Protocol Village: Fleek Network Claims Faster Edge Computing Than AWS, Vercel

Feb. 28: Fleek Network Testnet concluded the network's edge computing features, establishing a foundation for future services, according to the team: "Developers tested the capabilities and performance through the deployment of edge-optimized JavaScript Functions. The results collected show that Fleek Network deployed edge functions can be significantly more performant than traditional cloud platforms like AWS Lambdas and Vercel Serverless. Deployed edge functions saw an average global TTFB of 37.02ms including the TLS handshake, 7x faster than AWS Lambdas and 2.7x faster than Vercel Serverless in global testing."

Feb. 28: Babylon, the project that aims to build a Bitcoin-secured decentralized economy, announced the launch of the "world's first trustless Bitcoin staking testnet," according to the team: "Through its modular design and slashing functionality, Babylon’s Bitcoin Staking protocol allows proof-of-stake systems to introduce bitcoin as a staking asset and enjoy higher crypto-economic security than what native tokens can provide. The testnet is built on BTC Signet and no real Bitcoin is at stake. Users who complete the testnet process will be able to claim an NFT." CoinDesk 20 asset: {{BTC}}

Feb. 28: Pontem, a product development studio building Move and EVM-compatible products to enable a safer, more performant and developer-friendly Web3, will launch its EVM L2, SuperLumio, on mainnet, according to the team: "This launch marks a significant milestone as SuperLumio is the first L2 to support both EVM and Move VM. SuperLumio is designed to merge as part of Optimism Superchain, an emerging network of L2 chains. Additionally, SuperLumio also features support for Proto-Danksharding (EIP-4844), the Ethereum scaling solution that is set to reduce rollup fees by as much as 100 times.

Feb. 28: Coinbase, the publicly traded U.S. crypto exchange, said it's moving to help reduce risks on the Ethereum blockchain by adding support for two additional computer programs known as "clients" that users rely on to access and run the distributed network. In a blog post, Coinbase Cloud announced it's adding support for the Nethermind and Erigon execution clients, "which will diversify the execution layer within our Ethereum staking nodes." CoinDesk 20 asset: (ETH)

Feb. 28: Decent Labs, a Web3 accelerator and venture studio, launched "Lumen Proof, a proof-of-funds system for institutional, on-chain credit that makes DeFi safer without violating user privacy," according to the team: "Lumen Proof addresses the critical need for transparent and verifiable proof-of-funds in DeFi by allowing borrowers to confidentially verify the funds they hold at a lender's request without revealing position or trade history. With privacy-preserving borrower fund attestations, lenders can more accurately price lending pools, extend credit limits, and reduce default risk."

Feb. 28: BitGo, the leading digital asset trust and security company and a legacy player in the crypto space, has today joined the Hedera Council, according to the team: "As a member of Hedera’s Council, BitGo plans to explore further opportunities to expand offering support with the Go Network, its real-time USD and digital-asset settlement network." (HBAR)

Feb. 28: BounceBit closed a $6-million funding round to build BTC Restaking infrastructure, according to the team: "The round was led by Blockchain Capital and Breyer Capital. Participation from dao5, CMS Holdings, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures, Matrixport Ventures, Primitive Ventures, Arcane Grp., IDG Capital, Bixin Ventures, Nomad Capital, Geekcartel, DeFiance Capital, General Mining Research, OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, HTX Ventures, Mexc Ventures. Angels: Nathan from Anchorage, Calvin & Jessy from Eigenlayer, Kevin & Ashwin from Brevan Howard, George Lambeth, Pranay Mohan, James Parillo, RookieXBT, MacnBTC."

Feb. 28: Stake.link, the delegated liquid staking protocol for the Chainlink ecosystem, has announced the availability of cross-chain staking on Arbitrum, the biggest layer-2 network on the Ethereum blockchain, according to the team: "The move enables stake.link to establish a second home on Arbitrum where it will be able to continue delivering the most refined Chainlink staking experience for users who will no longer have to pay exorbitant gas fees to stake LINK and earn rewards." CoinDesk 20 asset: {{LINK}}

Feb. 28: Longtime Solana contributor Armani Ferrante’s crypto wallet and exchange company Backpack has raised $17 million in a funding round led by Placeholder VC, according to a press release. The Series A raise comes at a valuation of $120 million, a sign of strength for the company that fewer than two years ago told The Block it went into “cockroach mode” when its key previous backer, FTX, imploded and sent most of the startup’s $20 million funding to goblin town.

