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The team behind a decentralized notification protocol Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) has raised $750,000 at a valuation of $5 million, the startup announced on Tuesday. 

The India-based service received backing from several investors in the web3 ecosystem,  including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, former head of smart contracts at MakerDAO Mariano Conti and Gitcoin co-founder Scott Moore. Several VCs also joined the seed round, including TheLao, MetaCartel and Fourth revolution Capital. 

EPNS is a push notification service that allows crypto services to send notifications to user wallets. According to EPNS founder Harsh Rajat, this was a key missing piece of infrastructure in Web3. 

“It’s a pain point because if there is some sort of problem, users don’t know about it until it’s too late,” Rajat told The Block. 

“An ecosystem for push notifications that work across protocols is exactly what we need right now,” said Conti. “I was lucky to judge EPNS at an ETHGlobal hackathon where I met Harsh and Richa and was impressed with their vision and execution and am excited to be on board.”

According to Rajat, the goal of EPNS is to create a platform that allows smart contracts and dApps, along with other traditional services, to interact with user wallets to better inform and alert users. Rajat compared the service to YouTube — a vlogger uses the platform to send notifications to subscribers every time they post a new video, similar to how a registered crypto service would use EPNS to alert its users. 

Services have to activate themselves on the protocol first, and any service can be added to the protocol, from cryptocurrency price trackers to newsletters. The protocol recently launched a mobile app but can also be used on desktop.

© 2020 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.

Payments company Square has pledged to support renewable energy-backed Bitcoin mining operations as part of a broader green initiative.

According to a Tuesday morning press release, Square aims to become carbon-neutral by 2030. That includes reducing the company’s Scope 3 emissions, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency describes as pollution upstream and downstream of an organization which it doesn’t directly control. 

Square partnered with the climate change fighting company Watershed to reduce its carbon footprint.

In addition, Square pledged $10 million to its newly launched Bitcoin Clean Energy Investment Initiative, which will support other companies in the bitcoin ecosystem as they adopt renewables.

The firm explained:

“The new Bitcoin Clean Energy Investment Initiative will support companies working on green energy technologies within bitcoin mining, and aims to accelerate its transition to clean power rather than only removing the carbon for the bitcoin that Square processes. The company intends to reinvest any of its gains from the investment back into the initiative, and is exploring the possibility of opening this initiative for participation by a consortium of like-minded companies in order to amplify the impact.”

Square says it aims to achieve carbon neutrality through shrinking its own carbon footprint and scaling a caron removal portfolio, which the company plans to launch in the first quarter of 2021.

© 2020 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.