Original author: defioasis
Original editor: Colin Wu
On December 7, well-known crypto venture capital a16z announced a list of trends that are exciting for the crypto industry in 2024, including entering a new era of decentralization, reshaping future user experience, the rise of modular technology stacks, AI and blockchain The combination of chains, from play to earn to play and earn, AI becomes the game maker, Crypto provides guarantees, formal verification becomes more accessible, NFT becomes a ubiquitous brand asset, and SNARKs (concise non-interactive knowledge arguments) ) became mainstream.
This article will conduct a project inventory around the 9 major areas listed by a16z, prioritize a16z investment projects, and select based on multi-dimensional comprehensive considerations such as project status, financing situation, and personal understanding.
Entering a new era of centralization
Combined with the living laboratory of Web3 in the past few years, more practices about decentralization have begun to emerge, including decentralized models that can adapt to applications with richer features, and DAOs adopting Machiavellian principles. to design a more effective decentralized governance model.
PartyDAO
Party allows users to create on-chain groups on the Ethereum network. They can initiate crowdfunding, on-chain voting and authorization within the group, use the group as an individual address to perform Ethereum transactions, and even play on-chain games as a group. According to official data, more than 9,000 groups have been created on Party, with 55,000 participants in wallets, promoting a transaction volume of more than 10,000 ETH. Party itself is also decentralized in the form of DAO, namely PartyDAO.
PartyDAO completed US$16.4 million in financing led by a16z on June 10, 2022, with participating investors including Dragonfly, Uniswap Ventures, etc.
Fingerprints DAO
Fingerprints is a community and platform about digital art, with a shared treasury and some highly precious NFT collections collected by a community curatorial committee. Fingerprints operates as a DAO, and any user can join and become a member by obtaining 5,000 PRINTS Token or 1 Voxelglyph NFT. Members gain economic exposure to the collection, which benefits if the value of the collection increases; access to cutting-edge blockchain artists, collectors, and curators; and the ability to participate in governance through proposals and voting. FingerprintsDAO unveiled the work Terra 0 at the 2022 Dubai Art Show; in June this year, it cooperated with the German car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz to launch Maschine NFT.
Fingerprints completed a round of financing participated by a16z in September 2021, but did not disclose the amount and valuation; the current market value of PRINTS is US$9.1 million, but there are few transactions.
Reshaping the user experience of the future
Developers are actively building front-end UX that can reshape crypto applications, such as pass keys that simplify user login to applications, programmable and easy-to-manage smart accounts, embedded wallets, multi-party computation (MPC) and advanced RPC endpoints.
Dynamic Labs
Dynamic is a multi-chain based authentication and authorization platform with features including embedded wallets, Crypto-Native login, Profile and multi-chain wallets, as well as authorization and authentication. In addition, Dynamic also provides a customizable all-in-one service that can put crypto wallet technology in the backend for novice users, or in the frontend for native Web3 users.
Dynamic Labs completed US$13.5 million in financing led by a16z and Founders Fund on December 13 this year, and its current cumulative financing amount reaches US$21 million.
Pimlico
Pimlico is an infrastructure platform for building ERC-4337 smart accounts, providing developers with functions such as validators, verified payers, and ERC-20 payments. Pimlico became the first platform to integrate with the multi-sig contract Safes ERC-4337 smart account in November this year and serves as a Bundle in the Safe ecosystem. Pimlico is now one of the largest bundlers of packaging and processing user operations in the ERC-4337 account abstraction.
Pimlico completed a US$4.2 million seed round of financing led by a16z on November 7 this year, and its current cumulative financing amount reaches US$5.8 million.
The rise of modular technology stacks
The biggest advantage of open source’s modular technology stack is that it unlocks permissionless innovation, allows participants to specialize, and stimulates more competition.
Stackr Labs
Stackr is a modular rollup SDK that introduces micro-rollups, which can develop, optimize and maintain each function in dApps as an independent state machine. Stackr Labs is also developing pre-built state machines and cross-chain modules to make it easier for micro-rollups in different locales to interact. Some examples and applications include games, databases and cloud services, oracles and real-world data, off-chain multi-node networks and social algorithms, etc.
