FinTech news in computing category

They include Mask Network, MetaWeb Venture, Eniac Venture, Tess Venture, Stratified Capital, Fundamental lab, Incuba Alpha, Zeuth Venture, Cogitent Venture, Atlas Capital; Impossible Finance, RSS3, ShowMe and ETHsign’s co-founders Yan Xin and Potter Li. That’s why Yu, along with his former BTC China colleague Errance Liu, set out to build KNN3, a permissionless (hence decentralized) tool for developers to draw insight from cross-blockchain user data. One of KNN3’s better-known customers is Mask Network, which enables users to send cryptocurrencies on Web 2.0 services and is now building a decentralized identity system using KNN3’s tech. The latest to get VC recognition is KNN3, a Singapore-based startup working to help developers make sense of relational data across blockchains.

The team’s goal is to tap the blockchain to build a music creation suite that bakes in an open source ethos, allowing producers to sample a wide variety of songs and sounds while the platform ensures that credit always flows back to original creators appropriately. Arpeggi Labs, a new crypto startup focused on using blockchains to make music creation more collaborative, has scored $5.1 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz crypto arm alongside a host of artists including names like Steve Aoki, 3LAU and Wyclef Jean. To make this dream happen, Arpeggi is aiming to go beyond developing a protocol and build an entire in-browser digital audio workstation that allows producers to mix blockchain-minted beats while integrating with the wider arena of Web 2.0 and web3 music platforms. While the company hasn’t landed on whether they’re looking to issue a token for the platform down the road, the founders say they are mainly focused on enticing music professionals who haven’t already aligned themselves with the web3 mantra but are excited about the idea of the industry doubling down on open source.

While crypto mining, the process that verifies and adds new transactions to the blockchain using the proof-of-work method, is costly to join and prone to regulatory clampdown, crypto staking, enabled by the Merge, offers enhanced censorship resistance thanks to its low barriers to entry both in terms of cost and the computing power required. The Merge, the much-anticipated network update on Ethereum that’s slated to unfold this week, could provide a new way for China’s crypto enthusiasts to participate in the blockchain economy two years after the country began phasing out the lucrative crypto mining industry. Before China banned crypto mining, the country accounted for as much as two-thirds of Bitcoin’s worldwide hash power, the energy consumed to carry out proof-of-work. Big hopes for the upcoming Ethereum Merge Users who are more crypto-savvy could opt for decentralized protocols, which use algorithms to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions rather than relying on a centralized intermediary, allowing for a higher degree of anonymity.

HotStreak itself makes money both from the entry fees it charges players to use its platform, which it says are listed on the app at the start of each game, and plans to monetize its software by selling it to other sports betting platforms, according to Dean. While Dean admitted that the overall market for DFS providers could shrink as more U.S. states bring legalized sports betting online, he believes the overall sports gaming market is still set to grow significantly. HotStreak’s decentralized SHARP protocol aims to tackle both sides of the issue from a payments and custody perspective by facilitating near-instant payments and handling custody of assets based on a set of rules pre-determined within the protocol itself rather than relying on counterparties to initiate payments to other players. Focusing on DFS to start gives HotStreak a regulatory advantage, he explained, although the platform will likely expand into offering more traditional sports betting products, which typically require more expensive legal disclosures.

Koop also announced today that it is coming out of stealth with $5 million in funding led by 1confirmation and web3 creator economy-focused Variant Fund, with participation from Palm Tree Crew, Day One Ventures, Ethereal Ventures, DeFi Alliance, Volt Capital, PearVC, DCF God, 0xmons and angel investors including crypto influencer Cooper Turley, ex-Coinbase CTO and a16z investor Balaji Srinivasan and former Sequoia partner Liu Jiang. At its core, Koop is a protocol that helps creators and communities launch NFT-based membership passes to raise funds for projects, Murillo told journalist in an interview. The platform has seen $110 million in total value across the treasuries of its 50 active communities buying and selling NFTs, according to Murillo, who noted that the company has a waitlist of 8,500 groups who want to form Koops. Koops, in contrast, can be more centralized, tend to be smaller in size, and afford groups the option to organize around a short-term goal or cause and dissolve the Koop when it has been achieved, Murillo added.

