⚡ TFC Newsletter: 05/04/2023
Sports Illustrated Launches NFT Tickets, Uniswap Wallet Soars, Encrypted Email, Options Trading, Web3 Music, and more!
💡 Intro
Sports Illustrated Introduces NFT Ticketing Platform on Polygon: SI's innovative service, named "Box Office" enables event planners to distribute NFT tickets with sentimental value, incorporating pre-event and post-event benefits for attendees.
How It Works:
It was developed in partnership with ConsenSys and operates on Polygon
It allows owners, organizers and hosts the ability to create, manage and promote a fully scalable, paid or free ticketed live sporting event.
Attendees will retain the tickets for their event in their digital wallets indefinitely
Why It Matters:
"From the moment we launched our global event marketplace, which now boasts 50 million tickets to over 250,000 sports, concerts and shows, we have been preparing to enter and disrupt the primary ticket market." - SI Tickets CEO David Lane
SI Tickets does major business: over $2.5 billion in marketplace inventory.
In total, they have over 50M tickets distributed between 250k events.
NFT tickets have major adoption potential as they provide unique advantages over traditional digital tickets (including verification and easy resale capabilities)
One large ticket distributor successfully using NFT tickets can mean other distributers adopt them as well
Uniswap Wallet Soars in Activity: Launched just 2 weeks ago, Uniswap's new wallet surpassed 20k DAUs this week.
And just yesterday: it broke into the top 100 on the Apple Store (pic below).
The wallet space is highly competitive, with numerous well-resourced and funded teams vying for the same users.
However, this is beneficial for Web3 users overall: as it means wallet companies need to reward them for using their platforms!
And who doesn't like rewards 😁
Vibe / $4M — Vibe, a platform that turns NFTs into physical products, raised $4 million in seed funding from Alchemy, Aglaé Ventures, P Nation, and others. — CoinDesk
zkLink / $10M — Infrastructure layer ZkLink secured $10M in strategic funding from investors including Coinbase Ventures for its infrastructure layer simplifying cross-chain asset trading. — CoinDesk
Fedi / $17M — Fedi, a U.S. financial and data technology developer, raised $17M in a Series A round led by Ego Death Capital, with participation from TBD, Kingsway, Trammell Venture Partners, and Timechain. — FinSMEs
Portals / $2M — DeFi aggregator Portals secures $2M Seed funding led by Lightshift Capital with participation from several investors such Poolside, Basement Labs, LongHash Ventures, Daedalus Angels, Mechanism Capital and others. — Finbold
AlienSwap / $12M — NFT marketplace AlienSwap raised $12M in a strategic funding round led by NEXT Leader Capital and C² Ventures to develop a top NFT trading layer. — FinSMEs
OpenTrade / $1.5M — OpenTrade, a provider of on-chain financial products for Web3 businesses, raised $1.5M in funding led by Sino Global Capital. — 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.
Skiff
"Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email"
Type of Product: Open-Source Email Service
Purpose of Tool: Skiff is a secure email service and collaboration tool that offers end-to-end encryption. It provides users with a private email inbox that allows them to communicate freely with anyone without worrying about their personal information being shared or sold. Skiff's Drive suite is also available, which includes a document-sharing tool called Pages, which currently stores files on IPFS.
Skiff Mail: This is an end-to-end encrypted email service that protects users' inboxes and allows for free communication between Skiff users. External mail is also encrypted upon receipt.
Skiff Pages: Users can protect their notes, documents, and wikis with Skiff Pages, which are also end-to-end encrypted. Users can create teams and delegate permissions as needed.
Skiff Drive: Skiff Drive provides end-to-end encrypted protection for files, documents, and photos. Users receive 10 GB of free storage and can easily migrate from other storage services.
Skiff Calendar: This tool keeps users' schedules end-to-end encrypted and automatically updates events sent to their Skiff inbox.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On March 29th, 2022, Skiff completed their Series A funding round, which raised $10.5 million and was led by Sequoia Capital. This round followed a previous seed round, also led by Sequoia, which raised $4.2 million. Skiff have diverse group of angel investors to their company, including individuals with expertise in privacy and decentralization such as John Lilly, Balaji Srinivasan, Gaby Goldberg, and Albert Ni.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Sound
“Discover amazing new music and prove that you were there first."
Type of Product: Web3 Music
Purpose of Tool: Sound is a music platform that aims to create a more collaborative music movement, built on web3 technology and values. It allows fans to support their favorite artists directly and stake their claim on being there before everyone else. Some of the key features of Sound are:
We’ve featured Sound before, but they’ve made a major jump in activity since then.
They’re now a clear leader in Web3 Music space.
Launch Listening Parties: Sound provides artists with the opportunity to debut new music as a set of NFTs. Each edition of the NFT is numbered uniquely, allowing listeners to showcase their early support.
Own the Moment: Each Sound NFT is more than just the song. Owning a song’s NFT grants the backer the ability to make a public comment on the song, which is a unique feature.
