📬 Inbox Dump #42

Hello Defiers! Welcome to Inbox Dump where we include the updates and announcements that flood our DMs each week and didn’t make it to The Defiant’s content platforms. Sometimes announcements here didn’t meet the bar to become a news story, sometimes they ...

At The Defiant we cover the most important DeFi-related news and developments but we know many of you are hunting for projects before they are fully developed and before they are newsworthy. Our goal with this installment of the newsletter is to help you find them. Look at this as the starting point to DYOR.

We also include a compilation of DeFi and crypto funding rounds in the past week so you have these in one handy place.

Keep in mind these have been unedited. With that —here we go!

[This post is exclusive to subscribers]

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Inbox Dump!

✉️ FUNKO TEAMS UP WITH WARNER BROS. CONSUMER PRODUCTS FOR ALL-NEW DIGITAL POP!

Funko announced today a new partnership with Warner Bros. Consumer Products in the emerging space of Digital Pop!™ Together the partnership will create Funko Digital Pop! featuring some of Warner Bros. most beloved properties and iconic characters. Scooby-Doo will be the first collection to drop.

✉️ gmoney drops ‘GMONEY BRICK BREAKER’

On Monday, March 14 at 5PM EDT, gmoney (@gmoneynft) is dropping the first game licensed by a CryptoPunk NFT - "GMONEY BRICK BREAKER" - a rendition of the classic retro game of brick-smashing action hosted by gmoney’s Ape, CryptoPunk 8219 who makes appearances throughout the player’s engagement. The game, created in partnership with GM420 and cyberh49 is the first fully on-chain game that is also an NFT and is a showcase of a new technology with a compression rate of 90%+. Each of the 2500 NFT’s is generative or unique with differentiated properties and rarities. There will be an on-chain shared leaderboard where high scores can be recorded.

✉️ Parallel Finance Launches 6 DeFi Products in One Day

The full list includes: Parallel’s Automated Market Maker (AMM), Farming, Liquid Staking, v2 Crowdloan Platform, Cross Chain Bridge, and Wallet. These will allow Parallel’s Kusama deployment, Heiko, to include nearly all major DeFi products and enable Parallel users to access leveraged staking, leveraged trading and leveraged crowdloans on the Parallel platform. After some testing, these are expected to be deployed on the main Parallel chain on Polkadot.

✉️ Global Digital Finance Launches Dedicated Sanctions Hub for Crypto and Digital Assets

London, UK, 18 March 2022 - Global Digital Finance (GDF), the leading industry body championing the adoption of best practices for digital finance, has launched the Sanctions Hub, a knowledge center with resources and tools to support the crypto and digital asset sector in ensuring that platforms are not misused for sanctions evasion.

✉️ New Huobi Research Institute Report Cites KYC, Risk Management and Risk Pricing as Key Challenges to Crypto Lending Growth

London | Crypto lending has emerged as a key trend in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, but faces headwinds relating to Know Your Customer (KYC) considerations, risk management and risk pricing. However, these challenges can be addressed by limiting loans to on-chain legal persons, stepping up risk management, and using a market-based mechanism for risk pricing.

✉️ Ripple Commits 1 Billion XRP to Grants Program, Accelerator to Advance XRP Ledger Development

March 17, 2022 – SAN FRANCISCO – Ripple, the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, is committing 1B XRP to accelerate development and new use cases on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The fund is an extension to the XRPL Grants program which launched in 2021 and, to date, has awarded $6 million in total funding to more than 50 open-source projects built on the XRP Ledger.

✉️ Quadrata Launches Data Passport Network Instituting Identity and Compliance into DeFi

MARINA DEL REY, Calif., March 17, 2022 – Quadrata, a passport network bringing the identity and compliance layer to DeFi applications on existing public blockchains, announces the launch of their Web3 passport. The Quadrata Passport allows network participants to build robust DeFi applications, expand financial services and leverage the proprietary technology to initially access KYC and AML status and country of residence as well as credit reputation and accredited investor status in the future. Quadrata wants to take use cases on-chain beyond over-collateralization and help DeFi realize its full potential as a viable alternative to traditional financial services.

✉️ BNB Chain and Aptos Announce Collaboration to Onboard 1 Billion Users

March 17, 2022 - BNB Chain, a community-driven, decentralized and censorship-resistant blockchain has today announced a collaboration with Aptos, a Layer 1 blockchain that is secure and scalable, to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology across a variety of applications, including social media, gaming, and more.

