The Latest Tech News in Crypto and Blockchain

March 2: Babylon, builder of protocols for Bitcoin blockchain timestamping and bitcoin staking, announced a collaboration with Ankr, a Web3 infrastructure company, to bring security and liquidity to proof-of-stake (PoS chains), according to the team: “Ankr will create liquid staking tokens (LSTs) for the bitcoin staked via Babylon. The LSTs will then be issued on PoS chains secured by the BTC staking protocol. For stakers, this means their BTC will be locked on the bitcoin blockchain while new LSTs are minted on the PoS chain they chose to provide security for. Ankr will also run validators on Babylon’s testnet and build advanced security infrastructure to support Babylon’s nodes and finality providers.” CoinDesk 20 asset: (BTC)

March 2: Ottr, a crypto wallet powered by Solana, announced its team is joining Tools For Humanity (TFH), a primary contributor to the Worldcoin project, to lead development of TFH’s user-friendly mobile wallet, World App, used by over 3 million people monthly, according to the team: “Since launching Ottr Wallet 18 months ago, the Ottr team developed a self-custody wallet with seamless integration with U.S. bank accounts, gas-free transfers and trading, passwordless cloud backups and a comprehensive dApp store. Now, they’ll bring their expertise to TFH to help provide more people with access to the digital economy.”

March 2: Wormhole, a protocol for communication between blockchains, just revealed “Wormhole Native Token Transfers,” a new framework for making any token multichain, securely and efficiently, according to the team: “NTT introduces an open, flexible, and composable framework for transferring native tokens across blockchains while preserving their intrinsic properties. Compared to wrapped assets, NTT is simpler, decentralized, marking a significant stride forward for interoperability. Projects built on NTT retain control over their tokens’ behavior on each chain, including customizability, metadata and ownership/upgradeability.” According to a blog post, NTT is “powering natively multichain tokens for industry-leading projects like Lido, ether.fi, Puffer Finance, PIKE and Wormhole.”

March 2: BOB, a Bitcoin layer-2 blockchain project, announced its innovative hybrid solution between Bitcoin and Ethereum at their “Bitcoin Renaissance” event, a side event of ETHDenver attended by 1,500 individuals, according to the team: “This solution introduces an ETH-settled rollup that leverages an advanced merged mining technique to inherit Bitcoin’s PoW security. Looking ahead, BOB plans to enable settlements on both Bitcoin, via BitVM, and Ethereum. The project also revealed that its mainnet launch is timed to coincide with the upcoming Bitcoin halving.” CoinDesk 20 asset: (BTC)

March 2: Taiko, a layer-2 scaling solution provider for the Ethereum blockchain, has raised $15 million in a series A funding round, adding to the growing amount of investment allocations to crypto projects from venture-capital firms. The fundraise was led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures and Token Bay Capital, according to a press release. Other investors in the round included Wintermute Ventures, Presto Labs, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures, GSR and WW Ventures. The latest round brings Taiko’s total fundraising across three rounds to $37 million.

March 2: Clone, an open-source protocol for trading non-native tokens on the Solana blockchain, has announced the public mainnet launch of Clone Markets and Clone Liquidity launched on March 1, according to the team: “The launch will introduce highly liquid markets for non-native assets via Clone’s innovative “cloned assets” (clAssets), creating a more seamless, efficient and accessible trading environment for Solana users. Arbitrum, Optimism and Sui’s network tokens will be available to trade with deep liquidity on Solana for the first time.”

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

March 1 (PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE): Renzo, a liquid restaking protocol, has partnered with Connext to bring cross-chain restaking for Arbitrum, according to the team: “This now enables cross-chain restaking for multiple L2 networks, including BNB Chain, Linea, Base and now the Arbitrum network. Due to the lower fees rollups provide, users on L2s that have partnered with Renzo now provide restaking at a fraction of the cost while also allowing users to restake ETH on their supported network of choice. Renzo and Connext achieve this with ezETH, with EigenLayer leveraging Connext’s bridging and message-passing protocol to transfer ERC-20 with no slippage.”

