Placeholder is a venture capital firm that invests in decentralized networks and web services.

Placeholder

# Hashed: To empower networks and innovators in building the decentralized future. Hashed, based in San Francisco and Seoul, is the largest crypto assets fund and community builder in South Korea. The team was founded by serial entrepreneurs, company operators, and systems engineers, who are passionate about enabling the global adoption of blockchain through education, acceleration and impact investments. Hashed operates Hashed Lounge--a premier blockchain meetup group; Hashed Post--a cryptocurrency blog interviewing founders and thought leaders; and Hashed Night--a world-class conference, events, and networking brand.  The team is actively working towards a definition of what it means to be a fundamental technology and founder-focused investment startup in the blockchain ecosystem.

Hashed

A blockchain investment firm with an emphasis on privacy preserving protocols and early-stage ventures. Dekrypt Capital invest in, mentor, and accelerate teams developing novel solutions to address the core issues of scalability, privacy, and usability for decentralized protocols and applications. The team works on cryptography and computer security research with a focus in zero knowledge proofs alongside professors at UC Berkeley and founded Blockchain at Berkeley, the largest university ecosystem for blockchain technology in the United States.

Dekrypt Capital

1kx is a crypto investment firm that specializes in ecosystem growth.

Dragonfly Capital Partners brings together the leading participants in the decentralized economy. Its global ecosystem enables us to invest in and support the most promising opportunities in the crypto asset class.

Dragonfly

Union Square Ventures is a private equity and venture capital firm focused on early-stage, growth capital, late-stage, and startup financing. The USV portfolio companies create services that have the potential to fundamentally transform important markets.  It exclusively invests in the internet world, focusing on the applications layer of the web, internet services, and web services that create large networks as well as the mobile sector. Some of its invested companies are based in New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, and places in between. It typically makes a starting investment in portfolio companies of $1 million. In certain Series Around cases, the firm may make a starting investment between $2.5 million to $3 million. It typically invests up to $20 million in any single company. Union Square Ventures was founded in 2003 and is based in New York, United States.

Union Square Ventures

Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in seed, start-ups, early, mid-stage, growth, and late-stage. It prefers to invest in the social media business and technology sector with a focus on software, back-end infrastructure, the infrastructure of the Internet, cloud computing, enterprise software and services, consumer, business Internet, mobile-Internet, consumer Internet, cloud computing, data storage, social network browsers data-storage, consumer electronics, networking functions, software related biology, biotech, and medicine companies at the intersection of computer science and life sciences with a focus on digital therapeutics, cloud technology in biology, and computational medicine.

Andreessen Horowitz

Dragonfly engages in acquiring and developing e-commerce businesses. It is a venture-backed business run by versatile pros who’ve founded and managed global operations, dynamic startups, and $60M+ Amazon FBA businesses.  The firm was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

ConsenSys is an Ethereum software web3 company. ConsenSys enables developers, enterprises, and people worldwide to build next-generation applications, launch modern financial infrastructure, and access the decentralized web. ConsenSys' product suite, composed of Infura, Quorum, Truffle, Codefi, MetaMask, and Diligence, serves millions of users, supports billions of blockchain-based queries for its clients, and has handled billions of dollars in digital assets. Ethereum is a programmable blockchain in the world, business adoption, developer community, and DeFi activity. On this trusted, open-source foundation, ConsenSys is building the digital economy of tomorrow.

ConsenSys

Lido Peninsula Venture Partners is a venture capital firm focusing on start ups and entrepreneurs in the world of technology.

