Latest news with #Optimism
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Culver City Digital Asset Management Platform Stackup Raises $4.2 Million
Stackup, a Culver City-based digital asset management platform designed to streamline crypto operations for crypto businesses, raised a $4.2-million Seed funding round led by 1kx, with participation from Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, Soma Capital, Amino Capital and Digital Currency Group. The investment will accelerate the development of the Stackup platform, allowing the team to continue developing solutions that simplify crypto operations for businesses. The company was founded in 2021. Coinciding with the influx of new capital, it launched a new direct banking integration feature that directly addresses the fragmentation between traditional and crypto operations. Businesses can now connect their bank accounts to their Stackup wallet, enabling seamless, non-custodial ACH transfers between their bank and wallet within their existing payment workflows. 'Our mission at Stackup is to provide businesses with the tools they need to manage their digital assets with the same level of efficiency and control they expect from traditional financial systems,' said John Rising, chief executive and co-founder of Stackup, in a statement. Additionally, Stackup has expanded its support blockchains to include Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and BSC. Information for this article was sourced from Stackup.
UAE Moments
24-06-2025
- General
- UAE Moments
♋ Cancer Daily Horoscope for June 24, 2025
🌟 Daily Theme: Sun conjunct Jupiter cazimi in Cancer A rare and powerful cosmic alignment—Jupiter close to the Sun in Cancer—infuses you with optimism, emotional clarity, and opportunity. Love & Relationships Your emotional bond deepens naturally today. Speak with authenticity and openness—your conversations carry extra weight, bringing warmth and connection. Finances Luck supports you. Unexpected funds or helpful offers could land. It's a great day to review long-term plans—your intuition is subtly guiding you toward abundance. Career & Ambition Ideas flow effortlessly. Collaborate or present—it's your cosmic stage. Your confidence is magnetic, and others are drawn to your clarity and vision. Health & Well-being Energy vibrates high—use this surge wisely. A gentle walk, yoga, or any grounding activity calms your mind and centers your spirit. Personal Growth & Other Areas Jupiter cazimi in your sign amplifies your growth. Set intentions, start family projects, or reconnect with your roots. This is a powerful seed-planting moment.
Business Wire
20-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Stackup Raises $4.2 Million in Seed Round to Streamline Operations for Crypto Businesses
CULVER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Stackup, the digital asset management platform designed to streamline crypto operations for crypto businesses, today announced that it has secured $4.2 million in seed funding. The round was led by 1kx, with participation from Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, Soma Capital, Amino Capital, and Digital Currency Group (DCG). The investment will accelerate the development of the Stackup platform, allowing the team to continue developing solutions that simplify crypto operations for businesses. Coinciding with the influx of new capital, Stackup has launched a new direct banking integration feature that directly addresses the fragmentation between traditional and crypto operations. Businesses can now connect their bank accounts to their Stackup wallet, enabling seamless, non-custodial ACH transfers between their bank and wallet within their existing payment workflows. This solves a critical pain point for companies forced to juggle between two parallel financial systems: traditional banking for crypto operations and separate crypto platforms for on-chain activity. Stackup's solution creates one system for all financial operations, without giving up control of your assets to third parties. 'Our mission at Stackup is to provide businesses with the tools they need to manage their digital assets with the same level of efficiency and control they expect from traditional financial systems,' said John Rising, co-founder and CEO of Stackup. 'This funding gives us the ability to eliminate operational inefficiencies that have historically hindered the adoption and growth of this industry. We're empowering businesses to streamline their financial operations and workflows, allowing them to focus on growth without compromising on security or control of their assets.' Additionally, Stackup has expanded its support blockchains to include Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and BSC. This feature unlocks businesses operating across multiple blockchains. Previously, businesses were forced to manage separate wallets and manually bridge assets between chains, creating a process that was both time-consuming and error-prone. With Stackup, businesses can manage their multi-chain operations from one platform, moving assets seamlessly without external bridges or multiple wallet setups. 'Crypto businesses have largely struggled to address their operational needs due to the unique burden of managing assets on multiple chains,' said Nichanan Kesonpat of 1kx. 'Stackup is addressing those critical pain points and enabling businesses to take control of their funds in one seamless, secure, and scalable platform.' The Stackup platform has evolved significantly since its inception in 2021. The platform played a crucial role in building wallet infrastructure for major industry players like Coinbase and TrustWallet. This foundational experience in enterprise-grade wallet infrastructure informed Stackup's current model of providing a comprehensive digital asset management platform directly to businesses. Today, Stackup provides centralized control over decentralized assets, allowing businesses to take charge of every detail of their operations with ease. About Stackup Stackup is transforming how businesses manage their on-chain operations by offering a smart account platform designed to simplify and automate complex blockchain tasks. As the need for seamless, secure, and efficient crypto transactions grows, Stackup provides centralized control over decentralized assets, allowing businesses to take charge of every detail of their operations with ease. Our platform integrates advanced security and adaptive features to eliminate the chaos of traditional crypto wallets, empowering businesses to manage their crypto stack in real-time. Whether you're orchestrating large-scale transactions or ensuring complete transparency, Stackup's solution brings order and precision to blockchain management, turning crypto chaos into a structured, seamless business flow.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What Are Crypto Airdrops? And Are They Worth the Risk?
