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In the midst of the RWA Craze, will Cryptocurrency Rise as the New Financial System or Fall as a Traditional Satellite?
Original Title: Onchain Capital Structure
Original Author: long_solitude
Original Translator: Daisy, Mars Finance
Will Cryptocurrency Tokenize Traditional Finance, or Will Traditional Finance Tokenize Cryptocurrency?
The financial industry has been undergoing a transformation of its business models. Over the past few decades, we have seen the rise of alternative investments such as private equity, venture capital, and especially private credit. Private credit has become one of the fastest-growing sectors in the financial field.
M&A star Ken Moelis recently lamented the decline of M&A bankers. Today, alternative hybrid financing structures are more profitable than buying and selling companies.
For investors like us who focus on cryptocurrency, alternative financing could well encompass on-chain structured products and tokenized elements of capital structures. But if this opportunity is eventually seized by unemployed M&A bankers rather than profitable founders of crypto projects, it will be a great regret.
So far, the only products within the cryptocurrency space that have truly been accepted by the traditional financial system are stablecoins and Bitcoin. DeFi (Decentralized Finance) has yet to truly take off outside the crypto sphere, with its performance still closely tied to trading volumes.
One of the future directions is a bottom-up approach to build a fully on-chain capital structure (debt, equity, and tokenized assets in between). Traditional finance loves returns and structured products. While many of us in the past have seen thousand-fold returns by hyping concepts, the future development of institutionalized on-chain finance will require us to adapt to new challenges.
We Once Dismissed This
For a long time, we have always lacked interest in Real World Assets (RWA). In the past, we viewed it as a "reification" of outdated thinking—just giving a digital shell to existing off-chain assets, which are still subject to a traditional legal system vastly different from "code is law." But now, we are reexamining this seemingly unimaginative yet highly practical opportunity.
The Limitations of Onchain Private Credit
Tokenizing private credit on-chain essentially only opens up a new financing channel for borrowers. Platforms like Maple Finance have indeed driven this process. However, in the event of capital impairment or default, lenders can only rely entirely on the existing legal system (as well as platform teams like Maple) to recover funds. Moreover, such debt is often issued in jurisdictions with weak rule of law or in frontier markets. Therefore, it is by no means the perfect solution advocated by proponents (for more background, please refer to our earlier analysis).
Adverse Selection Dilemma
Even more concerning is the issue of adverse selection. On-chain private credit aimed at crypto retail investors often exhibits poor asset quality. Opportunities that offer the most optimal risk-adjusted returns are always monopolized by giants like Apollo and Blackstone, and they never flow into the blockchain market.
Unique Advantages of On-Chain Native Businesses
Fortunately, there is currently a group of traditional institutions that have not yet entered (but have already become profitable) on-chain native businesses. These projects now need to innovate boldly in their fundraising methods based on the revenue-generating nature of their on-chain operations.
As for U.S. Treasury bond tokenization? It is nothing more than a trick to add a yield-enhancing element to DeFi strategies or a shortcut for crypto-native users to diversify their assets while circumventing fiat on/off-ramp restrictions, with very limited substantive significance.
Exploration and Challenges of On-Chain Native Debt
There have been several attempts in history to issue pure on-chain debt (such as Bond Protocol and Debt DAO), with these debts being backed by project tokens or future cash flows. However, none of them ultimately succeeded, and the specific reasons are not yet fully understood. Currently, the following explanations exist:
1. Capital and User Exhaustion in Bear Markets
At that time, very few projects could generate substantial income, and market liquidity was severely lacking.
2. DeFi's Lean Capital Nature
One of the most attractive qualities of this industry is its ability to operate protocols with hundreds of millions of dollars in value with a lean team, where the marginal cost of expansion is almost zero.
3. Over-the-Counter Token Advantage
Selling tokens over-the-counter to specific investors not only provides funding but also garners social credit and status endorsement—these resources can subsequently be converted into growth in TVL (Total Value Locked) and price appreciation.
4. Overwhelming Advantage of Incentive Mechanisms
Compared to liquidity mining, point rewards, and other fancy incentives, bond products are not competitive in terms of yield.
5. Regulatory Murkiness of Debt Instruments
Relevant regulations have never provided a clear definition.
It is for the reasons mentioned above that DeFi founders have always lacked the drive to explore alternative funding channels.