Lido Peninsula Venture Partners

In late 2020, Gnosis announced plans to fully decentralize into a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Today, the GnosisDAO treasury has effective control of over 150K ETH and 8 Million GNO tokens, with the GNO tokens vested over 8 years.  A year later, in 2021, the xDAI and GnosisDAO communities voted to combine their vibrant ecosystems to create the Gnosis Chain: An Ethereum forerunner companion that addresses scaling issues through solid engineering. Gnosis Chain is the associated execution-layer EVM chain for stable transactions. It uses the xDai token and includes a wide-ranging group of projects and users. The Gnosis mission has always been centered on experimentation and building decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem. When Gnosis was founded in 2015, it focused on building prediction markets to enable worldwide access to accurate information. While creating the prediction market platform, it became clear that Gnosis needed to build the infrastructure required to support it.  As a DAO, Gnosis uses the products that it creates to transparently guide decisions on the development, support, and governance of its ecosystem. Gnosis Safe (multisig and programmable account), Cow Protocol (formerly CowSwap and Gnosis Protocol), Conditional Tokens (prediction markets), Gnosis Auction, and Zodiac (standard and tooling for composable DAOs) are all products incubated by Gnosis. Their success is demonstrated by the recent spin-out of Cow Protocol and the formation of SafeDAO. By combining needs-driven development with deep technical expertise, Gnosis has built the decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Gnosis

Aave (from the Finnish word for ''ghost'') is an open source non-custodial protocol on Ethereum for decentralized lending and borrowing. For lenders, the protocol mints ERC20-compliant aTokens at a 1:1 ratio to supplied assets. Interest immediately starts compounding continuously, represented by a steady increase in the amount of aTokens held by the lender. This interest stream may be redirected to any address, separate from the aTokens that represent the underlying principal. Aave offers flash loans: trustless, uncollateralized loans where borrowing and repayment must occur in the same transaction. Aimed at developers, this feature could lead to innovative uses of DeFi.

Aave

Bybit is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in March 2018 to provide a professional platform with an ultra-fast matching engine, excellent customer service, and multilingual community support for crypto traders. The company offers innovative online spot and derivatives trading services, mining and staking products, and API support to retail and institutional clients worldwide, and aims to be the most dependable exchange for the emerging digital asset class.

Bybit

Blockchain Ventures support and invest in distributed ledger technology (DLT) projects that advance the industry and provide positive societal impact. With support from Blockchain.com, Blockchain Ventures aims to contribute to the creation of an open, fair, and accessible financial system and promote DLT use-cases that are revolutionary beyond finance.

Blockchain.com Ventures

4RC is a crypto-native investment platform focused exclusively on digital assets and blockchain technology. Our thesis is centered on the belief that web3 networks will become the digital infrastructure of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We invest in tokens & equity with asymmetric upside, provide hands-on support to incubate investments, and generate yield on liquid assets to compound appreciation. We’re focused on long-term product-market fit and outsized risk-adjusted return across DeFi, NFTs, Gaming, Media, Metaverse, DAO Tooling, and Blockchain Infrastructure.

Fourth Revolution Capital

Rarible is a community-centric NFT marketplace that allows users to create, buy and sell digital collectibles. Rarible offers a wide range of products, including a custom community marketplace builder, white-glove marketplaces, and own API for building NFT functionality of any complexity.

Rarible

OKX Ventures focuses on exploring the best blockchain projects on a global scale, supporting cutting-edge blockchain technology innovation, promoting the healthy development of the global blockchain industry, and investing in long-term structural value. Through its commitment to supporting entrepreneurs who contribute to the development of the blockchain industry, OKX Ventures helps build innovative companies and brings global resources and historical experience to blockchain projects.

OKX Ventures

Wintermute Ventures is the investment arm of Wintermute, a global algorithmic trading firm, liquidity provider, and leading OTC desk in digital assets.  Drawing from Wintermute's expertise in pioneering DeFi trading and powering liquidity across the entire ecosystem, Wintermute Ventures is uniquely positioned to back early-stage Web3 projects with hands-on support. Focused on long-term growth, the company takes a flexible approach, investing from early ideation to later-stage expansion. Committed to developing strategic relationships and driving positive outcomes, Wintermute Ventures prioritizes decentralized ownership, ensuring its investments align with the company’s broader vision of a decentralized future. Since 2020, it has invested in over 100 projects.

Wintermute Ventures

Blockchain Capital helps entrepreneurs build companies and projects based on blockchain technology. The firm provides founders with capital, domain expertise, partnerships, recruiting, and strategy. Blockchain Capital is an active venture investor in the blockchain industry and has financed 170+ companies and projects since its inception. Blockchain Capital invests in both equity and tokens and is a multi-stage investor.