Feb. 28: Ether.fi, the biggest liquid restaking protocol, has raised $23 million in a Series A round led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund. The round also included investment from OKX Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Consensys and Amber, among others. CoinDesk is owned by the Bullish Group.

Feb. 28: Singapore-based staking platform ContributionDAO secured $2.8M in seed funding led by KASIKORN X Venture Capital, alongside prominent Web3 firms and angel investors, to bolster their institutional-grade staking solutions and community management tools, according to the team: "The funding aims to fuel expansion into the Southeast Asian blockchain market and enhance global project engagement."

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

Feb. 27: Validation Cloud, a global node infrastructure provider, raised $5.8 million, led by San Francisco-based Cadenze ventures, and included VCs such as Bloccelerate, Blockchain Founders, Side Door, to provide the necessary foundations for enterprise adoption in Web3, according to the team: "The funds will increase Validation Cloud's strong reputation as a leading Web3 infrastructure provider while supporting ecosystems such as Chainlink, Hedera, and Stellar, including emerging networks like Aptos, Eigenlayer and more."

Feb. 27 (PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE): Geodnet has raised $3.5 million to build "the world’s largest real-time kinematics network," according to the team. "The round was led by North Island Ventures, with participation from Modular Capital, Road Capital, Tangent and Reverie, who join existing Geodnet backers Borderless and IoTeX. Geodnet is a community-based Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN). Anybody can contribute to the network by installing and operating a reference station known as a Satellite Miner. Standard GPS is usually off by two meters; yet, devices connected to Geodnet's global RTK network can achieve instant accuracy within 1-2 centimeters."

Feb. 27: Safe, the smart-account infrastructure provider, has joined forces with Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network, Base, to offer financial incentives and modular tooling for developers building with smart accounts, according to the team: "Web3 developers building with Safe smart accounts on Base can receive up to 1 ETH in gas fee credits. With Safe{Core}, Safe’s modular and open-source stack, developers can leverage smart account infrastructure to build tools for a range of use cases on Base." CORRECTION (March 4, 14:54 UTC): An earlier version of this item said that Base was "offering 'up to $120K in funding' available to ecosystems in the initial 12-month launch of the program," in gas credits for developers building on Safe. After publication the team reached out to CoinDesk to ask us to remove the $120K figure and instead write that "Web3 developers building with Safe smart accounts on Base can receive up to 1 ETH in gas fee credits."

Feb. 27: Lens Protocol, a decentralized social media platform that's a sister project to the lending protocol Aave and led by Stani Kulechov, is launching out of beta and going permissionless, according to the team: "While in beta, users could join through invites, but there was a waitlist to mint a user profile. Before today, any builder could contact Lens or join a Lens hackathon to build on Lens. Now permissionless, anyone can mint a profile by going to Lens.xyz, and any builder can get started by accessing Lens documentation docs.lens.xyz, where there are easy instructions on how to get started. Lens has taken a series of steps to prepare for permissionless, such as Momoka, Open Actions, improved social graph API & more."

Feb. 27: For the past six years, Dune has led the charge in democratizing access to crypto data, establishing itself as the foremost authority in the blockchain sector with an extensive repository of 1.5 million datasets, according to the team. Now, there's "a significant step forward as Dune unveils Dune Datashare, streamlining access to its meticulously curated crypto data through the Snowflake Marketplace. This pivotal development addresses the longstanding challenge of deciphering complex publicly available crypto data, paving the way for industries and companies to seamlessly transition into the realm of Web3."

Feb. 27: Ripple and Axelar Foundation are partnering to integrate the Axelar network with XRP Ledger, according to the teams: "Axelar network's integration with the XRPL aims to help bolster the XRPL DeFi ecosystem by providing essential liquidity for stablecoins and large-cap assets. Developers will also be able to capitalize on the XRPL’s built-in features such as the native DEX, the upcoming AMM, and payments system recognized for its security and efficiency. Additionally, Axelar network will help facilitate the deployment of cross-chain dApps directly on the XRPL."

Feb. 27: Dan Held, a former Kraken marketing executive who recently has been serving as fractional CMO for Taproot Wizards and Trust Machines, is joining Joe McCann's crypto fund, Asymmetric Financial, as a general partner, with plans to spearhead a new Bitcoin DeFi Venture Fund I. They are targeting a raise of $21 million.

