A report published by research firm CB Insights has found that equity funding has dramatically overtaken initial coin offerings (ICOs) as the dominant means of finance in the blockchain space. While the largely unregulated ICO boom of 2018 raised $7.8 billion, initial coin offering funding fell more than 95% to raise $371 million in 2019. By contrast, equity funding raised $2.8 billion last year. The report also notes the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), noting that there are currently more than $1 billion in assets on DeFi platforms — up from $300 million as of January 2019. Crypto firms are …
Blockchain platform Telos raised $8 million in funding led by ConsenSys and Polygon investor John Lilic. The funding was secured right before the launch of Telos’ Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) platform, ending the company’s ongoing streak of bootstrapped initiatives. Telos aims to redirect the recently secured capital on the platform’s development and marketing in addition to improving the liquidity of the ecosystem “without needing to resort to TLOS token sales in the event of a prolonged bear market over the next year.” According to Telos chief architect Douglas Horn: “While this [bootstrapping] preserved our identity as an egalitarian, self-governing community, …
The U.S. Department of the Treasury released a study on the high-value art market, highlighting the potential in the nonfungible tokens (NFT) space to conduct illicit money laundering or terror financing operations. The treasury’s “Study of the facilitation of money laundering and terror finance through the trade in works of art” suggested that the increasing use of art as an investment or financial asset could make the high-value art trades vulnerable to money laundering: “The emerging online art market may present new risks, depending on the structure and incentives of certain activity in this sector of the market (i.e., the …
Developers of one of the earliest Android-based mobile browsers are working to bring online communication to the next level by introducing it to Web3. Sending Labs, a new startup focused on decentralized communications protocol, has secured $12.5M in seed funding to launch the Web3 communications stack. The new platform takes on the mission of building accessible and secure infrastructures for Web3 communication for developers and the community, applying end-to-end decentralization of core of its products. With the new offering, Sending Labs aims to enable privacy-preserving communications and guarantee ownership and transfer of digital assets within community chats. The seed funding …
According to a medium post on Feb. 20, the Interchain Foundation (ICF), a non-profit organization behind the creation of the Cosmos (ATOM) interblockchain communications (IBC) ecosystem, has committed to spending approximately $40 million in 2023 to develop its core infrastructure and applications. As a part of the Interchain Stack, which is utilized by around 50 blockchains, these include the Tendermint Core (and now CometBFT), Cosmos SDK, Cosmos Hub, and the IBC protocol. "Throughout the year, we envisage engaging other teams to deliver smaller, tightly defined tasks within each area of work. Such contracts will be to supplement the work of …