Blockchain Capital

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. It focuses on seed, early-stage, later-stage, expansion-stage, start-ups, growth companies, and incubation, and specializes in debt financing for start-ups and growth companies. Lightspeed Venture Partners invests in various sectors that include enterprise, consumer, big data, bitcoin, enterprise technology, cleantech, mobile, internet, financial technology, cloud solutions, e-commerce, storage, media, networking, energy, and software, software-as-a-service, information technology, biotechnology, and social. It mainly invests in countries such as the United States, Europe, Israel, China, and India.

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Variant is a web3-focused early-stage fund. According to the firm, the next iteration of the internet would turn consumers into owners. Variant was established in 2020 in New York, United States.

Variant

Matter Labs

A decentralized version of the web powered by the blockchain

Web3 Ecosystem

Inco is a modular, interoperable layer-1 blockchain that focuses on enhancing the confidentiality of dApps by integrating fully homomorphic encryption (a form of encryption that allows computations to be performed on encrypted data without having to decrypt it) while keeping on-chain data confidential and auditable. Its first testnet, Gentry, was launched in February 2024, and its second testnet, Paillier, was scheduled for launch in either Q2 or Q3 of 2024, while the mainnet launch was projected for Q4 2024.Funding and financialsIn February 2024, the company raised USD 4.5 million in a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26865">seed funding</a> round led by 1kx. The funds were raised as a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) and token warrants to launch its second testnet, Paillier. It also planned to use the funds raised to recruit engineers.

Tevaera offers a gaming stack for developers to build and launch Web3 games on the zkStack gaming chain. The platform is interoperable with zkSync Era and other zkStack-based hyper chains, enhancing the seamless movement of users, funds, and developers. It also offers low transaction fees and high throughput, leveraging zkSync’s technology.Tevaera's infrastructure consists of four main components: Teva Core, Teva Chain, Teva Dex, and Teva Market. Teva Core provides the essential smart contracts and tools for developers to create decentralized games. Teva Chain, a scalable L3 gaming HyperChain on zkSync, ensures fast and secure performance for growing player bases. Teva Dex powers the in-game economy by allowing players to trade assets in a secure, transparent, and sustainable play-to-earn model. Teva Market serves as a community-led NFT trading hub, offering low fees and fast transactions on zkSync Era, supporting dynamic trades and functional ONFTs within the ecosystem.Tevaera has also built its own flagship game called “Teva Run,” which counted over 850,000&nbsp; gamers as of April 2024.

Fabric develops a custom cryptography hardware to accelerate cryptography algorithms. The chips, whose components exclusively serve cryptographic purposes, are based on Verifiable Processing Units (VPUs) which incorporate features of GPUs and ASICs to improve the speed and cost of advanced cryptographic workloads.

TRALA is a Web 3 platform that provides a variety of games.

Tevaera enhances multi-genre game launch and play using zkStack-based L3 gaming chain, offering multiplayer features and UX-focused apps, facilitating user, liquidity, and builders' free flow within zkNation.

Clave is a smart account platform that effortlessly simplifies Crypto, Account Abstraction, and asset transactions through link sharing.

Inco develops a global confidentiality layer for Ethereum and other networks. It enables a wide range of new apps, spanning various verticals such as gaming and gambling, DeFi, including dark pools, private lending, and blind auctions, and enterprise solutions such as confidential stable coins, private RWAs, and private voting.

GRVT is an institutional-grade self-custody derivatives trading platform, where we eliminate counterparty risk and offer unparalleled efficiency. With features like KYC, self-custody, and privacy-enabled trading, plus high transaction throughput, we provide RFQ and CLOB options for futures, perpetuals, and more.

Matter Labs is scaling Ethereum with zero-knowledge proofs to accelerate public blockchain adoption. The company started out of scientific curiosity, the joy of engineering, and a deep conviction, the most impactful way to improve the world today is to provide an open and free alternative to its existing, deeply flawed financial system. The company was founded in 2018 with its head office in Berlin, Germany.

