Equilibrium Group

🚄 Equilibrium Labs Infra Bulletin #40 covers DoubleZero, The Cypherpunk Endgame, L1 Composability, and more... Let's dive in! 🤿 Highlight of the week 🔍 The main bottleneck for high-performance L1 blockchains and other distributed systems today is communication, not computation. While we’ve optimized the software side of blockchains, the physical networking layer has remained unchanged since the advent of Bitcoin. DoubleZero Foundation aims to change this by creating a high-performance, permissionless network optimized for distributed systems (a “new internet”). Research, Articles & Other Things of Interest 💡 - Commonware: the Anti-Framework - Solana Consensus - From Forks to Finality - The Cypherpunk Endgame & Real World Ethereum Personal Recommendations From Our Team 🤌 📚 Rogue Agent - James Crossland  🎧 Spin The Wheel - Mick Wingert 💡 Equilibrium HQ got a Christmas update (on Gather) 🎄 Link to the newsletter in the comments - thanks for reading and happy holidays to everyone celebrating! 🎅🏻🎄

🕚Here’s a flashback to an exciting and bold VC fund launch from earlier this year. 💸 In Q2 2024, Equilibrium Ventures (EQV), a Helsinki, Finland-based firm which is part of the Equilibrium Group (EQG), successfully secured €6 million during the initial close of its inaugural €30 million blockchain fund. Equilibrium Ventures Fund I attracted commitments from several notable limited partners, including strategic investors, family offices, and high-profile LPs such as BORGET Sebastien, Mask Network and Jigeum Capital. 💡 EQV focuses on funding early-stage #blockchain infrastructure projects. This includes investments in scaling technologies and real-world applications that aim to bring #web3 to mainstream adoption. Their typical investment per start-up ranges from $250k to $1m, primarily targeting #preseed and #seedstage projects, with occasional #seriesA investments. 🌍 #Europe 📈 EQV expects to fully deploy the fund in the next 12 months. EQG has backed portcos including API3, Arcium, Flowstate Games, Gevulot, Starknet Foundation, Zengo Wallet, among others off its own balance sheet. 💭 “With a network of approximately 70 blockchain engineers, the fund is uniquely positioned to help start-ups develop robust blockchain technologies.” - EQV 🗞️ Nurçin Metingil ArcticStartup https://lnkd.in/dyDp5hBp 👏 For the #AudaciousInvestors unleashing innovation and empowering tomorrow🚀 Olli Tiainen I Henrik Sundvik I Chris(Topher) A. I Ville Tapani I Vesa-Ville Piiroinen I Otto Wirkkala I Team EQV … #venturecapital #vc #funds #startups #entrepreneurs #funding #tech #entrepreneurship #technology #innovation #Helsinki #Finland #venture

🚄 Equilibrium Labs Infra Bulletin #39 covers Low-Latency Rollups On Solana, zkVM Template, The Verifiability Vision, and more... Let's dive in! 🤿 Highlight of the week 🔍 Bullet is an ultra-low latency, application-specific rollup on Solana developed by the team behind the perp-dex Zeta Markets. It’s built on the Sovereign Labs SDK and leverages Solana for settlement and data publication. The post covers key components of Bullet, including DA Adapter, sequencer design, security model, and database structure. Research, Articles & Other Things of Interest 💡 - Obelia: Scaling DAG-Based Blockchains to Hundreds of Validators - 5 Levels of Secure Hardware - Devcon Key Insight: Indistinguishability Obfuscation (IO) - Any zkVM template - The Verifiability Vision by Jens Groth News From Our Partners 🔥 Gevulot Firestarter is live and production-ready, meaning that delegating ZK-proving is now much more feasible for a wide range of protocols. Proving on Firestarter is 95% cheaper than traditional cloud solutions, and it supports thousands of prover nodes. Personal Recommendations From Our Team 🤌 📚 Confessions Of An Economic Hitman - John Perkins  🎧 Orbital - Halcyon And On And On 💡 A team of 10 AI agents writing a ”fully autonomous” book Link to the newsletter in the comments - thanks for reading! 🙏

Equilibrium's 20 Predictions for 2025 🔮 For the first time, we are publishing our predictions for what will happen by the end of next year and what we're paying attention to. Joint work between Equilibrium Labs And Ventures 🤝 Click below to read our predictions and more information about each one. We've also included links to data sources (where available) for tracking progress. Two disclaimers on how we approached this exercise: 1. We've focused hard on keeping these predictions relevant (tech-oriented), specific, and falsifiable. Hence, there are no markets/price-related comments nor generalized predictions (such as "ZK will get faster & cheaper") 2. Staying within our circle of competence. The predictions reflect Equilibrium's mission to design, build, and invest in core infrastructure for the decentralized web. Hence, there are no predictions about apps, stablecoins, or defi, even though we find all these interesting! Thanks for reading 🙏 https://lnkd.in/dUVJ65FR

🚄 Equilibrium Labs Infra Bulletin #38 covers ZK in Consensus, Co-Snarks In Action, DA Market Places, and more... Let's dive in! 🤿 Highlight of the week 🔍 What would an optimal base layer look like in world of many validity rollups?  Bedlam Research builds on advancements in ZK and DAG-based consensus research to propose a rollup-centric base layer where consensus is relaxed in favor of higher throughput and lower latency. More specifically, it includes fast confirmation times for rollup transactions, fast interoperability between rollups, specialized DA throughput, and specialized verification tooling (more proving systems) for rollups. Research, Articles & Other Things of Interest 💡 - ZK Boost Consortium Launches with 39 leading ZK companies. Long live ZK! - State of proving infrastructure landscape in Q3 2024 - Benefits of EOF (EVM Object Format) for Zero Knowledge Proofs - Karak's DA marketplace designed to connect rollups with any DA layer seamlessly - Slicing Up Binary Towers - CoSnarks in Action at Devcon7 - BRAID: Implementing Multiple Concurrent Proposers News From Our Partners 🔥 Paxos acquires Membrane Finance, the issuer of the first MICA-regulated Euro stablecoin EUROe. Upon completion of the acquisition, Paxos will be a fully licensed EMI in Finland and the EU. Membrane Finance was incubated by Equilibrium. Personal Recommendations From Our Team 🤌 📚 Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke 🎧 GPU organ plays music acoustically by controlling the RPM of each fan 💡 On Building Git for Lawyers Link to the newsletter in the comments - thanks for reading! 🙏

