House Capital will invest up to $150,000 in each deal with investments happening as the firm comes across new companies rather than at a set pace, said Launch House co-founder Michael Houck. The fund has already deployed capital to 17 startups, and the majority were Launch House veterans. The investments included crypto-accounting software Coinbooks. Source
“Web2 requires users to give up control of their data, which has led to the rise of monopolies and growing privacy concerns,” Ardoino said. “That is why Tether and Bitfinex chose to participate in the development of Holepunch and Keet. It believes that freedom of choice, communication and finances are the lifeblood of the future, and anything that will enhance those freedoms is worth amplifying.” Source
Game development giant Square Enix partnered with nonfungible token (NFT) platform Enjin (ENJ) to launch a digital and physical collection featuring Final Fantasy VII, a highly popular video game series. In an announcement, Enjin said that to get the NFTs, fans must pre-order Final Fantasy VII’s 25th-anniversary products at Square Enix’s store. The products will include a code to the digital collectible counterpart, which can be redeemed on the NFT platform Efinity network in 2023. According to Enjin chief technology Witek Radomski, the partnership will have a good effect on…
Staying true to the “bear market is for building” motto, crypto exchange Bitfinex along with Tether (USDT) and Hypercore announced the launch of a fully encrypted platform, Holepunch, for building peer-to-peer applications. As part of the initiative, the trio launched Keet, an encrypted application capable of facilitating real-time audio and video calls, text chat and file sharing. Partners aim to bestow control over data while breaking technology monopolies with Holepunch, according to the announcement. Tether and Bitfinex funded the development of the Holepunch platform. Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer…
Mercado Brazil parent 2TM raised $200 million from Softbank roughly one year ago, planning to use those funds to help expand across Latin America. Though the company did enter Portugal through an acquisition earlier this year, in Latin America it continues to operate only in Brazil. Source
Blockchain-based metaverse and Web3 platforms have decided to form an Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 (OMA3) to overcome the interoperability challenges of the industry. Four core principles of the Alliance are said to be transparency, inclusiveness, decentralization and democratization. The joint organization was established by Alien Worlds, Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, Space, Superworld, The Sandbox (SAND), Upland and Voxels. As the official announcement specifies, the means to overcome interoperability challenges would be focused on proposing standards and facilitating collaboration between various stakeholders of Web3 and other industries. OMA3 will be established…
Asset tokenization is a hot area in Brazil. In December, Brazil’s only stock exchange, B3, said it was exploring opportunities in the asset tokenization, digital asset custody and crypto-as-a-service (CaaS) segments. And last week, Itaú Unibanco, Brazil’s largest private bank, announced its plans to launch an asset tokenization platform that transforms traditional finance products into tokens. Source
The Ethereum-centric and decentralized protocols software firm Consensys has announced the launch of TURN token, or “Time-Unit Representative NFTs.” Consensys details that TURN tokens will create a new market for tokenized security auditing via Consensys Diligence, the firm’s smart contract audit service. Consensys Diligence to Launch TURN Tokens in Mid-August From August 15th to the 19th, Consensys disclosed a token sale will take place that will feature the company’s TURN token, which stands for “Time-Unit Representative NFTs.” The company’s smart contract audit service Consensys Diligence essentially will be tokenized and…
zkSync 2.0, a so-called zkEVM, is a kind of Ethereum scaling solution – a “zero knowledge rollup” – that aims to decrease Ethereum’s high fees and increase the network’s transaction capacity. In comparison to so-called Optimistic rollups, Zero Knowledge rollups like zkSync are considered superior, albeit far more complex for engineers to implement. Source
Polygon Deploys ZK Rollup Testnet; Eyes Mainnet Launch Source