Matter Labs, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, offers an Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol–zkSync Era (also called zkEVM). The protocol executes smart contracts using zero-knowledge (zk) rollups to improve scalability of Ethereum by bundling transactions into batches that are executed off-chain. It also produces cryptographic validity proofs for the finalized transactions posted onto Ethereum. The company claims zkSync to be the first rollup that can handle any Ethereum smart contract, which enables developers to create dApps on it similar to building on the Ethereum blockchain.

ZKsync developer Matter Labs poaches Solana Foundation's former VP of marketing

Fabric Cryptography

Protocol Labs

Offchain Labs

Polygon

Inflection.xyz

TRALA

Animoca Brands

Gate.io

Tevaera

Nomura

Laser Digital

Fenbushi Capital

CoinSwitch

Draper Dragon

Aquanow

Mapleblock Capital

Crypto.com Capital

Momentum 6

GBV Capital

Morningstar Ventures

HashKey Capital

Faculty Group

Selini Capital

Cogitent Ventures

DWF Labs

GD10 Capital

Monolith

Platforms that provide tools such as SDKs, blockchain node infrastructure, and bridges for developers to create, host, debug, and add extra functionality to dApps on one or many blockchains.

Clave

LambdaClass

Mirana

Safe

Inco

Robot Ventures

Alliance DAO

Daedalus Angel Syndicate

Circle Ventures

Big Brain Holdings

Symbolic Capital

Portal Ventures

Polygon Ventures

Also known as layer-1 networks, these include developers of the base blockchain network.

GRVT

Delphi Ventures

Susquehanna International Group (SIG)

AppWorks

Hack VC

Kosmos Ventures

CMS Holdings

CatcherVC

Ocular

ABCDE

DeVC India

Matter Labs, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, offers an Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol–zkSync Era (also called zkEVM). The protocol executes smart contracts using zero-knowledge (zk) rollups to improve scalability of Ethereum by bundling transactions into batches that are executed off-chain. It also produces cryptographic validity proofs for the finalized transactions posted onto Ethereum. The company claims zkSync to be the first rollup that can handle any Ethereum smart contract, which enables developers to create dApps on it similar to building on the Ethereum blockchain.In addition, the company developed zkSync V2 and released it on the public testnet in February 2022, followed by the "Baby Alpha" launch in November 2022, to stress test the system and undertake security audits ahead to its planned release (Alpha launch) towards the end of 2022 or early 2023.Key customers and partnershipsIn November 2021, Matter Labs partnered with Covalent, a provider of indexing solutions for blockchains to enhance data availability on zkSync Era. Through the partnership, developers can gain access to data posted by zkSync on the mainnet through a unified API on zkSync. In addition, it <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18986">partnered with Storj</a> to integrate zkSync Era with the latter’s decentralized cloud storage platform to optimize transaction speed, reduce gas fees, and improve the overall efficiency of the payment process. It also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25771">partnered with iCandy Interactive</a> to create zkCandy, a dedicated layer-2 hyperchain on zkSync focusing on gaming and AI. The two companies also formed a new company–zkCandy Limited– to jointly invest resources and capital to build an ecosystem around the zkCandy hyperchain.Funding and financialsThe company raised USD 200 million <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14783">Series C funding in November 2022 </a>, co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. It aimed to utilize the fresh capital to support the launch of its zkSync V2 rollup network.