Programmable Revenue and Embedded Finance
We firmly believe that on-chain enterprises should have a lower cost of capital than traditional enterprises. The term "enterprise" here specifically refers to DeFi-related projects—after all, this is the only sector in the crypto space that truly generates revenue. The foundation of this cost of capital advantage lies in the fact that all revenue is generated on-chain and is fully programmable. These projects can directly link future revenue to credit obligations.
The Debt Trap of Traditional Finance
In the traditional financial system, debt instruments often have clauses that restrict the leverage level of a specific enterprise (covenants). Once a default clause is triggered, creditors have the right to initiate asset takeover procedures. However, the issue is that creditors not only need to estimate enterprise revenue performance but also need to constantly monitor cost expenses—because it is precisely these two variables, revenue and cost, that affect covenant metrics.
The Structural Breakthrough of On-Chain Credit
Based on programmable revenue, on-chain credit investors can completely bypass the enterprise's cost structure and directly lend based on revenue. This means that enterprises can obtain funding at a much lower interest rate than equity financing (based on PNL statements). Projects like Phantom, Jito, or Jupiter, for example, should be able to secure billions of dollars in funding from large institutional investors using their on-chain revenue as collateral.
Through flexible smart contract settings:
When project revenue shrinks, the proportion allocated to creditors automatically increases (reducing default risk). When revenue grows rapidly, the corresponding proportion is dynamically adjusted downwards (maintaining the agreed credit term)
This embedded finance architecture is redefining the flow of capital and value.
Exploring the Financialization of On-Chain Revenue
Take pump.fun, for example. If it were to secure $1 billion from a pension fund, when the new coin collateralization rate drops (as is the recent case), the pension fund can take over the smart contract until the debt is repaid. While the feasibility of such aggressive measures is still controversial, this direction is worth exploring.
Advanced Applications of On-Chain Revenue
On-chain revenue can not only fulfill basic credit obligations but also achieve:
Automatic settlement of different priority debt rights in the capital structure (subordinated debt and senior debt)Condition-triggered repayment mechanismsDebt auctions and refinancingSegmentation and securitization of income by business type
Limitations of Token Financing
Compared to selling tokens at a discount off-exchange to hedge funds (which often opportunistically hedge or dump), the above income securitization should be a more economical financing solution. Project income can be sustainably generated, while token supply is limited. Although token sales are convenient, they are not a sustainable way for projects aiming for long-term development. We encourage ambitious teams to pioneer a new financing paradigm rather than sticking to conventions.
Reference to Traditional E-commerce
The above model is known in traditional e-commerce as "merchant cash advance" or "factor rate loans." Payment processors such as Stripe and Shopify provide operational funding to merchants they serve through their own investment tools. The actual interest rates for such loans are usually as high as 50-100% or even higher, and they lack a price discovery mechanism—merchants, as price takers, are tightly bound to the payment system.
Breakthrough in On-Chain Embedded Finance
This embedded (in-app) financing model shines on-chain:
Programmable payments support conditional payments, real-time fund flows to achieve more complex payment strategies (such as targeted customer discounts). Stripe is pioneering this algorithmic prioritization model through merchant coverage and Bridge acquisition to drive stablecoin applications between merchants and consumers.
However, the key question is: Can this model open up to permissionless capital and promote competition? Payment companies are unlikely to give up their moats to allow external entities to lend to their merchants. This may well be the entrepreneurial opportunity for on-chain native crypto-commerce and permissionless capital solutions.
Dual-Class Shares
If a company's equity value is entirely derived from on-chain revenue (i.e., no other source of income), then equity tokenization is the inevitable choice. Initially, a standard equity form may not be adopted, and a hybrid structure between debt and equity can be used.
The recent launch of tokenized Coinbase shares by Backed.fi has attracted attention. This scheme holds the underlying stocks through a Swiss custody institution, allowing cash redemption for KYC-compliant users. The token itself follows the ERC-20 standard, enjoying the composability advantages of DeFi. However, such a design only benefits secondary market participants, with Coinbase as the issuer not receiving any tangible benefits—neither able to conduct on-chain financing through this tool nor innovate the application of equity instruments.
Although equity tokenization (and other assets) has become a popular concept recently, truly exciting cases have yet to emerge. We expect such innovations to be catalyzed by platforms with broad distribution channels and benefiting from blockchain settlement, such as Robinhood.