Thirdweb — with operations in London but headquartered in San Francisco — plans to use the funding to continue enhancing its developer toolkit — which currently covers some 10 features spanning areas like smart contracts, decentralised logins, publishing tools and more — to expand support for a wider array of blockchains, to bring on more users and to grow its team, both via hiring and potentially acquisitions, all in aid of getting web3 to become more mainstream. In the latest development, a startup called thirdweb — which has created a development toolkit to make it easier to build and launch web3 products such as blockchain games, NFTs, DAOs, marketplaces and more — has raised $24 million, a Series A that values the startup at $160 million. The gap in the market that thirdweb is addressing is one that Bartlett said he discovered with his co-founder Furqan Rydhan when they were working on building a blockchain application themselves. Thirdweb has been live for just nine months, but it’s been on a roll: co-founder Steven Bartlett told journalist that to date some 55,000 developers — which range from independent creators through to organizations like Afterpay and New York Fashion Week — have built a range of NFT items, DAOs, games and other applications using its framework.

Led by Gavin Wood, co-creator of Ethereum and its founding CTO, Parity’s partnership with Watr is designed to co-develop the Watr protocol and key applications, and execute joint R&D on the functionality required to make the platform perform for the $17 trillion dollar commodities industry. Omar Elassar, global head of Ecosystem Growth & Business Development at Parity Technologies, said in a statement: This collaboration will bring Watr’s deep commodities’ expertise to the Polkadot ecosystem and kick-start a platform for web3-enabled solutions that solve pressing industry issues. We covered how the Watr Foundation, a Swiss-registered foundation created by experience commodities founders, plans to do this via the use of blockchains, incorporating the technology into commodities trading. We are thrilled to have the legendary team at Parity join us and our existing partners in enabling commodities’ transition to Web3 business models and liquidity while safeguarding the security and decentralized ethos of a public blockchain servicing both retail and regulated institutional users.

Nomad, a token bridge that allows users to send and receive tokens between Avalanche (AVAX), Ethereum (ETH), Evmos (EVMOS), Moonbeam (GLMR) and Milkomeda C1 blockchains, was attacked on Monday, with hackers draining almost all of the protocol’s funds. This meant that when a user transferred funds from one blockchain to another, Nomad allegedly never checked the amount, enabling the user to withdraw funds that didn’t belong to them. Approximately $190.7 million in crypto was stolen from the bridge, according to decentralized finance tracking platform DeFi Llama, which shows that the current total value locked — the amount of user funds deposited in a DeFi protocol — is less than $12,000 at the time of writing. The attack comes just days after Nomad revealed that a number of high-profile crypto investors, including Coinbase Ventures, OpenSea, Polygon and Crypto.com Capital, had participated in its $22 million April seed round, which landed the company a $225 million valuation.

Although it’s currently not making any money in its Russian operation, Viber, which is end-to-end encrypted, has kept the service live where it hasn’t been blocked by Russian authorities, since a lot of communication happens between Ukrainians and Russians (there remain a lot of links between the people, despite the actions and rhetoric of the Russian government), and it’s continuing to operate its service in Ukraine where it can — the occupied territories where Russia has taken control of communications being the exception. The company is not quick to disclose exact monthly active user figures, but in 2016, Viber was widely reported to have 823 million users (note: not active users — one citation of this number from its PR firm here); in that same year, an exec told journalist that it had 266 million monthly active users. Now it is making a move to double down on that strategy: it launching Payments on Viber — a new service that will let users set up digital wallets tied to their Viber accounts. Viber, the messaging app owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, has long been dancing around the area of fintech, launching services like money transfer and chatbot payments in various countries over the years.

Blockchain ecosystem Topl has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round to help companies track and monetize social impact initiatives.

