Welcome to our bi-weekly newsletter date from 8th to 22nd April.
🐱👤IOSG Insight
(1/3) In the era of Ethererum 2.0, staking economics will be a main engine for the open finance ecosystem. Due to staking mechanism, more users will be incentivized to provide liquidity. Overall, higher liquidity, reducing operating costs, faster network, protocol innovation(such as insurance for slashing risk, etc.) will lead DeFi booming. In addition to Defi, it can be expected that more friendly development tools will be arising in the middleware layer as well.
(2/3) Most active European blockchain startups mapped by IOSG.
(3/3) 18th April, another DeFi attack drains decentralized protocol dForce of $25M in Crypto followed by the recent announcement of the $1.5M round led by Multicoin Capital. Read more.
🐱🐉Industry
Swiss Crypto Firm Closes $14.5M Series B to Help Secure Brokerage License: Swiss holding company Crypto Finance AG has closed a $14.5 million Series B funding round co-led by Swiss investor Rainer-Marc Frey, Beijing-based private equity firm Lingfeng Capital and joined by Hong Kong’s QBN Capital. Read more.
SEC Allows $10B Hedge Fund to Offer Access to CME Bitcoin Futures: The Renaissance will offer access to cash-settled contracts from CME Group, one of the two oldest-running Bitcoin futures providers. Renaissance’s $10 billion hedge fund recently gained notoriety in the press, having gained 24% year to date despite the tumultuous volatility plaguing traditional markets over coronavirus. Read more.
Libra launched Whitepaper 2.0: The following key aspects are the major changes of 2.0 compared to 1.0: announcement of single-currency stablecoins, the introduction of a capital buffer for crisis situations, commitment to a permissioned blockchain system (Libra platform), and the implementation of a profound compliance strategy in cooperation with regulators. Read more.
Chinese local government employees to receive central bank digital currency in May: China Star Market said that Suzhou municipal government employees would receive 50% of their May transportation subsidies in DCEP. The digital currency will be issued to them by four state-owned banks, including the Agricultural Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Bank of China, and the China Construction Bank. Read more.
Reddit could be about to implement a new blockchain-based points system on its app: Redditor MagoCrypto posted the video, which is a walkthrough of a new build of the Reddit app that shows a feature with mention of community points. When delving into the FAQs of the wallet feature there appear to be pages on distribution, wallet, backup, and recovery, and on the blockchain. Read more.
Three Arrows Capital invests in BlockFi after its series B round: Three Arrows Capital, based in Singapore, is a registered hedge fund and cryptocurrency investor. BlockFi, a financial services company that specializes in crypto lending, aggressively wants to expand into global markets. Read more.
Genesis Global Trading suspends credit extension after “biggest deleveraging” it has seen in the crypto market: In the latest episode of The Scoop, Genesis CEO Michael Moro claimed that the cryptocurrency credit market is experiencing an unprecedented level of instability due to disappearing arbitrage opportunities following last month’s volatile price swings. Read more.
Chinese mining giant Canaan Creative has announced that it has made a net loss of $ 148.6 million in 2019: Since the IPO of $ 90 million, Canaan’s share price has now declined to about $ 3.5 per share, which is almost 61 percent below the IPO price. The firm posted a net loss of $ 114.7 million in the first quarter of 2019, which grew further with a net loss of $ 31.2 million in the first nine months of 2019. Canaan’s CEO and founder, Nangeng Zhang, said the firm saw a “significant drop” amid volatility in Bitcoin price in December, despite sales growth in October and November. Read more.
🐱🚀 Our portfolio companies
Polkadot (Cross-chain)
Polkadot Has Released The Third Version of “Lightpaper”, With Several Important Updates. Polkadot official website released the third version of Lightpaper. This version of Lightpaper puts forward the concept of “Heterogeneous Sharding”, adds the contents of Substrate and Kusama, emphasizes the governance and upgradeability on the chain, and is more concise and clear in structure, so as to help the entrants quickly understand the role and design ideas of Polkadot.
Nervos (Public chain)
Nervos Grants Project Bitcoin-SPV Utils Has Entered Testing Phase. The Summa team issued an announcement saying that its Nervos Grants project Bitcoin-SPV Utils has entered the testing phase. Bitcoin-SPV is a set of libraries for processing cross-chain communication between Bitcoin and other chains, including interchange, relaying and bridge connection. Next, Bitcoin-SPV will test the script by simulating CKB trading.
Conflux (Public chain)
Conflux Latest Progress Report: Published The First Beta Version of The Contract Manager, Realized Basic Function of DEX Protocol. According to Conflux official progress report (07th April — 19th April), in terms of technological development, the first beta version of the Contract Manager has been published, and the scalability of ConfluxScan has been improved. In terms of DEX ecology, the basic functions of DEX protocol have been realized, and integrated testing and stress testing have been initiated. Meanwhile, a beta version of the front page is planned to be launched at the end of the month.
🦄 About IOSG
Founded in 2017, IOSG Ventures is a research-driven venture capital focusing on Open Finance, Web 3.0, and cross-chain industry. We have over 50 investments and been actively involved in various developer & DAO communities. We invest in top teams with innovative ideas, operational excellence, and a robust community.
If you would like IOSG Venture to consider your project, please send a summary of your project along with a pitch deck and/or white paper to hello@iosg.vc
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