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Tendermint, an open network infrastructure provider with a focus on the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem, and the Interchain Foundation (ICF) today announced a partnership with Forte, an organization building a blockchain platform for video games.

As core contributors to the Cosmos Network, Tendermint’s partnership with Forte creates accessibility to blockchain gaming for all developers and gamers who can easily integrate their gaming ecosystems with the Cosmos interoperable blockchain network.

“With almost three billion gamers around the world and immense interest surrounding NFTs, the partnership with Forte will help propel Cosmos to a wider audience and solidify our place as a leading blockchain ecosystem. We have already built the industry’s best tools for blockchain development like Cosmos SDK and Starport. Now we want to make it easier for game developers and players to join the Cosmos community as well,” said Peng Zhong, CEO of Tendermint.

Cosmos + Forte 

Forte provides the blockchain infrastructure for game developers and players, such as cryptocurrency wallets that store virtual assets and NFTs, in a secure, easy-to-use, and fully compliant package

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Cosmos to bring their technologies to our community of developers, players, and fans,” said Josh Williams, Forte’s CEO and Cofounder. “Our alignment on scalability, usability, and interoperability makes them an ideal partner in building a more sustainable and equitable ecosystem for games, and the billions of people who play them.”

Earlier this year, the Forte team raised $185M in Series A funding led by Griffin Gaming Partners, and there are more than 25 game developers building on Forte’s platform, including pioneers Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims), Jeff Tunnell (Starsiege: Tribes, Social City), and Hi-Rez Studios (Smite, Paladins).

To date, Forte has created more than 10 million wallets, minted over 5 million NFTs, and has over 8 million monthly active users across its partner games.

“Forte and Cosmos share a vision of applications and economies built around passionate communities. Now that the technology is mature, I’m thrilled to work with Forte who can onboard the next generation of game developers and users, bringing Cosmos gaming to the mainstream,” said Billy Rennekamp, Grants Manager on the Board of Management at ICF.

Integration

Cosmos developers will work with Forte to ensure that all third-party game developers on the Forte platform can access Cosmos’ technology and easily integrate their games with the Cosmos network.

Plus, Forte will add ATOM and other Cosmos-enabled assets, such as stablecoins, to the Forte network to be used as payment, liquidity, or collateral for users, greatly increasing the utility of the ATOM token, and helping create a better experience for developers and players. Cosmos Hub wallets and accounts will too be integrated within the Forte wallet architecture.

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Outlier Ventures, the European blockchain accelerator ecosystem, today announced that Polygon, the Ethereum scaling platform – has been chosen for Outlier’s latest Base Camp Accelerator program.

To date, Outlier Ventures has accelerated more than 90 Web3 startups since 2014 and has grown a network of thousands of blockchain founders through its Ascent advisory program and quarterly Diffusion community event. Outlier Ventures is uniquely positioned to stimulate developer activity and growth on the Polygon network by collaborating with mentors from Polygon and its ecosystem players to host this rigorous five-month accelerator program.

Polygon

The Polygon ecosystem emerged in 2021 as a hub for scaling Ethereum-based apps, collecting more than $10 billion in value locked in the ecosystem through bridges from Ethereum, and hundreds of millions of dedicated venture capital is anticipated to enter the space to fund startups building on Polygon.

Following its success with the launch of ecosystem accelerators with the likes of Polkadot and Filecoin, Outlier Ventures is looking for a variety of teams using Polygon — from crypto natives to Web2 founders and enterprise professionals — to build high-growth startups and decentralized apps and networks.

Now open for applications, the Polygon x Base Camp Accelerator program will begin in early 2022.

Up to eight teams will join an intensive five-month program that supports founders with fundraising, community growth, token design and implementation, business model innovation, and governance, in addition to gaining access to Outlier Ventures’ mentor network of leading Web3 founders.

The accelerator will also serve as a catalyst for founders developing their projects within the context of Outlier Ventures’ Open Metaverse thesis, a toolkit for design alternatives based on principles of user-centricity and sovereignty of identity, data, and wealth.