✉️ QONEX Appoints New CEO as part of its Strategic Partnership with Bifinity

SINGAPORE – March 17, 2022 – EQONEX Limited (NASDAQ: EQOS) ("EQONEX" or the "Company"), a digital assets financial services company, and Bifinity UAB (“Bifinity”), a payments technology company that is part of Binance, took the next step in solidifying their strategic partnership with the appointment of EQONEX’s new CEO and two new members to the EQONEX Board of Directors (the “Board”).

✉️ ZENBRIDGE, developed by Dyne.org, RIDDLE&CODE and InfoCert, selected for phase 2 of the European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement

Vienna, March 17th, The consortium formed by Dyne.org, RIDDLE&CODE and InfoCert has entered the second phase of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) project and will receive support to further develop and test its multilayered blockchain stack ZENBRIDGE

✉️ milestoneBased, Innovative Startup and Investor Collaboration Platform, Announces Public Token Launch on Pancake Swap

milestoneBased, the first company to leverage a blockchain DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) and escrow smart contracts to dramatically improve the startup funding process, today announced its first public token sale IDO (Initial DEX Offering) on the Pancake Swap decentralized exchange. The MBT token will debut on Thursday, March 24th at 4pm GMT, London, UK time.

**✉️ AMC’s The Walking Dead Joins the VOXverse with Gala Games and Gallium Studios**

LOS ANGELES (March 16, 2022) -Gala Games, the successful blockchain gaming platform, announced today that they will release a new set of AMC’s The Walking Dead VOX NFTs that will have utility in both the cross-platform survival MMORPG, The Walking Dead: Empires and in VOXverse, currently in development by and led by gaming visionary and The Sims creator Will Wright.

✉️ X-Margin and Atlendis Form Credit Evaluation Partnership to Facilitate Uncollateralized Crypto Loans

PARIS, March, 17th 2022 – Atlendis, a capital-efficient DeFi lending protocol that enables crypto loans without collateral, is partnering with X-Margin, the credit oracle risk engine for trading firms and institutions, to enable capital-efficient crypto borrowing and lending. The partnership will accelerate the adoption of uncollateralized loans on the blockchain, by using proven methodologies to reduce the inherent risk of DeFi lending.

✉️ onXRP.com and Pastel Network Partner to Further Enhance Security on the onXRP NFT Marketplace

NEW YORK – March 15, 2022 — onXRP.com, a leading technology and content platform providing user-driven innovation to the XRP Ledger (XRPL), and Pastel Network (PSL), the first application-specific and purpose built NFT blockchain, announced an exclusive partnership to enhance the security of the XRPL NFT ecosystem. Together, Pastel and onXRP will integrate tools to the onXRP marketplace that aim to identify scammers by using Pastel’s Sense protocol to authenticate NFT rareness and perform NFT duplication checks as well as to ensure data security and storage through its Cascade protocol.

✉️ Shirtum's NFTs charity collection will donate 100% of the revenues to support war refugees

Barcelona, March 16, 2022. As a result of the war in recent weeks that has paralyzed Europe and much of the world, a huge and growing number of refugees have been forced to flee their homes. Faced with this devastating situation, Shirtum, the sports NFTs company that connects fans with their idols, proposes to join the solidarity list with the commitment to contribute financially to the humanitarian situation affecting refugees.

✉️ CogX Announces Winners of the 5th Annual CogX Awards and Support for the Humanitarian Crisis in Ukraine

Wednesday 15th March 2022, London UK. On Monday night, CogX hosted some of the world’s greatest technology trailblazers to recognise the innovators and change makers impacting our world at the 5th edition of its annual CogX Awards held at Samsung KX in London. CogX also announced its plans and early-bird passes for the CogX Global Leadership Summit and Festival of AI, Blockchain, the Metaverse and Transformational Technology on June 13th to 15th.

✉️ Flashloans Launches DeFi Platform

London, 16th March: Flashloans today announced it has launched an online platform that enables people without knowledge of Solidity programming to execute a flash loan and profit from arbitrage opportunities. The DeFi tool aims to ensure market discrepancies and premiums paid for certain tokens on digital asset exchanges are eliminated.

✉️ Aave Community Votes to Launch New Version of the Leading DeFi Protocol Across Six Blockchain Networks

LONDON — MARCH 16 2022 — The Aave Companies (https://aave.com) announced the launch of V3 of the Aave liquidity protocol, which brings new features including increased capital efficiency, security, and enhanced decentralization alongside a new, compatible user interface. With the fully redesigned and refreshed Aave app, users will be able to access simplified transaction flows, enjoy faster load times, and gain enhanced visibility into their portfolios via Aave’s revamped dashboard. Users will be able to access Aave V3 via new wallet integrations and access points on Instadapp, Debank, 1Inch, ParaSwap, Zapper, DeFisaver, Zerion, and more.

