Quick take:

The acquisition is part of Voodoo’s strategy of diversifying into consumer-focused apps.

Voodoo boasts 7 billion downloads worldwide, while BeReal has a user base of 40 million, according to the announcement.

Voodoo also plans to further invest in BeReal while providing its expertise in product strategy, growth, and infrastructure.

Voodoo, the mobile games publisher for both non-crypto games and blockchain games has announced the acquisition of authenticity-focused gen-z social media platform BeReal at a valuation of €500 million.

The two companies will look to leverage synergies from the acquisition with Vodoo taking advantage of BeReal’s global user base of 40 million to further expand its reach. On the other hand, BeReal will integrate the technologies provided by Voodoo to further enrich the experiences of its users.

Voodoo said that the acquisition further accelerates its diversification campaign into consumer apps.

“Together, Voodoo and BeReal will be ideally positioned to deliver on BeReal’s potential and unlock synergies afforded by the platform’s significant global user base. Voodoo intends to further invest in BeReal while providing its expertise in product strategy, growth, and infrastructure.”

Voodoo offers a variety of products to game developers including financing and technology support. According to its website, its platform helps creators bridge both Web3 games and traditional games to mobile.

“BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and growth, showing there is a universal need to share real, unfiltered experiences with close friends,” said Alexandre Yazdi, Voodoo co-founder and CEO. “We are very excited to bring our teams together and leverage Voodoo’s know-how and differentiated technologies to scale BeReal into the iconic social network for authenticity.”

BeReal allows users to post short (2-minute) real-time videos of what they are doing every day at the time they receive a push notification. The platform has become popular with Gen Z. Photos posted disappear within 24 hours and there are no follow and like features.

The company sees its acquisition by Voodoo as the beginning of a new growth chapter.

“Voodoo has a proven track record of driving significant growth in mobile apps. Their resources and expertise will help bring BeReal on a sustainable growth path while continuing to deliver on its mission to create an authentic world that keeps you connected with the people you really care about,” said Alexis Barreyat, BeReal founder and CEO.

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The post Web3 Mobile Games Publisher Voodoo Acquires BeReal at €500M Valuation appeared first on NFTgators .

Polygon has been one of the most active chains by non-fungible token (NFT) activity since the start of June. CryptoSlam data shows that the daily number of unique buyers of Polygon-based NFTs hit a record high on June 9 at 45,200.

Meanwhile, NFT sales on Polygon surpassed $3.4 million on June 7, the highest level since mid-January 2024.

Thanks to this increase in NFT activity, Polygon surpassed Solana by NFT sales over the last week, ranking third on CryptoSlam.

Weekly NFT sales on Polygon surged 30% to $20.2 million, excluding data associated with wash trading.

Elsewhere, Solana NFT sales declined 8% over the same period to $17.6 million.

Bitcoin remains on top with $48.7 million after soaring 54%, thanks to an increase in Ordinals volumes.

DappRadar also ranks Polygon in 3rd position by NFT sales, with Ethereum on top and Bitcoin on 4th.

DappRadar recorded $18.2 in Polygon NFT sales over the week, down 16% from the previous week.

The main driver behind the surge in Polygon NFT activity is the Moon Girl collection, which has generated over $5 million in sales over the last seven days, up 510% over the week.

Moon Girl is a new collection that was launched in June. It consists of 14,000 items representing images of rebel girls.

Another popular NFT collection on Polygon is Poker Girl, which comprises 10,000 NFTs. DappRadar shows that it has generated almost $2 million in sales over the last week, being third after Moon Girl and Liberty Cats. Poker Girl was also launched at the beginning of June.

The NFT market has been greatly affected by the ‘crypto winter’ following the collapse of UST (and LUNA), FTX, and other major crypto platforms. In 2023, Bitcoin ordinals came to the rescue by popularizing the concept of on-chain, censorship-resistant NFTs. Today, Bitcoin tops blockchain rankings by NFT sales.

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Polygon has been one of the most active chains by non-fungible token (NFT) activity since the start of June. CryptoSlam data shows that the daily number of unique buyers of Polygon-based NFTs hit a record high on June 9 at 45,200.

Meanwhile, NFT sales on Polygon surpassed $3.4 million on June 7, the highest level since mid-January 2024.

Thanks to this increase in NFT activity, Polygon surpassed Solana by NFT sales over the last week, ranking third on CryptoSlam.

Weekly NFT sales on Polygon surged 30% to $20.2 million, excluding data associated with wash trading.

Elsewhere, Solana NFT sales declined 8% over the same period to $17.6 million.

Bitcoin remains on top with $48.7 million after soaring 54%, thanks to an increase in Ordinals volumes.

DappRadar also ranks Polygon in 3rd position by NFT sales, with Ethereum on top and Bitcoin on 4th.

DappRadar recorded $18.2 in Polygon NFT sales over the week, down 16% from the previous week.