🚄 Equilibrium Labs Infra Bulletin #38 covers ZK in Consensus, Co-Snarks In Action, DA Market Places, and more... Let's dive in! 🤿 Highlight of the week 🔍 What would an optimal base layer look like in world of many validity rollups?  Bedlam Research builds on advancements in ZK and DAG-based consensus research to propose a rollup-centric base layer where consensus is relaxed in favor of higher throughput and lower latency. More specifically, it includes fast confirmation times for rollup transactions, fast interoperability between rollups, specialized DA throughput, and specialized verification tooling (more proving systems) for rollups. Research, Articles & Other Things of Interest 💡 - ZK Boost Consortium Launches with 39 leading ZK companies. Long live ZK! - State of proving infrastructure landscape in Q3 2024 - Benefits of EOF (EVM Object Format) for Zero Knowledge Proofs - Karak's DA marketplace designed to connect rollups with any DA layer seamlessly - Slicing Up Binary Towers - CoSnarks in Action at Devcon7 - BRAID: Implementing Multiple Concurrent Proposers News From Our Partners 🔥 Paxos acquires Membrane Finance, the issuer of the first MICA-regulated Euro stablecoin EUROe. Upon completion of the acquisition, Paxos will be a fully licensed EMI in Finland and the EU. Membrane Finance was incubated by Equilibrium. Personal Recommendations From Our Team 🤌 📚 Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke 🎧 GPU organ plays music acoustically by controlling the RPM of each fan 💡 On Building Git for Lawyers Link to the newsletter in the comments - thanks for reading! 🙏

Ex(c)iting News! 🚀 A little over three years ago, when we founded Membrane Finance, I was on a mission to find the most impactful and meaningful project in the crypto space. We strongly believed that the future of finance lies in tokenizing all asset classes. But first, we needed robust, reliable digital currencies—starting with our home ground, the EU. Stablecoins are the killer app of crypto, and recent developments have made it clear they’re also poised to become the killer app of finance. Our goal has always been to build true internet money: cheap, fast, and programmable. Today, I’m thrilled to share that Membrane Finance is joining Paxos. From the very beginning, we’ve shared a common vision with Paxos, the leading regulated blockchain and tokenization infrastructure platform. Together, we’re redefining financial markets by building prudentially regulated solutions that enable the instant, trustworthy movement of any asset to anyone, anywhere. This is an exciting new chapter, and I couldn’t be prouder of the journey so far.

❤️ EXIT NEWS: Equilibrium company Membrane Finance joins Paxos! We're beyond excited to announce that Paxos, the global leader in regulated blockchain and tokenization infrastructure, is acquiring Membrane Finance, a Finnish Electronic Money Institution (EMI) 🎉 Huge congrats to the team: Juha Viitala, Jimi Lehtonen, Juuso Roinevirta, Masnad Nehith, Otto Sulin, and Patrick Aarikka. This moment is also meaningful for us at Equilibrium Group. We've long believed that all assets will eventually be tokenized and that the revolution will start from slow and expensive payments. Membrane Finance was incubated at Equilibrium and it was the first company to issue a MiCA-compliant stablecoin in the EU. Partnering with Paxos and its network, including giants like PayPal and Robinhood, Membrane is now in the best position to deliver on their vision. Looking forward to seeing what the future holds for this team!

Open Problems In The Privacy Space 💡 In the third (and final) part of our privacy series, we explore nine open engineering problems related to blockchain privacy that still need to be solved. We also touch on the social challenges and include a small bonus at the end for eager hackers and app developers looking for inspiration. If you are thinking about any of these problems or are already building a solution, we’d love to hear from you! Equilibrium Labs partners with ambitious founders through R&D, engineering support, and funding through our venture arm (EQ Ventures). https://lnkd.in/dcYtN52x

🚄 Equilibrium Labs Infra Bulletin #37 covers TEE x AI Agents, Confidential ERC-20, Multi-prover zkVM, and more... Let's dive in! 🤿 Highlight of the week 🔍 AI Agents have become popular recently, but a fundamental flaw of previous ones is that they cannot prove their autonomy. Nous Research and Flashbots collaborated to create the first provably fully autonomous agent. The root credentials to the Twitter account and private key to the Ethereum address are delegated to a TEE, providing both confidentiality and attestation. While the agent got restricted on X quickly due to suspected bot behavior, it was an interesting experiment overall! Research, Articles & Other Things of Interest 💡 - Speeding up Narwhal with TEEs - Paper introducing Rateless Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables, which lowers computation and communication costs to enable faster state sync.  - Multiprover zkVM from powdr labs - Transacting Over Heterogeneous Trust with Intent Markets - 2024 Crypto Startup Trends Report from Alliance - Circle and Inco collaborating to create a confidential ERC-20 framework Personal Recommendations From Our Team 🤌 📚 Ready Player One - Ernest Cline 🎧 Lin Van Hek - Intimacy 💡 Dark Doesn't Exist and The Universe is 27 Billion Years Old Link to the newsletter in the comments - thanks for reading! 🙏