Zug, Switzerland, January 2nd, 2024, Chainwire

In collaboration with Telekom MMS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, stc Bahrain, Heartcore Capital, Arca Finance, Cardinal Cryptography, and others, the hybrid event offers different tracks with up to $575K USD in bounties and funding opportunities.

 The Aleph Zero Foundation, committed to the advancement and adoption of the Aleph Zero blockchain, today announced the launch of CTRL+Hack+ZK, a comprehensive hackathon event. Spanning from January 10th to January 31st, 2024, this event will be held virtually. CTRL+Hack+ZK represents Aleph Zero’s most immersive hacking event to date, designed to spur innovation and collaboration in the blockchain space.

CTRL+Hack+ZK invites developers, whether seasoned or new to Web3, to immerse themselves in a three-week virtual hacking experience. Participants will engage in Rust and ink! workshops, educational programming, as well as hands-on mentorship with Aleph Zero’s core development team and ecosystem partners.

Previous Aleph Zero hackathons have been the birthplace of success stories like AZERO.ID and Syncra, which have become integral to the Aleph Zero ecosystem. CTRL+Hack+ZK offers a launchpad for developers to turn their innovative ideas into reality, with the opportunity for projects to be integrated into the growing Aleph Zero ecosystem.

“We’re honored to partner with some of the world’s most esteemed organizations in different sectors for the CTRL+Hack+ZK hackathon. Their endorsement energizes our mission to expand the Aleph Zero ecosystem,” said Antoni Zolciak, Co-Founder of Aleph Zero. “Our focus remains steadfast on delivering exceptional user experience that prioritizes privacy, compliance, and speed. This hackathon is put together to help spread the overall adoption of Web3 with a primary focus on building the application layer using the Rust and ink! programming environments.”

Top-Line Partnerships and Opportunities

The hackathon partners include MMS Telekom, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, Saudi Telecom Bahrain, idOS, Cardinal Cryptography, Generative Ventures, Heartcore Capital, WW Ventures, Blockchain Founders Capital, and Buidlers Tribe. Additionally, collaborators from Franklin Templeton Investments, Block54, RR2 Capital, and more, will serve as hackathon judges, providing significant exposure opportunities for participants.

Teams from existing Aleph Zero ecosystem partners will share their experiences, offering practical insights and learnings that can guide new hackathon entrants in the development of their own projects within the ecosystem.

Fostering Innovation Across Diverse Tracks

With prizes ranging from $2K to $20K USD from the $75K USD pool, as well as an opportunity to get fast-tracked for up to $500K in follow-on funding, the hackathon tracks include:

• Telco: This track invites developers to transform the telecom sector leveraging Aleph Zero’s advanced tools, focusing on optimizing existing infrastructure and conceptualizing new services, setting the stage for future telecommunication advancements.
• DeFi: Developers are encouraged to harness Aleph Zero’s privacy-centric framework to craft unique DeFi solutions and services.
• DiD: This track will explore identity-related solutions leveraging Aleph Zero’s native privacy stack and network of interoperable tooling libraries to enable secure and decentralized identity management.
• Gaming: Participants are encouraged to creatively employ Aleph Zero for developing NFT-based in-game items, enhancing game development through Aleph Zero’s specialized libraries, crafting smart contracts for in-game transactions and collectibles, and building indexers for gaming data.
• Tooling and Infrastructure: This track will focus on developing applications, node providers, libraries, and tools that enhance the developer experience and ecosystem around Aleph Zero.

Schedule and Participation Details

The hackathon will kick off with the Aleph Zero ecosystem Town Hall on January 10th, followed by a series of workshops, intensive hacking sessions, and a demo day. Winners will be announced on February 5th, with prizes, mentorship opportunities, and potential inclusion in the Aleph Zero Ecosystem Funding Program, which, to date, has distributed nearly $4M in grants across various teams and products.

For more information and to register for CTRL+Hack+ZK, visit https://hack.alephzero.org/.

About Aleph Zero

Aleph Zero is layer 1 blockchain engineered for speed and opt-in privacy, achieving efficiencies akin to conventional web2 systems. It upholds rigorous standards for data privacy and transaction security, while aiming for genuine decentralization over time. Aleph Zero’s versatility is highlighted by over 40 use cases being actively developed, showcasing its adaptability across various sectors and applications.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC6LcyTN2Ok

Contacts

Ana
ana@serotonin.co
Martyna
martyna@serotonin.co

Zug, Switzerland, December 22nd, 2023, Chainwire

Secured Finance aims to surpass the conventional constraints of traditional DeFi lending models, introducing a fresh perspective to the bond market. Through the adoption of an order book-based system, the team has focused its attention on improving overall market transparency and efficiency.

The platform aims to enable the seamless integration of institutional and retail users into the DeFi ecosystem, ensuring secure and simple crypto lending, borrowing, and derivatives. Secured Finance wants to set itself apart in the fast-paced world of DeFi through features such as streamlined lending, transparent pricing, and counterparty risk reduction.