The main driver behind the surge in Polygon NFT activity is the Moon Girl collection, which has generated over $5 million in sales over the last seven days, up 510% over the week.

Moon Girl is a new collection that was launched in June. It consists of 14,000 items representing images of rebel girls.

Another popular NFT collection on Polygon is Poker Girl, which comprises 10,000 NFTs. DappRadar shows that it has generated almost $2 million in sales over the last week, being third after Moon Girl and Liberty Cats. Poker Girl was also launched at the beginning of June.

The NFT market has been greatly affected by the ‘crypto winter’ following the collapse of UST (and LUNA), FTX, and other major crypto platforms. In 2023, Bitcoin ordinals came to the rescue by popularizing the concept of on-chain, censorship-resistant NFTs. Today, Bitcoin tops blockchain rankings by NFT sales.

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The post Polygon NFT Sellers Surges to Record, Surpasses Solana in USD Sales appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

Squads also announced the launch of its retail-focused iOS wallet app called Fuse on public TestFlight.

The protocol allows companies and businesses to manage digital assets using multi-signature security.

Some of its more popular clients include Jito, Jupiter, Tensor, Drift, Zeta, Backpack and Kamino.

Squads Labs, a Solana-based multi-sig protocol that allows businesses to manage digital assets using multi-signature security has secured a $10 million Series A round led by Electric Capital. The fundraising also attracted participation from Coinbase Ventures, Placeholder VC, RockawayX, and L1 Digital, with Mert Mumtaz — the co-founder and CEO of Helius and founder of Odyssey Ventures joining as an angel investor.

The company is building an infrastructure that makes it easier for businesses, teams and individuals to securely transact, manage and own digital assets like tokens and treasuries.

The company also announced the launch of its smart wallet dubbed Fuse for public testing on the iOS TestFlight.

The Solana-based wallet is already used by more than 250 businesses including the likes of Jito, Jupiter, Tensor, Drift, Zeta, Backpack and Kamino.

The smart wallet enables users to gain access to their accounts without having to remember key phrases, and without compromising security. According to Squads, its protocol has already helped secure $10 billion in digital assets to date, which is a significant increase from the $500 million secured as of October 2023.

Commenting on the announcement, Stepan Simkin, CEO of Squads Labs told the Block that his company does not really view Solana-based Phantom as a direct competitor: “While Phantom and other wallets focus on onboarding and connectivity, Fuse aims to be the ultimate savings account for your digital net worth, eliminating the need for solely relying on cold wallets or CEXs.” 

According to Simkin, Fuse primarily focuses on internal features like two-factor authentication (2FA), wallet recovery, progressive security, time locks and spending limits, thus allowing users to “fully program their self-custody setup.” 

“The distinction I would make is that Fuse is for storing and compounding assets, while other providers are for ecosystem interactions,” Simkin said.

Fuse is scheduled to launch in the main iOS App store in July. The company also plans to add to its team of 17 people by hiring more designers and engineers, added Simkin.

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The post Electric Capital Leads $10M Series A Round for Solana-Based Multisig Protocol Squads appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

Nexus Laboratories will use the fresh capital to accelerate its go-to-market efforts and expand its engineering team.

The fundraising brings the total raised to $27.2 million, following a $2.2 million seed round raised in 2022.

Nexus is building a range of zero-knowledge privacy tools to be used to support technologies like AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and privacy-enhancing technologies.

Nexus Laboratories, a Web3 startup building zero-knowledge-powered scaling and privacy tools to support artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, cloud computing, and other privacy-enhancing technologies has completed a $25 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital. 

The fundraising also attracted participation from Dragonfly Capital, Faction Ventures, and Blockchain Builders Fund.

This fundraising brings the total raised to $27.2 million, following a $2.2 million seed round announced in 2022, which was led by Dragonfly and attracted participation from Alliance, SV Angel, and Blockchain Builders Fund.

Nexus offers a technology suite that it believes will help “bring truth to the internet.” Commenting on his company’s goals, Daniel Marin, founder and CEO of Nexus said in a statement:  “We want to bring to market an entirely new form of computation – verifiable computation. We believe this is a fundamental step for humanity, as was the advent of the Internet, cloud computing and AI. Our goal is to make zero-knowledge proofs accessible to any developer, and drive the cost of zero-knowledge proofs down by orders of magnitude.”

The company’s suite of tools allows developers to scale their projects, making their zero-knowledge-powered apps faster and more secure. The fundraising also follows Nexus’  launch of Nexus 1.0, “the first major release of its zero-knowledge virtual machine, which introduces a new cryptographic technique enabling highly efficient proof aggregation, the company wrote in a press release.

