⚡ TFC Newsletter: 03/07/2023
Avalanche Bringing Web3 To 30M Gamers, Getty Images Launches First NFT Collection, BTC NFTs Marketplace, Web3 Social, and more!
💡 Intro
🕹️ Gaming might be the next massive catalyst for onboarding millions of new users into Web3.
While the infrastructure + utility isn’t there yet, there are plenty of signs that we’re getting closer, including last week’s Unity Store update and Metamask’s launch of HyperPlay.
This week: e-sports giant TSM and Blitz, the company’s competitive gaming platform, announced they’re using Avalanche to host tournaments and other e-sport functionality, through a blockchain subnet of Avalanche.
🔥 Why This Matters:
Blitz has over 30M users which makes this a major onboarding mechanism for Web3.
This adds to Avalanche’s growing list of Web3 gaming use cases and cements the chain as one of the leading blockchains in Web3 gaming.
The better Web3 gaming infrastructure & use cases get, the closer we are to onboarding gamers in general. As well as an eventual crypto gaming token run.
When the largest stock photo platform with $233M in yearly revenue enters NFTs: it’s a big deal!
Getty Images just partnered with Candy Digital (a digital collectibles company invested in by Gary V) to launch their first NFT collection using photos from the platform.
According to Getty Images, this will be the of many NFT launches:
“Through this partnership, Getty Images and Candy Digital will collaborate and develop a diverse portfolio of NFT products and collections derived from Getty Images’ extensive library of more than 465 million images, including over 135 million analog images from Getty Images’ photographic archive. Iconic and defining moments from the last 170 years of history are contained in this unmatched repository of photography, spanning the worlds of art, culture, music, world events, and more.“
Kresus / $25M — Trevor Traina, a serial entrepreneur, has secured $25 million to create Kresus, a web3 superapp. Liberty City Ventures led the Series A round of funding. — TheBlock
Tensor / $3M — Tensor announced today that it had successfully raised $3 million in a seed funding round, with Placeholder VC leading the round and various other investors, including Solana Ventures, Alliance DAO, and more. — TheBlock
Relai / $4.5M — Relai, a Swiss Bitcoin platform, has announced the successful closing of a $4.5 million funding round. The round was led by Ego Death Capital and included other investors. To date, Relai has raised a total of $11.8 million across five rounds since its initial seed round in 2020. — Nasdaq
Coresky / $6M — Coresky secured $6 million in Pre-seed funding, with Payson Lee Private Foundation leading the round. The company intends to use the newly acquired funds for the hiring and development of its platform. — BitcoinNews
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Scroll
"The Native zkEVM Scaling Solution for Ethereum"
Type of Product: Zero Knowledge Tool
Purpose of Tool: Scroll is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that aims to provide native compatibility with existing Ethereum applications and tools using zkRollup technology. It is built upon the zkEVM, which is used to prove the correctness of EVM execution in Layer 2.
Native Compatibility: designed to be fully compatible with existing Ethereum applications and tools, which allows for a seamless transition from Layer 1 to Layer 2.
Efficiency: leverages a decentralized proving network to solve the efficiency problem on the prover side, which helps reduce gas costs and enables faster transaction processing times.
Security: Scroll uses zkRollup technology, which provides a high degree of security and privacy by enabling the execution of transactions off-chain while still guaranteeing their validity through zero-knowledge proofs.
Data Availability: Scroll's rollup and bridge contracts ensure data availability for all Scroll transactions, which helps prevent fraud and enables users to move assets between Ethereum and Scroll.
Scalability: Scroll's Layer 2 solution enables significantly higher transaction throughput compared to Layer 1, which helps improve the overall scalability of the Ethereum network.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Scroll successfully raised $50 million in a new funding round yesterday. The round was participated in by various firms including Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Crypto, Sequoia China, Moore Capital Management, Variant Fund, Newman Capital, IOSG Ventures, and Qiming Ventures.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Hologram
“Become Your Digital Self"
Type of Product: Metaverse
Purpose of Tool: Hologram is a digital identity platform that allows users to create and immerse themselves in their favorite virtual characters, flex their digital wearables on any social, content, or gaming platform. It unlocks distribution for brands, infinite utility for intellectual property, and interoperability in the metaverse.
