Category: Press release
A hospitable metaverse requires the basic building blocks of virtual life
Meta’s stated mission is to seamlessly connect disparate environments like work, social media and gaming so it can allow people to effectively live and work in the virtual space.
This will clearly have a significant and sustained impact on our networks. We aren’t just talking about a need to be constantly connected, without glitches; we’re talking about fully immersive content streaming seamlessly, in 4K and 8K, with low latency and minimal lag.
We will need to be able to go from one experience to another without being distracted by reboots, operating system or application loading times, network congestion, or anything else that suggests we’re not in a seamless virtual environment.
Accomplishing all of this makes virtual life seem as challenging as moving to Mars.
Yet, it is possible to make the journey to our new virtual world frictionless. We just need to make sure we are putting in place the basic building blocks needed for virtual life.
Starting today, we have the opportunity to make the metaverse habitable and hospitable, a place where our virtual selves can thrive, not just survive.
Bandwidth is key
We’ll need a lot of bandwidth to make this work at scale. Much like water is a building block of life, there is no way we could function in a metaverse without bandwidth. We need high-performance connectivity capable of supporting the different demands of bandwidth-hungry applications in the metaverse.
That bandwidth must be widespread and affordable, too, to better support our underserved and under-connected communities. Visions of a virtual world often center on equal opportunities for everyone to create and explore. For that to happen inside the metaverse, we need to ensure a level playing field of connectivity in the real world first.
Low latency is as critical as air
Bandwidth is one thing, but if it takes the avatar we’re engaging with several seconds to respond – or worse – then meta life is suddenly annoying and inhospitable. We already find it frustrating to have lag when streaming live sports or gaming online, and this will only be exacerbated when we are trying to fully immerse ourselves into a virtual world.
Technology such as edge computing – which can reduce network latency and improve reliability – will become increasingly important in networks that require real-time responsiveness.
Virtual hardware: The infrastructure of the metaverse
We’ve all been there: Hardware breaks, and we need to fix it. In that time, we need to be able to survive without whatever function that piece of hardware operated. But this can’t happen in a metaverse – or at least it shouldn’t, because we should have utilized virtualized functions for much of what the metaverse requires.
Deploying infrastructure functions using virtual machine and container concepts where they, like apps, can be deployed across the network at scale and in real time will be key. Classic network functions such as routing and switching will need to be fully virtualized. They need to be easily updated, upgraded, patched and deployed.
Software intelligence: The mayor of the metaverse
We need the metaverse to be software-defined to enable it to act quickly and seamlessly. It’s the equivalent of a local government or council being able to repair our roads, remove the trash and control traffic flows in real time. This generally happens today in real life without us knowing, until it stops working and we wonder what happened.
Automation and AI, powered by programmable software capabilities, hold the key to helping speed the delivery of network rollouts, making them more accessible and adaptive.
An adaptive virtual programmable network will be able to identify a fault and self-heal, without the need for a physical truck-roll. It can draw resources – compute, storage, bandwidth – from underutilized areas to ramp up other parts of the metaverse seeing increased activity, and revert automatically when required.
Over the next several years, we will hear a lot of talk about the metaverse, but any innovation in use cases will not happen without the required network innovations. An adaptive network that provides software-controlled, high-capacity, low-latency connectivity will be even more important of a foundation for the future metaverse than it is for today’s cloud apps.
The building blocks are already there for the artist formerly known as Facebook to build a hospitable metaverse, and as those technologies continue to evolve – driven by an expected uptick in innovation among tech developers looking to capitalize on the metaverse emergence – Meta will have more world-building tools to work with.
Simply put, it’s not easy to build a virtual universe, but it’s certainly something that we can bring closer to reality through proper network infrastructure investments and innovation.
Is raising money catastrophically challenging for female founders?
“Raising money is catastrophically challenging for female founders, and even harder for Black female founders.”
In the world of technology, we thirst to be a part of the next digital product that benefits from first-mover status and shapes what’s to come at an industry level. This is especially relevant in regard to seeking capital. And while we’ve witnessed some impressive transformations in the developer tools space, with VC-backed funding following suit, sometimes I worry we’re at risk of conflating technological growth for the social progress we really need. Women are still behind. Why?
There are some great female developer founders, like Nora Jones of Jeli, Window Snyder of Thistle Technologies, Edith Harbaugh of Launch Darkly, and Jean Yang of Akita Software, to name a few. There are also some amazing female angels and VCs. These are women I look to as leaders in the industry — those overcoming the barriers of either giving or seeking funding while remaining authentic to who they are.
