headlines
Worldcoin Closes $115M Series C Funding Led by Blockchain Capital
Odaily news OpenAI CEO's encryption project Worldcoin development company Tools for Humanity announced the completion of $115 million in Series C financing. This round of financing was led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global. Funds from this round of financing will be used to accelerate the development and growth of the Worldcoin project and the World App, the first crypto wallet for the Worldcoin ecosystem.
Worldcoin is an open-source protocol supported by a global community of developers, individuals, economists, and technologists committed to expanding participation in and access to the global economy. The Worldcoin Foundation is the steward and will support and grow the Worldcoin community until it becomes self-sufficient. Tools for Humanity helped launch Worldcoin and currently serve as an advisor to the World App Foundation and operators. (CoinDesk)
Odaily News Multichain tweeted that although most of the cross-chain routes of the Multichain protocol are operating normally, due to force majeure, some cross-chain routes cannot be used, and the time to restore services is unknown. After service is restored, pending transactions will be credited automatically. Multichain will compensate users affected during this process, and the compensation plan will be announced later.
According to yesterday’s report, in response to the “delay in the arrival of Multichain cross-chain funds” reported by many community users, the Multichain official responded in the community that the upgrade of the back-end nodes took longer than expected. Most routes are working as usual, as some routes (Kava, zkSync, Polygon zkEVM) are temporarily suspended. All affected transactions will arrive after the upgrade is complete.
Odaily news OpenAI CEO's encryption project Worldcoin development company Tools for Humanity announced the completion of $115 million in Series C financing. This round of financing was led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global. Funds from this round of financing will be used to accelerate the development and growth of the Worldcoin project and the World App, the first crypto wallet for the Worldcoin ecosystem.
Industry news
Multichain: Some cross-chain routes are unavailable due to force majeure, and the service recovery time is unknown, and affected users will be compensated
Odaily News Multichain tweeted that although most of the cross-chain routes of the Multichain protocol are operating normally, due to force majeure, some cross-chain routes cannot be used, and the time to restore services is unknown. After service is restored, pending transactions will be credited automatically. Multichain will compensate users affected during this process, and the compensation plan will be announced later.
Founder of Fusion Foundation: Multichain CEO is currently unreachable
DJ Qian, founder of the Fusion Foundation and former co-founder of Multichain, said on Twitter that he has not yet contacted Zhao Jun, the co-founder and CEO of Multichain.
Montenegro court extends Do Kwon's detention
Odaily News Montenegro court extended Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon's detention in Montenegro. The court said there would be a retrial based on the grounds for termination put forward by the High Court before making a decision on the defendant's acceptance of bail on the advice of defense lawyers.
Do Kwon and former Terra executive Han Chang-joon are due to appear in court for their next hearing on June 16.
Ripple Acquires Minority Stake in Bitstamp from Pantera Capital in Q1
Odaily News According to the latest minutes of the Galaxy Digital shareholder conference call, Ripple acquired a minority stake in the cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp in the first quarter of this year, but did not disclose the specific shares.
Ripple acquired the shares from U.S. digital asset investment firm Pantera Capital, with Galaxy Digital advising on the transaction. (Finance Magnates)
Fahrenheit Wins Celsius Bid Auction, Completion Subject to Regulatory Approval
Fahrenheit has won a bid to acquire bankruptcy lending platform Celsius Network, whose assets were previously valued at about $2 billion, according to court documents filed early Thursday.
Fahrenheit, a consortium of buyers including venture capital firm Arrington Capital and crypto mining firm US Bitcoin Corp, was selected as the winning bidder after a lengthy auction process.
Project News
Under the terms of the deal, the new company will receive between $450 million and $500 million in liquid cryptocurrency, and US Bitcoin Corp will build a series of crypto mining facilities, including a new 100-megawatt mine.
While the bid has been accepted by a committee of Celsius and its creditors, it still needs regulatory approval before the acquisition can be completed. (CoinDesk)
Cryptocurrency trading platform Coincheck's Nasdaq listing may be delayed again
Odaily News Japanese cryptocurrency trading platform Coincheck’s plan to list on Nasdaq through a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Thunder Bridge Capital Partners IV may be further delayed. According to a May 16 statement, Thunder Bridge's board did not believe there was enough time to complete the merger by the July 2 deadline, and it recommended that the deadline be extended by up to 12 months, subject to a shareholder vote.
The merger of Coincheck and Thunder Bridge was first announced in March 2022 and was initially expected to be completed in the second half of the year. But in October, Coincheck said the deadline had been pushed back to July 2, 2023. (CoinDesk)
Specifically, BEP-126 introduced the "Fast Finality" mechanism, which makes it impossible for a block to be reversed once it is finalized on the network, which will reduce the possibility of chain reorganization by bad actors.
Odaily News Zcash development team Electric Coin Co. (ECC) announced the reorganization of the company, which will narrow the focus of the team and transfer some Zcash support functions to the wider community to improve the resilience and sustainability of Zcash development.
