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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Aptos has experienced an increase in activity at the end of the second quarter. The number of monthly active addresses has reached a new record in June, hitting 4.8 million as of this writing, according to data from TheBlock. By the end of the month, the metric can touch the 5 million mark.

The new monthly record is possible thanks to a spike in the number of users in mid-June. Token Terminal data shows that daily active users hit a record 1.3 million on June 8. That was the first time Aptos had seen 1 million users in a single day.

Aptos is a layer 1 blockchain supporting the smart contract feature. The network uses a programming language called Move, which was developed by Mysten Labs, the company behind Sui, another fast-growing layer 1 blockchain. Both Aptos and Sui have been developed by ex-Facebook employees.

Aptos has consolidated its presence in decentralized finance (DeFi). It has a total value locked (TVL) of $340 million, as per DefiLlama, which is about half of Sui’s TVL. Aptos TVL crossed the $500 million mark on April 1 after a tenfold increase since September 2023.

The most active DeFi apps are lending protocols – such as Aries Markets, Echelon Market, and Aptin Finance – and decentralized exchanges, such as LiquidSwap, Cellana Finance, and PancakeSwap.

While June becomes the month with the most active users, May keeps the transaction count record, with an impressive 350 million transactions.

The surge in transactions was driven by a cat clicker game called Tapos, where each click generates a transaction on the network. Players tickle a cat with each click to earn HEART tokens. The game ended its campaign on May 26, causing a correction in the number of transactions. It has demonstrated that Aptos is capable of handling a high number of transactions at a low cost.

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Quick take:

The company says its “verifiable oracle protocol” is used by developers to build end-to-end trustless and decentralised apps powered by AI.

The company also offers a product called “initial model offering,” or IMO, which enables ownership of open-source AI models through tokenisation.

Ora said it is using zero-knowledge technology to provide secure and efficient on-chain machine learning with privacy-preserving features.

Ora Protocol, the On-chain AI oracle looking to integrate AI with decentralised applications has raised $20 million in a round backed by Polychain Capital, HFO, HashKey Capital, and SevenX Ventures. 

The company said it will use the fresh capital to accelerate the development of its technology and infrastructure for tokenising AI models. Ora offers a product called “initial model offering,” or IMO, which enables ownership of open-source AI models through tokenisation.

The company describes itself as a “verifiable oracle protocol”, which developers can use to build end-to-end trustless and decentralised apps powered by AI.

According to the product documentation, ORA’s On-chain AI oracle breaks down the limitations of smart contracts by offering AI inference, so developers can innovate freely.

Launched in 2022, some of the early adopters of the product include Compound, Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap, Optimism, and Arbitrum, among others.

The product currently supports LlaMA 2 (7B) and Stable Diffusion, which allow users to build their own AI oracle that is programmable, permissionless, and censorship-resistant.

According to ORA, its product development is driven by the need to address the challenge of monetising AI model contributions. 

“Many open-sourced AI models face the challenge of monetising their contributions, leading to a lack of motivation for contributors and organizations alike. As a result, the AI industry is currently led by closed-source, for-profit companies,” the documentation states. This drives the current products to raise more funding to build in public.

“With IMO, we can win the fight for open-source AI. IMO can enable the sustainability of the open-source AI model’s ecosystem by fostering long-term benefits and encouraging engagement and funding to the open-source AI community.”

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Quick take:

The blockchain data infrastructure provider said it will use the funds to expand its operations in Asia.

The platform enables users to access historical blockchain data in the “Ethereum Wayback Machine.”

The firm also enjoys backing from Hashed, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and Delphi Ventures which participated in a $2 million strategic funding in March 2021.

Covalent has raised $5 million in a strategic round led by RockTree Capital, with CMCC Global, Moonrock Capital and Double Peak Group also participating. 

The blockchain data infrastructure provider said it will use the fresh capital to expand its operations in Asia and accelerate the adoption of long-term data availability in China and Singapore among other countries.

Covalent unveiled the “Ethereum Wayback Machine” in November last year, a platform likened to web archive data on Web2 platforms, because of its ability to enable users to access historical blockchain data.

According to Covalent co-founder Ganesh Swami, his company will use this opportunity to revamp its data infrastructure offerings as blockchain technology and artificial intelligence continue to advance.

