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Google Partners With Dapper Labs to Aid the Growth of Web3.0

American search engine giant Google has announced its partnership with Canadian-based blockchain firm, Dapper Labs to help provide the infrastructural capability needed for the scalability of the latter firm in its bid to advance Web3.0.

As reported by Forbes, the move marks one of the broad arrays of partnerships that the tech giant has in store to engage with the blockchain world, and the current deal with Dapper Labs is billed to span for multiple years.

The deal will feature Google Cloud will act as a network operator, offering its infrastructure to help Flow scale. This will imply that in addition to the more than 50 applications that currently make the Flow Blockchain their home, more than 2,000 developers are building on the Flow network. According to Dapper Labs’ CEO Roham Gharegozlou, the developers will be able to “connect to Flow access nodes at lower latency through Google’s suite of cloud services.”

Drawing on the environmental impacts of blockchain mining, the vice president of Google Cloud North America, Janet Kennedy, said the crypto mining will not be permitted but that developers will have the choice to choose which region powers their nodes based on the energy consumption of that region.

“It’s really about helping them with rapid and sustainable growth,” says Kennedy. “Blockchain technology is becoming more and more mainstream. Such companies like Dapper need scalable, secure infrastructure to grow their business, and even more importantly, support their networks.”

Dapper Labs is amongst the most iconic blockchain startups that came into the limelight with the launch of CryptoKitties back in September 2019. Also renowned for creating the Flow Blockchcian network, which powers the emergence of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Dapper Labs’ core project also spans the NBA Top Shot marketplace. This outfit has grossed over $700,000 million in sales with over 600,000 active wallets.

The Dapper Labs partnership with Google will further streamline the connectivity for developers who can easily connect to the company’s software when compared with the other cloud infrastructures available today.

The Graph Onboards The Guild as Subgraph Developer with $48M Grant

The Graph Foundation has awarded a $48 million grant to The Guild to help develop subgraph solutions to build the We3.0 ecosystem.

As reported by the Venture Beat, The Guild is the leading developer group in the Facebook-created GraphQL infrastructure and will play a pivotal role in The Graph ecosystem for the next four years in which the grant is expected to span.

The Graph is an indexing tool that pulls data from blockchain-based Web3.0 protocols and creates an accessibility path for developers to utilize the data in building functional DApps. The Graph functions as an indexing tool for a number of prominent blockchains including Ethereum, NEAR, Arbitrium, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, Celo, Fantom, Moonbeam, IPFS, and PoA amongst others.

The Guild’s role is defined and the team will “collaborate with other developers in The Graph ecosystem and work towards improving features like subgraph composition, analytics, and mutations. It will also build out new subgraph standards, features, and The Graph Node’s querying capabilities, allowing developers to more quickly construct feature-rich apps using The Graph,” the Venture Beat report detailed.

These responsibilities vested on The Guild will help in scaling solutions and boosting DApp development that can promote the overall growth of the metaverse.

“The Guild’s experience innovating with GraphQL is unparalleled – they are the best-positioned team to contribute to open APIs for The Graph and to support the needs of web3 application developers,” said Eva Beylin, the director of The Graph.

A number of players in the blockchain ecosystem are tagging along in the future in which many believe would be dominated by Web3.0 innovation. While many players in the space are funding innovations hinged on Web3.0, The Graph is taking a far more proactive approach to fund and create an avenue where developers and innovators can directly influence the industry’s evolving space.

The blockchain protocol has funded up to 4 projects thus far this year to develop similar SubGraphs and is committed to onboarding more developers in the near future.

Image source: thegraph.com

nCore Games Raises $10M in Funding, Ready for New Web3.0 Offerings

An Indian gaming startup, nCore Games, has raised $5.5 million in new funding round as it prepares to integrate Web3.0 and metaverse related offerings in an attempt to upturn its revenue strategies.

According to a TechCrunch report, the funding round was led by Animoca Brands and Galaxy Interactive, with participation from Polygon, a popular layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution, and Hyperedge Capital.

A number of Angel Investors also invested in the company that has gained traction in the gaming ecosystem through its exclusive titles. Per the report, nCore Games is home to a number of gaming studios, including Studio nCore, Dot9 Games, and IceSpice. Its portfolio includes multiplayer action-title Fau-G and Pro Cricket Mobile that have garnered tens of millions of downloads.

While the Indian market is promising for games, revenue is generally at a low ebb due to the underdeveloped integration of in-app purchases. Based on this, nCore is committed to redesigning its model to accommodate more Web3.0 related offerings, including the launch of its in-game tokens and a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) feature shortly confirmed by Vishal Gondal, co-founder of nCore Games.

