RBV + Denarii Labs Weekly Newsletter 🧔📖 Week of 12/18/25

Welcome to the latest edition of the Red Beard Ventures newsletter, where we dive into exciting updates and insights from all over our portfolio and network!

📣 As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has a syndicate, fund, tokenomics accelerator, and Web3 consultancy:

• The Red Beard Ventures Syndicate is stage agnostic and invests in Frontier Technology with a focus on Web3, Space, FinTech, Sports, Robotics, Biotech, and Climate. We invest anywhere between $100k - $1.5M. 

• Red Beard Ventures Fund I invests $100k - $1M in Pre-seed and Seed blockchain based companies.

• Denarii Labs is a tokenomics accelerator which invests $100k into companies interested in designing and launching a token over a twelve week hands-on program. Denarii also features a consulting business for later stage clients with higher touchpoint needs in tokenomics, communications, growth, and marketing.

🎤 RBV / Denarii Labs Announcements:

Red Beard Ventures Fund II - Now Raising

Red Beard Ventures is launching Fund II, building on the success of our first fund and extensive network in Web3, blockchain, and DePIN. With a track record of early investments in high growth companies and a strong investor base, Fund II is positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities in the space.

Reach out to [email protected] for more information.

Denarii Labs Cohort 4 - Applications Now Open for Cohort 4

Denarii Labs is now accepting applications for Cohort 4. We are actively reviewing applications and investing $100K into projects looking to design, launch, and scale their token ecosystems over a 12 week program. Apply now to join a network of high-conviction builders shaping the next generation of on-chain economies.

Previous cohorts have partnered with leading ecosystems such as Avalanche, XION, Celo, and more. Hedera and Flow tracks are currently live, with more ecosystem partnerships to be announced soon.

Reach out to [email protected] for more information. Link to apply.

🚀 RBV Spotlight:

Senpi becomes a top-5 Hyperliquid app by daily new users just 5 days post-launch

Senpi has rapidly broken out on Hyperliquid, becoming a top-5 app by daily new users within just five days of launch. The platform is onboarding roughly 90 new traders per day, climbing the leaderboard and signaling strong early pull in one of crypto’s most competitive verticals.

The product wedge is clear: “mirror trading for normies.” Senpi abstracts away charts, leverage math, and execution complexity, allowing users to automatically mirror top Hyperliquid traders within defined risk and slippage parameters. This turns on-chain perps from a power-user tool into a plug-and-play consumer product.

Early traction suggests Senpi is tapping into a large, under-served demand for simple, non-custodial access to derivatives. By pairing Hyperliquid’s performance with consumer-grade UX, Senpi shows how on-chain perps can scale beyond native traders and into the next wave of users.

Congratulations to the Senpi team! 🚀

💼 Portfolio News:

Agoric collaborates with DCF to advance secure decentralized computing

• Partnership push toward secure decentralized compute milestones.
• Reinforces the “safe AI cooperation” narrative with capability security principles.
• A credibility signal as AI + crypto infra converges.

Ava Labs on CNBC: RIAs could be a major crypto catalyst in 2026

• Messaging aimed squarely at institutional distribution channels.
• Frames 2026 as a potential step-function year for broader allocation.
• Helps reinforce “mainstream rails + advisory adoption” narrative.

CryptoSlam: SLAM Nation BREAKOUT 2025 goes live with major guests

• Big distribution moment: stacked lineup across gaming, NFTs, infra, and media.
• Highlights sustained builder + creator momentum heading into 2026.
• A useful “ecosystem temperature check” event for LPs.

Colossal Foundation secures an additional $50M to tackle biodiversity

• Raised $50M to expand conservation + de-extinction programs globally.
• Accelerates deployment of “in-the-field” projects, partnerships, and new biotech initiatives.
• Strengthens Colossal’s position as the category leader in frontier conservation science.

Genies Avatar SDK featured in Top 10 Free Unity Assets roundup

• Recognized by UnityCodeMonkey, increasing visibility across Unity’s dev ecosystem.
• Validation of developer utility for avatar creation + integration workflows.
• Drives adoption momentum toward Genies as a standard identity/avatars layer.

LimeWire Network launches private beta and begins migrating 15M+ monthly uploads on-chain

• Major infra milestone: decentralized storage network enters private beta with real usage migration.
• Pulling existing scales into crypto-native rails rather than starting from zero.
• Next milestone teased: real-time network usage data for transparency + ecosystem growth.

Minima successfully demos stablecoin “MxUSD,” opening formal testing this week

• Stablecoin milestone: successful demo → testing phase begins immediately.
• Positions MxUSD as foundational plumbing for Minima’s DEX timeline and stable trading pairs.
• Clear sequencing toward safer rollout and shipping discipline.

Truflation data becomes available via AWS Marketplace for faster institutional integration

• Distribution unlock: institutions can plug Truflation’s macro/inflation datasets into cloud workflows quickly.
• Lowers procurement + integration friction for enterprise adoption.
• Strengthens Truflation’s positioning as an “independent data layer” inside TradFi stacks.

Shardeum partners with Humanode to bring biometric-based identity (Biomapper) to the ecosystem

• Partnership introduces privacy-preserving proof-of-uniqueness to reduce sybil activity.
• Expands ecosystem capabilities for airdrops, governance, and app-level gating.
• Differentiates Shardeum with identity primitives that support sustainable incentives.

Saga Proposal 23 implemented: platform migration complete and network resumes normal operation

• Major protocol milestone: migration completed and architecture from Saga’s litepaper realized.
• Sets foundation for chainlets as economic units + scalable infrastructure to “launch L1s.”
• Signals execution readiness for the next phase of chain deployment and validator revenue design.

Unstoppable Domains: early 2024 launch of .raiin identity layer shows growing
real usage

• .raiin provides a human-readable identity layer for Raiinmaker-powered apps.
• Becoming part of daily onchain activity, with an “ICANN path ahead” narrative tailwind.
• Reinforces Unstoppable’s role as core naming/identity infrastructure.

Wispr Flow acquires Yapify.ai, its first acquisition

• First M&A for Wispr Flow, bringing Yapify.ai into the team and product roadmap.
• Signals acceleration toward a broader “new human-computer interaction” platform vision.
• Strong proof of momentum: moving from product build → platform expansion via acquisition.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone a happy holidays from the Red Beard Ventures team!

We’ll be taking a short break from newsletters and will be back with exciting updates in the New Year. Thank you for being part of the RBV community and for all the great conversations we shared this past year. Looking forward to more in 2026!

🚀 Onwards!

Drew, Elana, Joshua, Lauren, and Jeff