Protocol Village: Wormhole Collaborates With AMD to Make Hardware Accelerators

Feb. 22: Wormhole, a blockchain interoperability platform, announced a collaboration with microprocessor maker AMD that will make enterprise grade AMD FPGA hardware accelerators available to the Wormhole ecosystem, including the AMD Alveo™ U55C and U250 adaptable accelerator cards. AMD will also lend its deep hardware acceleration expertise to help deliver speed and scalability to multichain applications being built with Wormhole. “AMD offers enterprise-grade FPGAs that are based on the most advanced architectures for scalable compute and flexibility for a breadth of applications. FPGAs can parallelize massive workloads, such as processing millions of multichain messages on Wormhole,” according to a blog post on AMD's website.

Inco Secures $4.5M in Seed Round, Launches Testnet 'Gentry'

Feb. 22: Inco, leading developer of a universal confidentiality layer for Ethereum and other networks, has secured $4.5 million in a seed round led by 1kx, and launched its testnet Gentry. According to the team: “The testnet addresses Web3's confidentiality challenges, blending EVM with FHE and secured by Ethereum via EigenLayer. With native on-chain confidentiality and randomness, Inco empowers diverse dApps including gaming, DeFi, private lending and blind auctions.”

Meso Network Raises $9.5M, Co-Led by Solana Ventures and Ribbit Capital

Feb. 22: Meso, a payment platform connecting banks and blockchains, announced it has raised $9.5 million in a seed round, co-led by Solana Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from 6th Man Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Phantom Co-Founder Chris Kalani, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready and Archie Puri of Bodhi Labs. According to the team, “the network was launched by veterans from PayPal, Venmo and Braintree. Apps can integrate Meso to onboard users without first sending them off to a centralized exchange to fund their wallets.”