February 3, 2022 – Tindi, Estonia

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Colexion, the authenticated celebrity NFT platform providing multiple other services and experiences, has raised over $5 million, enabling the team to build the necessary infrastructure bringing the mainstream into the NFT world.

Colexion raises the bar for the broader NFT industry by going beyond what traditional trading platforms offer to artists and collectors. The authenticated celebrity NFT platform also offers access to a personalized virtual museum, various play-to-earn games, virtual tournaments and the metaverse.

Colexion has grown to become Asia’s largest NFT marketplace, attracting the attention of various investment firms and private supporters. The team raised $1.8 million in the seed round and $3.2 million from a private round. Combined, both rounds yielded contributions from Polygon, Jump Trading Investments, Alan Howard of Brevan Howard, HyperEdge Capital, C² Ventures, GSR, Oracles Investment Group (OIG), Gains Associate and several other prominent names like ZBS Capital, ICO Pantera, Titan Ventures, Good Games Lab, Maven Capital and more.

Furthermore, the native CLXN utility token will come to numerous launchpads, including Redkite, Prostarter, Scaleswap, Firestarter and more. Trading of CLXN will occur on some of the top exchanges. In addition, the token and native Colexion NFTs will trade on the built-in marketplace and multiple ‘tier A’ exchanges.

The primary focus of Colexion is licensing celebrity NFTs while ensuring they remain affordable for the masses. Celebrities include major Indian movie stars, international cricket players and other global sports and movie stars, with every NFT being unique.

Moreover, Colexion has already acquired the exclusive rights of several dozen international cricketers, Bollywood and Tollywood TV stars, various global and Indian sporting leagues and other legendary athletes.

Additionally, users can experience a virtual museum of legendary celebrities depicting their life journeys. That museum is an integral part of Colexion’s metaverse. Ecosystem users will also enjoy various tournaments, concerts and a further expansion into the metaverse world where a diverse community can come together to achieve a common goal.

Colexion continues to build momentum after a recent Trump Card NFT drop of 30 international celebrities, making it the biggest NFT drop in this category to date.

About Colexion

Colexion is a licensed celebrity NFT platform that will be affordable for the masses to own a piece of their favorite superstars from major Indian and global movie stars, international cricketers and other sports stars, where each NFT will be unique on their fandom.

Colexion will work to get more exclusive licenses from celebrities worldwide to keep on adding value to its metaverse and virtual games.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Medium | Discord

Contact

Abhay Aggarwal

 

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February 2, 2022 – Cheyenne, Wyoming

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FriesDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, is testing whether an open community can successfully run a real-world fast food enterprise.

Intending to bridge real-world assets into DeFi and on-chain platforms, FriesDAO is the result of like-minded individuals who believe that traditional businesses can accommodate blockchain-based governance.

Members who wish to participate in the DAO can donate to its treasury and receive membership tokens which also serve as governance rights for the DAO’s future growth and processes. Community members began donating to the treasury on January 29, 2022, and the raise intends to continue into mid-February.

The funds raised by the community treasury will be used to contract traditional companies to acquire and operate franchises of well-known fast food restaurant brands on behalf of FriesDAO. Any operating profits – despite being owned by the contract organization – can be influenced by DAO governance for use toward store improvements or expansion of additional stores.

Moreover, building on-chain protocols that are able to access store operation data, from sales to logistics, allows the DAO to create additional blockchain utility, improve the efficiency of decentralized governance and integrate into other DeFi protocols.

Key members who are helping to initially organize the community as advisors include Drizly co-founder Brett Beller, as well as Launch Code Capital partner and crypto veteran Bill ‘Swo’ Lee. Other advisors who have joined to help in the DAO’s cause include Horizen Labs advisor Rowan Stone, who also works for a major cryptocurrency exchange, and DeFi developer vfat, renowned creator of vfat.tools.

FriesDAO has also identified franchising veterans Olivier Meyer and Jean-Clauder Meyer, who co-founded and run over 170 quick-service restaurant businesses to help advise and oversee operations of the stores. The community ultimately hopes to establish a gold standard operational framework with its first several stores – such that any future members can easily reproduce it – as part of a pathway to decentralization.

