Hack VC

Ep. 10 of the Gigabrain Sessions ft. @pharos_network is live 🎥 In this clip, @wishlonger shares with @ShaneBarratt how the team went from Alibaba’s research lab to launching Pharos, an open, high-performance L1 for global finance. Watch the teaser below and check out the full episode at the link in the comments.

1/ The thUSD Genesis Program filled its $100M cap in <24 hours.

NVIDIA just unveiled Vera Rubin: 336B transistors, 50 petaflops. The centralized AI arms race is accelerating. But more powerful chips don't solve the real problem: Who controls the inference? More compute ≠ more trust.

WTF is MPP, Visa, Agents, 0x402, Tempo and how do they all relate? @Stripe and @Tempo launched MPP and mainnet today. Then @Visa announced Visa CLI for agents. @base has been leading with 0x402 for almost a year now. Are these the same thing? Are they all using stablecoins? Will there be a single winner across all applications? One way to understand this space is to separate two different debates that often get mixed together. One debate is about crypto rails vs cards, and one debate is about MPP vs 0x402. 1. The settlement debate: card rails vs crypto rails This is the more familiar dimension. It is about the financial infrastructure that ultimately moves money. Traditional card networks remain powerful because they are simple, global, and deeply integrated into the merchant ecosystem. Programmable interfaces that expose card payments to software agents make it possible to automate purchases without redesigning existing business workflows. For larger or occasional transactions, this model is still efficient. Accounting is clear. Compliance is built in. Acceptance is nearly universal. Crypto rails introduce a different set of properties. Stablecoins enable instant global settlement, low fees, and programmable balances that agents can manage directly. This becomes important when payments are small, frequent, or continuous. Machine workloads often involve metered usage rather than discrete purchases. In these environments, streaming or batched micro-settlement is structurally easier to implement with blockchain-based rails. The key point is that settlement choice is largely economic. Developers will select the rail that best matches payment frequency, size, and operational complexity. 2. The protocol debate: 0x402 vs MPP A second debate is happening one layer above settlement. This is about how agents actually express intent to pay. Both 0x402 style flows and MPP build on the long-unused HTTP 402 Payment Required semantics. The shared idea is that payment should become part of the normal request-response cycle of the web. An agent asks for a resource. The server issues a machine-readable payment challenge. The agent proves authorization. Access is granted. 0x402 implementations tend to focus on stateless payment challenges. Each request can include a payment requirement, making the model simple and composable. This approach has gained traction in ecosystems such as Base where low-cost execution supports high-frequency interactions. MPP introduces a more structured framework through payment sessions. An agent can open a spending mandate with defined constraints and settle usage incrementally over time. This reduces transaction overhead and fits well with continuous service consumption such as inference, data feeds, or automated workflows. The relationship between MPP and Tempo today is similar to the relationship between early 0x402 deployments and Base. A preferred execution environment exists, but the protocol itself is not tied to a single chain. MPP is designed to be payment-method neutral and can operate across stablecoins, cards, bank rails, or custodial systems. Stripe’s own experimentation with multiple standards suggests the long-term stack will remain multi-protocol. Combining the two layers Once these dimensions are separated, it becomes clear that they can be mixed in different ways. A developer could use crypto settlement coordinated through 0x402 challenges. Another system might use MPP sessions with stablecoin rails. In some cases, agents may even coordinate payment using HTTP-native standards while settling through card authorizations or off-chain balances. In practice, not every combination will be equally natural. High-frequency machine interactions tend to align with crypto rails and session-based coordination. Larger, discrete purchases often align with card networks and simpler authorization flows. The important insight is that the ecosystem is exploring both axes simultaneously rather than converging on a single design.

Pharos is partnering with GCL New Energy (HKEX: 0451) through a strategic investment at a valuation nearing $1B. cointelegraph.com/press-releases… Together, we will explore how blockchain infrastructure can power the next generation of energy asset tokenization, decentralized energy markets, and RealFi applications.

27.5M blocks processed. 5,300+ contracts deployed. 3,500+ daily active accounts. And we just upgraded the engine underneath all of it. Geth → Reth. Faster sync. Lower costs. Modular execution. The 0G Aristotle Mainnet isn't slowing down. Explore: explorer.0g.ai

If you're heading to @blockworksDAS then stop by our office on 3/24 for a crypto & compute event! Shoutout/big thanks to our great partners @tectonicxyz luma.com/sryq7brm

Interested in what is getting funded in the crypto bear? What milestones matter most for funding quantum infrastructure? @xmalkov from @lever_io was joined by @johnlikes_ (@Magentalabs_io), @3MaxTorres (@CantonNetwork), and @IsTheBaron (@hack_vc) to discuss ‘Funding the Quantum Future’ during our Quantum Summit at ETH Denver Highlights 0:00 Introductions 1:40 Biggest Quantum Funding Gaps 3:45 Funding Research 7:58 What’s Fundable in Quantum Today 11:32 Supporting Open Source 14:37 Costs of Delaying PQC Migrations 18:20 What Drives Investments in Projects 22:58 Regulation Driving Investments

1Money is proud to be part of @Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program. As digital assets continue to mature into real-world financial infrastructure, collaboration across payment networks, financial institutions, and crypto-native builders will be critical. We’re proud to contribute to what comes next.