Limited partners should back more female VCs, and funds should offer women the same graces and latitude that are given to men.
Shanea Leven
Despite those of us trying to make a name for ourselves in dev tools, the reality is the dev tools space is led predominately by white men. For those of us who don’t meet those gender and racial criteria, simply thriving requires more attention to detail, energy and time than is often sustainable.
We need to level-set, acknowledging the current ways in which women must fight to thrive. We need to ask some tough questions.
The fight to be taken seriously
We want to be able to fundraise from other people that look like us, right? But many female investors are fighting just as hard to be taken seriously as the female founders they want to support. If we’re all facing the same social constraint — fighting to prove our legitimacy — we’re probably maintaining the same aversion to risk.
This creates an invalidating cycle in which female investors take fewer risks, particularly in regard to investing in female founders, and garner fewer funds than their male counterparts. How can we break this cycle?
Limited partners should back more female VCs, and funds should offer women the same graces and latitude that are given to men. Female VCs should be promoted to partnerships, where they will be able to write meaningful checks quickly.
I’ve personally witnessed the extraordinary results of empowered female angels and VCs connecting with others to support female founders; the community and sense of sisterhood they inspire have the potential to change the industry. This is what we need to latch on to and scale.
The fight to overcome ingrained psychological barriers
Today, there exists a widespread belief that women are less aggressive in the process of confirming a round, both as founders and VCs. As a female founder, I’ve been told male counterparts are capable of committing larger funds, faster — that women appear to be more risk-averse, often moving slower through the process and requesting less.
So, what’s causing the pause among women? It’s likely the most obvious answer: We are, in fact, facing a greater risk of rejection in the funding process. We also tend to have fewer connections into the VC community, where the “rules of VC” — what to do, say, and how to act — are often confusing and counterintuitive. Nothing like the clear guidelines on writing a good piece of code.
The fight against the numbers
Imagine you have 1,000 potential investors and only 10% of them focus on companies offering technologies like yours. Then, just 2% of them invest in companies at your stage and 5% of those share your same philosophies — and you’re only able to access yet another percentage of those. Now, imagine you’re stepping into those discussions with the understanding that we are ultimately people pitching to people, so you must “click” in an often all-too-brief interaction.
You’ll be committed in business to this investor for the next decade or more. So, while you’re attempting to navigate the numbers — the odds against you — you’re also trying to figure out a VC’s history, personality and perspectives. How have they been burned before? Can we be empathic to their businesses of the past and assure them our business is a worthy investment … all in 30 minutes or less?
So, how can women successfully fight for funding?
The simple answer: We cannot do it alone. Like most professional endeavors, seeking funding is ideally bolstered by a social network. While I wish I could say women intrinsically have everything they need to excel in the world of venture capital, I believe we require allies and support beyond basic networking and spanning gender and race.
We need everyone who has a stake in the game to join the fight for women, with focused attention on the challenges encountered by women of color. We must acknowledge the potential danger to female founders and investors in working from a survival mindset and provide them the coaching and guidance they need to step into funding discussions practiced, prepared and able to speak on behalf of a company with greater strength.
Said simply, we need to trust in the ability and potential of women on both ends of the deal, with no strings attached.
Hyundai Motor Group unveils its hydrogen strategy, plans to offer fuel-cell versions of commercial cars by 2028
Image Credits: Hyundai Motor Group
Hyundai Motor Group is backing hydrogen as a top energy solution for sustainability. With its new fuel cell system that it plans to launch in the next few years, the South Korean automaker said it will provide hydrogen fuel cell versions for all its commercial vehicles by 2028.
Hyundai announced its strategy for the future of hydrogen on Tuesday during a livestream of the automaker’s Hydrogen Wave conference. Saehoon Kim, executive vice president and head of the fuel cell center at Hyundai Motor Group, said Hyundai’s goal is to also achieve cost competitiveness comparable to that of EV batteries by 2030.
The company also shared details about its high-performance, rear-wheel-drive hydrogen sports car, the Vision FK, with a 500kW fuel cell system that can push it from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in less than four seconds and has 600 kilometers (373 miles) of range. Hyundai did not share when the vehicle would go into production.
