The Defiant

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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AI Blockchain Solution CryptoGPT (GPT) Gets Listed on Leading Exchange Bitget

Victoria, Seychelles, March 10 — Bitget, the largest crypto copy trading platform, announced the listing of CryptoGPT (GPT) in the AI Zone of the spot market.

Huobi To Create $100M USD Liquidity Fund

Singapore, Singapore, 10th March — Huobi has announced a $100 million Liquidity Fund with the aim of enhancing currency liquidity across several markets.

The evolution of NFTs in a multichain future

The nonfungible token boom of 2021 was characterized by a surge in interest and investment in digital art and collectibles that showcased a clear break from the way in which art had been made, perceived, bought and sold up to that point.

Audius Introduces NFT-Gating to Platform

Web3 music platform Audius said it’s implementing a non-fungible token (NFT) gating feature intended to allow artists to release exclusive content to NFT holders. This follows recent news that streaming service Spotify is testing token-gated playlists.

SatoshiChain Brings Bitcoin to DeFi; Announces Mainnet Launch Date and Upcoming Airdrops

Victoria, Seychelles, March 09, SatoshiChain, the blockchain platform that brings Bitcoin to DeFi, has announced that its Mainnet will officially launch on June 1st, 2023.

Bitget Becomes Sponsor Of Juventus Female Football Club

Seychelles, March 8, Global cryptocurrency exchange Bitget announced on International Women’s Day that it has become an official sponsor of the Juventus Women’s Team. Juventus Women, as they are better known, are one of Italy’s most successful football teams.

SelfKey Releases AI and zk-Based Solutions for Safer Digital Verification

Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 9th March — Self-sovereign identity service, SelfKey, has released a new whitepaper detailing KYC solutions with features enabled by artificial intelligence and Zero knowledge verifications.

DaoMaker’s Degen Zoo Builds The Abandoned Logan Paul Game in 30 Days

The DAO Maker founder took on the challenge of building the shelved concept to disprove Paul’s claim that the development cycle would take years. More than 115,000 wallets have registered to join the game with pledges of over $700 million, setting new records for a crypto game.

Marinade launches vault with Kamino and Cogent to boost SOL staking

LONDON, March 6, Marinade Finance launched a new liquidity vault for SOL liquid staking tokens with Kamino Finance and Cogent Crypto. The three Solana projects have launched an automated concentrated liquidity vault featuring Marinade’s mSOL and Cogent’s liquid staking token, cgntSOL, on Kamino.

Mizar Launches $MZR Token on Arbitrum and Unveils DeFi Roadmap

London, 8th March, — Mizar, a social trading platform that boasts over 10,000 users and sees daily trades in the millions of dollars, is pleased to announce the launch of its $MZR token on March 9th, along with the disclosure of its ambition to introduce automatic and copy trading on both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

Web3.0 Hackathon@HKU to take place from April 7-9, 2023

Web3.0 Hackathon@HKU will be held from April 7-9, 2023, at the University of Hong Kong. Themed “Into the Socialverse,” this event will be a genesis hackathon that focuses on the web3 social applications layer.

YOM Brings Peer-to-Peer Metaverse Rendering to the Masses with MEXC Listing

YOM (Your Open Metaverse) is excited to announce the listing of its token on MEXC, a top cryptocurrency exchange. The listing will take place on March 13 and is expected to provide the YOM community with greater liquidity and exposure.

Evest’s participation at Crypto Expo Dubai 2023 will highlight women’s engagement in digital investments

March 9, With the Crypto Expo Dubai 2023 coinciding with the celebrations of International Women’s Day in March, the leading digital platform for trading wants to empower women with knowledge in investments and trading.

Leading Web3 Investment Firm CoinFund Hires Julie Mossler to Lead Marketing & Communications

March 06 – CoinFund announces tech veteran Julie Mossler joined as Head of Marketing and Communications. As an award-winning and experienced brand leader, Julie will reimagine the firm’s marketing and narrative strategy as well as support its portfolio companies in their positioning and go-to-market approaches.

Funding

16z Invest $55M in the Open-World Game Studio Believer

On March 7, Andrew Chen and Robin Guo of a16z’s Games Fund One shared that they invested $55 million in the Series A round of Believer. Among the other investors in the round are Lightspeed Venture Partners, Riot Games, BITKRAFT Ventures, 1Up Ventures, Upfront Ventures, and Next Play Ventures.

Ethereum Layer 2 Network, Scroll, closes $50M to attain Unicorn Status

The round saw the following participants: Polychain Capital, Sequoia China, Bain Capital Crypto, Moore Capital Management, Variant Fund, Newman Capital, IOSG Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners

Kresus Raises $25M in Series A Funding

The round was led by Liberty City Ventures, JetBlue Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Marc Benioff, Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss, Craft Ventures, and other blockchain focused investors.

Crypto Payroll Startup Toku Raises $20M

Blockchain Capital led the funding round. Other backers in the round included Protocol Labs, GMJP, OrangeDAO, Orrick, Reverie, Quantstamp, Next Web Capital, Alchemy co-founders Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau, and a number of angel investors.

Proven Raises $15.8M in Seed Funding

The round was led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Balaji Srinivasan, Roger Chen, and Ada Yeo.

Coinbase Ventures, Brevan Howard among early backers of compliant DEX Mauve

Violet launched Mauve to be a compliance-focused DEX. Coinbase Ventures and Brevan Howard were among the backers of its $15 million round.

Cubist Raises $7M to Make dApp Development More Efficient, Secure, and Scalable

The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from venture capital and strategic investors including dao5, Amplify Partners, Polygon, Blizzard, Axelar, and more.

Digital Art Platform and Residency Program Wildxyz Raises $7M

The round was led by venture capital firm Matrix Partners, with participation from notable investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman; actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow; the co-founder of Twitch, Kevin Lin; and NFT investor Cozomo de Medici.

📬 Inbox Dump #93