• With the help of AI agents, the new platform will be able to carry out trades on users’ behalf, ensuring the best possible trade outcomes and minimizing the need for manual interaction.
• A USD 40 million fundraising round led by DWF Labs was recently completed by the business in order to accelerate the creation of AI and autonomous agents.

Fetch.ai Ltd., an artificial intelligence laboratory based in Cambridge that develops AI-powered agents for peer-to-peer applications, has announced the development of new trading tools for decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

With the help of AI agents, the new platform will be able to carry out trades on users’ behalf, ensuring the best possible trade outcomes and minimizing the need for manual interaction. At the same time, autonomous agents may be programmed with user preferences and fine-tune tactics based on market circumstances, allowing users to communicate in a peer-to-peer fashion across marketplaces.

Decentralized exchanges are components of the more extensive decentralized finance (DeFi) economy, a token economy based on blockchain technology that enables direct peer-to-peer transactions between users. The business claims that this creates the potential for Fetch.ai’s machine learning algorithms to track market circumstances and link customers and sellers for optimum impact.

It follows that transactions occur with one-to-one smart contracts on the blockchain instead of big liquidity pools involving several trades and users because each seller and buyer is directly connected. Hackers and insider exit schemes known as “rugpulls,” in which the owner of the crypto wallet just takes all the tokens, are clearly after large pools of cryptocurrency tokens.

Humayun Sheikh, Chief Executive of Fetch.ai, said, “As we stand at the forefront of a new era in the DeFi sector, with rapidly evolving technologies and innovations, we recognize the need to go deeper into decentralization. AI agent-based trading has enormous potential to remove central points of failure and solve some of DeFi’s biggest problems such as liquidity contract hacks and rugpulls, which cost the industry billions of dollars a year.”

According to research by De.Fi Security, which monitors these trends, crypto protocols, and marketplaces, lost more than USD 452 million to scams and hacks during the first quarter of 2023. Despite the size of these figures, they are far less than the USD 1.3 billion in losses experienced during the same time period in 2022. Many of these crimes and losses result from vulnerabilities in cryptographic protocols and blockchain smart contracts.

The business recently completed a USD 40 million fundraising round led by DWF Labs to accelerate the development of AI and autonomous agents. Through the Amadeus global distribution system, Fetch.ai has already created autonomous AI travel agents that can link customers to more than 770,00 hotels globally and make reservations on their behalf. It also tested a smart parking space management program in Germany to balance the supply and demand for parking spaces.

The new tools from Fetch.ai will go on general sale in the second quarter of this year. According to the business, these products will be the first of their type to be sold.

• The business asserts to have secured over USD 2 billion in bitcoin assets spread across tens of thousands of keys globally.
• Unchained Capital uses a “collaborative custody” technique to store bitcoins for users.

Unchained Capital Inc., based in Austin, Texas, revealed recently that it had raised USD 60 million in new Capital to expand its financial services for bitcoin owners amid volatile markets.

Leading the Series B funding round was Valour Equity Partners, which is well recognized for its early investments in Tesla and SpaceX. Existing investors such as NYDIG, Trammell Venture Partners, Ecliptic Capital, and Highland Capital Partners took part in the round’s early April closure. It adds to the USD 15 million the company raised in the fall of last year under Ten31’s leadership.

Unchained Capital uses a “collaborative custody” technique to store bitcoins for users. The company’s solution uses the bitcoin’s underpinning technology, which enables numerous parties to keep track of private keys and distribute ownership of bitcoins among themselves, Unchained, or other financial institutions.

The technology implements a multi-signature concept that, in essence, necessitates the agreement of multiple parties before the transfer of cryptocurrency. Unchained, and any other financial institution, cannot act on held cryptocurrency without the consent of the other signatory. This helps eradicate risks such as theft and critical loss and prevents anything from occurring to holdings if one signatory passes away.

It has been demonstrated that holding cryptocurrencies with businesses might result in the loss of tokens by the recent collapse and bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading Ltd. and other centralized crypto enterprises. The possibility that they may be transferred or used without permission—or that someone would just run off with them—reduces, though, if many people sign them.

