Daily Report ｜Data: Bitcoin miners' revenue reached $75.9 million yesterday, marking the second highest in history; a16z plans to raise $6.9 billion for a new series of funds, including two funds focused on AI

Organizer: Luan Peng, ChainCatcher

"What Important Events Happened in the Last 24 Hours"

1. Data: Bitcoin miners earned $75.9 million yesterday, the second highest in history
According to ChainCatcher, CryptoQuant's research director Julio Moreno tweeted that Bitcoin miners earned $75.9 million yesterday (March 6), marking the second highest in history.

The highest record was set on April 14, 2021, at $77.3 million. (Source link)

2. Binance announces the launch of the Futures NEXT platform

According to ChainCatcher, Binance Futures will launch the Futures NEXT platform, allowing users to predict which tokens will be listed on the USDⓈ-M market of the Binance contract trading platform through a prediction-based mechanism and earn rewards.

The NEXT pool is a component of the Futures NEXT platform, providing a curated collection of potential listing tokens nominated by users. Users can "choose" to allocate to tokens supported in the NEXT pool, and if the token successfully lists on the USDⓈ-M futures market, they can earn rewards. (Source link)
3. a16z plans to raise $6.9 billion for a new series of funds, including two focused on AI
According to ChainCatcher, Forbes reports that Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz plans to raise $6.9 billion for a new series of funds, including two focused on artificial intelligence.

The company will use the funds for its main fund and growth fund, and support gaming and startups. More funds will also be raised next year for crypto and bio funds. (Source link)

4. Open-source crypto company Zama completes $73 million Series A financing, led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs
According to ChainCatcher, The Block reports that open-source crypto company Zama announced the completion of $73 million in Series A financing, co-led by Multicoin Capital and Filecoin developer Protocol Labs, with participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, Vsquared Ventures, and Stake Capital. Additionally, angel investors including Filecoin founder Juan Benet, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood also participated in this round of investment.

Zama co-founder and CEO Rand Hindi stated in an interview that Zama has raised substantial funds in two rounds over the past two years. Hindi mentioned that this is an equity financing round, bringing Zama's total funding to over $80 million so far, but he declined to comment on the valuation. As part of the Series A financing, Benet from Filecoin and Kyle Samani from Multicoin will join Zama's board.

It is reported that Zama was co-founded by Hindi and Pascal Paillier in early 2020. Paillier is a renowned cryptographer and one of the inventors of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology, which is the core technology of Zama. Zama plans to use the new funding to continue researching and developing its FHE tools. Hindi stated that Zama has achieved a 100-fold performance improvement since its early research, and now aims for another 1,000-fold performance improvement to support large applications. (Source link)

"What Exciting Articles Are Worth Reading in the Last 24 Hours"

1. “From DePIN to the Bitcoin Ecosystem, What Wealth Codes Did ETHDenver 2024 Reveal?”

With the rapid development of blockchain and Web3 technology, the ETHDenver conference, as an annual event in the industry, once again attracted global attention. This year's ETHDenver brought together tens of thousands of Web3 enthusiasts and developers to discuss cutting-edge technologies and development trends in the industry. During the conference, topics such as liquidity re-staking, Bitcoin Layer 2, points, Crypto+AI, Berachain, DePIN, and modularization became the focus of attendees.

ChainCatcher interviewed several investors, developers, project leaders, and technical experts attending the conference to interpret this year's event from the attendees' perspective.

2. “Paradigm: All DeFi Products Are Power Perpetual Contracts”

Recently, we have been thinking about the issue of power perpetual contracts. Power perpetual contracts refer to derivative contracts that track the powers of an index, such as the square or cube of the index. This is an interesting rabbit hole. The longer you think about power perpetual contracts, the more you will find that everything in the DeFi world is similar to it.

3. “What is ERC-404? An Exclusive Interpretation of the Future of NFT Protocols”

At the beginning of last month, ERC-404 became the hottest topic. ERC-404 is an experimental token standard open-sourced by the Pandora team in early February for creators and developers, featuring a hybrid of ERC-20 / ERC-721 with native liquidity and fragmentation. As early development progresses, more and more participants are beginning to pay attention to this new protocol standard, ERC-404.