Projects will be selected for the cohort-based upon their ability to grow the Polygon ecosystem, with a focus on the following use cases and tooling:

NFTs & Gaming

• NFT franchises and media studios
• NFT marketplaces
• Play-to-earn games

Gaming Ecosystems & Infrastructure

• Game studios
• Gaming engines
• No-loss lotteries
• Decentralized music royalties

Infrastructure

• B2B solutions & services supporting Polygon
• Developer tools and smart contracts
• DAO infrastructure
• IoT infrastructure
• File storage
• Oracles and data curation

Middleware

• Wallets and access services cross chain
• Sustainability and environmental impact

DeFi

• Decentralized banks and related services
• Crowdfunding DApps
• Yield aggregators
• ESCROW services supporting Polygon
• Multi-chain DEXes
• DeFi/gaming combos
• Insurance initiatives
• Fixed Interest solutions
• Decentralized perpetual contracts

Services

• DeFi-related services supporting Polygon
• Decentralized social media
• Decentralized legal services supporting Polygon
• Identity and privacy-enhancing services supporting Polygon
• Supply-chain tracking

“Polygon has helped take the Ethereum ecosystem to the next level, making new use cases possible that require low fee and high throughput transactions, so it was a natural partner for us to help accelerate the Web3 ecosystem.” 
– Jamie Burke, Founder & CEO of Outlier Ventures

Outlier Ventures aims to invest in a diverse founder base and encourages teams from all backgrounds and especially those from communities that are underrepresented in the Web3 and tech industry to apply.

“As the leading solution for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development, It is vital to support and encourage development on Polygon as the network becomes essential for broader Web 3 growth. As such, we’re delighted that Polygon has been chosen for Outlier’s latest Accelerator program. Following the successes of the previous accelerators, we have high hopes that the program will discover the best the Polygon network has to offer to help drive developer activity and expedite ecosystem growth.”
– Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon

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Huobi Japan, a bitcoin and crypto exchange company, today announced it has received approval from Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) to register as a Type I Financial Instruments Business, as designated under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.

This will enable Huobi Japan to engage in the trading, underwriting, and management of cryptocurrency derivatives, as well as operate derivatives trading systems. The FSA is the chief regulatory authority for financial services in Japan, overseeing the banking, securities and exchange, and insurance sectors.

Currently, only seven out of the total 34 cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan possess this license, which requires the holder to meet specific asset levels. Without this license, the cryptocurrency exchanges may only offer limited spot trading services of cryptocurrencies for customers.

“We’re very excited to have reached this milestone. It will enable us to expand business beyond spot trading and fuel the next phase of our growth in Japan. Going forward, we plan to develop a number of crypto derivatives products to meet the growing demands of the market.”
– Huobi Japan CEO, Haiteng Chen

In June 2020, Huobi Token (HT) received approval from local regulatory authorities in Japan to list HT as a fully compliant crypto asset. Going forward, Huobi Japan plans to significantly expand its trading services and capabilities in Japan. As of September 2021, Huobi Japan offers spot trading services of 14 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Huobi Token (HT).

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Asia Digital Bank Ltd. (ADB), the first recipient of the Digital Banking license issued by Labuan Financial Services Authority in Malaysia and digital asset operator, announced a strategic partnership with Bianjie, IRISnet’s Core team, and a Cosmos Core Contributor since genesis.

ADB with Bianjie’s support plans to build a new blockchain-based infrastructure that supports the integration of centralized and decentralized financial services.

Powered by Cosmos’ scalable, sovereign, interoperable blockchain stack, this new digital banking infrastructure will support the realization of a lawful self-service financial paradigm. Utilizing DID, NFT, big data privacy protection, and interchain technologies via the Cosmos-based enterprise suite, IRITA, ADB’s firms, and individual users can manage both centralized bank accounts as well as accounts on open distributed ledgers connected through Cosmos/IRISnet Hubs.

Bianjie continues to expand Cosmos’ footprint into the enterprise blockchain space through building the Cosmos-SDK-based IRITA consortium blockchain framework. IRITA  will be used to build this Asia DB initiated open permissioned blockchain (OPB) to connect its banking business partners and other ecological service collaborators from different countries.

Last year, Bianjie launched WenChang Chain, the first Blockchain Services Network (BSN) Open Permissioned Blockchain (OPB) initiative to go to market. This OPB will support legal-friendly stablecoin issuing, digital asset exchange, asset-based securities issuing, and cross-border payments for global commerce. Additionally, this OPB  will integrate with the Cosmos ecosystem through IRISnet Hub for an open, inclusive, and legal-friendly financial services paradigm.

