Protocol Village: Radix Launches 'RadQuest,' Eclipse Mainnet Opens to Builders

Radix, a distributed ledger project built around native assets known as "resources," has launched RadQuest, a "fully mobile-ready Web3 gamified onboarding platform designed to enable anyone to confidently get started in Web3 and DeFi on Radix," according to the team: "RadQuest was developed with ustwo, – the digital product studio behind the award winning mobile game Monument Valley – to help create a repeatable onboarding experience for Radix that is engaging, educational, and intuitive enough for anyone to use. By completing a sequence of onboarding 'quests,' users will be able to earn tokenized rewards that can be combined into collectible 'RadMorph' NFTs."

Eclipse Foundation announced that Eclipse Mainnet is open for builders. According to the team: "In the weeks ahead, we invite builders to deploy on Eclipse Mainnet and participate in our hackathon, the Total Eclipse Challenge. Builders can deploy seamlessly, get fast, hands-on technical support from the Eclipse team and become part of the Eclipse ecosystem." Eclipse is a layer-2 network atop Ethereum that relies on the Solana Virtual Machine for transaction execution, Celestia for data availability and RISC Zero for ZK fraud proofs.

PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Raiinmaker, a federated peer-to-peer network developed to enable AI systems to optimize privacy, security and performance, has launched a decentralized application (dApp) on Solana Mobile dApp Store. According to the team, the project "allows users to seamlessly interact with its decentralized AI capabilities directly from the app’s DePIN mobile node. With this dApp, Solana users can generate AI content, train models, and run decentralized compute nodes from the palm of their hands."

Irys, a provenance layer for permanent data storage, announced it will transition to a new layer-1 network with the launch of a "programmatic datachain that combines data storage and execution." According to the team: "Designed to meet developers’ evolving needs, Irys Layer 1 offers the ability to create future-proof and secure dApps across Ethereum, EVM-compatible chains, Solana, Avalanche, Aptos and more….. Through IrysVM, which is fully EVM-compatible, developers can leverage efficient and cost-effective real-time data manipulation. This approach simplifies development processes, enhances scalability and ensures stable and predictable pricing for transactions and data storage. Ecosystem partners building on Irys’ Layer 1 include Berachain, Eclipse, Injective Labs, Livepeer, Linea, IoTeX, Gateway.fm, Lit Protocol, NodeKit, Olas, Snapchain, BeraLand and YEET." Founded in 2021, Irys began its journey as Bundlr, a scaling solution for permanent data storage on Arweave.

Hyperbolic, one of the newer contenders in the race to apply blockchain tech to artificial intelligence, has raised $7 million in a seed funding round led by Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction. Hyperbolic's first product will be an AI inference service that allows builders to use state-of-the-art AI models "at a fraction of the cost," according to the company. (After an AI model is trained, it makes "inferences" based on user requests, such as when ChatGPT responds to user queries.)

Router Protocol, a project built using Cosmos blockchain technology, said Tuesday that it launched the main network of a new blockchain designed for "chain abstraction" – a concept embraced by many protocols with the aim of making the user experience of blockchains more seamless. To make the new Router Chain more seamless in cross-chain interactions, it will focus on reducing “the development barriers and streamlining the development of dApps that can seamlessly interact with multiple blockchains and aggregate liquidity from any chain,” according to a press release shared with CoinDesk.

Movement Labs, a blockchain developer aiming to bring Facebook (META)'s Move Virtual Machine (MoveVM) to the Ethereum blockchain, has joined AggLayer. The collaboration will enable unified liquidity across layer-2 blockchains written in the Move smart contract language, according to an emailed announcement on Tuesday. "This integration makes Movement the first Move-based ecosystem to utilize the AggLayer, effectively bridging the gap between Move and EVM ecosystems," Movement Labs said.

XProtocol, an entertainment-focused layer-3 network on the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, announced the launch of its Superchain Testnet Mint, "a modular ultra-high throughput blockchain built using Superchain technology for the gaming and entertainment industry." According to the team: "The platform is now available for node operators, developers and the community to join and claim KICK Tokens and seamlessly integrate the XProtocol Testnet into their wallets. Participants can also mint exclusive Xardian Master NFTs, earning rewards for their valuable feedback." The project says its mission is to "provide cutting-edge solutions and experiences in the Web3 entertainment landscape."

ExSat, described as a "docking layer for scaling Bitcoin," launched a testnet with top validators and mining pools at Bitcoin 2024. According to the team: "ExSat supports sophisticated smart contracts and business logic applications across various layer-2 solutions; generates a UTXO Index for efficient navigation, facilitating the issuance and trading of assets such as Ordinals and Runes; and offers capabilities for UTXO lending and renting, further expanding its utility and flexibility within the Bitcoin ecosystem."

Superposition Labs announced the launch of MovePosition on the Movement Labs public testnet. The project is a "pioneering DeFi platform incubated by Superposition Labs, which addresses the critical challenges in DeFi with its novel approach to risk management, leveraging Concordia's adaptive risk model. The platform introduces an adaptive risk management layer that significantly enhances the stability and reliability of DeFi operations. By addressing the limitations of static risk models, MovePosition aims to mitigate systemic risks, prevent economic losses, and foster innovation within the DeFi ecosystem."

