Plume Network, a modular layer-2 network focusing on real-world asset tokenisation, has raised $10 million in a seed round led by Haun Ventures. Other participants included Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures, and Reciprocal Ventures. The Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible network is built on Arbitrum’s Orbit network and uses Celestia Network for data availability. Plume is currently in the testnet phase and is preparing to transition to the next stage. The company claims to have 80 real-world asset and DeFi projects building on its network. Plume aims to enable developers to create markets around yet-to-exist assets, taking tokenisation beyond securities like US treasuries.

Arbitrum, the leading Ethereum scaling solution, is witnessing a surge in activity as the US SEC deliberates on approving the first Ethereum spot ETF. Data from growthepie reveals that the number of active addresses on Arbitrum's Layer 2 (L2) surpassed 1 million for the first time on May 18, reaching a record high of over 1.1 million the next day. On May 19, transaction count on Arbitrum exceeded 3.4 million, marking the third-best day after mid-December 2023.

The most active applications on Arbitrum in the past month include decentralized exchange Uniswap, bridge solution LayerZero, and Xai, a Layer 3 chain for AAA gaming. Transactions involving USDT and USDC recorded the highest volumes. The total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum has been rebounding since the end of April, with DefiLlama data showing that the L2 has attracted $3.1 billion worth of crypto, nearing its record set on March 13 at over $3.2 billion.

The largest DeFi apps on Arbitrum are lending platform Aave, derivatives trading platform GMX, and Uniswap. If the SEC approves the first Ethereum ETF, Arbitrum and other Ethereum L2s could see further increases in activity due to potential new inflows from institutional investors. The SEC's decision on the ETF approval is expected in a few hours.

Ethereum futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) volumes hit record highs on Tuesday, following Ethereum's significant price surge from $3,070 to $3,661. Data from TheBlock reveals that all three Ethereum futures ETFs, EETH (ProShares Ether Strategy ETF), EFUT (VanEck Ethereum Strategy ETF), and AETH (Bitwise Ethereum Strategy ETF) experienced record trading volumes, totaling $47.7 million.

EETH, traded on the NYSE Arca, holds the largest share and saw its trading volumes increase from about $1 million on May 2 to over $43 million on May 21. Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) also saw a significant increase in daily trading volume, reaching $687 million, the highest since H1 2021.

This surge in Ethereum futures ETF trading volume is largely attributed to the recent spike in Ethereum's price. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has outperformed Bitcoin this week amid the crypto market recovery, gaining about 20% on Monday alone.

Investor confidence is growing in anticipation of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) possibly approving Ethereum spot ETFs later this month. Bloomberg ETF analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart have increased their expectations of spot Ethereum ETF approval from 25% to 75%. The SEC's decision on VanEck’s spot Ethereum ETF application is due on Thursday, May 23. If approved, Ethereum's price could continue its bull run to new highs.

Orange, a layer-1 blockchain platform specializing in User Generated Content (UGC) tools for gaming, AI, and the metaverse, has announced its integration with Pyth Price Feeds. Pyth is a permissionless data oracle that provides users with on-chain access to asset prices with low latency. This integration will allow developers on Orange to access over 500 real-time data feeds for digital and traditional assets, which can be used to monetize content on the Orange UGC platform.

The integration of Pyth Price Feeds into the Orange ecosystem will empower developers by providing them with sub-second price information for digital assets, ensuring in-game transactions are based on the most current and accurate data. This collaboration aims to enhance transparency and open new possibilities for creators and users in the GameFi ecosystem.

Orange's UGC-driven ecosystem includes a GameFi economy creation tool, a leaderboard and rewards system, an AI avatar creation tool, and an NFT toolkit for seamless deployment of NFTs in games. The integration with Pyth Price Feeds is expected to further enhance these offerings and elevate the next wave of Web3 creators.

South Korean payments giant, Naver Pay, is partnering with blockchain-based fan engagement solutions provider, Chiliz, to offer exclusive ticketing and payment services. The collaboration will also host fan events. Chiliz, which recently partnered with South Korea's K League, provides blockchain infrastructure solutions for sports teams, enhancing fan engagement. The company has partnered with global sports teams such as Tottenham Hotspurs, FC Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, and Manchester City.