Covalent also boasts backing from the likes of Hashed Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and Delphi Ventures which participated in a $2 million strategic funding in March 2021.

The company has now raised a total of $20 million through token rounds, according to The Block, with Arthur Hayes, the founder of crypto exchange platform BitMEX joining as an advisor earlier this month.

Swami believes Asia is an emerging crypto hub, and continues to show “immense potential to become the leader of the next bull run.” He wants his company to play a significant in the industry’s next growth phase in the region.

“With the Ethereum Wayback Machine [EWM] as a gateway to permanent data, we are excited to bring Long-Term Data Availability to Asian countries to boost local adoption and innovations,” he said.

Omer Ozden, CEO of RockTree Capital commended the Covalent team for being “relentless in driving the convergence of AI and Web3,” highlighting their commitment to delivering the largest data infrastructure in crypto. “As this convergence explodes, so does Covalent’s use-case,” he said.

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Quick take:

The fund will focus on pre-seed investments in selected startups from the winners of Solana Hackathons.

Colosseum has already funded 11 startups, investing $2.75 million so far.

The accelerator sees hackathons as the “crucible” for innovation, and recetly held its first hackathon, attracting 8,000 participants.

Colosseum, a Solana-based startup accelerator, which uses hackathons to identify investment opportunities has raised $60 million to invest in early-stage projects. The oversubscribed round attracted participation from Bonk DAO, an organization that manages $124 million worth of BONK tokens.

Colosseum plans to invest the funds in pre-seed projects and has already deployed $2.75 million across 11 startups, investing $250,000 in each. The accelerator sees hackathons as the “crucible” for innovation, and recently held its first hackathon, attracting 8,000 participants.

Commenting on the fundraising, Clay Robbins, co-founder of Colosseum said in a statement: “It’s evident that there is a market demand for novel, specialized venture products in crypto, and we are excited to have a diverse group of investors, including ecosystem founders and hackathon alumni, alongside us to realize our vision for Colosseum.”

According to Robbins, while investors are ecosystem agnostic, they also believe in Solana ecosystem’s hiuge potential. “Institutional LPs invest with both the current focus on the future in mind for what the model can become – so not necessarily a fund focused on one ecosystem, but more so this model,” he said.

The accelerator offers a six-week online program supporting hackathon winners to become embedded in the Solana ecosystem, rapidly iterate to find product-market fit, and raise seed funding faster. The 12-member team also offers educational sessions, and an upfront investment from Colosseum. 

To be selected, projects must be among winners of the hackathon events, which are held 2-3 times a year. The $250,000 handed to winners is structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants, according to a statement on the Colosseum website.

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Quick take:

The first product dubbed “Actions” enables users to complete crypto transactions on regular websites, social media platforms and QR codes.

Next up for Solana Foundation is a product called “Blinks”, which turns any “Action” into a shareable link.

Cubik, Sanctum, Tensor, Realms, Access, and Jupiter are among the teams that have opted in to test Solana’s newest products.

Solana Foundation is introducing new products designed to accelerate the mass onboarding of users to the Solana ecosystem. The organisation has already revealed the first two products dubbed “Actions” and “Blinks”, which have already attracted early adopters including Cubik, Sanctum, Tensor, Realms, Access, Jupiter, Helium, Truffle, Helius, Phantom and Backpack.

The first product, Actions, enables users to complete crypto transactions on regular websites, social media platforms and QR codes, while Blinks turns any “Action” into a shareable link, Solana Foundation said on Tuesday.

Commenting on the announcement, Jon Wong, head of ecosystem engineering at the Solana Foundation said in a statement: “Access to blockchain protocols has long been isolated to dapps and other wallet-aware tools. Actions and blinks on Solana allow any website and application on the internet to be a distribution point for on-chain interactions, furthering the goal of mainstream adoption.”

According to Solana, Blinks leverage the same concept used by Farcaster’s Frames on Ethereum. However, Blinks are not limited to one application, as they can be across websites, social medial platforms, apps.

Chris Osborn, founder and CEO of Dialect Labs, a smart messaging protocol based on Solana commented: “Actions and blinks deliver on one of the internet’s original promises: they make experiences portable, shareable, and actionable on any surface. From your X feed you can buy [NFTs], tip a creator, receive money, vote, stake, swap and so much more.”

The post Solana Accelerates User Onboarding with Tools that Turn Websites and Apps into Crypto Gateways appeared first on NFTgators .

