Advanced Blockchain Ecosystem Update October 2022
With the conclusion of November 2022, we are pleased to detail the many events of note that have taken place across the Advanced Blockchain ecosystem, including our portfolio companies. Here is all you need to know about these happenings. In this update, we'll take a look at the latest developments and events in the blockchain space and how they have influenced Advanced Blockchain and its portfolio companies:
Internal Updates within Advanced Blockchain
In the last weeks, we received from many of our supporters the question if Advanced Blockchain was directly or indirectly affected by the Downfall of FTX and Alameda. Overall, this was a significant event for the blockchain industry, as it took away a lot of trust in centralized trading platforms that were supposed to simplify the path to mass adoption. However, in our opinion, this just showed once again the importance of decentralization and the associated chance to independently verify information. FTX was a centralized player in the market, which goes against the ethos of blockchain. We are confident that innovation cannot be stopped and the Blockchain industry will recover. We are well prepared for the "crypto winter" as we are now operating only in the efficiently set up core team and thus have enough air to continue our business. We have kept the Dots and with the passive income from the Staking Rewards, we are funding some of the running costs.
"None of our investments have been actively impacted." However, we have two touching points which are also included in the FTX and Alameda portfolios. We made an investment in Near and hold a small USDC position on Polygon. Still, we do not consider this interface with FTX to be problematic, as both investments are active players in the Web 3 infrastructure space.
MKK and EKF Attendance
Our CEO Simon Telian and Head of Incubations Christopher Kraft both attended the german capital market conferences "34. Münchner Kapitalmarktkonferenz" and "Eigenkapitalforum Frankfurt" to represent the company and engage with potential investors. We were able to engage in exciting conversations and also got several follow-up 1:1 meetings scheduled.
“Todays blockchain markets remain extremely volatile and the case of FTX has shown that self-custody remains a top priority in the industry. We are confident that even after recent events and the feedback Advanced Blockchain received, the blockchain space remains a vibrant, powerful, and innovative industry” - Simon Telian, CEO, Advanced Blockchain AG
Telian also participated in a panel hosted by Deutsche Börse at this years Eigenkapitalforum. The live talk was recorded and made accessible via the following link: https://youtu.be/uy8VNpgh7Lo
Picture from left to right: Max Weiland / Dr Martin Steinbach / Caroline von Linsingen / Simon Telian during their “Listings 2022 in volatile times” panel at EKF
Successful Lean Operations
Since Telian took over as CEO, he began radically cutting costs and restructuring the company, resulting in a significantly lowered burn rate and vastly improved operational efficiency. This enabled us to relieve our cash flow and give us more room to make further investments at the end of this year, or in Q1 2023. The combination of the passive income from staking rewards, and our ability to react quickly to market developments make us confident that Advanced Blockchain is a well-positioned player in the industry, with sufficient liquidity to seize opportunities in the upcoming market.
Portfolio Company Updates: Incubations & Investments
Composable Finance
The long expected launch sequence for Picasso has begun on the 25th of November and eligible people can claim their PICA tokens finally. You are able to receive them to your wallet but you can’t move them until the TGE (Token Generation Event). A longer thread with the details can be found here.
Also this month the Composable Finance has been busy to road show their latest development and product updates. Some team members of Composable Finance have visited the Web Summit in Lisbon this month. At this conference they have showcased their work and vision of compromising DeFi for mass adoption.
Element Finance
Element Finance was integrated with Boardroom which allows snapshot voting, on-chain voting and delegation. Other than that a new fixed-rate pool called bb-a was approved by the Element DAO governance.
Panoptic
After the successful spin out of Panoptic reported in the last update a lot of work in the background is happening. The project team reported that all features of the first Panoptic version are implemented and are submitted for audit.
Arweave
Arweave reported that Meta is utilizing its solution for the storage of NFTs for Instagram.
Quasar Finance
Quasar has opened a community Telegram group to join and interact. Also its CEO Valentin Pletnev was hosted by the latest Fast & Crypto episode.
MYSO Finance
Myso has not only updated its whitepaper but also took the official testnet live. Users are able to take out Zero-Liquidation loans as well as to test out functionalities of providing liquidity and earning yield.
Mero
Mero took a functionality live which allows LPs earning yield with simultaneously using their liquidity as backup collateral. It is called Mero topup and more information about it can be found here.
Contago
The Contago team has showcased their Beta with a demo version at the ETH Gathering event in Barcelona from 19th to 20th of November.
Maverick
Maverick is engaging its community with the warrior program. This program is a robust framework that shall motivate and incentivize initiatives. It consists of a workflow and Maverick Warrior Credit (MCW) system.
Neonlabs
Neonlabs has partnered with Onomy Protocol and helps to scale their innovative suite of multi-chain DeFi products to a whole new user base. Onomy will be employing its hybrid DEX onto Neon. This unlocks additional cross-chain capabilities and enables the wider Solana community leveraging Neon’s EVM to place market, limit, stop and conditional orders, at zero trading fees.
Obol
Obol has launched their distributed validator launchpad with a user friendly interface to easily and in a secure way launch a distributed validator cluster. On top of that are some very interesting background developments we hope to be able to announce in the next ecosystem update!