NEAR Protocol is an open-source layer-1 blockchain launched in October 2020. The blockchain uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to validate transactions. Its native token is NEAR, which can be used to pay for transactions and storage on the blockchain, while also allowing token holders to participate in the platform’s governance process. In August 2024, NEAR launched a significant upgrade called "<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32890">Nightshade 2.0</a>" to enhance scalability and usability. This update is a major step in integrating sharding into NEAR's core architecture, which divides the blockchain into smaller segments, allowing the network to process more transactions at a lower cost. Validators no longer need to store shard states locally; instead, they retrieve "state witnesses" from the network to validate changes. This improves shard performance and boosts the network’s ability to support more shards.NEAR allows users to sign up for a wallet (account) using unique human-readable names (e.g., johndoe.near, in comparison to cryptographic and randomly generated private keys, which is a characteristic of chains such as Ethereum), which in turn enables easy sign-ins for dApps for users and improves the overall usability of the blockchain. The platform also allows developers to prepay gas fees for first-time users, allowing the latter to interact with a dApp for free. NEAR also offers the Rainbow Bridge, which allows users to transfer ERC-20 and NEAR tokens or any other digital asset between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchain. In addition, the platform provides tools such as SDKs, CLIs, and APIs for developers to create dApps on its blockchain. In addition, NEAR allocates 30% of the transaction fees to developers to encourage them to build applications on its platform, with the remainder being burnt.The protocol also incorporates <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32771">Chain Signatures</a>, a technology that allows smart contracts to sign transactions across multiple blockchains without relying on cross-chain bridges. This aims to simplify multichain dApp development by reducing the need for multiple wallets and manual bridging, as well as enhancing user experience and increasing asset liquidity and utility across blockchains.As of July 2022, NEAR had 100 validators on its blockchain, which it expected to increase in proportion to the number of transactions. The platform uses an auction system to select and determine the seat price for its validators every epoch (time interval of 12 hours). The platform claims to be able to scale infinitely by adding more validators owing to its underlying architecture.Key customers and partnershipsIn June 2021, NEAR joined ICON’s Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP), which seeks to improve cross-chain communication. The partnership allowed data to be transferred between the NEAR blockchain and other BTP partners such as Polkadot and Harmon. Moreover, NEAR partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23393">Nym Technologies </a>to integrate end-to-end encryption and privacy safeguards into the NEAR blockchain ecosystem.In addition, NEAR partnered with Ardana, a stablecoin and decentralized exchange (DEX) liquidity pool built on the Cardano blockchain in November 2021, to build a bridge to support integrations and token transfers between the NEAR and Cardano blockchains. It had also planned to enable cross-chain smart contract functionality and allow the NEAR token to be used as collateral on Ardana to mint stablecoins in the future.

NEAR

Ava Labs develops the open-source layer-1 blockchain, Avalanche. The Avalanche network architecture contains three separate blockchains in order to address the decentralization, security, and scalability limitations of blockchains. These include 1) the Exchange Chain (X-Chain), which is the default blockchain on which assets are created and exchanged and also includes Avalanche’s native token–AVAX; 2) the Contract Chain (C-Chain)—which is based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)—allows for the creation and execution of smart contracts with cross-chain interoperability; and 3) the Platform Chain (P-Chain), which coordinates validators and enables the creation and management of subnets (a sovereign network that defines its own rules for membership and tokenomic). Avalanche uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and is able to execute 4,500 transactions per second. As of December 2022, ~1,000 projects were built on Avalanche, including DeFi projects like Tether, SushiSwap, Chainlink, and Circle. As of the same date, the network processed on average two million daily transactions and was secured by more than 1,200 validators.Ava Labs launched Core, a dedicated non-custodial crypto wallet for AVAX as a browser extension, through which users are able to browse dApps on the Avalanche blockchain. In April 2023, the company announced plans to launch “ <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17583">Evergreen Subnets </a>,” a suite of blockchain deployments, tooling, and customization services specifically designed for financial institutions to run their own private, permissioned chains with approved parties. In addition, financial institutions will be able to communicate and transfer data with other subnets through Avalanche’s native communication protocol Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM) without relying on any third parties. It also launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18842">AvaCloud </a>in May 2023, a no-code Web3 launchpad that assists businesses in building fully managed blockchain ecosystems. AvaCloud consists of four main components: an automated blockchain builder, managed validators, comprehensive data tools, and chain interoperability within Avalanche subnets.Key customers and partnershipAvalanche has partnered with several cloud services providers to improve its network such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15079">Alibaba Cloud </a>(December 2022) to improve its infrastructure and support for its validators. Users of the Avalanche blockchain can launch new validator nodes using Alibaba Cloud’s plug-and-play infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), while dApp developers can use the latter’s storage and computing resources for the efficient running of their dApps. It also collaborated with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15640?industryIds=144">AWS </a>(January 2022) to scale and improve blockchain adoption and support its dApp ecosystem, while also enabling one-click node deployments through the AWS marketplace.