I was an early investor in like 5+ multi-billion perp dexs that Hyperliquid eventually vanquished. Plus many of the biggest CEXs. Here is exactly how HL won: 1. HLP: every winning perp exchange used an internal market maker. Liquidity is THE product, you can't outsource it. FTX <> Alameda is the infamous failure case, but Jeff also bootstrapped HL with his trading firm. He then took it to the next level by democratizing access to that internal MMer with HLP. 2. Centralization: they launched with a permissioned chain, with the team as sole validators. Competitors were messing around with experimental chains like Starknet and Solana, some parts on-chain and some off-, it was a mess. HL's approach was clean and fast, but also took major reg risk that a US team could never have done. But it paid off, because... 3. The best product: sorry to my founders, but HL was the whole package. The UX, the speed, the auto-margining… wow. CeFi-level trading experience. 4. Airdrop and VC-less fair launch: great narrative to give all tokens to the users and only the users. That’s what crypto is about.

1/ The IPO stack is evolving. We’re partnering with @Backpack on their IPO Primary Market offering. Backpack runs the marketplace. Superstate empowers issuers to bring shares onchain. This is what modern capital markets look like. More soon.

Sui Dollar is now live. Issued by @Stablecoin, a @Stripe company, Sui Dollar (USDsui) is a native digital dollar built for scalable finance and global payments. Enterprise-grade issuance. Compliance-ready rails. Onchain liquidity meets real-world payment utility. Learn more 👇

We’re proud to announce the launch of GI Advertising Network! 🚀 GI Advertising Network is a self-serve advertising platform that connects brands with one of the most engaged gaming audiences in the world. Backed by Game Informer's 34 years of brand trust and plugged directly into the Gunzilla ecosystem. Here's what it unlocks: Starting today, advertisers can launch marketing campaigns across Game Informer (Print + Digital), Off The Grid, and soon in third-party titles—all from one platform. Real products create real value. And that’s exactly what we’re building. 📈 For advertisers: Reach deeply engaged gaming audiences through organic, in-universe ad experiences—placements that weren’t realistically accessible before. With automated targeting and continuous optimization, campaigns run across a growing network of premium surfaces while staying native to the worlds players actually care about. 🎮 For game developers: Every game studio can monetize premium in-game placements in a self-serve, performance-driven way—automated, scalable, and brand-safe. This unlocks a new revenue stream on top of game sales and IAP, turning gameplay surfaces into measurable, repeatable profit. Try it now: ads.gameinformer.com

Thrilled to announce the formation of RealFi Alliance: a strategic ecosystem initiative designed to unify institutional asset issuers, financial infrastructure providers, and onchain builders under a standardized execution framework. Inaugural partners: Infra & Assets: @centrifuge | @AssetoFinance Network & Access: @chainlink | @LayerZero_Core | @Top_nod Yield & Market: @EmberProtocol | @Re7Labs | @R25Official | @Farooxyz By aligning global leaders to coordinate assets, infrastructure, and capital, RealFi is designed for operational readiness ⚓️

Busy week at ETH Denver! @IsTheBaron spoke at the Quantum Summit alongside @0xMiden (Hack VC portco, privacy infra) and others. Video clip below 👇 Key takeaways from the ground: 1/ User Metrics > Airdrops: The industry has entered a new level of maturation. The narrative has shifted from speculative incentives like airdrops to traditional fintech metrics like user analysis, acquisition, and retention. 2/ "Crowdstrike" of Crypto: In the post-quantum race, the winners likely won't be "blockchain-specific." They'll be DUAL USE infra providers that look more like a Crowdstrike than a standard L1 blockchain. 3/ Regulatory Collab: Even while CLARITY is still in progress, it's highly encouraging that regulators are proving to be collaborative partners. The mindset is shifting to: "my security protects you, and your security protects me." Many thanks to @Minittowinit and the @tectonicxyz team for partnering with us on some awesome events. See you all soon!

To all ETH Denver folks: come break bread with us and @tectonicxyz tonight luma.com/ch39m7az

Enterprises are racing into AI and stablecoins. Soon they'll realize every prompt puts compliance and profits at risk, and every transfer exposes sensitive financials. Just like that confidential computing or on-prem models flip into trillion-dollar necessities. @chamath

Pharos is partnering with @centrifuge to advance institutional-grade RWA distribution and execution onchain Tokenization alone doesn’t solve access or usability. Many assets still end up fragmented or idle after issuance By combining Centrifuge’s institutional asset standards and tokenization infra with Pharos’ execution-first financial environment, this partnership enables regulated assets to stay active within live onchain, and lays foundation for scalable distribution, and future institutional products ⚓