Another development direction of equity tokenization is to build an on-chain giant that can obtain nearly unlimited funding at extremely low cost based on on-chain revenue, proving to the traditional market that half-baked solutions are not viable — either all revenue is tokenized into a fully on-chain organization, or it continues to stay on Nasdaq.
In any case, equity tokenization must introduce new features or alter the risk characteristics of equity: Can a fully tokenized company lower its cost of capital due to its real-time on-chain income statement? Can it use on-chain oracles to validate event-triggered conditional equity issuance, changing the current market issuance (ATM) mechanism? Can employee equity incentives be based on on-chain milestones instead of time-based vesting? Can a company collect all trading fees generated from its own stock transactions instead of giving them to brokers?
Conclusion
We always face two development paths: top-down and bottom-up. As investors, we always pursue the latter, but more and more things in the crypto space are being realized through the former.
Whether it's equity tokenization, credit tools, or income-based structured products, the core question remains the same: Can new forms of capital formation be enabled? Can incremental functionalities be created for financial instruments? Can these innovations reduce the cost of capital for businesses?
Just as the traditional venture capital field has arbitrage between private and public markets (the trend is to stay private rather than go public), we anticipate that the binary opposition between on-chain and off-chain capital will eventually disappear — only superior or inferior financial solutions will exist in the future. It is quite possible that our judgment is incorrect, and on-chain credit linked to revenue may not necessarily lower the cost of capital (it may even be higher), but in any case, a true price discovery mechanism has not yet been formed. To achieve this goal, we need to go through the maturity process of on-chain capital markets, engage in large-scale funding practices, and attract new market participants.
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Ika Receives Strategic Investment from Sui Foundation, Total Funding Exceeds $21 Million
Switzerland Zug, April 28, 2025, Chainwire
The world's fastest parallel MPC network, Ika, is set to launch on the Sui blockchain, announces a strategic investment from the Sui Foundation. Previously, Ika successfully completed a record-breaking 1.4 million SUI NFT art event on Sui. Ika is the world's first sub-second MPC network, capable of achieving zero-trust interoperability among hundreds of signing nodes, unprecedented in scale and rock-solid security.
Ika's core values of performance, speed, and high decentralization align perfectly with Sui. With its upcoming launch on the Sui blockchain, Ika will bring its unparalleled MPC technology into the Sui ecosystem, providing Sui Move smart contract developers with secure cross-Web3 interoperability. This further solidifies Sui's position as the preferred solution in cross-chain DeFi, decentralized custody, chain abstraction, AI-agent defense, native Bitcoin programmability, leveraging the first truly scalable and secure MPC signature scheme.
Ika addresses key bottlenecks of existing MPC networks and delivers unparalleled performance through innovative 2PC-MPC encryption scheme and Sui's Mysticeti consensus protocol:
1. Record Throughput: Ika's transaction processing capability is up to 10,000 times higher than current MPC networks, supporting unprecedented transaction volumes.
2. Ultra-Low Latency: While traditional network signatures may experience delays of 30 seconds or more, Ika can generate signatures in sub-seconds, supporting cross-chain real-time applications.
3. Tremendous Scalability: Ika breaks the conventional limit of 4-8 nodes, and the 2PC-MPC can scale to hundreds or even thousands of signers, enhancing decentralization without sacrificing performance.
4. Zero-Trust Security: Ika's architecture ensures that even in the most extreme scenarios, user assets remain secure, setting a new standard for decentralized security.
Ika's ultra-fast MPC network supports various applications on the Sui blockchain, and several Sui developers have utilized Ika to build tech, including:
· DeFi Interoperability: Ika's sub-second speed and scalability enable instant secure operations within the Web3 ecosystem, bringing liquidity from chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum into Sui. Sui developers Full Sail and Rhei have announced upcoming tech launches based on Ika.
· Decentralized Custody: Ika provides a secure, decentralized custody solution for digital assets on Sui, delivering unparalleled security for both institutional and individual users. Sui developers Aeon and Human Tech have announced the integration of Ika into their technology.
· Chain Abstraction: Ika helps Sui developers abstract away multi-chain complexity for users, combining with Sui's zkLogin feature to deliver a seamless user experience. Sui developers Covault and Lucky Kat have announced the integration of Ika into their technology.
· Programmable Bitcoin: Ika unlocks new possibilities for native BTC on Sui, enabling programmable and secure DeFi and custody. Sui developers Native and Nativerse have announced the upcoming launch of Ika-based technology.
