Protocol Village: Copper.co to Custody CoinDesk 20 Members, CARV Launches $50M Accelerator

PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Copper.co is the newest custodian for CoinDesk 20 and will offer custody services for all cryptocurrencies included in the CoinDesk 20 Index. According to the team: “CoinDesk 20 is designed to track the performance of the top 20 digital assets by market capitalization and trading volume. By custodying all these assets, Copper aims to meet the security needs of institutional investors and traders with diverse holdings. Dmitry Tokarev, CEO and Founder of Copper.co vies the expansion as a signal of increased demand for secure custody solutions, enabling the broader adoption of digital assets by institutional investors.”
Nuffle, the blockchain modularity-focused project spun out of NEAR in June with $13 million of funding, “is taking EigenLayer multichain,” according to a message from the the project. The team behind NEAR DA (a data-availability solution) and the Nuffle Fast Finality Layer actively validated service (AVS) “are building the Nuff Protocol, a permissionless platform that enables AVSs to leverage cryptoeconomic security from any blockchain safely and natively while settling on the most vibrant restaking ecosystem, EigenLayer. For the first time, restakers will be given the ability to provide security and receive rewards directly from their native chains via the Nuff Protocol.”
Fuse, a fully-integrated renewable energy company, announced the completion of a $12 million strategic round led by Multicoin Capital, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $90 million. The company plans to use the funds to launch Project Zero, a renewable energy decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN), according to a press release: “As an integrated energy company, Fuse offers distributed energy resource (DER) installation, power trading, and electricity retail. The company currently manages 18 megawatts, with an additional 300 megawatts of renewable projects in the pipeline. Fuse Energy, a subsidiary of Fuse, is a vertically-integrated electricity retailer.”
Wingbits, a Stockholm-based protocol creating a DePIN flight-tracking network built on the Solana blockchain, said it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding, led by Borderless Capital and Tribe Capital, alongside Antler and angel investors. According to the team: “Wingbits rewards the quality of data captured by antennas maintained by amateurs and enthusiasts. Individuals are rewarded based on performance, coverage and uptime, and there are global leaderboards to compare the best performing antennas. At the end of 2023, 40 nodes were on the Wingbits platform. Now, there are close to 2,000 nodes.”
The Nomic DAO Foundation announced the launch of Ethereum support on Nomic’s decentralized custody engine for Bitcoin. According to the team: “This will enable seamless BTC on-and-off-ramping into Ethereum, bringing Bitcoin to the largest ecosystem in DeFi. Starting with a testnet, Nomic will facilitate native Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on Ethereum, without relying on centralized custodians. In addition to bringing Bitcoin into Ethereum through nBTC, this upgrade introduces a new framework for protocols to leverage Nomic’s decentralized custody engine to easily create BTC-backed assets at a lower cost.”
Unstoppable Domains and Radix launched the “.pw” extension, serving as both a DNS and on-chain domain, according to the team: “It connects traditional Web and blockchain technology, offering simple wallet addresses for cryptocurrencies. This partnership merges Radix’s domain expertise with Unstoppable’s blockchain knowledge to give users more control over their digital identity, aiming to create a decentralized, user-friendly internet experience across all platforms.”
CARV, a modular identity and data layer optimized for gaming and AI, is launching a $50 million accelerator “to foster projects advancing the adoption of its decentralized data protocol, supported by blockchain VC funds like HashKey Capital and Consensys.” According tothe team: “The accelerator will back startups building decentralized data infrastructure, offering funding, tokenomics advisory, marketing support and access to CARV’s network. Partners include MARBLEX, NEOWIZ, Solana and more. CARV aims to empower users to control and monetize their data, driving innovation in gaming and AI with a focus on modular, sustainable infrastructure.”
Infinit, describing itself as “the first DeFi abstraction layer,” has raised $6 million from major investors like Electric Capital and Mirana Ventures to develop its infrastructure. According to the team: “The platform enables rapid DeFi protocol launches with customizable building blocks, eliminating the need for complex coding languages. Developers can easily create applications like DEXes and yield protocols using TypeScript, with plans for a no-code interface. Infinit currently supports 12 DeFi dApps with $630 million TVL across three chains and aims to expand further, streamlining DeFi development for all skill levels.”
LEVR Bet, describing itself as “the world’s first decentralized leveraged sports book exchange,” announced its testnet launch platform on the Monad ultra-high-performance EVM-compatible L1 blockchain. According to the team: “LEVR Bet applies blockchain technology to enable sports betting with leverage, and creates unique features such as in-game marketplaces where bettors can adjust, enter or exit positions while games are in progress. LEVR Bet’s backers include Third Earth Capital, Kobol Fund, Hyperithm, Big Brain Holdings, FunFair Ventures, Varys Capital.” Interested users can try out LEVR Bet by signing up for the Beta at https://levr.bet.”
PROTOCOL VILLAGE EXCLUSIVE: Chaos Labs, a project for on-chain risk management, released its new flagship oracle product, Edge, with launch partner,Jupiter Exchange. According to the team: “Edge has already secured $30 billion in trading volume over the last two months, establishing Edge by Chaos as an immediate leader in the low-latency oracle category. In response to customer demand for a next-gen oracle solution, Chaos built Edge for any onchain application with a market. The unique protocol design blends market context and price data, reflecting Chaos’ central thesis that risk data and price data are inextricably linked.”
