Tootfinder

Mastercard unveils a Crypto Partner Program with 85 companies, including Binance, PayPal, and Ripple, to link blockchain tech with its payments infrastructure (CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/03/

Binance, PayPal, and Ripple join Mastercard’s massive new push into blockchain payments
More than 85 partners will work with Mastercard to connect on-chain payments with banks, merchants and global commerce as part of the payment giant's recent crypto program.

Robinhood launches a public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 network on Arbitrum supporting 24/7 trading, with a broader rollout later in 2026 (CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/02/

Robinhood (HOOD) starts testing its own blockchain as crypto push deepens
The Robinhood Chain, built on Ethereum-based Arbitrum, aims to become key plumbing for around-the-clock trading and plugging tokenized stocks into DeFi.

UK's FCA adds Blockchain.com to its registry of licensed crypto companies; the company withdrew its initial application in 2022 to pivot operations to Lithuania (Jamie Crawley/CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/02/10

Blockchain.com wins UK registration nearly four years after abandoning FCA process
The London-based company elected to withdraw its application for FCA licensing in March 2022 having not won approval ahead of an impending deadline.

Nathaniel Moore will speak on 'Running Containers with Open Source Akash Network, a Blockchain-based Distributed Computing Platform' as part of our Cloud Native Days track at SCaLE 23x. Full details: https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/23x

JPMorgan exec Naveen Mallela, global co-head of blockchain division Kinexys, steps down after 11 years at the bank; Kinexys handled $5B transactions per day (Anna Irrera/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-1…

just found out this exists 💩
https://identitymanagementinstitute.org/cmsc-web3-security-certification/

blockchain is just DRM in a trenchcoat
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/blockchain-powered-game-storefront-reportedly-shutting-down-and-taking-customers-games-with-it/

«IT-Arbeitsmarkt — Block-Mitarbeiter zweifeln an Dorseys KI-Narrativ:
Nachdem Jack Dorsey die Belegschaft von Block fast halbiert hat, widersprechen Angestellte der Darstellung, KI-Tools könnten sie ersetzen.»
Jup, der KI-Hype ist fast so wie der Blockchain-Hype. Viele lere Versprechen auf sehr viel Hoffnungen aber inhaltlich einfach nur eine überdimensionale Blase.
🤷

IT-Arbeitsmarkt: Block-Mitarbeiter zweifeln an Dorseys KI-Narrativ - Golem.de
Nachdem Jack Dorsey die Belegschaft von Block fast halbiert hat, widersprechen Angestellte der Darstellung, KI-Tools könnten sie ersetzen.

LayerZero Labs unveils a new Layer 1 blockchain called Zero, in collaboration with Citadel Securities, DTCC, Google Cloud, and Intercontinental Exchange (RT Watson/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/389295/citade

TRM Labs, which helps law enforcement and companies track crypto and blockchains, raised a $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital at a $1B valuation (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/02/04/trm-labs-blockchain-analytics-fundi…

Crypto crime-fighting startup TRM Labs notches $1 billion valuation with new $70 million funding round
With its blockchain analytics tools, TRM Labs helps private companies and agencies like the FBI track illicit finance.

A lot happened over the weekend. Check out today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you might have missed, including
--Proposed Israeli cyber law calls for cyber incident reporting in real time,
--Russia is likely the source of wiper malware that targeted Poland's energy sector,
--Russian national pleads guilty to targeting 50 victims with ransomware,
--DPRK group Konni is targeting blockchain engineers with malware,
--Critical flaw i…

Proposed Israeli cyber law calls for cyber incident reporting in real time
Russia is likely the source of wiper malware that targeted Poland's energy sector, Russian national pleads guilty to targeting 50 victims with ransomware, DPRK group Konni is targeting blockchain engineers with malware, Critical flaw in Solana's validator client fixed, much more

Are you Quantum AI blockchain zero-trust triple-ratchet encryption ready? :neocat_woozy:

Moderators of tech(-adjacent) Discord servers: are y’all getting hit with spam of people advertising their services for AI or blockchain projects?
I ask because a few servers I mod have had a very noticeable uptick of such drive-by self-promo. It’s specifically webdev servers, and none of those servers have advertised themselves as spaces for AI or blockchain interests…

Jammern die Bitcoin-Jünger schon und verlangen nach staatlicher Hilfe oder akzeptieren sie, dass sie gezockt haben und man beim zocken eben auch verlieren kann?
Der ganze Blockchain-Hype war die gleiche völlig überkochte Kacke, wie es das KI-Thema jetzt ist.