Polymarket is experiencing a surge in activity amid an intensifying US election campaign and a massive funding round.

Token terminal data shows that the number of active weekly users hit a record high on June 11 at over 11,000, while the number of monthly users is currently at a record high of 25,500, reflecting increased interest from the crypto community.

Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market powered by Polygon. The platform lets crypto holders speculate on the outcome of current and future events related to politics, sports, and other domains.

As the US election is getting closer, many crypto holders are making predictions on who of the two candidates, current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, will win the crucial battle later this year. On Thursday, June 27, Biden and Trump will have their first presidential debate in Atlanta, which may cause significant volatility in the odds. 

Another major event that may have contributed to the surge in activity is the European Football Championship held in Germany, which started on June 14.

Last month, Polymarket announced that it had raised $70 million from investors like Peter Thiel (via Founders Fund), Vitalik Buterin, and Polychain Capital. Interestingly, Polymarket said it had raised the amount in two separate rounds: a Series B round conducted recently and a previously undisclosed Series A round. 

The increase in active users is accompanied by a surge in volume. Token Terminal data shows that the weekly amount of net deposits (open interest) and trading volume have both set new records at $36 million and $3.17 million, respectively.

Interestingly, the majority of active users are using Polymarket for the first time. Data shared via Dune suggests that the number of monthly active users has already reached a record high in June about one week before the end of the month.

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Quick take:

The fundraising attracted participation from Archetype, Delphi Ventures, CMS Holdings, ID Theory and DCF God.

The announcement comes ahead of Allora’s planned mainnet launch sometime this summer.

Allora plans to use some of the funds to expand its team of 35 with up to 7 new hires, primarily in the engineering department.

Allora Labs, formerly known as Upshot has secured a $3 million funding round from Archetype, Delphi Ventures, CMS Holdings, ID Theory and DCF God.

Allora is building a decentralised network as a layer-1 blockchain on the Cosmos stack to address a pressing issue in AI models, which co-founder and CEO Nick Emmons calls “siloed machine intelligence,” The Block reported.

This is not Allora’s first fundraising, having previously raised $32 million under its former brand Upshot, which focused on developing an NFT appraisals platform.

Its shift towards AI mirrors a growing trend in the blockchain sector as startups look to leverage the decentralised ledger technology to improve AI training and rewards models.

Commenting on his company’s decision to shift towards building decentralised AI models, Emmons said: “NFT appraisals were always meant to be just an initial focus area for leveraging AI and DeFi to build more efficient and expressive financial infrastructure.”

According to Emmons Allora wants to create a decentralised environment where models can collaborate to optimise shared goals, enhancing their performance and accuracy. “This significantly improves the quality of AI and the rate at which it can improve,” he said.

Emmons believes that if machine learning models could learn from each other, they could become more efficient and accurate. His platform is made up of sub-networks called “topics”, which essentially have specific goals to perform that are run by different parties.

Workers run machine-learning models while reputers and validators ensure network security and consensus, he said.

Allora Network is initially focused on developing AI-powered DeFi agents, but its technology could have a range of use cases, Emmons said. “We have been working with teams building applications related to AI-powered DeFi agents that execute more complex trading strategies in a decentralized way, AI-powered prediction markets, AI-powered lending and perpetual systems.”

This announcement comes ahead of Allora network’s planned mainnet launch sometime this summer. The company plans to use some of the fresh capital to hire 5-7 staff, primarily for the engineering department to add to its current staff of 35.

Commenting on the funding, Nick Emmons said in a statement: “This recent investment round underscores the significant strides we’ve taken since rebranding from Upshot to focusing on supporting the development of the Allora Network. With the mainnet launch on the horizon, we look forward to further collaboration with our partners and the broader AI community to foster a decentralized, self-improving AI network that democratizes access to top-tier machine intelligence.”

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Quick take:

The technology allows developers to store 100 compressed token accounts for around 4 hundred thousandths of one sol.

Developers and users can choose to compress their on-chain state, where only state roots are stored in on-chain accounts.

This allows them to reduce state costs by orders of magnitude while preserving the security, performance, and composability of the Solana L1.

Light Protocol and Helius Labs have teamed up to introduce “ZK Compression” on Solana. This new technology primitive allows developers to build applications at scale, according to documentation.

