RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖Week of 11/14/24

Team RBV Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, & More

Author

Austin Ritter
November 14, 2024

Subject: RBV Weekly Newsletter 🧔📖 Week of 11/14/24: Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, & More

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Red Beard Ventures newsletter, where we dive into exciting updates and insights from all over blockchain, frontier tech, and the angel investing landscape. 


đź“Ł As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has a syndicate, fund, and a tokenomics accelerator:

  • 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.

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

  • Denarii Labs is a tokenomics accelerator where we invest $100k into companies interested in designing and launching a token, over a twelve-week hands-on program. 🚨Applications are now open for Wire Accelerator, apply here! 🚨

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RBV Spotlight 🚀


bitsCrunch has announced a partnership with Linea, a Layer 2 blockchain built by Ethereum core developers, to bring advanced forensic analytics to the platform. The collaboration goes beyond simply monitoring NFT wash trading by indexing the entire Linea chain to detect a range of manipulative behaviors, including pump-and-dump schemes, phishing, and rug pulls.

Leveraging Linea’s infrastructure, bitsCrunch’s forensic tools will be used within the ecosystem for identifying suspicious trading patterns and providing users with unbiased insights into ecosystem activities, with big impacts across DeFi, gaming, NFTs, and wallet projects. By offering wallet activity tracking, marketplace insights, and AI-powered risk assessments to help mitigate risks and drive informed decision-making, bitsCrunch is expanding analytics capabilities on Linea.

Check out the “Zealy Quest” for users to learn more about Linea’s capabilities

Congrats to the team!!

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  • Saga simplifies the creation and management of appchains, which they call Chainlets. Saga’s approach offers customizable, scalable infrastructure with shared security with their focus being to enable developers to focus on their applications without the complexity of blockchain management

  • Saga’s Quick State Sync allows validators to connect with over 100 chainlets in under five minutes, reducing downtime and resource use

  • Saga’s Service Provider Stack is designed for flexibility, allowing even smaller validators to participate without extensive infrastructure investment.

  • BasedAI is a decentralized network of machines designed to integrate Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) with LLMs. This infrastructure ensures secure, privacy-focused interactions by transforming standard LLMs into encrypted zero-knowledge LLMs, or “ZK-LLMs,” through a mechanism called “Cerberus Squeezing.” By doing so, BasedAI allows encrypted processing of user queries and responses.

  • The Cerberus Squeezing mechanism optimizes interactions between users, miners, and validators in FHE-compliant environments. By reducing performance degradation typically caused by quantized functions, it ensures efficient, privacy-preserving responses from BasedAI’s network, leveraging generative adversarial network insights for data privacy.

  • BasedAI’s mainnet is next month, and upon mainnet launch, BasedAI will introduce “Creatures”—autonomous agents capable of evolving and self-improving based on initial “Thought DNA” assigned by users. These creatures can take on complex tasks, from running a business to researching advanced scientific solutions, continuously refining their plans and evolving 24/7 without human intervention.

  • Truflation provides real-time inflation metrics independent of traditional government statistics. By leveraging blockchain technology and decentralized data sources, Truflation aims to offer transparent and accurate insights into inflation trends, covering categories like housing, food, and energy.

  • Truflation has partnered with Penn State University to analyze the housing market amidst slowing job growth. Their research comes at a time of economic challenges, including strikes, natural disasters, and economic pessimism, which all contributed to a drop in job additions in October.

  • The study highlights that AI-driven companies are currently experiencing double-digit gains, outpacing other sectors. However, an increase in temporary job hiring could indicate that the boom in AI hiring may be nearing its peak.

  • ZERĎ´ is a zero-gas EVM rollup designed to enhance user experience by eliminating gas fees, a common obstacle in on-chain transactions. By leveraging zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, ZERĎ´ enables frictionless transactions, making blockchain more accessible to users.

  • Layer3 has partnered with ZERĎ´ as the exclusive quest partner for its mainnet launch. Users participating in the launchpad can earn XP through Zerion’s loyalty program, exploring over 10 applications on the ZERĎ´ network.

  • In addition to the launchpad campaign, Layer3 has integrated ZERĎ´ into its app, allowing users to access ZERĎ´ credentials, bridge directly to the network, and benefit from gasless incentives offered by teams deploying tokens on ZERĎ´ Network.

  • Matternet is a leading developer of commercial drone delivery systems, specializing in urban and suburban environments. Their technology includes the Matternet M2 drone and a comprehensive software platform, facilitating efficient and reliable aerial logistics.

  • ANRA Technologies provides advanced airspace and mission management solutions for uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS). Their platforms integrate air traffic management, operational oversight, and regulatory compliance.

  • On November 12, 2024, Matternet and ANRA Technologies announced a collaboration to enhance Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) services for expanding urban drone networks. This partnership aims to support the safe scaling of Matternet’s home delivery services by integrating ANRA’s advanced airspace management solutions, enabling beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations in shared airspace.

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đź”” Active Investment Opportunities:

Dentity: Consumer-First Digital Identity on Web3 Infrastructure | Backed by Blockchange Ventures and Kleiner Perkins

  • Dentity is building a secure, consumer-controlled digital identity solution on Web3, using open standards to empower individuals to manage their online credentials independently. 

  • $3M Seed extension financing via SAFE with a $30M post-money valuation cap and token warrant

  • Backed by top-tier investors: Blockchange Ventures (Solana, Filecoin), Kleiner Perkins (Figma, Snap), Capital Factory, Nural Capital, and AARP

  • Expanded from 5,000 to 50,000 identity wallets in 2023; targeting 500,000 wallets in 2024, with projections for 5 million wallets and over 60 million verified attributes and attestations by 2025

  • Led by experienced founder: CEO Jeffrey Schwartz, who has founded, led, and been a director at over a dozen public and private companies, including Autobytel, Autoweb, and CarParts.com. He also serves as ambassador chairman of the Decentralized Identity Foundation

  • Dentity’s infrastructure is already being used by 100+ enterprises, creating a consumer-controlled identity ecosystem that fosters trust and data security across digital platforms.