Naver Pay, with 33 million registered users and 18 million daily users, aims to streamline payments and enhance customer engagement via rewards. The partnership is part of Naver Pay's global expansion campaign, integrating "cutting-edge Web3 technologies". Park Sang-jin, CEO of Naver Pay, said the partnership aims to transform user engagement with sports and entertainment. Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Chiliz, expressed excitement about the partnership, citing the maturity of South Korea's sports and crypto sectors.

Farcaster, an Ethereum-based social media platform, has raised $150 million in a funding round led by Paradigm. Other participants included A16z crypto, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Variant, and Standard Crypto. The funds will be used to support the platform's long-term development. Farcaster, which uses smart contract technology to manage social interactions, aims to grow its daily user base and add developer primitives to its protocol in 2024. Since becoming permissionless in October, the platform has seen a 50x increase in network activity and gained 350,000 paid sign-ups.

Raydium, the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana, has seen a significant rise in its total value locked (TVL), reaching $951 million on May 20, according to DefiLlama. This is the highest level since mid-January 2022, representing a 60% increase in the past month and a 650% surge since the start of the year.

Data from Dune reveals that Raydium's market share by DEX volume has hit a record 53.2% earlier in May, while Orca, which once accounted for over two-thirds of Solana DEX volume, now only holds a 22% market share. Despite this, Raydium's actual volume figures have been declining since March, when it handled a record $13.2 billion in transactions.

Meme coins have been the primary drivers of Raydium's activity in 2024. DEX Screener data indicates that Raydium is currently the most active DEX across all chains, with 7 out of the top 10 most traded pairs in the last 24 hours being on Raydium. All of these pairs are meme coins, including kiki, GME, Slothana, PONKE, and MANEKI.

Solana hosts one of the most active meme coin ecosystems, with more than half of the new meme coins registered on Coinmarketcap in March and April 2024 being hosted by Solana.

Ethereum 'hodlers', investors who have held ETH for a year or longer, currently hold a record 100.87 million ETH, as per data from IntoTheBlock. The amount held by short-term traders has dropped to its lowest since 2016. The balance held by 'cruisers', those who hold crypto for weeks or months, remains near multi-year lows.

Historically, hodlers tend to reduce their holdings late into bull cycles. The current record might be a result of the bull cycle that started in the last quarter of 2024. Ethereum has been correcting since its $4,000 level in mid-March. A significant decline in hodlers’ balances could indicate the end of the bull cycle, but this has not yet occurred.

The number of Ethereum addresses holding between 0.01 ETH and 0.1 ETH are at a record high of 20.8 million. Addresses holding less than 0.01 ETH have increased by about 10% since the start of the year to a record 93.2 million.

Data shows that over 80% of all addresses have seen a positive return since adding ETH, and only 10% have acquired ETH at a higher price than the current one. The largest portion of profitable addresses purchased ETH at an average price of $250. The number of profitable addresses correlates directly with the Ethereum price, reaching 100% when ETH hits a new record.

Earlier this year, Ethereum did not match Bitcoin’s achievement of reaching a new all-time high. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap hit a record peak in November 2021 at $4,878.

In a recent development, Pump.fun, a platform that uses bonding curves to secure tokens, was exploited through flash loans. The attacker, who claims to be a former employee, managed to buy out the bonding curve for Pump.fun memecoins. The exact amount stolen is still under debate, with some reports suggesting $80 million, and on-chain data indicating around $2 million.

The attacker, known as 'Stacc', has publicly taken credit for the exploit. He suggests that his actions were motivated by poor treatment in the blockchain industry and a desire to change its course. He also indicated that he is indifferent to potential legal consequences.

This incident follows a similar attack on Hedgey Finance, a token infrastructure platform on Arbitrum, which was exploited for nearly $45 million last month. These incidents underscore the need for robust security measures in the rapidly evolving crypto industry.

In a recent cyber attack, an individual known as 'Stacc' exploited the Pump.fun memecoin bonding curves using flash loans, potentially stealing up to $80 million according to some sources. However, on-chain data suggests the figure is closer to $2 million. The attacker has taken credit for the exploit, hinting that personal issues and dissatisfaction with the blockchain industry may have motivated the attack.

