FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Stride, the largest liquid staking protocol on Cosmos, announced the imminent adoption of Interchain Security. This integration is part of Cosmos Hub proposal 799, which garnered approval from the Cosmos Hub governance community with 97% of votes in favor.

Stride will be the second blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem to adopt Interchain Security after Neutron. 

Beginning today, as Stride incorporates ICS, block production responsibilities will transition from Stride’s validator set to that of the Cosmos Hub — the central chain of Cosmos. The move indicates that Stride’s blockchain will pivot from using staked STRD for its economic security to relying on staked ATOM, and it seeks to synchronize Stride network’s security measures with those of the Cosmos Hub, which holds $2.3 billion in staked ATOM.

The Stride team told The Block it will continue to maintain its unique identity as a sovereign blockchain, governed by the STRD token. For Stride users, this means they can continue to stake STRD, earn staking rewards and participate actively in on-chain governance.

Stride’s fundamental features, such as liquid staking, inter-blockchain communication protocol, will remain unchanged.

© 2023 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.

The stock market operator had said in March, that it was putting together infrastructure and regulatory approval for the custodian service.

The development team behind Manta Network, p0x labs, has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Polychain Capital and Qiming Venture Partners, valuing the project at $500 million.

In conjunction with the funding, Manta Network has launched the testnet for its Layer 2 solution, Manta Pacific, aimed at developing zero-knowledge (ZK) applications within its modular ZK ecosystem, according to a statement.

The funding will be allocated to expand Manta Pacific and Manta Atlantic, its ZK Layer 1 blockchain for compliant on-chain privacy, the team announced.

“We are excited to see Manta expanding into the Ethereum ecosystem, and have doubled down on our investment this Series A round,” added Polychain Capital investor Luke Pearson.

Manta claimed that Manta Pacific is the first Ethereum Virtual Machine-native modular execution layer specifically designed for ZK adoption — providing plug-and-play functionality for developers.

The team added that Manta Pacific utilizes Celestia’s data availability layer for enhanced security and reduced fees. Additionally, it uses a modified version of Optimism’s OP Stack by Caldera for scalability.

“Individually, Manta Network’s ZK solutions, Celestia’s modular data availability layer and Optimism’s OP Stack have gained substantial traction within our respective spheres,” Manta Network core contributor Kenny Li said. “By combining these three together, we are creating the best-in-class ecosystem for developers and users when it comes to ZK use cases. This will be instrumental in driving user adoption of ZK products.”

Leveraging ZK tech

ZK tech is widely seen as one of the most promising solutions to Ethereum’s scalability and privacy challenges, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin previously predicting ZK-Rollups will likely become the main Layer 2 solution for the network.

“Manta Pacific will leverage the performance capabilities of the modular ecosystem, whilst also allowing increasing access to ZK. We are excited to see ZK adoption grow, bringing throughput and privacy to the ecosystem,” Pearson added.

Manta also argued that while there was increased investor confidence and developer activity in the crypto niche, “many existing initiatives remain isolated from end users, who ultimately drive blockchain activity.”

“We have seen for the first time the real potential for ZK to onboard substantial user numbers through applied use cases,” Yi Tang, Principal at Qiming Venture Partners said. “We are looking forward to extending that adoption into web2 as well, and helping Manta Network to enter into the Asia market.” 

Manta Pacific’s testnet currently offers ZK applications including an on-chain game zkHoldEm, verified credential protocol zkMe and data verification protocol zkPass.

Manta claims that its native Manta Wallet has been installed over 200,000 times and that its combined project ecosystem reaches more than 1.5 million users.

© 2023 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.

RISC Zero, a Seattle-based crypto startup, today announced the close of a $40 million Series A round.

The startup wants to put zero-knowledge tech in the hands of developers and infrastructure providers. Its zero-knowledge Virtual Machine (zkVM) gives developers a simpler way to build zk-powered apps. Zero-knowledge proofs are a method, increasingly popular in crypto, by which one party can prove something is true to another without divulging any additional information.

