Protocol Village: Arthur Hayes Releases NFT Collection ‘Airheads’ on Bitcoin Ordinals

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange who now serves as chief investment officer of his own private-wealth office, Maelstrom, announced his first NFT collection, Airheads, using the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, and disclosed an investment in Oyl wallet. According to a blog post by Hayes: “Each Airhead is an inflatable, balloon-like character generated using recursive art to visually represent the size and value of your digital portfolio at the point of mint. With 10,000 Airheads available, these characters use sequential ranking and tier differentiation to reflect asset weightings according to the leaderboard, making them a fun and competitive way to display your wealth.”
Intuition, a technology company that says it’s “building information protocols that power a more trustful Internet,” announced Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base as its home base in powering a more intuitive, accessible and secure Web3 ecosystem. According to the team: “Together, Intuition and Base aim to tackle one of the most pressing challenges in Web3: poor UX and untapped information silos. Building with Base will empower Intuition to create a more reliable and intuitive Web3 to onboard the next wave of users seeking refuge from the legacy systems.”
Stakers on the Injective blockchain on Thursday passed the “Altaris Mainnet Upgrade Proposal,” also known as “IIP-420,” and deployment of the upgrade began soon afterward, according to social-media posts by the project. In a message to Protocol Village, the team described Altaris as “a major update enhancing the trader, staker, developer and end-user experience. It includes an advanced RWA Oracle for expanded tokenized offerings, improved INJ Burn Auction mechanics and market enhancements like perpetual market launch permissions for native DEXs. Altaris introduces SDKs for Python, Go and TypeScript for developers, enriched interoperability with IBC hooks, streamlined governance, enhanced security for the Injective Bridge and Ledger wallet integration.” (INJ)
Switchboard, a permissionless and customizable oracle network, has unveiled its new Oracle Aggregator allowing users to seamlessly “aggregate data across multiple oracle networks, including Chainlink and Pyth Network, hardening dApps against price manipulation attacks,” according to the team: “In aggregating data off-chain, Switchboard’s new UI reduces the need for gas-intensive operations and increases data integrity. The new oracle aggregator also grants developers greater autonomy to select the exact sources they’d like to pull from and eliminate those that don’t meet their standards.”
Pichi Finance, a trustless points trading protocol offering price discovery to tokens pre and post-TGE, completed a $2.5 million seed funding round, led by UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital and Mantle Network. According to the team: “The investment will be used to target new points programs, to create vaults to earn yield and points together, and to expand to other EVM chains. We’re unlocking the value of points through a trustless marketplace for trading these rewards. Our ERC-6551 account solution addresses the issue of points being tied to individual accounts, so users can securely and easily trade points.”
Daylight, building a decentralized protocol that will eventually allow users to build “virtual power plants” using “distributed energy resources” (DERs), launched a testnet and announced a $9 million funding round led by the venture capital firm a16z. Framework Ventures and existing investors Lerer Hippeau, Lattice Fund and Escape Velocity also participated. According to an a16z crypto blog post, “The Daylight ecosystem is comprised of three core components:
Karak, a universal restaking layer that previously raised $50 million, has chosen Space and Time’s coprocessor solution to power trustless slashing and rewards. According to the team: “Space and Time recently released its high-speed zero-knowledge prover, which ensures tamperproof computations at scale. Space and time is also building a Distributed Secure Service (DSS) on Karak. Space and Time logic allows for slashing logic to be defined much faster.”
Playbux, a crypto project for shop-to-earn and play-to-earn, announced the launch of RI (Real Intelligence) tech, powered by AI. According to the team: “This technology improves user experience and meets their needs based on behavior and decisions. Playbux aims to advance blockchain gaming with AI with the RI Engine integrating a model based on human senses and cognition. The RI Engine adapts continuously with user interactions, aligning with evolving preferences and behaviors. By analyzing extensive sensory data, it predicts and delivers tailored content for users. It also aggregates data from users with similar profiles to offer group-specific recommendations.”
Nuklai, a data marketplace and infrastructure provider that’s designed to run as a subnet in the Avalanche network, has announced a partnership with Timpi, a decentralized search engine project. According to the team: “This collaboration redefines how search engines operate, offering users direct financial benefits from their data. ‘We will generate new income streams and greater utility, making it a win-win,’ said Jochem Herber, head of ecosystem at Nuklai.”
Political bettors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into their expected outcomes on crypto-powered prediction markets: for example, who Vice President Kamala Harris will pick as her running mate. MetaDAO takes the idea further: the Solana-based governance experiment just raised millions of dollars from venture backers who think prediction markets should decide outcomes. VC giant Paradigm recently led a $2.2 million funding round in MetaDAO, a months-old project building governance structures that rely on market forces rather than votes. This construct is called a futarchy. Its proponents believe market participants are driven to make better choices than, say, politicians.
The venture arm of cryptocurrency exchange OKX and the Aptos Foundation, which supports the development of the Aptos protocol, set up a $10 million fund to encourage the growth of the Aptos ecosystem and broader adoption of Web3. The accelerator fund, named Ankaa, will be used to develop projects built on Aptos, according to an emailed announcement. Ankaa will be run by Aptos, OKX Ventures and Alcove, Aptos’ accelerator established last November.
Polyhedra Network, a team building a crucial blockchain component known as a cryptographic “prover,” released a new platform called “Proof Arena” that will “allow ZK-proof system creators to compare their systems against others in a clear and scientific manner while ensuring that all controllable variables are held constant,” according to a press release Wednesday. Initially, the project will be set up to generate benchmarks for Polyhedra’s own “Expander” ZK-proof system, Polygon’s Plonky3, StarkWare’s Stwo and Linea’s Gnark. “The team plans to support all open-source proof systems and will provide benchmarks for frequent ZK tasks like Keccak and Poseidon hash verification run on a variety of machine configurations,” according to the press release.
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Edited by Bradley Keoun.

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Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols team. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.