EP. 057 | By way of Introduction(.com)
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Table of Contents
What We’re Looking at 👀
Money Moves(Funding/M&A): 🤑
Industry Leaders 🤠
Events 📆
Top Stories 📰
Wrap Up ✌️
What We’re Looking at 👀
🌟 We’re not saying money buys power, but… Falcon just turned a private token buy into a stablecoin empire, RD timed a $40M raise like it was scripted by Scorsese, and Pipe Network might’ve just made AWS feel like dial-up.
From Hong Kong boardrooms to DePIN data bunkers, this week’s funding rounds prove one thing: connections, compliance, and compute speed still rule the game. And if you’re reading this from a centralized data center, you’re already behind.🌟
Money Moves(Funding/M&A):🤑
Industry Leaders 🤠
Falcon
USDf Gets a Trump Card: Falcon Finance Lands $10M for Cross‑Collateral Dollar Rails 🤑
Origin Story 🍼
Falcon Finance officially launched in early 2024, built from the ground up within DWF Labs.
Yes, that DWF Labs. The infrastructure engine behind Web3 liquidity, DWF Labs. The supporting 700+ projects and powering over 25% of top‑100 crypto trading volume across 60+ venues, while investing up to $50M per partnership. DWF Labs.
Andrei Grachev (DWF’s co-founder) is also listed as co-founder of Falcon, showing that Falcon wasn’t merely self-contained after launch; it was birthed as a project fuelled and managed by DWF from day one.
This is where things get juicy 🧃
On April 16, 2025, DWF Labs acquired $25 million worth of WLFI tokens in a private, strategic transaction. They paid a > 6× premium over previous rounds ($0.10 vs. $0.015) to become a top governance holder. They also committed to providing at least $150M in USD1 liquidity.
This was not a public funding round (e.g. Series A); instead, it was a private buy-in giving DWF multi-million governance influence and making it a key architect of USD1’s liquidity and token mechanics.
And from there, the rest is pretty much history. The power of strong capital backed intros, am I right 😏
Where we are now 📍
Last week, Falcon Finance closed a $10 million seed round led by WLFI, in a move that formalizes what’s essentially been in the works since day one.
The funding will be used to scale USDf across new markets, integrate deeper cross-collateral mechanisms, and strengthen liquidity rails between synthetic dollars (USDf) and fiat-backed stablecoins (USD1).
While USD1 serves as a, regulated, U.S.-centric alternative to USDC, USDf plays the utility role: programmable, composable, and built for DeFi rails. “Falcon expands our reach without compromising our foundation. USDf is the high-throughput twin to USD1—and this partnership was always part of the playbook,” said WLFI Head of Strategy Lauren Sadowski.
WLFI and USD1 remain a tightly regulated stablecoin. Falcon and USDf plays the part of the yield bearing synthetic. Yin and Yang. Its almost too perfect 😢on this one.
RD Technologies
RD Nails the Trifecta: Leadership, Partnerships, and Perfect Timing with $40M Series A2 🧠⏱️
Who are they 👤
RD was founded in 2020 by former Hong Kong Monetary Authority chief Dr. Norman T.L. Chan and ex-Alipay UK exec Rita Liu. It was designed from day one to meet the moment Hong Kong embraced regulated stablecoins. With Norman’s policy credentials and Rita’s fintech chops, the team positioned RD to straddle the intersection of digital currency and TradFi trust. “Our roadmap was always about bridging digital currency with regulatory trust,” Liu said in a recent statement.
Their Mission: Build a compliance-first digital payment infrastructure anchored in Hong Kong TradFi.
Partnership Roadmap Recap 🛣️🤝
Their strong regulatory leadership was bolstered early on with solid Pan-Asian Partnerships:
Mar 2022
• Partnered with CMB Wing Lung Bank, Bank of East Asia, and ZA Bank to pilot RD ezLink, a digital KYC utility platform for SME onboarding into regulated financial services.
Aug 2022
• Announced collaboration with LianLian Global to launch cross-border commerce rails using HKDR for international B2B payments.
Aug 2024
• Partnered with Cobo to provide institutional-grade custody and wallet infrastructure for HKDR distribution and integration into enterprise payment stacks.
May 2024
• Integrated Chainlink’s CCIP and Proof-of-Reserve to enable secure, cross-chain issuance of HKDR with real-time reserve transparency.
Oct 2024
• Signed issuance agreement with HashKey Exchange to list HKDR on Hong Kong’s fully licensed virtual asset exchange under the SFC framework.
