FinTech news in crypto ecosystem category

OP3N’s chat-based product, Superapp, aims to bridge the gap between Web 2.0 and web3 through implementing blockchain and decentralized technologies into Web 2.0-friendly interfaces. So going forward, Ma realized OP3N has to bridge the traditional market into web3 in a way that’s more understandable.

We realized very quickly the scaling limitations of Ethereum, but we never wanted to compete with it. Polygon could help Immutable avoid Ethereum congestion and costs without having to build its own alternative.

All in all, the market madness has seemingly created a bullish sentiment in the crypto economy; as traders responded positively to the news, the overall market cap rose on the week and crypto app downloads increased.

According to Circle’s January attestation report, the firm had about $9.88 billion in cash deposited at regulated banks to back its stablecoin’s value, among other assets. If Circle did have more than a smattering of cash at SVB, concerns could mount that the backing of USDC may no longer be complete and instead be more fractional than is needed for a stablecoin to remain steady.

The accelerator program’s first cohort accepted 30 startups from a pool of over 220 applicants across 76 countries.

Coinbase wallet as a service (WaaS) is a scalable set of wallet infrastructure APIs that allow companies to create and deploy customizable on-chain wallets to their users.

The tool will be compatible with Alchemy-supported blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and more, Rivabella noted. It also plans to include other protocols and software development kits in the future, he added.

Sealevel Virtual Machine will be powered by Eclipse and will be able to run smart contracts and tooling compatible with Solana, which will ultimately increase throughput speed and interoperability for crypto subsectors like gaming, DeFi and more, Neel Somani, founder of Eclipse

Coinbase, the second largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has launched Base, an Ethereum-focused layer-2 (L2) blockchain, Jesse Pollak, lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase.

The partnership plans to make it easier for all Google Cloud customers to become Tezos “bakers,” or network validators

Wall Street expected Coinbase to report $581.2 million in revenue and earnings per share of -$2.44 with adjusted EBITDA of -$201.8 million driven by 8.4 million monthly transaction users

The crypto industry doesn’t have a cohesive way for people to search for information across channels in a way that traditional search engines like Google do for mainstream information.

Thred platform combines automated machine learning and algorithms to rank NFT collections on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains and then ranks the desirability of every NFT collection and combines it with collector, consumer and community content, Straley said.

The startup was founded in March 2022 by Katz and Parker Jou, CTO of Caldera, in an effort to simplify the process of creating app-specific blockchains so builders can create layer-2 blockchains in the span of hours, opposed to months or years, the team said.

Sesame Labs, a web3 marketing platform, raised a $4.5 million seed round co-led by Wing Venture Capital and Patron, co-founders Vinay Jain and Aman Jain exclusively told journalist. Additional investors include Samsung, DoubleJump, Forte, Moonfire, Twin Ventures and angel investors like Balaji Srinivasan, chief technology officer at Coinbase and founder of Earn; Robin Chan, co-founder of Fractal; and Ryan Spoon, chief marketing officer at Sorare. A lot of classic Web 2.0 tools like Facebook ads or Twitter ads aren’t successful in web3 because they don’t fully understand on-chain behavior, Vinay noted. In the long term, the co-founders plan to focus on defining what web3 ads look like and build the product that powers it so applications can connect with users in a more innovative way.

Some major ZK-rollup blockchains that exist today include Polygon, zkSync and StarkWare’s StarkNet platform, which all aim to increase scalability and security for developers off-chain through higher speeds and lower fees before combining and submitting them to Ethereum. Its SDK wants to help Rust (and eventually C++) developers to use ZK technology across any blockchain without having to be experts in cryptography, both the co-founders said. A rollup is a blockchain that gets security from another blockchain, so it’s a way to add functionality to an existing chain without sacrificing security, Evans said. The capital will be used to build its SDK and hire protocol engineers and researchers with expertise in blockchains and their frameworks, Özer said.

Its new ecosystem fund is backed by previous investors like Pantera and Jump as well as other web3 players, including Kraken Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, Delphi Labs, Flow Traders, Gate Labs and IDG Capital. Injective, a layer-1 blockchain focused on building financial applications, has launched a $150 million fund ecosystem initiative, the platform CEO and co-founder, Eric Chen, told journalist. The group aims to support projects building on Injective or Cosmos blockchains in the interoperability, DeFi, trading, proof-of-stake infrastructure and scalability solutions sectors, it said. In the current market, there’s a lot of quality projects looking for backing but having more difficulty reaching investors, Chen noted.

