News linked to both this project and an event.
Monitoring by Odaily Seer Prophet Channel shows that on predict.fun, the probability of "Variational's FDV market cap exceeding $500 million one day after opening" has risen to 57%, up 12% in 24H. Additionally, the probability of "Variational's FDV market cap exceeding $800 million one day after opening" has risen to 36%.Last night, Variational announced the completion of a $50 million Series A funding round, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.Odaily Seer Prophet Channel continues to monitor the prediction market — seeing changes before they are priced in.
decentralized derivatives trading platform Variational has announced the completion of a $50 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures. Headquartered in the Cayman Islands, the company is dedicated to building an on-chain derivatives protocol for institutional and traditional finance traders. By aggregating liquidity from both traditional finance and crypto markets, it aims to provide instantly tradable on-chain markets for real-world assets such as oil and commodities. Its core product, the Omni platform, adopts a zero-fee model and incorporates a liquidity pool mechanism to enhance market depth and execution efficiency.Variational stated that its goal is not to directly compete with centralized exchanges, but rather to connect multi-source liquidity through a "brokerage-style" model, including traditional finance market makers and major crypto trading platforms, in order to solve the "liquidity cold start" problem for on-chain markets. (Fortune)
: Due to weak trading volumes and macro pressures weighing on valuations, crypto companies are pausing their long-awaited IPO plans. Hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger and MetaMask developer ConsenSys are among the companies that have delayed their IPOs. Ledger had previously planned to list on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of $4 billion.Sean Farrell, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Fundstrat, stated that crypto trading volumes have fallen by approximately 75% year-to-date, putting pressure on the valuations of publicly listed crypto companies. In contrast, demand for IPOs from tech companies related to AI remains strong.Additionally, Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI infrastructure have become one of the better-performing segments in the crypto market. Sean Farrell also pointed out that Hyperliquid is one of the standout crypto ecosystems in 2026, generating approximately $850 million in revenue over the past 12 months. Its recent partnership with Coinbase has made USDC the canonical stablecoin on the platform. (coindesk)
Odaily. Bernstein stated in its latest research report that the newly reached compromise on stablecoin yields under the U.S. CLARITY Act is structurally beneficial for Circle and the USDC ecosystem.The report notes that the current version of the bill prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest to passive holders that is "economically equivalent" to bank deposits, but allows reward mechanisms tied to actual transaction, payment, and usage activities to continue. Bernstein believes this means Circle's current model, which relies on partners like Coinbase to provide USDC reward programs, will gain regulatory recognition, while also limiting the industry's ability to compete for market share through high yields.Bernstein points out that the bill effectively reinforces the positioning of stablecoins as "payment tools" rather than "deposit substitutes," helping to protect Circle's current business model that relies on reserve income. The firm maintains an "Outperform" rating for Circle with a $190 target price.Data shows that the total global supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins has surpassed $300 billion, with USDT and USDC collectively accounting for approximately 97% of the market share. Bernstein notes that USDC's share in on-chain payments and wallet transfers is steadily increasing, and its share of payments in the AI Agent payment protocol x402 has exceeded 99%.Additionally, Bernstein mentioned that Circle's ARC chain has cumulatively completed 244 million testnet transactions. The ARC token pre-sale previously raised $222 million, with investors including a16z crypto, Apollo Funds, ARK Invest, and BlackRock.However, the report also points out that the CLARITY Act still needs to complete multiple legislative procedures before it takes effect, including a 60-vote threshold in the full Senate and coordination with the House version. Polymarket currently estimates its probability of passage by 2026 at approximately 62%. (The Block)
TownSquare, an infrastructure platform focused on institutional yield and cross-chain lending brokerage services, has announced a $100 million USD1 token liquidity program—a strategic initiative designed to bring institutional-grade and cross-chain yield opportunities to a broader user base via World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin and institutional yield strategies. Previously, TownSquare collaborated with the World Liberty Financial DeFi team to integrate the USD1 token onto Monad, a high-performance EVM-compatible chain, and received official incentives from the Monad Foundation. The team stated that this new liquidity program marks TownSquare’s continued commitment to expanding DeFi’s real-world applicability and delivering institutional strategy yields to more assets. Currently, the project’s official website has launched its cross-chain lending functionality, while its yield vault product is listed as “Coming Soon.” According to official information, the project has previously completed a funding round backed by Monad, a16z, Aptos, Solana Bonk, and other U.S. and European angel investors and VCs. The founding team includes alumni from Coinbase, Meta, Accenture, and market-making firms. Details about the project’s next funding round have not yet been disclosed.
