Fundraisings of the Week
Bitcoin Miner Marathon Digital-Linked Startup Auradine Raises $81M
Peter Thiel Backs Bitcoin Startup River in $35M Round
Cormint bags $30m and 400 BTC to scale Bitcoin mining in West Texas
ZK Startup Lagrange Labs Raises $4M to Build Secure DeFi Interoperability
After Royalties For A Rihanna Record Were Sold On AnotherBlock, The Platform Raised Over $4M In Funding
Jia rakes in $4.3m seed funding to expand blockchain lending
Crypto Startup Hourglass Starts Unique Marketplace to Trade Locked Up DeFi Assets
Jack Dorsey Leads $6 Million Raise for Bitcoin Payments Company Azteco
Global institutional participation in digital assets set to soar as PYOR raises $4m
Airstack Raises Over $7M for AI-Backed Web3 Developer Platform
DeFi
Weekly TVL
Gross: ā¬ļø$47.09B
Top 3 Apps: Lido ā¬ļø($11.95B), MakerDAO ā¬ļø($6.86B), AAVE ā¬ļø($5.21B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ā¬ļø($26.9B), TRON ā¬ļø($5.48B), BSC ā¬ļø($4.6B)
Top 7D Change š: Developing the next generation of Omnichain LSD-based stablecoins ā Lybra Finance (+262%, $60.37m)
[X2Y2 Fi and v3 Live] NFT marketplace X2Y2 launches X2Y2 Fi and the v3 upgrade. The X2Y2 Fi is a platform for NFT loans, and v3 improves the platform UX with new features such as Gasless Loan Offer Cancellation, Optimized Gas Expenditure, and Auto Refinance.
[Taproot Asset v0.2] Lightening Labs introduces an upgrade on Taproot Assets Protocol. The new version provides features for ādevs looking to issue, send, receive, and discover assets on the Bitcoin blockchainā. The upgrade is currently on the testnet and will be on mainnet soon.
[Rook Transition] Following the approval of KIP-44, Rook DAO is transitioning token governance to Incubator DAO, a new funding project to explore new concepts for the ROOK token. Rook brand and associated services are sunsetting, users will only be able to withdraw or un-stake their holdings from the Rook app.
NFT
Top 10 Collections by Weekly Volume
NFT News
May. 19, DIBA, the innovative marketplace for Bitcoin-based NFTs, has officially launched. It enables seamless trading of assets issued on Bitcoin smart contracts via layer 2 networks like Lightning Network. [Source: CoinDesk]
May. 19, Pudgy Penguins, the popular NFT brand, announces peer to peer trading engine Pudgy Swap. Powered by Flip, Pudgy Swap enables the Huddle to trade with peers, for both single asset and multi-asset swaps. [Source: Pudgy Swap Twitterr]
May. 18, The ApeCoin DAO has recently approved a proposal aimed at enhancing the growth of the Bored Ape NFTs and ApeCoin ecosystems. The initiative, known as Ape Accelerator, will serve as an incubator for new projects that contribute to the development and expansion of both communities. [Source: CoinDesk]
May. 17, Axie Infinity, the popular crypto game, has received approval from Apple to be available on the App Store. The game, titled āAxie Infinity: Origins,ā will initially launch in select countries across Latin America and Southeast Asia. [Source: The Block]
May. 17, Avocado, the smart contract wallet of Instadapp, announces support for NFTs. Users can now seamlessly transact and interact with your NFTs across multiple blockchains, while just using USDC as gas. [Source: Instadapp Twitter]
May. 17, Mavis Market, the first generalized NFT marketplace on the Ronin sidechain, has officially launched. The platform debuts with two exciting NFT collections, Axie DoLL Sidekicks and AxieChat Premium 2023 NFTs. [Source: Roninchain Website]
GameFi & Metaverse
[World Play League raises pre-seed funding] World Play League, a community-owned game publishing platform, announced the successful completion of its pre-seed funding round, with backing from Genesis Vault Capital. WPL offers a product that changes the way gamers and gaming studios interact in the Web3 space. For gamers, WPL provides a level of engagement and ownership in their favorite games.
[AnotherBall raises $2.2M in angel funding] AnotherBall raised $2.2M in Angel funding. The round was led by Hiroaki Kitano, Jaynti Kanani, Justin Waldron, Keisuke Honda, Kevin Aluwi, Kevin Lin, Rehito Hatoyama, Richard Ma, Shintaro Yamada, Sota Watanabe & Yusuke Obinata, Suji Yan, and Zeneca. AnotherBall is a digital entertainment company involved in building a VTuber project through IZUMO.
