⚡ TFC Newsletter: 04/28/2023
PayPal + Venmo Enabling On-Chain Transfers, New Mastercard Crypto Initiative, Web3 Privacy, Analytics, NFT Tooling and more!
💡 Intro
🥳 Happy Friday!
Another major week for crypto and Web3, with a ton of exciting speeches and announcements from Consensus 2023.
The conference is wrapping up today, and 2 major stories were dropped that should certainly help bring about Web3 adoption.
Check them out below, and as always: have a good weekend and see you all on Monday!
PayPal to Enable On-Chain Transfers From Venmo Accounts To On-Chain Wallets: In one of the most exciting announcements, a PayPal SVP stated the company will allow on-chain transfers from Venmo accounts starting in May.
Official pic from PayPal’s launch announcement below:
"You can buy a gift on Venmo and send it out. You can invite people and send it to another Venmo user, you can send it to a PayPal user. You can send it to an external wallet, you can send it to the hardware wallet, which we think is something fundamentally important," da Ponte said. "Consumers have been asking for that for a while."
Why This Matters:
There are 77M users on Venmo: Allowing them to easily onboard to Web3 by taking funds from Venmo and moving them on-chain can be a major onboarding vehicle for Web3.
PayPal is eyeing Web3 Gaming: Buried in the SVP’s announcement, he also mentioned: “The gaming industry is one that we think is very ripe for the adoption of cryptocurrencies.”
This is the first of many coming Web3 updates from PayPal: PayPal has been quiet after their Paxos crypto partnership. Following today’s news, the SVP also said PayPal is looking at gaming, media, loyalty, and micropayments through crypto.
Great news for crypto & Web3 users overall!
In more good news from Consensus 2023 today: Mastercard announced a new crypto initiative in collaboration with Polygon, Solana, Ava, and more.
As part of the initiative, Mastercard will work to enhance verification in Nfts, ticketing, enterprise, and other payment solutions.
Some other specifics include:
Providing easy-to-remember, straightforward aliases to help consumers share wallet addresses with one another, improving the consumer experience and reducing the potential for errors.
Bringing richer information to blockchain transactions through metadata, helping to define attributes of a wallet to help ensure that transactions are completed as intended (such as network type or assets supported).
Tapping into CipherTrace’s suite of services — including CipherTrace Traveler — to help verify addresses and support Travel Rule compliance for cross border transactions.
“Mastercard Crypto Credential will establish a set of common standards and infrastructure that will help attest trusted interactions among consumers and businesses using blockchain networks.
There are several use cases that Mastercard Crypto Credential can unlock, as consumer and business verification needs vary widely based on market and compliance requirements.” - From Official Press release
Native / $2M —Nomad Capital has led a seed funding round of $2 million for Native, a financial infrastructure layer. — Native Labs
Zodia Custody / $36M — A digital-asset firm, Zodia Custody, has secured $36 million in a recent funding round led by Japan's SBI Holdings for its institutional grade crypto custody solution. — CoinDesk
Tribe3 / $2.1M— To date, Tribe3, a decentralized NFT futures exchange with social and gamified features, has raised a total of US$2.1 million in funding. — GlobeNewswire
Cata Labs / $4.2M — Spartan Group led a funding round for Cata Labs, which raised $4.2 million. Other participants in the round included Robot Ventures, Maven 11, Alchemy Ventures, HashKey Capital, Circle Ventures, and Superscrypt. — CoinDesk
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Note: Do you have a product or tool you’re building? Have one you’d suggest? DM us on twitter! We’re always happy to feature products from the TFC community.
Flipside
"Explore the best data and insights in Web3"
Type of Product: Analytics
Purpose of Tool: Flipside Crypto provides the most comprehensive and reliable blockchain data and the tools to build with it, and all the resources you need to create powerful blockchain-based applications and data insights. - all for free. Here's what you can do with Flipside:
The core Flipside App: With this app, you can analyze blockchain data, visualize it, and instantly share a dashboard. It's great for data exploration, analytical storytelling, and creating comprehensive dashboards.
ShroomDK, the developer-friendly API: Get around the app and submit queries from your development or data science environment. It's perfect for building a custom analytics app, constructing a trading model, or using Flipside data in R or Python for data science work.