The company asserts to have secured over USD 2 billion in Bitcoin assets spread across thousands of keys globally. It offers loans with Bitcoin as collateral among its financial services, and since 2017 it has originated more than USD 500 million in loans with no losses. The company also provides a trading desk for customers to purchase Bitcoin directly into multi-signature cold storage. It also has a solution for individual retirement accounts, enabling customers to hold Bitcoin keys in tax-advantaged accounts.

A partner at Valor, Vivek Pattipati, said “In the midst of market chaos, Unchained has emerged as a highly trusted provider of bitcoin custody and financial services through superior technology, risk management, regulatory compliance, and client service. Particularly in lending, the company has differentiated itself by minimizing risk to both the lender and the borrower, leading to resilience and an extraordinary opportunity to capture market share.”

Given the current market volatility, unchained intends to utilize the money to increase its clientele and broaden its product selection, particularly in relation to Bitcoin. According to Chief Executive Joe Kelly, the cash will be used to expand the product line and address long-requested additions, upgrades, security features, and quality-of-life improvements.

With an eye on how people exchange Bitcoin for dollars, a portion of the funds will also be used to capitalize on the expanding popularity of Bitcoin. Unchained Capital plans to start providing dollar-focused products like checking accounts and credit cards in light of this.

Kelly said, “Using this fresh capital investment to expand our reach and suite of services. We hope to enable new entrants to bitcoin to leapfrog centralized custodians into our safer collaborative custody model.”

• Sei is a top-level, or Layer 1 blockchain, created to facilitate massive-scale digital asset trading.
• Before the mainnet launch, more than 120 developer teams had already deployed projects on Sei.

According to a press release, Sei Labs, a Sei blockchain contributor focusing on trading, announced recently that it has raised USD 30 million across two strategic funding rounds.

Sei is a top-level, or Layer 1 blockchain, created to support massive-scale trading of digital assets. With the largest blockchains on the market, it contends to be the biggest blockchain in the sector. It supports decentralized exchanges, markets, and financial applications by offering quick transactions, high security, and simple interoperability.

Jump, Multicoin, Flow Traders, Distributed Global, Asymmetric, Hypersphere, and Bixin Ventures were some of the investors in the rounds. According to the company, the funding raised the company’s valuation to USD 800 million.

In order to allow developers to create applications before it is made available on a mainnet, the Sei blockchain is currently in a testnet phase, which is comparable to being in beta. Sei supports 500 milliseconds for each transaction and 20,000 orders per second. The business claimed that since the public testnet’s launch on March 13, it has supported over 3.6 million testnet users and processed over 35 million transactions.

In contrast, Ethereum, the second largest blockchain in terms of market capitalization and the ecosystem that developers have chosen to create decentralized financial apps, can only process 20 transactions per second and complete majority of transactions in 2.5 seconds. Solana, a blockchain that processes nonfungible tokens much more quickly and supports 10,000 transactions per second with an equivalent 2.5-second transaction time, can be used.

Jayendra Jog, Co-founder of Sei Labs, said, “Infrastructure and applications historically come in cycles — Ethereum and the last generation of public blockchains led to a Cambrian explosion of new decentralized apps over the past two years. Among those apps, exchanges, and trading have achieved the clearest product-market fit but are held back by outdated Layer 1 blockchains. Our mission at Sei is to build the best Infrastructure for trading.”

Blockchains like Ethereum experience bottlenecks that slow throughput and result in high fees for trading on the network, despite going through upgrades like the Merge to reduce energy use. Ethereum can be scaled up, its speeds increased, and its fees decreased using a second layer of blockchains. Sei aims to create a top-level blockchain that can scale while still enabling high-speed trading without any bottlenecks.

Before the mainnet launch, more than 120 developer teams had already deployed projects on Sei. Some of these are decentralized asset management, games, asset management, nonfungible tokens, marketplaces, and wallets.

Jog said, “This funding will accelerate our efforts to unlock the next cycle of new applications in Web3, enabling developers to build apps that are orders of magnitude more performant than before.”

• The business was established in July 2022 with the goal of enabling consumers to supply data for businesses to use in the training of AI models.
• CryptoGPT recently launched “Alex,” a crypto-oriented AI assistant specified as a “public library of the internet, powered by OpenAI models.”