As most automakers begin to roll out electric vehicles for both passenger and commercial use, hydrogen is still a bit of a niche market, but one that is growing as Europe, China and the United States set ambitious emissions reductions goals. Toyota Motor Corp., BMW and Daimler have all begun embracing hydrogen fuel cell technology to varying degrees, even as they continue to develop exclusively electric vehicles. For its part, Hyundai’s commitment to hydrogen doesn’t deter from its commitment to electric. With the climate situation as it is, we’re facing an all hands on deck situation. May the best fuel win.
At the event, Kim also announced Hyundai’s plans to launch two new hydrogen fuel cell powertrains in 2023, which the company hopes will help make hydrogen mainstream by 2040. The third generation of Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel stack will come in either 100kW or 200kW outputs for either passenger cars or commercial vehicles, respectively.
Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Hyundai, Kia and Genesis, has one fuel cell bus on the market today, the Elec City Fuel Cell bus, with 115 buses live on the road in South Korea. The automaker also has one fuel cell truck, the Xcient Hyundai, on the market, 45 of which were launched in Switzerland last year.
Hyundai boasts a fuel cell SUV, the NEXO, with plans to introduce the next model in 2023, alongside a hydrogen-powered multi-purpose vehicle model. The company announced at the IAA Mobility conference in Munich that it would also launch a large fuel cell-powered SUV after 2025, as well as four more commercial vehicles by the end of the decade. The company aims to provide fuel cell technology for different use cases, including emergency vehicles, ships, freights, trams, forklifts and other vehicles for industrial processes.
“Fuel cell is a proven technology that can deliver the benefits of hydrogen to people around the world in various fields,” said Kim. “Basically, a fuel cell is a power generator like an engine. It differs from a battery which stores electricity. A fuel cell system consists of a fuel cell stack that generates electricity, a hydrogen supply system, an air supply system and a thermal management system. It generates power by combining hydrogen and oxygen, similar to the engine of an internal combustion vehicle, but without the carbon emissions.”
Kim went on to explain that fuel cell systems produce energy through chemical reactions and operate as long as hydrogen fuel is supplied, unlike a battery which just passively stores energy. He said Hyundai is working on building up the necessary ecosystem to create success in the hydrogen space, including production, storage, fuel cell technology and infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure would be solar and wind sources that would produce the renewable energy needed to create clean power to split water into oxygen and “green” hydrogen.
Alongside its own research and development, Hyundai Motor has also already invested in hydrogen startups like H2Pro and has announced plans to establish green hydrogen infrastructures in countries with supportive governments and abundant renewable energy resources.
Much of the movement in this space comes after the group announced its commitment to become carbon neutral by 2045 and to reduce its emissions by 75% below 2019 levels by 2040. By 2030, Hyundai expects 30% of all vehicle sales to be zero emission, with battery electric and fuel cell electric vehicles taking up 80% of total fleet sales by 2040.
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Coinbase to propose a federal regulatory framework for crypto to US officials within the next month
Image Credits: Steve Jennings / Getty Images
Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase wants to help guide any emerging regulation on exchanges like itself, for obvious reasons, and in an interview with TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on Tuesday, Coinbase CEO and founder Brian Armstrong revealed it’s preparing a draft regulatory framework for consideration by federal lawmakers which it aims to distribute sometime within the next month.
“Coinbase wants to be an advisor and a helpful advocate for how the U.S. can create that sensible regulation,” Armstrong said in the interview. “In fact, there’s a proposal that we’re putting out at the end of this month, or maybe early next month, that is our proposed regulatory framework.”
Regulators typically seek industry feedback when forming new rules, particularly in industries where the pace of technological advancements mean that progress in the market has far outpaced the development of new, and amendment of existing, regulation. Armstrong said that he has in fact been asked multiple times for such a proposal.
“When I go to DC, I’ve met with a number of people in government, and they typically will ask us ‘Well, do you have a draft, do you have a proposal of something we could try to shop around about how this could be regulated federally?’,” he said. “Because right now, Coinbase has, you know, 50 different state regulators for money transmission licenses, 50 for lending licenses, you know, FINCEN, and SEC, and CFTC, and IRS and Treasury and OFAC.”
Armstrong clearly would prefer if there were an overarching federal framework that would alleviate the burden of dealing with independent state-by-state rules and agencies. But he also did seem aware that any proposal they put forward will definitely be just a single piece of a larger puzzle, which will include input from other industry entities working in crypto as well as guidance from existing related regulations.
