Eco (🤝) / Doubles Down on Crypto-Native Products — Eco is discontinuing its US-only fintech app to focus on crypto-native products, backed by the growing popularity of self-custodial products like Beam (“onchain Venmo”). CEO Andy Bromberg said, “It’s time to bring on the golden age of onchain payments." — more
Yuga Labs / New Partnerships — Yuga Labs announced new partnerships to advance the development of its interoperable metaverse, Otherside. Hadean, AccelByte, Bad Rhino Studios, and Faraway will contribute their technical and creative expertise to help build out the virtual platform — more
Citigroup / Digital Asset Expansion — Citigroup introduced Citi Token Services — a product that converts customer deposits into digital tokens for instant global transfers. “The company will rely on a private blockchain owned and managed by the bank.” — more
Dreamus / Debuts K-Pop NFT Tickets — South Korean entertainment company Dreamus, a subsidiary of SK Planet, introduced NFT ticketing services through its loyalty rewards app. Users can purchase NFT tickets for K-pop concerts on the Avalanche blockchain, leveraging SK Planet's private Avalanche subnet — more
Bastion / $25M Raised — Bastion, an “enterprise-focused web3 orchestrator”, raises seed round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Autograph, Laser Digital Ventures, Not Boring Capital, Robot Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, and Aptos Ventures — more
Freatic / $3.6M Raised — Freatic, a startup aiming to use cryptography and game theory to connect people with untapped information, raises round led by a16z, with participation from Anagram, Archetype, Not3Lau Capital, Robot Ventures, Arweave, and others — more
Proof of Play / $33M Raised — Proof of Play, a crypto gaming company led by FarmVille co-creator Amitt Mahajan, raises seed round from a16z crypto, Anchorage Digital, Greenoaks, Naval Ravikant, and others — more
Essential / $5.15M Raised — Essential, a startup developing intent-based infrastructure and tooling, raises round led by Maven 11, with participation from Robot Ventures, Karatage, Batu, Skip, and others — more
Orb / $2.3M Raised — Orb, a startup building a web3 social app, raises round from Superscrypt, Founder Inc., Daedalus, Foresight, AAVE, and others — more
Blockchain Capital / $580M Raised — Blockchain Capital, a crypto-focused investment firm, raises $580M for two new funds. “The funding is split between $380M for its sixth early-stage fund … and $200M for its opportunities fund, which will target late-stage investments from Series B onward.” — more
Investor Participation Trends in Blockchain Venture Capital / Evanston Capital — “Evanston Capital recently took a deep dive into the blockchain-focused venture capital ecosystem. We wanted to analyze the types of participants in this unique segment of venture capital and identify any key trends relating to how different types of investors have modulated their participation in this market during the cyclical ebbs and flows…” — more
Generative Manufacturing: Transmuting Code into Physical Goods / Accelxr x 1kx — “We believe onchain generative media will proliferate across every other consumer and luxury goods vertical, and this artistic process will uniquely enable a new class of physical productions through generative manufacturing.” — more
The Casino on Mars / Matt Huang x Paradigm — “It’s useful to think of crypto as a new planet that’s being settled. Skeptics see a desolate planet without purpose. Or worse, a haven for an unsavory casino. Optimists see the planet’s potential: a blank slate on which we can build an upgraded financial system and internet platform … A history of speculation and hype cycles has cast a social taboo over the new planet, leaving many to wonder: what is its future?” — more
Ephemeral Apps / Patrick Rivera — “Some of the most successful consumer apps of the past 24 months (in terms of social impact and value capture for the core team) have internalized the market reality and taken a different approach. They're building "ephemeral apps".” — more
Forks are good / jacob at zora — “To date, forks have been an implicit part of most governance systems given that anyone can redeploy the same version of the open source code. What Nouns has created has made it an explicit feature of its governance, and made it readily available, equitable and open for any Noun holder to call upon when needed.” — more
Capitalism Onchained / Packy McCormick — “Crypto’s ideal state is to make capitalism more effective. That’s a big claim that risks being overly grandiose. Crypto isn’t short on grandiose claims. So I’ll be as specific as possible, laying out my thinking in two parts: 1. Capitalism is good and capitalism evolves. 2. How crypto can make capitalism more effective.” — more
Rainbow (🤝) / Introducing Rainbow Extension — Rainbow launched its new extension wallet, which features Magic Menu — a smart search and command bar that makes onchain actions easy to put into action with keyboard shortcuts. The extension also offers support for L2s such as Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, with plans to add custom networks and testnets soon — more
Peter at Reservoir / Introducing Memswap — Memswap is a new EVM protocol designed for token swaps and NFT purchases with decentralized market orders, optimized for a post-MEV world where it encourages value extraction for users. It utilizes intents, order flow auctions, and an open market of solvers to enhance swap execution by leveraging the MEV supply chain — more
Conduit / Extends Support for Arbitrum — Conduit expanded its suite of rollup stacks with support for Arbitrum Orbit, including Stylus. Now builders can deploy fully-managed L3s on top of Arbitrum’s L2s, One or Nova, by leveraging Conduits tech — more
Pedro Falco / Bright Moments (🤝): ESQUEJES — “Esqueje" is the Spanish equivalent of cutting or clone. This consists of a fragment of stem cut from a plant and introduced into the ground so that it can take root with the intention of reproducing it, thus generating new clones. "Esquejes" is a generative system resulting from algorithmic gardening, which seeks to push the uniqueness of each pixel to the limit.” Minting now — more
wuwa / Art Blocks (🤝): Muttenz — “The Muttenz series is an exploration of the intersection between mathematical precision and artistic expression. Driven by the desire to discover the extent to which a rigid system could be used as the foundation for captivating and aesthetic artworks, this journey delves into the realm of complex grid formulas and color palette algorithms, and how to break them.” Minting Oct. 2nd — more
Scerbo / Verse: Anti-crash — “Disturbance is the engine of the evolution of my work. Anything that creates instability and confusion, all visual or auditory material that can distract reason from its desire to claim a plausible motivation for what it has created or experienced, automatically becomes a vehicle for an approximation to the unknown.” Minting Sept. 26th — more
Art Blocks / Marfa Weekend 😍
glitch / Grant Yun, Editioned + Signed at glitch
Derek Edws / Shoutout on the Rick Rubin’s Podcast
FirstMate / Art Blocks (🤝) Contract Support
seth bloomberg / Onchain Creator Revenue
Digitized / Featured #21 x EXO-1 x Mona (🤝)
Canto / Building with Polygon
a16z / Crypto Startup School Applications Open
Otherside Meta / Legends of the Mara Live Sept. 26th
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
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