Airdrops are promotional distributions of cryptocurrencies. Some airdrops are scams, others require unpaid labor, and a few are free money. Your time is probably better spent doing something else. 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin › Few phrases in cryptocurrency trigger the fear of missing out (FOMO) faster than "free coins." Social media used by cryptocurrency natives overflows with screenshots from people who supposedly banked five-figure windfalls simply by clicking a button, or sometimes simply by holding a certain coin. The allure taps mankind's primordial impulse to find and then eat free lunches whenever possible. But it's been said that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn't real. That tension is why crypto airdrops feel at once irresistible and, for most investors, maddeningly unrewarding. For some, they can even be disastrous. Let's unpack how these giveaways really work, what can go wrong, and why skipping them usually beats chasing them. For the uninitiated, an airdrop is, at its core, a marketing stunt. In a nutshell, an airdrop is when a cryptocurrency protocol or side chain sends free tokens into all wallets that meet a specific set of on-chain criteria. The objective is for the recipients to talk about the asset, trade it, get others to use it, and generally to bring in some liquidity. Crucially, you will never ever see established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other dominant networks airdropping coins. Their brands are already strong. The issuers are almost always newer players with fairly small market caps looking to bootstrap users. Qualifying for airdrops usually requires performing on-chain actions weeks or months before the drop. Usually the more of those actions the user performs, the larger their distribution is. Thus there's the term "farming airdrops," wherein users intentionally do repetitive actions on a network with the goal of inflating their record of actions that should in theory generate a larger airdrop for them whenever it occurs. For example, Arbitrum awarded at least 625 ARB tokens, worth roughly $800 on launch day, to addresses that had bridged assets or used its apps before a March 2023 snapshot. Those airdrop criteria are relatively loose in the sense that it was very easy to qualify. In contrast, Optimism's third airdrop sprayed 10 million OP across 54,000 wallets, but filtered for governance voters and repeat bridge users rather than passive holders. In other words, on average, qualifying for airdrops isn't dumb luck as much as it is a combination of luck in selecting the right protocol to use and consistently doing the right kind of grind. You will usually need to be paying gas fees and hoping that the issuer's rules about qualifying don't change. Then, on claim day, you typically need to take action in order to collect, though in some cases the airdrop is automatically distributed to qualifying wallets. Sometimes the haul is large. Sums as high as $12.1 million have been reported as recently as 2023. But such jackpots are very much statistical outliers, not the norm in any way. Airdrops are, in my experience, rarely worth the amount of time, capital, and risk it takes to find and then farm them. Gas fees can add up very quickly, especially when farming airdrops on chains like Ethereum. Bridging your assets to a new chain can also be expensive. And your time is valuable. Clicking buttons inside of a decentralized finance (DeFi) app for hours on end is tedious at best. Next comes uncertainty. Some chains hint at big airdrop offerings without making any explicit commitments, leading investors to park their capital and perform effort for months. Then, when the big moment arrives, sometimes users receive just a fraction of what rumors suggested. Expectations and outcomes rarely line up because issuers reserve the right to tweak formulas until launch. Security risk is the darker side. Phishing sites spin up within minutes of every announcement, mimicking claim portals and emptying wallets after one mistaken signature. "Free" tokens can be Trojan horses that grant attackers illicit spending permissions on someone's wallet. Rug-pulls masquerading as community drops further prove that marketing can pivot to malice overnight. Given those frictions, the expected value of farming random airdrops trends low. There are scenarios where the math can flip in your favor when it comes to trying to qualify for airdrops. If an issuer discloses eligibility early, publishes a fixed formula, and has venture capital (VC) backing or clear product-market fit, the risk-adjusted reward can justify a measured allocation of your time and capital. For instance, Arbitrum's drop met that bar. Rules were posted months ahead, there was a live ecosystem, and there was a public investor roster stacked with blue chip crypto funds. To tilt odds in your favor, verify announcements on the project's official domain and social channels before interacting, use a fresh wallet containing only the funds you need for the task, and cap your spending by setting a maximum in fees or deposits you are willing to risk. Remember that airdrops are ads. Most investors are better served by owning high-conviction assets directly, holding for years, and ignoring siren calls of "free money." The time you spend trying to out-game anonymous token issuers could be better spent researching enduring projects, or simply enjoying an afternoon offline. Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,702!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $870,207!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 988% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. What Are Crypto Airdrops? And Are They Worth the Risk? was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal Takes Over as Foundation CEO Amid Strategic Shakeup
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has officially assumed the role of CEO of the Polygon Foundation, marking a pivot in the organization's leadership makeup and a sweeping overhaul of the network's longterm roadmap. Nailwal, who launched the project in 2017 when it was still called Matic Network, will consolidate control and reorient the team toward AggLayer — Polygon's new cross-chain liquidity protocol that promises seamless interoperability across networks. "This renewed control marks the beginning of a strategic push for Polygon to reclaim its position at the forefront of Web3," the team wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk As chief executive, Nailwal will steer long-term planning, guide key ecosystem initiatives, and ensure that the foundation — which oversees Polygon Labs and other affiliated entities — delivers 'exponential growth, increased focus and greater value to POL stakers,' according to the foundation. In its early days, Polygon's proof-of-stake sidechain marketed itself as a low-cost, fast alternative to Ethereum, providing users with access to decentralized apps without the burden of high gas fees. It quickly rose to prominence as a go-to Ethereum scaling solution. But activity has since cooled. Total value locked (TVL) across Polygon networks has fallen to around $1 billion, down nearly 90% from its June 2021 peak of $9.79 billion, per DefiLlama. Polygon has ceded ground to a new wave of Ethereum scaling networks — namely 'layer-2 rollups' like Optimism and Arbitrum — which offer similar user experiences but with tighter Ethereum compatibility and more sophisticated security systems. Polygon's own rollup, zkEVM, ranks just 27th by TVL among layer-2s, according to L2Beat, trailing well behind its newer competitors. Now, the zkEVM experiment is being phased out. Polygon said it will sunset the zkEVM Mainnet Beta in 2026, citing developer friction, architectural limitations, and sluggish adoption. 'To ensure a smooth transition, the sequencer will remain live for the next twelve months,' the team noted. The decision also comes with a key personnel shift: Jordi Baylina, Polygon's zero-knowledge research lead, will leave to spin out his own project, ZisK. As part of its strategic reset, Polygon will double down on its flagship PoS sidechain, now targeting real-world financial assets (RWAs). The foundation teased an 'ambitious roadmap' with milestones to transform the chain into a 'gigagas' network capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second and securing trillions in tokenized assets. Polygon's reorganization mirrors changes at the Ethereum Foundation, which recently restructured its leadership and revamped its roadmap in a process led by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In a post on X, Nailwal said Ethereum's 'existential crisis' had pushed Polygon to revisit its core identity — returning to a bolder, more nimble, and more decisive 'zero-to-one' mentality. His stated goal: "to deliver greater value to POL stakers and bring increased clarity to the broader market." POL, previously called MATIC, is Polygon's native token. The asset can be "staked" with Polygon's PoS network to help secure it in exchange for rewards. The timing of the revamp, Nailwal suggested, could work in POL's favor. "The SEC has dropped its investigations and lawsuits related to MATIC as a security, which should have never existed given the nature of MATIC (and now POL)," he wrote. "We are excited to see several large market makers coming back to the table in recent days to make markets in POL that strengthens the liquidity of POL on exchanges globally." Read more: Polygon, GSR Release Katana Network Tackle DeFi Fragmentation