Titan announced it has raised $3.5 million “to redefine the $38 billion monthly decentralized exchange market on Solana.” The fundraise was led by Round13 Digital Asset Fund, with participation from the family office RN Financial Corporation and a number of angel investors. According to the team: “The funds raised will be used to continue development work on Titan, build out the team across multiple business lines including engineering, marketing and business development; and also to fund a platform launch later this year.”
Granite, a blockchain project incubated by Stacks developer Trust Machines, has emerged from stealth as a new Bitcoin DeFi liquidity protocol. According to the team, it “introduces a borrower-centric model, maximizes asset safety and minimizes liquidation risk. It enables BTC users to access DeFi without centralized custodians via Stacks’ Nakamoto and sBTC bridge. ‘Today there is no safe way to use BTC in DeFi,’ Blaize Wallace, founding contributor to Granite. ‘Protocols have decided to maximize returns at the cost of counterparty and protocol risk.’ The project features no rehypothecation, liquidation to solvency through ‘soft liquidations’ and a decentralized non-custodial protocol.”
Open Forest Protocol has closed a successful seed round led by Übermorgen Ventures and supported by BackBone Ventures and GS Futures as well as prominent foundations, including Bloom Foundation, NEAR Foundation, and Fondation Valery. According to the team: “OFP is a complete digital overhaul for the verification and issuance of carbon credits by offering carbon developers a no upfront cost, open source, and network and blockchain based verification system that allows them to bring transparent, verifiable, and valuable carbon credits to market. This will be vital to the future of on-chain natural assets with OFP.”
3DOS, describing itself as the “Uber for 3D printing,” has selected Sui as its exclusive blockchain partner to power its decentralized peer-to-peer manufacturing network. According to the team: “Sui’s zkLogin tech will facilitate the easy onboarding of 3DOS’s 500,000+ users and globally distributed 3D printing operators. By leveraging the Sui network, 3DOS will reduce overhead with Sui’s miniscule transaction fees, enhance transparency, and scale globally with minimal human intervention. Sui will enable 3DOS to connect manufacturers and customers, optimize supply chains, and lower costs while democratizing global 3D printing capacity access.”
Web3 music platform Tune.FM said Wednesday that it has secured a $50 million capital commitment from the Global Emerging Markets (GEM) Group. The news comes just eight months after Tune.FM shared it had raised $20 million in a funding round. Tune.FM, which describes itself as a decentralized music-streaming project atop the Hedera Hashgraph blockchain, aims to help artists earn more in royalties from their music by “streaming royalty micropayments and digital music collectibles,” with its native JAM token.
Gamified healthcare platform Universal Health Token (UHT) has raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed fundraising round led by Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures and Tezos Foundation. According to the team: “Universal Health Token is gamifying preventive healthcare through blockchain, powered by GOQii. The platform is the Web3 arm of Goqii and has recently hit over 5 million global downloads in app. UHT bridges technology and healthcare to reshape how society views wellness. Through exclusive NFTs, event access, and discounted health products, UHT motivates individuals to rethink their habits and embrace healthier living.”
Zano, layer-1 blockchain for confidential assets and private dApps, is partnering with Confidential Layer, the first-ever privacy bridge enabling seamless interoperability between public and privacy blockchains. Since 2023, over $200 billion has been swapped in cross-chain transactions. This collaboration allows users to retain their underlying assets, for instance, ETH or BTC, while enhancing them with advanced privacy features. The projects enable a secure, private transactions across different blockchain ecosystems.”
Chronicle, the first oracle on Ethereum, securing up $22 billion for Sky (formerly known as MakerDAO), has grown its trusted validator network through the addition of four new validators for its decentralized network: Euler, Mantle, Nethermind and ETHGlobal. According to the team: “In the Chronicle ecosystem, validators are trusted actors – established protocols or those with proven operational security – that provide data to oracles. Chronicle’s widened validator set delivers increased security and resilience by making it more difficult for a technical failure or hack to impact consensus and bring down the network.”
Solana restaking protocol Solayer and Binance have announced the official launch of BNSOL, a Solana liquid staking token (LST). According to the team: “As a Binance-supported LST, BNSOL serves as a bridge between centralized and decentralized finance, enabling users to seamlessly earn rewards while actively participating in Solana’s ecosystem through restaking. By staking SOL on Binance, users will receive BNSOL tokens, granting them access to various reward streams, including staking rewards, liquidity incentives, actively validated service (AVS) delegation and miner extractable value (MEV) rewards.”
DVIN Labs, the development team behind the dVIN protocol, announced the appointment of Real Vision co-founder and CEO and long-time wine enthusiast, Raoul Pal, to its board of directors. According to the team: “The dVIN Protocol leverages blockchain technology to both allow wine enthusiasts to monetize their data and be rewarded for their wine activity, purchases and loyalty.”
Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.
Edited by Bradley Keoun.

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Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. The Bullish group is majority-owned by Block.one; both companies have interests in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive options in the Bullish group as part of their compensation.
Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols team. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.