According to the document, “Solana programs can mix and match between compressed and regular on-chain state, allowing atomic interaction with multiple programs, accounts, and compressed accounts.”

With a compressed state, only state roots are stored in on-chain accounts, which allows them to reduce state costs by orders of magnitude while preserving the security, performance, and composability of the Solana L1.

The documentation also indicates that the technology allows developers to cut PDA account storage costs by up to 5000x, allowing them to store 100 compressed token accounts for ~0.00004 SOL versus an equivalent of 0.2 SOL on a regular on-chain state.

While compressed accounts are similar to regular Solana accounts, there are some differences. 

Compressed accounts are stored in what the primitive refers to as “sparse state trees”, whereby, “only the tree’s state root (small fingerprint of all compressed accounts) is stored in the on-chain account space.”

Each compressed account is identified by its hash and each write to a compressed account changes its hash, the document explains. An address can also be optionally set as a permanent unique ID of the compressed account.

This is how the protocol can store states as call data in the less expensive Solana ledger space instead of costly on-chain account space.

Giving an example of a token airdrop to 1,000,000 users, Helius Labs founder Mert Mumtaz on X explained that it would only cost $50, ~5,200 times cheaper compared to $260,000 that would be paid for the state alone in regular token accounts.

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Quick take:

The token round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT).

The company is building a chain abstraction layer that simplifies developer and user experiences.

Its Universal Accounts product enables users to use funds from any chain and transact across any network.

Particle Network has completed a $15 million token round co-led by The Spartan Group and Gumi Cryptos Capital. The Series A round also attracted participation from SevenX Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, Flow Traders and HashKey Capital. The company also boasts backing from the likes of Animoca Ventures, LongHash Ventures, and Alibaba Group.

The round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens, Particle Network founder and CEO Pengyu Wang told The Block. The fundraising brings the total raised to $25 million following $10 million secured across multiple rounds.

The company plans to use the fresh capital to expand its team of 30 to about 40, with a key focus on engineering and operations teams.

Particle is developing a blockchain abstraction layer that simplifies the experiences for both developers and users. One of the modular blockchain company’s products, Universal Accounts allows users to use funds from any blockchain across networks.

Universal Accounts also enable users to leverage the power of “Universal Liquidity” and “Universal Gas” thus allowing them to spend their tokens across any chain and pay for the gas and transaction fees using any of their token holdings.

“With universal accounts, users no longer need to bridge or manually manage accounts across chains, and developers can onboard users from anywhere in the ecosystem,” Wang said.

While still only in testnet phase I, Particle Network claims to already have 1.3 million universal account registrations and over 114 million transactions.

The platform is created using the Cosmos SDK and leverages Berachain’s BeaconKit framework for EVM compatibility.

This announcement comes ahead of Particle’s planned testnet phase 2 launch, this week, while its mainnet launch is scheduled for the third quarter of 2024. The mainnet launch will be accompanied by Particle’s PARTI token launch, Wang said.

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Quick take:

The tokens will be mainly from small to medium projects with strong fundamentals, a large circulating supply, and strong and organic communities, the exchange said.

To be eligible for the HODLer Airdrops program, users must hold BNB and be subscribed to its Simple Earn program.

The tokens will be offered to users from eligible jurisdictions, which Binance did not list in the announcement.

Binance has launched the HODLer Airdrops Program, designed to reward BNB token holders with early access to tokens with a large circulating supply before they launch on its platform. 

To be eligible for the program, users must first subscribe to the exchange company’s Simple Earn program and be from authorised jurisdictions. The company did not provide a list of countries or regions of residence where the program will be offered.

Binance said it will post an announcement before a HODLer Airdrops of new token begins.

Explaining how the program and token airdrop allocations will work, the leading crypto exchange company wrote in a statement: “Snapshots of user balances and total pool balances will be taken multiple times at any point of time each hour to get users’ hourly average balances in Simple Earn products (Flexible and/or Locked). Binance will use historical snapshots of user balances at random periods after this announcement to calculate user rewards.”

The HODLer Airdrops will be deposited in the BNB holders’ Spot Wallets within 24 hours after the airdrop is announced, the company said, adding that a hard BNB holding calculation limit per user will be announced in each HODLer Airdrop announcement.

