FinTech news in Solana category

Tensor, a Solana-centric NFT trading platform, has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Placeholder, the team exclusively shared with journalist. Solana is the third largest blockchain for NFTs by sales volume with over $3.7 billion in sales all-time, according to data on NFT aggregator CryptoSlam.

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

The growth in January marked a stark difference from the trend of the past few months, — October saw trading volumes dip to a low of $662 million — but in November, the market halted the downward trend to stay at $662 million, per the report. While Ethereum accounts for the lion share of trading volumes, with more than 78% of all trades on the blockchain, Polygon had the biggest influx of traders in January, the report showed. Trading volumes rose for two months straight, with January scoring the highest volumes since June last year, according to the Dapp Industry Report: January 2023. A number of blockchains allow traders to buy and sell NFTs, but Ethereum has held the leading position with over $36 billion in all-time sales, data from NFT aggregator CryptoSlam showed.

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.

More than 10 of the largest projects on Solana are already working on projects that leverage Backpack’s protocol, according to Ferrante. Ferrante’s iPhone analogy seems particularly apt when one considers that as an ecosystem, Solana has chosen to invest in hardware. The Discord community around Backpack has about 2,000 members today, which Ferrante said has been intentionally locked up until today’s announcement that Coral will launch Backpack in private beta and open-source its code, giving members of the Discord priority access. The Backpack wallet, Ferrante said, is like the iPhone’s iOS operating system, where a user can manage their private keys and access xNFTs, which are like the apps on the iPhone. Ferrante said the Coral team is in close contact with the team behind Saga and that he eventually hopes to see xNFTs run as native apps on the smartphone.

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.

An unknown actor had drained funds from 7,767 wallets on the Solana network as of 5am UTC on Wednesday, Solana’s Status Twitter account said. Solana spokesperson Chris Kraeuter declined to answer our questions, but referred us to Solana’s Status Twitter account.

NFT marketplace Magic Eden, launched just nine months ago, has raised $130 million in a Series B round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners, bringing its valuation to $1.6 billion.

The safety and risk of crypto-based financial products are in question this week as Celsius Network, a major crypto lender that lets users make deposits to earn interest and take out loans in crypto, paused withdrawals this week, sending the price of its token tumbling.

Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation have set up a $100 million investment and grant fund to deploy capital into South Korean web3 startups, Johnny Lee, general manager of games at Solana Labs, told journalist.

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.

Sienna is among several other blockchain startups trying to prevent “front-running”, where transactions on Ethereum can be preempted by someone else simply by them paying a higher transaction fee — just like trumping a trade on the stock market by paying a higher fee to a broker.

Siedman said his conversation with a number of entrepreneurs including Amir Haleem, the founder and chief executive of decentralized wireless network Helium, helped him gain more confidence about the business model of giving ownership to the contributors.

Wormhole released ETH to an Ethereum wallet based on those wETH, so the exploiter essentially stole some ETH from Wormhole’s reserves. It’s unclear what’s going to happen next with the assets and if wETH in Wormhole’s reserves are still backed by ETH.