Bessie Liu

Radius, a startup looking to separate the tasks of sequencing and execution, has secured $1.7 million in its latest pre-seed funding round led by Hashed.



Other investors including Superscrypt, Lambdaclass and Crypto.com also participated in the round.



Radius is currently developing a trustless shared sequencing layer that aims to resolve the potentially damaging effects of centralized sequencing — where a single entity has control over the ordering of transactions in a block.



“A sequencer may front-run or sandwich user transactions, creating adverse price effects and forcing users to pay more and wait longer for their transactions to go through,” the company <a href="https://medium.com/@radius_xyz/radius-trustless-shared-sequencing-layer-b293dfa75db">wrote</a> in a blog post. 



Unlike traditional decentralized sequencer solutions, Radius notes that its zero-knowledge solution, “disempowers the influence of a centralized sequencer, rather than decentralizing it.” Its solution is known as the <a href="https://ethresear.ch/t/mev-resistant-zk-rollups-with-practical-vde-pvde/12677">Practical Verifiable Delay Encryption (PVDE)</a>.



PVDE is designed to encrypt transactions and prevent the discovery of harmful <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mev-searcher-battle-for-profit">maximum extractable value</a>, or MEV — completely eliminating the need for trust in sequencers. 



This means that when a user submits their transaction, the sequencer who is rearranging the transaction will not be able to view its contents.



AJ Ji Hoon Park, the founder of Radius, notes that the company is “committed to setting the standard for a trustless shared sequencing layer that not only maximizes revenue for Rollups but also safeguards users from the harmful effects of MEV.&#8221; 



Alongside the development of PVDE, Radius is also creating an MEV-resistant decentralized exchange. This exchange, named 360, will protect its users from front-running bots and sandwich attacks. 



Although it is unclear when 360 will be launched, the company notes that it plans to release an early version of its sequencing layer solution early next year.



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Startup looking to bring shared sequencing to life secures $1.7M

Morgan Chittum

<div id="highlights-block_623c63ccf5d5f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Other participants in the raise include 1confirmation, IDEO CoLab, Blockchain Capital, Wintermute and Figment</li>
 <li>The team currently has around 20 full-time employees, with the hope of expanding to over 50 by year-end</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Phi Labs, a contributor to an incentivized smart contract built on Cosmos, announced a $21 million seed round on Thursday.&nbsp;



The raise, led by investment firms CoinFund and Hashed, will go towards staff expansion, product development and building on Phi Lab’s protocol Archway. The team currently has around 20 full-time employees, with the hope of hitting over 50 by year-end.&nbsp;



Other participants in the round include 1confirmation, IDEO CoLab, Figment, Blockchain Capital, Wintermute, Chorus One, stake.fish, Lemniscap, Cosmostation and Hypersphere Ventures.



<a href="https://docs.archway.io/docs/overview/about/">Archway</a> is “one of the first smart contracting chains where any [decentralized app] developer can build on top of, and then access all the other assets throughout the Cosmos ecosystem,” Phi Labs Chief Executive Griffin Anderson told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Archway, Anderson said, rewards developers via its protocol by sharing a portion of transaction fees and inflationary rewards generated on the Cosmos network.&nbsp;



“[Smart contract platforms] all been kind of ideating on the trilemma around scalability, decentralization and security,” Billy Dishman, Principal at CoinFund, said. “And what is largely ignored is the idea of ideating and improving tokenomics on blockchains.”



“There are three main constituents within a blockchain. You have the validators, the users and the developers, and so far, no one [has] prioritized the developers.” Archway is expected to launch sometime this year. The protocol’s tokens, according to <a href="https://docs.archway.io/docs/overview/faq">Archway’s website</a>, will not be offered in certain countries including the US, China, Zimbabwe, Albania and Venezuela.



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Phi Labs Secures $21M Seed, Led by CoinFund and Hashed

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_622755c8558fd" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>With a new $5.4 million fundraise, Kado aims to make access to algorithmic stablecoin UST much easier, says Vince Dowdle, co-founder and chief operating officer</li>
 <li>The company plans to expand into other ecosystems beyond Terra with a focus on cross-chain services</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Kado, a stablecoin payment infrastructure provider, closed its first capital raise for $5.4 million on Tuesday, the company’s co-founders exclusively told Blockworks.



There needs to be greater stablecoin access, simplicity and ability to use them, Emery Andrew, co-founder and CEO of Kado, said to Blockworks.&nbsp;



The seed round was led by venture fund Hashed with participation from Race Capital, Circle Ventures, Collab+Currency, Republic Capital, PrimeBlock Ventures, 0xVentures, T&amp;G Ventures, Skyvision Capital, Lunatic Capital, Contango Digital, TPS Capital and a few angel investors, including Blockworks&#8217; Co-founder Jason Yanowitz.



The funding will help Kado grow from the Terra ecosystem into other stablecoins, multichain worlds and markets, Andrew said. There is no public valuation at this time.



The company formed during a Terra community hackathon in May 2021 with the goal of supporting stablecoin ecosystems like Terra’s UST by creating products that make it easier for users to spend and use their stablecoins. It plans to provide support for Circle’s USDC in the near future as well, Andrew said.



“Ultimately, in our first six months, we launched Kado Pay, the ability to spend your stablecoins on Amazon, not natively on it, but through our application,” Andrew said. “You can come to our site and spend stablecoin directly, and very soon you’ll be able to spend USDC as well.”



Stablecoin demand has jumped over the past 12 months, Terra’s market capitalization has increased 1,563% from $830.88 million on the year-ago date to $13.82 billion as of Monday. Meanwhile, the market cap for USDC, another popular stablecoin, rose 487% from $8.93 billion to $52.47 billion in the past year.



“The biggest problem in the Terra ecosystem is getting access to UST, you have to jump through all these hoops…there’s so much friction involved,” Vince Dowdle, co-founder and chief operating officer, said to Blockworks. Last month, the company launched Kado Ramp, an application where users can swap between dollars and stablecoins within minutes.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“People who don’t understand the complexities of crypto can just connect their bank account, onboard directly into these protocols natively with dollars,” Dowdle said.&nbsp;</blockquote>



In the company’s first week, it processed over $1 million in UST purchases and has been increasing about $100,000 a day since, Andrew said. To date, it has users from over 60 countries and anticipates its purchases to increase further through new payment methods and protocol partnerships, Dowdle said.



Going forward, the company plans to expand into other ecosystems beyond Terra with a focus on cross-chain services like Solana to USDC and Avalanche to USDC, Andrew said.&nbsp;



“Ultimately, we want to make sure the experience for the merchant is a simple one,” Andrew said.



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