· AI Agent Protection: Ika enhances AI applications on Sui by providing secure MPC protection, ensuring AI agents do not possess unrestricted power and safeguarding user asset security. Sui developers Atoma and Ekko have announced the upcoming launch of Ika-based technology.
The strategic investment in Ika by the Sui Foundation underscores Sui's commitment to driving cutting-edge technology for high performance and decentralization. This amplifies the technical synergy within the Sui ecosystem, propelling Sui and Ika to the forefront of the Web3 revolution, jointly advancing the future of secure, scalable, decentralized infrastructure.
Ika has raised over $21 million in funding, with a peak private valuation of $6 billion FDV, backed by support from Sui Foundation, DCG, Big Brain Holdings, Blockchange, Node Capital, Amplify Partners, Liquid2 Ventures, FalconX, Tykhe Block Ventures, Lightshift, Token Bay Capital, Collider, Zero Knowledge Ventures, NoLimit Holdings, Rubik Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Insignius Capital, Impatient Ventures, Cerulean Ventures, Earl Grey Capital, HDI Ventures, Flowdesk, TPC Ventures, Purechain Capital, Solr DAO, Heroic Ventures, Naval Ravikant, NotVCs, G-20 Group, Artifact Capital, DSRV, Encapsulate, and many other key players in the Web3 space.
Ika also demonstrated the strong support of Sui users by launching the "MF Squid Market" NFT art event, which became the largest and most successful NFT event in Sui's history, raising over 1.4 million SUI and establishing an active grassroots community.
The IKA token is set to native launch on the Sui blockchain, unlocking new decentralized security features and utilities. As the native token of the Ika MPC Network, IKA will play a key role in its ultra-fast, scalable infrastructure, used for paying MPC signature services, enabling seamless transactions within the Web3 ecosystem. Leveraging Sui's unparalleled speed and performance, Ika enhances the security and scalability of the entire ecosystem, introducing the most promising MPC technology in blockchain to the fastest-growing L1 of Web3.
Ika is the world's fastest parallel MPC network, offering sub-second latency, unprecedented scale and decentralization, and zero-trust security. As the preferred choice for interoperability, decentralized custody, and chain abstraction, Ika will fundamentally transform digital asset security and multi-chain DeFi.
Sui is the first Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the ground up to provide fast, private, secure, and inclusive digital assets. Built on the Move programming language, its object-centric model supports parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. Through horizontally scalable processing and storage capacity, Sui supports widespread applications at low cost with unparalleled speed. Sui represents a significant advancement in blockchain technology, offering creators and developers a platform to build exceptional user experiences.
Contact:
Ika PR
pr@ika.xyz (mailto:pr@ika.xyz)
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In October 2024, since the launch of the AI Meme—GOAT, the AI Agent concept, Crypto has begun to accelerate its integration with AI. Concepts such as Game+AI, DeFAI, AI Agent Hive, etc., have sprung up, with almost a new batch of concept projects appearing every week, until January 18th of this year when Trump announced the issuance of MemeCoin, directly draining market liquidity, causing the premature bursting of the CryptoAI bubble. Two days later, DeepSeek announced the open-source R1 model, and after several weeks of fermentation, the AI concept stocks in the US stock market also saw their bubble burst.
With just $6 million, one could create a large model; however, those holding out for the $60 million market cap of CryptoAI were once defined by the community as "undereducated cabbage." Such trends were rampant, coupled with the collective plunge of AI concept stocks in the US market, naturally causing the coin price to spiral downwards, leading to the gradual silence of the AI concept in Crypto.
One quarter later, the CryptoAI uproar returned to the market, and this time, it seemed to bring some new concepts.
Following Pumpfun's success story, Crypto sparked a trend of asset issuance platforms. During the previous AI Agent craze, frameworks and AI distribution networks/LaunchPads were the two highest FDV areas. However, after the concept of framework akin to Ai16z's developer community had developed to a certain extent, the community realized the limited capabilities of frameworks, especially in capturing the value layer in Crypto. Thus, the existing frameworks gradually transitioned into LaunchPads. However, AI LaunchPads also faced challenges because the existing LaunchPads could not meet the needs of AI product launches. In preparation for the next wave of AI resurgence, project teams began looking for solutions.
