Week of Aug 16, 2022
Overview of Fundraisings of the Week
Singapore’s Safeheron raises $7M Series Pre-A funding led by Yunqi Partners and Web3Vision
Blockchain Protocol Algorand Leads $22M Investment Round in Tokenization Firm Koibanx
Singapore payments fintech FOMO Pay gets US$13mn in Series A
https://fintechmagazine.com/articles/singapore-payments-fintech-fomo-pay-gets-us-13mn-in-series-a
W3 Storage Labs, a Decentralized Application Company, Finalizes $3M Pre-Seed Round
Meson Raises $4M to Develop Minute-fast Stablecoin Cross-chain Protocol
GitPOAP Raises $4.28M To Build Out On-Chain Credentials
dWallet Labs Raises $5M in Pre-Seed Round As Odsy Network Comes Out of Stealth
Rocketplace raises $9M in seed funding to build the ‘Fidelity for crypto’
Dimension X Raises USD600K in Pre-Seed Funding
Fundraising Trend Since the Beginning of the Year
DeFi
Weekly TVL
Gross: ⬇️ $60.73B
Top 3 Apps: MakerDAO ⬇️($7.99B), Lido ⬇️($6.91B), AAVE ⬇️($6.37B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬇️($34.68B), TRON ⬆️($6.04B), BSC ⬇️($5.39B)
Top 7D Change 📈: World’s first fully decentralized and open liquidity infrastructure — Serum (SRM) (+92.82%, $217.66m)
DeFi News
[BendDAO Potential NFT Liquidation] NFT liquidity protocol BendDAO is risking a potential liquidation spiral as the NFT floor prices keep dropping and the health factor of some listed NFTs (BAYC, MAYC, etc.) are at/below 1.2 which is near the danger zone.
[Celer cBridge DNS Hijack] Attacker(s) hijacked the frontend of Celer cBridge via a cache positioning attack, redirected users to approve malicious contracts, and drained their funds. Celer users should check and revoke approval for the listed contracts in the tweet to avoid fund loss.
[Lido on L2s] Lido community proposes to launch stETH on L2s including Arbitrum and Optimism, enabling users to stake with lower fees and access to L2 dApps to amplify yields.
NFT
7D SALES: $131,031,282
7D CHANGE IN SALES: -17.35%
7D NUMBER OF SALES: 1,106,873
NFT News
Aug. 20, BAYC face liquidation on BendDAO due to NFT bear market.
Aug. 19, STEPN partners with Atlético de Madrid and WhaleFin for new NFT sneakers.
Aug. 18, Dapper Labs opens NFL All Day NFTs to the Public.
Aug. 18, Rarible proposes feeless BAYC marketplace for ApeCoin holders.
Aug. 16, Tencent halts NFT sales amid regulatory scrutiny.
GameFi & Metaverse
[MetaverseGo raised $4.2 million led by Galaxy Interactive] MetaverseGo announced it has raised $4.2 million in a seed round led by Galaxy Interactive with participation from Delphi Digital, Dragonfly Capital, Mechanism Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC), Shima Capital, Com2uS, Akatsuki, Ascensive Assets, BitScale Capital, Yield Guild Games (YGG), BreederDAO, Mentha Partners, and Emfarsis. The funding will be used for software development and strategic hires.
[BNB Chain GameFi project ArchLoot rolling out the 2nd phase of the Closed Beta Test] GameFi project ArchLoot has announced its plan for a second phase of the Closed Beta Test. Users are able to sign up for the beta program and get an immersive web3 gaming journey. For the second phase, the game is not only providing enhanced gameplay smoothness and graphics, but is also ready to roll out brand new features like squads, hidden maps, 3v3 battles, and more.
[Kingdomverse introduces closed alpha version of defend the Kingdom game with NFTs] Kingdomverse is an innovative community-driven Metaverse project that allows every GameFi enthusiast to create its own Metaverse. Now, its first GameFi title is available in closed alpha release. The closed alpha build is opened for participants of the Monkey Kingdom community. The new game will set new benchmarks in interactivity and immersion.
