Tech
Side-dealing allegations put crypto VC funding in spotlight
The Ethereum Foundation’s Vitalik Buterin drew more than 1,000 people to a room in Brussels at the EthCC conference, and CoinDesk’s Margaux Nijkerk was on the sceneWe have this story and many announcements coming from the largest Ethereum-focused conference in Europe.
But one of the biggest blockchain stories that is making headlines is the revelation (discovered by Sam Kessler of CoinDesk) that a prominent industry developer has been accused by his former employer, the prestigious cryptocurrency venture capital firm Polychain, of violating ethics policies by taking an undisclosed personal allocation of tokens from a project that raised funds from the company. Read on.
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Polychain claims Ritual co-founder Niraj Pant, a former general partner, violated its policies. (Ritual)
SECOND DEAL? Two months ago, the blockchain development world was rocked by the news that Neel Somani, founder of the ultra-modular blockchain project Eclipseera taking a step back from his role in response to sexual harassment allegations. Now, there are new allegations surrounding the project’s fundraising. The crypto venture capital giant Polychain accused Niraj Pant, the fund’s former general partner, of entering into a secret agreement with Eclipse that violated the fund’s policies, a scoop by Sam Kessler of CoinDesk. According to three sources familiar with the matter and internal Eclipse documents reviewed by CoinDesk, Eclipse’s Somani quietly awarded Pant 5% of an upcoming Eclipse cryptocurrency token in September 2022, just days after Pant had tapped Polychain to lead the firm’s $6 million pre-seed funding round. The allotment was eventually reduced to 1.33%, worth $13.3 million at the token’s most recent fully diluted valuation in a private investment round. Pant insists the deal was completely kosher because it wasn’t finalized until September 2022, the month after Polychain had already invested in Eclipse. According to a copy of an agreement obtained by Kessler and signed by Somani, Pant’s Psychological Operations Co. would receive a grant of Eclipse tokens in exchange for “periodic synchronization meetings via teleconference” as requested by Eclipse. Somani told his inner circle that the generous token grant was intended to incentivize Pant to secure Polychain’s money and the veteran VC’s coveted endorsement, according to two people familiar with the matter. “Polychain’s statement to CoinDesk offers a rare glimpse into the sausage-making process of the cozy world of crypto VC firms and the projects they fund,” Kessler wrote. Sarcastic posters on social media platform X chuckled wryly that they were “shocked“to find out what similar practices might be taking place in the cryptocurrency fundraising landscape.
Former President Donald Trump’s Republican Party has officially has adopted a platform who would try to Support cryptocurrency innovationaccording to the document released Monday by the Republican National Committee. Separately, Multicoin Capitalone of the largest U.S. investment firms focused on cryptocurrencies, is pledging up to $1 million to support Senate candidates with favorable views on the sector.
Residents of the small town of Granbury, Texascomplained of suffering physical symptoms due to a “dull hum” coming from a nearby Bitcoin mining facility that “exceeded legal noise ordinances on a daily basis,” Reported time“A representative for Marathon Digital Holdings, the company that owns the mine, did not respond to questions about health impacts, but told Time it is working to remove noisy fans from the site.”
Blockchain Games “they are emerging fully cooked,” writes David Z. Morris in a guest column: “That is, many are at least as fun as games that have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.” Another CoinDesk contributor, Jeff Wilser, looked at the success of the tap to earn treasure Hamster Fighta game launched on the TON blockchain that has become so popular in Iran that the country’s deputy military chief described it as part of the West’s “soft war.”
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin gave a keynote speech on strengthening the Ethereum blockchain as a base layer, in front of a packed house of about 1,100 attendees, at a developer conference in Brussels on Wednesday. Buterin he spoke at length during his presentation at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) on the strengths and weaknesses of the world’s largest smart contract blockchain and its sprawling ecosystem, including his concerns about transaction censorship, as well as a proposal to increase the “quorum threshold” from 75% to 80%. Buterin said he believes the Ethereum ecosystem’s strengths include the fact that it is a “large and reasonably decentralized staking ecosystem” and that it is a highly international and intellectual community. (Not sure if he’s referring to Crypto Twitter?)
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin speaks at the EthCC conference in Brussels on Wednesday (Margaux Nijkerk)
Last week’s top picks from Our Protocol Village column highlighting the main innovations and technological updates of blockchain.
Diagram illustrating how Combinder works (Combinder)
1. Combinera DePIN for energy data collection, presented an “AI-based prototype of a Web3-based energy nano-grid, built together with Nevermined and Valory, on behalf of Olas”, according to the team: “Running on peaq, the layer 1 blockchain for DePIN and Machine RWA, the prototype will demonstrate the feasibility of Web3-based nano-grid energy management involving AI agents, intelligent software components that represent individual household devices. Leveraging real-world data to simulate the energy needs of an average household, the project team will build a physical nano-grid involving a plug-in green power source and an AC unit.”
2. Trilitechfocused on the Tezos blockchain, announced what the team described as a “major development”: the introduction of Jstz (pronounced “justice”), a “JavaScript-based smart rollup.” According to the team: “The upcoming layer-2 rollup under development on Tezos will enable developers to utilize JavaScript and its vast resources. But more than enabling the language itself, what sets Jstz apart is that it was designed to be compliant with standard JavaScript APIs, allowing builders to tap into a huge ecosystem of familiar and proven JS tools and libraries.” (Please see our recent article Here on Tezos’ plan for a “canonical cluster”).
3. A new project called TON Application Chain (TAC) is building a level 2 network for the TON Blockchain ecosystem, known for its affiliation with popular messaging app Telegram. The project, backed by The Open Platform, an investor focused on the TON blockchain ecosystem, will rely on technology from Ethereum-focused layer-2 developer Polygon, according to a press release. The team made the announcement Tuesday at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) in Brussels, Belgium.
4. Union Laboratoriesthe level of modular interoperability, has added support for ArbitrumTVL’s leading layer-2 ecosystem, to connect Arbitrum Orbit chains with IBC-enabled blockchains, as well as other networks that integrate with Union such as Polygon, Scroll, and Movement. According to the team: “This integration will unlock unprecedented liquidity flow between IBC and the Arbitrum ecosystem. This will also enable latency reduction in optimistic cross-chain operations, while maintaining the security and integrity of transactions entering and leaving the Arbitrum ecosystem.”
5. The development company behind the World currency The protocol shared on Tuesday that its next layer 2 chain, World Chain, is now open for use by developers. This means that select developers can apply to build, test and provide feedback to Tools For Humanity, the development company behind Worldcoin, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk. World Chain has leveraged Optimism’s OP Stack, a Customizable tool kit which allows developers to create their own blockchains using Optimism’s technology, to build their own network.
Private Equity (PE) Firms Are Finally Seeing the Value of Bitcoin (BTC) miners, thanks to the growing demand for data centers capable of powering artificial intelligence (AI) machines.
“Even private equity firms that have never done data centers before are looking at this space,” Adam Sullivan, CEO of one of the largest mining firms, Core Scientific (CORZ), said in an exclusive interview with CoinDesk.
Core Scientific recently signed a 12-year, 200 megawatt (MW) contract Deal with cloud computing company CoreWeave for AI-related computing needs, with the ability to further expand capacity.
Since news of the deal broke, Core Scientific has received several proposals from top-tier private equity firms offering funding for additional AI-related partnerships, Sullivan said.
Roma co-founders Anil Kumar (right) and Sattvik Kansal (Roma)
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