With a fresh $42 million in its coffer, the firm plans to invest in the “social ecosystem” of web3, a version of the internet built largely on blockchain that promises to be more decentralized.

Starting at $8 a month, creators can sign up for Notch’s Instagram account insurance, which means that if they get hacked and lose access to their account, the startup will pay them a stipend and help them regain control of their page. journalist reviewed a sample insurance policy, which quoted a $459 annual fee (or about $38 a month) for insurance that pays out $244 for each day that a creator can’t get into their account after a hack. When creators get hacked, it can mean that they aren’t able to post sponsored content, earn payments from badges or operate their Instagram shops — it’s debilitating, like if a chef broke their arm and had to cook with one hand. With that information, Notch can estimate how much sponsored content a creator posts a month, and how much money someone of their caliber would make off of each post.

The Justice Department and SDNY U.S. Attorney’s Office have begun getting more active in prosecuting crypto crimes, but the NFT space has largely evaded much action, which made the announcement a bit of a shock to those in the crypto space. OpenSea soon fired Chastain after they determined the allegations were legitimate, though Chastain has continued to be active in the NFT community, especially on Twitter.

Wagner also noted that the company recently launched a new product line around CRM data sharing and since the company is seeing a lot of traction around its file-sharing capabilities, it is also investing in that as well.

startup platform Bloom has now secured a £300 million / $377 million financing round led by Credo Capital and Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG), making it one of the better-funded revenue-based lending businesses in Europe.

Stokley will serve as co-CEO of the company alongside RJ Phillips, another former OnlyFans exec joining Zoop this summer. Zoop plans to release 500 cards per influencer for its initial drops and has long-term plans to launch its own token, Phillips told The Block.

CyberConnect plans to generate revenues through the social data network, which include different participants like data contributors, indexers and recommenders, curators, and users.

Tel Aviv-based Classiq, a startup that wants to make it easier for developers to build quantum algorithms and applications, today announced that it has raised additional funding for its service.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum have sustained over 20% declines each over the past week, a number of emerging projects have been hit even harder, including Silicon Valley darling Solana which has seen its token price decline some 40% week-over-week.

Singapore-based crypto trading and asset management startup Amber Group is reportedly raising a new round at a $10 billion valuation; 11 months ago it had just reached the unicorn status in a $100 million financing round. Chainalysis, a startup that provides crypto investigation and compliance services, has secured $170 million in a Series F funding round led by GIC, a sovereign wealth fund of Singapore.

Sold as a SaaS itself — basic pricing is 5% + 50 cents per transaction — Paddle premise follows the basic principle of so many other business tools: payments is typically not a core competency of, say, a video conferencing or security company (one of its customers is BlueJeans, now owned by Verizon, which used to own journalist; another is Fortinet).

Wayne Chang, co-founder and CEO of Spruce, told journalist that web2 platforms that offer sign-in capabilities have been able to access this data in the past because they offer trust and verification to users of the network. That’s the question Spruce is trying to answer by building a public utility of sorts for internet users, but doing so requires individual users to build trust with one another by voluntarily sharing data through the network when they can’t rely on a centralized intermediary to make assurances.

This is part of the reason you read about layer 1 (L1) and layer 2 (L2) networks so often; VCs are making bets on competing L1 blockchains to take advantage of this deficit and L2 blockchains that sit on top of Ethereum are designed to improve the speed and price of transactions. It’s a technology that has been pretty widely accepted as a near-term solution for the Ethereum network and VCs have already christened a number of other unicorns in the optimistic rollup space including Optimism and Arbitrum.

On Friday, Justin Kan’s crypto gaming marketplace Fractal, which hosts Solana-based NFTs, raised $35 million in a round co-led by Paradigm and Multicoin, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca, Coinbase and Solana Labs.

The ether and USDC deposits on Ronin were drained from the bridge contract, but the network is working with stakeholders from Axie Infinity and its parent company Sky Mavis to determine the best move forward so no user funds are permanently lost, it said.

