The Block: A look at 5 innovative projects worth watching
Original author:Frank Chaparro,Editor-in-chief of The Block
Original compilation: Felix, PANews
Over the past year, FTX, Genesis, Voyager, and Three Arrows have all exited the crypto scene. It’s been a year of significant transition, not only for the crypto industry as a whole, but for authors as well. But it also offers the opportunity to focus on emerging small businesses. It’s really exciting, especially with new entrepreneurs and first-time founders coming to the fore. They remain passionate, not frustrated by the challenges of running a company, but friendly and approachable. That’s why this article focuses on five startups in the crypto industry that may one day replace the companies that folded last year.
Ostium Labs
Crypto startup Ostium Labs has raised $3.5 million in funding, backed by investors including General Catalyst, LocalGlobe, SIG, and Balaji Srinivasan. The company is developing a digital commodity perpetual swap protocol to appeal to both traditional commodity traders and cryptocurrency traders by seeking a more transparent and flexible alternative to traditional derivatives platforms. The platform will support perpetual trading tied to oil, Bitcoin and FX counterparts of several major currencies, aiming to bring real-world assets to the blockchain. The project has established a partnership with Chaos Labs and plans to use Chainlink to feed prices. Ostium Labs aims to fill a gap in the market by providing on-chain trading directly across a wider range of asset classes.
JKLabs
JKLabs is a startup in the crypto space that aims to solve governance issues in the DeFi and web3 ecosystem by providing a platform that facilitates on-chain decision-making and community participation. Unlike traditional governance platforms that rely on token voting, JKLabs leverages on-chain reputation to determine a participant’s influence in the governance process, allowing for more meaningful and fair participation. This approach enables projects to organize competitions, hackathons, and grant programs while providing community members with opportunities to monetize and expand their audience, with the goal of exploring a more transparent and effective governance model for the crypto industry. The company recently raised $2 million in pre-seed funding from various investors.
Fractal
Fractal, a startup co-founded by Aya Kantorovich and Alex Elkrief, has raised a total of $6 million to develop a platform designed to increase transparency in the clearing and settlement of digital assets. The company aims to prevent users from losing money due to bankruptcies of companies like Three Arrows and FTX, allowing customers to monitor their positions in real time and limit borrowing collateral to crypto blue-chip tokens to alleviate liquidity issues faced by counterparties.
Turnkey
Turnkey, a startup led by a former Coinbase Custody executive, has secured $7.5 million in seed funding. The company aims to provide a developer-first platform for securing and managing digital assets in the crypto industry. The goal of the platform is to provide flexible, programmable solutions for generating wallets and signing transactions on different blockchain networks, solving the increasingly complex problems of on-chain transactions. According to Chainalysis, the move comes in response to growing user concerns about the security of digital assets, as crypto hacks have caused a record $3.8 billion in losses this year.
Architect
Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX.US, received $5 million in financing from investors such as Coinbase Ventures and Circle Ventures and established a new company, Architect. Architect will focus on providing software trading tools for DeFi to meet the needs of large investors and institutions. The companys goal is to develop institutional-grade trading technology that simplifies access to decentralized protocols and centralized exchanges for corporations, large traders, and large trading accounts.
