Deep Ventures Monthly Newsletter - July 2024

Hope you’ve been able to enjoy a nice vacation and touch grass this summer!

I just returned from a 2-week vacation hiking the towering Dolomites of Italy and visiting the lush greens of Ireland. Now I’m back at it!

In July’s newsletter, we talk about:

• The progress that our porfolio companies OrdinalsBot, Numbers Protocol, and Gnosis Guild have made

• The Ethereum ETFs starting to trade

• My appearance on Ran Neuner’s Crypto Banter YouTube show

• And more!

Let’s go!

Portfolio Company Highlights

OrdinalsBot launches Runes Launchpad and TokenPay

OrdinalsBot has achieved massive traction with their Ordinals inscription infrastructure. They’ve ridden this momentum to launch two new products - a Runes Launchpad and TokenPay.

Their Runes Launchpad makes it super simple for anyone to create a Runes token, including enabling whitelists, supporting public sales and claims, creating custom landing pages, and much more. The launchpad was used to mint $DOG, the #1 Runes token by market cap.

The OB team also launched TokenPay, which enables builders to add utility to tokens, accept payment in tokens for on-chain activities including inscribing or minting Ordinals, and pay for transaction fees on DEXs or other trading platforms. TokenPay makes it possible to use Bitcoin native tokens for any form of commerce. Read more about the launch here.

Brian, Toby, and the entire OrdinalsBot team are on a relentless mission to expand the Bitcoin ecosystem, and we are here for it!

Numbers Protocol announces partnerships, recognized by Grayscale

Numbers Protocol announced three major partnerships in July to integrate their content provenance protocol:

1. They’ve announced a strategic partnership with Defiance TV aimed at "setting a new standard on media transparency and integrity."

2. They will work with the Shezidao Wetlands project to archive the historic images of Taipei City, ensuring their preservation and accessibility for future generations.

3. They’ve forged an Ethical AI collaboration with Itheum, focused on bringing provenance to transcending content and data.

Additionally, Numbers was recognized by Grayscale, alongside Story Protocol and Worldcoin, as one of the crypto protocols capable of addressing AI-related challenges.

With the proliferation of deepfakes created by AI and the increasingly important role that media plays in major events, Numbers will have a massive impact in ensuring content provenance.

Gnosis Guild / Enclave improves products and are hiring

Gnosis Guild is a critical part of the Gnosis / Safe ecosystem, builds modular products for DAO operations, and works with over 150 of the largest DAOs.

In July, the team forged a collaboration with Hats/Treasure DAO, launched the Roles module on Optimism, and are gearing up for ENS's and Balancer’s upgrades to Roles mod v2.

The GG team is also building Enclave, an open-source protocol for virtual secure execution environments to facilitate the creation of privacy-preserving applications (we invested in both GG and Enclave). They’ve reached important development milestones, including advancing its node infrastructure and progressing on the protocol itself.

And they’re hiring Applied Cryptographers for the Enclave team. Here’s the JD. If you know a candidate who'd make a good fit, please let us know!

Industry News

Ethereum ETF starts trading

Ethereum ETFs started trading on July 23. Since then, the total assets under management (AUM) has reached $6.61B.

Grayscale’s ETHE continues to see large outflows due to its high fee structure (2.5%, more than 10x compared to other Ethereum ETF options), but maintains the lead in AUM. Grayscale’s ETH Mini (ETH) and BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) are second and third in AUM.

Here’s a nice Ethereum ETF dashboard by Coinglass.

Germany sold a lot of Bitcoin

The German state of Saxony sold nearly $3B worth of Bitcoin in early July.

Good riddance. Onward and upward without the Germans!

Helium Mobile hits 100K in subscribers

Helium Mobile, a new kind of mobile carrier and wireless communications network that is decentralized, democratized, and affordable, hit 100K in subscribers in July.

Helium Mobile is a prime example of a real-world use case of blockchain, where a crypto-incentivized community can help launch products faster and at a lower cost.

I am a Helium Mobile subscriber and the service is great and inexpensive (only $20 per month).

Congrats to the Helium Mobile team on a fantastic accomplishment!

Events and Content

Mike on Crypto Banter

I was a guest a Ran Neuner’s Crypto Banter YouTube show (almost 1 million subscribers!) that aired on July 19!

We spoke about the Ethereum ETFs, how the ETFs will impact altcoins, the Bitcoin ecosystem, gaming, and more!

Check out the video below and let me know what you think!

Bay Area Investors Happy Hour

Sherman and I hosted a Bay Area Investors and Builders Happy Hour on July 10 at Casements Bar in San Francisco. We had great food and drinks, perfect weather, and most importantly, amazing conversations!

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the DV monthly newsletter!

Hit me up at [email protected] or @mikewchan on Telegram with your thoughts about the newsletter, what’s happening in crypto, or anything else!

Give us a follow on Xwitter @deepventuresvc, @mikewchan, and @sherm8n and Deep Ventures on LinkedIn.

Talk soon!