Tag: delphi digital

Delphi Digital Spearheads zkLend for $5m in Seed Funding

zkLend, a Layer-2 (L2) money-market protocol built on StarkNet has raised the sum of $5 million in seed funding from investors led by Delphi Digital. 

As unveiled by the protocol, the funding round also enjoined participation from various stakeholders, including StarkWare, Three Arrows Capital, Genesis Block Ventures, Alameda Research, CMS, MetaCartel DAO, DCVC, Amber Group, among other leading Web 3.0 angels.

zkLend is building a next-generation money market on StarkNet. It seeks to champion the belief that the innovations behind zk-rollups are the ultimate answer to the congestion woes on the Ethereum blockchain. The startup has two unique products, including Artemis, designed for Decentralized retail Finance (DeFi) users, and Apollo, a whitelisted institutional solution for borrowing and lending.

The startup said it will use the new funding to launch both products highlighted, as it seeks to position both as the goto money legos in the emerging world of the StarkNet layer-2 protocol. While the Artemis product is slated for the third quarter of this year, institutional investors will not be able to gain access to Apollos until 2023.

While investors’ focus is primarily on NFT and metaverse related protocols in the emerging Web3.0 ecosystem, it is becoming more prevalent to see Layer-2 protocols get funding to build out their solutions. 

As reported earlier this month by Blockchain.News, an Israeli startup, StarkNet was on track to receive the sum of $100 million from investors, as it joined the host of related protocols building a zk-rollup solution. 

While the broader digital currency ecosystem is still warming up to the potential of these new technologies solutions, the backing of protocols creating solutions in this niche by industry leaders like Vitalik Buterin is a sign that shows promises for their future.

To aid its mission and vision, zkLend said it will also be hiring new staff across tech, marketing, and business development.

HQ Trivia Games Secures $7.8m in Seed Round

Internet Game, a remodelling project of a once-popular online game dubbed ‘HQ Trivia Meets NFTs”, has secured $7.8 million in a seed round. 

Interestingly, the founder of the HQ Trivia that crashed and burned down two years ago is among the investors who injected capital into a similar project. Particularly, this project reinvents HQ Trivia as an Internet Game, a crypto-based twist on the original model.

Cumulatively, the seed funding round enjoyed participation from HQ Trivia co-founder Rus Yusupov, ParaFi Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Delphi Digital, Uniswap Ventures, Collab+Currency, Gmoney, Milk Road, Ready Player DAO, and Zedd, co-founder of Magic Eden. 

HQ Trivia was shut down two years ago after it started its operation in 2018. The firm declared bankruptcy due to its operations’ failure due to intense competition. 

In addition, the leadership style adopted by the HQ Trivia game co-founders Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov was part of the factors which contributed to its closure. Rus Yusupov threatened to fire Scott Rogowsky, his star host at that time. Their issue was over a profile that the Daily Beast had written about Rogowsky.

According to the statement written about Rogowsky, even with HQ Trivia’s exponential growth, he can still “order his favourite salad from Sweetgreen” without people interrupting him. This statement created a rift between the star host and the co-founder. Meanwhile, it did not affect the growth of the firm at first.

Secured Funds Focused on Season Two’ Bear Market Battle’

For the game, users compete against each other and win real as well as virtual cash prizes. Initially, when the games first launched, its games were hosted twice weekly. While its Trivia holds every Thursday by 9 pm. During all of its time, it gave almost $6 million as cash prizes to winners of its trivia questions. 

The first season began in March when 8,000 players mined $2.2 million worth of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to access the game. NFT prizes, which were voted on by Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Doodles, Azukis, and CloneXs, were purchased with over $1 million.

Noteworthy is that with this secured fund comes season two of the Internet Game; Bear Market Battle. It will be launched on September 12. Also, between September 12 and September 23, six new games will be held.

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