DWF Labs led a USD 10 million round of new funding for CryptoGPT, a zero-knowledge layer 2 blockchain that seeks to allow users to profit from data for use in artificial intelligence (AI).

The company was established in July 2022 with the goal of enabling consumers to supply data for businesses to use blockchain technology in the training of AI models. Zero-knowledge proof, a blockchain scaling technique, is used by its core engine to enable it to record, encrypt, and anonymize user data before selling it to AI firms in a worldwide market.

The company reported, “Instead of applying ZK technology to payments, CryptoGPT integrates it for private data transfers.” CryptoGPT recently started making headlines in the news after several generative AI models, such as Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and Midjourney, emerged and gained immense traction in the market. Besides, the company’s name itself drives popularity to a large extent.

According to CryptoGPT, the ability to manage one’s data would encourage consumers by creating an ecosystem of apps across a variety of different industries, such as fitness, gaming, dating, music, travel, and more, where they can choose to monetize. The company refers to this component of its platform as a data-to-AI engine since it gathers user data and sells it to businesses looking to train AI models. Users get compensated for their activity in return.

CryptoGPT recently launched “Alex,” a crypto-oriented AI assistant specified as a “public library of the internet, powered by OpenAI models.” The company launched separate versions for mobile and desktop. The option of VPN is also provided to enable AI data monetization with blockchain network.

The business said that it would put the money toward expanding its developer staff and regional reach in Asian countries.

ChatGPT employs a native coin, GPT, released in early March, to run its blockchain. According to CoinMarketCap, its market value is just over USD 13 million right now.

Other AI-focused crypto tokens, such as SingularityNET or AGIX and Alethea’s artificial liquid intelligence or ALI, have also attained significant market caps as the popularity of AI continues to soar. Fetch.ai, a well-known blockchain project supported by DWF Labs that utilizes AI for smart infrastructure, has a market valuation of USD 355 million.

• Developers can create specific sections of their dapps to utilise the capabilities of different blockchains by utilising LayerZero’s protocol.
• The LayerZero protocol aims to address the issue of the crypto ecosystem’s numerous blockchains, each of which tends to solve a different problem but cannot interact with others.

Cross-chain interoperability protocol startup LayerZero Labs Inc. revealed that it has received USD 120 million in fresh funding at a USD 3 billion valuation.

The latest Series B round triples LayerZero’s valuation from its previous USD 135 million financing round in March 2022. Thirty-three investors participated in the round, including Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency division, BOND, Circle Ventures, Samsung Next, Sequoia Capital, OKX Ventures, and OpenSea Ventures. The Christie’s auction house, renowned for selling pricey works of crypto art, also participated in the round.

LayerZero’s messaging protocol enables decentralized apps to communicate with each other across various blockchains. Its protocol platform facilitates flexible and trustless message delivery, allowing the programmers to quickly build dapps that can operate on multiple blockchains and still communicate.

Developers can create specific sections of their dapps to utilize the capabilities of different blockchains by utilizing LayerZero’s protocol. For keeping track of action-packed gameplay in one area of their app, a developer might use a highly scalable blockchain with low fees and high transaction rates, and for betting or storing in-game items, they might use a different blockchain that operates more slowly and with higher security.

Ryan Zarick, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of LayerZero Labs, said, “Imagine a future where a single user-facing application can harness the speed of Solana, the security of Ethereum, and the cheap file storage of Arweave, while also being fully abstracted to the user. The days of choosing one chain to build on are over; the future is omnichain applications.”

LayerZero’s protocol aims to address the issue of the crypto ecosystem’s numerous blockchains, each of which tends to solve a different problem but cannot interact with others. Developers now choose which blockchain they migrate to and lock themselves in, which has caused fragmentation.

Several multichain interoperability initiatives are also being developed; however, LayerZero contends they are inadequate. Examples include Cosmos IBC, which uses lightweight nodes, and Polkadot, a centralized solution with hub-and-spoke architecture. Due to Ethereum transaction fees, the former may lose security while the latter becomes more expensive.