  • Link to invest

xMarkets: Creator-Focused Prediction Market Platform | Polymarket ($1B Valuation) Competitor | Closing this week

  • xMarkets is revolutionizing prediction markets by enabling verified X users with 1,000+ followers to create markets on any topic using AI-driven tools for clarity and efficiency

  • AI agent for market creation, $100 fee for quality curation, multiple resolution methods (LLMs, market creators, pricing oracles), and seamless X integration

  • Secured KOLs with 10M+ followers, planning September launch ahead of presidential election. 

  • Competitor Polymarket valued at ~$1B

  • Led by experienced team: Co-founder AJ, MIT CS grad and former Microsoft ML Engineer, previously founded DeFi projects reaching $50M TVL and $1.1B market cap. 

  • Backed by notable investors: Wes Cowan (Juice.finance), Paul Taylor (BlackRock), OneFlow Digital founder, Rahim Noorani (Satori.finance), Peter Huo (Whampoa Digital), and Eckhardt Capital. 

  • Raising $1.5M Pre-Seed with $15M post-money valuation cap SAFE + $XMKT token warrant. 

  • Link to invest

Enhanced Games: Revolutionizing Sports with Medically Supervised Performance Enhancements | Backed by Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan

  • Enhanced Games is poised to disrupt the world of sports by introducing an alternative to traditional athletic competitions like the Olympics

  • The company already has 6,500+ articles and billions of impressions with just $2.5M marketing spend

  • The Inaugural event is targeted for late 2025

  • Led by President and Co-Founder Dr. Aron D'Souza (previously founded OPEN, backed by NYSE) and Co-Founder Christian Angermayer (founder of Apeiron Investment Group and atai Life Sciences - NASDAQ: ATAI)

  • Backed by notable investors including Peter Thiel (PayPal, Palantir), Balaji Srinivasan (ex-CTO Coinbase, ex-GP Andreessen Horowitz), and Apeiron Investment Group.

  • Revenue from media rights, sponsorships, and pharmaceutical partnerships leveraging athlete performance data.

  • Link to invest

StackingDAO: Liquid Staking on Stacks (The largest L2 on BTC) | Building what Lido (1.83B FDV) is for Ethereum

  • Stacking DAO is building a liquid staking protocol for Stacks, the largest L2 on Bitcoin, solving issues like long unlock periods, high minimum requirements, and manual relocking.

  • $110M TVL since December 2023 launch, fastest-growing DeFi protocol in Stacks history, holding 17% of stacked STX.

  • Backed by Portal Ventures, Golden Chain Republic (Republic's Digital Asset Arm), Modular Capital, and Cherry Crypto.

  • Strong potential to become the Lido (current $1.83B FDV) of Stacks, offering auto-compounding tokenized representation of stacked STX (stSTX).

  • Link to invest

Monoquant: Revolutionizing Quantitative Trading for Crypto

  • Monoquant is developing an AI-powered platform that democratizes quantitative trading in the $2.1T cryptocurrency market, allowing investors at all levels to create, backtest, and deploy automated trading strategies.

  • Impressive data moat covering 60% of DeFi and 70% of CeFi markets, with over 4 trillion data points.

  • Secured broker agreements with major exchanges (OKX, Binance, Crypto.com, Bybit, MEXC) spanning ~85% of CEX volume.

  • Backed by Cherry Street Digital Assets Fund and Alumni Ventures.

  • Raising a pre-seed round at an attractive $20M post-money valuation cap with SAFE + token warrant. $MONQ token with 15% unlock at TGE, 3-month cliff, 12-month linear vesting.

  • Link to invest

Travelswap: Exclusive Expedia Crypto Partner Disrupting Travel

  • TravelSwap, an Expedia exclusive, combines travel booking with 100+ crypto payments, tokenized reservations, and rewards.

  • Impressive traction since July 2023 launch: 1,000+ bookings, 50+ B2B partners, 10k+ users (50% MoM growth), 12%+ repeat bookings.

  • 2024 plans: $TRAVL token, last-minute DEX, V2 B2B platform, expanded offerings.

  • Link to invest

SatRepublic: Leading Ordinals Studio Launches tool for collectors and developers

  • SatRepublic, the Ordinals Studio behind Pizza Artifacts, SatScribe is launching Runevo, a mobile-first infrastructure designed to enable users to transact, monitor, trade, and snipe Runes, Rare Stats, and Ordinals.

  • Pizza Artifacts, the first historical collection of Ordinals fully inscribed on the exotic 'pizza' Sats from the pizza transaction of May 22, 2010, trading at 25x mint; SatScribe, the first public platform for inscribing on rare and exotic Sats, which has done over 150k paid inscriptions for users; and Runevo, a collection of 6.025 pre-rune Ordinals that sold out in under 24 hours to raise $1.4mm USD, or 17.4 BTC.

  • Link to invest: 

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🥳 Upcoming Events: 

Events are a great way to stay informed in our industry, so we have had a very full 2024. We would love to hear about any other conferences you will be attending or the remainder of this year, so please let us know as we are still planning our event calendar! 

Stay tuned for updates on future events, and until then, keep spreading joy and positivity in our community!

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🤝 We are also looking for part-time syndicate vertical leads in the following categories - if you are interested please reach out and we can discuss the opportunity in greater detail:

Biotech 

Space 

Robotics & Automation

Climate 

Fintech & SaaS

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Onwards 🚀 

Drew, Elana, Joshua, and Lauren