ChainCatcher news, the Tongcheng City Anti-Fraud Center received a tip-off indicating that there was a large suspicious fund transaction related to fraud in the area. It is reported that the victim, Ms. Hu, met a "rich and handsome" boyfriend named Zhang online, who claimed to be working in virtual currency investment abroad, and asked her to prepare cash to hand over to a "client manager." Fortunately, the police of Tongcheng City discovered and successfully intercepted the situation in time. Upon investigation, the so-called "client manager" was actually a "cash handler" recruited by an overseas fraud group. Currently, the suspect has been criminally detained in accordance with the law for suspected fraud, and the 730,000 yuan defrauded funds have all been returned to the victim. The case is under further investigation. (Anqing Voice WeChat Official Account)

ChainCatcher News, Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, stated at the Sibos 2024 conference on October 23, titled "Multilateral Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge: Connecting Global Economies with Central Bank Digital Currencies," that the Digital Currency Research Institute will systematically enhance the currency bridge technology in three aspects:Privacy protection mechanism. In the future, privacy protection technology based on zero-knowledge proofs will be developed, with plans to launch in 2025. The design of zero-knowledge proofs can demonstrate the compliance of both parties in a transaction and the sufficiency of funds without disclosing details such as account balances or transaction timestamps.System development and operation maintenance system. The currency bridge system will be deployed in a decentralized manner, with each party independently maintaining operations.Openness and transparency of the currency bridge platform. To strengthen trust among participants, the source code of the currency bridge is currently fully transparent to all participating central banks. Next, the Digital Currency Research Institute plans to promote joint development, code delivery, code review, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment using the development and operation maintenance system. At the same time, the Digital Currency Research Institute will collaborate with the Bank for International Settlements to hire service providers for third-party code reviews and open-source assessment preparations to achieve full open-source status.

ChainCatcher news, Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, recently pointed out in an article in the "Current Affairs Report" that the digital renminbi features a dual-layer operational framework, combining both account and value models. In the future, the digital renminbi will deepen its development in areas such as cross-border payments and smart contracts, aiding in the internationalization of the renminbi and the construction of a unified domestic market.The digital renminbi integrates both account and value models and achieves a unified ledger through data capability construction: under the account model, it can be integrated and interconnected with the traditional banking account system; under the value model, it can facilitate value exchange in the form of currency strings, providing smart payments on the blockchain and usable in extreme offline scenarios such as "no network" and "no electricity," optimizing traditional trade finance processes and supporting cost reduction and efficiency enhancement.

ChainCatcher news, the Public Security Bureau of the New District of Tongchuan City has issued an announcement. In the lawful investigation of the fraud case involving Tian, it was discovered that the criminal suspects, including Chen, have been engaged in activities that assist information network crimes for a long time. The funds defrauded from Tian have flowed into the TokenPocket wallet registered under Chen and five others in the form of virtual currency (USDT). The bureau has legally frozen six TokenPocket accounts belonging to Chen and others.Currently, the USDT coins identified among the six listed accounts have been legally returned to the victims, but there are still some unclaimed. The bureau is now issuing a claim announcement for the remaining USDT coins in the above six accounts. From the date of this announcement, within three months, relevant parties are requested to bring the necessary proof materials to the Public Security Bureau of the New District of Tongchuan City to claim. If no one claims them after the deadline, the bureau will handle them according to the law.

ChainCatcher news, Rabbit Club announced the completion of a strategic round of financing on platform X, with participation from NGC Ventures, Nothing Research, LinkVC, and Japan Digital Fund. The specific amount has not been disclosed.It is reported that Rabbit Club will issue the back to real series of NFTs in May, which will only support the purchase with RABBIT tokens.