Despite experiencing a recent incident where the SN28 subnet was exploited to turn it into a MemeCoin and drive TAO into Meme Coin hype, ultimately being centrally intervened by the foundation, over time, the foundation's control over the Bittensor subnet will diminish. This has sparked community concerns about its future potential to become a "attention network" pan-incentive project. A longtime follower of the Bittensor project, known as "Quirky Mind," also published an article stating that this could be a scam.
Further Reading: "Opinion: Why Bittensor Is a Scam and TAO Is Heading to Zero?"
However, purely from an investment perspective, Bittensor's ecosystem liquidity is better than that of other AI Agent ecosystems. For example, Virtuals, because LP and Virtuals are paired, this will lead to higher volatility for liquidity providers. There is approximately a 3% to 7% slippage when investors invest in agent tokens within the platform. When funds are invested in dTAO subnet tokens, the slippage is usually 0.05% to 0.1%.
It is for this reason that VC or large AI project participants tend to lean towards making long-term investments in Bittensor. Just last week, former Messari analyst and Crucible Labs partner Sami Kassab announced that he and his friend Seth Bloomberg, who has similar work experience, will establish a fund specifically for providing liquidity to Bittensor.
The "First Mover" of Bittensor, Rayon Labs, has created several products that offer a glimpse into the preferences of Bittensor's project parties, who are often more "practical" and long-term oriented.
SN64 "Chutes" provides a serverless way to easily deploy AI infrastructure, with the project team stating that a previous AWS outage was a prime example of why we need "serverless." Because if reliant on centralized service providers, once an outage occurs, AI applications may crash due to a single point of failure, and the crypto industry being money-intensive, the probability of losses is much higher than traditional AI.
SN56 "Gradients" is a zero-code platform for deploying AI models, where users can train their own AI models on Gradients (for specific use cases, image generation, custom LLM), and the recently launched v3 has a competitive advantage in terms of pricing compared to similar products.
SN19 "Nineteen" is a fast, scalable, decentralized AI inference platform.
As one of the most complete AI projects combining ecosystem building with a value flywheel in the previous cycle, Virtuals Protocol's token price has slowed along with the ecosystem's momentum as the market quieted down. Following this, the $45 billion market cap bubble was burst, experiencing a drop of over 90%, and significant decrease in participation from launchpad contributors. However, Virtuals did not give up. In this AI bear market, they began to Build.
First, Virtuals refined their own project development ecosystem by launching the VPN plan "Virtuals Partners Network." From the beginning, Virtuals' plan was to onboard more AI people into the Crypto space. This plan will interconnect multiple ecosystem positions, including investors, experts from various fields, scholars, and developers. Essentially, as long as you have an idea, resources can be obtained through this plan from investors to liquidity providers, marketers, and even professionals. This "one-stop service" incubator can be said to be the best choice for anyone looking to enter Crypto to collaborate with Virtuals.
To expand the influence and interactivity of AI Agents in the ecosystem, Virtuals has designed a protocol called ACP "Agent Commerce Protocol." It can be seen as a realization of the previous Swarm, Ai16z, and similar projects' hive concepts. ACP has built a commercial ecosystem composed of AI agents – a virtual nation where AI Agents can autonomously interact, cooperate, and transact with each other. It is worth mentioning that after this, Google also released a similar A2A concept. A slight difference is that ACP is connected by smart contracts, whereas A2A is connected by protocols.
In April, Virtuals just launched a new model of Virgen points and Genesis launch mode. Users can earn points through investing in Sentient and Prototype Agents, holding Virtuals, staking VADER, among other methods, and points serve as the basis for participating in the Genesis launchpad project. The Genesis launchpad is an IDO-style project launch method, where users receive investment quotas based on the points they hold. Currently, not everyone can participate in this launch mode, as it requires official approval from Virtuals.
This model has several benefits. First, it increases the stickiness of its platform users through rewards. In the words of founder Ethermage, "Our principle is to reward believoors." Staking points to participate in the Genesis project allocation is a fairer start, with participants usually of higher quality, allowing the project to develop more sustainably.
What was the most interesting project at the Virtuals Protocol hackathon?
In addition to the projects on Genesis worth noting, Virtuals just announced the winners of this hackathon on April 21, with more than 100 project teams participating. The judging panel was also quite impressive, including LucaCurran, who is in charge of AI and DEPIN sector development at Base, KunPeng, the founder of the Stanford Blockchain Community, and Anand Iyer, a partner at Canonical Crypto. Interestingly, Anand's Tag on X is AI.
