PayPal / Introduces New Stablecoin — PayPal revealed its new stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), in partnership with Paxos. PYUSD is backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. Treasuries, and similar cash equivalents. The stablecoin will be introduced to US customers on Venmo. PayPal has 435M customers globally — more
Coinbase / Base Launch — According to Dune, the newly launched Base L2 now has ~$175M of assets bridged onchain and is adding roughly 40k new wallets per day. Coinbase encouraged users to transfer ETH to Base to mint NFTs as part of its “Onchain Summer” initiative, with over 125k users minting more than 30M NFTs so far — more
Coinbase / Asks SEC to Dismiss Lawsuit — Coinbase provided the SEC with a detailed argument defending it doesn't trade securities. The company emphasized its focus on crypto and digital assets not classified as securities and asserted the SEC's case is outside its delegated authority and violates due process — more
Visa / Onchain Gas Fees with Credit or Debit — Visa completed testing a method that allows users to pay onchain gas fees directly using a credit or debit card, simplifying transaction processes. The experiment, conducted on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet, utilizes a paymaster contract to sponsor gas fees, enabling users to send onchain transactions without needing to hold ETH balances — more
Circle / Launches Programmable Wallet — Circle launched the public beta of its Programmable Wallets platform, allowing Web3 developers on Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon to integrate wallets into their applications. The platform leverages multi-party computation and will expand to include additional chains in the latter half of 2023 — more
Etihad Airways / Web3 Loyalty Program — Etihad Airways expanded its loyalty program to include the upcoming "Horizon Club" Web3 loyalty program. The program allows holders to stake NFTs for Etihad miles. Holders of the NFTs will also receive benefits like Etihad Guest Silver Tier Status, priority check-in, and lounge access — more
fxhash / $5M Raised — fxhash, a generative art platform and marketplace, raises seed round led by 1kx, with participation from Fabric Ventures, Bright Opportunities DAO, Union Square Ventures, Tezos Foundation, Tane Labs, Daedalus, Everyrealm, PunkDAO, KRPDM, and several angel investors, including generative artist Casey Reas, thefunnguys, Lemonde2d, and Gus Lee — more
Cube3 / $8.2M Raised — Cube3, a startup using machine learning to prevent malicious blockchain-based transactions from occurring in real-time, raises seed round led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, ICLUB, and TA Ventures — more
Puffer / $5.5M Raised — Puffer, a startup aimed at addressing challenges faced by solo validators in Ethereum’s PoS network, raises round co-led by Lemniscap and the joint venture of Lightspeed and Faction, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Animoca Ventures, DACM, LBK, SNZ and Canonical Crypto — more
Goldlink / $1.4M Raised — GoldLink, an onchain leveraged lending protocol designed to provide real-time data feeds and modular risk management, raises pre-seed round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Kronos, Modular Capital, Reverie, Veda, SkyVision Capital, and others — more
Kate Vass on Rethinking Art Collecting / thefunnyguys x Le Random (🤝) — “Contemporary art is a conduit through which the multifaceted complexities of our present-day existence are captured and expressed. These complexities encompass our social dynamics, economic tribulations and political situations as well. As such, art functions as a mirror to gaze into or even a crystal ball that occasionally affords us glimpses into our collective future. Generative art is not a recent phenomenon; in fact, it has a rich history spanning over seven decades. With advancements in technology and innovation, however, generative art’s accessibility, visibility and affordability have experienced an upswing.” — more
Economies of Scale / Chris Ahn — “One hypothesis I have is that we need to introduce economies of scale into blockchains to crack open a diversity of crypto applications. It’s hard to know why most crypto applications are variations of marketplaces that chase network effects. But only having access to network effects and not having access to economies of scale severely limits the types of defensible businesses that can be built onchain. The big question is how we will achieve economies of scale. It will take creativity and tradeoffs between onchain and offchain components.” — more
Helium Mobile / Fred Wilson — “I have always loved the idea of using web3 technologies to let consumers to “peer produce” a communications network creating a people-powered network …. Helium Mobile offers members the opportunity to earn Mobile tokens by sharing your location with the network. They call this “mapping”. I turned that on yesterday and should start seeing Mobile tokens in my Helium Mobile app today.” — more