Commenting on his company’s leading role in the Series A round, Ravi Mhatre, founder and managing partner of Lightspeed said: “With the rise of AI and the increasing need for privacy preservation, verifiable computing is becoming essential. Nexus’s innovative approach promises to make these advanced cryptographic techniques practical and scalable, reducing costs dramatically and setting new standards for secure and efficient computation.” 

Lauren Stephanian, general partner with Pantera Capital added: “Nexus is focused on enabling zk-rollups, the largest source of demand for proof generation today.” 

Stephanian believes zk-proofs will power thousands of rollups in the coming months and years, which will require proof generation.

Nexus plans to use the fresh capital to expand its team of engineers and build more products. The funds will also be used to support early-stage users in production deployments as the company continues its “engagement with the scientific community.”

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Quick take:

The fundraising also attracted participation from Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and others.

Mountain Protocol offers a yield-bearing stablecoin USDM “entirely backed by US treasuries.” 

The USDM total supply currently stands at 50 million tokens, with nearly 40 million tokens on Ethereum alone.

Mountain Protocol has completed an $8 million Series A round led by Multicoin Capital. The fundraising also attracted participation from Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and others.

The company offers the yield-earnings stablecoin USDM, which is backed one-to-one with the US dollar. The ERC-20 rebasing token currently provides about a 5% yield and is kept separate from the company’s operating accounts.

Launched in October 2023, Mountain Protocol’s USDM currently has a total supply of 50 million tokens. The company plans to use the fresh capital to ramp up that figure 10x to 500 million, Martin Carrica, co-founder and CEO of Mountain Protocol, told The Block.

Carrica added that nearly 40 million of the current token supply is on Ethereum. 

The fundraising was a pure equity round and brings the total raised to $12 million, following a $4 million seed round announced last September.

Carrica added that the stablecoin is mainly being used to manage treasuries of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), adding that the stablecoin will soon be made available for other use cases after the fresh funding.

There are also plans to expand the USDM offering to other blockchains including Solana, Aptos, Sei, and Monad, as well as, integrate with more DeFi protocols, before expanding to fintech firms, crypto exchanges and market makers.

“Market makers and traders are holding about 20% of their book on stablecoins. If they are able to hold that book on yield-bearing stablecoins and then continue engaging in their activity, they are very interested in doing the swap,” Carrica said.

The stablecoin market has emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments this year with multiple crypto companies launching new stablecoins. In April, Ripple launched a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar as it looks to wrestle the likes of Tether and Circle from their market dominance.

In the same month, VanEck Scion the investment firm founded by Nick Van Eck, the son of investment management veteran Jan Van Eck raised $12 million for its stablecoin entity Agora, while real-world asset stablecoin issuer Anzen last month expanded to multiple chains and protocols following a $4 million fundraising. 

Such has been the rise in interest in stablecoins that Ethereum stablecoin volume on Ethereum has since surpassed $1 trillion.

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Quick take:

Noteholders will be able to convert their holdings into the equity of Bacasable Global Limited the corporate name of The Sandbox.

The Sandbox said it will use the capital to advance its vision of building a decentralised virtual world.

Sebastien Borget, president of The Sandbox said his company, which counts 300 employees, now has enough capital to operate for five years or more.

The Sandbox has completed a $20 million fundraising via a convertible note. Kingsway Capital and Animoca Brands co-led the round with participation from LG Tech Ventures and True Global Ventures.

The note was issued at a valuation of $1 billion, The Sandbox said in a statement on Thursday. According to the announcement, noteholders will be able to convert their debt into equity of Bacasable Global Limited, the corporate name of The Sandbox, at the same terms as existing preference shares.

The Sandbox President Sebastian Borget said: “We’re excited to welcome new strategic partners who support our vision to develop the most accessible and inclusive platform that makes available the opportunities of Web3 to a global mainstream audience, and where brands and communities join hands to co-create the future of gaming and entertainment. The Sandbox is a proud believer in the power of the metaverse to shape our digital tomorrow to be collaborative, fair, and open.”

The Sandbox offers a metaverse platform driven by user-generated content. Users on the platform can engage in a variety of virtual activities and events including playing games, socialising and joining virtual concerts.

The company plans to use the funding to accelerate its vision of building a decentralised virtual world “where culture meets gaming and where the community is able to participate actively in and derive benefit from, the growth of the whole ecosystem,”  The Sandbox wrote in a statement.

Commenting on the announcement, Yat Siu, executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said in a statement, “We are deeply honoured by the continuing commitment to the vision of The Sandbox, and we’re incredibly excited about the future of composable user-generated content games.”

Although the metaverse hype seems to have calmed over the past year, market research firm McKinsey once estimated it could be worth $5 trillion by 2030.

Companies involved in the industry now seem to be adopting more subtle phrases like virtual worlds and 3D interactive digital spaces as they continue to build. But platforms like the Sandbox believe while the likes of Roblox and Minecraft offer their own versions of metaverse experiences, they lack the advantages of leveraging blockchain technology to provide their users with digital property rights.

