Protocol Village: Privado ID, Recent Polygon Spinout, Launches First Product, ‘Web Wallet’

July 9: Privado ID, formerly Polygon ID, is launching its first product since spinning out of Polygon – a “web wallet designed to set new standards for privacy while reducing user interactions by over 50%.” According to the team: “The new wallet eliminates repetitive KYC processes across platforms. Instead of nine authorization steps, users now only need 4 – meaning they no longer have to re-enter documentation like a driver’s license for every new service they log into. The web wallet will be leveraged by Verax, Consensys’s enterprise-grade SSI solution, which is relied on by projects like Gitcoin Passport and many others.”

July 9: EOracle and Hexagate have partnered to create “The Gate Security Oracle, the first-of-its-kind decentralized ML-based security protocol,” according to the team: “This system, built on the eOracle stack, will allow DeFi protocols to leverage Hexgate’s security models to protect themselves from hacks. This integration will essentially create a DeFi firewall to mitigate threats before they cause damage.” The announcement was made at the EthCC conference in Brussels.

July 9: API3, a first-party oracle solution aiming to make real-world data more accessible and efficient for decentralized applications (dApps), has launched the OEV Network on Arbitrum Orbit. According to the team: “This will allow dApps to reclaim 90% of the MEV leaked by lending protocols, worth hundreds of millions. The OEV Network sells the right to execute particular data feed updates for designated dApps to the highest bidder. This solution is integrated with all data feeds on the API3 Market, which means that any protocol that utilizes API3’s data feeds automatically can recapture value across any chain supported.”

July 9: Masa, a decentralized AI network where people earn by contributing data, announced the “launch of an AI Data Subnet on Bittensor, a protocol pioneering the decentralized production of artificial intelligence.” According to the team: “Masa will leverage Bittensor’s peer-to-peer machine intelligence network to supercharge AI data aggregation, transformation, and access. Together, this empowers a world of Fair AI powered by the people, where AI developers can build anything, anywhere with the world’s data.”

July 9: Safe, the team behind the Safe{Core} smart account developer toolkit, has collaborated with infrastructure platform Pimlico in the design of a Multi-Chain Gas Station Program that offers a total of $250,000 in gas fee credit incentives, including $200,000 for Polygon PoS developers, and $50,000 for Gnosis Chain developers building Safe smart accounts. According to the team: “This collaboration aims to the drastically simplify the usability of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The program is available to any developer building on collaborating chains or projects utilizing Safe{Core}.”

July 9: Rome, a crypto startup project aiming to use Solana as an auxiliary network to provide services to layer-2 blockchains built atop Ethereum, emerged from stealth and announced it has raised $9 million of funding from top-tier investors. The financing was provided by Hack VC, Polygon Ventures, HashKey, Portal Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot VC, LBank, Anagram, TRGC, Perridon Ventures, as well as notable angels including Anatoly Yakovenko, Nick White, Santiago Santos, Comfy Capital, Austin Federa, Jason Yanowitz, according to a press release shared first with CoinDesk.

July 9: The developer firm behind the Worldcoin protocol shared Tuesday that its upcoming layer-2 chain, World Chain, is open for developers to use. This means that select developers can apply to build, test, and give feedback to Tools For Humanity, the developer firm behind Worldcoin, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk. World Chain has tapped Optimism’s OP Stack, a customizable toolkit that lets developers build their own blockchains using Optimism’s technology, to build out its own network.

July 9: Storj, a crypto-backed cloud-storage platform, said it bought Valdi, a provider of high-performance cloud computing, to add graphics-processing-unit (GPU) computing for its enterprise clients. The Valdi network comprises over 16,000 GPUs globally and provides on-demand processing that is used for artificial intelligence (AI) training in industries such as technology, research and life sciences, Storj said in a press release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

July 9: Consensys, the Ethereum software developer firm that built the MetaMask wallet, shared Tuesday that it is launching a “MetaMask Delegation Toolkit,” aimed at making the user experience of blockchain applications more seamless. According to a press release shared with CoinDesk, the Delegation Toolkit will allow for instant user onboarding without needing to interact with a traditional wallet, in addition to eliminating “user friction completely,” meaning no pop-ups or confirmations when switching between a decentralized application and wallet.

July 9: Crypto wallet provider Exodus is starting a new product that is looking to make the user experience (UX) of Web3 as easy as possible for newcomers to the sector. The “Passkeys Wallet” will enable new users to create a wallet to explore various decentralized apps (dapps) without creating a new wallet or leaving the application.

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.

July 8: Hinkal, describing itself as an “institutional-grade, self-custodial protocol designed to empower users with full control over their on-chain assets, mirroring the secure standards of traditional finance,” announced the upcoming launch of the “Shared Privacy Protocol, dubbed the ‘EigenLayer for Privacy,’ because it enables cross-chain privacy via anonymity staking.” According to the team: “Hinkal addresses liquidity fragmentation and incentivizes discreet DeFi trading by creating a unified pool of shielded liquidity to properly mask transactions on over 200 layer 1s and layer 2s. The Shared Privacy Protocol allows traders and dApps to leverage shielded TVL across any chain, rewarding stakers with assets and yield.” According to the project’s white paper: “Hinkal is a middleware and set of smart contracts on EVM chains that uses ZK-proofs and stealth addresses to enable compliant and discreet transactions on major dApps.”

