Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 Visa’s CEO believes stablecoins and CBDC's can play a meaningful role in the payments space. Fractal is bringing its Web3 gaming platform to the Polygon network.
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Visa is working on “a number of” stablecoin & CBDC initiatives
Credit card giant Visa may integrate blockchain-powered solutions into its services and offerings to power the next generation of payments.
Speaking during Visa's annual meeting on Tuesday, outgoing CEO Alfred Kelly shared the firm’s plans for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins. According to a report from the San Francisco Business Times, Kelly said:
“It’s very early days, but we continue to believe that stablecoins and central bank digital currencies have the potential to play a meaningful role in the payments space, and we have a number of initiatives underway.”
“We’ve had an immaterial amount of investments in crypto funds and companies as we seek to invest in the payments ecosystem,” he added.
Over the past year, several major players in the crypto industry have filed for bankruptcy, including FTX, Three Arrows Capital, BlockFi, Voyager, and Celsius Network. However, Kelly confirmed that Visa’s balance sheet hasn’t been impacted by the crypto winter:
“We’ve had no credit losses related to these failures [...] In everything we do, please know that we’re extremely focused on maintaining the integrity of Visa’s payment system and the payment system in totality and of course, the reputation of our brand standing for trust.”
In late 2022, Visa’s crypto thought leadership team proposed a solution that would enable providers to automatically “pull” funds from users’ Ethereum-backed crypto wallets.
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Web3 Special
QuickNode raises $60M in Series B to ‘fuel blockchain adoption’
Web3 infrastructure firm Quicknode has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round to “further power global blockchain adoption.”
The Series B raise, which valued QuickNode at $800 million, was led by 10T Holdings, with participation from Tiger Global, Seven Seven Six Ventures, and QED Investors, among others.
According to a press release, the funding will be used to provide developers with the education, performance, reliability, and deployability required to onboard the next billion blockchain users. QuickNode will also continue to expand its team.
“At QuickNode, we firmly believe in Web3 as the future of the Internet. Blockchain adoption and development continue to increase year-over-year, and we expect continued momentum in the space," said QuickNode CEO Alex Nabutovsky.
"The industry is about to enter its next era, and with this raise, we are preparing for mass adoption of blockchain technology in 2023 and throughout the rest of the decade. We are proud to help our customers scale to their full potential and move the industry forward," he added.
This round comes just over a year after QuickNode announced a $35 million Series A funding round led by Tiger Global in October 2021.
Fractal expands to Polygon and raises funding
Fractal, a Web3 gaming platform that launched on Solana in late 2021, is expanding to the Polygon network, VentureBeat reported on Tuesday.
The company said that expanding to Polygon will help it "focus on user acquisition and provide the blockchain tooling and financial infrastructure necessary to spur successful game development."
Fractal’s product suite, F Studio, will be available on Polygon, including its NFT launchpad, marketplace, tournaments, developer SDK, game launcher, and Sign-in with Fractal service.
The platform will support 30 Polygon-based games at launch, including Aether Games, Champions Ascension, Phantom Galaxies, and Life Beyond. Fractal will also work with Polygon Labs to promote these games through online tournaments and events in 2023.
“Inspired by Justin’s learnings from founding Twitch, Fractal’s mission has been to relentlessly support Web3 game developers with everything they need to build the future of gaming," said Fractal co-founder Robin Chan. "Partnering with Polygon Labs’ own efforts to provide a high-performance environment to its community will bring this future-forward even faster.”
Polygon Labs, the company behind the Ethereum sidechain, has also made a strategic investment in Fractal to help expand its services.
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