Protocol Village: Metis Decentralized Sequencer Onboards Hashkey, EVM Explorer Blockscout Raises $3M

PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Metis, an Ethereum layer-2 rollup platform distinguished by its decentralized sequencer, announced that Hashkey Cloud, with the robust support of the Metis community, has successfully passed the Critical Evaluation Group review at the end of July. According to the team: "Hashkey Cloud is now in the process of onboarding onto the Decentralized Sequencers network and will become first external decentralized sequencer client to go live. This significant milestone brings Metis closer to its vision of creating a layer-2 solution with true decentralization, empowering contributors through network ownership, impactful governance roles and reinforced economic security via revenue sharing."

Wireless internet provider Andrena has raised $18 million in funding to develop a protocol for decentralized broadband. The protocol, known as DAWN, is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN), designed to provide homes with internet without having to rely on centralized providers. DAWN is currently operating in a testnet environment ahead of launching on Solana, Andrena announced via email on Wednesday.

Blockscout, an open-source block explorer for EVM-based chains, completed a $3M seed round led by 1kx with participation from Primitive Ventures and Gnosis, according to the team: "The investment will be used to develop Blockscout’s product suite, improve user experience, integrate social elements and AI-enabled tooling into the dashboard, and deepen involvement with existing chains. As one of the few open-source players, Blockscout will be the default setting for all new and existing EVM chains.”

Arbitrum, the Ethereum layer-2 project, introduced bridged USDC as a custom gas token for Orbit chains, according to the team: "Users benefit from easier payments, reduced volatility and lower entry barriers. Builders can quickly set up via RaaS providers and apply for Circle's USDC grants. This collaboration streamlines transactions, leveraging USDC's stability and acceptance. It improves flexibility for users and developers, boosting customization and accessibility in the Arbitrum ecosystem." (ARB)

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Mysticeti, a consensus protocol based on directed acyclic graphs (DAG) that "cuts consensus latency to 390 milliseconds and establishes Sui as the fastest consensus layer in the industry," has been deployed on Sui Mainnet after a successful run on testnet, according to the team: "Developed from extensive research into Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanisms, Mysticeti represents a significant advancement from Narwhal-Bullshark, the consensus algorithms launched with Sui Mainnet over a year ago. Mysticeti achieves unprecedented transaction speeds, extending Sui's low latency performance across all transaction types on the network."

Curio, a gaming studio building foundation infrastructure serving composable on-chain crypto games, announced it has raised an additional $5.7 million in capital, co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and SevenX Ventures, with participation from OKX Ventures. Concurrently, Curio has released Duper, their flagship strategy game, along with the launch of its first season. According to the project documentation: "The game uses Keystone technology, and the game contract is currently deployed on Arbitrum One."

Succinct, a platform for developers to build decentralized apps with zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), announced SP1 1.0, the production-ready release of their zkVM, "enabling builders to write real-world ZKPs with Rust and affordably generate proofs in real time," according to the team: "The co-founder and CEO is Uma Roy. The platform has delivered up to a 10x performance gain in latency/cost, already securing over $1 billion in TVL, with thousands of proofs. With more than 100 billion CPU cycles proven on the prover network’s private beta, Succinct is trusted by Polygon and Celestia." According to a blog post: "We benchmark SP1 against RISC0 on three real-world workloads (Tendermint, Reth Block 17106222, and Reth Block 19409768) using a variety of cost-efficient AWS and Lambda Labs GPUs with on-demand pricing." Also: "SP1 is 100% open-source, allowing teams like Argument (formerly known as Lurk Labs) and Scroll to implement custom precompiles for their own use-cases that have dramatically decreased cycle count and accelerated proof generation time."

PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Khalani, pioneer of a decentralized solver platform designed to unleash the full potential of intents, raised $2.5M in a seed round led by Ethereal Ventures, with participation from Nascent and Figment Capital. According to the team: "Angels include Arthur Hayes via Maelstrom, Jan Xie and Nick White. Min Teo of Ethereal said, 'Khalani is paving the way for more flexible, unified and user-centric on-chain interactions.' Arthur Hayes said, 'We’re excited to back Khalani's general purpose matching protocol that will eventually serve as the solver backbone of all the various intent-based dApps.'"

Transak, a Web3 payments infrastructure provider, has "officially launched wire transfers as a new payment method for U.S. users to purchase cryptocurrencies," according to the team. "Implementing wire transfers for cryptocurrency transactions involves intricate processes, from handling bank transfers to ensuring accurate fund reconciliation. This is far from a streamlined task and requires a robust and lengthy product development cycle. Transak has invested significant time in building a comprehensive system that ensures smooth fund flow, demonstrating its commitment to providing a seamless user experience."