“If we can empower our economy and keep it growing, we can enable people to build their own experiences on their phones using Game Maker,” Arthur Madrid, CEO of The Sandbox, told GamesBeat. “They can launch their experiences on virtual land and start monetizing.”

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The post The Sandbox Ramps Up Vision of a Decentralised Virtual World with $20M Convertible Debt appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

Bitstamp holds over 50 active licenses and registrations globally.

The crypto exchange company also has offices in Luxembourg, the UK, Slovenia, Singapore and the US.

The acquisition will usher in Robinhood’s first institutional business to its ecosystem as it seeks to accelerate global expansion.

Robinhood has announced the acquisition of the UK-based crypto exchange company Bitstamp for $200 million. The acquisition is part of Robinhood’s strategy of expanding its global footprint. 

The company boasts retail and institutional clients from the EU, UK, US and Asia, who will all become part of the Robinhood business, which has rapidly been expanding into crypto over the past few years.

With offices in Luxembourg, the UK, Slovenia, Singapore and the US, Bitstamp holds over 50 active licenses and registrations globally. The acquisition will usher in Robinhood’s first institutional business.

The company will be adding to its crypto business Bitstamp’s range of products including its core spot exchange platform with over 85 tradable assets, as well as, products like staking and lending.

Commenting on the announcement, Johann Kerbrat, General Manager of Robinhood Crypto said in a statement: “Bitstamp’s highly trusted and long-standing global exchange has shown resilience through market cycles. By seamlessly coupling customer experience with safety across geographies, the Bitstamp team has established one of the strongest reputations across retail and institutional crypto investors.” 

According to Kerbrat, the acquisition better positions Robinhood for expansion outside the US, whilst also welcoming institutional customers.

Robinhood has been a predominantly retail-trader-focused platform dating back to days when it was only offering stock trading.

JB Graftieaux, CEO of Bitstamp commented: “As the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, Bitstamp is known as one of the most trusted and transparent crypto platforms worldwide. Bringing Bitstamp’s platform and expertise into Robinhood’s ecosystem will give users an enhanced trading experience with a continuing commitment to compliance, security, and customer-centricity.”

As part of the acquisition, Bitstamp’s team will join forces with Robinhood to collaborate on growing the business globally.

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Quick take:

Coinbase has unveiled its highly anticipated Smart Wallet, announced earlier this year.

The company said the wallet is designed to make it easier for non-crypto native users to get started in decentralised finance.

The Coinbase smart wallet allows users to create a new wallet using Face ID, a Google Chrome profile, or a fingerprint unlock feature among others.

Coinbase has unveiled its highly anticipated Smart Wallet, designed to onboard billions of users to Web3. First announced in February this year, the Coinbase Smart Wallet is made to work across different networks and applications. 

The wallet makes the onboarding process of new users to decentralised finance applications easier by allowing users to create a new wallet using Face ID, a Google Chrome profile, or a fingerprint unlock feature among others.

Coinbase has made it its mission to reduce the barriers to Web3. Last year, the company launched a Wallet-as-a-Service solution enabling companies to integrate and deploy self-custody wallets to their platforms easily.

“Until now, going on-chain has been slow, expensive, and hard, with separate wallet app installs and first-generation blockchains,” Coelho-Prabhu wrote in a statement.

But with Coinbase Smart Wallet, users will be able to use a variety of options, including FaceID and social media profiles to create new wallets.

According to the announcement, the Coinbase Smart Wallet also supports gasless transactions, reducing the cost of interacting with Web3 apps.

The wallet allows users to manage all their assets using one profile unless in a fragmented state where they are forced to create a new wallet for every platform they interact with.

“With the smart wallet, users will be able to manage all their crypto assets regardless of the network and application, from a single place,” a statement on the Coinbase Smart Wallet page says.

At launch, the Coinbase Smart Wallet will support 8 networks including Base, Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, and Zora, with more set to be added in the future, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.

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Ethena, a decentralized stablecoin protocol, saw its total value locked (TVL) exceed the $3 billion mark on June 2, and it has since reached a new high at $3.14 billion, according to data from DeFiLlama.

The crypto funds are locked to mint Ethena’s algorithmic stablecoin USDe. The USD-pegged token has become the fourth-largest stablecoin by market cap after Tether’s USDT, Circle’s USDC, and Maker’s DAI. It accounts for about 2% of the total market cap of all USD-backed stablecoins.

Ethena’s stablecoin was launched at the end of 2023, and it has become the fastest-growing USD stablecoin.

Meanwhile, ENA, Ethena’s governance token launched last April, is trading at $0.97 and has a market cap of $1.47 billion.

According to data from Token Terminal, Ethena surpassed Solana in 7-day revenue, reaching third place after Tron and Ethereum.

Ethena had its third-best revenue week from May 27 to June 2, generating over $7 million. It also hit a weekly record when revenue figures surpassed $8.3 million.