[Web3 music startup Anotherblock closes a ā¬4 million seed round] Anotherblock, a Swedish web3 platform that lets fans invest in music by buying NFTs, has raised another ā¬4 million in a recent investment round. The round was led by Stride.VC, a UK-based venture capital firm known for backing successful early-stage businesses such as Deliveroo, Zoopla, and Daily Motion, as well as Axwell of Swedish House Mafia. Axwell became the second member of Swedish House Mafia to support anotherblock after Steve Angello.
[CryptoHub raises $6M led by Tectona] Israeli startup CryptoHub has raised $6 million, with $3 million from Tectona, led by chairman Yariv Gilat and CEO Yossi Barnea. CryptoHub, whose first project is CoinScan where it develops a platform for displaying trading information in real time and provides resources for traders to perform analysis and research.
[Getaverse has received investment from YBB] Getaverse is a blockchain credit system developed and deployed on several public chains. It aims to create an ecological metaverse service platform based on the Web3 protocol for digital authentication systems. Getaverseās vision is to become the largest trusted traffic platform based on the DID credit system in the Web 3.0 world, empowering the full ecological application of Web 3.0 innovative products.
[Saudi Arabia in talks over $200M sponsorship of African Super League] Saudi Arabia is in talks with the confederation of African Football over a $200M deal to sponsor the African Super League. Super League Gaming is a leading strategically integrated publisher and creator of games and experiences across immersive digital platforms. The Company received approximately $23.8 million from November 2022 through May 2023.
[Unitea raises $7M in funding] Unitea, a provider of an engage-to-earn music platform, raised $7M in funding. The round was led by 1st Class Guernsey, Chaos Capital, TokenSociety, and Fuel Venture Capital. The company intends to use the fund to further expand the capabilities of its platform within the music industry and beyond. Unitea is an engage-to-earn platform that deepens connections between artists and their fans.
[nChain invests in Planetary to launch metaverse-based social media] nChain announced a partnership with Planetary, a mobile app that combines social media with a metaverse platform. nChain is investing Ā£2.5 million for 25% equity in Planetary, which has valuation of Ā£10 million. Planetary is a virtual 3D world where users can create avatars, engage in 3D worlds, host live events, and monetize their online presence.
DAO
[Visa deployed paymaster on goerli to push for crypto mass adoption ] Visa revealed its intention in developing blockchain settlement and stablecoin payment in the previous blogs and their smart contract deployment.
[Worldcoin rollouts new measure to prevent scammers cheat the system] Worldcoinās vision is about building the worldās identity network as people can only authenticate themself by scanning their human recognition to the Orb, However many questions raised as human recognition can be brought with a very low price to cheat the system with a fake identity. To fix the specific problem, a spokesperson said the team has made some adjustments to the initial in-person signup process and uses dynamic OR code instead of static.
[Dydx might consider governance thru subDAO to achieve a decentralized future] Foxlab initiated a discussion towards subDAO within the community; they proposed setting each subDAO for community, growth, governance, security, product development, marketing & communication, risk management, treasury management, dispute resolution and market maker or validator business development.
[Departed co-founder of Evmos attempted to dump token] Evmos revealed on Twitter that the departed co-founder, who owns 34M tokens, attempted to dump the token; the project is in active communication with this person to transfer back the token to the foundation for the longterm goodness of the protocol.
[Tonado.Cash underwent hostile takeover ] Attacker has granted themselves 1,200,000 votes through a malicious proposal and then granted themselves all control of the governance contract.
[Lido proposed $LDO Staking ] The proposal directly benefits the $LDO token holder as they can stake their token in exchange for 20ā50% revenue from the protocol treasury.
Regulation & Adoption
- 15/05/2023: (š°šµ) North Korean hackers stole Japanās 721M USD in crypto.
- 16/05/2023: (šŖšŗ) EU finance ministers approve MiCA crypto regulation.
- 17/05/2023: (š) Tether to buy BTC using realized profits. Tether will allocate up to 15%. of realized investment profits into BTC. Tether disclosed they hold 1.5bn USD in BTC and 3.4bn in gold among their reserves.
- 20/05/2023: (š§š·) Binance provider in Brazil gets payment institution license approval.
- 21/05/2023: (šŗšø) President of the US, Biden, wonāt accept a debt deal protecting ācrypto speculators/tradersā.
Macro
Industrial production in March fell by 4.1% in the Eurozone and by 3.6% in the EU. Ireland was the worst-performing country, with a 25% decrease.
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