The Defiant

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 may have slipped through the cracks, or they came late and we haven’t had a chance to cover.

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]

🙏 Together with:

Sorare: Experience true football connection in The Global Fantasy Football Game! Trade & collect, play with football NFTs #OwnYourGame

Inbox Dump!

✉️ Unstoppable Domains Joins Polygon to Enable Users to Mint and Manage NFT Domains for Free

Dubai, 27 October 2021 – Polygon, an Ethereum scaling platform onboarding millions to Web3, today announces that Unstoppable Domains, the world’s leading non-fungible token (NFT) domain naming service, is the latest to join the Polygon ecosystem. By moving to Polygon, Unstoppable Domains users will be able to buy NFT domain names without having to pay claim fees, renewal fees, or gas fees.

✉️ Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors Achieves $18.6 Million in Debut NFT Auction on Sotheby’s Metaverse

Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors, Sotheby’s first NFT group sale to take place on Sotheby’s Metaverse, culminated today after nine days of live bidding with nearly 1,500 bids across the sale, driving the total to $18.6 million.

The sale was highlighted by three exceptional results, with each work acquired by Meta4 Capital:

Rare Pepe PEPENOPOULOS sold for $3.6 million in an auction record
8817 Ape by Bored Ape Yacht Club sells for $3.4 million in auction record for a single Bored Ape
Digital Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility by Mitchell F Chan sold for $1.5 million

✉️ NFT-Powered Automated Market Maker Ruby.Exchange Closes $2.8 Million VC Funding

NGC Ventures, Flow Ventures, and Wintermute lead round aimed at building the first AMM on the SKALE Network, closely integrating NFTs into the user experience.

October 27, 2021—Ruby.Exchange, the leading next-generation NFT-integrated AMM and decentralized exchange, has announced the completion of a combined $2.8 million Seed and Strategic funding round, backed by NGC, Flow Ventures, Wintermute, the SKALE Ecosystem Fund, Morningstar Ventures, Yield Ventures, HashKey, CitizenX, and ZBS Capital, as well as significant angels in the DeFi space.

✉️ Legendary Jazz Musician Arturo Sandoval’s Private NFT Album Release Party at Historic Birdland Jazz Club

WHAT: Famed Jazz musician Arturo Sandoval will be performing two shows at the renowned Birdland Jazz Club in New York City. Arturo will be debuting songs from his forthcoming album, RHYTHM & SOUL, which will be his first album sold as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

**✉️ First Music Artist Generative NFT Collection on OneOf.com, the leading music NFT platform. “GloGang Genesis”**

MIAMI, FL -- Crypto Punks, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cool Cats have put Generative NFT Collections in the global spotlight, although high minting costs and environmental concerns around blockchain energy consumption have prevented many major artists and fans alike from participating in this new art form, until now. Multi-Platinum recording artist Chief Keef, and GloGang Creative Director, ColourfulMula are partnering with OneOf.com, the Green NFT platform for music artists, to release the first ever music artist Generative NFT collection built on the Tezos blockchain, with pre-sale starting on Thursday October 28, 2021 at 4:44pm EST.

✉️ MEXC Global and Bybit Announce Joint Launchpad to Promote Innovative Projects

Singapore, October 28th - Global cryptocurrency and digital asset platforms MEXC Global and Bybit are teaming up to bring their joint launchpad to market, with CropBytes’ CBX token the first asset to be listed.

✉️ Ankr V2 Launches Decentralized Computing Services To Support the Growth of Web3

San Francisco, October 27, 2021 -- Today, Ankr, a leader in the digital asset space as a software platform and decentralized infrastructure provider, introduced Ankr V2, a decentralized web service (DWS) portal for Web3 development that empowers builders to create multi-chain systems, products, and services. Ankr also announced that it will distribute more than $10 million in grants distributed over two years to bolster the growth of a distributed supercomputer and reward the creation of tutorials and education around Web3 development.

✉️ Flutterwave Enables New Europe-Africa Payment Corridors via Stellar

San Francisco, USA — October 25, 2021 — Today, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced that Flutterwave, a global payments technology company, has launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network. Working with TEMPO, Flutterwave is leveraging the Stellar network and Stellar USDC to simplify remittances in Africa.

✉️ BitGo Integrates Stacks To Give Institutions Easy Access to Bitcoin Yield

New York, NY — October 25, 2021 — BitGo, the market leader in providing institutional-grade liquidity, custody and security for digital assets, today announced support for Stacks. Stacks is a network that has created the technology needed to bring applications and smart contracts to the Bitcoin network. In order to match the demand for institutions wanting to hold bitcoin, BitGo will now offer institutional token holders the opportunity to earn BTC rewards for holding Stacks’ native token (STX) in a process known as Stacking. This in turn makes Bitcoin DeFi immediately accessible to large financial institutions and BitGo’s massive network of clients.

✉️ Legendary Investor Tim Draper’s AI Hologram Will Take your Questions Now

Miami, FL (October 24, 2021): Miami Crypto Experience announced today Tim Draper, who is known as “The Riskmaster,” will be delivering a keynote Q&A at the second annual event dedicated to Crypto and Blockchain education and networking. The twist is he’ll be answering questions and sharing his wisdom through his StoryFile, AI-powered conversational video that will be presented holographically on the new PORTL Epic display – the first public presentation of the two new technologies working in sync.

