Fundraisings of the Week
KuCoin Has Closed a $10M Funding Round Into CNHC, but Is the Offshore Yuan Right for a Stablecoin?
ORBS Token Rises 15% After DWF Labs Invests $10M
Backed with $3M, Soul Wallet aims to bring self-hosted crypto wallets to the next billion
TeleportDAO Raises US$2.5M in Seed Funding
Why do we invest in LSDx
DressX raises $15M for digital fashion
BitKraft and Framework Co-Lead Web3 Studio Jungle’s $6M Round
With $4.8 million in funding, GigaStar looks to turn creators and fans into investors
Foresight News Raises $2M in Strategic Seed Round to Revolutionize Crypto News
DeFi
[Weekly TVL]Gross: ⬇️$48.55B
Top 3 Apps: Lido ⬆️($10.51B), MakerDAO ⬆️($7.73B), AAVE ⬆️($5.55B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬇️($29.3B), TRON ⬇️($5.3B), BSC ⬇️($4.8B)
Top 7D Change 📈: NFT peer-to-peer lending protocol — NFTFi (+98.45%, $30.04m)
DeFi News
[Arbitrum Token Coming] Arbitrum has announced its token will come this week.
[FVM Live on Filecoin] The Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) is now live, enabling programmability on the Filecoin network, and kicking off the final step of the Filecoin Masterplan.
[EU to Regulate Smart Contracts] The EU Parliament passes Data Act including smart contract regulation. “Smart contract developers may need to design reset possibilities to allow termination or interruption of transactions.”
The legislation will now travel into trialogue negotiations, where each EU institution will defend its position.
NFT
Top 10 Collections by Weekly Volume
NFT News
Mar. 16, Salesforce launches NFT-based loyalty program on Polygon. “Salesforce will help their clients onboard to Polygon with its management platform to help its clients create token-based loyalty programs.” [Source: Ryan’s Twitter]
Mar. 15, NounsDAO community approves proposal for NFT movie. “The proposal links up with Atrium, a network of independent Web3 artists and creators, to continually produce a series of episodic content via consecutive proposals.” [Source: CoinDesk]
Mar. 15, Solana NFT marketplace Formunction is shutting down. “Formfunction is shutting down on Wednesday, March 29th. This was an extremely difficult decision; however, after much discussion and careful consideration, we’ve come to the conclusion that we cannot continue to operate Formfunction.” [Source: Company Blog]
Mar. 15, Sotheby’s hosts “Natively Digital: Oddly Satisfying” NFT auction. “Sotheby’s to Auction ‘Oddly Satisfying’ Reddit-Inspired NFTs In the Metaverse. Beeple and XCOPY headline the next two Sotheby’s NFT auctions, showcasing hypnotic animations and glitch art.” [Source: Decrypt]
Mar. 13, Meta stops working on Instagram and Facebook NFTs. “Some product news: across the company, we’re looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses.” [Source: Stephane’s Twitter]
GameFi & Metaverse
[KuCoinLabs backs TripleC to incubate fun and sustainable Web3 games] TripleC is a GameFi incubation and distribution platform. KuCoinLabs, the research arm of the KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange, has announced its support for TripleC to incubate and publish Web3 games that are fun to play and reward players for their effort in the form of digital assets using blockchain technologies.
[Jungle raises $6M for Web3 mobile shooter] Jungle has raised $6 million for its Web3 mobile shooter. The funding shows that the Web3 game development virus has spread to Brazil. This investment will enable the Sao Paolo company to expand its team of game developers, designers, artists, and engineers to bring the first title in its portfolio to market.
[Lionel Messi backs Web3 soccer game startup Matchday in $21M round] Matchday, a soccer-centric Web3 gaming startup, announced that it has raised $21 million in seed funding to develop a suite of games — with legendary soccer player Lionel Messi’s venture capital firm onboard. Messi’s firm backed the startup, with Courtside Ventures, Greylock, HackVC, Capricorn Investment Group, and Horizons Ventures.