“For example, if a user holds 203 BNB, and the holding calculation limit is 200 BNB. Binance will only use 200 BNB to calculate their total rewards,” Binance explains.

By the time the token lists on the Binance Spot, airdropped tokens will have already been deposited in the users’ Spot Wallets.

The company also said BNB Simple Earn assets collateralizing against Binance Loans (Flexible Rate) are not entitled to HODLer Airdrops rewards.

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Quick take:

Kraken’s chief security officer Nick Percoco said Wednesday that $3 million was taken from its wallets.

The bug allowed anyone to initiate a deposit to the platform and receive the funds without completing it.

Percoco said three people connected with an undisclosed company had refused to return the funds until Kraken made public the potential size of the exploit.

CertiK and crypto exchange company Kraken have been engaged in a bug bounty dispute for the past several days according to information material disclosed by the blockchain security firm on X. 

CertiK said on June 5, it found a vulnerability in Kraken’s deposit system that allowed withdrawals of fabricated crypto that could be converted into valid crypto.

The crypto security firm deposited 200 Matic on June 5 before withdrawing 90,000 Matic two days later. It then made a significantly larger deposit before withdrawing an even larger amount on June 9, the firm claimed via a post on X.

Source: Certik on X

Commenting on its test result on X, CertiK wrote: “The Kraken exchange failed all these tests, indicating that Kraken’s defence in-depth-system is compromised on multiple fronts. Millions of dollars can be deposited to ANY Kraken account.”

“A huge amount of fabricated crypto (worth more than 1M+ USD) can be withdrawn from the account and converted into valid cryptos. Worse yet, no alerts were triggered during the multi-day testing period. Kraken only responded and locked the test accounts days after we officially reported the incident.”

In its response, Kraken’s chief security officer Nick Percoco said his company was able to “triage the bug” within an hour and 47 minutes, before completely fixing the issue within a few hours.

Describing the circumstances of the bug, he said: “Our team found a flaw deriving from a recent UX change that would promptly credit client accounts before their assets cleared – allowing clients to effectively trade crypto markets in real-time. This UX change was not thoroughly tested against this specific attack vector.”

Percoco said further investigations showed that three accounts had already taken full advantage of the bug to credit their accounts with $4 in crypto, which would have been enough to file a bug bounty report with the Kraken team, earning themselves a sizeable reward from the crypto exchange’s bug bounty program.

“Instead, the ‘security researcher’ disclosed this bug to two other individuals who they work with who fraudulently generated much larger sums. They ultimately withdrew nearly $3 million from their Kraken accounts. This was from Kraken’s treasuries, not other client assets.”

After discussions to file the report so the funds could be returned, the researchers refused, said Percoco, going on to brand the event as an “extortion”.

CertiK said that after initial successful conversions on identifying and fixing the vulnerability, Kraken’s security operation team threatened individual CertiK employees to repay mismatched crypto amounts without giving them reasonable time or repayment addresses.

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Quick take:

Bondex is building a gamified version of LinkedIn powered by the BDXN token.

Users of the platform receive up to $10,000 in token-gated referral bounties for successfully referring new hires to recruiters.

Bondex will use the majority of the new capital to improve the platform as it positions itself to take on traditional digital hiring platforms.

Bondex, a blockchain-based talent marketplace has raised $10.5 million to build the LinkedIn of Web3. The fundraising included $4 million from Animoca Brands, Morningstar, Dext Force Ventures and iAngels and a $6.5 million community sale on Coinlist.

Bondex is building a gamified talent recruitment platform powered by the $BDXN token. Bondex CEO and founder Ignacio Palomera said it will use the majority of the new capital to improve the platform as it positions itself to take on traditional digital hiring platforms.

According to the announcement, the Bondex platform provides referral bounties to users, allowing them to act as extended recruitment arms to hiring companies. Users stand to receive up to $10,000 in token-gated referral bounties for successfully referring new hires to recruiters. 

The company said it has already tapped leading Web3 companies including Binance, Blockchain.com, Chainlink, CoinMarketCap and Ankr as recruiting partners. 

Commenting on his company’s participation in the fundraising, Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman, Yat Siu said in a statement: “Bondex is changing the game for future recruitment through Web3, enabling blockchain technology and the power of referrals to innovate against legacy platforms out there.” 

Founded in August 2021, Bondex has quickly grown to 4.55 million downloads and more than 500,000 daily active users, according to the company’s announcement on X. 