What does Secured Finance offer?

The platform goes beyond mere trading, as Secured Finance concentrates on conducting all processes, from bond issuance to settlement, on the blockchain which helps them establish a comprehensive ecosystem. According to Secured Finance Founder and CEO, Masa Kikuchi, “By using blockchain technology, the system improves overall transparency and security and helps the platform achieve immediate and low-cost settlements while also providing investors with stable returns.”

Perhaps most importantly, however, Secured Finance is making history by being the first to open a cryptocurrency-denominated bond market. This is a first in both DeFi and TradFi, as presently nobody can trade BTC and ETH bonds elsewhere as public-chain-based bond settlement systems don’t exist yet.

The platform also introduces standardized OTC products with on-chain order book-based price discovery, ensuring fair interest rates with minimal gas costs. Establishing a reliable yield curve through user-driven order book systems for efficient collateral management and hedging is also feasible, as is bridging DeFi technologies with interbank standards to create a transparent and open financial infrastructure.

Furthermore, Secured Finance aims to provide a genuine and transparent yield curve for informed decision-making and risk management. The platform also enhances composability and scalability by enabling the interpolation of interest rates and leveraging derivatives through a unified yield curve. Finally, Secured Finance’s standard supports zero-coupon bond issuance and trading, facilitating fixed-rate loans and efficient hedging opportunities.

What about future goals?

Looking ahead, Secured Finance aspires to transcend being merely a platform, as the aim is to set a new benchmark in the financial realm. This benchmark embodies principles of transparency, efficiency, and accessibility, which means that Secured Finance’s objective is to foster greater inclusivity in financial services and dismantle barriers entrenched in traditional markets.

The order book system transforms decision-making, enabling informed investments. Secured Finance’s roadmap focuses on growth, expansion, and innovative product development post-mainnet launch, solidifying its leadership in financial innovation. The mainnet launch, scheduled on December 15th, 2023, marks a significant milestone for Secured Finance, and it will be supported by successful fundraising efforts, enhancing the platform’s trust and market position.

Ultimately, this innovative journey is synonymous with innovation, transformation, and leadership in finance. Secured Finance does not want to simply participate in the financial market narrative, as instead, the focus is on writing the next chapter of it while being at the forefront.

About Secured Finance

Secured Finance is revolutionizing financial markets, bridging traditional and crypto markets with transparent, efficient solutions. Its innovative order book system addresses Ethereum challenges, enhancing on-chain management. Essentially, Secured Finance envisions a mature cryptocurrency market, with a fully on-chain advantage providing a competitive edge. The order book system extends benefits to P2P transactions, offering stability and expanded market potential.

In the bond market, Secured Finance’s yield curve aids in anticipating trends, contributing to diversified investment strategies and improved risk management. The platform enables fixed interest rates by tackling ETH gas costs, enhancing liquidity, and offering flexibility in OTC derivatives. The Ethereum choice balances liquidity and innovation. 

With Secured Finance, transparency is key, with on-chain systems ensuring fair interest rate determination. A lengthy and thorough Q&A session highlighted several operational aspects of the platform, all of which emphasized transparency, innovation, and risk management. As previously mentioned, the platform is also the first project to enable crypto bond trading in the history of finance.

Put simply, this journey is about spearheading market evolution. Similar to how Bitcoin (BTC) redefined the concept of money, Secured Finance aims to reshape the perception of the bond market as well as the broader financial landscape via stability, efficiency, and transparency, ushering in a new era of financial possibilities.

For more information, visit Secured Finance’s official website along with the GitHub, X, YouTube, Discord, Guild, and Galxe channels. For email-related inquiries, feel free to use contact@secured-finance.com.

Contact

Secured Finance Contact
contact@secured-finance.com

London, United Kingdom, December 19th, 2023, Chainwire

Alkimi, the world’s first decentralised ad exchange, has exited beta and now has advertisers and publishers buying and selling inventory through its blockchain-based programmatic platform. The launch of a custom consensus, distributed ledger and node platform marks a new era for digital advertising. It makes it possible to buy and sell advertising space in a completely decentralised manner through the blockchain infrastructure.

The mainnet Alkimi offers delivers performance enhancements, complete transparency, and greater efficiency in the digital advertising ecosystem. By cutting the fees from over 37% to between 3-5%, the cost of buying ads was reduced from $9.03 to $2.71, granting advertisers 212% more media while also increasing ad campaign performance by 19% in collaboration with the world’s largest media agencies and publishers.

Ben Putley, Alkimi CEO and Co-Founder, expressed how “I am thrilled to announce the launch of Alkimi Exchange’s mainnet, a pivotal moment in our journey to revolutionise digital advertising. In 2023, the digital ad spend is projected to be $678.9 billion, signifying the immense potential of this market. Alkimi Exchange will capture this potential by bringing a significant portion of digital ad spend on-chain via our exchange AlEx.”

