Hello 
Welcome to the 46th edition of Sfermion’s Collider where we highlight the latest & greatest news in the world of crypto, gaming & entertainment, AR/VR, AI, macro, and more!
Bi-weekly, we aim to drop a curated list of the most exciting stories & updates that we believe are enabling the future of tech and the emergence of the metaverse.
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Crypto Updates
Polygon unveils 1B $POL token program to boost developer engagement (link)
Terraform to Pay $4.47B to Settle SEC Fraud Case (link)
MicroStrategy Buys 11,931 Bitcoin for $786M (link)
Fox Corporation to Upgrade Verify Beta to Dedicated L2 Built with Polygon CDK, Announces TIME as First Publishing Partner (link)
Fidelity International Tokenizes Money Market Fund on JPMorgan’s Blockchain (link)
OneFootball adopts Mocaverse’s Realm Network to offer Football ID to over 200M football fans (link)
Friend.tech collaborates with Conduit, launches Friendchain (link)
Empowering the Solana Ecosystem: Circle's Web3 Services is Now Available on Solana (link)
Biggest Bank in the World Says Ethereum Is ‘Digital Oil,’ Bitcoin ‘Digital Gold’: Report (link)
Joe Biden’s Administration Sues Coinbase Yet Needs It For Crypto Donations (link)
Coinbase International announces support for pre-launch market (link)
Binance reaches 200M users with $100B in assets under custody (link)
Gaming Updates
Uniswap Labs is Acquiring Crypto: The Game (link)
Introducing: Ronin ZkEVM (link)
Baby Shark Universe X Immutable () Partnership Announcement (link)
Ethereum Network Ronin Launches ‘Forge’ Program to Onboard More Games (link)
Ethereum Wallet MetaMask Now Lets You Launch Crypto Games—Here’s How (link)
VG Insights: Fallout TV Series generated over $80M in Incremental Revenue for Bethesda (link)
Next-Gen Xbox Preview: Everything You Need to Know About the Console and Crypto Plans (link)
AI Updates
Apple announces iOS 18 with new AI features and more customizable homescreen (link)
OpenAI and Apple announce partnership to integrate ChatGPT into Apple experiences (link)
Apple to “Pay” OpenAI for ChatGPT through distribution, not cash (link)
Musk threatens to ban employees from using iPhones (link)
Oracle Stock Jumps to Record High on Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google Deals (link)
OpenAI Names Ex-Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar as CFO, Kevin Weil as CPO (link)
Other Updates
Photo-sharing app BeReal acquired by Voodoo for €500M (link)
Queen Catalog to Be Acquired by Sony Music for £1B (link)
Tesla shareholders vote to reinstate Elon Musk’s $56B pay package (link)
US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions that are too hard to cancel (link)
The Big Loser in Tesla’s Shareholder Vote Is Delaware (link)
India pulls in tech giants for its AI ambitions (link)
Apple discontinues short-lived BNPL offering (link)
Starlink Mini brings space internet to backpackers (link)
VTuber Gawr Gura will sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at the Dodgers’ “hololive night” (link)
Research & Interesting Reads
Pantera | Newsflash, Crypto Owners Vote (link)
Konvoy | Voodoo Gets Real (link)
Accel | Our Investment in KGeN (): Ushering in a New Era of Gaming and Data Sovereignty (link)
Notable Raises
Paradigm completes $850M fund to invest in early-stage crypto projects (link)
Mistral secures €600M funding as valuation soars to almost €6B (link)
CMT Digital looks to raise $150M for fourth crypto fund: report (link)
Blockchain engineering group Equilibrium launches venture unit, raising over $30M for first fund (link)
Nexus Laboratories raises $25M from Pantera and Lightspeed to expand ‘zero-knowledge’ privacy tools (link)
Renzo Capitalizes on Restaking Frenzy to Raise $17M From Galaxy, Brevan Howard (link)
Layer3 raises $15M Series A ahead of token launch and airdrop (link)
Polkadot Parachain Moonbeam Launches $13M Gaming & RWA Fund (link)
Nuffle Labs Raises $13M to Expand Modular Infrastructure for Blockchain Layers (link)
Solana gaming Layer 2 Sonic raises $12M round ld by Bitkraft (link)
Ava Protocol lands $10M funding to develop 'super transactions' (link)
Solana-based multisig protocol Squads raises $10M, launches retail wallet app Fuse (link)
Irys raises a total of $8.9M in Lemniscap-led funding round (link)
Hypersonic Laboratories raises $7M for modding platform Helix (link)
Telegram tap-to-earn crypto game Pixelverse raises $5.5M from Delphi, Merit Circle, and others (link)
Verida raises $5M to protect user data amid rise in generative AI (link)
SCRYPT raises $5M to expand crypto asset services (link)
Gudchain Closes $5M Investment Round (link)
Yuliverse Secures $4M in Pre-A Funding Round (link)
Memecoin leverage trading protocol Wasabi raises $3M led by Electric Capital (link)
Tether to Invest More Than $1B in Deals Over Next Year (link)
Mo & Andrew's Curated
Crypto
Today we’re happy to announce a major win for Ethereum developers, technology providers, and industry participants: the Enforcement Division of the SEC has notified us that it is closing its investigation into Ethereum 2.0.