The proposed NFT and token offerings will complement the startup’s plans to launch and invest in more games this year, a move that will now be made possible through the new funding. The startup hopes to recreate the successes of Axie Infinity which has grown in popularity in regions such as Indonesia and the Philippines with poor in-app purchase revenue generation models like India.

Just like most blockchain-affiliated startups that have gained massive valuations through venture capital funding in recent times, the positioning of nCore games and its addressable markets remains one of its biggest selling points to investors.

“nCORE Games was started by experienced gaming industry professionals with strong pedigrees. This is one of our most promising investments in India, which has a large gaming market with massive growth potential,” said Yat Siu, the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, in a statement.

Google's Parent Company May Utilize Blockchain to Revamp its Existing Products

Alphabet Inc, the parent company of search engine giant Google, is not ready to play the second fiddle when it comes to blockchain technology, marked by the company’s in-depth research into the emerging tech.

According to the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Sundar Pichai, the company is doing all it can and planning to contribute to Web3.0 as it has always done for the open source technologies it has benefitted in. Web3.0 is considered by many as the decentralized web, which will return data control back into the hands of the owners.

While Google is amongst the companies that have benefitted the most from data centralization, it is beginning to wrap its hands around the unique potentials of the technology driving the Web3.0 innovation with its partnership with EOS as a block producer candidate.

Based on the potential of the tech, Sundar said Google is prepared to use it in overhauling a lot of “areas of interest” for Alphabet. By inference, Google heavily deploys artificial intelligence into its search engine and he hinted at the likelihood of boosting YouTube and Google Maps through augmented reality and blockchain technology.

“Any time there is innovation, I find it exciting, and I think it is something we want to support the best we can […] The Web has always evolved, and it’s going to continue to evolve, and as Google, we have benefited tremendously from open-source technologies, so we do plan to contribute there.”

While Google has long been showing its deep interest in the blockchain ecosystem, the reaffirmation from Sundar Pichai is proof that big tech now knows better than to compete with decentralized web solutions.

A number of digital currency trading platforms including Crypto.com are currently dependent on the resilient cloud hosting services of big techs, and with the deployment of blockchain to enhance these capabilities, there will be a better synergy and mainstream tech firms, and the emerging world of cryptocurrency.

Metaverse will change the world in 2022

After Facebook has announced to change its name to “Meta” last summer, the whole world has focused on a term called “Metaverse”. The word “Metaverse” has been searched in Google and Youtube every day. However, Meta is not a decentralized organization that is not a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a Web.30 concept, and GameFi players may not like it.

Blockchain technology supports non-fungible tokens (NFT) such as investors and crypto fans accepting Crypto Punks. Another new concept, vertical lands by Sandbox, Decentral Land, Nifty Island Land, will be a popular investment vehicle soon. Sandbox “SAND” token was launched in the last quarter of 2020. The price of SAND has been raised from USD0.04 to around USD 3.4 today. Buyers use the SAND token to buy land in Sandbox. There is a total of 166,464 pieces of land, and so far, around 75% have been sold out. There is a robust demand for land in Sandbox. New lands were sold out within 2 seconds. SAND token highest record was USD6.3 per each. SAND holders will be able to participate in the platform’s governance via Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), where they can exercise voting rights on key decisions of the Sandbox ecosystem.

Landowners build up their Metaverse on their lands to attract players to come in and buy NFTs. The NFTs will be traded in Market Place. The SAND can be exchanged into fiat currencies, and therefore, “Play to Earn” will be an income model. In addition, each NFT has a smart contract, and it guarantees landowners has an ongoing fee income when each NFT transaction, the landowner will be a loyal fee of 3% to 5%. Image all utility NFTs have been traded in years to generate an income model in their Metaverse.

Landowners can start their business in Sandbox virtual lands. Big names such as Adidas, Nike, The Walking Dead, the Smurfs, Snoop Dogg, Sun Hung Kai Company Ltd., Pricewaterhouse, the accountant firm all bought their lands in Sandbox. Mr Adrian Cheng, an HK famous tycoon, has built up a Mega City. Several big names and celebrities, such as Asia movie star Mr Stephen Fung and his wife Shu Qi, have started to build up their Metaverse to create a new experience with players and fans.

More than 80,000,000 SAND tokens gave to the Alpha 1 game, and they were 1,000 landowners and 3,000 players last November. They are about USD272,000,000 cash. Alpha 2 game has planned to roll out in March or April. More SAND tokens (money) will give to players.