“We have a proposal that we actually want to put out there that could help maybe create at least one idea about how to move forward,” he said. “But this is going to require input from a lot of people and that willingness [on the part of lawmakers] to kind of engage with private industry and learn about what the opportunity is here.”
Coinbase recently clashed with the SEC after teasing the launch of a ‘Lend’ product that would allow its users to stake their crypto holdings in exchange for a return in the form of yearly interest. The SEC threatened to sue over the product since it signalled that this would represent security, and be regulated as such, and Coinbase quietly walked back its plans to debut the product for now shortly after making public the SEC’s threat and articulating its lack of comprehension about the potential regulatory backlash.
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DeFi investor platform Zerion raises $8.2 million Series A
Image Credits: Zerion
While crypto exchanges have demystified some of the largest cryptocurrencies for retail investors, many of the intricacies of decentralized finance are still lost on even more savvy investors as a result of DeFi weave of diverse offerings.
Zerion, a startup building a decentralized finance “interface” for crypto investors, has attracted venture capitalist attention on the back of recent growth. Amid a renewed crypto gold rush, the company has processed more than $600 million in transaction volume so far this year, now with over 200,000 monthly active users, CEO Evgeny Yurtaev tells TechCrunch.
The startup has also wrapped an $8.2 million Series A funding round led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from Placeholder, DCG, Lightspeed and Blockchain.com Ventures, among others. Mosaic’s Toby Coppel and Placeholder’s Brad Burnham have joined Zerion’s Board, the startup also shared.
Zerion gives customers access to more than 50,000 digital assets and 60 protocols on the Ethereum blockchain through their app, which streamlines the UI of DeFi. Users can access tokens and invest through the app similar to exchanges like Coinbase or Gemini, but do so using their own personal wallets like MetaMask, meaning user funds and private keys aren’t controlled by or accessible to Zerion, a sticking point for Yurtaev, a lifelong crypto enthusiast and builder.
Image Credits: Zerion
“There are a bunch of different tokens and protocols in the DeFi space,” Yurtaev says. “In theory, it’s supposed to be easy to navigate, but in reality, it’s all a mess … We try to demystify them.”
Alongside major growth in Ethereum and bitcoin prices, DeFi volume has surged in 2021, up from just under $20 billion at the year’s start to nearly $90 billion this May. The DeFi market at large has proven just as volatile as bitcoin, with market volume falling some 35% in the past couple months to just over $57 billion.
The startup’s mobile app on iOS and Android has become a particularly popular way for crypto investors to track the market and the tokens they’re backing. The average user opens the app more than nine times per day, the company says.
Crypto’s 2021 upswing has drawn plenty of investor attention, not only to the assets themselves but to the platforms facilitating those transactions. Last month, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced that they had raised more than $2.2 billion to invest in startups building products in crypto spaces including decentralized finance.
Blockinvest Ventures is hereby to help you understand more regarding the investment industry with conscientious advice. We hope that you can feel the article was helpful and don’t forget to subscribe our website for further news!
Blockinvest Ventures funds $30M capital for the development of a potential project Bitcoinnami
Cryptocurrency has always been a craze sector, especially in the recent, the prices of the crypto-coins have been steadily rising despite Covid-19 pandemic which has damaged the capital market.
Following the early stages of Bitcoinnami, Blockinvest Ventures highly appreciate the project’s vision and roadmap as well as the potential of the product their team created. Therefore, this venture have decided to invest $30M in this project, which is the first step for us to build beneficial partnerships and start with the future development orientation.
Blockinvest Ventures is a financial technology project that allows businesses to create bespoke financial instruments. The company seeks to replace current financial procedures by improving the journey of an instrument operator, providing means to enter the blockchain markets and remain compliant. BlockInvest has been investing for many crypto projects and exchanges, they have a full-scale global operation with the ability to trade on all major exchanges and markets.
BitcoinNami is envisioned as one of the first heterogeneous multi-chain frameworks designed to facilitate cross-chain interoperability and scalability of blockchains. This platform functions itself as a global payment connector. With simple technical applications built into the protocol of the system and firm cooperation and integration with international exchanges, users can promptly swap and trade BTCN and other tokens without any troubles.
The fundraise looks like a highly strategic one and so BlockInvest decided to invest 30 million USD to nurture the growth of this application implied for BTCN system’s technology and ideas. At the same time, the venture will make recommendations on strategic directions in the coming time to suit the trends of the times, especially develop ecosystem-oriented strategy.