The money will be used to enable RISC Zero to bring Bonsai, its computing platform, to market, as well as to develop it.  

Blockchain Capital takes the lead

San Francisco crypto venture firm Blockchain Capital led the round, with seed round lead Bain Capital Crypto also participating, alongside Galaxy Digital, IOSG, RockawayX, Maven 11, Fenbushi Capital, Delphi Digital, Algaé Ventures, IOBC, Tribute Labs’ Zero Dao, Figment Capital and Alchemy Ventures.

“Imagine a world where data privacy, security, and trust are no longer concerns, where software supply chains are transparent and verifiable, and where a new generation of applications can harness the power of zero-knowledge computing to solve some of the most pressing challenges of the digital age,” said Bart Stephens, founder and managing partner at Blockchain Capital, in a statement.  

“This is the promise of zero-knowledge computing and the reason we are investing in RISC Zero.”

Blockchain Capital has been involved in a number of high profile later stage crypto rounds in recent months. It led Worldcoin’s $115 million raise in May and led a $200 million Series C by Matter Labs, creator of zkSync, in November last year.

© 2023 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.

The startup creates developer tooling that helps build zero-proof software for improved security and computational power.

Societe Generale has become the first company to receive a digital asset service provider (DASP) license in France.

French regulator Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) gave SocGen’s crypto asset division, called Societe Generale-Forge, a DASP license on July 18. The license allows Forge to operate digital asset custody, sell and purchase digital assets for legal tender and trade digital assets.

Forge CEO Jean-Marc Stenger said in a statement the license “confirms our pioneering role in the crypto assets ecosystem.” Stenger added that it will enable Forge to meet demand from institutional clients for digital assets.

Many crypto firms, including Binance, are registered with the AMF, but only SocGen’s Forge has received one. The level of compliance to receive a license is much higher than the requirements for registration. To obtain a license a firm must also be domiciled in France. “Firms must comply with certain requirements in terms of organization, financial resources and business conduct,” the AMF said.

The EU passed its Markets in Crypto Assets regulatory framework, MiCA, in April. Under the new legislation, digital asset providers will be required to have obtained a full license from a member state to operate within the EU by January 2025.

© 2023 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.

Companies from all over the world will be able to make transactions to Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.

Developers have proposed an “Ecosystem Council” to push smart contract upgrades, as well as changes to how community-based funding works.

The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for July 19, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.

Ethereum Layer 2 Starknet has announced the launch of “appchains,” a framework that allows developers to create several application-specific blockchains within its ecosystem. 

This step is consistent with the broader evolution of the Layer 2 ecosystem, where projects such as Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism have already set the stage for similar modular networks. Starknet is the latest addition to this lineup.

Developers can create appchains using Starknet Stack, the ecosystem’s native developer tooling. These chains will utilize STARK proofs for enhanced security. Central to this stack is Cairo, a programming language developed by the StarkWare team, which shares similarities with Rust.

In a blog post, the team suggested that by leveraging Starknet appchains, developers can benefit from enhanced performance. This claim is bolstered by Starknet’s recent v0.12.0 upgrade on mainnet, which reportedly boosted its network performance.

Customizations for Starknet developers

A notable aspect of appchains is their capacity to support features not yet present on Starknet’s main network. This includes features like custom fee market logic, consensus mechanisms and others. Such flexibility can potentially afford developers the ability to customize their application’s configurations and functionalities, the team added.

“Starknet Appchains are the bespoke environment where applications can tailor an instance of Starknet to achieve better control over the specs, lower cost, greater scale and opt-in privacy,” wrote the team.

The team highlighted that there is an escalating interest in application-specific blockchains tailored to meet customized requirements.“The need for appchains has been apparent for several years and is now getting renewed attention,” the team noted.

© 2023 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.