Ava Labs

Based in Australia, Immutable is a developer of blockchain-based video games and a provider of a Web3 game development platform. The company develops and publishes its games through Immutable Game Studio, and released its first game, Gods Unchained, in March 2021. The game is a NFT strategy card game, and had ~80,000 active players as of January 2022. It also claimed that over USD 25 million of Gods Unchained digital assets have been traded as of the same date. In February 2024, the company launched the mobile version of Gods Unchained, available on Google Play and Apple App Store. Immutable launched its second game, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29491">Guild of Guardians </a>, in May 2024 to over 1 million pre-registered users. It is a mobile role-playing game set in a fantasy world on the brink of destruction, where players must form teams to battle against evil Dreads.Its Web3 game development platform, Immutable X, provides a SDK that offers APIs and smart contracts to allow developers to leverage ready-made Web3 infrastructure to quickly build and deploy blockchain-based games. These include an onboarding solution (non-custodial wallet) called <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16041">Passport </a>, transaction infrastructure, and NFT minting tools. The platform also consists of a developer hub which allows developers to launch and manage their projects in one-place and obtain related performance analytics.In addition, Immutable X also acts as a layer-2 scaling solution on the Ethereum blockchain. It uses <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/607497">StarkWare's </a>StarkEx roll-up technology and can process 9,000 transactions per second, with zero gas fees, while claiming to be carbon-neutral. Its native token IMX can be used to pay for transactions as well as stake and govern the network. Notable companies building on Immutable X include GameStop, TikTok, OpenSea, Ember Sword, Illuvium, GreenPark Sports, and Vee Friends (Gary Vee).Key customers and partnershipsImmutable partnered with Mineloader to develop Guild of Guardians, and it has also collaborated with several game developers, including Turner Sports and Kongregate, to build Web3 games on the Immutable X platform. Furthermore, Immutable partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22566">Amazon Web Services (AWS)</a> to develop infrastructure solutions to assist companies in developing and scaling blockchain-based games, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24637">Amazon Prime Gaming</a> to list in-game content for Gods Unchained in the latter’s platform. This partnership also aimed to introduce the game to a broader audience circle through Amazon's platform, which boasts over 200 million Prime Gaming members. It also collaborated with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25892">Axelar</a> to integrate games built on Immutable's zkEVM into the Axelar network to enhance user onboarding across blockchain.The company collaborated with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/786111">Polygon</a> to launch its <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24881">zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine</a> (zkEVM) scaling solution to bypass the scaling limitations of the Ethereum blockchain and promote Web3 gaming. This network allows developers to completely abstract transaction fees, allowing a frictionless player onboarding and improved user experience.