Token Terminal took to Twitter (now X) to say that Ethena is on track to generate over $220 million in revenue over the next 12 months.

While the dramatic collapse of UST and LUNA has affected the reputation of algorithmic stablecoins, Ethena is repairing the damage. It introduced a unique mechanism called delta hedging. Its USDe token is fully backed by the USD based on an on-chain mechanism.

The stablecoin is targeting delta neutrality thanks to a risk management mechanism in which the collateral’s price change risk is covered by short futures positions on derivatives platforms.

For instance, if Bitcoin is used as collateral, USDe will dynamically adjust the delta position by taking short positions against BTC derivatives on futures trading platforms like Binance, BitMex, or Deribit. If the BTC price declines, the short positions become profitable, maintaining a balanced reserve to back the stablecoin.

Below is an overview of Ethena’s collateral assets:

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The post Ethena’s TVL Crosses $3B Mark, Bringing Trust to Algorithmic Stablecoins appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

The company also announced the launch of the open testnet of its data confidentiality layer called Helium.

Fhenix is leveraging fully homomorphic encryption technology from cryptography firm Zama to enable full confidentiality in its network.

The latest fundraising brings the total raised by Fhenix to $22 million following a Seed round announced in September 2023.

Data confidentiality-focused layer-2 Fhenix has completed a $15 million Series A round led by Hack VC. The fundraising also attracted participation from Dao5, Amber Group, Primitive Ventures, GSR, Collider Ventures and Stake Capital.

The fundraising brings the total raised to $22 million following a $7 million seed round announced in September 2023.

The company also announced the launch of the open testnet of its platform called Helium, powered by FHE technology. Fhenix has teamed up with fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology firm Zama to bring data confidentiality to its network.

With FHE technology data is encrypted at all times, thus reducing the likelihood of sensitive information ever getting compromised. This allows smart contract systems to use data without compromising on privacy.

Fhenix is not the first blockchain company to team up with Zama for FHE technology. Earlier this year, another EVM-compatible data confidentiality layer Inco announced it was using the same technology, while Shiba Inu also collaborated with Zama to enhance ecosystem privacy and security.

According to Fhenix co-founder and CEO Guy Itzhaki, confidentiality is the next step after scaling in the evolution of the blockchain technology industry, The Block reported.

“After scaling, confidentiality is the next major hurdle Ethereum needs to solve in order to reach mainstream adoption,” Itzhaki said. “FHE is the most elegant solution to the problem of encryption because, unlike existing confidentiality solutions based on zero knowledge technology, it allows for end-to-end computation of encrypted data.”

The company remains on course to launch its mainnet in the first quarter of 2025, according to Itzhaki and has set up a grand program (of yet to be determined amount) to attract developers to its testnet.

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Quick take:

Polygon and Toposware previously collaborated to develop a Type 1 Prover, which allows Ethereum-compatible platforms to easily adopt zk proofs.

This acquisition aligns well with Polygon’s goal of building a portfolio of zero-knowledge rollup tools through AggLayer.

Although no acquisition value was provided, Toposware was last valued at about AUD31-46m in November 2023 according to Dealroom.

Polygon has announced the acquisition of zero-knowledge research and engineering firm Toposware. The acquisition comes as Polygon advances its zero-knowledge rollups-focused strategy.

This is the Ethereum scaling L2’s third zk-rollup startup acquisition over the past three years. The two companies have been working on a Type 1 Prover, which allows Ethereum-based blockchains to easily adopt zero-knowledge proofs.

The acquisition will see Toposwares team of 11 engineers integrated into Polygon’s zero-knowledge research and development teams.

According to Polygon co-founder and executive chairman Sandeep Nailwal, who recently took on the role of Chief Business Officer his company committed $1 billion to Zero-Knowledge-related investments in 2021. 

In August 2021, Polygon acquired zero-knowledge scaling technology developer Hermez Network for $250 million, before adding another ZK startup Mir in a $400 million deal.

Although based on the amount committed to ZK-related projects versus what has already been spent in acquisitions leaves a lot more available for spending, a Polygon spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company has no other deals planned at the moment.

Zero-knowledge proofs allow blockchain protocols to exchange information without compromising user privacy. The technology now not only secures user data but also brings the highly-needed scalability for the mass adoption of users.

Blockchain gaming platforms, NFT-powered loyalty programs, the metaverse and real-world asset tokenisation (RWA) platforms are some of the verticals where zero-knowledge technology is used.

For instance, Polygon partnered with Immutable to launch the Immutable zkEVM, a Web3 gaming platform powered by zero-knowledge proofs.

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Quick take:

The fundraising also attracted participation from SevenX Ventures, Nomad Capital, Chapter One, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Hashkey Capital and others.

The announcement comes just weeks ahead of mainnet and token launch according to founder Anurag Arjun.