In September 2021, the business began operations with USD 6 million in financing. Since then, the LayerZero protocol has transmitted over 2 million messages across 30 networks, locked in USD 7 billion, and handled over 6 billion transactions. The business reports that the platform has deployed more than 300,000 contracts on its testnet and 3,500 on its mainnet, in addition to more than 10,000 distinct apps and hundreds of thousands of unique users.

Some of the most well-known apps in the cryptocurrency sector, including the biggest decentralized crypto exchanges PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, TraderJoe, and Uniswap, use the company’s technology.

Zarick compared the development of blockchain technology to that of the Internet, saying that computers existed in fragmented and isolated data centers until a distributed networking system was developed to connect them. Zarick further said, “LayerZero is revolutionizing blockchains by creating one unified ecosystem, like the internet, that connects each blockchain’s developers and user community.”

• Apex Crypto offers a turnkey platform for integrated cryptocurrency trading that is tailored to the requirements of trading clients like neobanks and financial organizations.
• Bakkt is taking a significant step by purchasing Apex at a time when authorities are cracking down on the cryptocurrency sector.

Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns the New York Stock Exchange, founded the digital asset startup Bakkt LLC that revealed the completion of its acquisition of Apex Crypto LLC, a cryptocurrency trading company.

Apex Crypto offers a turnkey platform for integrated cryptocurrency trading tailored to the requirements of trading clients like neobanks and financial organizations. By facilitating the transaction of cryptocurrency investments, Apex offers answers through its services, including custody, exchange, cost basis, and tax services for cryptocurrency.

Following the purchase, Apex Crypto will provide Bakkt with over 30 business clients and a vast network of financial technology solutions. Since its start in 2019, the firm has reportedly handled over $12.5 billion in crypto transactions.

Gavin Michael, Chief Executive, said, “This acquisition marks an exciting new chapter for Bakkt, significantly advancing portions of our crypto roadmap, helping us tap into a universe of 5.8 million crypto-enabled accounts, and further establishing Bakkt as the [business-to-business-to-consumer] crypto provider of choice.”

Early in November 2022, Bakkt announced its agreement to buy Apex for up to USD 200 million. According to the agreement, the business would pay USD 55 million in cash after the transaction, then up to USD 100 million more in Bakkt stock and sellers notes based on Apex Crypto’s performance through 2025, or USD 45 million in Bakkt stock.

Bakkt is taking a significant step by purchasing Apex at a time when authorities are cracking down on the cryptocurrency sector. The firm has acquired permission from the New York Department of Financial Services and has obtained both a BitLicense and a trust charter. Both Bakkt and Apex were required to get regulatory clearance from other jurisdictions in which they operate as money transmitters.

Since Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX Trading Ltd. collapsed, causing a chain reaction of market volatility and big bankruptcies, times have been difficult for the cryptocurrency industry. The most recent setback to crypto banking possibilities was the closure of crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank due to market conditions and New York regulators’ control of Signature Bank.

Especially in international markets through Apex’s financial technology partners, Bakkt will expand its products and services through the acquisition to serve even more customers.

• Ledger creates hardware goods and services to assist businesses and consumers in safeguarding their blockchain-based cryptocurrency tokens and money.
• Ledger Nano X and Ledger Nano S Plus are small enough to fit in your pocket and can connect to phones or other devices to help individuals manage crypto transactions.

Ledger SAS, a startup based in Paris that produces hardware for cryptocurrency wallets, recently announced that it has successfully raised the majority of a USD 109 million funding round.

According to Bloomberg, the company’s valuation is still around USD 1.4 billion, about the same as in June 2021 when Ledger raised USD 380 million in a titanic funding round, a Series C funding round.

True Global Ventures, Digital Finance Group, Cité Gestion SPV, and VaynerFund are just a few new investors the company has attracted. Current backers 10T, Morgan Creek, Cap Horn, and Cathay Innovation also took part in the round.

Ledger creates hardware goods and services to assist businesses and consumers in safeguarding their blockchain-based cryptocurrency tokens and money. Current products from the company resemble USB keys and have tiny screens that let users confirm transactions and take action without using the internet.

