Stakeholder

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

In August 2024:
- We valued Cormint at $2.159 billion
- BTC was $53k

[Cormint Inc @CormintInc]

Cormint ranks #1 again in @CoinSharesCo miner benchmarking.

With 3 EH/s and 115MW already energized, The company is actively developing its pipeline beyond Fort Stockton with the goal of having 500 MW under management by 2026.

https://t.co/qxfw1ECdSq

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

@MayanFinance continues to be the fastest, safest, and easiest to integrate cross chain swapping protocol in the space

[Mayan @mayan]

Half a billion dollars of volume?

In October alone?

Yeah, Mayan just did that.

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

While you are sleeping @0xdirichlet is executing with limited resources against a big vision in today's most validated use case for crypto (outside of gambling)

"You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it"

Sleep on @sphere_labs at your peril

[Dirichlet @0xdirichlet]

I originally discovered crypto in 2009, earning @Bitcoin online without needing a bank account.

But it wasn't until the 2017-8 cycle where I saw digital dollars being built by @circle where I could explain why crypto could matter to anyone — especially family.

Years later, it was an absolute honor to come full circle (😉) and chat with @jerallaire about the stablecoin adoption that we've seen on-the-ground in emerging markets like Latin America and APAC as that dream for ubiquitous financial access is coming to life.

Hope that you get a chance to tune in, and learn something new! Easily one of my favorite conversations over years in the space yet.

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

We will be participating in @AdrenaProtocol's Genesis Lock program and you should too

[Adrena @AdrenaProtocol]

Genesis Liquidity Pool is now LIVE!💉

Deposit now to earn bonus rewards for a limited time.

https://t.co/H67ogIEznt

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Bravo on the progress. @MayanFinance remains the protocol we trust most to swap and transfer on chain assets cross chain, in size

[Mayan @mayan]

Bridge it!

Phantom 🤝 Mayan

[Cormint Inc @CormintInc]

Cormint's unaudited H1 2024 mining results are in:

Highlights:
- 1.9c/KWh "All in" power cost
- 260 BTC mined
- $15MM+ in revenue
- 79% Electricity gross margin

Full results here: https://t.co/VvIK0Lyavb

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

83% gross margins on 204 BTC mined, with more capacity to come online this year

Bravo

[Cormint Inc @CormintInc]

Cormint is pleased to announce preliminary unaudited April YTD mining results:

- 205 BTC mined
- All-in power cost of 1.8c kWh

Full results and further detail are available on our website:

https://t.co/Fx1ZXfbvfk

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Glad to be a supporter of @MayanFinance: fast, efficient, permissionless cross-chain trading via Solana

[Mayan @mayan]

1/ 🎉 Big things ahead! We announce today our funding round, co-led by 6MV and Borderless Capital, with support from industry leaders Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana, Saeed Badreg of Wormhole, and more.

A huge thanks to our investors and the community for believing in our vision!

[Mayan @mayan]

Optimism is here!

Users can now bridge native assets between Solana and Optimism on "Next" - the edge version of Mayan

Next uses a new set of Solana programs optimized for account usage to make more space for the flash swap.
This means we can offer better swap rates!

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Fast and cheap payments via stables is crypto's #1 scaled use case today, and Solana has the best foundation for its continued growth. @0xdirichlet shared our conviction in this thesis when most people thought crypto was dead and Solana was deader. We are at the very beginning.

[Sphere Labs @sphere_labs]

We're excited to announce our $2.8m seed round led by @tcg_crypto and @jump_, with participation from @wehrtyou @BigBrainVC @joinrepublic @SolanaVentures @shvcap @CogitentV @SteelDAOxyz and a team of amazing angels to build an operating system for stablecoins.

[Sphere Labs @sphere_labs]

A deep dive into Sphere's "true" on-chain subscriptions

🔗 1. The missing link in web3 payments

Pull payments, where customers authorize businesses to directly withdraw money from their bank account or card, have been one of the most difficult payment problems to solve on blockchains.

Think about the most common subscriptions in your lives. Whether it’s Netflix or Amazon Prime, once you approve a subscription, these companies can withdraw from your card or bank account without your explicit approval each time. Subscribe and forget.

There are several reasons why this is challenging on blockchain. High gas fees, latency, and signing issues have historically made recurring payments infeasible. Imagine your $7 Netflix subscription became 10–20% more expensive due to gas each month and you had to approve again every time — assuming low congestion.
An obvious non-starter for most.

🤔 2. What about account abstraction?

Even with new advancements like account abstraction, which lets smart contracts sign for users and allows gas sponsors, there’s still a lot of setup involved. Further, it’s still unclear who should cover the gas. Some solutions include setting up centralized networks to cover gas fees or using an escrow-like system, occasionally with variations of token standards.

💭 3. Hasn’t this been done before?

Escrow-style “subscriptions” have been one of the biggest misnomers within the industry. Although it is true that funding an escrow account and cranking that escrow periodically to disburse funds is a form of recurring payment, the UX is completely different from normal subscriptions.

Users must effectively pre-pay for their subscription to fund the escrow, continuously keep track of their escrow balances, and sign additional transactions to cancel or renew. This complicated process requires precise account management from users, and more importantly is capital inefficient — imagine having to pay for all 12 months of Amazon Prime up-front just to get started with a yearly “subscription”.