July 8: Particle Network has led the industry efforts in forming the Chain Abstraction Coalition, an alliance of 50+ chains in Web3, according to the team: “The alliance aims to unify the ecosystem and improve user experience by eliminating manual processes to interact with multiple chains. Web3 growth has led to impressive scalability and cost-effectiveness but also resulted in significant fragmentation. As such, the Chain Abstraction Coalition, which include notable networks like Arbitrum, Berachain, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Linea and Botanix, will work together to offer superior interoperability to both developers and users.”

July 8: Celo, the layer-1 chain migrating to become a layer-2 chain atop Ethereum, said its layer-2 testnet, “Dango,” is now live, forking the Alfajores testnet with all historical data (smart contracts, accounts, and balances) carried over. According to the team: “Dango enables bridging of WETH and ERC-20 tokens between Ethereum and Celo, CELO token duality (the ability to interact with CELO natively or via the ERC20 interface) and maintains key L1 features like Fee Abstraction and SocialConnect. Once infrastructure providers have updated for the L2, Alfajores will be directly migrated for dApp developers to test (with no expected impact on most user-facing dApps).”

July 8: 1inch Labs announced the addition of the Web3 RPC API to the 1inch Developer Portal, “further expanding the range of innovative tools available to Web3 developers.” According to the team: “With the Web3 RPC API, 1inch provides Web3 developers with efficient and robust RPC blockchain interaction without the need to run their own node. With our extensive node experience and the ongoing need for reliable node access for 1inch operations, we can ensure that our RPC service is secure and reliable for Web3 developers.”

July 8: Emurgo, the founding entity of the Cardano blockchain, announced the launch of the Anzens USDA stablecoin under the ownership of institutional-grade trading desk, Encryptus. According to the team: “With off-ramping capabilities in over 80 countries, USDA – the fully-backed stablecoin native to Cardano – allows users to manage their assets autonomously, and transact seamlessly and affordably. USDA will provide users with access to frontier markets through affordable liquidity and simplified access to Web3 solutions, bridging the gap to critical financial services for businesses and individuals alike.” (ADA)

July 8: Halliday, a commerce automation network, has launched with backing from Hashed and Andreessen Horowitz. According to the team: “Aimed at improving blockchain-based payments, Halliday addresses user experience and integration issues between Web2 and Web3 environments. Featuring a PoS protocol automating tasks across blockchain networks, the platform offers a unified interface for transactions and managing digital assets. Developers participate in a permissionless network to build/earn rewards, promoting adoption of blockchain in commerce.”

July 8: Nuklai, a collaborative infrastructure provider for data ecosystems, has collaborated with Filecoin Foundation to “archive the world’s data, empowering AI with contextualized data ontology,” according to the team: “The first step of this strategic collaboration is to integrate with Filecoin’s decentralized network using Lighthouse Storage’s solution for efficient data storage. Nuklai enhances data reliability by providing additional context enabling improved interoperability. Everyone can contribute by sharing and contextualizing datasets, accessible via app.nukl.ai.”

July 8: Bagel Network, an AI and cryptography research lab, announced a partnership with the Filecoin Foundation to unlock the computational capacity of decentralized AI. According to the team: “This collaboration will enable AI developers to train and store their models using Filecoin’s compute and storage capabilities, offering unprecedented efficiency and flexibility for decentralized AI development.” (FIL)

July 8: Crypto trading firm and market maker Auros said in an exclusive interview with CoinDesk that its newly established venture capital arm plans to invest more than $50 million of its own capital in early-stage digital asset ventures in the next two years. To lead the investment efforts, the company appointed Julien Auchecorne as head of Auros Ventures. Auchecorne previously held roles at hedge fund Brevan Howard and digital asset services platform XBTO International, among other crypto and traditional investment firms.

July 8: Decentralized education protocol Open Campus has announced a $1 million hackathon to promote decentralized app development on the EDU Chain. According to the team: “Open campus’s Codex Hackathon series seeks to bolster dapp development in this sector via EDU Chain. The mainnet is expected to go live later this year. EDU Chain is the first decentralized blockchain for education built by Open Campus and is designed to drive the democratization of education and to empower all participants to contribute to and benefit from the decentralized future of education.”

July 8: Immunefi, an on-chain crowdsourced security platform, and the Ethereum Foundation have launched the first crowdsourced security audit contest, “to augment the security for the entirety of the protocol’s code,” according to the team: “The Attackathon features a time-bound code review program by Immunefi, ensuring top-tier engagement from elite security researchers and a community education program centered on Ethereum-related security and technology. To kick off the Sponsorship program, the Ethereum Foundation has seeded the reward pool with a contribution of $500,000.”

July 5: Valora, a P2P payments app, introduced Mobile Stack, described as “an open protocol that simplifies the creation of Web3-native mobile apps on iOS and Android.” According to the team, “it unlocks a critical pathway for bringing the next billion users on-chain by providing Web3 brands and startups with the tools they need to bring their apps to consumers’ fingertips. Troopo (from Stake Capital/Curve) and The ChatGPT DataDAO (from Vana) will be the first of Mobile Stack’s ecosystem partners to bring their Web3 dApps to mobile, showcasing how web3 products can be reimagined as consumer-friendly, mobile-first experiences.”