Because the private keys that stand in for a user’s cryptocurrency wallet can be stored in a hardware wallet and are secured by a secure chip, they never leave the wallet and provide security. When sending or receiving crypto tokens, the device is linked to another device, like a computer or smartphone, and the user directly authenticates the transaction.

Users are prompted to enter a “recovery phrase,” a string of 24 words that serve as their wallet address when a hardware wallet starts up. They can use it to restore their Ledger account on a new wallet if their device is damaged, lost, or stolen.

The Ledger Nano X and Ledger Nano S Plus are two of Ledger’s most popular products. Both are small enough to fit in your pocket and can connect to phones or other devices to help individuals manage crypto transactions. The Nano X is also equipped with Bluetooth, making it easier to connect to a phone and manage crypto and nonfungible tokens.

Ledger Stax is a device about the size of a credit card with an E Ink display that can connect with Bluetooth and is now available for pre-order. It has the same security as every other Ledger device, but the screen is much bigger, so users can see what they’re doing and change pictures on the touchscreen.

Customers can also use the company’s app, Ledger Live, to buy, sell, and trade crypto directly or connect their wallets to other apps using blockchain technology.

There can be a lot of security problems in the crypto business, and there have been a lot of stories about hackers and scams. Because of this, users have been looking for better ways to protect their tokens, which has helped Ledger’s bottom line.

Most of Ledger’s sales have come from the recent chaos in cryptocurrency exchanges, such as the sudden fall of FTX Trading Ltd. and its bankruptcy. When FTX shut down, many people with their assets on the platform couldn’t access them anymore. This caused some people to take their assets off of other exchanges. “Not your keys, not your crypto” is a cry that is often heard in the crypto community.

“Suddenly people were like, ‘Wow, to leave crypto on an exchange is actually dangerous,'” Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier told Bloomberg in an interview. “And 2023 is even better for us because you can’t even leave money at a Swiss bank anymore.”

The company made the most money in November, right after FTX left. Because of this, Ledger Live’s income doubled from one year to the next. Ledger also said it stores over 20% of all cryptocurrencies and 30% of all nonfungible tokens worldwide.

Gauthier said that Ledger will use the new money to grow its network of distributors and make more and better products. This will help the company keep up with the growing demand and grow its business.

• Magic Eden collaborated with and integrated two noncustodial wallets, Hiro and Xverse, to simplify the process of purchasing, selling, and trading Ordinals.
• According to the company, they will offer an interface that is comparable to the Phantom wallet developed in Solana and will enable users to process transactions.

Magic Eden, a cross-chain nonfungible token marketplace, recently revealed that it is expanding to include Bitcoin NFT Ordinal inscriptions in its marketplace, enabling users to buy and sell brand-new digital collectibles.

Bitcoin Ordinals are newly launched nonfungible token (NFT) which can be “inscribed” on the Bitcoin blockchain. They are a cryptoasset type that can represent a digital collectible like a file, an image, a video, or an item from a video game and then be inscribed onto the smallest unit of Bitcoin, the Satoshi. Users can create a tradeable version of the collectible on the Bitcoin blockchain by demonstrating that they also own the Satoshi with the collectible item inscribed on it by proving ownership of that Satoshi.

In contrast to NFTs supported on other chains like Ethereum, Ordinals encrypt the storage data for the collectible directly on the chain rather than using a link to the media. Since it is always directly connected to Satoshi and “inscribed” to it, it cannot go offline or get lost and stays with the owner of the NFT.

By market share, the marketplace is the biggest Solana-based NFT marketplace, and last year it added support for Polygon and Ethereum. The expanded support for bitcoin NFTs gives marketplace users more options to investigate new possibilities.

Jack Lu, Chief Executive and Co-founder of Magic Eden, said, “Bitcoin Ordinals bring a whole new dimension into the universe of NFTs. On Bitcoin, all media that is uploaded onto the chain cannot be changed or removed. This simplicity is embraced by many creators who want to create true collectibles that are inscribed onto the chain.”

Since the protocol’s initial launch on January 21, more than 500,000 Ordinal inscriptions were announced earlier this week. Galaxy Digital Ltd., a financial services company specializing in cryptocurrencies, predicted that the market for Ordinals would grow significantly, with a base case estimate of USD 4.5 billion by 2025. In contrast, the total NFT market’s organic trading in 2022 was close to USD 24.7 billion.

