faster and cheaper money transfers powered by Base, Coinbase said in a statement.

“Base has quickly become the most used L2 due to its secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly transaction infrastructure, as we continue to make strides towards our one second, sub one cent goal.”

The two companies believe crypto is the future of money because “it is unrestricted by international borders or banking hours, and reduces both friction and fees for users.”

“These three key integrations lay a strong foundation for Stripe and Coinbase to begin building a better payments future for users around the world,” Coinbase wrote.

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The post Coinbase Teams Up With Stripe to Accelerate the Global Adoption of Crypto appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

The fundraising also attracted participation from Figment Capital, Folius Ventures, Robot Ventures, Big Brain Holding, Tangent, and Credibly Neutral.

MegaLabs will use the funds to accelerate the development of its new Ethereum scaling protocol MegaETH.

According to a press release, the MegaETH blockchain can stream 100,000 transactions per second with millisecond-level responsiveness.

MegaLabs, a Web3 developer building the “first real-time EVM-compatible blockchain” has completed a $20 million seed round led by Dragonfly. The fundraising also attracted participation from Figment Capital, Folius Ventures, Robot Ventures, Big Brain Holding, Tangent, and Credibly Neutral.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Consensys’ Joseph Lubin, EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan, Cobie, ETHGlobal co-founder Karthik Talwar, and Helius Labs’ Mert Mumtaz were among those who joined as angel investors.

The round was completed at a valuation of $100 million according to MegaLabs co-founder Shuyao Kong, The Block reported.

MegaLabs plans to use the funds to accelerate the development of its new blockchain dubbed MegaETH.

MegaLabs believes all types of blockchains currently in existence have some flaws in them, arguing that they are “failing to serve the growing demand for decentralised applications.”

“High throughput blockchains, such as Solana, are unable to scale to meet user demand and suffer from constant congestion and reliability issues. Ethereum Layer-2 Blockchains, while easy to develop, are not optimized for performance and are fundamentally limited in the number of users they can serve,” MegaLabs wrote.

The company claims MegaETH is capable of streaming 100,000 transactions per second with millisecond-level responsiveness, the speed and level of performance it believes is necessary to handle the growing demand for on-chain trading activities.

“People increasingly want to store their savings in stablecoins on-chain, bet on world events on-chain, and post content to social networks on-chain, but today’s blockchains cannot offer the snappy, reliable experience that people are used to in mainstream consumer applications.”

According to MegaLabs, the MegaETH protocol’s near-instant performance unlocks fully on-chain applications that can match the experience of best-in-class web2 apps without compromising on decentralisation.

Commenting on the fundraising, Yilong Li, the CEO and Co-Founder of MegaLabs said in a statement: “By leveraging Ethereum’s superior security and censorship resistance guarantees, we can explore a much larger design space to create the fastest execution layer and state synchronization network possible without compromising the core values of blockchains.”

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The number of daily transfers on NeuroWeb, a Polkadot parachain, reached a new record on June 20, at 79,510, according to data compiled by TheBlock.

Polkadot parachains are independent blockchain networks built on Polkadot infrastructure and compatible with Polkadot’s mainnet and its other parachains.

NeuroWeb is an artificial intelligence (AI) blockchain that rewards users for sharing data and knowledge. The project builds upon the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), a decentralized knowledge-sharing market developed for its predecessor, OriginTrail Parachain. The ecosystem began transitioning to NeuroWeb at the end of 2023 following a community vote.  

The goal of the DKG is to organize data on traditional and crypto assets to make it discoverable and verifiable. It connects physical world data from sectors like art, fashion, healthcare, and education with digital world ecosystems like decentralized networks, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), metaverse, and decentralized finance (DeFi).  

NeuroWeb incentivizes knowledge sharing via its native NEURO token, formerly known as TRAC. The token, with a market cap of over $310 million, is still listed under the old ticker on Coinmarketcap.

The parachain builds upon OriginTrail’s expanding ecosystem, which has secured high-profile partnerships with the likes of the British Standards Institution, Walmart, Oracle, and the European Union Commission’s Next Generation Internet.

The increase in NeuroWeb transfers reflects the growing adoption of decentralized AI solutions for data sharing and analysis.

Currently, there are over 100 parachains on Polkadot, and NeuroWeb is the most active one in terms of daily transfers.

Other popular parachains include MoonBeam, Astar, Nodle, Interlay, and Phala.

Another parachain that is gaining traction in June is BridgeHub, a bridge network that connects Polkadot with its sister blockchain, Kusama.

The number of daily transfers on BridgeHub has surged from less than 50 at the beginning of June to over 6,700 as of this writing.

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Quick take:

The Bitcoin analytics startup says its product will enable miners to organise transactions better.

The company believes that new protocols like Ordinals and Runes will particularly find its product useful because Bitcoin does not natively support smart contracts.

MEV or maximum extractable value is an ordering process that helps miners earn the highest fees possible from transactions.

Rebar Network, a Bitcoin-based analytics software startup has raised $2.9 million in a seed round led by 6th Man Ventures. The fundraising also attracted participation from ParaFi Capital, Arca, Moonrock Capital, and UTXO Management.

The Remote Procedure Calls startup will use the funds to accelerate the development of its MEV tools on Bitcoin. This comes as new protocols like Ordinals and Runes continue to emerge as gateways for building the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

Rebar CEO Alex Luce commented: “Bitcoin is entering a new era of programmability and increased trading activity. Our mission is to develop infrastructure and products that help the Bitcoin community (users, miners, and developers) navigate the emerging MEV landscape on Bitcoin, ensuring a more equitable and transparent ecosystem.”

MEV or maximum extractable value is an ordering process that helps miners earn the highest fees possible from transactions. Because the Bitcoin blockchain does not natively support smart contracts, Rebar sees an opportunity for MEV protocols amid the potential of Bitcoin’s dApp ecosystem.

“Rebar recognizes that MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) strategies are emerging on Bitcoin, similar to those seen in DeFi on Ethereum,” Rebar wrote in a press release. “The company recognizes both the challenges and opportunities presented by MEV, aiming to develop solutions that balance network efficiency with user protection and equitable value distribution across the Bitcoin ecosystem.”

Some of the various ways MEV protocols can be used to maximise earnings include opening two different orders on either side of an open order (sandwiching) and arbitraging transactions (where a miner replaces a pending order with their own to lock in a better price).

Commenting on his firm’s leading role in the fundraising, Carl Vogel of 6th Man Ventures said in a statement: “We believe Rebar is at the forefront of a crucial development in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Their focus on MEV and its related infrastructure will be vital as Bitcoin continues to evolve and attract more diverse activities on-chain.”

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