⚡ TFC Newsletter: 05/19/2023
Pudgy Penguins & Axie Infinity Add Mainstream Launches, Web3 Data, MEV Security, Web3 Developer Tooling, and more!
💡 Intro
🥳 Happy Friday!
Here’s some good Web3 news to end the week: Another week in Web3 is down, and it’s ending on a successful launch from Pudgy Penguins with their Amazon toy sale breaking 500k in sales in just 2 days.
The toys come with blockchain based components including a “birth certificate” and QR code that unlocks NFTs or a trade-able traits on their online platform, Pudgy World.
👀 This potentially is a great way to onboard new entrants into Web3 and the toys are already #1 in New Releases on Amazon for Toys & Games.
Also: Axie’s mobile app finally got approved in the App Store. It’ll be interesting to see how the App launch goes, but this gives millions of people new access into Web3 gaming.
👉 Note for TFC Rewards Club Members: Next update is coming out Sunday, we have a protocol breakdown so don’t miss it!
Have a good weekend and see you all next week!
Normally we feature other Web3 tool updates, but this time we have our own!
The TFC team has been hard at work the past month redeveloping a lot of the site, to make it more user friendly + have useful features for product discovery.
👉 Note: there may be some bugs here and there until the full site is rolled out end of month, so bear with us!
We have a major update coming in a couple weeks around the site mechanics, so this is all in prep for that!
New Updates Include:
Bookmark & Save Your Favorite Products For Later: It’s always annoying when you find a great tool, try to think of it later on, and can’t remember the link! We’ve added a Bookmark icon to each listing and once you bookmark it, it appears on your Account Page in a saved section.
Search For Products: Search is now live on the site. It works off the product name (we’re adding full text search in the next couple weeks so be on the lookout for that).
More Granular Categorization: We now have 140+ categories on the site, to make it easier to find older products in the categories you want.
Azteco / $6M — Azteco, a Bitcoin purchasing service, secures $6M in seed funding, with Jack Dorsey as the lead investor. Other participants include Lightning Ventures, Hivemind Ventures, Ride Wave, Aleka Capital, Visary Capital, Gaingels, David Van Der Weele, and Sunil Rajaraman. — FinSMEs
CyberConnect / $5.4M — CyberConnect, the Web3 social graph protocol, successfully concludes its CoinList token public sale, raising $5.4M at a token price of $1.80 for CYBER. — ICO Analytics
PYOR / $4M — PYOR (Power Your Own Research), a leader in providing accurate data and insights for the digital assets industry, secures $4M in seed funding led by Castle Island Ventures. — FinSMEs
Lagrange Labs / $4M — Lagrange Labs, a cross-chain infrastructure startup specializing in zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, raises $4M in pre-seed funding. The investment is led by 1kx, with participation from Maven11, Lattice Fund, CMT Digital, and Daedalus Angels. — 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.
Wallchain
"The most used MEV-Recovery on BNB and Polygon."
Type of Product: MEV Security
Purpose of Tool: Wallchain protects users from external MEV attacks. It integrates with DeFi platforms and eliminates malicious bots to capture profits, which significantly increases DEX/Wallet revenue and provides cashback to users. Unlike other solutions, Wallchain partners with Protocols to protect their users against malicious activity and guarantees additional value extraction from transactions.
Cost-effective: Wallchain applies the most cost-effective MEV strategies to outcompete bots. It operates at the level of the transaction, independent of external parties such as validators and searchers. This results in 90% less gas cost, blockchain agnostic feature, and avoids paying 45% extra to validators and searchers.
Cashback Guarantee: Users are guaranteed to receive cash back from those transactions that provide MEV opportunities. Wallchain applies complex strategies to find these opportunities for you and extracts value from them via additional transactions.
Profitable: With high-level analysis algorithms, Wallchain guarantees a profit on the result even though the amount may vary from opportunity to opportunity. The tool processes each specific trade you make in order to define and execute its strategy successfully, ensuring that your transaction costs do not exceed your profit.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Wallchain was founded by Yurii Kyparus, who is a Y Combinator alumnus, and Max Bevza, who has over 12 years of experience in machine learning and algorithm research. Both founders have previous experience as entrepreneurs. The team has a strong background in technology, having worked for companies such as Google, Meta, and Grammarly.
Coinbase One
“Get more out of crypto with one membership"
Type of Product: Trading
Purpose of Tool: Coinbase One is a subscription product offered to Coinbase users that provides access to exclusive benefits. With Coinbase One membership, users can get more out of their crypto investments. Here are the features of Coinbase One:
Zero Trading Fees: Members can pay zero trading fees on hundreds of assets, although limits and spread fees may apply.
