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Welcome to the latest edition of the Weekly Pulse, a weekly Algorand news wrap-up segment presented by Algopulse. As ever, we welcome your feedback so if there is anything you would like us to add, please let us know on Twitter, Discord, or Telegram.
Bnext Partner With LoginID to Bring Additional Security to Alternative Banking Solution
Spanish language Fintech giant Bnext and Algorand based biometric authentication protocol LoginID have this week announced a partnership that will facilitate the integration of secure logins on the Bnext application. The partnership is viewed by Bnext as another significant step forward in achieving their ambitions to become a widely adopted alternative to traditional banks in the Latin American market.
“Working with the LoginID team was a natural fit for Bnext, they understand the compliance and security requirements around securing financial services,” said Bnext CEO, Guillermo Vicandi.
“We are excited about the potential to leverage the LoginID technology to secure Bnext financial services to support our customers.”
“Bnext has focused on emerging, underserved markets with new, exciting financial services for customers,” said LoginID CEO Simon Law.
“An important part of these new services will be helping provide a frictionless, secure experience that customers will feel confident in. Integration of the LoginID FIDO2 SDKs is easy and will provide the strongest form of authentication for customers.”
Algofi Launches on Mainnet
In massive news for the Algorand ecosystem, AlgoFi officially launched on mainnet on December 18th. The AlgoFi platform allows users to earn interest, access leverage, and borrow against their cryptocurrency assets, as well as mint the “Algostable” stablecoin. Algofi launching signifies a significant milestone for Defi in the Algorand ecosystem in which all three of the protocols earmarked by Algorand Foundation as pillars for financial growth are live on mainnet (the other two being Algomint and Tinyman).
“When we looked at the DeFi market today, we observed that the separation of lending and borrowing and stablecoin minting creates capital inefficiency, and strongly argue that Maker and Compound do not need to exist as different protocols,” said Algofi Co-Founder Owen Colegrove.
“Algofi is bridging the gap by natively integrating a stablecoin with a lending protocol. This construction better approaches maximum market efficiency, and offers borrowers the lowest rates on stablecoins in any ecosystem.”
Reach CEO Shares Vision for the Future of Digital Ownership
The Co-founder and CEO of Reach, Christopher Swenor, this week wrote an interesting piece for Nasdaq exploring what he believes will be the future primary use cases for both blockchain technology and NFTs. He explained that while to this point NFTs have primarily embodied art in the future their representation of ownership of almost any item in the metaverse will be a more pertinent component. Certainly, a fascinating read and insight into the potential future direction of blockchain adoption.
Algoracle Awarded new Algorand Foundation Price Oracle SupaGrant
Algoracle has been announced this week as the first recipient of the new Algorand Foundation Price Oracle SupaGrant. The grant was first announced in September as part of the Foundation’s Viridis DeFi fund which called for applications from developer teams and organizations to build secure and high-quality solutions such as Oracles and Bridges for the Algorand ecosystem. The Algoracle protocol is leveraging Algorand to create an oracle network that provides data on price, weather, sports, and more to other Dapps in the ecosystems.
“There is a large number of exciting applications that can be built on blockchain, and a healthy network of oracles that is just as decentralized and opaque as the blockchain it is built on is crucial,” says Algoracle CEO, Abdul Osman.
“Algoracle believes in security by reducing complexity,”.
Polynize Closes USD $1 mil Seed Round
Polynize, an Algorand based platform that aims to Gamify and tokenize innovation has closed a seed round during which they raised $1 million USD. The seed round was led by some of the ecosystem’s biggest Venture Capitalists including Borderless Capital, SevenX Ventures, MEXC, Elves Long Term Capital (ELTC), Cognitive Blockchain Capital, and more. Beginning as a physical board game, Polynize shifted to a blockchain protocol in 2021 to expand its potential for global reach.
“It was all about the story. Our project isn’t like the typical DeFi / crypto project, so we were unsure about how we’d be received,” said Polynize co-founder Shourov Bhattacharya.
“But we found that our backstory — of taking the process of innovation from our own work in music — really resonated. We’re thrilled to have found investors who are willing to go deep with us on our project.”
First Opulous S-NFT Set to be Released
Blockchain-based music licensing protocol Opulous has this week announced their first-ever S-NFT single Big Zuu’s new release, “NFT BARS” is set to release on December 30th, 2021. The S-NFT sold out in just 30 minutes when it was originally auctioned in April 2021. In the time since the sale, Big Zuu released his debut album “Navigate” in October, earned a BAFTA nomination, and won awards for his TV show “Big Zuu’s Big Eats”. Opulous have just released instructions for investors who bought shares in the single to claim their assets.
Algorand Foundation Award Grant to SEA Nexus
The Algorand Foundation has awarded a grant to Scotland-based not-for-profit project SEA Nexus as they build to provide Environmental Data by leveraging Algorand. The project has the lofty goal of turning every smartphone around the globe into an environmental sensor to form the biggest pool of data ever seen.
“The grant is a major breakthrough for SEA, it means we can accelerate our build process, be more ambitious with the size of the dataset we’ll be working with, and spread the word more effectively about our apps,” said SEA Founder James Birchall.
“The global scientific community is seeing more and more environmental feedback loops — human-made crises which combine and augment to create exponentially deepening emergencies. The Nexus can identify these situations at an early stage and alert us; it can give us time to react. We need such a system in place as soon as possible, and the Algorand Foundation grant is going to make that happen. And of course, Algorand — the ‘green blockchain’ — is the right place for us to build.”
Steve Kokinos Interviewed by Anthony Scaramucci for SALT
In what will be a real Christmas treat for the Algorand community, Algorand CEO Steve Kokinos recently made an appearance on the SALT YouTube channel where he was interviewed by SkyBridge Capital Founder and Managing Partner Anthony Scaramucci. In a 40 minute long discussion, the two explored Kokinos background prior to Algorand, web 3.0, layer-one technology, and more. Watch the entire discussion here.
Algorand Integrated by NFT Cross-Chain Protocol XP.network
Blockchain and NFT bridge giant XP.network has this week confirmed that Algorand has been integrated onto its platform facilitating additional opportunities for cross-chain adoption.
“An Algorand and XP.network integration is a major step. We are honored and eager to see where it will take both of us. One thing is for sure — It will lead us one step closer to a unified future. Welcome aboard this fantastic adventure!” Nir Blumberger, CEO, XP.network.
Thank you for reading this week’s edition of the Weekly Pulse as we look forward to continue bringing this content to the Algorand Community. Was there anything that we missed? If so let us know on Twitter, Discord, or Telegram where you can also send us any news you see throughout next week for our next installment.
