📬 Inbox Dump #85
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!
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Inbox Dump!
Polygon Founder-Backed Early-Stage Web3 Accelerator Beacon Holds First Demo Day Of The Year
January 12th — Early-stage web3 accelerator Beacon held its first Demo Day of the year with 13 projects pitching live to over 300 top venture capitalists. Beacon, positioning itself as the most founder-friendly accelerator started by Sandeep Nailwal.
Coinbase-Backed Openfund Pioneers New Fundraising Model, Powered by Decentralized Social
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10, DeSo, a new blockchain that has raised $200 million from Coinbase, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz, just launched Openfund, a cross-chain fundraising platform, for entrepreneurs to launch fundraising rounds with tradeable coins via an on-chain order-book exchange backed by the DeSo blockchain.
Astar Network Launches the XVM on Public Testnet, Enabling Truly Multichain Use Cases
Singapore, 9th January — Astar Network, the smart contract platform for multichain, today announces the launch of its Cross-Virtual Machine (XVM) functionality on the public testnet Shibuya.
BitDAO Launches Testnet for Mantle, a Modular Layer-2 Solution Built for Web3 Adoption
NEW YORK, Jan. 10 – BitDAO, one of the world’s largest DAOs, announced the launch of the public testnet “Wadsley” for Mantle, the first modular Ethereum layer-2 (“L2”) blockchain designed for hyper-scalability.
Trezor appoints Matěj Žák as new Chief Executive Officer
January 13, Trezor, the hardware wallet company, has appointed Matěj Žák, formerly Chief Product Officer, as its new CEO. Žák takes over the leadership of Trezor from co-founder Marek “Slush” Palatinus, who will remain in the company, helping to guide the strategic, technical and visionary direction of the business.
DoraHacks and Cryptosat Run the First Cryptographic Trusted-Setup for Zero-Knowledge in Space
January 12th / DoraHacks, a global hackathon organizer and open source incentive platform, and Cryptosat, which develops and launches crypto-satellites into space to enable novel cryptographic applications, announced they successfully performed the first experiment to initiate a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proof system in space.
GBBC’s sixth annual Blockchain Central Davos
The Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) is the largest industry association for the blockchain technology and digital assets community. Launched in Davos in 2017, GBBC is a Swiss-based nonprofit with more than 200 ambassadors from across 100+ jurisdictions and disciplines that exist today.
NFT Project Orange Financial Debuts Innovative Yield Farming Treasury – Stablecoin Rewards for Holders
The public mint date for Orange Financial, a multi-chain yield farming treasury, is February 1. Orange Financial will change the face of yield farming and NFTs as the only project to offer stablecoin rewards to its holders through yield farming.
Taunt Battleworld announces launch of Black Magic NFT collection
Taunt Battleworld — a digital collectible competitive fighting game for the metaverse — will launch its next nonfungible token (NFT) collection, the Black Magic collection, on Jan. 14, 2023, exclusively on Magic Eden.
Automotive Company Togg Selects METACO to Launch Mobility Ecosystem Powered by Blockchain
Lausanne, Switzerland – 10 January — Togg, a global mobility technologies and ecosystem provider has selected METACO, the market-leading provider of digital asset custody orchestration technology to complex, global financial institutions, to underpin and secure the custody and governance of digital assets.
Blvck Parisx Fortnite-An Iconic New Clothingand Lifestyle Collection
January 10 – Global lifestyle brand Blvck announced its latest partnership with Epic Games’Fortnite. The striking capsule collection debuts a monochromatic color palette of premium quality clothing and lifestyle products.
WOW Summit Hong Kong 2023 to be the flagship large-scale Web3 event in APAC
After successful editions in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Lisbon, WOW Summit Hong Kong is set to be the flagship full-scale Web3 event in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in 2023.
BidX Markets Grows Global Team with New APAC Head Harry Fry
January 9th – BidX Markets, the globally regulated multi-asset liquidity and trading technology provider is continuing to expand its international team with the addition of Harry Fry who will be overseeing and growing the firm’s Asia-Pacific operations.
Metacade presale passes $2 million – only $690k remaining before it sells out
London, United Kingdom, 10th January — Metacade has exceeded expectations as investors flocked to its presale to purchase MCADE tokens, raising over $2 million for the GameFi project.
Head of $100 million venture studio Spartan Labs departs
The head of Singapore-based Spartan Group’s $100 million venture studio has quietly left after less than a year in the role. It remains unclear what motivated the departure.
Funding
Crypto market maker CyberX raises $15 million led by Foresight Ventures
Crypto investment firm Foresight Ventures led a $15 million Series A round into digital asset market maker CyberX.
The Easy Company raised $14.2M to build an easy-to-use ‘social’ crypto wallet
The round included Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Tapestry VC, Upside and Scribble Ventures, angel investors from social media and web3 like former heads of Instagram, Novi product and engineering and former executives from Airbnb, Twitter, Uber, OpenTable and Eventbrite, among others.
Web3 Studio Sortium Raises $7.8M in Seed Round
The funding was revealed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the details, including Arca’s participation were confirmed by Sortium CEO Marc Seal. Seal didn’t specify who the other investors were, but said the group included other crypto-native firms.
Alkimiya Raises $7.2 million Strategic Round Led by 1kx and Castle Island Ventures
The funding round was led by Castle Island Ventures and 1kx and included contributions from other digital asset heavyweights including Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and Dragonfly Capital Partners.
Quasar Finance Raises $5.4m – Advancing Interchain DeFi
The round was led by Shima Capital, but also saw participation from other notable firms and individual investors. Some of them include Blockchain Capital, Polychain Capital, CIB, HASH Capital, and Osmosis’ Sunny Aggarwal, among many others.
Digital Village welcomes $4 million in round backed by BOLD, the VC fund of L’Oréal
The round arrives via BOLD, L’Oréal’s venture capital fund, The Venture Reality Fund, Venrex, British Fashion Council, and undisclosed others.
Jumbo Raises $3.5M in Funding
The round was led by Pantera and Huobi Incubator, with participation from DWEB3, D21 Ventures, Metaweb Ventures, Fundamental Labs, Proximity, and Genblock Capital.
Exactly Protocol raises $2 Million in funding and launches on Ethereum Mainnet
The round was led by Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, Daedalus; a web3 angel collective, and Esteban Ordano, co-founder of Decentraland. Other investors included Bodhi Ventures, Newtopia, NXTP Ventures, and Kaszek Ventures.