Immutable

Mythical Games is a video game studio building games based on blockchain technology, playable NFTs, and play-to-earn game economies. The company developed two games—NFL Rivals and Blankos Block Party. The latter was discontinued in December 2023 after its launch in June 2022.In May 2022, NFL and the NFL Players Association partnered with Mythical Games to develop an NFT-based video game NFL Rivals. The game was launched in 2023, with players taking part in arcade-style gameplay, assuming the role of NLF general manager. They can collect and trade players represented as NFTs on the secondary market via the iOS and Android apps, as well as Mythical’s web-based marketplace. In addition, a unique feature of the game is the “squad system,” which enables players to team up with fellow players to compete with others.Mythical Games also enables other game developers and publishers to build or integrate blockchain-based play-to-earn economies into their games through The Mythical Platform. The platform also includes built-in regulatory KYC/AML compliance and indemnity as well as a verified wallet for transacting both real and cryptocurrencies. Further, the company also offers a marketplace that enables users to sell and trade their digital assets.The Mythical Platform is built on an EVM-compatible sidechain Mythical Chain, which uses a proof-of-authority consensus mechanism to validate transactions. The chain also offers interoperability features, allowing players to transfer and trade NFTs across multiple blockchains. It also claims the minting of NFTs and integrating the marketplace over its platform does not require mining.It acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15966">DMarket </a>–a digital gaming asset marketplace–in January 2023, and utilized its technology to launch an improved version of its own marketplace (Mythical Marketplace 2.0), with features such as a blended payment gateway and AML and fraud protection systems.Key customers and partnershipsAs of June 2023, the company reported to have achieved daily gross sales exceeding USD 1 million and gained more than 2.5 million new users over the past year. Moreover, it expects to reach over 20 million player accounts across its entire game portfolio by the end of 2023, primarily propelled by NFL Rivals and the upcoming release of Nitro Nation World Tour.The Mythical Platform’s first developer partners were announced by the company in November 2021, which includes 1) CCG Games to create Epic Spell Wars: Magic Fight, a trading card game; 2) Creative Mobile to create Nitro Nation – World Tour, a racing game; and 3) Abstraction Games to create a new action strategy title. These were slated to be released in 2023.Funding and financialsIn November 2021, Mythical Games raised USD 150 million in a Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of ~USD 1.3 billion. Additionally, it raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19719">USD 37 million in a Series C1 </a>funding round led by Scytale Digital in June 2023, at a similar valuation. This funding round is expected to close later in 2023 and reach USD 57 million-67 million. It had planned to utilize the fresh funds toward initiatives that will drive profitability within the next year and expand its games and infrastructure to reach a larger audience.

Mythical Games

Storj Labs developed the Storj Decentralized Cloud Storage (DCS) network that works by compressing, encrypting, and splitting files into more than 80 smaller pieces to distribute and store them across a global network of individual storage nodes, which are excess hardware space rented out by individuals in return for a fee. Storj audits its network through random file verification every hour, which ensures its files are consistently being hosted by its nodes; it automatically reconstitutes the data when it is required by the user. The company claims to have more than 10,000 active nodes with over 6 petabytes of available storage capacity spread across the world, as of August 2022. It uses its native token STORJ, which is used by customers to pay for providers of decentralized storage.Key customers and partnershipsStorj partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/792614">Matter Lab’s </a>zkSync Era ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18986">in May 2023 </a>) to integrate the latter's zero-knowledge roll-up technology into its cloud storage platform to optimize transaction speed, reduce gas fees, and improve the overall efficiency of the payment process. Additionally, the partnership enables EVM-compatible composability for decentralized storage payments, providing customers with increased flexibility and a wider range of customization possibilities. As part of the development, Storj also had plans to develop and maintain two open-source libraries, Crypto-Batch-Payment and Storjscan, which will focus on creating a seamless onboarding experience for its customers on the zkSync Era network.

Storj

Developers of video games that use elements of blockchain technology, allowing gamers to earn cryptocurrency by playing games. They can either convert it into real money or purchase in-game assets.

A decentralized alternative to traditional social networks that operate on independently run servers on the blockchain. These are community-owned and reward user participation.

An alternative storage system in which data is encrypted, segmented, and stored on multiple nodes across the blockchain rather than a single server.

Developers of dApps for use in industries such as travel, health, and fitness, which are yet to reach wider adoption.

Providers of wallets that allow users to purchase and store the cryptocurrencies/tokens required to interact with web3 apps, along with app browsers for users to browse and access dApps.

Also known as layer-2 solutions, this includes providers of scaling solutions, such as sidechains, state channels, and rollups, which improve the speed and throughput of transactions occurring in layer-1 blockchain networks.

Includes companies that form the Web3 ecosystem

Web3 is based on blockchain tech, a key enabler of the industry

GenAI tools help develop smart contracts and query the blockchain for data

Providers of node-as-a-service and SDKs to build dApps operate under this model

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

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 QuickNode, a Web3 development platform, has teamed up with Matter Labs to integrate support for zkSync hyperchains. This collaboration offers improved data privacy, scalability, speed, and cross-chain functionality. It enables seamless asset transfers from zkSync and simplifies the development of blockchain solutions for various fields such as gaming, AI, SportsFi, etc.
</div>

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