[With $4.8M in funding, GigaStar looks to turn creators and fans into investors] GigaStar, which operates a platform that turns fans into investors, has announced $4.8 million in seed funding. GigaStar’s signature product is GigaStar Market. The digital marketplace will let visitors browse channels that are offering ownership cuts in their future productions. Fans who chose to invest via GigaStar Market will receive tokens to signify their stake in the associated channel.
[iBLOXX raised $5M to grow its blockchain gaming divison] iBLOXX, a premier Web3 incubator and market maker, revealed that it secured a $ 5 million investment in a recent funding round led by PrimeXM. The capital will be utilized to expand the company’s GameFi division. The investment brings the gaming division’s post-money valuation to $ 30 million. The fund will be primarily used to develop iBLOXX Studios.
[Pantera invested $10M in metaverse game Worldwide Webb] Worldwide Webb, creator of a pixel art-based metaverse game, has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round from crypto-focused investment firm Pantera Capital. The funding will go toward hiring, integrating more non-fungible token (NFT) collections into the game and forming partnerships with brands and intellectual-property holders.
[Web3 social startup Towns raised $25.5M led by Andreessen Horowitz] Here Not There has raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to build out Towns, a Web3 group chat protocol and app that lets online communities build blockchain-based gatherings in a fully decentralized way. The startup also received backing from Benchmark and Framework Ventures.
[Million on Mars raised $3.5M for blockchain-based space sim] Million on Mars has raised $3.5 million to bolster its blockchain-based space simulation about how the human race could one day colonize the Red Planet. Erik Bethke, the CEO of Million on Mars, hopes that Mars will one day have a population of a million people, and his game is all about simulating how such a thing could happen.
DAO
[Arbitrum plans to launch token on March 23rd] The token represents the DAO of the governance for the Arbitrum network, 12.75% of the total supply will be airdropped on March 23, of which 11.62% will be allocated to eligible users and 1.13% will be distributed to DAOs. 42.78% of the token are allocated to the DAO treasury, and the rest are for teams and investor, who has a vesting period of 4 years.
[Starknet DAO is setting up the first vote regarding the protocol upgrade] The DAO will decide on the launch of the latest version of the protocol upgrade, called Starknet Alpha v0.11.0, the vote will start on March 21st and close in 6 days.
[Celestia launched BlockSpace Race network] Celestia’s incentive testnet BlockSpace is here, currently, it supports 100 light nodes to verify and maintain data availability.
[Stacks upgrade to improve the usability of Bitcoin] The Bitcoin Layer 2 chain Stacks announced upgrade 2.1 to eliminate inefficiencies of the PoX reward and lower difficulties for developers.
[dydx passed a proposal to reduce trading Rewards] The proposal aimed to reduce trading rewards by 45% as the accelerated expansion of the circulating supply limited the sustainable development of the protocol, and the proposal passed with a majority.
Regulation & Adoption
- 13/03/2023: (🇬🇧) HSBC Buys out troubled SVB UK
- 15/03/2023: (🇺🇲) META to lay off 10,000 more employees.
- 16/03/2023: (🇨🇭) Credit Suisse to borrow up to 50Bn USD from Swiss Central Bank to strengthen liquidity.
- 18/03/2023: (🇺🇲) SVB files for bankruptcy.
- 19/03/2023: (🌍) BTC Breaks 28k amid banking crisis.
- 19/03/2023: (🇨🇭) UBS buys Credit Suisse.
Macro
- Brent is below 79 USD for the first time since January 10th.
- Moody’s cuts outlook on the US banking system to negative.
- Argentina’s inflation tops 100% for the first time since 1991.
- FED balance sheet swells by 300bn USD in just a few days to deal with the banking confidence crisis.
- The UK is set to be the worst-performing G7 economy in 2023 and 2024.
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