Protocol Village: EigenLayer, Cubist in New ‘Secure Staking Alliance’ for Anti-Slashing Standards

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Nov. 9: Cubist, a crypto wallet-as-a-service provider, announced a new “Secure Staking Alliance” that also includes EigenLayer, Babylon, BridgeTower, Ankr and Redacted, along with several staking-related, security and interoperability protocols. According to a press release: “We are collaborating on technical standards and best practices that will help teams design, build, and run secure staking infrastructure. For example, we are writing specifications that will guide new protocols towards design points that consider “anti-slashers” from the start, making it possible to run secure validators (i.e., validators that won’t get slashed) even in the presence of bugs and human errors.”

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JPMorgan Adds Programmable Payments to JPM Coin

Nov. 10: Users of JPMorgan’s (JPM) blockchain-based settlement token, JPM Coin, can now program their accounts to make payments automatically according to preset conditions. The financial giant is allowing clients to plug in conditions for funds to be moved to cover overdue payments or margin calls, according to an email on Friday.

Interop Ventures Raises $3.85M for ‘Interchain Economy’

Nov. 9: Interop Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that says it invests in the “Interchain economy,” has raised $3.85 million from investors including KR1, LBank Labs and Sunny Aggarwal. According to a press release, the fund is particularly focused on the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem: “The Interchain ecosystem and the Cosmos technology stack have always been at the forefront of innovation, and we believe will play a crucial role in fulfilling this vision,” said Sebastian Couture, general partner at Interop Ventures. (ATOM)

Polygon Labs Commences $85M Grant Program to Draw Builders to Its Ecosystem

Nov. 9: Ethereum scaling platform Polygon Labs has started a grant program to entice developers to build applications in its ecosystem. Polygon Labs is offering a total of 110 million of its native token, MATIC, worth around $85 million at the time of writing, to projects in decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, social media and more. $MATIC

Risc Zero Open-Sources Technologies

Nov. 9: RISC Zero, developers of a general purpose zero-knowledge (ZK) virtual machine technology, announced the open sourcing of three key technologies as public goods for zero knowledge cryptography and blockchain developers. According to the team: “developers can now modify, enhance, audit and sublicense these potent tools under the permissive and community-friendly Apache2 license.”

Zircuit Launches New zkEVM Rollup

Nov. 9: Zircuit, a new EVM-compatible ZK rollup, is announcing its public testnet launch. According to the team: “Zircuit uses a hybrid approach that combines the latest ZK proofs with optimistic infrastructure. More efficient proof generation results in reduced fees and the development of new compression algorithms increases transaction speeds and saves users gas. By having security at the sequencer level, Zircuit will block any malicious transactions while still allowing developers to see an attempt to hack.”

Moflix Raises $3.1M to ‘Explore Ways of Incorporating’ Hedera Tech

Nov. 9: Moflix, which provides end-to-end digital solutions for “cloud-native, all-digital telco-in-an-app,” has raised a $3.1 million seed funding round with participation from The Hashgraph Association (THA), the Swiss-based non-profit organization accelerating the adoption of the Hedera network globally, alongside other strategic investors. According to the team: “THA’s financial commitment and engineering expertise will enable Moflix to explore ways of incorporating Hedera’s technology into its offering, empowering telcos to offer infrastructure, platforms, applications and user experiences for a Web3-enabled world.” (HBAR)

Stackr, Provider of Tools for ‘Micro-Rollups,’ Raises $5.5M

Nov. 9: Stackr Labs, provider of a software development kit to build app-specific “micro-rollups” using Web2 programming languages such as JavaScript and Python, announced its Seed round, raising a total of $5.5 million, according to the team. “The round was led by Archetype, with participation from Lemniscap, a16z CCS, Superscrypt, a_capital, Spartan, Scalar Capital, t0 Capital, as well as a host of angel investors including Anurag Arjun, Sreeram Kanan, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Arjun Bhuptani, Rahul Sethuram, Layne Haber, Lito Coen, Andrew Keys and Devfolio. The raised funds will be used to support team expansion, prepare for the upcoming v1 launch of the platform and to expand Stackr’s developer ecosystem.”

Standard Chartered, SBI Holdings Establishing $100M Investment Firm Targeting Crypto Startups

Nov. 9: Standard Chartered’s (STAN) venture arm is teaming up with Japanese financial services firm SBI Holdings to form an investment company with $100 million backing to target crypto startups. SC Ventures and SBI Holdings’ Digital Asset Joint Venture investment company will be established in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and focus on firms in market infrastructure, risk and compliance, decentralized finance (DeFi) and tokenization, according to a Thursday email.

Edited by Bradley Keoun.