Manta
The team has completed the delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) migration for Calamari, enabling on-chain staking of KMA and becoming a Collator. Users can now also stake their KMA on the platform. A comprehensive update of the month can be found here.
Light
Light makes a step forward towards bringing compliance hand in hand with privacy by launching their zk transaction history which can be used as a verifiable source of funds proof for a user deposited assets on the protocol. This feature is live on Light Shield.
Alluo Finance
Alluo Finance hosted their pre-hackathon and presented how to create interest bearing and streamable USD/ETH/BTC flows at the ETHGlobal event in San Francisco. At the beginning of the month the team added a feature to auto invest and to take advantage of the Dollar cost average (DCA) effect.
Component Finance
The ecosystem development team has officially launched the PerpSim LP Suite Beta und perpsim.com. PerSim is a user-friendly simulation tool for providing liquidity on Perpetual Protocol’s Perp v2.
Instrumental Finance
Instrumental Finance has announced after Composable Finance’s Picasso launch sequence news that they are working to deploy on Picasso and leverage yield opportunities for users across the Substrate and IBC ecosystem.
Mekatek
Mekatek has launched Zenith on Evmos and joins Juno Network and Osmosis in having access to a competitive and transparent blockspace market. Evmos validators can now offer blockspace efficiently and increase revenue for their stakers while getting closer to being sustainable. An article about toxic order flow going more in detail about the issue was published on Mekatek’s blog earlier.
Tgrade
Tgrade has open-sourced its dApp to enable decentralization even more. This is a follow up step after designing Tgrade around proof of engagement as a consensus mechanism instead of proof of stake which gave concerns about concentration of power in a small number of validators. With open-sourcing the application Tgrade gives the community a chance not only to verify and govern the code and dApp but also to build on it easier than before.
Peaq Network
November has been a busy month for the Peaq team. The ecosystem grants program was launched which allows people building on peaq to apply for financial backing of their projects. Next to that a couple of partnerships were closed, especially with OnFinality, Ocean Protocol and Crust Network. Last but not least the team presented Polkadot and themselves at WebSummit and had an on-site team meeting on Mallorca. A summary of all happenings can be found here.
Pendulum Chain
Pendulum has announced that its Polkadot crowdload will start in the upcoming month on 16th December. On top of that Pendulum announced a partnership with Acurast.
Fractal Protocol
Fractal has distributed the second round of KYC incentives and fulfilled all verification requirements of the .bit branding reserved program. Next to that the product has pivoted from Acala to Gnosis, which allows to launch the bridge and staking sooner and Fractal is teaming up with 5 students from the University of Florida to work on a project together.
Sigmadex
Sigma Labs, the organization behind Sigmadex, has officially opened the claim of sSDEX for anybody on the Avalanche network. Other than that some smaller updates about product development have been shared here and here.
zCloak Network
zCloak has completed designing and implementing its fir DID method based on the W3C DID standard. On the product side, zCloak has updated its Credential Platform product combined and integrated with the new DID and VC protocol. On 23rd November a partnership with Scroll was announced. It is planned to work together to provide a privacy-preserving identity service on Ethereum L2 for Scroll users. Again, the partnership will focus on bringing a W3C compatible DID and VC platform on SCroll’s L2 architecture. More details on updates can be found here.
Apricot Finance
Apricot has altered temporarily the LTV limits on its platform in multiple steps to keep the platform safe. Apricot confirmed that it got hit by the issues around the Solana network but confirmed that they are not in danger of closing down. The LTV changes are cautious steps to avoid unexpected problems.
Talisman
Talisman took the expected feature for staking small portions of DOT live. With this feature users can stake easily and within seconds their DOT without the trouble of running a validator. Next to that the team has improved and upgraded its platform security including an updated password policy and advanced password encryption. On the business side the team was able to enable user to connect Nodle, Centrifuge and Acala with Talisman through their Ledger hardware wallet.
NEAR Protocol
Many updates and news for NEAR this month. NEAR has reported that it has over 20 million wallets registered in total (plus over 2 million NFTs minted!) and is integrated with Binance Custody, an institutional-grad digital asset custody solution. There were also more news on an institutional level: Bitcoin Suisse announced the full support of NEAR as part of their institutional investors offering. Also the team launched a regional hub in South Korea. Through this hub the team wants to lay the foundation for Web3 gaming’s future in Korea.
Moxy
Moxy has announced three new advisors joining the team. First announced advisor is Germain Gioia. Other than that the team is still working on the TGE.
Warp Finance
The team has published Devlog #18 laying down what has happened. The team is working on the feedback received for the Chisel audit and other features which can be taken from the linked Medium article.
Sentinel dVPN
Sentinel dVPN has posted several updates to their product suite and released with MathNodes their new Linux dVPN. The team was also reporting that over 4,000 activations and claimers within the first month have signed in to a give-aways which is a great number to the team.
Portfolio companies without updates:
FinPro - Please visit the website for more information.
Trace Bloc - Please visit the website for more information.
Stela Labs - Please visit the website for more information.
Fragnova - Please visit the website for more information.
Forest Park Group - Please visit the website for more information.
Polymer Labs - Please visit the website for more information.
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