Kiln, an enterprise-grade staking platform for Ethereum and other proof-of-stake blockchains, announced the launch of "Kiln DeFi," a new service that "enables integrators to facilitate stablecoin rewards by providing seamless access to leading DeFi lending protocols like Aave, Morpho and Compound," according to a press release. "After years of collaborating with integrators, the Kiln team has gained a deep understanding of the challenges they encounter, such as limited front-end resources and a lack of staking and DeFi expertise. To address these issues, Kiln has recently launched the Kiln Widget, allowing customers to integrate within a day using just five lines of code. The first integrator to launch with Kiln DeFi is Crypto.com DeFi Wallet."

NetSepio has joined peaq, a layer-1 blockchain optimized for DePIN and Machine RWAs, "to decentralize VPN services," according to the team: "Anyone can join its Erebrus network and earn rewards by sharing their bandwidth for private web browsing or accessing geo-fenced applications. The network uses zero-knowledge proofs to ensure user privacy and community insights to detect threats. The VPN service operates on NFT subscriptions, purchasable with crypto. In its beta phase, it has onboarded 500 users and grown to 10 nodes."

Zircuit, a fully EVM-compatible ZK rollup with AI-enabled sequencer-level security, announced that Mainnet Phase 1 is now live. According to the team: "Zircuit also opened Season 1 Airdrop claims. Mainnet Phase 1 also includes the launch of the Zircuit Mainnet Festival, a first-of-its-kind program that rewards ZRC and a chance to win large prizes in proportion to gas spent on the Zircuit network."

X10, a hybrid perpetuals crypto exchange developed by former Revolut employees, with trade settlement occurring on StarkWare's StarkEx layer-2 engine, launched on mainnet. According to the team: "X10 is developing an intuitive trading mini-app for Telegram, allowing trading directly within the messaging app. The mini-app will include all markets available on the X10 exchange, with orders and trades handled via X10’s order book. To further improve liquidity, X10 offers a transparent market maker program open to all. And X10 partners with global fintech to provide seamless on/off-ramping."

Cartridge, a developer of provable games and the tooling and infrastructure that powers them, has completed a $7.5 million Series A funding round, led by Bitkraft Ventures with additional participation from Fabric, Dune, StarkWare, Primitive and Ergodic. Alongside this, the company is announcing the release of Dojo 1.0, an open-source framework and toolset for building complex, provable games, autonomous worlds, and applications. According to the team, this funding "will support Cartridge’s continued growth and commitment to building new, positive-sum ecosystems for game developers."

Xodex has launched its DEX, "marking a significant step towards becoming the first DEX supporting the Kaspa blockchain," according to the team: "This platform offers seamless trading, including swaps with stablecoins and up to 50x leverage on perpetual futures. Key features include a self-custody model, low fees, and gas-less transactions for optimal cost-effectiveness and security. A phased rollout will enhance functionality with full Kaspa transaction support, leveraging zero-knowledge technology. Xodex aims to provide a secure, efficient trading experience across multiple blockchains."

Zoth, a DeFi yield infrastructure company, raised $4 million in a strategic round to accelerate the launch of its Tokenized Liquid Note ($ZTLN). According to the team, the fundraising attracted "significant investment from Taisu Ventures, G20, Fat Cat Ventures, GemHead Capital and other prominent companies. Prior to this, Zoth completed a $2.5 million Seed Round in April 2024, led by Blockchain Founders Fund. The $100 million $ZTLN, backed by Real World Assets like U.S. Treasury bills and top-rated corporate bonds, aims to provide institutional investors with stable, transparent yields by bridging traditional fixed-income and DeFi."

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange who now serves as chief investment officer of his own private-wealth office, Maelstrom, announced his first NFT collection, Airheads, using the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, and disclosed an investment in Oyl wallet. According to a blog post by Hayes: "Each Airhead is an inflatable, balloon-like character generated using recursive art to visually represent the size and value of your digital portfolio at the point of mint. With 10,000 Airheads available, these characters use sequential ranking and tier differentiation to reflect asset weightings according to the leaderboard, making them a fun and competitive way to display your wealth."

Intuition, a technology company that says it's "building information protocols that power a more trustful Internet," announced Coinbase's layer-2 network Base as its home base in powering a more intuitive, accessible and secure Web3 ecosystem. According to the team: "Together, Intuition and Base aim to tackle one of the most pressing challenges in Web3: poor UX and untapped information silos. Building with Base will empower Intuition to create a more reliable and intuitive Web3 to onboard the next wave of users seeking refuge from the legacy systems."