Digits itself is not a data ingestion tool: Chang notes that it essentially sits on top of Intuit’s Quickbooks (note: that choice was deliberate because Quickbooks accounts for about 80% of the small business accounting software market in the U.S. today, although over time Digits will work with other sources as demand dictates it).

Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth, which emerged from stealth today, believes his company is taking a more unique approach by appealing to employers that want to offer more value-added benefits. Estate planning startup Wealth is going after a $180 billion U.S. market.

This has pushed some founders to build competing blockchains on entirely unique infrastructure, while others in the developer community are focusing their resources on building modular blockchain solutions that sit on top of Ethereum, bundling transactions faster and cheaper while keeping a record of the movements on the central chain.

To keep up with the demand, the company raised $4 million in seed funding, led by Ibex Investors, which also included Y Combinator, Financial Venture Studio and a group of individual investors.

London-based early-stage European VC fund Backed is bolstering its position by adding €75 million to its seed fund, while adding another €75 million via a new follow-on fund vehicle.

Until you remember that OnlyFans is doing NFT profile pictures now, which means maybe no one wins (except for the intersection of people who both love crypto and also want to compensate NSFW creators for their work?).

With big-name backers like The Chainsmokers, Alexis Ohanian, Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg, Pearpop is launching Pearproof, a web3 app that allows creators to mint NFTs of their social media posts.

Among the portfolio of companies, the firm has invested in email security company Abnormal Security, which raised $50 million back in 2020; biotech software developer Benchling, which raised $100 million in Series F funding last November; and Transmit Security, which took in a $543 million Series A last year on a pre-money valuation of $2.2 billion to rid the world of passwords. Artisanal Ventures, a Bay Area venture capital firm investing in B2B cloud startups, closed on its first fund, the oversubscribed $62 million Artisanal Ventures I. Cloud is the big buzzword these days, with people talking about why it a smart move for companies, and lots of venture-backed startups developing easy ways for companies to make the shift. That includes combining the expertise of the firm’s limited partners with Artisanal Talent’s executive search capabilities to help portfolio companies build best-in-class teams.

This was followed by Social (70 apps), Entertainment (57 apps), Books (37 apps), Lifestyle (33 apps), Tools (26 apps), Business (25 apps). However, mobile game publishers led the adoption of the keyword, as 107 apps in the Game category now reference the term, or 19% of the apps studied.

Many crypto detractors contend that the web3 space is buoyed by meme money, so Coatue leading a $69,420,000 Series B in a blockchain startup shouldn’t leave them too surprised. The investment — made in crypto analytics platform Dune Analytics — brings the startup valuation to $1 billion.

Though compliance presents an ever-evolving suite of challenges, the most persistent landmine for DAO tooling startups has been helping DAOs educate their users on potential threats — something that will only become more important as crypto startups and DAOs look to entice an increasingly mainstream user base.

Phantom, one of the premier wallet apps for the Solana ecosystem, has seen plenty of momentum as the result of investor and developer attention being paid to the Ethereum competitor which has seen its value explode over the past year — though the relative newcomer is also proving to be a more volatile bet with the token taking a particularly rough hit during the most recent crypto crash.

Syndicate’s suite of smart contracts can walk users through the process of formalizing their club with a legal entity and handling things like setting up a bank account and getting tax forms to ensure stuff stays above-board.

Here’s how to conduct the ultimate litmus test on an NFT project through its creators: Check if both the founder and tech are open The first NFT was created in 2014 and was sold only last year.

The company is rolling out NFT Profile Pictures to Twitter Blue subscribers on iOS by way of Twitter Blue early access Labs feature

POAP, which stands for Proof Of Attendance Protocol, wants to dial deeper into the idea of using NFT to create internet communities, with a protocol that helps build more active communities and award individual participation like taking part in an event.

Autograph, an NFT agency co-founded by athlete Tom Brady with a particularly deep bench of star power, has banked new funding from crypto investors who hope the platform can bring a new generation of celebrities and their fans into the fold of crypto collectibles.