Pump.fun uses bonding curves to protect users from potential rug pulls by ensuring the safety of all created tokens. In this exploit, the attacker used flash loans to acquire enough SOL to buy out the bonding curve for Pump.fun memecoins.

This incident is not the first of its kind. Last month, Hedgey Finance, a token infrastructure platform on Arbitrum, was exploited for nearly $45 million. The recent attack on Pump.fun raises further concerns about the security of blockchain platforms and the potential for internal threats.

Supra, a leading data oracle and verifiable randomness provider, has integrated with ApeChain to become the first oracle price feeds and verifiable randomness protocol to deploy on the new layer-3 on Arbitrum. ApeChain will utilize Supra's Oracle price feeds protocol and Decentralised Oracle Agreement (DORA) to enhance real-time data accessibility for GameFi, DeFi, and other dApps.

Supra's decentralised verifiable randomness (dVRF) will ensure the integrity of random outcomes in blockchain games and prize draws. The platform is powered by the Supra Moonshot Consensus, a protocol that has recorded 530K transactions per second throughput in the testing stage.

Supra's DORA is designed to enable efficient validation and communication of real-world data to deterministic blockchain networks. The company's two lead solutions, DORA and dVRF, solve the problem of generating unpredictable outcomes for dApps via decentralised randomness in a verifiable way.

ApeChain aims to leverage this partnership to accelerate the mass adoption of Web3 gaming by ensuring trust with reliable data and "verifiably fair outcomes".

Crypto trading company Intensity Labs has raised $6.9 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Polychain Capital and DAO5. The round, which also saw participation from Arrington Capital, Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom, and others, was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants.

Intensity Labs is developing Shogun, a DeFi protocol aimed at maximising trader extractable value (TEV). The protocol is designed to route liquidity through a hybrid model of intent-based fulfilment through market makers and centralised exchanges, combined with on-chain fulfilment for long-tail assets through decentralised exchanges and passive liquidity vaults.

The platform will allow users to access every token on every blockchain, eliminating the need for different wallets or accounts for different chains. The company plans to release its on-chain routing tool and its native token, $GUN, in the second quarter of this year.

Blockchain-based digital identity startup, Humanity Protocol, has raised $30 million in a seed round led by Kingsway Capital, valuing the company at $1 billion. The round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com, and Shima Capital. The funds will be used to expand the team and build more partnerships.

Humanity Protocol is developing a system to verify online identities using palm scans, addressing concerns about artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and digital IP. The company plans to launch a testnet in Q2 and has already onboarded 500,000 users to the waitlist.

Founder Terence Kwok stated that the next steps include releasing an app that uses a phone camera to scan people's palm prints to determine their identity. Unlike other biometric technologies, Kwok believes that the Humanity Protocol system is less invasive. The startup now joins the ranks of Worldcoin, another identity verification company using biometrics.

Web3 gaming project Cross The Ages (CTA) has secured a $3.5 million equity round led by Animoca Brands, with participation from Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox and Nicolas Jeuffrain of Tenergie. This brings CTA's total raised to $23.5 million, including a $3 million seed round, a $9 million private round, a $3 million token pre-sale, and a $5 million community round.

The announcement coincides with CTA's token generation event, with the game's native token set to list on crypto exchange platforms Bybit, KuCoin, GATE, and MEXC. The funds will be used to accelerate growth initiatives as CTA builds its universe and ecosystem.

Since launching its virtual trading card game in March 2023, CTA has seen over 400k downloads and 148k monthly active users. The game has sold over 35 million digital cards, with more than 3.5 million NFTs minted.

CTA CEO Sami Chlagou expressed excitement for the collaboration with Animoca Brands, citing it as a shared commitment to expand the CTA gaming universe. Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, praised blockchain gaming for bringing "true digital ownership to the masses," and highlighted CTA's embodiment of these values.