Stakers on the Injective blockchain on Thursday passed the "Altaris Mainnet Upgrade Proposal," also known as "IIP-420," and deployment of the upgrade began soon afterward, according to social-media posts by the project. In a message to Protocol Village, the team described Altaris as "a major update enhancing the trader, staker, developer and end-user experience. It includes an advanced RWA Oracle for expanded tokenized offerings, improved INJ Burn Auction mechanics and market enhancements like perpetual market launch permissions for native DEXs. Altaris introduces SDKs for Python, Go and TypeScript for developers, enriched interoperability with IBC hooks, streamlined governance, enhanced security for the Injective Bridge and Ledger wallet integration." (INJ)

Switchboard, a permissionless and customizable oracle network, has unveiled its new Oracle Aggregator allowing users to seamlessly "aggregate data across multiple oracle networks, including Chainlink and Pyth Network, hardening dApps against price manipulation attacks," according to the team: "In aggregating data off-chain, Switchboard’s new UI reduces the need for gas-intensive operations and increases data integrity. The new oracle aggregator also grants developers greater autonomy to select the exact sources they’d like to pull from and eliminate those that don’t meet their standards."

Pichi Finance, a trustless points trading protocol offering price discovery to tokens pre and post-TGE, completed a $2.5 million seed funding round, led by UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital and Mantle Network. According to the team: "The investment will be used to target new points programs, to create vaults to earn yield and points together, and to expand to other EVM chains. We're unlocking the value of points through a trustless marketplace for trading these rewards. Our ERC-6551 account solution addresses the issue of points being tied to individual accounts, so users can securely and easily trade points.”

Daylight, building a decentralized protocol that will eventually allow users to build "virtual power plants" using "distributed energy resources" (DERs), launched a testnet and announced a $9 million funding round led by the venture capital firm a16z. Framework Ventures and existing investors Lerer Hippeau, Lattice Fund and Escape Velocity also participated. According to an a16z crypto blog post, "The Daylight ecosystem is comprised of three core components:

Karak, a universal restaking layer that previously raised $50 million, has chosen Space and Time’s coprocessor solution to power trustless slashing and rewards. According to the team: "Space and Time recently released its high-speed zero-knowledge prover, which ensures tamperproof computations at scale. Space and time is also building a Distributed Secure Service (DSS) on Karak. Space and Time logic allows for slashing logic to be defined much faster."

Playbux, a crypto project for shop-to-earn and play-to-earn, announced the launch of RI (Real Intelligence) tech, powered by AI. According to the team: "This technology improves user experience and meets their needs based on behavior and decisions. Playbux aims to advance blockchain gaming with AI with the RI Engine integrating a model based on human senses and cognition. The RI Engine adapts continuously with user interactions, aligning with evolving preferences and behaviors. By analyzing extensive sensory data, it predicts and delivers tailored content for users. It also aggregates data from users with similar profiles to offer group-specific recommendations."

Nuklai, a data marketplace and infrastructure provider that's designed to run as a subnet in the Avalanche network, has announced a partnership with Timpi, a decentralized search engine project. According to the team: "This collaboration redefines how search engines operate, offering users direct financial benefits from their data. 'We will generate new income streams and greater utility, making it a win-win,' said Jochem Herber, head of ecosystem at Nuklai."

Political bettors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into their expected outcomes on crypto-powered prediction markets: for example, who Vice President Kamala Harris will pick as her running mate. MetaDAO takes the idea further: the Solana-based governance experiment just raised millions of dollars from venture backers who think prediction markets should decide outcomes. VC giant Paradigm recently led a $2.2 million funding round in MetaDAO, a months-old project building governance structures that rely on market forces rather than votes. This construct is called a futarchy. Its proponents believe market participants are driven to make better choices than, say, politicians.

The venture arm of cryptocurrency exchange OKX and the Aptos Foundation, which supports the development of the Aptos protocol, set up a $10 million fund to encourage the growth of the Aptos ecosystem and broader adoption of Web3. The accelerator fund, named Ankaa, will be used to develop projects built on Aptos, according to an emailed announcement. Ankaa will be run by Aptos, OKX Ventures and Alcove, Aptos' accelerator established last November.

Polyhedra Network, a team building a crucial blockchain component known as a cryptographic "prover," released a new platform called "Proof Arena" that will "allow ZK-proof system creators to compare their systems against others in a clear and scientific manner while ensuring that all controllable variables are held constant," according to a press release Wednesday. Initially, the project will be set up to generate benchmarks for Polyhedra's own "Expander" ZK-proof system, Polygon's Plonky3, StarkWare's Stwo and Linea's Gnark. "The team plans to support all open-source proof systems and will provide benchmarks for frequent ZK tasks like Keccak and Poseidon hash verification run on a variety of machine configurations," according to the press release.