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Facebook parent Meta has integrated decentralized data storage protocol Arweave to permanently store digital collectibles from Instagram.

“Instagram users are now able to issue digital collectibles for their posts, stored on Arweave,” Sam Williams, founder of Arweave, tweeted on Thursday. Meta’s lead of commerce, fintech and web3, Stephane Kasriel, also confirmed the Arweave protocol integration in a separate tweet.

The price of Arweave’s native token, AR, surged as much as 75% since news of the Meta integration, according to CoinGecko.

Earlier this week, Meta announced that creators will soon be able to make their own digital collectibles on Instagram and sell them to fans, both on and off Instagram. Meta will support different blockchains for NFT issuance, starting with Polygon and Solana. The platform launched its Digital Collectibles feature in 100 countries, allowing users to connect to their digital wallets and showcase NFTs that they either created or bought.

Meta believes NFTs can help expand the creator economy. “It’s still early for the NFT market compared to where we think it’s going,” Kasriel said in a blog post. “By making NFTs easier to use natively on Instagram, we’re opening up new ways for the billions of people who use our apps to connect with and support their favorite creators — which, in turn, unlocks more economic opportunity.”

Arweave was founded in 2017 to enable users to store data forever. The protocol matches people who have hard drive space to spare with those who need to store data or host content permanently. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Revolut’s new instant messaging feature, which launched yesterday in the UK and the European Economic Area, will integrate NFT profile pictures, CEO Nik Storonsky said in an interview with The Block at Web Summit in Lisbon. 

The new messaging tool, which allows users to chat as well as share gifs and stickers while sending and requesting funds, marks the next step in Revolut’s mission to establish itself as a super-app. The chat function emulates the likes of WeChat and AliPay, which are popular in Asia. 

The messaging function was built with end-to-end encryption and is embedded in the ‘transfer’ section of the Revolut app. Customers will need to have the 8.72 update or later for their Revolut app on iOS or Android to use it. 

Storonsky’s comments come ahead of the launch of Revcoin, which he said is slated for “early next year.” The long-rumored native token will function in a similar way to airline Air Miles programs, where users earn rewards based on how often they use the service, as previously reported by The Block. It will be tradable on exchanges. 

Users will be rewarded with cashback in Revcoin, and receive higher interest rates on it, Storonsky added. 

Revolut is also developing a non-custodial DeFi wallet which will operate as a standalone app.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto exchange Huobi seems to have confirmed that it is moving its headquarters from Seychelles to the Caribbean island of Dominica. 

Justin Sun, the founder of Tron who was appointed as an advisor on Huobi’s global board, told The Financial Times that the Caribbean “is a very crypto-friendly community” and that Dominica is “one of the frontrunners.” Huobi appeared to confirm that it will move to Dominica by retweeting Sun’s statements and the linked FT report with a single parasol emoji.

Furthermore, Tron partnered with Dominica’s government last month to develop a national blockchain infrastructure and issue a national fan token. Sun said in the interview that Dominica’s prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, is “a very tech-savvy person” and claimed that “he understands how crypto and the technology work.”

Huobi is not the first crypto exchange to apparently move its headquarters to the Caribbean in search of a friendlier regulatory landscape. FTX moved from Hong Kong to the Bahamas last year.

Huobi was contacted for comment.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Three leading executives at web3 gaming studio Mythical Games announced they were leaving the company yesterday in a further exodus of talent from a notable crypto firm.

After four years at the company, the startup’s co-founder Rudy Koch announced he was ready for a change on LinkedIn. 

“So, what’s next? Well, I’m not finished with Web 3.0; far from it,” said Koch in the LinkedIn post. “I have a new venture cooking, and I can’t wait to share it with you all in the next couple of weeks.” 

Mythical’s chief operating officer and head of game studios and publishing, Matt Nutt, also announced that he would be starting something new after less than two years at the company — alongside strategy and investments senior vice president Chris Ko, who had been at the company for less than a year. 