IRISnet + ADB

“We are delighted to have the leading blockchain technology innovator Bianjie join forces with Asia DB. This technical cooperation is going to expedite our new generation of digital banking system development. With Bianjie’s support, we believe through the adoption of advanced enterprises-oriented Cosmos-based blockchain stacks, we can support innovative financial services that will generate lasting impacts for ASEAN, China, the Islamic financial market, and the whole world in building an inclusive financial ecosystem.”
– Andy Liu, Chairman of Asia Digital Bank

Asia DB was initiated and established by the Asia Pacific Investment Bank (Registration No. LL11654), (licensed Labuan Investment Bank) (License No. 170120BI)(APIB) in Labuan International Business and Financial Centre (Labuan IBFC). On November 28, 2019,

it was officially approved by Labuan Financial Services Authority (Labuan FSA) as a digital financial business licensee established by Nanjing Zijin Investment Group, a state-owned enterprise of Nanjing City, Asia DB is under the guidance of the People’s Bank of China’s Digital Currency Research Institute (Nanjing) Application Demonstration Base when carrying out financial services to support efficient international commerce activities for Chinese enterprises.

Founded under strategic cooperation between Nanjing and the Labuan IBFC and Labuan FSA, this first batch of licensed digital investment banks aims to build an inclusive self-service financial platform for global digital asset transactions using blockchain technology.

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Gate.io, a bitcoin and crypto exchange company, today announced a cooperation with the decentralized financial data provider, Pyth Network, to provide reliable cryptocurrency pricing data on the platform.

By partnering with Pyth Network, data providers such as Gate.io contribute regular, live market data, and developers are able to access this data directly on the blockchain. Pyth Network is a Solana-based data aggregation platform for the decentralized finance (DeFi) market. It helps solve a problem faced by DeFi by making available high-fidelity and time-sensitive data.

“Providing users with accurate and reliable cryptocurrency price data is one of our top priorities at Gate.io. Over 6 million users around the world rely on up-to-date, reliable data when trading on our platform and as such we have partnered with Pyth network to ensure the best possible trading experience for our users.”
– Marie Tatibouet, Chief Marketing Officer at Gate.io

Gate.io offers spot, margin, futures, and contract trading in addition to DeFi products through Hipo DeFi, custodial services through Wallet.io, investments through Gate Labs, and its GateChain platform. Furthermore, the company also offers a wholly integrated suite of products such as its Startup IEO platform, NFT Magic Box marketplace, crypto loans, and more.

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Cindicator, a crypto investment platform, announced today that its first NFT on Stoic, an automated crypto investment app with AI, has sold for 36.75 ETH or over $140,000 at the current rate. The winning bid came from someone named _satoshi.

The Stoic NFT is named Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. He believed that happiness and peace of mind come from living by reason and nature. His ideas profoundly influenced many generations of philosophers after him.

This 1:1 NFT gives free lifetime access to the Stoic app, which offers trading strategies built for Cindicator Capital, a quant hedge fund. The holder of the NFT can connect the Stoic algorithm to a Binance account with a balance of up to $10 million. The usual Stoic annual fee is 5%.

Launched by Cindicator, Stoic automatically builds and rebalances a long-only portfolio of crypto-assets based on quant research and AI. Since its release in September 2020, over 10,000 clients have connected to Stoic holding over $100M in crypto. From March 2020 to September 2021, Stoic returned +2,189%.

“Selling lifetime access to a product as an NFT is a unique case. Besides its collectible value from rareness, it carries real utility in the Stoic app. The holder can manage up to $10 million with Stoic and use the NFT as an on-chain signal of credibility to unlock other opportunities.”
– Mike Brusov, Co-Founder and CEO of Cindicator

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InfStones, a blockchain infrastructure service provider, has announced it has partnered with Neo to launch Neo N3 public API services on the InfStones platform. All users can create their Neo API on the InfStones platform for free and access Neo N3 on-chain data in a much faster and more convenient way, or use this service to develop and deploy applications on the Neo N3 network.

“The Neo API services provided by InfStones constitute an important part of the N3 ecological infrastructure. Thru this partnership, we can provide developers in the Neo ecosystem with better API solutions, & better data accessibility.”
– John Wang, Director of Neo Ecological Development

InfStones + Neo

Neo is the third public chain that InfStones has added public API services for after Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Back in July, InfStones was elected as an initial member of the Neo Council, to provide professional data services, API services, node services, and staking services to the Neo ecosystem to ensure the smooth launch of the Neo N3 mainnet and help with the Neo N3 ecosystem development.

In addition to public API services, the InfStones platform also supports users to build dedicated APIs with one click on each blockchain including Neo. The public API service uses a shared node cluster, which is fast to create and low in cost, but there are restrictions on the request amount and rate.

Different from the public API, each dedicated API created by the user monopolizes the node machine, there is no limit on the requested amount, and the node machine configuration can be customized according to performance needs. At present, InfStones has supported nearly 50 blockchain dedicated API services including Ethereum, BSC, Neo, Solana, Polygon, Cosmos, etc.