The Intern
The Intern is an AI assistant for operations. He can help with promotion, replies, and community management on X. By deep diving into the community, he can understand its culture and can generate images using TADA. He has now teamed up with Pudgypenguins to launch the Penguin Intern, running his own Twitter. From the quality of Twitter operations, if it is entirely AI-operated and can be scaled to this level, it would be a good product.
BuzzingClub
BuzzingClub is a prediction market platform where the project team believes that the future of prediction markets should be in the hands of the participants, rather than a central authority, stating that "everyone should be able to freely create, share, and express their opinions," making Buzzing more free compared to other prediction platforms.
In Buzzing, all users can create prediction markets by proposing topics or questions, with AI generating rules. Subsequently, an AI algorithm filters out some spam and low-quality prediction markets, and finally, an AI oracle automatically retrieves internet search data, rather than human-generated data, to determine the outcome of the prediction question.
Burnie
Burnie is a code-learning platform that can enhance the skills of users who want to learn to code, and players can earn rewards by completing the tasks he publishes.
Arc and Ai16z, as the framework development stagnated, have also transformed into distribution platforms for AI Agents. Since the launch of the distribution platform forge by Arc, it has disappeared from the spotlight since the first product, AskJimmy. Ai16z's AutoFun went live a few days ago, but the currently publicly supported projects have not gone online, and its development path is still unknown. From a product framework perspective, AutoFun seems more inclined to create a community UGC culture platform, with little difference in value retention compared to traditional LaunchPads.
Arc plans to launch the new Agentic App Store Ryzome, while Myshell's existing AIApp Store has yet to officially launch, and the latter lacks activity, with most of the products appearing to be similar.
In this scenario, dev.fun, which previously appeared with the concept of AppFi, seems more conventional. At first glance, it looks similar to Pumpfun in everything from color scheme to UI but appears to have more vitality on some level. Although from a token price perspective, dev.fun, like other AI projects, has experienced a significant drop in this cycle. Surprisingly, there are currently nearly 13,000 Apps born on this platform.
dev.fun has provided a feature that allows users to generate apps through AI chat, similar to the previously YC-backed Replit. In addition to being able to issue project/meme tokens, users can also choose their own trading pairs. The Buidl, which currently has the most supporters, has a total of 1400 apps and has been run nearly 70,000 times.
The currently popular projects in the market are divided into several categories. One is development tools, including frameworks, AI Coplit's programming tools, and MCP infrastructure. The second is consumer AI applications, including AI agents, games, DeFAI (Alpha signals, funds, automated LP), and GambleFAI. The third is decentralized AI infrastructure, such as decentralized computing, validation, storage, etc. The first two are usually more favored by retail investors, while the third is preferred by VCs or investors, and such projects often require a relatively high valuation to participate.
These projects have a broader range of use cases and project concepts, but many times they are also the preferred choice of scam project teams because to retail investors, there is no "visible" product. The feedback cycle of such products is often longer, and whether it is "usable" or can generate viral spread (someone using it) is key. Therefore, creating such products requires a high level of technical expertise and marketing skills for a team.
A recent hot project, the MCP project Dark, is one of the projects that has done both well. Launched DARK under the influence of the MTN DAO and delivered a visible game product, "Dark Forest," within two weeks.
In this field, the most widely spread project in the market right now is probably Solana's "prodigal son" SEND AI, which gained fame by hosting a large AI hackathon for Solana in the past. The Solana Agent Kit is also used in many products. ALCHEMIST AI continues to build up, dropping to a $1.4 million market cap from February, and has now returned to a $14 million market cap.
Autonome
Autonome is a platform created by the Rollups protocol AltLayer that provides developers and users with the ability to build, deploy, and distribute verifiable AI agents without code. It has been active since the previous cycle and has not yet issued tokens.
Game
Smol
Recently, Treasure announced that it would shift the project's focus from the gaming chain and game operations to AI+NFT. Today, SMOL has provided the first response to this initiative by announcing the release of the "Virtual Companions" feature. This feature can turn NFTs into AI agents, and these agents will be able to use social media, play GameFi or DeFi on their own, and have created a marketplace for AI agents to trade skills, memories, and other data.
