With the beta launch of its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) mainnet scheduled for March 27, Polygon, a layer-2 solution provider for Ethereum, has revealed the long-awaited scaling enhancement. After three and a half months of “battle testing,” the system will be ready for the mainnet the following month, Polygon stated in a blog post on February 14. The “seamless scaling for Ethereum” project was introduced in December of last year as a testnet. The zk-rollup scaling technology has been under development for the past three years. The team has acknowledged various achievements made by the Polygon zkEVM system throughout that time. Among these are the execution of more than 5,000 smart contracts, the creation of more than 75,000 zk-proofs, the creation of more than 84,000 wallets, and two open third-party audits. The platform for creating virtual worlds, Polygon, has raised $50 million in a Series B financing that Andreessen Horowitz primarily led. The native token of Polygon, MATIC, has risen 5.3% over the previous 12 hours due to the announcement.
The upgrade, code-named “Valentine,” will improve cross-chain capabilities for decentralized financial (DeFi) applications developing on the Cardano network. Instead of using middlemen to provide customers with financial services, Cardano dapps use smart contracts. Demand is indicated by the locked value of tokens on Cardano-based dapps, which has climbed by over 100% to over $110 million since the beginning of January. The utility of Cardano’s native ADA coins would thus probably increase as a result of this. Such a feature on Cardano will enable programmers to create tools that link Cardano with other blockchains, giving consumers access to those other blockchains so they can easily interact with the financial services provided by Cardano dapps.
The institutional-grade decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Infiniti Exchange has received a strategic investment from Laser Digital, a division of Japanese investment banking giant Nomura, the companies said on Wednesday. As of last November, the hybrid protocol developed by JP Morgan, Onyx, had resolved over $300 billion in intraday buyback transactions. The Japanese financial services provider was one of the first banks to look into digital asset custody and began trading cryptocurrency contracts last year. The business debuted Laser Digital, a division devoted to trading and investing in digital assets, last year. The new regulations “portend a huge wave of tokenization across financial and real assets,” according to the press release, noting that there are already US$300 trillion worth of outstanding credit securities and multiples of that in the loan, derivative, and stock markets. According to the press release, the asset tokenization movement received some additional support from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) most recent cryptocurrency guidelines. Following Infiniti’s $4.2 million early fundraising round, which included trading heavyweights including CMS, GSR, and Susquehanna as investors, Nomura made an investment.