For advertisers and media agencies, the mainnet presents a level of clarity and accountability in ad spend that was previously unattainable. Publishers, in contrast, are poised to benefit from a more streamlined and profitable approach to ad management and revenue generation, with a higher proportion of advertiser dollars being passed on to them, thus creating more value online.

A key feature of the new mainnet is the inclusion of a Liquidity Staking Derivative (LSD), allowing users to join a liquidity pool on Balancer and stake their LP tokens (stADS) on the user portal, labs.alkimi.org. This feature offers users the opportunity to ‘yield farm’ the internet.

The launch of this mainnet represents not just a technological advancement but a paradigm shift in how digital advertising is conducted. By harnessing blockchain technology, the company is setting new standards for transparency and performance in the industry, marking a significant step towards a future where digital advertising is more effective, transparent, and fair for all parties involved.

About Alkimi Exchange

Alkimi Exchange is a decentralised replacement to the inefficient legacy programmatic ad exchanges with the mission to restore the value exchange between advertisers, publishers and users. Alkimi Exchange is a custom layer 2 scaling solution on the Ethereum network, specifically for advertising — which allows us to provide the fastest, infinitely scalable solution with 0% fraud, low transaction fees and complete end-to-end transparency.

Learn more at www.alkimi.org.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alkimi-exchange

Telegram: https://t.me/Alkimi_Exchange

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/ebeHPzYHFT 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlkimiExchange 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfvLB-WjXB7oZSeFci-RT5w

Contact

Head Of Marketing
Milly Putley
Alkimi Exchange
hello@alkimi.org

Warsaw, Poland, December 14th, 2023, Chainwire

Flipster, the fast-growing crypto trading platform, released its final campaign series for the year. Named ‘The Dragon’s Treasure’, this campaign is Flipster’s first themed event, consisting of an initial nine trading competitions over seven weeks with up to 1 million USDT worth of prizes to be given out. The huge prize pool stacks on top of existing generous offerings to bring new users to the platform, who can earn up to 175 USDT worth of bonuses (at the time of writing).

The Dragon’s Treasure is a series of challenges that each run for a week. Each weekly challenge contains a story that is linked to an overarching narrative across an initial seven chapters. Taking inspiration from the pop culture world that the platform’s target demographic grew up with, the storytelling elements are aimed at elevating the trading experience to a level of enjoyment found in popular digital entertainment options. 

For each chapter, a new tournament is revealed in conjunction with a new character and world. The team has created backstories for each of the seven chapters, with inspiration for the characters and chosen worlds being drawn from the unique cultures of Flipster’s user base.

The first competition, named Chapter One: The Lucky Bear, kicked off on 13 November 2023. Users had to compete to win a share of 25,000 USDT in prizes. Building up the momentum and excitement for traders, with each week that passes, more characters are revealed, and the prize money also increases in tandem, with Chapter Five: A Charming Elephant (scheduled to conclude on 17 December 2023) awarding up to 100K USD worth of prizes. Two more weeks of tournaments remain for 2024 before the campaign ends with a bang in a grand final round with record prizes planned.

The crypto-obsessed world has been stunned this year by the rapid rise of Flipster in a year dominated by high-profile dramas in the news and a primarily bearish market. Despite less-than-ideal conditions, Flipster has impressed insiders with its rapid rise in user growth, maintaining a greater than 500% month-on-month user growth. The increase has transformed into a positive 4000% trading volume growth.

Flipster came to prominence around June 2023, having proven they can build and launch in a bear market, bullish whispers predict how quickly they will rise if a bull market does pass next year for the bitcoin halving.

CEO Yongjin Kim says, “We are deeply committed to excellence and innovation at Flipster, and take nothing for granted. I am proud of the team’s performance and thrilled with how this translates into our impressive numbers. It’s incredibly rewarding to constantly encounter individuals who are curious about Flipster’s journey. Their questions about what’s next for us and how we plan to lead the crypto industry in the coming years are not just thought-provoking but also affirming the brand we have carved out. From myself and everyone at Flipster, we wish everyone a joyous holiday season.”

The price of BTC and the crypto market are moving positively, making it a fun way to wrap up the year by trading crypto on Flipster and competing for prizes in The Dragon’s Treasure. 

About Flipster

Flipster is the fastest-growing crypto exchange in the world. The easy-to-use crypto derivatives trading platform offers users an all-in-one trading experience with leverage of up to 100x on over 190 tokens. Created by the same founders as Presto Labs, the largest crypto quant trading firm in Asia. Users can get started at flipster.xyz. For media enquiries or interview requests with the team, users can reach out to pr@flipster.xyz or keep up to date with flipster on our blog

Official Website | Linkedin | Twitter | Telegram | Facebook

Contact

Head of Marketing
Ben Rogers
Flipster
benrogers@prestolabs.io