The first game to go live is the on-chain RPG game Gigaverse by Abstract. The community has generally praised it, and as a result, Treasure's token price has rebounded. After plummeting to a $20 million market cap following the previous announcement of exiting the GameFi business, today it has returned to an $80 million market cap. Besides the anticipation of the NFT AI transformation technology, the prospect of having AI agents play GameFi may be more appealing. The issues of no one playing for GameFi project teams and uninteresting games for players may potentially be solved in the future by assetized AI agents.
DeFAI
Almanak
After 18 months of development, Almanak announced last week on April 17, 2025, that it will conduct the token generation event (TGE). Almanak is an end-to-end platform that allows users to create, optimize, and manage complex financial strategies using AI agents. Functions such as market data analysis, strategy formulation, optimization, and high-speed execution can all be automated. The team has received support from numerous top-tier venture capital firms and advisors, such as RockawayX, Delphi Labs, Hashkey, AppWorks, Matrix Partners, Bankless Ventures, and more.
GambleFAI
Sportstensor
Sportstensor is an SN41 subnet on the dTAO that is an AI platform for sports event prediction, enabling participants (miners and validators) to collaborate in developing and optimizing sports prediction models. Participants with better models and datasets that can predict sports match outcomes profit from their participation. Users can engage with the project either technically by "developing models" or non-technically by "using prediction results."
For example, in an NBA game between the Celtics and the Magic with odds of 0.92:0.08, if you follow the market odds and bet on the Celtics (the popularly favored team), your win rate is about 92%. However, even with such a high win rate, after multiple bets, most people's return on investment is negative. While the popularly favored team often has a higher win rate, they also have higher odds, meaning that even if the prediction is correct, the winnings are lower. People tend to bet on their favored team, leading to a low win rate for the underdog, which means that if you bet on the underdog and win, you can earn a lot of money.
This is where the advantage of the Sportstensor model lies: miners use their own data to run their machine learning models to achieve the best results. Sportstensor then takes their averages/medians and uses them as an intelligent indicator to identify market advantages. The difference between the model-predicted odds and market odds is the part where users can profit in the long run.
Such products are among the earliest concepts of integrating Crypto with AI, as seen in projects like Grass. There have been countless similar products in the past, but sustaining them has been challenging. The key to decentralized computing power is how to optimize synchronous computing power and offer it at a price below that of traditional computing power providers. On the other hand, the key to decentralized training is the cost of data transmission itself, which was difficult to achieve during the infrastructure's early days. However, once achieved, it has the potential to tap into a significant underserved market, making it a focus of venture capitalists.
PrimeIntellect
PrimeIntellect was co-founded by Vincent Weisser and Johannes Hagemann, both of whom were previously key members of Desci's leading VitaDAO. PrimeIntellect is a platform that commodifies computing power and models. The investment lineup is quite impressive, with a $5 million seed round led by CoinFund and Distributed Global, and a $15 million second round led by Founders Fund. Individual investors include prominent figures in the industry such as Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, notable investors, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji.
Recently, renowned OpenAI researcher Yaoshunyu published an article titled "The Second Half," where he stated that we are currently at AI's halftime, with the second half soon approaching. If the first half of AI focused on gaming and exam-solving, the second half will see AI build valuable products to establish companies worth tens of billions or trillions of dollars in value. This will undoubtedly present opportunities for CryptoAI as well.
So stay tuned and welcome to the second half.
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Ika Receives Strategic Investment from Sui Foundation, Total Funding Exceeds $21 Million
Switzerland Zug, April 28, 2025, Chainwire
The world's fastest parallel MPC network, Ika, is set to launch on the Sui blockchain, announces a strategic investment from the Sui Foundation. Previously, Ika successfully completed a record-breaking 1.4 million SUI NFT art event on Sui. Ika is the world's first sub-second MPC network, capable of achieving zero-trust interoperability among hundreds of signing nodes, unprecedented in scale and rock-solid security.
Ika's core values of performance, speed, and high decentralization align perfectly with Sui. With its upcoming launch on the Sui blockchain, Ika will bring its unparalleled MPC technology into the Sui ecosystem, providing Sui Move smart contract developers with secure cross-Web3 interoperability. This further solidifies Sui's position as the preferred solution in cross-chain DeFi, decentralized custody, chain abstraction, AI-agent defense, native Bitcoin programmability, leveraging the first truly scalable and secure MPC signature scheme.