Feb. 27: Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, has invested an undisclosed sum in Babylon, a Bitcoin staking protocol, according to a blog post. It "pioneers the concept of native bitcoin staking, allowing users to stake bitcoins for PoS blockchains and earn yields without any third-party custody, bridge solutions or wrapping services. It provides slashable economic security guarantees to the PoS chains while ensuring efficient stake unbonding to enhance liquidity for Bitcoin holders." CoinDesk 20 asset: (BTC)

Feb. 27: Fluence DAO, the governing body of Fluence, the first decentralized serverless computing network, announced the launch of FLT, according to the team. It's "the native token for the network on Ethereum mainnet alongside the Fluence Platform, which is being deployed on InterPlanetary Consensus (IPC), making Fluence’s “Cloudless” computing platform generally available for the first time. Launching the platform on InterPlanetary Consensus enables high-throughput marketplace of compute resources plugged with massive amounts of data in Filecoin."

Feb. 27: ZkMe and Aptos Foundation are partnering to provide an accessible and straightforward way for users to verify identities on-chain while maintaining their confidentiality, according to the team: "With this partnership, zkMe’s identity oracle will be integrated into the Aptos ecosystem and will be automatically available to all developers and creators building on Aptos. ZkMe's identity oracle will also allow cross-chain verifications to enable interoperability between Aptos and other chains." (APT)

Feb. 27: Aethir, a decentralized GPU cloud infrastructure provider, announcing its first decentralized AI node sale, starting March 20, according to the team: "Aethir is a decentralized GPU cloud infrastructure provider that aims to address the surging demand for GPU compute power in AI and gaming industries. The sale allows individuals and organizations to run nodes and earn rewards. This decentralized approach is crucial as traditional centralized cloud infrastructure struggles to meet the computational needs of generative AI and gaming apps."

Feb. 27: INTMAX launched Plasma Next on mainnet alpha, an innovative layer-2 ZK-rollup with stateless architecture, according to the team: "Co-founder Leona Hioki presented it at ETHDenver, achieving scalability using Plasma framework principles. It scales with a constant block cost, akin to original Plasma's goals, while maintaining ZK-rollups' security. Plasma Next employs bulk-token-transfer, Merkle Trees, and ZKP-TLC for conditional payments, ensuring constant state growth per block. This eliminates the requirement for user-provided liquidity or constant online presence, enhancing user experience and network efficiency."

Feb. 27: Registration for the Solana Foundation’s ninth hackathon, Renaissance, kicked off today on Colosseum, according to the team: "So far, more than 2,000 builders from 92 countries have created builder profiles on Colosseum, and are using the platform to match with co-founders, discuss product ideas, and register to compete for over $1 million in prizes across DeFi, consumer apps, DePIN, gaming, DAO & startup communities and infrastructure tracks. Select winners of the Renaissance hackathon will be selected to join Colosseum’s first Accelerator cohort, with each team receiving $250,000 in pre-seed capital." CoinDesk 20 asset: {{SOL}}

Feb. 27: Michael Ganser, former CEO of Cisco Germany and Cisco’s ex-senior VP for EMEA, has joined the Peaq Foundation in an executive role to enhance its enterprise strategy, according to the team: "The foundation, supporting peaq blockchain for real-world apps, aims to grow in the enterprise sector with Ganser's appointment. With years of business insight, Ganser, an advisor and early investor in peaq, is set to enhance its appeal to traditional businesses by leveraging his network and experience, building on collaborations with Bosch and more."

Feb. 26: Anchorage Digital, a digital-asset custody firm, shared full access to its new institutional self-custody wallet, Porto. According to a post on its website, Porto is "built for any security-first institution with:

Feb. 26: Polkadot canary network Kusama announced the activation of a new consensus protocol, Beefy, designed to "enable seamless verification of the blockchain on Ethereum and other EVM-compatible networks, according to the team: "A key feature is the introduction of two innovative bridges: Snowbridge, a common-goods bridge that directly connects Kusama to Ethereum to enhance the flow of information and transactions, and Hyperbridge, which provides secure interoperability with Ethereum's fragmented layer-2 networks and emerging new chains." CoinDesk 20 asset: (DOT)

Feb. 26: Avail, among a handful of new "data availability" blockchain projects designed to handle transaction data produced by the increasingly sprawling networks, announced on Monday a $27 million fundraising led by the venture capital firms Founders Fund and Dragonfly. Avail, spun out of Polygon in March 2023 and is led by a Polygon co-founder, Anurag Arjun, will use funds from the seed round to develop three of core products: its data availability solution (DA), Nexus and Fusion, collectively marketed as the “Trinity.”