Hologram's components include:
Hologram Extension: allows users to become their hologram on various video-chatting apps on the browser, including Google Meet, Discord, Slack, Gather, and more.
Hologram Studio: The Hologram Studio allows users to chat and stream as their holograms on any video platform.
Hologram Web: The Hologram Web provides users with the ability to try on or stream their hologram through Hologram's embeddable web plugin.
Hologram Creator: The Hologram Creator is the fastest way to create more than 20k collections of AR/VR digital assets, providing users with a simple and easy-to-use platform to create their hologram.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Hologram has previously secured $6.5 million in seed funding. The funding round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from several other companies, including Nascent, Inflection, The Operating Group, Quantstamp, Neon DAO, Foothill Ventures and South Park Commons. The co-founders of Hologram, Pow and Hongzi Mao, started working on the project in December 2021.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Solcial
“Welcome To The Future of Social Media"
Type of Product: Web3 Social
Purpose of Tool: Solcial is a permissionless social network built on a blockchain that rewards users for their work and promotes freedom of speech. Users can create an account using either a Solcial wallet or any Solana wallets without providing any personal information, ensuring their privacy is protected.
Moderation V2: The platform has a sensitivity content filter with options ranging from “Safe Space” to “MadMax,” NSFW tags for 18+ content, and posts reporting. Users can also mute other users to filter out unwanted content.
Mobile apps: Solcial has released iOS and Android apps, allowing users to access the platform directly from their phones.
Video feature: The platform supports uploading videos directly on IPFS with client-side encoding and compression, ensuring no one can edit the video afterward.
Polls: Solcial has a poll feature that allows users to create and participate in polls.
Team / Funding / Backers Info / Transaction Amount: Solcial has recently announced a referral program that allows social users to earn a 5% commission in SLCL rewards from their referrals' trading on the platform. As of this writing, Solcial has achieved impressive figures with over 30,000 views and 4,500 active users.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Gamma.io
"Where people come together to create and collect what’s next.”
Type of Product: BTC NFT Marketplace
Purpose of Tool: Gamma.io is a Bitcoin NFT marketplace powered by Stacks, which allows smart contracts that settle onto Bitcoin. The platform provides an open marketplace for Bitcoin NFTs, a creator launchpad for 100% creator-owned Ethereum, and a social platform that connects creators and collectors in a web3-native way.
User profiles: Gamma's user profiles allow collectors to combine multiple Stacks and Ethereum wallets on one page to showcase all their NFTs. Users can also share profiles based on decentralized identity.
Open marketplace: The platform provides an open marketplace for Bitcoin NFTs, allowing users to buy, sell, and trade NFTs on the blockchain.
Creator launchpad: Gamma's creator launchpad allows creators to create and launch their NFTs on Ethereum, while still retaining 100% ownership and control of their creations.
Social platform: Gamma's social platform brings together creators and collectors in a web3-native way, allowing them to interact, share, and discover new NFTs.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On February 9, 2023, Gamma revealed the release of their new platform which allows users to create NFTs on the native Bitcoin network through the use of ordinals, without requiring any coding knowledge.
With a marketplace that has facilitated millions of dollars in transactions and support for the largest number of NFT contracts on Bitcoin, Gamma currently backs over a thousand NFT collections, almost 80% of which were created using its no-code portal.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Dialect | Social | Link to product
Cardinal | NFT Tool | Link to product
Magic | Dev Tool | Link to product
Sigle | Privacy | Link to product
Juno | Banking | Link to product
Ethereum Foundation | Rust Engineer | Link to position
Nansen | Customer Success Manager | Link to position
Ankr | Sales Development Representative | Link to position
Celestia Labs | Security Engineer | Link to position
Opensea | Senior Full Stack Engineer | Link to position
Kraken | US Strategy Director | Link to position
Wintermute | Algorithmic Trader | Link to position
Moonpay | Lead Product Manager | Link to position
Web3Auth | Developer Relations | Link to position
Certik | Security Research Internship | Link to position
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