DAO-governed fast-food restaurants cater to the original spirit of franchising. The fast-food industry is an ideal target for DAO governance because it has proven to be extremely successful, with a franchise success rate of more than 90%.

The governance structure means FriesDAO is uniquely positioned as a partner for big restaurant chains wanting to tap into the potential of the crypto space. FriesDAO provides a novel opportunity for such companies to quickly gain access to a wide crypto audience as well as benefit from first-mover advantage.

Bill ‘Swo’ Lee, partner of Launch Code Capital, said,

“The future of businesses could very well be run by DAOs powered by a strong and intelligent community – but only if they have clear and measurable goals and a nimble governance system. FriesDAO is essentially a decentralized research group to experiment as the first crypto community to run real retail businesses in a successful, scalable manner and set an example for future DAOs.”

As part of its research mission, the community intends to release annual reports on its performance, findings and experience in its franchising endeavors as a DAO, which can help promote the legitimacy of the crypto space.

About FriesDAO

FriesDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that’s democratizing access to the fast-food industry, giving the crypto community the chance to participate in community-governed restaurant franchises.

By acquiring franchises and building on-chain utility around them, FriesDAO will gradually expand its footprint to operate a multitude of restaurants under its governance model, while enabling unique on-chain data integration between restaurants and blockchain-based protocols. Follow along on Twitter to keep up to date with the DAO’s developments.

Contact

Dan Edelstein

 

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February 2, 2022 – Singapore, Singapore

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Kyoko.finance (‘Kyoko’), the DAO-to-DAO credit provider and cross-chain GameFi NFT lending market for guilds and players, announced today that it has raised $3 million in its private funding round led by Animoca Brands, with other investors including Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC), YGG SEA, Morningstar Ventures, AXIA8, Red Building Capital, NGC Ventures, Momentum 6, BlockchainSpace, founder of BlockchainSpace Peter Ing and Kliff Capital.

Kyoko provides liquidity solutions to the web 3.0 market through its unsecured and collateralized DAO-to-DAO credit lending platform. The company also addresses the most pressing issues challenging GameFi, including the rising cost of entry and siloed in-game assets across different blockchains, through its P2P NFT lending and cross-chain asset lending platforms. The team has a strong technical background and comes from senior positions at major technology companies and fintech startups across the globe.

The new funding announced today will be used to strengthen Kyoko’s position as a first mover within the market. Kyoko will aggressively pursue strategic partnerships with DAOs, guilds and games, while also growing its development and marketing teams to quickly scale its industry reach.

Steve Hopkins, head of investor relations and business development at Kyoko, said,

“Traditional corporate credit is a multi-trillion dollar industry in the US alone. There’s never been a better time to bring this demand to blockchain – and Kyoko has the right team and resources to do it. This investment will allow the Kyoko team to quickly expand its credit lending solutions for blockchain-based institutions and capture this untapped opportunity.”

Yat Siu, executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, said,

“As one of the world’s largest investors in NFT-related companies and decentralized projects, Animoca Brands is keenly aware of the value that blockchain-based credit is able to offer to the open metaverse ecosystem, and we recognize the strong potential of Kyoko’s liquidity solutions.”

Kyoko’s P2P NFT lending platform is currently in its test launch phase and its DAO-to-DAO lending and cross-chain asset lending platforms will be released later in Q1 2022. Follow Kyoko on social media for the latest announcements and company updates.

About Kyoko.finance

Kyoko is a DAO-to-DAO credit provider and cross-chain GameFi NFT lending market for guilds and players. Kyoko’s DAO-to-DAO lending offers liquidity to promote web 3.0 development, while its guild-to-guild lending, P2P NFT lending and cross-chain asset lending platforms aim to solve the most pressing issues challenging the GameFi market – including the rising cost of entry and siloed in-game assets across different blockchains.

Kyoko’s metaverse will also allow guilds to display their history, progress and other accomplishments, while players can connect with others in a world that can be built-in, developed and sold off.