ChainCatcher news, Hashkey Group announced a partnership with global IP game operator Zhongyou Mobile (0302.HK) to jointly promote the development of Web3 games and gaming platforms. Zhongyou Mobile will focus on fully embracing Web3, leveraging its accumulated product and technical experience in the gaming field, and collaborating with Hashkey Group to promote Web3 games and their popularization. Zhongyou Mobile will open an account on HashKey Exchange to purchase virtual assets. In addition, Hashkey Group will provide institutional virtual asset custody services for Zhongyou Mobile.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, the ERC404 improvement protocol project LoongCity has announced the completion of a $2 million seed round financing, led by MAZARINE SEA.It is reported that LoongCity will launch the ERC1321 protocol based on the ERC404 protocol improvement, addressing the issue of the ERC404 protocol's inability to determine NFT rarity by introducing on-chain oracles. LoongCity is a fictional Chinese steampunk-themed metaverse, which will conduct its first NFT minting tomorrow, and will subsequently develop towards GameFi and the metaverse.

ChainCatcher news, in the "2023 Web3 Industry Development Research Report and Annual List" published by the crypto asset data platform RootDada, NGC Capital has been selected as one of the Top 100 investment institutions in 2023.In 2023, NGC Capital's publicly disclosed investment projects exceeded 29, with representative projects including PolyHedra, Anoma, Web3Go, Connext, Nibiru, and others.

ChainCatcher news, the Sui ecosystem protocol ComingChat announced on social media that it has launched the Bitcoin L2 protocol BEVM, compatible with EVM chains, to connect the public chain Sui with the Bitcoin ecosystem.Previously, ComingChat was a social platform built on Sui, providing users with encrypted chat features and securely sending digital assets using the Signal encryption protocol.

ChainCatcher news, Chen Yaowen, Chief Digital Officer and Financial Technology Innovation Director of the A-share listed company Sifang Jingchuang, stated in an interview that Hong Kong can play a pivotal role in tokenization and the subsequent secondary market in the future, by building a solid financial infrastructure. Sifang Jingchuang can develop more non-local token issuance under the compliance regulations of Hong Kong.Chen Yaowen added that currently, Sifang Jingchuang has developed solutions in the field of virtual asset applications that are integrated with banking applications and connected to banking systems such as East Asia Bank, which can facilitate tokenization operations. This will enable the banking industry to accelerate the adoption of related technologies for handling the issuance, custody, and payment of security token offerings (STO).

ChainCatcher news, DID market aggregator GoDID has completed a new round of financing with a valuation of 30 million, led by NGC.It is reported that GoDID is a market aggregator focused on all categories of DID, with its core functions being bulk search, registration, trading, and management of DIDs. The GoDID sub-platform bdid.io focuses on the BTC ecosystem, and its token BDID has been launched on Bounce and has started trading on Uniswap.

ChainCatcher news, Ethereum scaling startup Versatus Labs (formerly VRRB Labs) announced the completion of a $2.3 million seed round financing at a valuation of $50 million, with participation from NGC Ventures, Republic Crypto, and Hyperithm.It is reported that the company completed a $1.4 million seed round financing in February this year, bringing the total funding to $3.7 million. Versatus is currently building a "stateless Rollup" called LASR. LASR is currently in the Alpha stage and is expected to launch on the Ethereum testnet in the first week of January next year, with plans to go live on the mainnet in mid-March.

ChainCatcher news, according to a report by The Paper, Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, stated at the main forum of the "2023 China International Financial Annual Forum" during the 2023 China International Service Trade Fair on financial services that after completing the upgrade of currency, the payment tools for the entire society will also need to be upgraded to the new currency accordingly.The first to achieve the upgrade will be the payment tools used in retail scenarios, specifically using digital RMB as the payment tool in all retail scenarios. Wallet providers such as WeChat, Alipay, the commercial bank's mobile banking app, and other third-party payment institution apps, as well as digital RMB operating institutions, must have compliance awareness, obtain the corresponding financial licenses, and comply with regulations. In the short term, we can first unify the QR code standards from a technical perspective to achieve mutual recognition of barcodes; in the long term, we will steadily realize the upgrade of payment tools.The payment tools used in wholesale payment scenarios also need to be upgraded. Currently, the interbank payment clearing system and the internal systems of commercial banks that support wholesale payments are operating normally and can meet the needs of China's economic development. To avoid wasting existing systems and resources, there is no need to replace them with a central bank digital currency system, but we can achieve seamless connectivity by ensuring that digital RMB is fully interoperable with existing electronic payment tools and commercial bank deposits.Additionally, for financial market infrastructures that were previously uncovered, digital RMB can be used for settlement, and smart contracts can be utilized to achieve delivery versus payment (DVP) and payment versus payment (PVP), thereby improving the efficiency of wholesale payments.