Timing is Everything ⏱️
And the timing? Impeccable. RD announced a $40M Series A2 on July 30, 2025, just 24 hours before Hong Kong’s new stablecoin licensing framework came into effect. That wasn’t luck; it was planned. RD is now a clear front-runner in Hong Kong’s regulated stablecoin race. Fully capitalized, compliant, and already connected to bank rails before competitors even filed paperwork.
With funds earmarked to scale HKDR via the RD Wallet, expand fiat on/off ramps, and support CBDC integrations, RD is building Asia’s most regulation-aligned dollar network. No splashy hype cycle, no X noise. Just strong leadership, partners, and great timing.
Events 📆
Introduction.com Web3 Growth Series Ft. Ronin Network
IRL:
ETHGlobal New York 2025, New York City; 8/15-8/17 🗽
Coinfest Asia, Bali; 8/21-8/22 🏄♂️
Virtual:
Introduction.com x Addressable: Web3 Growth Series with Jiho Zirlin, CEO of Ronin Network
Thursday, August 7th 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT 🖥️
Top Stories 📰
TradFi continues the slow march toward Digital Asset adoption, powered by GENIUS ACT and the like. Huge long-term strategic win for crypto/web3 🤓
Zora
Zora token soars as it captures massive marketshare 🚀
Recap ⏪
On July 16, Coinbase rebranded its Wallet as the Base App with a major focus on social media and content creation.
The relaunch integrated social features via Farcaster and content minting via Zora.
The hope being that the pairing of Farcaster and Zora would lead to massive token growth.
Instead of linking out to third-party token tools, users could now mint, collect, and trade content within the feed itself.
This UX shift eliminated friction. Token creation became as easy as posting a photo or reacting to one.
The result? A literal vertical spike in SocialFi activity across the entire Base ecosystem 📈
Numbers at a Glance 🤓
In under 3 weeks:
1.6M+ tokens have been minted
Daily trading volume exploded from $1M to a peak of $41M
ZORA token has increased by 440%...
Now here is where things really start to get interesting…Zora captured 90% of all creator token share for the month of July. And the majority. Yes, the majority of all new token launches. While Pump still leads in terms of raw numbers, things are just starting to heat up 🔥
What’s to Come 🔮
A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. And in this case it looks like CoinBase is learning from Pump in a big way.
I’d be hard pressed to say Pump made any mistakes with a monster revenue of $350M in 2024.
That being said, Pump’s hype is clearly cooled as of late. July 2025 revenue dropped to just $24.96 million, an over 80% decline from its January 2025 peak of $130 million. Daily trading volume also cratered from $300M+ in early 2025 to $150M at peak in July, reflecting waning memecoin speculation and cooling user activity.
Despite lower daily volume compared to Pump.fun, Zora’s creator-aligned activity and consistent audience engagement reflect sustainable platform usage not just hype.
Critics Agree: “In just two weeks, ZORA minted over 1.6 million tokens—most from creators monetizing content directly on-chain. Not stunts. Not spam. Real people, real coins.” — The Block Research, SocialFi Adoption Report (Aug 2025).
Let’s keep watch to see if Base can keep the momentum going.
Robinhood
Q2 Earnings Report gives us a look under the HOOD after Bitstamp and WonderFi acquisition 🏁
If You Live Under a Rock 🪨
Robinhood acquired Bitstamp two months ago and entered into a deal to buy WonderFi. Now that Q2 earnings are live, we can see what it means for the platform and where it’s headed next.
Q2 by the Digits 🔢
Here’s the impact the acquisition had:
Crypto trading volume: $28 billion in Q2 2025, up +32% YoY.
$7B of that came from Bitstamp in June alone.
Crypto revenue: $160M in Q2, +98% YoY
Bitstamp’s contribution ~ 4% to 13% of total Q2 crypto revenue (range due to variable take rate)
Robinhood (HOOD) surged +176–184% YTD, reaching all-time highs above $113 in July.
Bitstamp’s acquisition catalyzed an immediate ~5–6% pop, followed by a further ~3% boost post‑earnings. That cumulative ~8–10% driver helped lift the wider ~176% YTD rally.
⚠️Retail crypto volume on Robinhood declined from approximately $46 billion in Q1 2025 to about $28 billion in Q2. Bitstamp’s contribution of roughly $7 billion in June alone acted as a 35% volume buffer for the quarter, stabilizing total crypto volume and revenue while retail activity waned ⚠️
Keys to the Kingdom 🔑
HOOD is definitely flexing with its impressive YoY gains 💪
Bitstamp accounted for roughly 25% of Q2 crypto trading volume and roughly 10% of crypto revenue. After 1 month. 1! And this was all during the Q2 cool down ‼️
🚦But here’s the signal within the noise 🚦
Absolutely 0% of that revenue was from tokenization. Yes. The whole reason why they purchased Bitstamp in the first place. None of that potential revenue was reflected in the report. None. 0.