Matic Raises $10M from Blockinvest Ventures
Matic network provides scalable, secure and instant Ethereum transactions. Matic wallet will enable users to interact easily with Matic network while having a simplified User experience to make faster transactions.
The key aim is to change the decentralized transactions by leveraging a combination of blockchain scaling, developer platform and tools, and a rapid focus on User experience.
Matic network provides scalable, secure and instant Ethereum transactions. Matic wallet will enable users to interact easily with Matic network while having a simplified User experience to make faster transactions.
The key aim is to change the decentralized transactions by leveraging a combination of blockchain scaling, developer platform and tools, and a rapid focus on User experience.
Matic wallet will help users to interact with DApps and sign transactions easily while keeping their private keys safe on their mobiles. This is a great way of making blockchains reachable to mainstream users.
As mentioned earlier, Matic network aims to solve the problems faced by the blockchain ecosystem by building a decentralized platform using an adapted version of the Plasma framework. This enables low-cost transactions using Matic’s sidechain while also increasing the throughput.
Blockinvest Ventures is a leading investment fund specializing in blockchain technology, privacy-preserving technologies, and early-stage projects. This investment is aligned with goals to achieve adoption through better usability alongside scalability and will help realize the vision to achieve scale for decentralized applications.
Bat attention (BAT) Raises $20 Million in Round with Blockinvest Venture
Several companies participated in BAT’s latest funding round, including Blockinvest Venture, Standard Crypto and other venture.
The new funds will go toward extending the project’s reach.
The company has raised more than $20 million in the past through separate fundraisers, including a $3 million venture capital round in July 2020 and a $17 million ICO in 2017.
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Decentraland – a blockchain VR project, has raised $13 million in new funding
A virtual reality project built on top of blockchain technology has raised over $13 million from Blockinvest Venture-a leading investment fund specializing in blockchain technology, privacy-preserving technologies, and early-stage projects.
Decentraland, as previously reported by CoinDesk, is looking to create a virtual world, in which blockchain acts as a registry for digital plots of land. Among those involved is developer Manuel Aráoz, who also built the bitcoin document timestamping tool Proof of Existence.
Besides, Kicking off yesterday afternoon, the ICO raised 86,206 ether ($26,203,082 at press time), according to the Decentraland website, and hit its pre-set hard cap in a little over an hour.
The speed with which the raise was completed evoked memories of the Brave sale in May, which concluded in an astonishing 30 seconds. Perceptions that, as a result, the tokens sold will have ended up in the hands of a few bigger investors stoked some criticism on social media.
Decentraland’s ICO is the latest in a string of such crowdsales, as illustrated by data from CoinDesk’s ICO Tracker, that have raised more than a billion dollars-worth of cryptocurrency to date. More than $500 million was raised in July alone through the funding model.
Also completed this week, was an ICO held by 0x, a decentralized exchange project, which raised $24 million.
ChiliZ raises $60 million from Blockinvest Ventures and other organisations
Blockinvest Ventures-a leading investment fund specializing in blockchain technology, privacy-preserving technologies, and early-stage projects, has invested in blockchain esports and traditional sports voting platform, chiliZ.
The amount invested by Blockinvest Venture is undisclosed, but it will “work hand-in-hand” with chiliZ to “engage with the sports industry and develop a fan-driven token ecosystem for traditional sports teams.”
Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of chiliZ discussed this investment: “Blockinvest Ventures’s significant investment in chiliZ will boost our current private placement offering and help us to move faster. Their support will help us deliver our vision globally, increase our visibility in the blockchain ecosystem and empower our technical vision. I’m also excited that Blockinvest Venture is setting-up in UAE, where we will be able to share resources, enabling a more strategic partnership.”
Another announcement from the platform has revealed that it has reached its goal of raising $65m (£48.6m) through a global private placement place for chiliZ tokens.
Dreyfus also touched on the amount of money chiliZ has raised: “We have been overwhelmed by the demand for chiliZ tokens in the last few days. It has been a combination of hard work from the team, but also our strategic partners who invested and believe in our long-term vision. This gives us a great runaway to develop and deploy our vision, and to start looking at acquisitions.”
In late May, chiliZ announced plans to invest $10m (£7.4m), at least, into organisations who compete in Battle Royale titles. There main three titles in this genre are Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and H1Z1. chiliZ has a strong advisory board with well-known people from the esports industry, such as Fnatic’s CEO Wouter Sleijffers and Team Vitality’s CEO Nicolas Maurer.