Whether advertised as “real-time streamed payments” or otherwise, customers must fundamentally pre-lock up assets that merchants then claim through signing transactions each billing period.

Although some have explored solutions like token allowances, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Malicious merchants could drain wallets of unwitting customers without proper controls — akin to a DeFi exploit.

✅ 4. Sphere, Solana, and the solution

Fortunately, newer high throughput blockchains like Solana have cheap enough fees, low enough latency, and built-in account abstraction to make “true” on-chain subscriptions possible. The real challenge isn’t just the subscription, but ensuring smooth billing, proper merchant behavior, and a developer experience that is a single API call: no proxies necessary.

At Sphere, we’ve spent the last year creating a protocol that enables merchants to offer their customers subscribe and forget — no escrow, token wrapping, relayer networks, or confusing token standard forks necessary. It is available via API, and can be directly invoked by any other smart contract through CPI.

The way that it works is simple. Customers approve future purchases up to some limit that the merchant sets, and then non-custodial payments are programmatically transferred directly to the merchant each billing cycle by our smart contract.

For maximum flexibility, merchants still have the option to choose escrowed-style subscriptions if they wish. But the key is that they now have the choice of a better user experience — Sphere also provides a separate web portal where customers can freely view and manage their existing subscriptions, just like you might find in a traditional platform like Stripe.

We recently released this product with @multisig, the default multi-sig on Solana, and with @Sollinked_com, an up-and-coming web3 social media app. If you’re interested in on-chain subscriptions, please get in touch.

❗5. Why does this matter?

Given all this context, why do “true” on-chain pull payments matter at all? Aren’t escrow-based subscriptions good enough? Well, subscriptions have become the dominant monetization platform from ecommerce to gaming. Offering subscriptions increases purchases due to convenience, cost, and recurring revenue streams for platforms to build better products. Convenience is listed as a top reason for consumer adoption, and churn due to poor user experience (e.g., more clicks and accounting) is well understood as a problem — especially in web3.

Visa’s exploration of account abstraction identified recurring payments as one of the exciting new unlocks. As user experience improves across vectors from custody to app interaction, we’re excited to announce this contribution to the payments experience on-chain — getting one step closer to a web2-like experience with all the benefits of decentralization.

Read more on our Medium: https://t.co/XS03HUGChN

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Well done @CormintInc @jamesmcavity

[Anthony P⭕️wer @cazenove_uk]

As the #BTC miners start to issue their quarterly financials in the coming weeks, I thought I would remind you what the Gross margin achieved was for each of the North American #BTC Miners.

The gross margin is determined by taking the revenue achieved from mining a #BTC and deducting the cost of energy (i.e. electricity).

$HUT include a small element of direct labour costs within their margin and $MARA's cost of energy includes a hosting fee.

What is noticeable is that @cormintinc were still able to achieve a margin of 74% when the average price of a #BTC in Q1 2023 was $23,069.

At todays price of $29,400 they are currently achieving an impressive 77% gross mining margin with an average energy price of 2.4c kWh.

Both $IREN and $WULF provide their monthly energy costs and using June 2023 costs for comparison purposes, they would be achieving 56% and 66% respectively.

[Sphere Labs @sphere_labs]

1/ NFTs enable true digital ownership in an increasingly digital world.

Although they have made great strides in fields from art & music to community & loyalty, what if they could be used for so much more?

A 🧵 on NFTs with superpowers.

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Congratulations @CormintInc on a well-earned Series A, rapid growth, and bringing black ink to the bottom line in Q1! Glad to be an early supporter of @jamesmcavity @rich__godwin. Look forward to the continued growth and getting more long $btc

[Cormint Inc @CormintInc]

Cormint raises $30,000,000 Series A and 400 BTC in Bitcoin debt to scale West Texas Bitcoin mine

https://t.co/6U1nEwKvgs

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Glad to support @_ilmoi and the @tensor_hq team early. We are highly convicted on the future growth of this team, NFTs x DeFi, and @solana

[Tensor ⚡️ @tensor_hq]

1/6 We're extremely excited to announce our $3m seed round led by @placeholdervc, with participation from @toly, @rajgokal, @alliancedao, @SolanaVentures, @BigBrainVC, @HGESOL, @MonkeVentures, @ABCV3NTURES, @solBOOGLE and many other amazing funds/angels.

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

fast on-chain subscription payments. good work @heliuslabs @sphere_labs

[Helius @Helius]

CRYPTO PAYMENTS ON SOLANA

You can now start building on Solana in seconds using only USDC and a Solana wallet!!

Yes, it's that easy.

Get access to RPCs, APIs, webhooks instantly with crypto — no credit card required.

[Stakeholder @shvcap]

Sustainable double-digit DeFi yields during the winter, backed by math. Kudos to @TarikMoon @WCRoller

[Affine DeFi (ultraETH) @AffineDeFi]

🟢 Some Exciting News 🟢

Today @AffineDeFi is announcing our $5.1 million seed round led by @hack_vc and @jump_ with participation from @cbventures, @circle_ventures,