And not by choice. This is just how the process works. There is lag time. There just wasn’t enough time post acquisition for any of that potential revenue to be reflected in Q2. Just how things work.
So far Robinhood officially lists over 200 U.S.-based equities and ETFs via Arbitrum-based tokens through Bitstamp.
Per Vlad Tenev (CEO) “Tokenization is the biggest innovation our industry has seen in the past decade.”
The company clearly has a broader vision for tokenization. The alliance with Bitstamp and WonderFi lay the groundwork for Robinhood to become an RWA tokenization juggernaut.
Keep your eyes peeled for Q3 to see how this starts to play out.
Pipe Network
Pipe Network DePINs its functionality with addition of Firestarter Storage. Web2 giants like Cloudflare R2 and AWS S2 are feeling the burn 🔥
Pipe Who 👤
Pipe Network is smart. Like really smart. And at this point I don’t even mean their tech, which is next level btw.
I’m talking talent. I’m talking leadership. I’m talking the brains that rival Brad’s 🧠🤓
The team is led by David Rhodus, a veteran infrastructure engineer with over 20 years of experience in video streaming, cloud systems, and distributed networks.
He previously served as:
CTO of Volar Video
early engineer at Elemental Technologies,
The broader team includes senior engineers from AWS/Elemental, Palantir, Valve, and Crunchyroll.
Collectively, they bring expertise in:
Distributed computing and edge networking
Real-time video and media delivery infrastructure
Decentralized protocol design
Zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic verification systems
Wicked Smaht…
How Do Ya Like Them Apples 🍎
So obviously the brain trust came up with a really great idea: make it go faster…
Whether it’s websites, games, or streaming, they wanted the internet to feel instant.
Coming from AWS you’d think they’d realize that Amazon had a pretty good handle on data. If the old adage is true: you get what you pay for, with their massive central data centers generating over $100B in revenue annually, it seems like the case is closed.
What these Pipe dreamers figured out though, is that, ironically, the data centers are the reason the internet does not feel instant in the first place. The data “centers” mean the data is housed in a “central” location.
For many, this means their data travels extremely long distances to reach its final destination. Engineers estimate that traditional fiber networking contributes ~24 ms of delay over ~150 miles, with the rest due to routing, queuing, and server handling.
Enter Pipe. Utilizing fresh web3 ideas, Pipe established hyper-local PoPs technically shortening the physical distance between where the data is stored and the end user. In practical terms, this architectural shift cuts average latency from ~80–150 ms down to <10 ms, representing a 5–15× improvement in speed.
I have to hand it to ‘em. Its pretty f@#$%^& fast…
Where are we 📍
Just a quick recap so you can get yer bearings:
2024 Series A: $10M infusion was used for hiring, scaling PoPs, and beta and testnet rollout. This was their proof of concept. It showed the world that Pipe could dance 💃
In June, the company held a public token sale 🎉I guess you could say this was their spirit week 🎉
In classic form, the token sale was critical for enabling Pipe’s token economy. It broadened ownership beyond early investors and gave the community a governance stake in the network before launch. The launch effectively set the stage for the company’s next phase.
In July, the company announced their Firestarter Storage. 🪩Its debutant ball 🪩
By adding origin storage to their stack, Pipe has set itself apart from the competition even within the web3 space. They are now able to store original content directly on their decentralized network. Data is encrypted, sharded (haha sharded), and stored permissionlessly. Meaning, developers no longer need third-party storage providers because Pipe is end-to-end. This is a first of its kind DePIN. Data storage is no longer centralized. This could truly be the beginning of a decentralized web3 internet.
Head in the Sky ⛅Feet on the Ground 🥾
Practically speaking, this announcement is huge. Adding origin storage solves a major DePIN gap and positions Pipe as a genuine full-stack alternative for decentralized delivery. If Firestarter gains traction with AI developers, media platforms, or Web3-native applications, it could prove that decentralized stacks can compete on both price and performance without leaning on centralized services. This would be a major win for web3 over web2.
Wrap Up ✌️
✨ Falcon’s playing 4D chess with dollar rails, RD’s outmaneuvering the competition before they even hit the starting line, and Pipe’s turning latency into legacy. If this is what seed and Series A rounds look like in Q3, imagine what Q4’s going to bring.
Remember:
Power isn’t just capital, it’s coordination.
And the best deals? They’re made before the funding rounds ever hit the wires.
Stay early. Stay clever. Stay introduced. 😉 ✨