✉️ Digital Development Corporation Invites Experts in Social Media Marketing to Participate in Upcoming NFT Series Designed by 101-year-old Heroic War Veteran

DENVER, March 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Development Corporation (DDC) announced today that it welcomes social media partners to support the upcoming launch of its NFT, which features a generative art collection entitled "Peace 101" created in collaboration with 101-year-old Robert (Bob) McAdam, PhD. He is a former WWII POW and Purple Heart recipient and the world's oldest known collaborative NFT artist.

✉️ Wildlife Studios to Launch Flagship Mobile Game on Avalanche Blockchain

San Francisco, CA. - March 14, 2022 - Wildlife Studios, one of the ten largest mobile game developers in the world, will be expanding into Web3 gaming by launching on the Avalanche public blockchain (AVAX).In doing so, it will dramatically expand the opportunities available to players of Castle Crush, the studio’s hugely popular real-time strategy game with over 1M monthly active users.

✉️ Celestis and MicroPets Join Forces to Launch Animated NFTs into Space

March 15, 2022 – Celestis, Inc., the pioneer and global leader in Memorial Spaceflight Services, today announced that they will be teaming up with MicroPets (Cape Coral, FL) to launch unique animated NFTs on its 3 upcoming missions Ascension (Earth Orbit), Destiny (Luna) and Enterprise (Deep Space).

✉️ Irish NFT creators, Lepros team up with Kinsale Spirit Company to launch a specific collection for St.Patrick’s Day. Bringing Irish Business into the Web3 era.

Lepros a NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) collection, founded by young blockchain and crypto enthusiasts Niamh Coleman and Keith Finn have partnered with Kinsale Spirit Company to create three one of one NFT pieces which are inspired by the Kinsale Spirits Whiskey bottles: Red Earl, Spanish Earl and the Great Earl. These will be auctioned on St. Patrick's day with a redeemable physical signed bottle from Kinsale Spirits and will have bespoke access/ privileges in the metaverse.

✉️ IHEARTRADIO AND ONEOF LAUNCH

Miami, FL — March 15, 2022 — OneOf, the green Web3 company built for music and sports, has revealed the details of their exclusive NFT drop with the popular iHeart Radio morning show The Breakfast Club. The collection, titled “A Moment At The Breakfast Club,” is the first in a series of six drops set to occur in collaboration between OneOf and The Breakfast Club over the coming months. Scheduled for Tuesday, March 15th at 6 am ET, “A Moment at The Breakfast Club” is a tribute to viral moments on The Breakfast Club Morning Show, and includes four NFTs as depicted by the show’s famous hosts: Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy, and Angela Yee.

✉️ Green Dot and Plaid Partner to Give Customers Seamless Access to Their Money Through Secure Open Finance Solutions

AUSTIN, Texas – March 15, 2022 – Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT) today announced it is partnering with Plaid, the data network powering the digital financial ecosystem, to bring secure open finance solutions to GO2bank customers. Launched in 2021, GO2bank is Green Dot’s flagship digital bank designed to give all people the power to bank seamlessly, affordably and with confidence.

✉️ Ajuna Partners With Darwinia to Broaden the Reach of In-game Assets

Zug, March 2022 – Decentralized gaming platform Ajuna Network has formed a partnership with Darwinia Network to expand the reach of its in-game assets to a wider array of blockchains. Ajuna’s decentralized platform is built on the understanding that in modern gaming, players are those who generate value. But while a game’s attractiveness comes from its community and shared creations, in conventional games, players are still denied real ownership of the assets they develop. Ajuna changes this by enabling gamers to own, control and trade their in-game assets, and even bring them to new gaming environments.

✉️ Liquid Staking Protocol for Ethereum, Swell Network, Raises $3.75M in Round Led by Framework Ventures

March 14, 2022 – Swell Network, a protocol for liquid staking on Ethereum, has raised $3.75M in a seed round led by Framework Ventures, an investment adviser with significant experience in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, along with IOSG Ventures and Apollo Capital.

✉️ Kaddex (KDX) Announces Completed Second Token Sale For $8M Total Raise

March 15th, 2022, 9am CET - (Zurich, Switzerland) Kaddex, the first gas-free DEX (Decentralized Exchange) built on the Kadena Blockchain, has closed a second sale completing a total of $8M raised pre-launch. 100% of KDX available in the second round was sold. The second public sale on Tokensoft was held between March 4th and March 14th 2022, with 3,000 individual users completing purchases.

