Protocol Village: Morph EVM Raises $19M in Seed Round Led by Dragonfly

March 21: Morph, a fully permissionless Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) layer 2 for value-driven dApps, announced the close of a $19 million seed round, led by DragonFly Capital with additional participation from Pantera Capital, Foresight Ventures, The Spartan Group, MEXC Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Public Works, MH Ventures, Everyrealm, with an additional $1MM raised in an angel round. According to the press release: “The innovative technology is built within three key pillars – decentralized sequencer, optimistic zkEVM integration and modular design.”

March 21: Elastos, a blockchain project, announced BTC Oracle, “a radical new solution that will enable every EVM-compatible blockchain to be a Bitcoin L2, the most comprehensive solution for cross-chain operability involving Bitcoin and EVM blockchains yet.” According to the team: “The BTC Oracle is part of Elastos’s BTC L2, ‘BeL2,’ the first BTC L2 to enable the direct development and management of Bitcoin-native smart contracts. Elastos’ BTC Oracle acts as a zero-knowledge proof data feed that provides real-time Bitcoin information to EVM smart contracts. A prototype is now available to illustrate how you can stake ELA in return for Bitcoin rewards.”

March 21: VeChain announced the winners of its most recent hackathon hosted at the University of Cambridge in partnership with EasyA and with participation from BCG. According to the team: “The hackathon encouraged the development of the VeBetterDAO platform, a sustainable ecosystem designed to incentivize enterprise and individual positive impact and resulted in 50+ X-2-Earn projects. VeChain track winner: Meatless, an app that incentivizes buying sustainable food products BCG track winner: EcoNex, an app promoting eco-friendly travel Pitch-a-thon track winner: LogiQ, an app designed to streamline trucks freight-sharing.”

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.