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Oasis Launches $160M Ecosystem Fund With Backing From Jump Capital and Others
The layer 1, long in development, is finally preparing for prime time.
Updated May 11, 2023, 3:53 p.m. Published Nov 17, 2021, 2:00 p.m.
After the establishment of a $160 million investment fund, a long-dormant layer 1 project with a focus on privacy is showing signs of life.
The Oasis Foundation announced Tuesday the launch of the fund in collaboration with a host of major venture capital firms, including Dragonfly Capital Partners, Draper Dragon Fund, Electric Capital, FBG, Jump Capital, Kenetic Capital, NGC Ventures and Pantera Capital, according to a press release.
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The fund will be used to seed early stage projects building on Oasis, including “DeFi, NFTs [non-fungible tokens], metaverse, data tokenization, data DAO, data governance” and other projects.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Oasis Labs founder Dawn Song said there is already a deal-flow pipeline of young projects ready for announcement.
“The hope is that everyone works together to fuel the growth of the ecosystem,” she said.
The fund bears similarity to a program established by Avalanche last month, Blizzard, where a group of VC investors committed $200 million to early stage projects. Both programs are part of a wider trend of layer 1s committing massive sums of money to bootstrapping projects and traffic in an increasingly competitive landscape for Ethereum base layer alternatives.
Read more: Fantom Commits $314M in FTM to Boost Ecosystem Development
As it looks to enter the race, Oasis may be starting far behind the pack.
In 2018, the buzzy startup focused on privacy-preserving smart contracts raised $45 million, but aside from occasional partnerships, has remained dormant ever since.
However, Song told CoinDesk that the chain may be preparing for prime time. The chain hosts “ParaTimes” – essentially sidechains with different execution environments that collectively rely on the same consensus layer – and a forthcoming ParaTime, “Emerald,” will enable Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) projects to easily port over to the chain.
Song said that the launch of Emerald is “imminent,” that a host of recognizable DeFi names are already building implementations on the network and that the launch of Emerald may come with a ROSE token liquidity mining program as well.
“There is a DEX [decentralized exchange], there’s lending, NFT projects, including special types of NFTs, there are lots of exciting partnerships coming,” she said.
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Microsoft Raises Alarm of Malware Targeting Coinbase, MetaMask Wallets
A new report from Microsoft researchers warned of malware that could steal and decrypt users’ information from 20 of some of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets.
What to know:
- Tech giant Microsoft shared a new report warning of malware that targets 20 of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets used with the Google Chrome extension.
- The malware, dubbed StilachiRAT, could deploy “sophisticated techniques to evade detection, persist in the target environment, and exfiltrate sensitive data."
- While the malware has not been distributed widely, Microsoft did share that it has not been able to identify what entity is behind the threat.
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