Blockchain-based prediction market platform, Polymarket, has successfully raised $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Other participants included Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, 1confirmation, ParaFi, and Dragonfly Capital. This brings the total funds raised by Polymarket to over $70 million. The company has also appointed Richard Jaycobs, former president of the Cantor Exchange, as its head of market expansion. Polymarket allows traders to bet on the outcomes of real-world events, including sports competitions, celebrity engagements, and political events. The platform is currently seeing significant activity around the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election, with more than $125 million in bets already placed.

ImmutableX, an Ethereum layer 2 chain, witnessed a record high in the number of buyers and sellers of its NFTs last week, largely driven by the Guild of Guardians (GOG) NFT collection tied to a new blockchain game. According to Cryptoslam, daily unique sellers surpassed 400 on May 10, while daily buyers reached 353 on May 8.

The GOG collection, the most popular on the gaming-oriented chain, has secured over $11 million in NFT sales in the past month, an increase of about 80%. In the last week alone, the collection has generated over $3.4 million in NFT sales, ranking 6th on Cryptoslam. DappRadar data indicates a trading volume of $3.9 million during the same period, placing it in 12th place.

ImmutableX is the fifth-largest blockchain by NFT trading volume, generating over $7 million in NFT sales over the last week, up 13.3%. For comparison, NFT trading volume on Polygon exceeded $10 million during the same period, up over 20%. Interestingly, Polygon and ImmutableX are the only blockchain networks among the top 10 that experienced an increase in NFT trading volume during the last 7 days.

Blockchain-based AI training platform, ChainML, has successfully raised $6.2 million in an extended seed round led by Hack VC. Other participants included Foresight Ventures, Inception Capital, HTX Ventures, Figment Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. This follows a $4 million seed round announced in September 2022.

ChainML has also introduced Theoric, a framework for training autonomous AI agents for complex tasks, which is being used by Web3 startups. The platform aims to decentralize AI access using blockchain technology, enabling agent registration, payment, and security.

ChainML co-founder and CEO, Ron Bodkin, stated that the company is already collaborating with established Web3 projects, with more details to be revealed at the Consensus 2024 event. The AI models deployed by these projects will draw data from various sources, including social media and on-chain data, to perform complex tasks for the Web3 community.

The company plans to launch Theoric this summer, with a mainnet release later this year. The newly raised capital will be used to expand its engineering and research teams and to build a new team for the go-to-market campaign.

Erik Voorhees, founder of crypto exchange ShapeShift, has launched a generative AI product named Venice. The platform leverages blockchain technology for permissionless payments and end-to-end encryption, and serves as a web3 infrastructure for local browser storage. Venice aims to intersect AI and blockchain, offering services without compromising user data. Users can utilize Venice for generative conversation and image creation, and the platform plans to omit all forms of censorship. Teana Baker-Taylor, former vice president at Circle, has been appointed as COO of Venice, while Voorhees will act as CEO. The platform will utilize the Morpheus decentralized AI network and is not a crypto app, but rather uses blockchain and web3 infrastructure without holding user data.

Bitcoin-native application Arch has successfully raised $7 million in a seed round led by Multicoin Capital. The round also saw participation from Portal Ventures, OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings, and Tangent. The funds will be used to expedite the development of Arch's platform for bridgeless trading on the Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike other Layer 2 solutions, Arch does not require users to bridge assets to a side chain, offering a more user-friendly experience. The company plans to launch its mainnet in the second half of 2024, ahead of its public devnet rollout.

Web3 startup Arcium has secured $5.5 million in a strategic funding round led by Greenfield Capital, bringing its total funding to $9 million. The round saw participation from Coinbase, Heartcore Capital, Longhash VC, L2 Iterative Ventures, Staking Facilities, Smape Capital, Everstake, and angel investors Anatoly Yakovenko and Keone Han.

Arcium plans to use the funding to expedite the development of its platform, which employs zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, multi-party computations (MPCs), and Homomorphic encryption to ensure secure computation on encrypted data. The startup, founded by the team behind the Solana-based ZK privacy protocol Elusiv, is focusing on "confidential computing" by creating a verifiable encrypted computation protocol aimed at real-world asset tokenisation, decentralised finance apps, and decentralised physical infrastructure networks.

According to Arcium, it is set to release two versions of testnets before the mainnet launch, including a private incentivized testnet and a public testnet.