Ledger Postpones Recover Service, BTC Ordinals Volume Explained, Web3 Rewards, and more!
Discover the latest and greatest tools in Web3 & Crypto
💡 Intro
Ledger Delays of new Recover Service Until Open Source Work is Done: Today, Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier announced they won’t be releasing Recover until the code is open sourced.
"Open source" code refers to a type of software that is publicly accessible, allowing anyone to view, use, modify, and distribute the project's source code.
This would help alleviate concerns around the service, as outside developers & security experts could read each deployment and determine if concerns exist.
💡 What You Should Know:
The Recover Service Is Now Delayed: It won’t be pushed to users until the Open Sourcing of the code is done.
Recover Will Be Fully Auditable: This is one of the stated goals of Ledger in their recent email.
At TFC, we’ve covered a number of BTC Ordinals wallets and marketplaces over the past two months through this Substack.
Ordinals took the crypto space by storm and came out of no where earlier this year, as they’re a new innovation directly on-chain for BTC.
There’s also a good chance similar type trends happen on other coins (maybe LTC?), making it useful to watch (even if you’re not trading Ordinals directly).
BTC NFTs have flipped SOL by volume and are 2nd to only ETH NFTs.
Transaction data by marketplace also shows the strong surge of Ordinals (Unisat is a BTC wallet + marketplace).
Full Dune Analytics data is below:
Openfort / $3M — Openfort, a Web3 wallet infrastructure, has secured $3 million in seed funding co-led by Gumi Cryptos Capital and Maven 11, with participation from Game7, NGC Ventures, and Newman Capital. — VentureBeat
Sort / $3.5M — Sort, a platform for integrating smart contracts into Web3 applications, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding co-led by venture capital firms Lemniscap and The General Partnership. — CoinDesk
LabDAO / $3.6M — LabDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization specializing in open-source drug discovery, has raised $3.6 million in a funding round co-led by Inflection.xyz and Village Global. — CoinDesk
Fastlane / $2.3M — FastLane Labs, a maximal extractable value (MEV0) protocol for Polygon, has raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round led by crypto-focused investment firm Multicoin Capital. — CoinDesk
Dispersion Capital / $40M — Early-stage venture firm Dispersion Capital unveils a $40M fund for decentralized infrastructure startups. — TechCrunch
Narwhal Finance
"Seamless Experience for Social Trading"
Type of Product: Perp Trading Platform
Purpose of Tool: Narwhal Finance is a decentralized perpetual trading platform on BNB Chain and Arbitrum that enables users to trade with multiple leverages and pairs (Crypto and FX) without the need for KYC, geographic restrictions, or high centralized exchange fees. It has a protocol ecosystem revolving around USDT, NLP, and NAR tokens as its cornerstone features.
Narwhal just closed a $25M dollar round yesterday.
They’re certainly worth watching for both their utility (perp trading platform operating on both ARB and BNB chains) and for potential rewards.
They mentioned the funding will go towards “enhance the social trading experience on the platform.”
Narwhal is still in closed Beta. We’ll keep an eye out for the TFC community for early access.
NEXT-GEN Trading Engine: Narwhal provides unmatched liquidity and minimal slippage, surpassing top CEXs. Users can trade cryptocurrencies, stocks, indexes, and forex through synthetic assets. Enjoy self-custody trading without upfront deposits until opening a position.
DECENTRALIZED Social Trading: Copy trading platforms simplify investing by allowing effortless following of top-tier traders. Choose from flexible strategies for higher returns without dealing with complex settings. Access valuable insights shared by experienced traders now!
COMMUNITY POWERED Trading: Maximize your trading potential with Narwhal's community resources, including news updates and data, easily accessible. Connect with like-minded traders through engaging discussions and gain valuable knowledge.
Referrals system: Narwhal's referral system incentivizes new and existing users with discounts and rebates in USDT for inviting others to join the network. Referrers and referees can both earn lifetime rewards of up to 20%.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Just yesterday On May 22nd, Narwhal Finance revealed the successful conclusion of their strategic funding round with a $25 million valuation. Investing in this round were Animoca Ventures, Hailstone Ventures, and other angel investors.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Artemis Blockchain Activity Monitor
“Crypto metrics that matter in one place"
Type of Product: Trending Analytics
Purpose of Tool: Artemis Blockchain Activity Monitor (BAM) allows users to view and analyze application-level activity across six EVM compatible platforms: Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, BNB Chain and Avalanche.