“Neo N3 is an important upgrade of the Neo public chain. We are very happy to cooperate with Neo at such a critical stage and give full play to our technological advantages. As the world’s leading blockchain infrastructure service provider, we hope that the Neo API service supported by InfStones will become an important part of the infrastructure in the Neo ecosystem and help Neo N3 achieve its mission of empowering everything with blockchain technology.”
– Zhenwu Shi, CEO of InfStones

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BlockFills, a cryptocurrency trading technology company, announced today the release of Phoenix, its new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) crypto interface designed for institutional clients to access the company’s proprietary cryptocurrency trading technology and liquidity.

With the new platform, investors have access to the following capabilities:

• Desktop, Mac-native, web, and mobile platform versions
• A virtually limitless choice of studies, drawing tools, and a completely customizable user-interface
• Volume-weighted average price (VWAP), volume profile, order flow, real-time market cap, correlation matrices, heatmaps, and more
• On-chart trading and advanced capabilities such as server-side OCO (order-cancel-order) commands
• Real-time on-chain network data such as difficulty and hash rate, analytics, and data export capabilities
• Deep liquidity supported by battle-tested infrastructure
• All the bespoke technical services provided by BlockFills

Phoenix is the latest addition to BlockFills’ growing SaaS ecosystem, which is focused on liquidity providers and professional consumers. The company, founded in 2018, introduced its software division in the first quarter of 2021 with two new institutional trading solutions, called “Vision” and “Zephyr.”

“Our team noticed a gap in the technology available – other crypto platforms frequently crash, provide subpar customer service, execute orders at different price points, or generally have poor tech design. Based on our decades of experience in institutional trading, we knew there could and should be a better option. So, we launched Phoenix.”
– Nick Hammer, Co-Founder & CEO of BlockFills

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Hex Trust, an Asia-based licensed and insured provider of custody for crypto-assets, announced it has raised USD $10 million in an investment round led by Animoca Brands, a company specializing in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification.

Other investors include Ripple Labs, Algorand Foundation, BCW Group, Tessera Capital Partners, Mind Fund, Double Peak Group, and Token Bay Capital. Several investors of the USD $6 million Series A round closed earlier this year also participated, including QBN Capital, Kenetic Capital, MANTRA DAO, Borderless Capital, Radiant Tech Ventures, and Cell Rising Capital.

Capital Deployment

Next to the Capital Markets Services (CMS) license recently granted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Hex Trust will use the capital to secure new licenses in line with its strategy to implement compliance standards and work closely with regulatory bodies across multiple jurisdictions.

Further, Hex Trust plans to further the institutional-grade market infrastructure and sophisticated security frameworks underpinning the custody and other value-added services it provides through its proprietary bank-grade platform Hex Safe, and establish itself as a custodian in the NFT space.

The fresh capital will also enable the company to expand its operations across the Singapore and Vietnam offices, as well as establish its footprint in Europe and the Middle East.

“It is the perfect time to invest in scaling operations, hiring key talent, and building top-tier infrastructure to seize the opportunities in this rapidly evolving and growing market.”
– Alessio Quaglini, CEO & Co-Founder of Hex Trust

As a pioneer integrating entertainment and gamification with blockchain technologies, Animoca Brands will act as a strategic partner to Hex Trust as the custodian rolls out services covering the NFT market.

“We view Hex Trust as a trusted partner to institutional investors and digital asset companies, offering the full range of services required to operate in this dynamic market in a safe and compliant manner.”
– Yat Siu, Chairman & Co-Founder of Animoca Brands

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BitOasis, the Middle East and North Africa-based crypto exchange, announced today it has wrapped up its Series B round, the company has closed $30 million in funding from new and existing investors.

This round was co-led by Chicago-based VC firm Jump Capital, along with MENA region’s Wamda, and seeks to propel BitOasis on an accelerated growth path.

The fundraising round welcomed new investors including Alameda Research and Global Founders Capital, with existing investors Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, and NXMH further contributing.

“Our aim is to build the largest and most trusted cryptocurrency platform in the region, and our latest investment round serves as a vote of confidence in the BitOasis growth story. It further speaks to the state of interest in the MENA region’s growing crypto ecosystem, with global investors and venture capital heavyweights backing the region’s home-grown businesses. This new capital is going to equip us with the resources we need to expand our regional presence while ensuring high standards of regulatory compliance. We work proactively with regulators  across the region and will acquire licenses where available “
– Ola Doudin, CEO & Co-Founder of BitOasis

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