Thirteen collections, including Taproot Wizards, Inscribed Pepes, and Bitcoin Bandits, are publishing Bitcoin NFT Ordinals through the marketplace at launch. Every collectible will be presented on Magic Eden like other NFTs, with metadata like Ordinal rarity, age, name, and inscription number. The market also stated that it would keep updating the feature as new collections went live and develop more sophisticated tooling to support Ordinals.

Magic Eden collaborated with and integrated two noncustodial wallets, Hiro and Xverse, to simplify the process of purchasing, selling, and trading Ordinals. According to the company, they will offer an interface comparable to the Phantom wallet developed in Solana and enable users to process transactions.

By visiting the newly launched Ordinals marketplace section and establishing a connection with their wallets, users can now buy, sell, trade, and transact using Bitcoin NFT Ordinals.

• The launching of latest organizations will largely decentralize blockchains, said Steven Goldfeder, Chief Executive and Co-founder of Offchain Labs.
• Owners of the tokens will have the ability to vote on ideas presented to the DAO and determine how future development and governance choices will be made.

Offchain Labs Inc., the company behind the Ethereum blockchain scaling solution Arbitrum, recently announced that it will airdrop, or give away for free to chosen individuals, its new token, $ARB, a new cryptocurrency that can be used to vote on two of its blockchain products.

In addition, the business announced the formation of the Arbitrum Foundation and a DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, to oversee the development of Arbitrum One, its primary blockchain, and Arbitrum Nova, a blockchain geared for social media and gaming.

According to Steven Goldfeder, CEO and co-founder of Offchain Labs, introducing new organizations will significantly decentralize blockchains. Steven Goldfede also stated, “Through the community airdrop, the delegation process, and the introduction of the Security Council, community participation and control is at the forefront of today’s announcement, and the requirements for receiving a share of Arbitrum governance have been crafted meticulously, optimizing for the longevity of the ecosystem and community.”

Blockchain technology and Web3 rely on several copies of distributed ledgers to cryptographically secure peer-to-peer network transactions from potential manipulation. Decentralized applications, or dapps, which operate using self-executing code across networks without the need for central servers, are also made possible by its use. Developers have used cryptocurrencies and tokens to create decentralized applications, including social networks, games, and complete decentralized economies.

The tokens’ owners can vote on ideas presented to the DAO and determine how future development and governance choices will be made. Goldfeder claims that this will further decentralize blockchain development and decision-making in the future. On March 23, the tokens will be withdrawn.

Goldfeder stated, “Looking ahead, we’re moving closer and closer toward a decentralized financial system, with the Arbitrum technology at the forefront of that.”

To speed up transactions and reduce fees, Ethereum utilizes “rollups” technology, which Offchain Labs Arbitrum creates. Layer 2 solutions perform transitions independently of Ethereum on their blockchain, group them into “rollups,” and then send them back to Ethereum, where they can all be run simultaneously.

According to DefiLlama, Arbitrum One is the top Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, with about USD 1.67 billion in total assets locked in the network. In August 2021, Offchain Labs received USD 120 million in financing to launch the Arbitrium One mainnet, and Reddit, the largest internet social media platform, selected Offchain Labs’ scaling solution for its blockchain-based “Community Points” program.

Offchain Labs also introduced Arbitrum Orbit, a Layer 3 scaling solution that will enable programmers to create their own scaling networks that will roll onto Arbitrum simultaneously with the new foundation and the DAO.

Orbit gives programmers access to extensible rollup blockchains that operate similarly to the other blockchains in Arbitrum. For instance, they could strive for Layer 3 AnyTrust chains using the minimal trust to allow high volume and low transaction costs similar to Arbitrum Nova, or they could construct Layer 3 Rollup chains with Ethereum-level security to optimize scalability. Since the main engine of Arbitrum Nitro serves as the foundation for all these solutions, developers can create their own Layer 3 solutions to meet the requirements of any particular application.