Ika addresses key bottlenecks of existing MPC networks and delivers unparalleled performance through innovative 2PC-MPC encryption scheme and Sui's Mysticeti consensus protocol:
1. Record Throughput: Ika's transaction processing capability is up to 10,000 times higher than current MPC networks, supporting unprecedented transaction volumes.
2. Ultra-Low Latency: While traditional network signatures may experience delays of 30 seconds or more, Ika can generate signatures in sub-seconds, supporting cross-chain real-time applications.
3. Tremendous Scalability: Ika breaks the conventional limit of 4-8 nodes, and the 2PC-MPC can scale to hundreds or even thousands of signers, enhancing decentralization without sacrificing performance.
4. Zero-Trust Security: Ika's architecture ensures that even in the most extreme scenarios, user assets remain secure, setting a new standard for decentralized security.
Ika's ultra-fast MPC network supports various applications on the Sui blockchain, and several Sui developers have utilized Ika to build tech, including:
· DeFi Interoperability: Ika's sub-second speed and scalability enable instant secure operations within the Web3 ecosystem, bringing liquidity from chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum into Sui. Sui developers Full Sail and Rhei have announced upcoming tech launches based on Ika.
· Decentralized Custody: Ika provides a secure, decentralized custody solution for digital assets on Sui, delivering unparalleled security for both institutional and individual users. Sui developers Aeon and Human Tech have announced the integration of Ika into their technology.
· Chain Abstraction: Ika helps Sui developers abstract away multi-chain complexity for users, combining with Sui's zkLogin feature to deliver a seamless user experience. Sui developers Covault and Lucky Kat have announced the integration of Ika into their technology.
· Programmable Bitcoin: Ika unlocks new possibilities for native BTC on Sui, enabling programmable and secure DeFi and custody. Sui developers Native and Nativerse have announced the upcoming launch of Ika-based technology.
· AI Agent Protection: Ika enhances AI applications on Sui by providing secure MPC protection, ensuring AI agents do not possess unrestricted power and safeguarding user asset security. Sui developers Atoma and Ekko have announced the upcoming launch of Ika-based technology.
The strategic investment in Ika by the Sui Foundation underscores Sui's commitment to driving cutting-edge technology for high performance and decentralization. This amplifies the technical synergy within the Sui ecosystem, propelling Sui and Ika to the forefront of the Web3 revolution, jointly advancing the future of secure, scalable, decentralized infrastructure.
Ika has raised over $21 million in funding, with a peak private valuation of $6 billion FDV, backed by support from Sui Foundation, DCG, Big Brain Holdings, Blockchange, Node Capital, Amplify Partners, Liquid2 Ventures, FalconX, Tykhe Block Ventures, Lightshift, Token Bay Capital, Collider, Zero Knowledge Ventures, NoLimit Holdings, Rubik Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Insignius Capital, Impatient Ventures, Cerulean Ventures, Earl Grey Capital, HDI Ventures, Flowdesk, TPC Ventures, Purechain Capital, Solr DAO, Heroic Ventures, Naval Ravikant, NotVCs, G-20 Group, Artifact Capital, DSRV, Encapsulate, and many other key players in the Web3 space.
Ika also demonstrated the strong support of Sui users by launching the "MF Squid Market" NFT art event, which became the largest and most successful NFT event in Sui's history, raising over 1.4 million SUI and establishing an active grassroots community.
The IKA token is set to native launch on the Sui blockchain, unlocking new decentralized security features and utilities. As the native token of the Ika MPC Network, IKA will play a key role in its ultra-fast, scalable infrastructure, used for paying MPC signature services, enabling seamless transactions within the Web3 ecosystem. Leveraging Sui's unparalleled speed and performance, Ika enhances the security and scalability of the entire ecosystem, introducing the most promising MPC technology in blockchain to the fastest-growing L1 of Web3.
Ika is the world's fastest parallel MPC network, offering sub-second latency, unprecedented scale and decentralization, and zero-trust security. As the preferred choice for interoperability, decentralized custody, and chain abstraction, Ika will fundamentally transform digital asset security and multi-chain DeFi.
Sui is the first Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the ground up to provide fast, private, secure, and inclusive digital assets. Built on the Move programming language, its object-centric model supports parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. Through horizontally scalable processing and storage capacity, Sui supports widespread applications at low cost with unparalleled speed. Sui represents a significant advancement in blockchain technology, offering creators and developers a platform to build exceptional user experiences.
Contact:
Ika PR
pr@ika.xyz (mailto:pr@ika.xyz)
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