ECC said it was laying off 13 employees, about half of its team, in the reorganization. Over the next few weeks, the ECC will release a revised roadmap focused on empowering and giving voice to ZEC holders, including: creating a great user experience for PoS ZEC; Easy to use for everyone; launch of mobile wallet SDK, useful for other Zcash builders; US policy work to ensure ZEC, self-custody and staking are still viable in the US.
BEP-174 proposes "Cross-Chain Relay Management", which aims to mitigate any potential security issues in BBSC Bridge. Additionally, the proposal would introduce "managers" for relayers to be chosen by on-chain governance. These managers will be in charge of managing the registration of individual relayers, making it easy to remove or add any relayers in times of potential crisis.
The ECC noted that near-term work to address third-party wallet performance issues remains its current priority, and the ECC is committed to releasing zcash 5.6.0, an updated version of lightwalletd, and new iOS and Android mobile SDKs.
Odaily News Arbitrum development team Offchain Labs announced that it has written a complete and effective fraud proof program for the next-generation programming environment Stylus.
It is reported that Stylus allows users to deploy contracts written in their favorite programming languages (including Rust, C, C++, etc.). The team leveraged Nitro to enhance security for Stylus contracts in WASM and expand EVM+ support. Stylus is expected to be audited and ready for production this year.
a16z Crypto open source on-chain privacy voting system Cicada
Odaily news a16z Crypto released the open source Solidity library Cicada. Cicada leverages time-lock puzzles and zero-knowledge proofs to enable on-chain privacy voting, guarantees minimal trust assumptions, and is available on the Ethereum mainnet. Cicada formal certification is also coming soon.
Ethereum client Geth releases v1.12.0 version, no longer supports POW
Odaily News Go Ethereum released the Ethereum client Geth v1.12.0 version (Krogam DMZ), which no longer supports Proof of Work (POW), so it can no longer be used for PoW-based private chains, or as an upstream library for projects that rely on ethash PoW .
Offchain Labs has written a complete, efficient fraud proof program for the programming environment Stylus
Odaily News The Snapshot voting page shows that the Uniswap community is conducting a temperature check vote on the proposal of "deploying Uniswap V3 to Fantom". The current support rate is 100%, and the voting will end on May 31.
Phoenix Labs Launches Spark Protocol Update Proposal: Proposed Raise of D 3 M Debt Ceiling
Odaily News According to MakerDAO’s disclosure on social media, Phoenix Labs has initiated a Maker governance proposal for Spark Protocol update on MakerDAO. The main contents include: raising the D 3 M debt ceiling to 20 million DAI, deploying SubDAO agents, adding administrator roles, and deploying The new DAI interest rate strategy to precisely match the DSR, the new interest rate strategy suggests increasing the DSR to 3%.
NFT Marketplace Blur Launches ETH Loan Batch Repayment Feature
Odaily News The NFT market Blur announced a new feature, users can now borrow ETH and repay the loan in batches instead of all at once.
This feature is available for NFTs purchased using "buy now pay later" (BNPL) and directly borrowed NFTs. If the loan is called on, users can extend the loan by paying a fee as low as 0.1 ETH instead of repaying the full amount immediately. This can also be used to refinance the loan for a better rate.
NFT Marketplace Blur Launches ETH Loan Batch Repayment Feature
NFT lending platform Astaria has officially launched
Odaily News According to official Twitter, Astaria, the NFT lending platform co-founded by the former Sushi CTO, announced its official launch today. Astaria is a borrower-centric platform with instant liquidity, fixed terms, and no mandatory liquidation.
Doodles Lianchuang reveals that Doodles AR app is being tested
This feature is available for NFTs purchased using "buy now pay later" (BNPL) and directly borrowed NFTs. If the loan is called on, users can extend the loan by paying a fee as low as 0.1 ETH instead of repaying the full amount immediately. This can also be used to refinance the loan for a better rate.
Investment and Financing
Magic Eden launches NFT transaction aggregator on Solana
Odaily news NFT market Magic Eden launched an NFT transaction aggregator on Solana, aggregating the list of each key Solana NFT platform.
NFT lending platform Astaria has officially launched
Doodles Lianchuang reveals that Doodles AR app is being tested
Odaily News Doodles co-founder burnt toast posted a video on Twitter showing that Doodles' AR application is being tested.
Crypto trading platform Growminer secures $48 million in strategic funding
Odaily News Cryptocurrency trading platform Growminer announced that it has received US$48 million in strategic financing. It claims that the world's top funds, investment groups and professional investment institutions participated in the investment, but the specific investor information has not yet been disclosed.