ChainCatcher news, the metaverse construction project STELSI announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, led by NGC Ventures.It is reported that STELSI is a Web3 lifestyle platform built on blockchain technology, aimed at transforming the construction and real estate industry. Currently, STELSI's partners include Korbit, Lambda256, Weple, enzyme, Betwin Space, and the Korean Institute of Architects.

ChainCatcher news, Hangzhou Shangcheng District has released several measures to accelerate the innovation and development of the metaverse industry. These measures apply to metaverse enterprises that have newly settled in Shangcheng District and are engaged in legal operations, focusing on key core technologies of the metaverse such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, interactive technology, high-performance computing chips, XR terminals, as well as basic software development, terminal equipment research and development, common technology platform construction, and digital content production.At the same time, Shangcheng District will also provide policy support for metaverse startups in areas such as entrepreneurial support, office subsidies, R&D subsidies, growth incentives, talent introduction and cultivation, financial support, benchmark scenarios, and ecological construction. Specific policies include: for newly settled metaverse entrepreneurial projects, upon recognition, a one-time establishment subsidy of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan will be granted; for metaverse enterprises with an annual main business income of 10 million yuan or more, upon recognition, a subsidy of up to 30% of the actual R&D investment for that year will be granted, with a maximum of 3 million yuan per enterprise and a subsidy period of up to three years; for enterprises that are newly included in the statistics, upon recognition, a one-time reward of 200,000 yuan will be granted. For enterprises that reach a certain scale, when their annual main business income first reaches 100 million, 300 million, 500 million, and 1 billion yuan, upon recognition, rewards of 100,000, 300,000, 500,000, and 1 million yuan will be granted respectively; for high-level talent innovation and entrepreneurship projects in the metaverse field, after the "Golden Boot Running" entrepreneurial project review, a maximum entrepreneurial subsidy of 10 million yuan will be granted, etc. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, Hangzhou Shangcheng District has released a series of policies aimed at promoting innovation in metaverse technology, accelerating the agglomeration of metaverse enterprises, constructing a metaverse industry ecosystem, and creating a leading area for the metaverse industry.It is understood that the series of policies includes multiple measures such as entrepreneurial support, office subsidies, R&D subsidies, growth incentives, talent introduction and cultivation, financial support, benchmark scenarios, and ecological construction. For instance, new metaverse entrepreneurial projects that settle in the area will receive a one-time startup subsidy of up to 200,000 yuan; enterprises renting their own office space will receive an annual subsidy of up to 2 million yuan, with a subsidy period of up to 3 years; and high-level talent innovation and entrepreneurship projects can receive a maximum subsidy of 10 million yuan. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, the currency market protocol Dolomite on Arbitrum has completed a $2.5 million financing round, led by Draper Goren Holm and NGC, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, WWVentures, RR2 Capital, 6th Man Ventures, Token Metrics Ventures, Orchard Street Capital, and Guanxi DAO. Individual investors include Matthew Finestone, Kyle Rojas, David Bleznak, Coinflipcanada, CryptoCondom, 1chioku.eth, and slappjakke.eth.According to the crypto data platform RootData, Dolomite is the next-generation margin trading and lending protocol on Arbitrum, supporting the use of thousands of different assets as collateral. (Source link)