Funding News & Insights from Blockchain Innovation Forum & Demo Day!
The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator is an internationally recognized, non-dilutive source of support for startups in the global blockchain ecosystem and now leads our 3rd pillar on community & entrepreneurship for the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI).
Also, UC Berkeley has been ranked the #1 university for blockchain in the US for two years in a row!
Thank You for Making 2024 Blockchain Innovation Forum & Xcelerator Demo Day a Success!
We’re grateful for the incredible turnout at Blockchain Innovation Forum on April 12th hosted by Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator, Blockchain at Berkeley, and Berkeley RDI. Thank you to the ~500 registrations and 200+ in-person attendees.
A special thank you goes to our keynote speaker and all the panelists who participated in the four panels, sharing their valuable insights on the following topics:
- Technology Frontiers in Blockchain: Prof. Dawn Song, Avery Ching (Aptos), Jeremy Clover (Circle) and Mahdi Zamani (Visa) (Recording Link)
- Blockchain Innovation in Traditional Finance: Prof. Christine Parlour, Catherine Gu (Visa) and Kevin Farrelly (Franklin Templeton) (Recording Link)
- Keynote: Juan Benet, Founder & CEO, Protocol Labs (Recording Link)
- Lens to the Future of Blockchains: Prof. Dawn Song, Avichal Garg (Electric Capital) and Dan Robinson (Paradigm) (Recording Link)
- Emerging Landscape in Blockchain: Spencer Farrar (Theory Ventures, Jason Levy (Story), Michelle Munson (Eluv.io) and Chetan Nandakumar (Gensyn.ai) (Recording Link)
See the full program agenda and recordings here.
A round of applause also to Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator 2024 cohort teams for their stellar presentations! Special thanks to AutoAPE.AI, Belong.net, CoopHive, exaBITS, Giza, Glacier, LOOPID, Lulubit, Pado Labs and Sidechain. Check out all presentations here.
The Blockchain Innovation Forum & Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Demo Day on April 12th offered insightful discussions from industry, academia and founders. It was part of the broader Funding the Commons SF Bay Area event on April 13–14th, offering a platform for thought leaders, educators, and innovators to engage with the Berkeley and wider communities.
To learn more about this event, please visit us here.
More Funding by Maven 11, Signum, & ARK, plus Alumni Updates!
Camp Network Raises $4 Million in Funding to Onboard Consumers
Congratulations to our 2023 cohort team, Camp Network, a modular Layer 2 blockchain focused on consumer adoption, on securing a $4 million Seed funding round led by Maven 11. Other participants include OKX Ventures, Protagonist, and Inception Capital, among others, along with select angel investors. The funding will support the network’s mainnet launch and accelerate growth for its 25+ ecosystem teams. Camp Network’s “digital backpack” leverages offchain engagement data from social and streaming apps to enhance user understanding and incentivize behavior. With plans to launch a public testnet in April and mainnet in June, Camp Network aims to redefine consumer crypto and drive mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.
To find out more click here.
Sortium’s $4+ Million Dollar Fundraising PLUS Their Novel AI Tools
Sortium, a 2023 Xcelerator cohort team and a pioneering force in generative AI for gaming, has unveiled innovative AI tools for artists and developers, promising to revolutionize creativity and efficiency in the industry. Leveraging Polkadot infrastructure, these tools streamline production, enhance creativity, and facilitate user-generated content. Supported by a $4 million funding round led by Signum Growth, Sortium has garnered widespread investor confidence, including from ARK Investment Management LLC and Polygon. The AI tools integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, accelerating production and empowering users to design characters, opening new creative avenues. Sortium’s commitment to IP rights and ethical technology deployment sets a high standard in the gaming sector, ensuring both technical excellence and community benefits.
To learn more visit Sortium’s website.
Noodle launches world’s first digital trust network &
is now on zkSync to bring the fastest growing DePIN to Ethereum
Click, built on the Nodle Network (from our 2020 Cohort), is the world’s first digital trust network empowering creators and consumers everywhere to easily create authentic media content. Click is on a mission to combat misinformation and bring truthful photos and videos to everyone via an immutable digital proof of authenticity. Click makes it easy to confirm it’s real and happened at a specific location and time, and via a specific mobile device and camera. This is all made possible by ContentSign, Click’s proprietary technology which proves the integrity of data from the moment of capture via blockchain. Click is the first app to leverage the Nodle network as an app for social good. Click supports the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) and is a member of the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI).
Also, Nodle (NODL), one of the largest DePINs and a long-standing force in blockchain innovation, with over 100,000 daily active users on its mobile wallet app and one million holders of the token, announces it will be launching on zkSync Era, a cutting-edge zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to scale Ethereum to a billion people, joining the Ethereum community.
Download Click on iOS or Android and visit us at https://clickapp.com.
You can read more about Nodle’s Click camera app here, here, and here.
To learn more about Nodle’s launch on zkSync go here.
Best in Show and Product of the Year Awarded to a 2019 Cohort Team
One of our teams from our second cohort has been honored with 2 awards. Eluvio’s latest release, the Eluvio Content Fabric and Application Suite (Casablanca release), has been recognized with two prestigious awards: the 2024 NAB Show Product of the Year Award for streaming and a 2024 “Best of Show” Award at NAB by TV Tech. These accolades highlight the platform’s innovation, cost efficiency, and performance in serving the media and entertainment tech industry. The Casablanca release introduces groundbreaking features like provable mass scale performance, low-latency live streaming, and enhanced content security. Eluvio will showcase these advancements during encore webcasts on May 15, 2024, aiming to demonstrate the platform’s transformative impact on digital media distribution and monetization.
Go here to learn more about Eluvio.
Two new pools on Pendulum network are live on Zenlink
Pendulum, from our 2022 cohort, has successfully launched the PEN/DOT and PEN/GLMR pools on the Pendulum Network on Zenlink, opening new avenues for liquidity provision and token swapping in these pairs. The PEN/DOT pool marks the debut of native PEN trading within the Polkadot ecosystem and provides an additional method for obtaining GLMR, which offers an easy route necessary for gas when adding liquidity to the xcPEN/xcDOT pair on Stellaswap. The next phase will introduce pools for XLM (Stellar’s native token, bridged to Pendulum via Spacewalk), further broadening Pendulum’s offerings and cross-chain interactions.
Find out more here.
Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Newsletter
April 29, 2024
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