Danilo S. Carlucci, co-founder and CEO of Morningstar Ventures added: “Bondex changes the way we see recruitment and networking, allowing users to be an employer, recruiter, talent, sales agent, or all of those at once and get rewarded for their efforts.”

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The post Bondex Secures $10M to Build LinkedIn for Web3 appeared first on NFTgators .

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Pantera Capital portfolio manager Cosmo Jiang believes every crypto company will soon be an artificial intelligence venture.

Jiang told DL News he is actively looking for projects leveraging AI to boost blockchain businesses.

The firm counts crypto exchange companies Coinbase and Bitstamp alongside stablecoin issuer Circle among its portfolio companies. 

Pantera Capital has revealed it is raising $1 billion for a new fund that will see up to 20% of the fund ($200 million) dedicated to AI projects. 

According to Pantera Capital portfolio manager Cosmo Jiang, every crypto company will soon be an artificial intelligence venture. Jiang’s Web3 venture capital firm has been one of the busiest in the crypto space investing in crypto exchange companies Coinbase and Bitstamp alongside stablecoin issuer Circle.

The company has also been keen on investing in the intersection of AI and blockchain technology, most recently co-leading a $25 million Series A round for Nexus Laboratories, the Web3 company using blockchain technology to help AI agents verify data.

Describing how he views the future of AI in crypto, Jiang told DL News: “Ten,15, 20 years from now, everyone will be using AI.” According to Jiang, telling people you’ve invested in an AI company “will be as stupid as saying ‘I’m investing in a company that has a website.’”

Jiang’s strategy for the intersection of AI and blockchain technology involves identifying projects using AI to improve blockchain businesses or those that use blockchain technology to improve AI businesses.

Jiang even went as far as using Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Worldcoin as the best examples of AI and crypto companies that could be synergistic if they coexisted as one.

OpenAI has disrupted the AI industry with generative AI, while Worldcoin wants to become the world’s leading privacy-preserving human identity and financial network.

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The post Pantera Capital to Invest $200M in the Intersection of AI and Blockchain Technology appeared first on NFTgators .

The transaction count on Solana has reached its highest weekly average in about two years, according to data from TheBlock. The 7-day average of so-called non-vote transactions on Solana stood at 38.37 million as of June 18.

Non-vote transactions refer to SOL transfers between Solana accounts, smart contract executions, and decentralized exchange (DEX) trades. Elsewhere, vote transactions are associated with votes by validators on the state of the network.

Solscan data shows that the daily number of non-vote transactions has maintained near 40 million since the beginning of June.

On June 12, Solana recorded its third-highest daily count of active accounts, with over 1.23 million active wallets.

Interestingly, although the total number of active wallets did not match the performance seen in late May, Artemis data indicates that the number of returning addresses reached the record high of 1.2 million again on June 17, after initially setting this record in March of this year.

Elsewhere, data shared via Dune shows that the weekly number of traders on Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) hit a record high earlier in June, hitting the 3 million mark.

DefiLlama data shows that the total value locked (TVL) in Solana DeFi projects maintains above $4 billion as of this writing. At the end of May, TVL on Solana almost touched the $5 billion mark when it rose to the highest level since February 2022.

On May 22, TVL across Solana DEXs alone hit a record high at $1.93 billion before correcting to the current level of $1.68 billion.

The largest DEX on Solana is Raydium, which accounts for about two-thirds of TVL and trading volume among Solana DEXs.

All in all, activity on Solana seems to be reviving in the May-June period following several weeks of consolidation.

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The fundraising also attracted participation from Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings.

Bitkraft Ventures’ leading role in the round also sees it join Sonic’s board. 

Sonic has now raised $16 million in total following a $4 million seed round announced in 2022.

Solana-based layer 2 Sonic has completed a $12 million Series A round led by Bitkraft Ventures. The fundraising also attracted participation from Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings, among others.

The Series A round was structured as equity with token warrants according to Sonic founder and CEO Chris Zhu, and values the blockchain-gaming-focused chain at $100 million. The round brings the total raised to $16 million following a $4 million announced in 2022.

According to the announcement, Bitkraft will join Sonic’s board as part of the deal, The Block reported.

Mirror World Labs (MWL) is developing Sonic. They are the legal entity behind the HyperGrid Framework technology, which leverages Solana rollups to enable horizontal scaling. 