The fundraising follows Avail’s $27 million seed round announced in February this year.

Avail, the modular blockchain platform founded by former Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun has secured a $43 million Series A round co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Dragonfly, and Cyber Fund.

The fundraising also attracted participation from SevenX Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Chapter One, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, KR1, Alliance, and Hashkey Capital.

The Series A round was structured as a combination of a simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) and a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) Arjun told The Block.

The fundraising also comes on the heels of the company’s $27 million seed round announced in February, which Founders Fund and Dragonfly, with participation from SevenX, Figment, and Nomad Capital.

Avail also secured a $5 million pre-seed round according to Arjun and has now raised a total of $75 million. 

The announcement also comes just weeks ahead of Avail’s mainnet and token launches, Arjun said.

The former Polygon co-founder is building a modular blockchain platform that focuses on rollup infrastructure, as he expects rollups and layer 2s to dominate the industry in the future.

“There will be a few base layers, like Ethereum and Avail, and then hundreds and thousands of rollups on top. Avail is building the infrastructure to support this rollup-centric future,” Arjun said.

Avail is developing a trinity of products Data Availability (DA) layer, the Nexus unification layer, and Fusion, an additive security layer, which will address among other Web3 challenges, rollup scalability. The platform leverages validity proofs, which enable 10x faster guarantees on transaction finalization.

Joey Krug, partner at Founders Fund, said in a statement: “Avail makes data availability — a historically costly problem for blockchains — much cheaper and more efficient with their innovative, custom-built approach. 

“Their DA solution, paired with their Nexus interoperability layer and Fusion security layer, makes it super seamless and easy for teams to create new protocols leveraging Avail’s tech stack.”

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Quick take:

The indictment states that Mr. Guan, 61, led Epoch Times’  “Make Money Online” team, which used crypto to “purchase tens of millions worth of crime proceeds.” 

Epoch Time has stated that it “intends to and will fully cooperate with any investigation dealing with the allegations against Mr Guan,” BBC reported.

Mr. Guan has since been suspended by the company until the matter is concluded, Epoch Times said.

Epoch Times chief financial officer, Bill Guan has been indicted by Federal prosecutors for allegedly participating in a scheme that laundered tens of millions of dollars using cryptocurrency.

According to the report, Mr. Guan, 61, led Epoch Times’  “Make Money Online” team, which used crypto to “purchase tens of millions worth of crime proceeds.”

He has since been suspended by the outlet “until the matter is concluded.” Epoch Time has also stated that it “intends to and will fully cooperate with any investigation dealing with the allegations against Mr Guan,” BBC reported.

“Although Mr Guan is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the company has suspended him until this matter is resolved,” Epoch Times said.

If convicted, Mr. Guan, who has yet to enter a plea, could face a prison time of more than 30 years, the report states.

According to the indictment report, the alleged scheme began in 2020.

Describing how the plot was executed, prosecutors said members of the Make Money Online (MMO) team simply “purchased crime proceeds via cryptocurrency at a discount and then transferred those proceeds into bank accounts held by entities affiliated with newspaper.” 

The money would then be moved into Epoch Times accounts using “tens of thousands of layered transactions” including credit card accounts opened using stolen identities, the report states.The report, which bases some of the allegations on accounting data, indicates that Epoch Times revenues skyrocketed by 410 times to about $62 million from $15 million about the time Mr. Guan came up with the alleged scheme.

Mr. Guan reportedly lied about what caused the surge in revenues, claiming it came from donations.

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Quick take:

Siu used Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital to tokenise the violin.

Siu is using the tokenised violin as collateral for a loan facilitated by Galaxy’s Global Markets business.

Made in 1708, the violin once belonged to Russia’s Catherine the Great, the press statement said.

Yat Siu has tokenised his 316-year-old violin to secure a multi-million dollar loan facilitated by Galaxy Digital’s Global Markets business. 

The tokenisation demonstrates the expansive use cases blockchain technology could bring to real-world assets, a segment of the industry that has recently become one of the most exciting verticals for traditional asset managers.

Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital offers a variety of blockchain-based solutions including digital infrastructure solutions, trading and lending services, as well as, strategic advisory services, institutional-grade investment solutions, proprietary bitcoin mining and hosting services, and network validator services, among others.

Tokenising the violin opens up another market enabling rare items to be used as collateral by leveraging blockchain technology.

Made in 1708, the violin once belonged to Russia’s Catherine the Great, a press statement said.

“The tokenization of this iconic musical instrument, celebrated for its unmatched craftsmanship and storied provenance, marks a significant advancement in the application of blockchain technology to unlock the value of unique real-world assets,” Galaxy Digital stated.

Commenting on the announcement, Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Michael Novogratz said: “By tokenising this Stradivarius violin, we are not just preserving the legacy of one of the world’s most precious musical instruments, but we are also setting a precedent for how the latent value of real-world assets can be accessed and utilized.”

