Protocol Village: Alchemy Launches ‘Modular Account’ for Ethereum L2 Developers

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Feb. 22: Alchemy just launched Modular Account, “a bold step forward in making the Web3 ecosystem more broadly accessible to non-technical users through dramatically improved UX,” according to the team. “Imagine trying to onboard the layman with no prior blockchain exposure and describing the various nuances of cold wallets, private keys, gas, nonces, etc. Modular Account is a new contract account implementation designed from the ground up for ERC-4337 and ERC-6900 compatibility. Modular Account provides enterprise-grade security, best in class cost, and robust account extensibility to developers building on Ethereum L2s.”

Astar Network Developer Startale Labs Raises $3.5M

Feb. 22: Astar Network developer, Startale Labs, a developer of Japanese Web3 products, Aiming to accelerate the mass adoption of Web3, has raised an additional $3.5 million from UOB Venture Management and Samsung Next, according to the team: “This brings the total seed round funding to $7 million, combined with a $3.5 million investment from Sony Network Communications in June 2023.”

DWallet Labs Announces Testnet Launch of ‘dWallet Network’

Feb. 22: DWallet Labs announced the testnet launch of dWallet Network, a first-of-its-kind composable modular signature network. According to the team: “The dWallet Network introduces a new primitive for multi-chain collaboration in Web3 – dWallets – a noncollusive and massively decentralized signing mechanism that can be used as a building block on L1s and L2s to sign native transactions to all chains. With assets always staying on their native chains, eliminating the cross-chain risks of wrapping, bridging or messaging. It’s the first-of-its-kind composable modular signature network built on dWallet’s new protocol 2PC-MPC.”

Binance Labs Invests in Renzo to Support Liquid Restaking on EigenLayer Ecosystem

Feb. 22: Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, has invested in Renzo, a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) and strategy manager for EigenLayer, built to promote the widespread adoption of EigenLayer. “Renzo Protocol, an EigenLayer restaking hub, consists of Ethereum smart contracts that facilitate trustless collaboration between stakers, node operators, and Actively Validated Services (AVSs),” according to the team.

Aave Plans Expansion to BNB Chain

Feb. 22: With strong governance support from the community, Aave, the largest DeFi money market protocol, is coming to BNB Chain, according to the BNB team.

– “This move further expands the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem, joining other industry heavyweights like Uniswap, Ambit Finance, PancakeSwap and Lista DAO,” according to the team.

– “BNB Chain users will now have access to an industry leading lending platform and with strong liquidity on FDUSD, will be able to engage in more DeFi related activities.”

– “Aave users will benefit from being integrated with one of the largest DeFi ecosystems and have access to BNB Chain’s low fees.”

Wormhole Collaborates With AMD to Make Hardware Accelerators

Feb. 22: Wormhole, a blockchain interoperability platform, announced a collaboration with microprocessor maker AMD that will make enterprise grade AMD FPGA hardware accelerators available to the Wormhole ecosystem, including the AMD Alveo™ U55C and U250 adaptable accelerator cards. AMD will also lend its deep hardware acceleration expertise to help deliver speed and scalability to multichain applications being built with Wormhole. “AMD offers enterprise-grade FPGAs that are based on the most advanced architectures for scalable compute and flexibility for a breadth of applications. FPGAs can parallelize massive workloads, such as processing millions of multichain messages on Wormhole,” according to a blog post on AMD’s website.

Inco Secures $4.5M in Seed Round, Launches Testnet ‘Gentry’

Feb. 22: Inco, leading developer of a universal confidentiality layer for Ethereum and other networks, has secured $4.5 million in a seed round led by 1kx, and launched its testnet Gentry. According to the team: “The testnet addresses Web3’s confidentiality challenges, blending EVM with FHE and secured by Ethereum via EigenLayer. With native on-chain confidentiality and randomness, Inco empowers diverse dApps including gaming, DeFi, private lending and blind auctions.”

Meso Network Raises $9.5M, Co-Led by Solana Ventures and Ribbit Capital

Feb. 22: Meso, a payment platform connecting banks and blockchains, announced it has raised $9.5 million in a seed round, co-led by Solana Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from 6th Man Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Phantom Co-Founder Chris Kalani, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready and Archie Puri of Bodhi Labs. According to the team, “the network was launched by veterans from PayPal, Venmo and Braintree. Apps can integrate Meso to onboard users without first sending them off to a centralized exchange to fund their wallets.”

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.

Edited by Bradley Keoun.