“I’ll be in stealth mode working on something new starting next week,” said Nutt in a LinkedIn post. “Look forward to sharing more on what’s next in the coming weeks!” 

Ko echoed similar sentiments in his own LinkedIn post. All three executives are veterans of the gaming industry having previously worked at the likes of Blizzard, Activision and Electronic Arts. 

The Block reached out to Mythical Games for a comment and did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

A gaming unicorn

The game development studio secured unicorn status in November of last year when it raised a $150 million Series C round, which brought its valuation to $1.25 billion. Andreessen Horowitz led the round. Other backers of the startup include FTX, Binance Labs, Galaxy Interactive, NBA superstar Michael Jordan and Alumni Ventures. 

Mythical Games has raised more than $270 million in funding, earning the majority of it — $225 million — in 2021, according to a company release. 

The startup planned to use the funding to continue to expand its team and build out NFT-based, play-to-earn games.

At the end of September, the startup released its first game Blankos Block Party, a 3D multiplayer game on the Epic Games Store, the company behind Fortnite. 

Mythical has three other web3 games scheduled for release next year including NFL Rivals, which it is creating in partnership with the football league. 

The executive exodus continues

Mythical isn’t the only company in the crypto industry to see executives depart. Yesterday Coinbase said Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee has left the exchange as part of an overhaul of the exchange’s product team.

In recent weeks, top executives from leading crypto firms such as FTX, Nydig, OpenSea and Genesis have also stepped down from their positions. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest bought shares in Block and Robinhood this week as the two crypto-adjacent companies prepared to release earnings. 

Ark purchased 69,756 Block shares and 343,623 Robinhood shares on Wednesday across two funds, according to its latest trade filing. 

Block shares closed down at $54.64 yesterday ahead of earnings today. Based on this price, the Ark Innovation ETF’s purchase cost around $3.8 million.

Jack Dorsey’s firm delivers earnings this evening, with gross payments volume — number of payments less refunds of merchants using the companies payment software — one of the key metrics to watch. In the third quarter of 2021, this figure came in at over $45 billion, and analysts estimate it rose to $54.3 billion in the past quarter, according to data via Visible Alpha.

Robinhood gains

Robinhood finished at $11.40 yesterday, before releasing better-than-expected earnings after the close of trading. The retail investing platform traded higher after hours, closing at $11.85 in the extended session. 

Ark’s Next Generation ETF added 303,129 Robinhood shares, worth over $3.3 million based on the price at close. Wood’s fund bought a further 40,494 Robinhood shares for its Ark Fintech Innovation ETF, worth an additional $460,000.

Robinhood beat analysts’ estimate of negative $48 million EBITDA last night, registering positive EBITDA of $47 million — up from negative $80 million in the second quarter. Crypto transaction revenue declined 12% to $51 million compared with the previous quarter, missing estimates of $58 million and down from $58 million in the second quarter. Overall the firm’s losses have narrowed, while monthly users are down. 

Cathie Wood’s fund appears to be warming on crypto stocks again, with this just the latest crypto-related purchase. Last week the fund bought shares in Coinbase, Block and Robinhood. Ark Invest holds around 7.7 million Coinbase shares, worth over $450 million at the time of writing.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

An unknown hacker siphoned $3 million from Skyward Finance, a launchpad project on Near Protocol. 

The Skyward Finance team acknowledged the exploit, explaining that the “Skyward Treasury has been drained through a contract exploit.” 

According to security firm BlockSec, the exploit was perpetrated in just one transaction. In this transaction, the hacker redeemed more than 1.1 million wrapped Near tokens ($3 million) in a loop from Skyward’s treasury contract. 

The contract was open to the public and could be used by anyone who wanted to redeem Skyward Finance tokens for wrapped Near tokens.

BlockSec found a bug in the contract’s token-redemption function that failed to check for duplicate token account IDs, the firm said in a statement shared with The Block.