AI character economy platform Charms Interactive has announced the completion of a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round, with participation from Lattice, JME, Coinbase Ventures (Base Ecosystem Fund), Gidorah (Echo), and others. Charms has simultaneously launched its product, Charms.ai, aiming to upgrade "AI characters" from application features to tradable, ownable, and sustainable on-chain economic assets. (Decrypt)
Coinbase announced a “seven-figure” strategic investment in Centrifuge and selected it as the primary asset tokenization partner for its public blockchain, Base. Under the partnership, Centrifuge will serve as the core infrastructure for issuing tokenized assets on Base, enabling the onchain issuance and trading of real-world assets (RWAs), including ETFs, credit funds, and structured products. The two parties have previously collaborated—for instance, launching the first compliant onchain S&P 500 index fund on Base.
stablecoin infrastructure startup Rain is now valued at $1.95 billion and has announced a partnership with payment giant Mastercard to issue credit and prepaid cards, while also exploring the use of stablecoins for payment settlements. Previously, Rain primarily relied on the Visa network for its card products. This collaboration with Mastercard marks its entry into a "dual-card network" strategy, further expanding its institutional client market. Rain stated that the partnership will focus on serving large institutional clients already deeply integrated with a single payment network, enabling them to introduce stablecoin settlement capabilities without altering their existing payment systems.Meanwhile, the application of stablecoins continues to expand across the industry, with institutions such as Stripe and Coinbase actively promoting the integration of stablecoin payments and settlements. This indicates that the convergence of traditional finance and crypto payment infrastructure is accelerating. Analysts suggest that as regulatory frameworks gradually become clearer, stablecoins are rapidly transitioning from trading tools to enterprise payment and cross-border settlement infrastructure. (Fortune)
Hut 8 announced its subsidiary has entered into a $200 million, 364-day bitcoin-backed credit agreement with FalconX to replace the previous financing arrangement from Coinbase Credit. The new financing carries an annualized fixed interest rate of 7.0%, a reduction of 200 basis points from the previous 9.0% rate on the Coinbase facility. During the period from December 2023 to March 2025, this financing cost had reached as high as 10.5%–11.5%, meaning cumulative reductions of up to 450 basis points, demonstrating continued progress in optimizing debt costs.Following this refinancing, approximately 3,300 BTC held by Hut 8 have been converted to an unencumbered state, valued at approximately $260 million based on market capitalization as of May 1, 2026. This significantly enhances the flexibility and liquidity capacity of its balance sheet. Additionally, the credit structure maintains key risk control provisions, including a limited recourse structure, a no-rehypothecation clause, and a fixed LTV threshold design to avoid triggering additional margin calls in the event of a decline in bitcoin prices.Hut 8 management stated that this financing not only reduces capital costs but also releases more unencumbered bitcoin assets, helping to enhance capital allocation flexibility across different market cycles. FalconX emphasized that this transaction reflects its growing capability in providing institutional-grade bitcoin credit solutions. (PRNewswire)
According to on-chain analyst Ember (@EmberCN), Pantera Capital—the lead investor in Ondo—transferred 83.9 million ONDO tokens (approximately $22.11 million) five hours ago. The market expects these tokens to be sold in the near term. The receiving address has a history of similar activity: one year ago, it received 34.28 million ONDO tokens (approximately $42.52 million) from Ondo’s multi-sig wallet and subsequently transferred them to Coinbase Prime in batches.
: Solana ecosystem multi-signature protocol Squads announced the completion of an $18 million strategic funding round, led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, and others. Its total cumulative funding has now reached $42.9 million. According to reports, Squads' stablecoin payment platform Altitude allows enterprises to conduct 24/7 global payment settlements in stablecoins through self-custodial wallets, and connects to the global payment network via its compliance and risk control system. (The Block)
According to The Block, Squads, a multi-signature protocol in the Solana ecosystem, has announced the completion of an $18 million strategic funding round led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, and others. This round is an equity financing, bringing Squads’ total funding to $42.9 million. Squads will use the funds from this round to expand its stablecoin-based corporate finance platform, Altitude.
Blockworks has announced the completion of a Series A extension funding round, achieving a post-money valuation of $192 million. The round was co-led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, with support from Coinbase Ventures, MoonPay Ventures, and several other institutions and industry participants. The funding also attracted investments from over 20 founders and operators of ecosystem projects including Solana, LayerZero, Arbitrum, and Kraken, though the specific amount raised has not been disclosed.The company stated that while the crypto market has grown to a trillion-dollar scale lacking traditional capital market infrastructure, it still faces issues such as fragmented data, inconsistent disclosure standards, and a lack of investor communication mechanisms. Blockworks aims to fill this gap through a "data + disclosure + investor relations" tripartite architecture. (CNBC)
On-chain lending platform Votre has raised $3.75 million in seed funding, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Founded in 2025, Votre operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, enabling users to borrow USD—settled the same day—using Bitcoin as collateral, with loan sizes ranging from approximately $25,000 to $5 million. The funds will be used to scale technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, enhance liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems.
OpenGradient, a verifiable AI computation layer, has announced the completion of a $9.5 million funding round. Investors include a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures, SV Angel, Foresight Ventures, Pragma, SALT, Symbolic Capital, Canonical Crypto, Black Dragon, NEAR, Celestia, Thanefield Capital, and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase. The new funds will support the development and expansion of a decentralized infrastructure network for hosting, executing, and verifying AI models—enabling open and auditable model execution.