The technology allows developers to deploy decentralised applications from Ethereum Virtual Machine to Solana seamlessly, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The seamless integration enables Sonic to provide “an exceptionally fast on-chain game experience, powered by Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), at minimal cost,” Zhu said.

Justin Swart, principal at Bitkraft Ventures is optimistic about the SVM, adding that he expects it to become “the go-to destination for any gaming studio that wants to build games within the Solana ecosystem.”

This announcement comes ahead of Sonic’s planned launch of its incentivized testnet campaign called “Odyssey” later this week. The testnet will support among other functions, playing games and sending transactions, with their gaming activity earning them “rings” as rewards, Zhu said.

According to Zhu, rings represent points in the game. Although they are not directly convertible to Sonic tokens, contributors will still be rewarded in some way, he said.

The company’s native token is scheduled for launch alongside the mainnet in the third quarter of 2024.

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Quick take:

Renzo offers an Actively Validated Service powered by EigenLayer that leverages staked ETH to secure other protocols on the Ethereum network.

The restaked ETH generates yield for users who then receive Renzo’s liquid restaking token ezETH.

The company will use the funds to expand restaking services on EigenLayer including adding support for ERC-20 tokens.

Renzo has announced a $17 million fundraising secured across two rounds. The EigenLayer-based liquid restaking protocol said Galaxy Ventures led the first round, while Brevan Howard Digital Nova Fund led the second, CoinDesk reported.

Earlier this year, Renzo also raised $3.2 million in a seed round led by Maven11 Capital, according to a post on X.

The company also enjoys backing from other leading Web3 VCs including SevenX Ventures, IOSG Ventures, OKX Ventures, and Robot Ventures among others.

Renzo plans to use the latest funding to expand its liquid restaking services including adding support for ERC-20 tokens. 

The company currently offers Actively Validated Services (AVS) powered by EigenLayer, which allows it to leverage staked ETH to secure other protocols on the Ethereum network.

Stakers receive Renzo’s liquid restaking token ezETH, earning yield from their restaked ETH.

According to Lucas Kozinski, founding contributor of Renzo, the company is simply pouncing on an emerging trend in the Web3 industry with crypto restaking protocols also now beginning to build on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

“EigenLayer pioneered native ETH restaking, which is now expanding into other assets including $EIGEN to secure EigenDA,” Kozinkski told CoinDesk. “The use of ERC-20s for restaking is opening the door for other liquid restaking tokens to join alongside ezETH.”

According to the on-chain DeFi protocol tracking platform DeFiLlama, EigenLayer, which powers most crypto restaking protocols on Ethereum has since surpassed $18 billion TVL following its mainnet launch earlier this year.

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The post Renzo Ramps Up the Development of Its Liquid Restaking Protocol with $17M Funding appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

Wasabi is a DeFi protocol on Ethereum and Blast that allows users to trade long-tail assets like memecoins and NFT with leverage.

The platform boasts over 18,000 traders who have generated more than $500 million in volume this year.

The company plans to use the fresh capital to expand its team of six to ten.

Wasabi, a DeFi protocol on Ethereum and Blast has announced a $3 million funding round led by Electric Capital. 

The round also attracted participation from Alliance, Memeland, and Spencer Ventures, with Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, Magic Eden co-founder Zhouxun Yin, angel investor Santiago Santos, Cygaar, Zagabond, DCF God and Bob Loukas joining as angel investors.

The company claims to have more than 18,000 traders who have already generated over $500 million in transaction volume this year. 

Wasabi co-founder Eren Derman told The Block that the protocol will use the funds to expand its team of six to 10, including hiring a smart contract engineer, back-end developer, quantitative engineer and head of operations.

Commenting on the reasoning behind the product, Derman said it is the first protocol to enable leveraged trading backed by actual assets. Wasabi’s on-chain perpetual futures mean that all trades are asset-backed, and this removes counterparty risk, he said.

“[It] is significantly different from conventional perp decentralized exchanges like Aevo and Hyperliquid, which rely on market makers to keep their synthetic prices feed pegged to the actual price of assets on-chain.”

Users can trade long and short, or stake memecoins and NFTs, with leverage of 2-3X available for more exotic assets, whereas the more established assets like ETH and USDB have up to 10x leverage,” said Derman.

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