Lava Network, a modular network enabling users and developers to interact with any blockchain and rollup, launched its mainnet with Filecoin Network, Starknet Foundation and Cosmos Hub. According to the team: "Ecosystems use Lava to create incentive pools to attract high-quality infrastructure providers, rewarded for providing reliable service for users. Google Cloud, for example, was already operating as a provider on Lava testnet, running nine nodes handling millions of Ethereum requests."

Blackbird Labs, the restaurant loyalty platform founded by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal, announced the launch of Blackbird Pay, a system that will allow participating restaurants to accept payment in cryptocurrency. The new payments platform expands on Blackbird's mission by allowing consumers to pay for their meals using the $FLY cryptocurrency. The tokens can be earned as loyalty points for dining at participating restaurants or purchased in the Blackbird app using Coinbase's popular USDC stablecoin.

Optimism’s marquee hackathon event of the year, Superhack, is taking place Aug. 2-16, 2024. According to the team: "Happening virtually as part of ETHGlobal’s hackathon series, Superhack invites developers to compete for over $200,000 in prizes for building on the Superchain, a network of chains built on the OP Stack and contributing revenue back to the Optimism Collective. Applications to participate are open through July 31, 2024."

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.

The developers of Theoriq, described as an "AI agent base layer," published its official project whitepaper, introducing the key aspects of its network and outlining its benefits for the development of advanced AI agent collectives. According to the team: "Using a decentralized model, Theoriq will leverage smart contracts to ensure transparency and accountability while also maintaining flexibility to ensure its network will continue to adapt as AI continues to advance in complexity. Ultimately, Theoriq aims to create a meritocracy for AI agents that is completely permissionless thanks to the power of the blockchain."

Dash, a payments-focused cryptocurrency project, is launching the Evolution upgrade on July 29, described as "its most major upgrade" to date. According to the team: "Evolution is a new sidechain and data contract platform to enable indexed decentralized storage and decentralized applications. The first two of these, Dash Platform Name Service and DashPay, deliver a decentralized Venmo-style payment experience of usernames and contact lists. Looking forward, Dash aims to implement IBC compatibility, as well smart contracts to enable advanced privacy for tokens data and payments." According to a blog post: "The Platform Chain is a sidechain that, as mentioned above, is run by EvoNodes, which also secure the legacy Dash chain. It uses the account-based model (single addresses have balances), as opposed to the UTXO model (multiple addresses hold coins, or UTXOs) of the Core chain. It uses a heavily-modified derivative of Tendermint (Cosmos) consensus called Tenderdash. The main differences between Tenderdash and Tendermint are that Dash’s version has same-block execution, meaning you don’t have to wait for the next block after writing new data in order to query it."

European Gymnastics, representing 50 national member federations and over 8.5 million gymnasts, announces the launch of its new AI-powered digital assistant, Luigi, providing decentralized AI and blockchain solutions to the Summer Olympics. According to the team: "Developed with OriginTrail, Luigi's AI twin helps users find competition info, historical events, scoring elements, navigate schedules, and track results. The Luigi AI assistant provides sourced information, powered by OriginTrail’s Decentralized Knowledge Graph, ensuring that users can delve deeper into the summer games while maintaining data integrity."

Kuru, building the first fully on-chain central limit order book (CLOB) on Monad, raised $2 million in a seed round led by investors like Electric Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, CMS Holdings and notable angels like Nomad Labs co-founder Keone Hon, Eugene Chen and Jarry Xiao. From the blog post: "Monad plans to have a TPS of ~10,000 and a 1 second block finality. This will result in significantly lower transaction costs and faster block times compared to current EVM chains. For the first time, this makes a fully functional CLOB on the EVM feasible, allowing market makers to frequently update their quotes without having to worry about transaction costs (gas fees) and slow block times."

PSTAKE Finance, backed by Binance Labs, announced the mainnet launch of version 1 of its Bitcoin liquid-staking solution built on Babylon’s Trustless BTC Staking protocol, with a 50 BTC deposit cap for protocol security. According to the team: "Prior to Babylon's innovation, there was no way to earn meaningful yields on Bitcoin, but pSTAKE's v1 solution leverages Babylon's secure infrastructure to enable users to deposit their BTC and participate in securing app chains, thereby earning rewards once PoS chains start consuming BTC security from Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol."

Portal to Bitcoin, describing itself as a "platform dedicated to unlocking Bitcoin liquidity through the only truly trustless solution," announced strategic integrations with Bitlayer, Sovryn and Tari as additional core components of its impending testnet launch. According to the team: "In addition to the Lightning Network, Portal to Bitcoin employs atomic swaps to facilitate direct peer-to-peer exchanges between Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Atomic swaps are smart contract-based transactions that allow users to exchange one cryptocurrency for another without the need for a trusted third party."