Deca (🤝) / Introducing Uploads — Deca now enables users to select files and upload them directly to their Deca artist page. This enables artists to share works in progress and highlight experimental projects that have not yet been minted onchain — more
DRiP Haus / Creator Rewards Program — DRiP Haus introduced Creator Rewards — a way for creators to earn compensation for each collectible through the DRiP Creator Fund. The fund's balance determines the Price per Collectible (PPC), which is paid to creators based on the number of collectibles they've dropped. This initiative is available to qualifying artists and content creators — DRiP has a 2.5-month waitlist for new creators — more
Fingerprints DAO / NFT Membership Launch — Fingerprints DAO announced the Voxelglyph — a collaboration between Larva Labs and Fingerprints that aims to introduce an NFT format for DAO membership. Building on the influence of artists like A. Michael Noll, Ken Knowlton, and Sol LeWitt, the NFT follows the legacy of Autoglyphs and Protoglyphs. The NFT will be available for holders of 5k+ $PRINTS tokens — more
Bonfire (🤝) / Introducing: Know Your Collectors — Bonfire introduced a new "Know Your Collectors" feature that offers creators insights into their collector base, including profile details, token holdings, and engagement history, enabling improved community engagement. The update also includes a collector leaderboard across collections — more
PixelVault / Acquires Wolf Game — Pixel Vault has officially acquired Wolf Game. The acquisition grants Pixel Vault exclusive perpetual rights for future development and expansion, with collaboration from The Shepherd and the Wolf Game team to bring new possibilities to the game on the RebootGG platform — more
dadabots / Ensemble (🤝): Pizza Fire — “IF I COULD MAKE PIZZAFIRE, I COULD DO ANYTHING WITH NEURAL NETS. In 2015 there was no open source toolkit for generating animated GIFs with neural nets on distributed computing so I wanted to release the first. In my head I imagined an animated gif of fire in the style of pizza. And this was my first goal. To make Pizzafire.” Mint is live with Pizzafire (1/1) at a 1 ETH Reserve, 50 editions of 5 separate songs available at .02 ETH — more
Vebjørn Isaksen / Art Blocks (🤝): Dendro — “Dendro is a generative art project inspired by the beauty of tree rings. Each year, trees add a new ring to their trunks, recording their growth and responding to the changing seasons and environmental conditions. These rings tell a story of the tree's life. By replicating these patterns, the project captures the rhythmic and organic qualities of nature.” Minting August 21st — more
Rich Caldwell / SuperRare (🤝): Synergy — “On Monday 14th August I will launch my ‘Synergy’ Series on Super Rare. This is a unique opportunity for the collector to become the collaborator….QQL for aerial photography if you will … As an early member of Transient Labs’ (🤝) new Lab I’m able to utilize their ‘Synergy’ protocol on the contract whereby I will submit a final piece to the collector and they can accept it or refuse…upon refusal an alternative 1/1 is presented to them.” Minting August 14th — more
Gallery (🤝) / Introducing Support for Base
Base / Onchain Summer Day One
Snowfro / Art Blocks (🤝) Engine x Red Bull Racing
doodles / Crocs x doodles arriving August 2023
IYK (🤝) / IYK-powered Pudgy Proof-of-Possession
Rodo / 22 New Lots on Sotehby’s from the 3AC Collection
seth bloomberg / Exploring Consumer Crypto Trends
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
If you enjoyed this edition of Digitized, please subscribe below and follow @digitizedweekly on Twitter. Let’s Form Group.
Collab+Currency is an investor in companies labeled with the “🤝” emoji.
Information regarding any company or investment in this Newsletter, including any links to information on our website, should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation of that company or investment for any purpose whatsoever, either for purposes of investment or otherwise. Any person receiving this Newsletter or accessing our website is encouraged to consult with their own financial advisor, tax advisor and/or attorney before making any decision to invest.
The above material and content is educational in nature and should not be considered to be a recommendation to invest in a digital asset. Investing in digital assets, NFTs or cryptocurrency (collectively “digital assets”) is highly speculative and volatile, and digital assets are only suitable for investors who are willing to bear the risk of loss and experience sharp drawdown. Past performance is not indicative of future results.