To summarize, with blockchain support and a new financial model with Web 3.0, DAO, NFT, Metaverse and GameFi, AI, Decentralized Data Architecture will be a new wave to the market in the world. Bitcoin as digital gold, smart contract through ETH, has significantly affected the traditional financial and technology industry.

Alex Yuen

Director

Asia Digital Asset Financial Ltd.

Emerging Web3.0 Protocol Aligned Secures $34M in Venture Funding

Operating in “Stealth Mode” for some time now, emerging Web3.0 and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol, Aligned has announced it has secured the sum of $34 million from investors as it seeks to advance the reach of the emerging Web3.0 world.

Through the funding, Aligned is on track to carve out a niche for its in the DeFi ecosystem with an over $186 billion market valuation. Despite the competition around in the industry today, Aligned offers a lot of targeted products and services, including solutions for mining and high-performance computing, staking, and liquidity provisioning, while supporting decentralization through an immutable, full-stack infrastructure for DeFi. These are highly in demand and will give Aligned a massive lifting in DeFi’s competitive world.

“We see Aligned as Web3’s answer to AWS. We are building custom hardware, tooling, and infrastructure at every layer of the stack, which enables us to support decentralized networks and leverage the crypto assets needed to operate decentralized tech. This all goes towards creating massive upside for our clients,” said Sam Cassatt, founder, and CEO of Aligned.

In the statement, Cassatt also mentioned that the startup is lucky to “have the support of like-minded investors who understand the opportunity to create a more perfect business model for running Web3 infrastructure. Our team has ambitious plans to optimize every layer of blockchain, from data centres to DeFi applications, and this fundraising is just the beginning of a breakthrough year for Aligned and our partners.”

While Aligned has a very promising product offering outlook, the profile of Cassatt as a former Chief Strategy Officer at ConsenSys and a notable investor and early Ethereum adopter has given investors more confidence to back the protocol. As announced by the firm, the funding round enjoined participation from GSR, Altium Capital, Cavalry Fund, and Ninja4 amongst other investors with no prominent lead.

Image source: defidaonews.com

WalletConnect Pulls $11M in Venture Capital Funding

Digital Currency infrastructure services provider, WalletConnect has raised the sum of $11 million in a Series A funding round from venture capital investors.

While the startup’s valuation was undisclosed, the funding round was led by Union Square Ventures and 1kx, with Coinbase Ventures, Semantic Ventures, and Zerion, amongst others, participating.

The WalletConnect funding round also witnessed the participation of Angel investors, including Alex Svanevik, Eric Conner, Arjun Bhuptani, Viktor Bunin, Mara Schmiedt, Anna Rose, and Ajit Tripathi.

WalletConnect plays a very vital role in the connectivity of today’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem. The startup’s infrastructure lets users connect crypto-wallets with decentralized applications via QR codes. The WalletConnect connection gateway is widely used in such unhosted wallets, including Metamask and Trust Wallet.

With the funding round, the startup hopes to scale wallet interoperability, develop a push notification service, launch its own token and develop a generalized messaging layer.

“Web 3 isn’t complete without some form of medium to communicate between users,” WalletConnect co-founder Pedro Gomes said in an email statement. “Since wallets essentially introduce digital identities that are portable across applications, we are able to create a shared messaging layer that isn’t owned by any particular wallet or application.”

While WalletConnect will not be the first protocol looking to float a Web3.0-backed messaging tool, the startup has arguably run a service that millions of cryptocurrency users utilise today. In just about four years since it was conceived, WalletConnect now has a reach that spans more than 100 wallets and over 200 applications, one of whom is the mainstream social media giant, Twitter.

This funding round by wallet connect is a testament to the broad-based approach venture capital firms are employing to become a part of the fast-evolving Web3 and metaverse driven world. As reported earlier this week by Blockchain.news, Space Runners, a platform looking to democratize blockchain-backed fashion metaverse pulled $10 million in funding from investors.

Cake DeFi Floats $100M Venture Fund for Web3.0

Cake DeFi, a Singapore-based decentralized finance investment platform has launched its new $100 million venture capital arm to invest in innovative technology companies.

As announced by the startup, the new venture capital will be spread over a 24 month period, and the funds will be allocated to external startups that can guarantee its long term growth.

With a specific focus on investing in Web3, gaming and fintech startups, Cake DeFi Ventures will trail the same path as its counterparts in today’s Web3.0 ecosystem.

“By launching Cake DeFi Ventures, we strive towards bringing cryptocurrency and blockchain capabilities to the world. With Cake’s current status as Singapore’s and Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing platform, projects which we invest in can expect to receive strong support scaling globally,” said Julian Hosp, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cake DeFi.