Contact

Steve Hopkins, head of investor relations and business development at Kyoko

 

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February 1, 2022 – New Delhi, India

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Passive crypto investment gateway Flint will enter its beta stage to let anyone easily access passive returns on their stablecoins. Returns can be as high as 13% per annum, and there are no specific time requirements for locking up funds.

Passive income is a dream for many cryptocurrency enthusiasts, yet it remains challenging to achieve. Flint is here to solve that problem by giving investors exposure to crypto markets without the volatility.

By leveraging DeFi and stablecoins, Flint is able to generate up to 13% returns per year – yet the service doesn’t require the user to own any cryptocurrency directly. Instead, users can enter using Indian rupees to get exposure to the decentralized finance (DeFi) yields at times of historic low-interest rates.

Flint generates returns by making use of stablecoins like UST and USD Coin. Since stablecoins are pegged to one dollar, it reduces the price volatility for investors who don’t have the stomach for it. Additionally, Flint will invest the stablecoins in carefully diligence decentralized finance protocols to generate returns on behalf of the platform’s users.

An added bonus of using Flint is the option for users to withdraw funds at any time without any fees. Entering and exiting a position is seamless, creating a new gateway to the cryptocurrency industry for those who do not hold crypto assets at this time.

Furthermore, Flint aims to deploy up to $500 million in capital across various decentralized finance protocols on Solana over the next three years. That step is part of a process to establish a thematic basket of coins on Solana and the introduction of Flint’s NFT store on the network.

In addition, the company aims to use Solana for foreign remittance and Flint Pay (P2P and P2M crypto payments) and establish Solana’s native stablecoins as the primary asset for yield generation through Flint.

During the beta test – which can accommodate up to 100,000 users – there is also an exciting referral program, as users earn additional returns on their deposits for specific intervals.

Flint reduces risk by choosing the protocols for you, using stablecoins over more volatile assets, and imposes no lock-in requirements. It is the most straightforward way to explore passive revenue through cryptocurrency, even if one doesn’t own crypto assets or stablecoins.

Entering the cryptocurrency space remains a key hurdle for most consumers. The risk of losing money due to price fluctuations or scams, complex research requirements to invest in decentralized finance and the absence of consumer-first interfaces to access investment opportunities can be an intimidating user experience.

Through its core product innovation, Flint combines fintech in the front end with crypto in the backend to create an enticing consumer-facing investment solution accessible through a mobile application.

Anshu Agrawal, co-founder of Flint, said,

“We are targeting close to 500 million users globally across various customer segments who are crypto-curious, have idle cash or stablecoins and are chasing higher yields than conventional investments. The best part is that Flint achieves all of these for our users without them having to break their heads on active crypto trading or price movements.”

Akshay BD, advisor of Solana Foundation, said,

“We’re incredibly excited about startups like Flint leveraging the Solana network to offer valuable consumer products in the mobile-first experience users are used to. Crypto is increasingly finding a place in every investor’s portfolio, and stablecoin yield may offer a great starting point for most investors entering the space.”

About Flint

Flint will roll out its crypto-focused passive income offering to India first, where users can deposit rupees. A global rollout will occur gradually as the team introduces support for more fiat currencies and stablecoins.

The first network for supporting stablecoins will be Solana, a blockchain renowned for its speed, low transaction costs and high efficiency. Providing stable returns on stablecoins on Solana paves the way for optimizing returns at controlled risk on SOL.

Website | Twitter

Contact

Anshu Agrawal, co-founder of Flint

 

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February 1, 2022 – Zürich, Switzerland

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Astra Protocol, a cutting-edge legal and compliance layer that brings unmatched assurance to public blockchains, is pleased to announce that it has set up a compliance hub in The Sandbox virtual world. The new compliance hub will arm the metaverse users with a decentralized compliance layer, including know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) capabilities.

Astra Protocol resolves on-chain compliance issues using its patented technology and the expertise of trusted legal firms. With its new compliance hub, Astra aims to make the emerging frontier of metaverse safer for all participants.

It has created a unique decentralized legal network (DLN) consisting of all the major global legal and audit firms to provide the best KYC/AML services available. The DLN covers jurisdictions in 195 countries to ensure that regulations can be met almost anywhere globally.