This means that the SEC…
17.7K
Over the past few years, the Biden Administration has openly declared war against crypto. It has weaponized multiple government agencies to bully, harass, and…
FAULT PROOFS & STAGE 1 HAVE ARRIVED Open source, permissionless fault proofs are live on OP Mainnet, and with them the OP Stack arrives at Stage 1 decentralization.
This is a major step forward for the Superchain!
An open protocol incentivizing the interpretation and contextualization of onchain information
Powered by $ZAP
1. Web3 gaming pioneers @Ronin_Network building a zkEVM using @0xPolygon CDK and exploring Agglayer. Bullish for $RON as people can stake RON and run gaming chains
2. @FoxNews, one of the largest media networks in the…
My primary focus for @tangent_xyz is two things:
1) Investing and working with founders long term on the venture side, and
2) Spotting inflection points on the liquid side to help founders weather them better
This thread is about the latter.…
TON's quiet growth, fueled by Telegram's 900M user base, has driven its daily active addresses above Ethereum.
At its core, TON is a bet on Telegram's distribution. Though the ecosystem is nascent, its early growth is promising. But is it enough?
Bullpen is one of the ways that I feel I can leverage my platform to provide value back to…
From the very beginning, @blknoiz06 and I have been obsessed with building a one-stop shop for retail to trade onchain.
What exactly is Bullpen and how are we different?
Most of this flow is on coins originating from @pumpdotfun
This market is fundamentally broken: when retail users trade, sophisticated actors should compete to lower their slippage, not maximize it.
NFTs
The Stoodio is officially migrating to @Base this July
learn more about our vision for the future on Ethereum & EVM
(1) A Commercial Agreements Initiative, to negotiate commercial agreements with projects, companies & protocols committed to building on ApeChain
(2) A User Incentives Initiative, to provide rewards for ApeChain users
@stevewchung brings deep expertise from his roles as Chief Global Officer of CJ ENM, CEO of CJ ENM USA, and Chief Growth Officer at FOX. His talent for taking Korean content global and driving…
AI
Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.
If you want a brief overview of crypto x AI and why it's such a thorny intersection, give it a watch (20 min)
Gaming
Following the Nexian Gems' power-up to Nexus Nodes, it was time for an ecosystem revamp.
Goal: Simplify the RG ecosystem & enhance community rewards.
Let's dive in: medium.com/@RevolvingGame…
1/4
Ecosystem Expansion
RCADE Foundation x Revolving Games x Starlings Partnerships
P.S. Told ya Tuner has his ways, also catch the hints at what's coming next?
These layoffs span games that were canceled and scaled back, as well as studios that…
We are super excited to announce the Public Beta launch of “The Lunatics” - an all-new strategy game developed by the amazing @play_alchemy team, exclusively available on Discord! And massive shoutout to the super talented team at @GrowStudioHQ who produced…
Other
Historically you get a better return over time by investing in the S&P at all-time highs compared to any other day.
(H/t @MikeZaccardi)
= Sfermion Portfolio Company
Curated by @mopat1214 + @AndrewSteinwold
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