Stackr Labs completed a $5.5 million seed round of financing led by Archetype on November 9 this year, with participation from a16z CCS; the project was also shortlisted for the a16z Crypto Startup School 2023 in May this year.
Celestia
Celestia is a modular blockchain that introduces new capabilities for data availability collection and strives to achieve breakthroughs in scalability, flexibility, and interoperability. The Celestia mainnet was launched on October 31, and rollups and other modular public chains can use Celestia to achieve data availability and consensus. Currently, Celestias data availability layer has been integrated with Arbitrum Orbit and Polygon CDK.
Celestia Labs completed US$55 million in financing led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital on October 20, 2022. Participants included Coinbase Ventures and Jump Crypto, etc.; the current cumulative financing amount reaches US$56.5 million. The current market capitalization of Celestia TIA reaches US$2 billion.
Combining AI and blockchain
A decentralized, open-source cryptographic network will democratize AI innovation and make it safer for users.
Gensyn
The Gensyn network is a machine learning computing protocol that claims to unite the worlds computing resources into a global supercluster that can be accessed by anyone at any time. Gensyn plans to reduce costs and enable trustless access by using blockchain to decentralize computing resources and using tokens to buy and sell processor cycles.
Gensyn completed a US$43 million Series A round of financing led by a16z on June 12 this year, and its current cumulative financing amount reaches US$49.5 million.
Fetch ai
At the core of Fetch.ai is a decentralized autonomous AI agent network that provides the infrastructure for building intelligent, funded services. Fetch ai provides a smart wallet that serves as a machine learning platform and AI agent-based trading tool, and has been integrated with OpenAIs GPT API; it can also serve as an off-chain layer for the L1 network.
Fetch ai completed a $40 million investment from DWF Labs on March 29 this year; on April 27, it received a $10 million support commitment from the crypto exchange Bitget and was listed on Launchpad. The current market value of Fetch ai FET reaches US$650 million.
from play to earn to play and earn
What the industry really needs is games that are both fun and allow players to gain more value. P2E will transform into Play-and-Earn, establishing a significant difference between games and work.
EthXY
EthXY is a Telegram-based one-click poker MMORPG game with PvP and poker battle mechanics. The game is played on-chain on the Base network, and players can obtain loot through a variety of incentive structures. According to official data, EthXY attracted 1,060 ETH (over $2 million) in bets and 30,000 games between players in the first two weeks of its launch; more than 3,000 games were executed in the past 24 hours fighting.
EthXY completed a pre-seed round of financing of US$1.6 million on November 15 this year, with participation from the a16z CSS 23 accelerator program; the current market value of the game token SEXY is approximately US$6.5 million.
Proof of Play
Proof of Play is a blockchain gaming startup that aims to create interesting full-chain games. Currently, Proof of Play has launched the Beta version of Pirate Nation, the first on-chain role-playing game, with competition, PvE and PvP, as well as customizable characters and islands. The character Pirate NFT is based on Ethereum, while the game is built on Arbitrum Nova.
Proof of Play completed a US$33 million seed round of financing co-led by Greenoaks and a16z on September 21 this year.
AI becomes the game maker, Crypto provides guarantee
The AI generates the lore, terrain, narrative, and logic for the game, and Crypto provides the ability to understand, diagnose, and punish the AI when things go wrong.
Pahdo Labs
Pahdo Labs is a game studio that is building the anime-style action role-playing game Halcyon Zero, as well as launching a UGC platform. Pahdo Labs democratizes anime game creation, allowing players to create unique anime-style mods and worlds through generative AI tools.
Pahdo Labs completed US$15 million in financing led by a16z on September 12 this year, and its current total financing amount reaches US$17.5 million.