Genesis Global Holdco and two of its lending business subsidiaries Genesis Global Capital and Genesis Asia Pacific filed voluntary petitions under the bankruptcy code for SDNY, its press release stated. On January 12, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Genesis and cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian Gemini for the unregistered offer and sale of securities to retail investors through Gemini Earn crypto asset lending program. The firm struggled to raise capital for its lending unit, cut 30% of its staff in early January and took a financial hit from major catastrophic crypto events last year like the collapse of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and the decline of crypto exchange FTX. Aside from Genesis, DCG is the parent company of digital currency asset manager Grayscale, media company CoinDesk, mining and staking company Foundry, digital asset exchange and wallet Luno and API-centric platform TradeBlock.

Delphia, a mobile investment platform, is facing a lawsuit and allegations that its co-founder and CTO Cameron Agius-Westland sexually assaulted and harassed a former employee, according to a complaint filed on Monday and shared exclusively with journalist. Andrew Peek, CEO and co-founder of Delphia, shared a statement with journalist in response to the lawsuit allegations: Delphia takes the allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Westland very seriously. The following day, Westland is said in the complaint to have at least partly acknowledged his behavior by sending the Plaintiff and two other colleagues the following message, as shared in a screenshot in the document: In December 2022, Delphia announced its acquisition of Fathom Privacy, a data rights company that aims to provide individuals the ability to own personal application data.

The wallet also allows users to link their social identity from other sites and curate their profiles with their own NFTs from multiple wallet accounts and blockchains. The funding round included Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Tapestry, Upside and Scribble, as well as angel investors from traditional social media and web3 groups like former heads of Instagram, Novi product and engineering and former executives from Airbnb, Twitter, Uber, OpenTable and Eventbrite, among others. Today, its beta wallet is available to the public on iOS and Android after completing a 30-day private testing phase, Mike Dougherty, co-founder and CEO of Easy, said to journalist. In the app, people can also send crypto and tokens to profiles and real usernames, rather than a random variation of numbers and letters (which often make up one’s crypto wallet address), Swint said.

Some marketplaces aren’t very social, like OpenSea or Magic Eden, and collectible platforms like Sorare and NBA Top Shot aren’t social media-focused, Sideman said. Revel’s marketplace allows users to create NFTs for their followers, friends or community and also allows people to own editions of the media they like and follow, Sideman said. The capital will be used to expand Revel’s web3 interoperability, generative and collaborative AI functionality, and social features, Sideman said. Instagram is known as a social media platform while Robinhood is known as an investing and trading platform.

One of the most common attacks Yakoa sees is people making copies of NFTs and claiming them as their own work, Andrew Dworschak, co-founder of the startup, said. The funding round was led by Collab+Currency, Volt Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital with participation from Data Community Fund, Alliance DAO, Uniswap Labs Ventures, Orange DAO, Time Zero Capital, gmjp, Sunset Ventures and FAST by GETTYLAB, as well as angel investors. Yakoa provides tools and an indexer that detects copies or infringement probabilities on original NFTs, ranging from direct forgery to partial or stylistic forgery, which will then notify platforms, brands or creators of these fraudulent activities. Yakoa, an NFT fraud detection startup, has raised $4.8 million to build tools to fight intellectual property fraud in web3, the company exclusively told journalist.

Joepegs, an NFT marketplace on the Avalanche blockchain, raised $5 million in a seed round led by now-defunct FTX Ventures and the Avalanche Foundation, its co-founders who go by the pseudonyms Cryptofish and 0xMurloc, exclusively told journalist. The marketplace launched in May and has grown rapidly to the largest NFT marketplace on Avalanche with over $3.4 million in secondary NFT sales and 12,000 users. Earlier this year, Avalanche dove further into the NFT space after partnering with the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which now operates on the blockchain alongside other platforms like Joepegs and Kalao. It also has an in-house production unit, Joe Studios, as well as an NFT Launchpad, which has on boarded over 50 projects to the Avalanche ecosystem, the company said.

Separately, the web3-focused phone will allow content creators and platforms to enable digital ownership rights to both organizations and users – opposed to handing over the 30% tax Apple and Google have for in app sales. If there’s a web3 distribution channel for mobile crypto developers, it can open up opportunities for them to build experiences outside of the laptop-centric digital asset ecosystem, Yakovenko said. So neither Google nor Apple want to really take on web3 because true digital asset ownership disrupts their business models, Yakovenko said. The idea of true digital ownership means the digital items have to be treated like physical ones, and this isn’t something Apple or Google are built around, Yakovenko said.