Create a Culture: Sound NFTs are your access pass to the Sound community on Discord where artists and listeners interact with each other. The community engages in weekly hangouts, collaborative projects, and more. Artists can also include additional benefits for their backers, ranging from exclusive listens of unreleased songs to concert tickets.
Decentralized Storage: All metadata for NFTs sold through Sound is uploaded to Arweave, a permanent and decentralized storage network that guarantees permanence. Artists have full control over the metadata, even if Sound ceases to exist.
True Ownership and Provenance: Contracts deployed on the Sound Protocol are completely artist-owned and non-upgradeable. Unlike other platforms, artists on Sound retain true ownership and provenance over their work.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On December 15, 2021, Sound.xyz was able to secure $5 million in seed funding. The round was made possible with the backing of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Variant Fund, Li Jin’s Atelier Ventures, as well as contributions from crypto angels and popular artists such as Holly Herndon, 21 Savage, and DJ Drama.
The Sound team is led by co-founder David Greenstein, who recruited two co-founders with technical backgrounds to set the company in motion: Vignesh Hirudayakanth and Matt Masurka, better known as the electronic musician Gigamesh.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Portals
“A yield and protocol aggregator for transaction bundling, any-to-any swaps, and real-time data"
Type of Product: DeFi
Purpose of Tool: Portals is a platform that facilitates yield and protocol aggregation, allowing users to bundle complex actions into a single transaction with ease. Here are some of the features that make Portals a unique and valuable tool for DeFi enthusiasts and builders alike:
With Portals, users can combine multiple steps into a single multicall transaction that swaps tokens of different types, such as liquidity pool, vault, or simple tokens, for any other token. This functionality streamlines the DeFi process and saves users time and effort.
Portals enables users to stake their liquidity and earn yield from over 20,000 opportunities across various platforms, with new options being added regularly.
Portals offers a powerful API that allows developers to query data from various DeFi protocols, including LP and token prices, liquidity and pool data, account balances, and more. This data can be used to make informed investment decisions and build more sophisticated DeFi applications.
DeFi API for builders: Portals can be easily integrated into any DeFi project with just a few lines of code. This simplifies the development process and makes it possible for anyone to create their own multi-step DeFi transactions with a simple API request.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Just yesterday on May 3rd, 2023, Portals announced the successful closing of a $2M seed funding round. The round was led by Lightshift Capital and included participation from Basement Labs, LongHash Ventures, Daedalus Angels, Mechanism Capital, and several prominent angels. Portals was also chosen to be part of the inaugural cohort of Poolside Accelerator, receiving $100,000 in funding and mentorship.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Aevo
"On-Chain Options Trading Has Arrived”
Type of Product: Options Trading
Purpose of Tool: Aevo is a decentralized options exchange that operates on a custom EVM roll-up that rolls up to Ethereum. It runs an off-chain orderbook with on-chain settlements, which means that trades get executed and settled with smart contracts once orders are matched.
High-Performance Orderbooks, Matching Engine, and Risk Engine: Aevo Exchange processes thousands of events per second, thanks to its high-performance orderbooks, matching engine, and risk engine. This ensures that trades are executed quickly and accurately, making it an ideal platform for traders who want to take advantage of market opportunities.
Built on Aevo Chain: Aevo Chain is an optimistic roll-up to Ethereum that runs on the OP Stack. This makes it secure, scalable, and fast, and allows Aevo to offer liquid options markets across expiries.
Standard Margin and Portfolio Margin: Aevo Exchange supports both standard margin and portfolio margin, giving power users flexibility with their trading strategies. This means that traders can choose the margin type that suits their risk tolerance and investment goals.
Instant Bridging and Fast Withdrawal Times: Aevo Exchange offers instant bridging into Aevo Chain, which means that users can easily move their funds between the two platforms. It also has fast withdrawal times, which ensures that users can access their funds quickly and easily.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On April 7, 2023, Aevo officially announced its launch. Despite being a new exchange, invites to users will be slowly released through the use of Aevo $PASS, an NFT that grants access to trade on the platform. Approximately 4,000 $PASS have been distributed to wallets belonging to existing Ribbon users, Ribbon VIPs, partners, and early Aevo testers.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
NFT Scoring | Builder Community | Link to product
ThirdWeb | Events Tools | Link to product
BlockWallet | Dev Tool | Link to product
Across | NFT Tool | Link to product
Cookbook | DEX | Link to product
Sygma | Technical Product Lead | Link to position
O(1) Labs | Senior Technical Product Manager - Mina Protocol | Link to position
Talisman | UI/UX Product Designer | Link to position
WalletConnect | Full-Stack Data Engineer | Link to position
Nethermind | Internship Program | Link to position
Bluesky | Web Developer | Link to position
Glassnode | CRM Manager | Link to position
MetaMask | Product Designer - Portfolio, Assets, and NFTs | Link to position
Obol Labs | Technical Customer Success Manager | Link to position
Status | Activist Copywriter | Link to position
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