We’ve covered Artemis in the past, but this is a new tool they’ve built into the platform that is super useful for traders.
It lets you see Trending Contracts, Categories, and Applications at a quick glance.
It also lets you drill down into specific chains (OPT, BNB, ETH, etc)
It provides a “Holy Grail View” of EVM Compatible Chains which shows Active Addresses, Gas Usage and Transactions across blockchains in a side-by-side manner.
Composition View – Presents active addresses, gas usage and transactions across blockchains in side by side comparison.
Trending Applications View – Allows access to Application Screener page which categorizes applications on blockchains with subcategories for each application category.
Proprietary Categories - Defines blockchain applications into categories with subcategories for further breakdowns of application use cases.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: The Blockchain Activity Monitor is a new feature added to Artemis just last month on April 2023. The Artemis platform provides precise and impartial blockchain data, bringing together the main metrics that are relevant in web3 into one centralized area for projects and investors.
Vincent Jow and James Ho of Modular Capital, an investment firm specializing in cryptocurrency, are credited as the early pioneers of fundamental crypto investing. They are responsible for kickstarting Artemis.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Ribbon
“Build culture with verifiable awards"
Type of Product: Web3 Rewards Tool
Purpose of Tool: Ribbon is a platform that makes public recognition easy for teams. It uses verifiable, on-chain awards to celebrate professional achievements and give employees full ownership of their awards through the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
One great use case of blockchain/web3 tech is giving verifiable rewards on chain.
Ribbon is a new tool which lets organizations and groups do that easily.
Their UI/UX is also phenomenal.
Employee Profiles: Employees can access their home page to collect, organize, and curate their ribbon awards. This allows them to easily understand who they're working with by checking out other people's profiles and awards.
Company Profiles: Companies can increase visibility into culture and achievements within the organization both internally and externally. Connecting your teams and enhancing employer branding will be made easier with this feature.
Ribbon + Slack Integration: Connect Ribbon with your Slack workspace so that your team can stay up to date with the latest awards.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Ribbon, a startup that is continuously developing new features in order to close the gap between user experience and technology. Their goal is to attract and onboard more than one billion users with the help of advanced tech and UX.
Team:
Arsham Ghahramani - Arsham is an experienced engineering leader who has accomplished many feats in deep tech. Arsham holds a PhD in Machine Learning + Genomics from The Francis Crick Institute in London, UK.
Dave Vu - Dave is a tech leader with 10 years of experience in helping startups grow from seed to series B, and was the first employee at Ezra.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Upstream
"The Easiest Way to Start a DAO”
Type of Product: DAO Tooling
Purpose of Tool: Upstream is a full-stack, no-code DAO tool that enables anyone to launch and manage a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) without needing any technical experience. It provides a streamlined tech stack with voting, chat, events, proposals, governance and treasury all managed through one platform.
With Upstream, users can focus on what matters for their community rather than wasting time building things from scratch or switching between platforms.
Easy to use, no-code tool for DAO creation + operations.
They also have a useful Events tab with DAO related events/proposals.
Investment: Through features such as DAO Vault Management, Governance Protocols, Voting Mechanisms and Legal Support Services, Upstream helps users to launch their own investment DAOs.
NFT Projects: By setting up token-gated DAOs around their projects, users can engage their community of NFT holders while using the treasury to reward them.
Vault DAO: For those wanting to keep their cryptocurrency and NFTs safe from scams or hacking attempts then Upstream’s Vault DAO provides an extra layer of security.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On May 23, 2023, Upstream announced the launch of My First DAO. This 24-week program is designed to teach and reward people who want to learn about and create DAOs. To join MFD, participants will need to mint a limited edition DAOphin NFT by Process Grey, an artist known for his work on Illuminati NFT & Goblintown.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Coinshift | Senior Product Designer | Link to position
DappRadar | Social Media Manager | Link to position
WalletConnect | Web3 Communications Associate | Link to position
Cere Network | DevOps Manager | Link to position
Offchain Labs | Blockchain Developer | Link to position
Outlier Ventures | Token Design Associate | Link to position
Magic Square | Back-end/Node.js Developer | Link to position
Treehouse | UI/UX Design Intern | Link to position
Aptos | Software Engineer | Link to position
CoinGecko | Software Test Engineer Intern (QA) | Link to position
How was the newsletter today? Your feedback helps me make this great.
Loved it | OK | Didn’t Like
Anything you want to see? Fill out this form and let us know!
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. Always DYOR!