In the journey towards Web3, every entrepreneurial moment is noteworthy. We regularly review the financing news, products, and market dynamics of Zonff Partners' portfolio companies.

Financing

Web3 liquidity infrastructure, Solv Protocol, secured $6 million in a new funding round. Participants included Nomura Securities subsidiary Laser Digital, Dahua Venture, Mirana Ventures, Emirates Consortium, Matrix Partners, Apollo Capital, HashCIB, Geek Cartel, and Bytetrade Labs. The funds raised will be utilized for team expansion and technical development.

Manta Network developer p0x labs raised $25 million at a $500 million valuation, with Polychain Capital and Sequoia Capital leading the investment. The funding will be used to expand the ZK Layer 1 blockchain of Manta Pacific and Manta Atlantic, focusing on achieving compliant on-chain privacy. Manta Network also launched the testnet of its Layer 2 solution, Manta Pacific, for developing ZK-based applications within its modular ZK ecosystem. Manta Pacific utilizes Celestia's data availability layer for enhanced security and reduced costs, along with Caldera's Optimism OP Stack for improved scalability.

Products

EigenLayer developer EigenLabs plans to launch EigenDA at the end of 2023, a solution aimed at reducing Ethereum Layer 2 Rollup data storage costs. Projects such as Celo, Mantle, Fluent, Offshore, and Layer N are considering integrating EigenDA into their Layer 2 solutions. EigenLabs will also introduce the Operator testnet, providing services like EigenDA verification, node operation, performance tools, and maintenance. The testnet enhances the authorization experience among stakeholders, achieved through Operator authorization via CLI. There is no upper limit on native stake validator nodes.

Orbiter Finance integrated Linea mainnet, Mantle mainnet, Base mainnet, Zora, opBNB mainnet, Scroll Sepolia, Stylus testnet, and Kroma testnet, along with integrations on the testnet with COMBO.

Caldera relaunched the public Celestium testnet, named "Bubs," running on the Goerli testnet and utilizing Celestia as its native DA layer. Bubs is the first blockchain using Celestia's modular DA interface with the newly released OP Stack. As a mature Rollup on the Ethereum Goerli testnet, Bubs includes a faucet, cross-chain bridge, and block explorer. Caldera also integrated SupraOracles, providing precise price feeds for efficient and effective DeFi protocols.

Solv introduced GMX V2 Funds, an addition and upgrade to V1 rather than a replacement. V2 enhances liquidity provider hedging and risk management, offering more customization, control, and revenue opportunities. Additionally, V2 expands market supply, allowing traders to interact with new assets at lower costs and improved liquidity. V2 also enhances the ability to extend open interest and deepen liquidity, aiming to become a leading on-chain perpetual trading platform.

Game developer Curio Research launched the L2 framework "Keystone" for building high-performance on-chain games like RTS (real-time strategy games). The framework combines EVM and high-performance game engines, prioritizing support for data availability (DA) layers like Celestia. Subsequently, Curio Research open-sourced the Keystone ECS engine portion that supports war3 demos. The final form of Keystone will feature an EVM layer consisting of smart contract and game engine data.

Manta Network initiated the Pacific Alpha mainnet, allowing users to interact with the modular EVM L2 supporting ZK-enabled applications. Additionally, Manta Network announced the upcoming launch of Manta Pacific, the first EVM-native modular execution layer designed for widespread adoption and practical application of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK). Manta Pacific leverages Manta's generic ZK circuits and ZK interfaces, facilitating easy deployment of applications in both Web3 and Web2. Manta Pacific utilizes Celestia's data availability layer for security and reduced gas fees and achieves scalability through the OP Stack enhanced by Zonff Partners' another portfolio company, Caldera.

Market

Meson Network completed integration with the BNB Chain. BSC database snapshots are stored on over 20,000 distributed Meson gateways globally. Distributing file blocks among multiple storage backups enhances redundancy and security, reducing BSC node synchronization time from 20 hours to 1 hour. Meson Network also partnered with AWS to simplify Meson Network deployment.

Secure3 added projects to its smart audit platform: Hibiki Run in the Polygon ecosystem, Aark Digital, StakeStone, Fun.xyz, EchoDex in the Linea ecosystem, Mufex in the Arbitrum ecosystem, Pinnako Dex in the zksync ecosystem, and Gambit Trade.

Complete audit reports for these projects are available at: Secure3 GitHub