Currently Relevant: Edition #25

Welcome to Currently Relevant, THE RELEVANCE HOUSE’s regular roundup curating the best of news, views, and stories from the blockchain, crypto, and Web3 space.

This month: Sony launches its own entertainment-focussed blockchain; Nostr is attracting praise for its blend of social media and micropayments; France’s central bank governor calls for Europe-wide tokenization; Polkadot signs another big sports sponsorship deal, this time with Inter Miami; and we round up all the latest funding news, including Story Protocol’s $80 million haul in its Series B round.    

Sony launches Soneium, an entertainment-focussed blockchain 

Sony knows a thing or two about adoption. After all, it was the company that introduced a generation of teenagers to portable music players with the Walkman. Now the Japanese electronics giant is turning its attention to Web3, with the launch of its own public blockchain, Soneium. 

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While details of the network remain a bit hazy, the focus will initially be on gaming, NFT and entertainment use cases. In particular, Sony cites the potential of the network to automate the management of intellectual property rights and create new revenue streams for content creators. The long-term strategy seems to rest squarely on attracting blockchain newbies, with a stated commitment to “spark the interest of people who have never used Web3 services”. 

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Currently at testnet stage, the roadmap envisages that key Sony business divisions, such as Sony Music, Sony Pictures, and Sony Bank, will be integrated into the platform in year two. The testnet is an Ethereum-based layer-2 network running on the Optimism tech stack and Soneium is offering grants of up to $100,000 to projects or teams building on the platform. This is not the first time Sony has ventured into Web3: In August 2023, it acquired the crypto exchange WhaleFin through a subsidiary. 

Nostr looks to blend social media with micropayments

Amid giants like Facebook and Youtube, Web3 advocates have long called for decentralized alternatives to corporate social media sites. But in a sector that is heavily swayed by network effects, it seemed impossible for a challenger to gain a foothold. In April 2022, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter looked like it could shake up the microblogging space for the first time in decades. Amid sweeping changes, layoffs, experimental features and high-profile controversies, some users began to look for other options. By the end of the year, almost half a million people flocked to open-source competitor Mastadon. The initial influx proved short-lived, however, as the network struggled to cope with the increased load and users became confused by its diffuse structure. 

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Next came Bluesky, which had been initially conceived as a decentralized project within Twitter by Jack Dorsey back in 2019, but was later spun off as a separate team in 2022. Although Dorsey helped fund Bluesky and sat on its board, this May he abruptly left his role at the network amid differences in opinion over its future direction. 

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Enter Nostr: Dorsey’s new vision for decentralized social media and a torchbearer of freedom for many in the cypherpunk movement. Rather than relying on large centralized servers like X and Threads (or user-run server instances like Mastodon) Nostr broadcasts messages in a decentralized manner using relays. Nostr sits at the base of the tech stack, while users interact with frontend client applications like Damus for social media or Highlighter for long-form publishing. The goal is to create a censorship-resistant social media network that does not rely on centralized actors, and where users have full control over what they see in their feeds and can even select their own algorithms. 

Ultimately, Dorsey envisages deeply integrating micropayments into Nostr in order to change the way social networks and the creator economy are financed. Nostr already supports small Bitcoin payments called Zaps which can be sent directly as tips or rewards over the Lightning Network.

It is still relatively early days for the protocol, which currently commands in the region of 20,000 daily active users. The passion and enthusiasm for the network is evidenced by the fact that many volunteers have been willing to run relays for free to support the project in its infancy. In order to scale sustainably longer term, however, monetization and incentivization mechanisms will be key. In a time of flux, it will be fascinating to follow how the network develops from here.

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Banque de France governor calls for tokenized Europe

A world where financial transactions happen seamlessly across European borders, in real-time, and at a fraction of the cost we're used to. That was the vision laid out by France’s central bank governor François Villeroy de Galhau recently in a talk in which he detailed a harmonized Europe-wide ledger system for tokenization. The system would encompass a single, interconnected platform for tokenized assets, including a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), tokenized commercial bank money, and tokenized financial instruments. 

The speech is a call for increased EU focus on DLT amid faltering progress across the bloc. The EU’s DLT Pilot Regime was first launched in March 2023, but in the 18 months since, no DLT market infrastructures have been successfully authorized under the initiative. Beyond the EU, the Bank of France has also been participating in BIS Project Agorá, an initiative of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) through which seven central banks are aiming to improve cross-border payments using tokenization.

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Polkadot nets $8.8M deal with Inter Miami

Football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez will be taking to the field with a well-known name from Web3 emblazoned across their chests. The layer-0 network Polkadot has partnered with Inter Miami to become the club’s “global training partner” in a deal reportedly worth $8.8 million. 

This is the second major US sports sponsorship that the blockchain platform has been involved in recently, after its $2.1 million deal with Indycar star Conor Daly in April. The funding for both was ratified through the network’s on-chain governance platform, Polkassembly. On the field, Inter Miami look almost certain to make the end-of-season playoffs, sitting eight points clear at the top of the Eastern Conference table. Polkadot announced the partnership with a humorous video that poked fun at football’s basic understanding of Web3. The effectiveness of such Web3 sports deals remains open to question, however — at time of writing, DOT is up 2.3% over the past 12 months. 

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https://x.com/heroicgg/status/1832101619166802210?s=12

Funding Roundup 

• Story Protocol, a blockchain focussing on intellectual property, raised $80 million in a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
• The on-chain risk management platform Chaos Labs has raised $55 million in a Series A round. The funding was led by California-based Web3 venture capital firm Haun Ventures, which was founded by Kathryn Haun, a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
• Sahara AI, which focuses on decentralized artificial intelligence, secured $43 million in Series A funding, with Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, and Polychain Capital leading the round.
• Fabric Cryptography, which is developing a specialized Verifiable Processing Unit (VPU) for cryptographic tasks, raised $33 million in a Series A round led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx.
• Edge Matrix Chain, a project that is building an AI-driven layer-1 network, has closed a $20 million funding round led by Amber Group and Polygon Ventures.
• Space and Time Labs, a company developing a platform for AI and blockchain integration, raised $20 million in Series A funding to accelerate its development efforts. Participants in the round included Framework Ventures, Arrington Capital, Faction, and Hivemind Capital.

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