The open-source EVM blockchain platform Nexis Network announced the completion of a private placement financing round on X platform, with Castrum Istanbul participating, but the specific amount and valuation have not been disclosed. Nexis Network is designed specifically for decentralized projects and applications, aiming to create a transparent, community-driven ecosystem that integrates innovative technologies to solve scalability, security, and decentralization issues. The platform supports dApps and DeFi protocols based on Ethereum, using its native token NZT for trading, payment, and staking to achieve consensus.

What I will show is that if we have a public merkle mountain range where existence within it implies correctness, then this primitive can be used to achieve the lookup singularity. What I mean is you can enable complex lookup tables for sha256 hash, merklizing leaves, or potentially even EVM storage proofs.

On January 21st, GameFi game service platform Tabi (formerly Treasureland) announced the launch of Tabi Chain, a game blockchain with EVM compatibility on Cosmos, setting a new standard for the large-scale adoption of blockchain games. The testnet will be launched in February this year. According to Tabi, Tabi Chain has features or functions such as Omnicomputing, parallel sharding, supervised sharding (the integrity of the game experience is maintained by Tabi's supervisory nodes), and Tabi Runtime.

According to Polygon co-founder Branden Farmer, parallelized EVMs may help to solve the problem of inscription spam.

On December 31st, Sei Labs co-founder Jayendra (Jay) Jog posted on social media that Sei v2 will support both EVM and Cosmwasm. By using stateful precompiles and chain-level message scheduling, EVM and Cosmwasm contracts will also be able to call each other.

Currently, the benefit PBS might provide to on-chain execution is limited by the lack of a reliable link between a block builder and EVM execution. The most direct link - the block.coinbase address - is set by builders but can be arbitrarily assigned; its association with the builder is not verified. Requiring a signature verification (or similar) to prove ownership of the block.coinbase as part of the consensus layer’s block validation process will unlock novel DeFi primitives and turbocharge the benefits of PBS to the execution layer.

Sei Labs has announced its plans to incorporate Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) support into its upcoming Sei V2 upgrade, which will enable a seamless transition of Ethereum-based contracts onto the Sei network. The integration of EVM signifies a notable progression from Sei's current smart contract framework, based on CosmWasm technology. Sei V2 will also introduce SeiDB, a data structure designed to optimize the platform's storage layer and prevent state bloat. The Sei V2 upgrade is undergoing thorough security audits, and the public testnet launch is scheduled for the first quarter of 2024, with the mainnet deployment anticipated in the first half of the same year. The anticipation surrounding the Sei V2 update has influenced the market, with SEI, Sei's native token, enjoying a dramatic jump to an all-time high of $0.284978, reflecting an 8.62% surge from the intra-day low.

Phantom has announced its integration with LI.FI to provide support for its newly launched wallet's cross-chain exchange function. This collaboration marks an important step in connecting Solana with the wider EVM ecosystem, allowing its millions of active users to easily transfer assets from EVM chains to Solana and vice versa.

According to data from The Block dashboard, the number of transactions on alternative Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, including Fantom, Avalanche, Celo, Polygon, and BNB Chain, has surged since mid-November. Fantom saw the highest increase, reaching 1,321%, with transaction volume growing from 239,920 on November 17 to 3.41 million on November 26. Celo grew by 1,277% in just four days, with transaction volume increasing from 277,500 on November 22 to 3.82 million on November 26. Polygon saw a 155% increase in transaction volume from November 14 to November 26, while Avalanche's transaction volume grew from 321,900 on November 18 to 3.08 million on November 26, an increase of 857%.

The latest in blockchain tech upgrades, funding announcements and deals. For the period of Nov. 16-22, with live updates throughout.