Source: a16z Crypto is targeting around $2B for its fifth fund and plans to close the raise by the end of the first half of 2026 (Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/03/04/a16z-crypto-chris-dixon-venture-capital-blockchain-paradigm-hau…

Exclusive: Venture giant a16z crypto targeting around $2 billion for its fifth fund amid blockchain market downturn, sources say
The Chris Dixon-led firm is planning to close the fundraise in the first half of 2026.

The old web was cool shit... no AI, no NFTs, no Blockchain.
http://www.sendmeyourhead.com/
#art #web

Looks like they covered all the buzzwords in their solution. And so much complexity which can (and will) go wrong 🙄
New Company Hopes to Build Age-Verification Tech into Vape Cartridges - Slashdot https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/3

Democratizing Federated Learning with Blockchain and Multi-Task Peer Prediction
Leon Witt, Kentaroh Toyoda, Wojciech Samek, Dan Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28434 https://

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@VirusBulletin/116294907171305521
Etherhiding is an established but lesser known method of providing C2 information to malware. Most businesses do not need to allow access to the blockchain-related API / RPC endpoints us…

US federal regulators say banks don't need extra capital against losses when dealing with blockchain-based securities, calling their rules "technology neutral" (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/u

Singapore-based Startale, developer of the Strium blockchain for tokenized securities and JPYSC and USDSC stablecoins, raised a $63M Series A from SBI and Sony (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/03/…

SBI, Sony back Startale’s $63 million push to expand Japan’s tokenized finance stack
The Singapore-based company builds blockchain tools for financial firms and retail users, including a blockchain for tokenized securities, stablecoins, and a consumer app.

The FBI arrests the son of a federal contractor who managed critical services and charges him with stealing ~$46M in crypto from the US Marshals Service (Sander Lutz/Decrypt)
https://decrypt.co/360120/federal-contractors-so…

Federal Contractor’s Son Arrested, Charged With Stealing $46 Million From US Crypto Stockpile
John Daghita was publicly accused of the crime by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT in January.

Crypto VC firm Dragonfly closes a $650M fund, its fourth, as the crypto VCs go through a "mass extinction event"; Dragonfly backed Polymarket's Series B (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/02/17/dragonfly-fou…

Exclusive: Crypto venture firm Dragonfly closes $650 million fourth fund—even as blockchain VCs face ‘mass extinction’
An inside look at the fast-rising firm, from its early Polymarket bet to its mysterious founding partner.

Stripe and Paradigm-backed startup Tempo launches the Machine Payments Protocol and its blockchain to facilitate autonomous AI agent transactions (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/03/18/stripe-tempo-paradigm-mpp-ai-payments-protocol/
…

Stripe-backed crypto startup Tempo releases AI payments protocol, launches blockchain
Tempo, incubated by Stripe and the venture firm Paradigm, raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation in 2025.

Valinor, which aims to use smart contracts to replace manual lending processes in the private credit industry, raised a $25M seed led by Castle Island Ventures (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/03/30/valinor-seed-round-25-mil…

Ex-Blackstone staffers raise $25 million for startup Valinor, which aims to put private credit on the blockchain
Castle Island Ventures led the fundraise, with participation from Maven11, Susquehanna Crypto, and the founders of the Bitcoin-mining-turned-AI company TeraWulf.

Blockchain-based lender Figure unveils the On-Chain Public Equity Network to issue, trade, and lend stocks natively on a blockchain, not as tokenized replicas (Kyle Baird/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/385595/figure-onchain-equi…

NYSE plans to use its tech that matches buyers and sellers, alongside blockchain networks, to facilitate real-time trading of tokenized securities in 2026 (Katherine Doherty/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026…

Blockchain-based lending company Figure confirms a data breach; ShinyHunters hacking group published 2.5GB of data, saying Figure refused to pay a ransom (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/fintech-lending-giant-fi…

Fintech lending giant Figure confirms data breach | TechCrunch
The company said hackers downloaded “a limited number of files” after breaking into an employee’s account. The hacking group ShinyHunters took responsibility for the breach.

Beaconcha.in: a record ~36M ethereum tokens, or 30% of ethereum's total supply, worth ~$119B, are now staked, as institutional investors grow their share (Sage D. Young/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/crypto/a-record-36-million-ethereum…

A record 36 million ethereum tokens are now dedicated to staking
The duty to defend the blockchain is referred to as staking, per ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin.

Polygon buys crypto startups Coinme and Sequence for a total of $250M , as it seeks to bolster its stablecoin and fintech infrastructure and compete with Stripe (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/polygon-labs-acquisition-coinme-seq…

Polygon Labs buys two crypto startups for $250 million as it looks to compete with Stripe
The longtime blockchain developer bought cash-to-crypto company Coinme and wallet infrastructure firm Sequence.