According to Novogratz, the tokenisation of “high-end”  assets like this violin “[creates] a process that will transform how a whole range of assets are managed, valued, and traded in a digital economy.”

Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Siu commented: “I am thrilled to help trailblaze this new economic model for unique assets while at the same time preserving and sharing not just a very rare and precious instrument, but also a piece of history.”

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Quick take: 

Connext will use part of the capital to complete its rebrand to Everclear, as it doubles down on building a clearing layer for intent-based bridges.

Everclear now becomes the new Foundation of the new tech stack that includes the clearing layer.

The clearing layer functions as its own blockchain, serving as a backend liquidity that facilitates matching orders for intent-based bridges.

Connext, the Web3 startup building a modular clearing layer for intent-based bridges has received a $5 million investment from Pantera Capital. The fundraising was executed via a $NEXT token sale in an over-the-counter (OTC) deal.

The company also announced its rebrand to Everclear, the organisation that will now become the new Foundation behind the company’s tech stack including Everclear Chain, an optimistic rollup.

According to the announcement, the clearing layer functions as its own blockchain, serving as a backend liquidity that facilitates matching orders for intent-based bridges.

According to the announcement, the system operates by matching orders from users as they seek to interact with applications from different blockchains. Solvers then compete to fulfil the orders at a small fee.

The platform already supports multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Gnosis, Arbitrum, Optimism, BSC, Linea, Metis, Mode and Base. At the same time, zkSync, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, X Layer, Avalanche and Mantle are set to be integrated soon.

Deployed as a rollup on Arbitrum Orbit, Everclear leverages Hyperlane to enable permissionless communication across chains, while EigenLayer secures its operation as an Actively Validated Service.

Everclear wants to lower transaction latency between blockchains and involving any asset or application to under 10 seconds, The Block reported.

Everclear plans to launch its mainnet in the third quarter of 2024, following its successful testnet that is already being used by Socket, Particle Network, Router and Enzo to build their projects.

This announcement follows Connext’s $7.5 million strategic round announced in June last year, which attracted participation from Polychain Capital, NGC Ventures, Polygon Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, KXVC, a_capital, No Limit Holdings, Factor, and Dokia Capital.

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Quick take:

Tether has entered into a private placement with Bitdeer to purchase 18,587,360 A-shares of Bitdeer at $10.00 per share.

The company also secured a warrant to purchase up to 5,000,000 additional shares.

The announcement comes just weeks after Tether reorganised into four divisions as part of its diversification strategy.

Tether, the issuer of the world’s biggest stablecoin by market capitalisation, USDT has accelerated its diversification campaign with a $100 million investment in Bitdeer, a bitcoin mining platform, which recently unveiled plans to expand its BTC mining hash rate to 11.4.

According to the announcement, Tether has entered into a private placement with Bitdeer to purchase 18,587,360 A-shares of Bitdeer at $10.00 per share. The company also secured a warrant to purchase up to 5,000,000 additional shares, for a total of $50 million bringing its stake in Bitdeer to $150 million.

The warrant is subject to customary anti-dilution provisions reflecting share dividends and splits or other similar transactions, Bitdeer wrote in a press release on Thursday.

This announcement follows Tether’s $200 million investment in biotech firm Blackrock Neurotech, made through the USDT issuer’s newly formed venture arm Tether Evo.

The $100 million BTC mining investment will be made through the company’s Power unit, one of the initial four divisions announced in April.

The Singapore-based Bitcoin miner said it will use the net proceeds from the private placement to fund its data centre expansion and ASIC-based mining rig development. Some of the proceeds will also be used for working capital and other general corporate purposes, the company said.

Commenting on the announcement, Linghui Kong, Chief Business Officer of Bitdeer said in a statement: “This substantial investment demonstrates confidence in our vision and the strength of our extensive global operations. With Tether’s support, we are poised to accelerate our growth and continue our leadership in sustainable and efficient bitcoin mining.”

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether added: “We regard Bitdeer as one of the strongest vertically integrated operators in the Bitcoin mining industry, differentiated by its cutting-edge technologies, and a robust R&D organization.”

The companies used financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald & Co as the placement agent for the private placement.

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Quick take:

Neynar’s goal is to become the go-to inventory for developing any social protocol.

Most of the developers using its toolbox are currently building on Farcaster Protocol.

Frcaster’s open-source protocol basts over 378,000 users who own and control their data.

Neynar, a Web3 social toolbox for developers looking to build social media protocols has completed an $11 million Series A round led by Haun Ventures with participation from a16z’s CSX, Coinbase Ventures, and Union Square Ventures, Fortune reported.

According to Naynar, most developers that use its tools are currently building on Farcaster, a Web3 social media protocol with over 378,000 users. 