The new scaling solution entirely supports the Ethereum virtual machine, allowing programmers to create and run smart contracts. The business added that it will support the forthcoming release of Arbitrum Stylus, which will enable developers to write code for dapps in programming languages other than Solidity, such as C, C++, and Rust, for their chains.

Steven Goldfeder said, “The launch of Arbitrum Orbit marks another step in the goal of growth through ecosystem expansion by way of onboarding new developers. With today’s announcement, developers now have another tool allowing them to not only build their own smart contracts, but to also launch their own L3 chains leveraging the best technology available.”

• Salesforce Inc. has released a restricted release of its digital collectibles platform for Web3 branded nonfungible tokens, making decentralized technologies and loyalty programs easier for organizations.
• Salesforce Web3 puts the power of blockchain technology in the hands of enterprises, allowing them to create, manage, and deploy nonfungible tokens in a secure, scalable, and sustainable manner.

Salesforce Inc. has announced a restricted release of its digital collectibles platform for Web3 branded nonfungible tokens, allowing companies to embrace decentralized technologies and develop loyalty programs more simply.

Salesforce Web3 puts the power of blockchain technology in the hands of enterprises, allowing them to create, manage, and deploy nonfungible tokens in a secure, scalable, and sustainable manner. It also integrates these new digital assets with the company’s customer relationship management system, allowing their gathering and use to be recorded and correlated with sales.

Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are a digital collectible and an emerging industry in which many multinational companies are intrigued yet cautious due to their usability, potential security issues, and sustainability challenges.

Adam Caplan, general manager of Web3 at Salesforce, highlighted in an interview with a leading media house that the debut of NFT Management – formerly known as NFT Cloud – has enabled businesses to develop and manage their digital collectibles using Salesforce. In June, the company piloted NFT Cloud with select organizations to provide them with a “360-degree perspective” of the physical and digital client experience.

Adam Caplan stated, “When NFTs just exploded a couple of years ago, now we just had a ton of interest from [chief marketing officers] and customers just asking us how to leverage this technology. They thought there was something interesting here, but they were nervous from a brand perspective, from a reputation perspective, from a security and trust perspective, and from a sustainability perspective.”

NFT Management was designed with consumer security and morality in mind to address this. Digital collectibles coined and maintained in Salesforce Web3 are audited and protected, and the business has engaged its Office of the Ethical and Humane Use of Technology and Web3 Advisory board to address ethical concerns for value-driven Web3 initiatives. Also, the firm will exclusively utilize energy-efficient proof-of-stake blockchains, which, according to the company, emit 99% fewer emissions than proof-of-work blockchains.

Since the initial introduction of the pilot program a year ago, the platform has logged more than 275,000 transactions for companies, including Crown Royal, Mattel, and Scotch and amp; Soda, all of which use it for developing and securely distributing digital collectibles.

With NFT Management, Salesforce is releasing Web3 Connect, a new application programming interface connection that enables businesses to develop tailored experiences on their websites and applications more quickly, allowing them to provide NFTs and monitor them through Salesforce.

Mattel, Inc. utilized this by developing digital collectibles with Salesforce and distributing digital collectible NFTs in packs. Because to the fact that Mattel’s Hot Wheels toys have a large collecting community, these items were offered in digital packs containing many vehicles and varying rarities of NFTs. Each pack may include a digital collectible automobile with a high rarity that victors could exchange for a die-cast copy.

Sven Gerjets, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Mattel, said, “Salesforce Web3 enhances our NFT collections to help us connect with customers and bring our Web2 and Web3 systems together. Web3 Connect is powering invaluable insights into our audience and seamlessly bridging Web3 channels with the rest of our customer experience.”

And now that Mattel has acquired all of this information from its consumers purchasing these collector packs, entering their information, redeeming digital cars for actual cars, and more, all of this information returns to Salesforce and can be utilized for other opportunities.

For instance, the ownership of a digital collectible could unlock discounts in a store or activate digital experiences or VIP rooms on a website that are only accessible to those who own that digital collectible – in the same way, that certain premium NFT Hot Wheels could be exchanged for the physical car.

Caplan stated that the program’s wide availability for businesses interested in building and releasing their own NFT digital collectibles is currently restricted. This allows Salesforce to teach new organizations and ensure they can use the latest technology.