The metaverse users can head to Astra’s compliance hub, connect to its DLN, gain accreditation and receive a non-transferrable NFT, which grants them privileged access to otherwise unreachable special events.

This whitelisting process means that once a user is verified, they can partake in all the exciting metaverse occasions without having to worry about their identity being compromised. Astra’s services solve identity issues while protecting users from harm or malicious accounts.

Jez Ali, founder of Astra Protocol, said,

“We are delighted to announce Astra Protocol’s entry into the metaverse with our first plot in The Sandbox. The future of metaverse development will be a long-lasting and innovative mission that has already shown incredible growth and is an exciting area of web 3.0. By deploying the first compliance hub in the metaverse, we can support this growth by adding a layer of protection for users across the world.”

Astra Protocol chose The Sandbox for its compliance hub because it has some of the most desirable and exciting locations. It is where most users are flocking to for new immersive experiences and ways of interacting with one another. With only 166,464 individual plots of land available, there is enormous competition for The Sandbox locations.

The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based virtual world where users can build, own and monetize online hangout spaces and gaming experiences.

About Astra

Our mission is to equip all DeFi smart contracts with a fully decentralized compliance layer, including KYC and AML capabilities, to act as a tool to resolve real-world compliance issues using the expertise of trusted legal firms.

For further information, visit here.

Contact

Arthur Ali

 

Source

February 1, 2022 – Mahé, Seychelles

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Crypto products trading platform BitMEX today airdropped over 1.5 million of its BMEX tokens to thousands of new and existing users. The airdrop comes a day after BitMEX unveiled the BMEX Token Litepaper, which outlines the ambitious vision, utility and roadmap for the token.

BMEX is an ERC-20 token with a maximum supply of 450 million – many of which will be used to reward new and existing BitMEX users. The tokens are locked in a five-year vesting contract. Further details on the token vesting schedule and allocation can be found here.

BMEX holders can stake BMEX from February 1, 2022, at 10:00 UTC onwards and start enjoying benefits. Trading of BMEX will commence in early Q2 upon the launch of the BitMEX spot exchange.

By holding and staking BMEX, users can receive the following.

• Trading fee discounts of up to 15%.
• Exclusive privileges and experiences, such as early product access, BitMEX swag and VIP tickets to sports events.
• VIP services for users who hold over 500,000 BMEX.

In the coming weeks and months, BMEX holders can expect the following.

• Exclusive product access and preferential terms for upcoming services.
• An increased rate of return on BitMEX EARN deposits.
• Free access to BitMEX Academy courses and private community channels.
• Fee discounts on BitMEX Spot (launching in Q2).

Alexander Höptner, CEO of BitMEX, said,

“Although this is a huge milestone for BitMEX users, it’s important to consider that we’re just at the beginning of our journey. Crypto is at the core of a massive shift from analog to digital, and we’re positioning BitMEX to be a cornerstone of this new paradigm. BMEX is the token for true believers in this new era and will be the fuel we use to expand the BitMEX ecosystem.”

For detailed information on the benefits of holding BMEX, please visit the token microsite. To register for BitMEX today, click here.

About BitMEX

BitMEX is a trading platform that offers users access to the global digital asset financial markets. BitMEX is owned by HDR Global Trading Limited. To learn more about BitMEX, our vision, growing team and the road ahead, please follow us on Twitter, Telegram and the BitMEX Blog. For further inquiries, please contact us here.

Contact

Taylor Bossung of BitMEX

 

Source

January 31, 2022 – Lausanne, Switzerland

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Alephium, an innovative layer one blockchain announces today its first official listing on the top 10 exchange Gate.io.

Gate.io first to list ALPH token

Cheng Wang, founder and core developer of Alephium, said,

“We are very happy to have partnered with Gate.io for our first listing. This is a strong vote of confidence in our tech, our team and our roadmap.”

Alephium is the first operational layer one sharded blockchain scaling and improving on Bitcoin core technologies, proof-of-work and UTXO. It delivers a highly performant, secure DeFi and DApps platform with enhanced energy efficiency.