Growminer mainly provides trading tools for institutional and individual investors. It is currently in the process of regulatory approval and is expected to land next month. The new funds will be used for team expansion, product improvement and accelerated market penetration, with plans to expand services to the global digital economy. (digital journal)
Media company Semafor has raised $19 million to buy back SBF's investment stake
Semafor, co-founded by former Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and New York Times media columnist Ben Smith, went live last October. Semafor’s total funding to date is $34 million. (Reuters)
Kosmos Ventures launches new blockchain fund Zero Age Ventures with $10M commitment
Following a successful initial transaction and a $10 million commitment of its own capital from the general partner, Zero Age Ventures is ready to distribute capital in 2023 and 2024.
All new investments will be managed by Zero Age Ventures as the team moves into the next phase of development. While Kosmos Fund I will continue to support existing portfolio companies, it will be phased out and no new investments will be made.
Originally founded in 2017, Kosmos has made significant seed round investments in protocols such as Solana, Algorand, Polkadot, and Fantom. Zero Age Ventures aims to continue this tradition by driving innovation and growth in the industry. (Chainwire)
Crypto Loyalty Service Kigo Announces Launch, Secures $6.5M Investment Commitment
Odaily News Augeo, a corporate engagement and loyalty technology services company, today announced the establishment of Kigo, a merger of Augeo’s encrypted loyalty subsidiary Heaps and NFT engagement platform Thred. A new $6.5 million commitment from Ventures and Augeo to accelerate the launch of Kigo.
It is reported that Kigo was founded in 2023 by Augo and former Starbucks, Amazon and Thred executive Ben Straley. The company aims to provide services such as membership, user participation rewards and recognition through the blockchain. The rewards support a variety of digital assets, including BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies, digital collections, NFT passes, etc. (Augeo Marketing)
Odaily News Blockchain energy trading platform UrbanChain announced the completion of Series A financing of £5.25 million, led by Eurazeo. With the new funding, UrbanChain will expand into new international markets, starting with Ireland.
UrbanChain is currently running a P2P energy trading platform in the UK. The platform uses blockchain and artificial intelligence systems to match renewable energy generators and consumers, allowing users to obtain reasonable electricity prices, thereby reducing electricity bills for businesses and households.
Hong Kong asset manager Metalpha has raised $5 million from Bitmain for its fund
global policy
The fund, established in partnership with NextGen Digital Venture Limited, invests in Grayscale products through structured derivatives, granting access to the pillars of the digital asset portfolio in a manner compliant with US and Hong Kong laws. (Coindesk)
Singapore Communications Company GoodGang Labs Raises $2M Seed Round, Kakao Investment Participates
Odaily News GoodGang Labs, a Singaporean communication company based on avatars, announced the completion of a US$2 million seed round of financing, with Kakao Investment as the investor.
GoodGang Labs has previously received investments from Naver, Kimgisa Lab, Naver Z and Planetarium, with an undisclosed amount. (Technode)
global policy
White House, Republicans discuss extending debt ceiling to 2024
Odaily News According to Punchbowl, citing multiple sources, the White House and House Republicans are discussing a debt ceiling agreement that would raise the government's borrowing limit until the end of 2024, which would incentivize Congress to pass all annual spending bills.
A spokesman for the US Treasury Department said: The two parties in the United States should quickly resolve the debt ceiling issue and avoid an artificial economic crisis.
Fed Minutes: Rate cut unlikely, split on further hikes
Some participants said the Fed "should stand ready to use its liquidity facilities" to offset the damage from a possible default. Waller said that he does not support stopping interest rate hikes, whether to raise interest rates in June or skip raising in July depends on the data in the next three weeks. Bostic said that not wanting to be trapped in a specific rate adjustment rhythm (skip/rate hike in June), it is best to consider a rate cut next year. (Golden Ten)
French Legislative Council Approves New Rules Limiting Social Media KOLs' Promotion of Unregistered Cryptocurrencies
South Korean National Assembly Passes Two Bills Requiring Lawmakers and Senior Public Officials to Register Virtual Assets
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Members of the 22nd Congress will have to register their cryptocurrency holdings in property matters, and members of the 21st Congress will have until the end of June this year to register cryptocurrency holdings acquired and held between the start of their term and May 21 and changes. (News 1)
Colombian Senate is advancing a bill to regulate crypto trading services
Odaily News Colombian Senate Member Gustavo Moreno held the first debate on Bill 139 of 2021 on Wednesday. The bill seeks to regulate crypto asset trading services offered through digital platforms.
The bill was unanimously passed by the Colombian House of Representatives late last year. However, if the bill is not approved by June 20, it will be stalled in Congress.
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Ripple CEO: The U.S. SEC and Ripple lawsuit may reach a judgment within a few weeks
Odaily News Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an interview recently that in terms of the current legal battle with the US SEC, he is confident that he will receive a judgment this year. This could happen within weeks or even months, he added.
Garlinghouse called the court's ruling on the Hinman papers a major victory for transparency. He added that the U.S. government and SEC put politics before sensible policy, which is the main reason why most crypto entrepreneurs and companies choose to leave the United States.