Feb. 29: Metis, an Ethereum layer-2 network, plans to integrate Chainlink’s interoperability solution, Chainlink CCIP, “as its canonical token bridge infrastructure, enabling the Metis ecosystem to expand its cross-chain footprint, enhance user and developer experience and accelerate adoption,” according to the team. “As a part of this integration, the Metis bridge interface will be upgraded to leverage Chainlink CCIP as the official cross-chain infrastructure to power the canonical Metis token bridge, with an initial focus on bridging leading stablecoins from Ethereum mainnet onto the Metis network.” CoinDesk 20 asset: {{LINK}}

Feb. 29 (PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE): Alchemy is launching Embedded Accounts, “the easiest way to onboard users to Web3, according to the team. “It’s a simple all-in-one solution to:

1. Onboard users with Web2 login (email, passkeys, and soon social auth)

2. Transact with zero friction. One-click checkout by sponsoring gas and batching tx

3. Build custom smart accounts with account recovery, multisig, session keys and more

Our mission at Alchemy is to onboard the whole world to self-sovereign Web3 accounts. To achieve this mission, wallets must become invisible by abstracting away the tech such that the user doesn’t even know they’re using a wallet.”

Feb. 29: Tea Protocol, founded by Max Howell, the creator of Homebrew’s open-source software package management, said that his “latest project leverages blockchain technology to address longstanding challenges in OSS development, marking a significant step towards a more sustainable and equitable ecosystem for software creators.” According to the team, Tea is “at the forefront of supporting OSS development through Web3 technology. This innovative approach ensures transparent and fair compensation for developers, enhancing collaboration and innovation within the open-source community.”

Feb. 29: QuickNode, a Web3 development platform, is launching “Streams,” a real-time blockchain data streaming solution, aiming to revolutionize blockchain infrastructure by providing instant access to historical and real-time data from Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, according to the team: “Streams empowers developers with popular programming languages, bridging the gap between blockchain data and conventional tools, reducing operational costs and expediting time-to-market for decentralized applications (dApps).”

Feb. 29: Immunefi, a bug bounty and security services platform for Web3 protecting over $60 billion in assets, released its “Crypto Losses in February 2024” report, showing a loss of $200.5 million to hacks and rug pulls in 2024 year-to-date, a 15.4% increase when compared with the same period in 2023. For the month of February alone, some $67.1 million was lost due to hacks and rug pulls, with the most targeted chain being Ethereum. Hacks continued to be the predominant cause of losses, accounting for $65.4 million, compared to fraud.

Feb. 29: Marathon Digital Holdings, a publicly-traded bitcoin mining firm, disclosed it has been incubating Anduro, a new programmable, multi-chain layer-2 network atop the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s a “platform built on the Bitcoin network that allows for the creation of multiple sidechains,” according to a press release. “Marathon is already developing the first two sidechains on Anduro, Coordinate and Alys, which can be further developed by open-source contributors. These chains demonstrate Anduro’s flexible programmability. Coordinate offers a cost-effective UTXO stack for the Ordinals community, whereas Alys is an Ethereum-compatible chain for institutional asset tokenization. Anduro’s sidechains utilize a process called merge-mining. Participating miners, like Marathon, may be able to earn Bitcoin-denominated revenue from transactions that occur on Anduro’s sidechains while continuing to mine bitcoin on the base-layer uninterruptedly.”

Feb. 29: The team from ZkLink, a multi-chain ZK rollup and layer-3 protocol, announces that zkHub has built a multi-rollup orderbook decentralized exchange (DEX) based on ZK technology, to address difficulties when navigating between layer-2 rollups, such as high transaction costs, security issues and operational complexity. “ZkHub is Ethereum’s first multi-rollup DEX to offer users a high-performance Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) with multi-chain native asset support, low transaction fees and Ethereum grade security,” according to a blog post.

Feb. 29: Coinbase, the publicly traded U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, is coming out with two new wallet solutions that are supposed to make the onboarding of new users into crypto easier. The features, known as their smart wallet and embedded wallets, aim to overcome hurdles that often come with the clunky user experience when creating crypto wallets.

Feb. 29: Shiba Inu plans to introduce a new privacy-focused network on top of the Shibarium blockchain in a move that boosts the value proposition of SHIB tokens, a representative shared with CoinDesk in a release on Wednesday. Shiba Inu is working with open-source cryptography company Zama on the as-yet-unnamed network. The network will use Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) – a privacy tool that lets developers use data on untrusted domains without needing to decrypt it. (SHIB)

Feb. 29: Rarible, a provider of real-time infrastructure for NFT wallets, games and marketplaces, launched “Rarible API,” which is “designed to simplify the complex nature of building in the NFT space,” according to the team: “It offers a comprehensive set of features, meeting the ever evolving needs of the Web3 ecosystem, including a real-time NFT indexer, aggregated order book, multi-chain support and trading SDK. Built with developers and creators in mind, Rarible API provides a robust infrastructure, enabling and inspiring the invention of future NFT experiences.