[Animoca Brands Corporation puts all the pieces together for a blockchain checkmate in chess] Animoca Brands Corporation in conjunction with subsidiary Lympo and in partnership with Play Magnus Group is developing Anichess, a blockchain-based chess game with a play-and-earn ecosystem due to launch in 2023. The game combines the expertise of Lympo, a leading global sports NFT ecosystem and PMG, a global leader in the chess industry that offers entertainment and e-learning services via its chess market brands.
[Mark Zuckerberg responded to metaverse memes] To mark the expansion of Meta’s bland virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, into France and Spain, Mark Zuckerberg shared a selfie. The graphic, featuring the boyish CEO in front of a model of the Eiffel tower, quickly struck a nerve, sparking sneers, jeers and sighs from quippy social media users. Zuckerberg claimed that the graphics and avatars are “capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly.”
[Axie Infinity enters phase 3 of game transition] Axie Infinity, a PlayAndEarn blockchain game built on Ethereum sidechain Ronin, has entered into its next transitory phase with Axie Infinity: Origin season 0. Axie Infinity announced the milestone event that the community has been waiting for. Phase 3 transfers the transmission of $SLP from Classic to Origin as the team slowly migrates the community to the new game mode.
[Pawtocol announced plans to build multiple pet parks in Decentraland by the end of 2022] Pawtocol, creator of blockchain-powered solutions that improve the lives of pets and pet owners, announced a strategic plan to build multiple private pet parks in Decentraland by the end of 2022. Pawtocol will develop their new pet parks on LAND parcels near the Genesis Plazas, making them convenient for users to find and gain access to.
[The SandBox Alpha Season 3 launch date announced] The Sandbox is now entirely interoperable thanks to the team’s accomplishment in voxelizing avatars from 13 NFT collections. The user’s digital identity will be represented by these avatars, which will be playable during Sandbox Alpha Season 3. The Alpha Season 3’s more than 90 playable experiences will be unveiled over the course of ten weeks.
DAO
[Ethereum POS might face censorship] Upcoming POS merge for Ethereum raised another controversial issue regarding possible censorship following the Tornado.cash sanction event, since the concurrent validator infrastructure are concentrated among few key players. According to on-chain data, Lido, Coinbase and Kraken staked over 50% of all ETH deposited. For node services, Messari revealed that over 50% services are deployed on AWS and about 46.4% nodes are held within U.S. The statistics stated that it is possible to censor through these key providers if U.S law enforcement determined to make a compliant Ethereum. Few developers discussed potential social slashing mechanism towards validator to against censorship in the latest Ethereum Core Devs Meeting.
[BendDAO initiated auctions towards 13 NFTs] Due to concerning health factors, BendDAO is auctioning 13 pieces of NFT, 4 of them are from BAYC collection. This week, the protocol has already liquidated 18 NFTs.
[EOS is rebranded as Antelope.io ] After announcing EOS EVM, the protocol is rebranded as Antelope.io. Meanwhile, the Block.one proposed $27.5M settlement in the lawsuit against the foundation, the New York Court has ruled that the proposal has not met the needs of the EOS token holders.
Regulation & Adoption
Aug 15 (🇰🇿) Binance obtains in-principle approval to operate in Kazakhstan.
Aug 16 (🇪🇺) EU to create new crypto regulator. The EU council and the EU commission have reportedly proposed to create a new regulatory body dubber “AML Authority” which will have direct oversight over the crypto industry.
Aug 18 (🇧🇷) Ripple launches crypto-enabled enterprise payments in Brazil.
Aug 18 (🇰🇷) South Korea accuses 16 crypto exchanges of operating without license, among those platforms well known names such as KuCoin, MEXc and Poloniex.
Macro
- UK inflation (YoY) hits 10% in July, highest in 40 years.
- Europe’s largest importer of gas on the “brink of insolvency”.
- German PPI up by 37.2%.
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