BRIEFINGS

Smith + Crown’s summary of important news across the industry

Sep 21, 2022
  • Wintermute hacked for $160M.
    Market maker Wintermute has been exploit by attackers via the company’s DeFi operations for $160M. Lending and OTC services were not impacted. This hack comes just six days after the Tron Network announced their selection of Wintermute as the ecosystem’s official market maker.
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  • Ethereum completes Merge upgrade.
    The Ethereum network has transitioned from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus with the successful implementation of the Merge upgrade. The upgrades are intended to lower environmental impacts and increase network throughput, among other state goals. Upgrades planned for the near future include the addition of sharding.
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Sep 14, 2022
  • Starbucks selects Polygon for its loyalty program.
    Starbucks NFT-based loyalty program Odyssey will use Polygon to enable users to purchase digital collectible stamps that offer benefits and immersive experiences. The company previously hinted at developing Web3 experiences in May when it announced plans to launch NFT collections for customers.
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  • Mysten Labs raises $300M.
    Crypto startup Mysten Labs raised $300M in a funding round at a $2B valuation, led by FTX Ventures. Additional participation came from Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The company will use the funds to build out its Sui blockchain and expand into Asia-Pacific.
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Sep 07, 2022
  • Fuel Labs raises $80M.
    Fuel Labs raised $80M in a round led by Blockchain Capital and Stratos Technologies with participation from Alameda Research, CoinFund, Bain Capital Crypto, TRGC, Maven 11 Capital, Blockwall, Spartan, Dialectic and ZMT. The startup aims to provide a modular execution layer with superior speeds to industry standards. Fuel Labs previously raised $1.5M in September of...
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  • Arbitrum One upgrades to Nitro.
    Layer 2 scaling solution Arbitrum has migrated its current chain to Arbitrum Nitro. The upgrade increases network speeds and reduces transaction costs through call data compression. Arbitrum Nova, a separate chain focused on social and gaming, went live in August and is built on the Nitro stack.
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Aug 31, 2022
  • Proof Collective raises $50M.
    Proof Collective raised $50M in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Collab+Currency, Flamingo DAO, SV Angel, VaynerFund and Seven Seven Six. The company raised $10M in an April funding round and announced an upcoming NFT project called Moonbirds Mythics scheduled for launch in 2023.
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  • Animoca Brands raises $100M.
    Animoca Brands raised $100M in a funding round led by Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek. The company raised $75M in July from existing investors Liberty City Ventures, 10T and Kingsway Capital.
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Aug 17, 2022
  • Yuga Labs releases IP licensing agreement.
    Yuga Labs released an IP licensing agreement for CryptoPunks and Meebits that gives holders full commercialization rights to create projects and products based on their NFTs. Yuga Labs bought the collections from Larva Labs in March.
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  • Injective raises $40M.
    Injective raised $40M in a funding round led by Jump Crypto with participation from BH Digital. The funds will be used to boost the utility of the DEX protocol’s native INJ token and resolve scalability issues and bottlenecks.
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