- Coinbase announced the launch of a testnet version of Ethereum Layer 2 network Base. Jesse Pollack, Senior Engineering Director at Coinbase, said that Base is modeled on the Goerli testnet of Ethereum and built on top of the open-source OP Stack, without issuing any dedicated tokens.
- Blockchain chip startup Chain Reaction has raised $70 million in funding, with Morgan Creek Digital leading the round. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team. The total amount raised by the company now stands at $115 million.
- Bitcoin mining consulting firm Sabre56 has completed a $35 million funding round, with investments primarily coming from private sources that have not been disclosed. The funding will be used to build its custody sites with the goal of preparing 150 megawatts (MW) of energy capacity by the end of this year.
- Here Not There Labs, a Web3 startup, has raised $25.5 million in funding, with a16z leading the round and Benchmark and Framework Ventures among the participants. The capital will be used to build a Web3 social protocol called Towns. Towns is a group chat protocol and application that enables communities to create programmable, autonomous “town squares”.
- Privacy technology start-up Beldex has completed a $25 million funding round, with digital asset market maker and investment company DWF Labs investing and establishing a partnership with them. These funds will help drive the development of Beldex’s ecosystem, with DWF serving as an advisor and assisting with marketing efforts.
- Binance has responded to the issue of “perpetual contract positions of Australian users being liquited”, stating that this is due to some accounts being misclassified. The team discovered that some Australian users on Binance were incorrectly classified as “wholesale clients”.
- Dapper Labs, the development team behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, has decided to lay off 20% of its full-time employees. In November 2022, Dapper Labs laid off 134 of its 613 employees due to a restructuring strategy. Dapper Labs’ Senior Vice President of Marketing, Dave Feldman, confirmed on Twitter that the company had carried out layoffs.
- The Edge wallet has reported the discovery of a security vulnerability in its application, which leaked approximately 2000 private keys by sending them to the Edge infrastructure. This represents about 0.01% of the total keys created on the Edge platform.