Data Shares (via Snowflake): Get Flipside's entire database in your stack. This is ideal for teams that rely on blockchain data to operate, understand their users, or make applications more web3-connected.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On September 24th, 2019, Flipside Crypto raised $7.1 million in venture funding, led by Galaxy Digital Ventures. As of this writing, with Flipside Crypto, you can explore 102.5k Dashboards, and 33.3k Analysts listed on their platform.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
mint.fun
“Mint new NFT projects safely from one interface."
Type of Product: NFT Tool
Purpose of Tool: mint.fun is an interface that enables users to discover and mint new NFT projects in a safe and efficient manner. It offers a streamlined way to locate newly minted tokens, as well as all known minting options, without having to search across multiple websites.
Single Interface: mint.fun presents projects that are minting now in order of popularity, so users do not have to search across different sources. Furthermore, users can mint directly from mint.fun, as the interface connects wallets to the project contracts without taking fees.
Safety Checks: mint.fun runs automated safety checks on all projects and users are able to flag suspicious projects for the benefit of the entire community. Warning labels are shown for questionable projects so users know when to proceed with caution.
Maximum Information: mint.fun provides users with important information about a project such as its launch date, the % minted so far, the number of unique minters, top minters, creator wallet, and more. It even shows users what their Twitter friends are minting.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Manta Wallet
“The Fastest and Most Decentralized ZK Layer 1 for On-chain Privacy Applications"
Type of Product: Privacy
Purpose of Tool: Manta Wallet is an innovative browser extension that provides a secure and private way to manage, store and trade digital assets. It allows users to build zero-knowledge proofs and send and receive zkAssets, providing a layer of programmable privacy to web 3.0. Developed by the Manta Network, it is designed to have the fastest prover speed and most decentralized trusted setup available.
Manta Wallet’s Browser Extension lets you:
Create wallet accounts with both public address and zkAddress with a single mnemonic,
Import and persistently store the mnemonics and the derived private key,
View public assets and zkAssets in the wallet,
Connect to DApps and sign human-readable transactions from trusted DApps,
Encrypts your keys and mnemonics on your device,
Import private keys and mnemonics into your wallet,
Rotate your private key from within the wallet if needed,
Easily review and simulate transactions before signing them.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Manta Network is a privacy layer project for the Polkadot ecosystem. The project was created by a team of experienced founders hailing from renowned institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Algorand.
On October 19th, 2021, Manta Network secured $5.5M in funding led by over 30 venture funds, including the likes of CoinFund, a crypto hedge fund, and ParaFi Capital, an alternative investment firm.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Coinflow
"Enable Purchases In Seconds”
Type of Product: Web3 Payments
Purpose of Tool: Coinflow is a payment solution designed to enable web3 companies to accept traditional payment methods and process payouts in USD directly to their customers' bank accounts. The platform is ideal for games, NFT projects, wallets, and other web3 products looking to onboard non-crypto native customers with familiar and more traditional payment flows.
Some of the key features of Coinflow include:
Acceptance of credit card payments on-chain: With Coinflow, users can pay for goods and services instantly using their credit cards. This feature eliminates the need for users to convert their fiat currency to cryptocurrency before making payments.
Reduced onboarding friction: Coinflow makes it easy for users to pay for products and services. There are no cumbersome processes or additional steps involved in making payments, making it a more user-friendly experience.
Near-zero minimum spend: Most onramp solutions require a minimum payment, which can be as high as $30, making it difficult for users to get started. Coinflow solves this problem by allowing users to start with as little as $0.50 cents, making it more accessible to everyone.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On April 19, 2023, Coinflow Labs announced that it had successfully closed a pre-seed funding round of $1.45 million. The round was led by Jump Crypto and Reciprocal Ventures, and backed by CMT Digital, Digital Currency Group, Gumi Cryptos, Builder Capital, Prompt Ventures, Blocktech Ventures and a number of angel investors.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Revise | Builder Community | Link to product
Aztec | Events Tools | Link to product
Phaver | Dev Tool | Link to product
MetaFlyers | NFT Tool | Link to product
Bonfire | DEX | Link to product
Uniswap | Senior Product Designer | Link to position
Visa | Web3 Software Engineer | Link to position
Nokia | Bell Labs Web3 Researcher | Link to position
Shardeum | Software Engineer | Link to position
OKX | Data Engineer | Link to position
Pepsico | Web3 Assoc Manager | Link to position
Slingshot Finance | Content Marketing Specialist | Link to position
Optimism | Designer | Link to position
Outlier Ventures | Product Engineer | Link to position
Across Protocol | Smart Contract Engineer | Link to position
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Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. Always DYOR!