As noted, the current Asian location of Cake DeFi will not impede the venture capital’s growth to other markets globally. The plan is to invest in as many innovative and promising startups globally, irrespective of the country of origin of the firms. In showcasing its main diversity tenets, the company revealed it has made its first investment in US-based media startup, The Edge Of Company, Inc.

As a platform that offers value investing to the public, Cake DeFi has seen enormous growth since its inception. The platform grew its userbase by ten-fold in 2021 to 400,000, while paying a total of $230 million to its customers within the time frame. According to the platform, the new venture arm will be a complement to its growth strides as it seeks to expand its Web3.0 offerings.

“As an extension of our multiple blockchains support and having built up an R&D arm with cryptography deep tech capability and specialization, investing in companies that bring synergies to Cake DeFi’s core business will allow us to enhance our Web3 offerings,” said U-Zyn Chua, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Cake DeFi.

Besides Cake DeFi, Binance, Avalanche Blockchain, and even the European Union have also floated their own ecosystem funds to power similar innovations in the Web3.0 world.

London-Based Fabric Ventures to Close Funding for Two New Web3 Funds

As it is becoming a trend in the Web3.0 ecosystem nowadays, Fabric Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm, is on track to close two new Web3.0 funds that will focus exclusively on the “Open Economy.”

As confirmed by Richard Muirhead, the company’s Managing Partner, the two funds will be worth as much as €225 million ($245 million), The Block reports.

Muirhead noted that the first of the funds was largely oversubscribed by its investors, and in a bid to accommodate more backers, the venture capital firm had to expand its hard cap to €125 million. The first fund will support early-stage startups, and the yet-to-be-completed second fund will focus on innovative projects at the Series B stage and above.

Fabric Ventures has a very robust profile as an investor in the digital currency ecosystem. Since its inception, the company has invested in Open Zeppelin, Ocean Protocol, Ramp, NTropy Network, Orchid, Aurora, and Trailblazer Games. The robust profile of Fabric Ventures also extends beyond crypto startups and as a European Investment Fund (EIF) firm, it has holdings in such protocols including PayPal, MySQL, and Block (former Square).

The ultimate focus of Fabric Ventures, according to Muirhead, is to help innovative protocols with the potential of contributing to the Web3.0 ecosystem-scale up their solutions. It is an example of a startup trailing a similar path as a number of blockchain protocols have been dishing out ecosystem funds to help the growth of new outfits building on them.

From Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to Avalanche and Near Protocol, there has been a very precise emphasis on projects that can join in expanding the general utilities of blockchain networks in the fast-emerging Web3.0 powered internet.

The Fabric Ventures investment will help cover more grounds in anticipation that more protocols will gain more comprehensive access to an integrated network of industry veterans that can also help power their growth.

Kadena Protocol Launches $100m for Web3 Grants Initiative

Kadena Protocol, a scalable Layer-1 blockchain network, has announced the launch of a $100 million Web3.0 grant to power the growth of innovative startups looking to build on the network.

According to a blog post shared by Francesco Melpignano, the Chief Executive Officer of Kadena Eco, the application for the grant is now ongoing and the funds will be deployed to fund both small and big projects that are ready to innovate on the Kadena blockchain. Projects looking to build gaming, metaverse, DeFi, and NFT-related solutions are of particular interest to the grant.

“Kadena Eco exists to empower builders to create new projects that transform the world. To realize this mission, we’re doubling down on our growing community by deploying capital towards the long-term sustainability of our ecosystem,” Melpignano said. “Kadena Eco grants will be applied to projects big and small, enabling builders of all backgrounds to succeed on Kadena. With our network of technology experts and strategic partners, we’re here to support builders every step of the way.”

While Kadena’s grant is not different from those of its peers like the ecosystem fund floated by Avalanche and Binance, Melpignano said gaining access to this grant can open more doors to the platform’s incubators and other programs designed to assist young developers to fulfil their potentials.

As unveiled, the selection criteria for the Kadena Web3 grant is hinged on the technical strength of the application, details of the specifications, the experience of the team, and the adjudged usefulness of the project to the Kadena ecosystem.

With the calls for applications out, Melpignano said projects that end up benefiting from the grants will have to work under the “Build in the Open” philosophy. This philosophy mandates developers connected to the Kadena network to contribute content, codes, tutorials and product explainers on relevant channels connected with the protocol.

In all, the Kadena team is open to mentoring the next generation of leaders that will innovate to connect the world with the blockchain ecosystem, and one of the ways it is doing this is through the newly launched grant.