The incident comes as crypto hacks continue to grow. Just last month, as many as 44 exploits accounted for more than $650 million in losses.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Protocol Ventures, a crypto fund of funds that invested in the likes of Multicoin Capital, Pantera Capital and Electric Capital, is reportedly shutting up shop.

Bloomberg reported the news on Thursday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. The shuttering is expected by the end of this year or the first quarter of next year, per the report. Protocol Ventures reportedly sent notices to investors at the end of October about the move.

Protocol Ventures was founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Rick Marini, reportedly as the first-ever fund-of-funds for cryptocurrencies. The fund had started with $1 million of Marini’s own money and it had hoped to raise $100 million at the time. Investors in Protocol’s fund-of-funds may have lost as much as 90% over the past year, according to the Bloomberg report.

Protocol Ventures did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

The fund’s closure comes amid the so-called crypto winter. The market capitalization of the crypto sector globally has fallen to around $1 trillion from over $3 trillion a year ago, according to data tracked by CoinGecko. Several crypto companies have faced financial difficulty and bankruptcy, including Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, Voyager, Zipmex, Vauld, Hodlnaut and Core Scientific.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Robinhood will not close its long-awaited acquisition of UK-based crypto startup Ziglu this quarter. 

Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick also raised the possibility that the deal may not close at all on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Nov. 2. 

“While the parties are working hard at it, there’s some regulatory uncertainty as to whether the deal will close,” Warnick told investors and analysts. “What we know at this point is that the deal won’t close this quarter.”

The retail investing platform slashed its acquisition offer for Ziglu in August, decreasing its value from $170 million to $72.5 million. Robinhood and Ziglu first announced the deal in April. 

The New York State Department of Financial Services slapped Robinhood’s crypto division with a $30 million fine in August for alleged violations relating to anti-money laundering, consumer protection and cybersecurity regulations.

Despite the uncertainty hanging over the Ziglu acquisition, Robinhood executives underscored that expansion outside the U.S. still is in the works. The company plans to start offering its Robinhood Wallet internationally “early next year.”

Menlo Park, California.-based Robinhood launched its self-custody web3 wallet to 10,000 beta customers in late September. The company’s waitlist is more than 1 million people long, Robinhood’s wallet website shows.

Executives on the earnings call said the company will roll out the wallet to more people in coming months. Robinhood expects to make the wallet “generally available” in early 2023 and will likely add NFT capabilities. One in-demand feature from crypto enthusiasts is the ability to view NFTs in the wallet app.

“I think trading NFTs in-app is a little bit complicated with the recent Apple guidance, so we’re keeping an eye on that, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said during the call. “But I think it’s highly likely that we’ll add the ability to view NFTs and for people to custody them.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Dapper Labs laid off almost one-quarter of its employees, Senior Vice President of Marketing Dave Feldman confirmed on Twitter, as the company grapples with plunging NFT trading volumes.  

Almost 22% of Dapper Labs’ staff — or, 134 out of a total workforce of 613 — was laid off as part of a larger reorganization strategy, BetaKit first reported.

Feldman on Twitter called the reorganization a “difficult day.”

As Dapper reorganizes, NFT trading volume across gaming, art, and collectible markets, in which the company holds significant financial stakes, declined since a high last May, based on data from The Block Research.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

In Meta’s latest bid to expand into the crypto ecosystem, Instagram will soon host a marketplace for NFTs starting with support for Polygon, the company announced.

The features are live with a small group of creators in the U.S. and will be expanded to other countries soon. Support is also live for Solana’s Phantom wallet, Meta said, adding that information for collections from OpenSea can now be viewed on the platform.

A creator economy potentially worth $100 billion cannot be realized without a digital economy with greater portability than today’s web services, Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s commerce fintech and web3 lead, said in a blog post. Meta’s ongoing strategy is to help creators earn a living, and the company won’t charge fees in its digital collectible marketplace until 2024 and will cover any blockchain-related gas costs.

The digital asset feature expansion follows Meta’s announcement last month to integrate NFT visibility and access for Facebook and Instagram.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.