✉️ Magic Eden, leading NFT marketplace on Solana, raises $27M Series A led by Paradigm to fuel growth

14 March 2022 – Magic Eden, the leading NFT marketplace on Solana, has closed a $27 million Series A round led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia, Electric, Greylock, Kindred, Variant and the Solana Ventures. “Magic Eden will be much more than a place for users to purchase NFTs. Our goal is to make a clear distinction between Web2 and Web3, allowing creators, collectors and supporters to engage with each other and lead the direction of their online interactions,” said Jack Lu, CEO and Co-founder of Magic Eden.

✉️ New Division Dedicated to Providing Full-Service Blockchain Hosting Including Mining Equipment, Power Solutions and Infrastructure for Digital Asset Mining

Las Vegas, NV, March 14, 2022 – BitNile Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: NILE), a diversified holding company (“BitNile” or the “Company”), announced today that its subsidiary, BitNile, Inc. has formed a new division, BitNile Mining Solutions (“BMS”). BitNile’s cryptocurrency mining focus to date has been on self-mining Bitcoin. BMS will leverage BitNile’s deep industry partnerships, including its partnership with Bitmain Technologies Limited. BMS will focus on the sourcing and sales of cryptocurrency miners and related equipment and offering additional blockchain infrastructure services such as hosting, managing electrical power, repair and other crypto-focused infrastructure solutions. BMS will offer products and services to companies ranging from start-ups to providing fully integrated industrial operations and solutions including self-mining. Interested parties can contact the new division at Solutions@BitNile.com.

✉️ Web3 Game Publisher Ex Populus Expands Team With New Executive Appointments

March 14, 2022 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time – BERKELEY, Calif.-(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ex Populus, an Animoca-backed, Web3 game publishing company founded by former executives from Pixar, Activision and EA, has announced expanded roles for its rapidly growing team. Game marketing veteran and Ex Populus co-founder Sean Charles will broaden his current role to support Ex Populus as a senior advisor, while game development expert and co-Founder of the Media Indie Exchange, Justin Woodward, will join Ex Populus as a board director. Both appointments aim to expand the Ex Populus ecosystem and foster its growing community of developers and publishers.

Funding

💰 Katie Haun’s New Fund Joins $10M Round for Polkadot Lending Protocol Moonwell

As Polkadot brings its hub-and-spoke vision for the future of crypto to the fore, investors are pouring money into the network’s decentralized finance (DeFi) building blocks. Lunar Labs is the latest team to emerge, announcing Thursday a funding round of $10 million to fuel the development of Moonwell Artemis, a collateralized lending protocol for Polkadot’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)–compatible Moonbeam parachain.

💰 DeFi startup Treehouse clinches US$18m in seed round

SINGAPORE-BASED Web3 decentralised finance (DeFi) startup has clinched US$18 million in a seed funding round led by an undisclosed large fintech investor. Other investors who participated in the round include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Binance, MassMutual Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Jump Capital, GSR, Wintermute, Do Kwon of Terraform Labs, senior executives from SoftBank Vision Fund and more.

💰 Binance, Lightspeed back $18m round of DeFi startup

Treehouse, a decentralized finance (DeFi) company, has raised US$18 million in a seed round led by an undisclosed fintech investor. Investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Binance, and MassMutual Ventures also took part.

💰Crypto Bank Let’sBit Closes a Pre-Seed Round Led by Angel Ventures

According to a report by Galaxy Digital Research, US$33 billion of venture capital that was invested around the world in 2021 went to crypto, blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) startups. This figure suggests that we are likely to see even more investment in these sectors in Latin America. After all, Web3 and DeFi are two of the most attractive sectors for VC investors in 2022.

💰 ConsenSys raises $450M in Series D funding, doubles valuation in four months

On Tuesday, ConsenSys, the leading Ethereum and decentralized protocols software company with product suites such as MetaMask, Infura and Truffle, announced the close of a $450-million Series D funding round led by ParaFi Capital. Notable new investors included Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures and C Ventures. The deal more than doubles its valuation since the firm’s $200-million Series C raise in November 2021.

💰 A Wall Street Quant Turns His Crypto Firm Into a Unicorn

Gauntlet, a financial-risk modeling platform for crypto lending, raised a new round of funding that pushed its valuation to $1 billion. The $23.8 million Series B round was led by Ribbit Capital, the company said in a statement Monday. Existing investors including Polychain Capital and Paradigm also participated.

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