Sat 02/25

Good Morning. Looks like even Polygon employees aren’t safe from the layoff wave, USA’s Montana state passes a “right to mine” bill, CoinEx gets the hammer as it’s asked to stop crypto services in the USA, and Blur is coming for OpenSea.

Polygon Lays Off 20% Of Its Workforce: According to a blog post, Polygon Labs, the group of companies responsible for the blockchain network named after them, has announced a reduction of 20% in their workforce. Around 100 employees have been let go and will be provided with severance pay for three months. The reason for the layoff was due to the consolidation of various business units under Polygon Labs earlier this year, affecting multiple teams and positions. The news is unexpected considering the recent success of Polygon, as its governance token, MATIC, has experienced a 4% increase in the past week.

Kratos, an Indian web3 gaming studio raises seed round at $150M valuation, and acquires IndiGG: Kratos Studios has raised $20 million in a seed funding round, resulting in a $150 million valuation. The funding was led by Accel. Kratos also acquired IndiGG, a sub-DAO of Yield Guild Games DAO, through a token swap, which means that existing INDI token holders will receive new Kratos tokens without having to mark down their investments. According to Kratos co-founder Manish Agarwal, the new tokens will be launched in 12 months. Agarwal is also the former CEO of Nazara, India's first publicly listed gaming company.

Blur Shocks The Market With 82% Trading Volume: Blur, a new NFT marketplace that launched with zero trading fees, has quickly gained an impressive market share of 82% of the trading volume on Ethereum within a week, after its rival marketplace eliminated its fee. The achievement was recorded by a dashboard created by a pseudonymous researcher known as hildobby. The success of Blur was further boosted when it airdropped 12% of its BLUR tokens to FT traders on February 14, resulting in more than 70% of daily NFT trading volume on Ethereum being conducted on Blur since then. As a result, OpenSea, another NFT marketplace, has lowered its fees. It's worth noting that other marketplaces like SudoSwap also offer zero-fee trading.

CoinEx Stops US Services: CoinEx has instructed its users based in the United States to withdraw their assets within 60 business days, which is before April 24. After that, the company will gradually prohibit these users' accounts. The identification of U.S. users was done using their IP addresses. CoinEx was recently charged by the New York Attorney General's office on February 22, with the intention of forcing the company to stop its operations solely in New York. It is uncertain whether CoinEx is facing regulation from federal agencies, but the company's latest move appears to be a proactive step to avoid potential regulatory action.

Montana Passes “Right To Mine” Bill: On February 23, Montana's state senate approved a bill to safeguard the right of individuals and businesses to engage in cryptocurrency mining. The bill's main objective is to prevent the government from imposing higher electricity rates on cryptocurrency miners and implementing additional taxes on cryptocurrencies. It also intends to guarantee that mining companies can operate in industrial zones and that individual miners can operate in residential areas, subject to noise complaints. The bill was passed with 37 votes in favor and 13 against. Dennis Porter, the CEO, and co-founder of the Satoshi Action Fund supported the bill, and he mentioned that it must now pass in the house and be signed by the governor.

What Are Z-K Rollups: Simply put, zero-knowledge rollups or zk-rollups is a layer-2 scalability solution that allows blockchains to validate transactions faster while also ensuring that gas fees remain minimal.