Feb. 26: Pyth Network, a blockchain oracle protocol, announced that its price feeds have officially launched on Hedera, an open-source public distributed ledger. The price feeds are already on more than 40 blockchain ecosystems, including Solana, many EVM chains, Aptos, Sui, NEAR and several Cosmos chains.

Feb. 26: EtherMail, describing itself as a Web3 email solution, has launched its email-as-a-wallet (EaaW) solution, enabling users to create non-custodial wallets through Gmail or Apple accounts in under one minute, according to the team: "EaaW provides a familiar and easy entry point for users to explore the Web3 space, allowing them to circumvent the steep Web3 learning curve. EaaW allows users who currently don’t have a digital wallet to access Web3 services as well as seamlessly buy, send and receive digital assets. EaaW includes a ‘know what you sign’ feature, allowing users to review transaction details as an email before signing the transaction."

Feb. 25: Vibrant Finance DEX, backed by Izumi, deployed its DL-AMM-modeled DEX on Neon EVM to expand into non-Ethereum-based DeFi ecosystems, according to the team: "Integrating Vibrant Finance into Neon EVM gives users an enhanced trading experience and increased capital efficiency, signifying a substantial advancement in DeFi that combines the strengths of Ethereum's framework and Solana's performance."

Feb. 23: Flare, describing itself as a layer-1 network for data, has raised $35 million in a private round that included investment from Kenetic, Aves Lair and others, according to a press release. Flare supports the creation of smart contract protocols and focuses on pricing oracles, which relay asset prices to and from various decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

Feb. 22: Researchers at Telos Foundation, supporting the Telos blockchain, and Input Output Global, known for its work on the Cardano blockchain, have teamed up to publish a white paper revealing a new protocol, "Snarktor," that developers can leverage to scale blockchains more efficiently and securely across millions of use cases via the integration of zk-SNARK technology. According to the abstract for the paper, published in Cryptology ePrint Archive: "We present a new protocol for decentralized recursive proof aggregation allowing one unique proof to aggregate many input proofs to be efficiently verified on-chain, increasing the throughput and cost efficiency of SNARK-based blockchains. The protocol is designed for decentralized environments where independent actors (provers) can join and contribute to the proof generation process."

Feb. 22: Vault, an assisted self-custody wallet by the global Web3 financial platform Uphold, is exiting the three-month beta phase on Thursday. According to the team: "The previous beta phase has seen a significant volume of $24M in assets traded amongst the select group of beta users. Following a diligent community feedback session, the Uphold team saw roughly 80% of surveyed users found Vault easy to understand and simple to use when moving and managing funds."

Feb. 22: Helius on Thursday announced the successful closing of a $9.5 million Series A round, according to the team: "Helius, founded by former Coinbase and Amazon Web Services software engineers, has built a suite of tools designed to enhance the developer experience on Solana. The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures and Solana ecosystem founders, among other funds and investors." CoinDesk 20 asset: {{SOL}}

Feb. 22: Alchemy just launched Modular Account, "a bold step forward in making the Web3 ecosystem more broadly accessible to non-technical users through dramatically improved UX," according to the team. "Imagine trying to onboard the layman with no prior blockchain exposure and describing the various nuances of cold wallets, private keys, gas, nonces, etc. Modular Account is a new contract account implementation designed from the ground up for ERC-4337 and ERC-6900 compatibility. Modular Account provides enterprise-grade security, best in class cost, and robust account extensibility to developers building on Ethereum L2s."

Feb. 22: Eigen Labs, the developer behind EigenLayer, the crypto restaking project atop Ethereum that is shaking up the decentralized finance landscape before it's even gone live, raised $100 million from venture capital investor a16z crypto. Eigen Labs confirmed the investment in a thread on the social media platform X.

Feb 22: POKT Network, describing itself as the "RPC base layer," says its Morse protocol has received its final update, marking a shift towards the Shannon upgrade. According to the team: "Launched on July 28, 2020, with Ethereum and POKT Network, it quickly advanced decentralized infrastructure. This update introduces AI support and improvements in non-custodial staking, reflecting Morse's evolution and community contributions. Achieving over 700 billion relays across 60+ chains, Morse sets the stage for Shannon, enhancing network sustainability and capacity."

