Morning News | LayerZero completes $135 million financing; Blockchain.com completes new round of financing with a valuation of $14 billion
The founder of Terra stated that the goal of Terra is to become the largest single holder of BTC in the world, apart from Satoshi Nakamoto.整理：Richard Lee
"What are the important news from the past day?"
1. Blockchain.com completes a new round of financing at a valuation of $14 billion, amount raised undisclosed
According to Bloomberg, cryptocurrency wallet developer and exchange Blockchain.com recently completed a new round of financing at a valuation of $14 billion, but the actual amount raised has not been disclosed. It is reported that this round of financing was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Baillie Gifford & Co.
Chain Catcher previously reported that Blockchain.com was founded in 2011, is a UK company, and its main businesses include a block explorer, cryptocurrency wallets, exchanges, etc. It also provides a series of solutions such as asset custody and lending for institutions. Its venture capital arm, Blockchain Ventures, has invested in dozens of projects including Securitize, Aave, and Near. Its website states that the company has 37 million verified users, with 82 million wallet creation addresses and transaction volumes exceeding $1 trillion.
In February and March 2021, the platform completed two rounds of financing, raising $120 million and $300 million respectively. In the March financing, Blockchain.com was valued at $5.2 billion, with DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and VY Capital as the leading investors. (Source link)
2. Interoperability protocol developer LayerZero Labs completes $135 million Series A+ financing, led by Sequoia Capital
Multi-chain interoperability protocol developer LayerZero Labs has completed $135 million in Series A+ financing, led by FTX Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and a16z, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, PayPal Ventures, Tiger Global, Multicoin Capital, and Uniswap Labs, with a valuation of $1 billion.
Additionally, according to Multicoin, other participants in this round of financing include Animoca Brands, SoftBank CEO Rene Marcelo Claure, Avalanche ecosystem fund, Polygon ecosystem fund, Fantom ecosystem fund, Dapper Labs, Kronos Research, Ethernity, ImToken Ventures, Matrixport, Gemini, and angel investors such as American football player Tom Brady, singer Justin Timberlake, and Nike Foundation chair Maria Eitel.
It is reported that LayerZero Labs is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and its core is a full-chain interoperability protocol that can connect the key infrastructure layer of any given contract on each given chain. Last September, the project completed $6 million in Series A financing, led by Multicoin and Binance Labs. (Forbes)
3. Axie Infinity responds to the attack: the hacker incident was caused by social engineering attacks and human error in December last year, and is in dialogue with stakeholders
Axie Infinity co-founder and COO Psycheout responded to the $620 million hacker attack. He tweeted that an in-depth forensic review is currently underway on the internal network, and this hacker incident was caused by social engineering attacks and human error in December 2021. Sky Mavis's technology is reliable, and several new validator nodes will be added to the Ronin network to further decentralize the network.
Axie Infinity is committed to ensuring the recovery or reimbursement of all depleted funds and is continuing to engage in dialogue with stakeholders to determine the best course of action. (Source link)
4. Terra founder: The goal of Terra is to become the largest single holder of BTC globally, apart from Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitinfocharts data shows that the Terra ecosystem development organization Luna Foundation Guard increased its Bitcoin holdings by 2,943 BTC yesterday afternoon, worth about $140 million. Currently, this address holds a total of 30,727 BTC, worth about $1.46 billion.
Terra founder Do Kwon recently stated in an interview with Fungible Times that algorithmic stablecoins are the only way to create internet-native currency, but currently, external asset reserves, such as Bitcoin, are also needed.
Do Kwon stated that he plans to increase UST's Bitcoin reserves to $10 billion because Terra's goal is to become the largest single holder of BTC globally, apart from Satoshi Nakamoto. "In this case, the failure of UST would be equivalent to the failure of the cryptocurrency industry itself." (Source link)
5. Helium Inc. completes $200 million financing and adopts new name Nova Labs
Distributed wireless communication company Helium Inc. announced that it has completed $200 million in Series D equity financing. This round of financing was led by Tiger Global and a16z, with participation from Seven Seven Six, Goodyear Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Liberty Global (including Virgin Media & Vodafone), Nokia-backed NGP Capital, Pantera Capital, Ribbit Capital, and Deutsche Telekom's Telekom Innovation Pool. The new financing will be used to continue developing Helium's IoT and 5G networks and drive the flourishing of ecological applications.
To better reflect the core community values of the Helium network, Helium Inc. has officially changed its name to Nova Labs to clarify its boundaries with the Helium network, Helium blockchain, HNT token, and Helium community. The community-driven Helium Foundation (formerly Decentralized Wireless Alliance) will take on the management responsibilities of the original Helium Inc. brand assets, uniting and serving the global Helium community under a unified Helium brand.
It is reported that Helium was co-founded in 2013, and its initial wireless network was built for IoT devices such as sensors and trackers. Users can share their home internet service through Helium miners/nodes, which will spread the signal over several miles and reward users with HNT tokens to support the network. Currently, the Helium network has over 680,000 nodes launched and running. (Source link)
"What articles are the editors of Chain Catcher reading?"
For those who know him, Zhao Changpeng is at the top of an industry that has the potential to completely disrupt the economic field. Regardless of the technical indicators used to assess him, he has reached the top at lightning speed. Since founding Binance in 2017, he has built it from scratch into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, which now has about 100 million users. According to the company, Binance's trading volume far exceeds that of any other platform, reaching an astonishing $34.1 trillion in total trading volume during the crypto boom year of 2021, with the exchange charging commissions on each transaction.
2. "Jump Crypto: Detailed Analysis of the Blockchain Infrastructure Sub-segment and Landscape"
With the rapid emergence of cross-chain bridges, new frameworks, and other core crypto protocols, effectively planning blockchain infrastructure is a key challenge for users, developers, and investors. The term "blockchain infrastructure" can encompass a variety of different products and services. In this article, our goal is to provide a broad overview of the key components of blockchain infrastructure, breaking these components down into clear, digestible sub-sections, and mapping the infrastructure landscape.
3. "Sequoia India Leads Investment, Analyzing How 'STEPN' Ignited the Chain Game Market"
In the past few months, the hottest chain game in the GameFi market has been "STEPN." This game is built on the Solana blockchain and claims to be the world's first Move To Earn (earn while moving) NFT game. Is the innovative gameplay of "Move To Earn" really reliable? Can the new player in the chain game market, "STEPN," succeed in breaking out like "Axie Infinity" and bring incremental growth to the crypto market? The author of this article has personally experienced this game and will deeply analyze the project's economic model and development prospects.
4. "In-depth Analysis of IPFS: A New Generation of Internet Underlying Protocol"
IPFS is a peer-to-peer (P2P) storage network that allows access to content through nodes located anywhere in the world, which may transmit information, store information, or do both, and has become an important storage solution for many crypto projects. This article provides a detailed analysis of how IPFS works, its advantages and disadvantages.