Boosted Staking Rewards: Users can activate up to 6.94% APY on eligible reward-earning assets, earning more rewards for their staked coins.
Priority Support: Members have access to dedicated support teams available 24/7, 365 days a year, ensuring they get answers when they need them.
Pre-filled Tax Forms: During tax season, members can navigate crypto taxes with ease thanks to courtesy pre-filled Form 8949 that they can file directly.
Exclusive Prizes: Members have the chance to enter sweepstakes for exclusive
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Just today: Coinbase One is a new subscription service just recently announced yesterday on May 18th. It would be available for a monthly fee of $29.99. Additionally, Coinbase One would be expanding its availability to include the United Kingdom, Germany, and Ireland.
Defined
“Enriched Blockchain Data"
Type of Product: Web3 Data
Purpose of Tool: Defined is a data platform that allows users to access on-chain data and interact across multiple blockchains and DeFi protocols. Defined provides information/trading volume from top NFT projects while giving users the ability to see attributes and transaction histories; track the value of NFT portfolios across marketplaces.
Defined also provides tools to help users manage yields across networks; curate a list of governance proposals for tokens they own. Access to Defined’s dataset enables users to build their reports/dashboards on everything happening across multiple networks. They can also analyze individual wallets or find the most profitable traders across various time ranges.
Enhanced Data: Users can get the exact value of every real-time or historical on-chain transaction in USD pricing. Real-time aggregates such as volume, liquidity, unique wallets are available instantly for multiple timeframes. The data is structured and typed for easy understanding.
Multiple Delivery Options: Users can access data in real-time through queryable on-chain options that take less than 3 seconds. The platform also offers live-streaming data over unbroken connections through websockets and alerts via webhooks when anything happens on-chain.
Filter and Search: With powerful filters such as sorting by volume, liquidity, number of transactions, etc., users can find any token or NFT in under 500ms. Automatic indexing ensures new assets are immediately available after creation. A search demo app demonstrates the power of these filters.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On May 28th, 2021, Defined received a seed investment of $2.5m led by an investment firm and included participation from various notable investors such as Mark Cuban, Balaji Srinivasan, and Compound.
Defined is also featured as one of the presenting companies in the latest cohort of Alliance DAO, after being an active participant for several months. The company showcased its products during the event.
Link to product | Link to TFC listing
Caldera
Type of Product: Dev Tool
Purpose of Tool: Caldera specializes in building layer-two blockchains that are high-performance, customizable, and application-specific. These custom-built blockchains, known as Caldera Chains, offer features such as high throughput, low latency, and customizable options to optimize the performance and user experience of decentralized applications.
For DeFi:
Dedicated Lane: A scalable, dedicated transaction layer that protects against gas fee spikes or network outages.
Native Bridging: Utilize the two-way trustless bridge on your Caldera chain to avoid centralized bridging risk and keep assets secure.
Mempool Design Control: Choose to internalize MEV as transaction revenue or implement a fair ordering scheme with complete control over mempool design.
For Games:
Massive Scale: Process thousands of transactions per second to support game economies with millions of players. More scale can be achieved by launching multiple Caldera chains.
Gasless Transactions: Improve user experience by enabling gasless transactions without requiring users to buy ETH or MATIC to interact with the app.
On-chain Differentiation: Implement game or NFT rendering logic on-chain without worrying about high transaction costs.
For DAOs:
Ecosystem Internalization: Launch DAO-supported projects on your dedicated Caldera Chain, aligning incentives with the DAO.
Governance Token Utility: Designate governance token as chain's gas-paying token increasing its utility.
Sustainable Revenue Generation: Re-invest proceeds from transaction fees and/or MEV back into the DAO creating a revenue-generating flywheel.
Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: On February 13, 2023, Caldera, a startup founded in March 2022 by Matt Katz and Parker Jou, had raised $9 million in funding across two rounds. The investment was led by Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital and Ani Pai of Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Neo, 1kx, and Ethereal Ventures.
Magic Eden | Social Media Manager | Link to position
Tether | European Project Manager | Link to position
WalletConnect | Web3 Communications Associate | Link to position
Paradigm | Senior Technical Recruiter | Link to position
Polygon | Chief Of Staff | Link to position
Messari | Research Analyst | Link to position
Phantom | Front End Engineer | Link to position
Treehouse | UI/UX Design Intern | Link to position
Aptos | Software Engineer | Link to position
Outlier Ventures | Social Lead | Link to position
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Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. Always DYOR!