Feb. 22: Astar Network developer Startale Labs, a developer of Japanese Web3 products, Aiming to accelerate the mass adoption of Web3, has raised an additional $3.5 million from UOB Venture Management and Samsung Next, according to the team: "This brings the total seed round funding to $7 million, combined with a $3.5 million investment from Sony Network Communications in June 2023."

Feb. 22: DWallet Labs announced the testnet launch of dWallet Network, a first-of-its-kind composable modular signature network. According to the team: "The dWallet Network introduces a new primitive for multi-chain collaboration in Web3 – dWallets – a noncollusive and massively decentralized signing mechanism that can be used as a building block on L1s and L2s to sign native transactions to all chains. With assets always staying on their native chains, eliminating the cross-chain risks of wrapping, bridging or messaging. It’s the first-of-its-kind composable modular signature network built on dWallet's new protocol 2PC-MPC."

Feb. 22: Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, has invested in Renzo, a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) and strategy manager for EigenLayer, built to promote the widespread adoption of EigenLayer. "Renzo Protocol, an EigenLayer restaking hub, consists of Ethereum smart contracts that facilitate trustless collaboration between stakers, node operators, and Actively Validated Services (AVSs)," according to the team.

Feb. 22 (EXCLUSIVE): Clave, a fintech dApp start-up aiming to provide an easy user experience for everyone to accelerate their on-chain journey, has raised $1.6M in a pre-seed funding round led by Matter Labs, the developer behind the layer-2 network zkSync. "The round also saw participation from Safe, Lambda Class and Mirana Ventures, as well as angel investors Sandy Peng of Scroll, Raj Parekh of Portal, Anurag Arjun of Avail, and many more industry leaders."

Feb. 22: Arbitrum Foundation, supporting the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum, announced a partnership with OpenZeppelin, a smart-contracts code auditor, "to enable next-generation development on Arbitrum Stylus," according to the team: "What is Arbitrum Stylus? Stylus is an upgrade to Arbitrum Nitro, the tech stack powering Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova and Arbitrum Orbit chains. It opens the door for developers to write smart contracts in various languages, such as Rust, C, and C++, that compile to WebAssembly (WASM). OpenZeppelin Contracts and Defender will be getting expanded to Arbitrum Stylus while supporting builders in the ecosystem with best-in-class security services." (ARB)

Feb. 22: Aave, the largest DeFi money market protocol, "with strong governance support from the community, is coming to BNB Chain," according to the BNB team.

- "This move further expands the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem, joining other industry heavyweights like Uniswap, Ambit Finance, PancakeSwap and Lista DAO."

- "BNB Chain users will now have access to an industry leading lending platform and with strong liquidity on FDUSD, will be able to engage in more DeFi related activities."

- "Aave users will benefit from being integrated with one of the largest DeFi ecosystems and have access to BNB Chain’s low fees."

Feb. 22: Wormhole, a blockchain interoperability platform, announced a collaboration with microprocessor maker AMD that will make enterprise grade AMD FPGA hardware accelerators available to the Wormhole ecosystem, including the AMD Alveo™ U55C and U250 adaptable accelerator cards. AMD will also lend its deep hardware acceleration expertise to help deliver speed and scalability to multichain applications being built with Wormhole. "AMD offers enterprise-grade FPGAs that are based on the most advanced architectures for scalable compute and flexibility for a breadth of applications. FPGAs can parallelize massive workloads, such as processing millions of multichain messages on Wormhole," according to a blog post on AMD's website.

Feb. 22: Inco, leading developer of a universal confidentiality layer for Ethereum and other networks, has secured $4.5 million in a seed round led by 1kx, and launched its testnet Gentry. According to the team: "The testnet addresses Web3's confidentiality challenges, blending EVM with FHE and secured by Ethereum via EigenLayer. With native on-chain confidentiality and randomness, Inco empowers diverse dApps including gaming, DeFi, private lending and blind auctions."

Feb. 22: Meso, a payment platform connecting banks and blockchains, announced it has raised $9.5 million in a seed round, co-led by Solana Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from 6th Man Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Phantom Co-Founder Chris Kalani, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready and Archie Puri of Bodhi Labs. According to the team, "the network was launched by veterans from PayPal, Venmo and Braintree. Apps can integrate Meso to onboard users without first sending them off to a centralized exchange to fund their wallets." Meso currently supports Ethereum, Solana and Polygon, and will add Arbitrum, Optimism and Base by the end of Q1.