CCP Games
CCP Games is an independent game developer founded in 1997. In May 2003, it launched the sci-fi space epic massively multiplayer online game MMO EVE Online, which has won many awards. CCP Games is producing a new AAA blockchain game set in the Eve Online universe, using smart contracts and blockchain technology to create a new relationship between the virtual world and players. Neural Nexus, a player-operated organization of Eve Online, has appointed ChatGPT as the new leader, giving GPT-4 decision-making power to enjoy long-term development and reduce dependence on a single leader.
CCP Games completed US$40 million in financing led by a16z on March 21 this year.
Formal verification becomes more accessible
In software development, especially smart contract development, there is a need for more accessible formal verification methods to reduce the occurrence of security incidents as much as possible.
Buildspace
Buildspace is an encryption developer community that provides training courses for Web3 developers through live broadcasts and provides a communication environment for Web3 developers. Its current courses include Solidity, Ethereum NFT, Solana Web3 App, etc. In July this year, Buildspace also opened its first Buildspace campus in Francisco, where students can freely build whatever they want to build.
Buildspace completed $10 million in financing led by a16z on November 18, 2022, with participation from Y Combinator and Solana Ventures.
Convex
Convex is a global state management platform for full-stack TypeScript development and Web3 developers. As a developer, you can use JavaScript or TypeScript functions to interact with its shared state and bind that state to your reactive application.
Convex completed a $26 million Series A round of financing led by a16z on July 4, 2022, and general partner Martin Casado also joined the Convex board of directors.
NFT becomes a ubiquitous brand asset
More and more well-known brands have brought digital assets to mainstream consumers in the form of NFTs. With L2 custodial wallets and low transaction costs, conditions are created for the popularity of NFTs as digital brand assets for wider companies and communities.
Sound xyz
Sound.xyz is a music NFT platform that aims to become the new home for music discovery on the Internet and is open to all artists. Sound is also creating a platform for fixing the economics of music streaming, allowing artists to monetize their music while maintaining full control of their music and retaining 100% publishing rights. According to official data, Sound has generated more than $5.5 million in revenue for a select group of creators in less than a year since its launch.
Sound xyz completed US$20 million in financing led by a16z on July 12 this year, and the current cumulative financing amount reaches US$25 million.
Ready Player Me
Ready Player Me is a Metaverse identity platform where users can establish virtual identities through NFT in the Metaverse, and developers can integrate the platform into their own applications. The platform said that more than 3,000 partners, including VRChat, Somebody Space and Nike-owned NFT studio RTFKT, have integrated the Ready Player Me platform.
Ready Player Me completed a US$56 million Series B round of financing led by a16z on August 23, 2022, and its current cumulative financing amount reaches US$69 million.
SNARKs (Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments for Knowledge) go mainstream
SNARKs (Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge, Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge) allow an untrusted certifier to calculate a cryptographic receipt for certain computing workloads and cannot be forged.
zkSync
zkSync is an L2 protocol based on the ZK rollup architecture. All funds are held by smart contracts on the main chain, while calculations and storage occur off-chain. The validator transactions are packaged in a separate block and submit a cryptographic commitment (i.e. the root hash) to the Ethereum mainnet smart contract, as well as a cryptographic proof (a SNARK) that this new state is indeed some correct transaction application result from the old state.
Matter Labs, the development team behind zkSync, completed a US$200 million Series C financing jointly led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly on November 16, 2022, with participation from a16z and others. Currently, zkSync/matter Labs’ cumulative financing amount reaches US$258 million.
Manta Pacific
Manta Pacific is an L2 network powered by Manta Network that supports zk-SNARK, provides programmable ZK, and can develop ZK applications using Solidity. In addition, Mantle Pacific also launched Universal Circuits 2.0 to improve the developer experience of deploying EVM native ZK applications and provide ZK as a service. Mantle Pacific also recently launched New Paradigm, introducing yield tokens and composability to L2.
Manta Pacific developer p 0x labs completed a $25 million round of financing led by Polychain Capital and Qiming Venture Partners on July 19 this year, bringing its total funding to date to $31.6 million.