ALPH is the native token of the Alephium blockchain. It now trades against USDT on Gate.io.

A distinctive approach to scalability

Unique among its peers, Alephium is built on the BlockFlow algorithm which improves on the UTXO model of BTC to make it scalable. It allows for up to 400 transactions per second with just 16 shards on mainnet – scalable to 10,000 TPS on 1,024 shards later on.

Addressing contemporary concerns, its novel proof-of-less-work (PoLW) algorithm – which combines physical work and coin economics – grants much better energy efficiency than the original consensus mechanism used by Bitcoin, while retaining its decentralization and security.

A custom virtual machine (Fi-VM) leveraging the stateful UTXO model invented by Alephium, as well as its own programming language for DApps (Fi-Lang), enables developers to create powerful and efficient smart contracts while addressing DeFi security challenges.

Maud Simon, chief of staff at Alephium, said,

“Putting all these innovations together, Alephium delivers a highly demanded solution in the industry – a scalable blockchain improving on mature ideas from Bitcoin and Ethereum to deliver reliable, powerful and secure DeFi and DApp capabilities.”

What’s next?

Alephium is live and fully functional since November 8, 2021. Its mainnet – around which lives a thriving ecosystem of wallets, mining pools and software and explorers and DApps – is maturing rapidly. The focus of the next few months will be on bridges, DeFi and NFTs primitives, while expanding its community of developers, miners and users.

To learn more about Alephium, get in touch on Discord or Telegram, contribute on GitHub, follow us on Twitter, read about us on Medium – or discover Alephium in five minutes.

About Alephium

Alephium is the first operational layer one sharded blockchain scaling and improving on Bitcoin core technologies, proof-of-work and UTXO. It delivers a highly performant, secure DeFi and DApps platform with enhanced energy efficiency.

Contact

Maud Simon, chief of staff at Alephium

 

Source

January 31, 2022 – Singapore, Singapore

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Singapore-based startup Affyn raised over $20 million through several fundraising rounds, including the recent round led by several launchpads.

This comes directly after a successful presale round that raised $10.4 million. This back-to-back successful fundraising round indicates a high level of anticipation for its play-to-earn metaverse.

Affyn is a blockchain-powered metaverse project with a free-to-play, play-to-earn mobile game that integrates the best of both the virtual world and the real world. Utilizing geolocation technology, augmented reality (AR) mechanics and blockchain technology such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Affyn aims to create an ecosystem that is fun and practical, both virtually and in real life.

Building a sustainable game economy

The Affyn team spent over a year developing a closed-loop ecosystem that places sustainability at the forefront of its game economy. In contrast to many other projects in the play-to-earn category, Affyn places heavy emphasis on envisioning an ecosystem with a broader long-term view in mind.

Creating a system with multiple revenue streams that includes an advertising revenue model and business-to-business collaboration, Affyn is positioning itself as one of the pioneers of building a mobile play-to-earn model that is sustainable.

Users can also catch glimpses of the NEXUS metaverse on Affyn’s social media in the coming months as they reveal their ‘buddies’ – a collection of NFT characters in the game. A trailer video of the NEXUS metaverse is set to be released in February.

Lucaz Lee, founder and CEO of Affyn, said,

“We would like to thank our partners, advisors, investors and community for the tremendous support and trust in Affyn. Our successful fundraising campaign signals strong confidence in the vision of Affyn’s play-to-earn metaverse. [The year] 2022 will be unprecedented as we ignite the tech space by ushering in a new era of metaverse. We will pioneer the first of its kind play-to-earn metaverse that encapsulates the fabric of reality into a synthetic world where the notion of a real world is represented by digital avatars, NFTs and assets. We would like to invite you to join us in this metaverse where we can play, earn and have more fun together at the same time.”

About Affyn

Affyn is a Singapore-based company building a blockchain-powered metaverse project with a free-to-play, play-to-earn mobile game with integrated geolocation where the virtual and real world converge. Making use of geolocation technology and AR mechanics, Affyn incorporates the fun element of gaming with blockchain technology such as the utility of NFTs.

Contact

Tammie Chew of Affyn

 

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