Fuse, a blockchain ecosystem for Web3 payments, announced the new Fuse Flash testnet launch, with tokenomics changes. According to the team: "This transition brings key updates as part of the road to the new mainnet, expedited to Q4. The testnet is part of the Fuse mission to enhance capabilities, stability and decentralization with deployment of Polygon-based ZK layer-2 network, that will also include:

Clearpool, a DeFi credit protocol focused on RWA lending, will be launching on Arbitrum, the biggest Ethereum layer-2 network. According to the team: "The integration marks the debut of Clearpool Prime on Arbitrum, an institutional-grade credit marketplace on-chain. Designed to meet the growing institutional demand for on-chain credit, Clearpool Prime enables institutions to transact through non-custodial smart contracts in a fully compliant, KYC-verified environment."

Crypto staking protocol Stakewise has launched its V3 protocol on Gnosis Chain, the Etheruem sidechain. According to Gnosis, "The launch will see the creation of a new staking marketplace and permissionless access to the new liquid staking token osGNO." Before the launch of StakeWise V3 on Gnosis Chain, the staking protocol's V2 platform amassed over 73,000 GNO in deposits, equivalent to roughly 40% of Gnosis Chain's staked assets, according to the team. (GNO is Gnosis Chain's governance and staking token – used to secure the protocol and vote on key changes to its roadmap.)

BitcoinOS, a network of Bitcoin-based rollup chains, has verified the first-ever zero-knowledge (ZK) proof on Bitcoin's mainchain. ZK cryptography is looked to as a key technology for scaling blockchain throughput and usefulness, but the tech is complicated and computationally intense – meaning it was unclear if or when it would make its way to the comparatively bare-bones Bitcoin network. According to the BitcoinOS team, "This is the first permissionless upgrade of the Bitcoin system and the first time Bitcoin has been upgraded without a soft fork." Bitcoin can now be "infinitely upgradable," the team told CoinDesk, "while requiring no changes to the consensus code." BitcoinOS aims to be the "ultimate implementation of a Bitcoin rollup system," eventually serving as a bridge connecting any number of rollups – quick and cheap layer-2 blockchains that are secured by the Bitcoin blockchain and ZK proofs.

PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Roxom raised $4.3 million in pre-seed funding to launch the first stock, commodities, and futures exchange denominated in Bitcoin. The company was founded by CEO Borja Martel and CTO Nick Damico. Martel was previously a co-founder at LATAM-based crypto exchange Lemon. Roxom's round was led by Kingsway, Draper, and David Marcus, among others. "Bitcoin native financial markets are an important step for holders to access a wide range of financial services natively. Roxom is an important step in that direction," said Marcus.

P2P.org is set to integrate the just-launched Avail Network into its non-custodial staking platform. According to the team, the integration with Avail's data availability network will enable "smoother cross-chain transactions, improving overall blockchain interaction." Key highlights, according to P2P, include a "0% fee incentive for the first three months of staking AVAIL, successful testnet phases managing over 300 million requests and 37,000 concurrent connections, and the deployment of innovative solutions like a proxy balancer for enhanced network capacity."

PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Bitcoin-based Layer-2 service Elastos says it has introduced native bitcoin staking for the first time ever. From the team: "Using the Elastos BeL2 SDK, partners can develop Native Bitcoin dapps aimed at encouraging the staking of over 1 Trillion dormant Bitcoins." The SDK debuted at Bitcoin Nashville 2024, with the StarBTC demo loan app. "Elastos is the sole L2 with innovative arbiter node technology and smart contracts, facilitating dispute resolution and revenue opportunities to node holders who stake Elastos ELA or BTC," said the team.

Unchained, a Bitcoin financial services company, is launching “Connections,” a service designed to help friends and family securely invest in Bitcoin. Connections builds on Unchained's custody service with an interface for guiding loved ones through the process of investing and securing Bitcoin. Unchained says the new service helps with "enhancing Bitcoin’s accessibility and leveraging trusted relationships to safeguard against digital threats."

Core, a blockchain that uses Bitcoin's security mechanism and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), adopted a Dual Staking model, "Bitcoin x CORE." From the Core Foundation: "This new model builds on Core's first-ever implementation of Non-Custodial Bitcoin Staking that acts as a Bitcoin bond layer, establishing the Bitcoin Risk-Free Rate." Core says 55% of Bitcoin mining hash power is being actively delegated to Core, helping to secure 100+ dapps boasting $135M in TVL and 50k+ DAU. "Dual Staking is set to further solidify Core’s transformation of Bitcoin from a mere store of value into a secure, yield-bearing asset," said the team.

Blake Benthall, the programmer who was behind the infamous black market narcotics marketplace Silk Road 2.0, announced the launch of his new company Fathom(x). From the company: "The Fathom(x) platform allows individuals and businesses to know exactly where their cryptocurrency is located, providing proof that they can access it." The platform "also simplifies the legal mandate to screen customer assets for sanctions," Fathom(x) said in a statement, "proving that a business followed the law and presenting confusing blockchain data as a simple ledger that finance professionals can quickly understand." Benthall's success running a dark web drug market, which ultimately led to his getting arrested by the F.B.I., has played no small part in his pitch to investors.