This announcement comes when decentralised social media protocols are gaining popularity. Last week, Farcaster secured a $150 million fundraising, led by Paradigm with a16z and Haun also participating.

Web3 social media protocols allow users to own and control their data, addressing one of the biggest challenges facing traditional social networks.

Developers can the Farcaster protocol to build social applications without seeking permission from the network.

Despite the similarity in the markets that Neynar and Farcaster are targeting Breck Stodghill, a partner at Haun Ventures does not see investing in one as equivalent to investing in the other.

Although most of Neynar’s users are on Farcaster, the company simply chose that strategy because that is where most Web3 social developers currently are. “It doesn’t mean that they won’t expand to other protocols and infrastructure later on,” Stodghill told Fortune.

According to the announcement, one of the key main tools offered by Neynar includes an endpoint that shares immediate data about Farcaster such as the user’s profile information, casts, and follows. There is also a tool that secures the sending of data to the Farcaster protocol, by signing it in with private keys before pushing it to the network.

Describing to Fortune how Neynar works co-founder Rishav Mukherji compared his company to what cloud computing does for internet users, “[providing] a service for remotely storing files, applications, and data, eradicating the need for desktop computers to always be online and providing insurmountable memory.”

Mukherji also believes developers will be able to cut costs significantly given that Neyner essentially runs the hub for them, from $9 per month, compared to hundreds of dollars they would spend using Farcaster Protocol’s “storage units” called “hub”.

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The number of transactions on the SKALE network reached a new record in monthly terms, surpassing the 47 million mark one day before the end of May, according to data from The Block.

The SKALE chain has been around for about two years and started to gain traction in the summer of 2023.

SKALE is an Ethereum-compatible blockchain network offering zero gas fees, instant finality, and a modular architecture for building all kinds of decentralized applications (dapps). As a sidechain, it combines elements of layer 1 and layer 2.

It positions itself as a hybrid layer 1/layer 2 chain that partially borrows security features from Ethereum while offering performance and decentralization of a Layer 1.

Web3 Gaming Drives SKALE Activity

SKALE has a modular architecture where communities can build and manage hub chains by category, which act as a Web3 services layer. The most popular hub chains are Europe (for DeFi), Nebula (for gaming), Calypso (for NFTs), and Titan (for general apps).

The network also hosts app chains, which are dedicated chains that provide high performance for individual dapps, such as Exorde and Cryptoblades.

As of today, Nebula accounts for the largest share of transactions and users on the SKALE ecosystem, suggesting that the EVM chain is actively used for Web3 gaming.

So far, Nebula has seen over 30 million transactions performed in May, a new record high.

This month, Nebula had over 3.5 million users, which is about 90% of the active user base of the entire SKALE ecosystem.

However, unlike the transaction count, the number of active users on SKALE has been declining since February of this year, when it reached an all-time monthly high of over 7.5 million.

SKALE claims that it has saved over $7 billion in gas fees.

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Quick take:

The fundraising also attracted participation from Bullish Capital, Polychain Capital and others.

Babylon’s Bitcoin staking protocol allows Proof-of-Stake (“PoS”) systems including PoS chains, L2s, Data Availability layers and oracles to acquire staking capital from Bitcoin.

Babylon’s trustless Bitcoin testnet saw over 100,000 stakers within 48 hours following its launch in February 2024.

Babylon Chain has completed a $70 million funding round led by Paradigm with participation from Bullish Capital, Polychain Capital and others. The company plans to use the capital to accelerate its “mission of building a Bitcoin-secured decentralised economy.”

Babylon’s Bitcoin staking protocol allows Proof-of-Stake (“PoS”) systems including PoS chains, L2s, Data Availability layers and oracles to acquire staking capital from Bitcoin. Its trustless Bitcoin testnet saw over 100,000 stakers within 48 hours following its launch in February 2024.

Babylon Chain is expanding the utility of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. With over $1 trillion in market cap, Babylon’s scalable staking and restaking features will allow it to unlock more revenue opportunities from the Bitcoin ecosystem.

“Since bitcoin is huge in supply and has been serving as a store of value without much yield, using it as a staking asset can greatly reduce PoS chains’ inflation pressure and enhance its financial utility to holders,” the company wrote in a statement via press release.

Commenting on the announcement, David Tse, co-founder of Babylon, said in a statement: “We are thrilled by the confidence shown by Paradigm, Bullish Capital, Polychain Capital and other investors. This funding will accelerate our mission to make Bitcoin the security backbone of PoS systems. Our team is dedicated to advancing the utility of Bitcoin beyond its traditional roles and enhancing the security of the entire blockchain ecosystem.”

Arjun Balaji, Investment Partner at Paradigm commented: “Trustless staking is a novel and fundamental primitive for bitcoin and the broader ecosystem. We are thrilled to partner with David Tse and the Babylon team, who are among the best researchers and builders pushing at the frontier of Bitcoin innovation.”

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