✉️ Enjin to Hold Second Annual NFT Awards in Decentraland

Decentraland — October 28th, 2021 — Enjin, the leading ecosystem for NFTs, today opens nominations for the second annual NFT Awards. Running from today until November 26th, nominations and community voting for the NFT Awards are now open on nftawards.org. The second edition of the program will celebrate the Metaverse, honoring projects that are driving the future of human experiences through NFTs. The awards ceremony will take place on January 12th, 2022 in Decentraland.

✉️ Scientists develop first high-resilience, cryptographic time source based on blockchain technology

Ground-breaking new research, is rethinking central timekeeping, with a way to globally synchronise clocks across a blockchain and to provide a more secure and tamper-proof global time source for everything from IoT devices, like measurement devices in supply chains, to entire distributed systems, particularly where the disruption of a central clock represents a security risk.

✉️ Circle Asserts Commitment To Compliance With TRM Labs

BOSTON, Oct. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Circle Internet Financial, LLC, a leading fintech that helps businesses harness the power of digital currencies and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide today announced it is implementing a full suite of risk management tools developed by TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence provider. The relationship allows Circle to further enhance their platform's ability to detect and defend against fraud and financial crime with tools from TRM Labs.

Funding

💰 CoinList Raises $100 Million in Series A to Continue Global Expansion

San Francisco, CA, October 26, 2021 - CoinList, the trusted platform for new crypto offerings, has raised $100 million in a Series A round, bringing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The round was co-led by Accomplice VC and Agman Partners. CoinList’s global presence was reflected in the other funds participating in the round, funds such as Alphemy Capital, Continue Capital, CMT Digital, DFG Capital Management, Fenbushi Capital, executives from GoldenTree Asset Management, Rising Tide Capital, Imperii Partners, and Metaplanet. CoinList’s strong community was also present in the round as some of CoinList’s closest partners and most active users took part.

💰 NFT-Powered Automated Market Maker Ruby.Exchange Closes $2.8 Million VC Funding

💰 SQUADS, ALL-IN-ONE DAO APP, ANNOUNCES THEIR SEED ROUND

Squads, a DAO creation & management application that makes setting up a Decentralized Autonomous Organization as easy as starting a group chat, announces seed round with Collab+CurrencyWednesay, October 27th -Squads, an application for Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAOs) creation and management built on the Solana blockchain, is pleased to announce a $1.5m seed round led by Collab+Currency with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, Volt Capital, Chaotic Capital, 6thman Ventures, Republic Capital, 8186 Capital, Solana Capital, as well as angel investors Ryan Selkis, Ryon Nixon, Chris Hermidaand Julia Lipton.

💰 Digital Fortress Investment Fund Injects $350,000 Into BondAppetit DeFi Lending Protocol

BondAppetit is a DeFi protocol for business loans. The core product of the protocol is the USDap decentralized stablecoin, which is backed by bonds at 100%. The presence of collateral can be verified at any time at https://bondappetit.io/collateral.

💰 DeFi bug bounty platform Immunefi raises $5.5 million in seed funding

Immunefi, a crypto startup that helps DeFi protocols launch bug bounty programs on its platform, has raised $5.5 million in a seed funding round. Electric Capital and Blueprint Forest co-led the round, with Framework Ventures, Bitscale Capital, IDEO Colab, The LAO, BR Capital, and North Island Ventures, also participating, among other investors.

💰 Three Arrows Capital Backs $10M Raise for DeFi on Cardano

Cardano’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem may be showing glimmers of primordial life following the close of a $10 million raise for Ardana, a new protocol that aims to provide stablecoin minting and exchange services. The round was led by Three Arrows Capital and Ascensive Assets, with participation from Morningstar Ventures and Mechanism Capital.

💰 Tokenized Cash-Flow DeFi Project Swivel Finance Raises $3.5M

In DeFi’s volatile lending and borrowing sector, fixed-rate lending services are fast gaining attention. Swivel Finance is the latest to turn investors’ heads. Multicoin Capital again participated in Swivel Finance's latest $3.5 million funding round and was joined by trading desks GSR Markets, SCC Investments, and CMT Digital. OKEx Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, IOSG Ventures, and SevenX Ventures also contributed to the latest round.

💰 Alchemy Becomes Crypto Unicorn With Andreessen-Led Funding Round

Alchemy Insights Inc., whose technology powers projects ranging from decentralized-finance startups to NFT platforms, said it closed a $250 million funding round that was led by Andreessen Horowitz Crypto.

💰 Integrated DeFi Hub OpenSwap Raises $1.5M

OpenSwap, the interchain DeFi Hub and liquidity booster for merchants, has raised $1.5 million in its most up-to-date funding round. Led by neatly-known VC corporations NGC Ventures and Coin98 Ventures, the round attracted investment from BR Capital, Legos Capital, Double Height Community, High Block Capital, Illusionist Community, and All In Ventures. Quite lots of fundamental angel investors also contributed.

💰 Zaki Manian’s DeFi project Sommelier raises $23 million in new funding

Sommelier Finance, a crypto project that helps automate DeFi trading, has raised $23 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from existing investor Alameda Ventures and new investors Zola Ventures, Byzantine Ventures, Tendermint Ventures, Secure Ventures, D1 Ventures, and Ferngrove Ventures.

Share The Defiant

The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Spread the word and share!

📬 Inbox Dump #30