Web3 funding experienced a slight increase in Q1 2024 compared to Q4 2023, which is the first rise since Q4 2021. However, venture dollars are still down year-over-year and far from the highs seen in 2021-22. Startups in the crypto and blockchain sectors raised almost $1.9 billion in Q1, a 58% increase from Q4 2023, but a 17% decrease from the same quarter in 2023. Despite the challenges faced by Web3, such as a pullback in venture funding and cryptocurrency difficulties, there is potential for growth with the rise in crypto prices and the approval of Bitcoin ETFs. Monad Labs, a layer-1 blockchain compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine, recently secured a $225 million funding round led by Paradigm, marking the biggest Web3 funding round of the year so far. This could be a sign of more large-scale funding to come, as investor interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain startups remains strong, according to first quarter data analyzed by Crunchbase. The support of Fidelity and the upcoming Bitcoin halving event may also contribute to further growth and attract new venture investments in the crypto industry.

It was announced that Web3 social simulation game Today has completed a $5 million seed round of financing, with Sfermion and Big Brain Holdings leading the investment. GSR, Collab+Currency, Lingfeng Innovation Fund, Compute Ventures, Builder Capital, Tommy Tran, Metavest Capital, 32 Bit Ventures, Dingaling, Grail, and Spirit DAO also participated in the investment. It is reported that this round of financing will be used to further develop its intelligent NPC and no-code creator tools based on generative AI.

On April 6th, OKX President Hong was invited to attend the main forum of "2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival" and delivered a keynote speech on the theme of "Responsible Innovation". Hong stated that as a centralized platform, we will continue to adopt advanced technology to ensure transparency with users, partners, regulatory agencies, and major stakeholders, and to make it our important responsibility. One of our key global strategies is to ensure that we are transparent, responsible, and provide relevant permissions to our customers and stakeholders, in order to better serve and build in the local area. Hong Kong is a location of strategic importance to us, and we are honored to be a part of the Hong Kong Web3 ecosystem. We are also honored to work with many partners, stakeholders, and legislators to build the Hong Kong Web3 ecosystem. We will adhere to localization to integrate into the Hong Kong Web3 ecosystem and make contributions, so that we can make long-term investments and maintain compliance.

Steve Yun, Chairman of the TON Foundation, and John Hyman, Chief Investment Officer of Telegram APP, delivered a keynote speech on "Cryptographic Transformation within the Telegram Ecosystem". Steve Yun stated that Web3 faces challenges such as complex user experience, lack of simple onboarding methods, no viral marketing, and no distribution channels in large-scale adoption. TON has partially addressed these issues by integrating wallets, MiniApps, easy onboarding mechanisms, and Telegram ads within Telegram.

Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Wanxiang Group, Lu Weiding, gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the Web3 Carnival in Hong Kong, stating that this year's second Web3 Carnival will continue the effect of last year. According to incomplete statistics, in addition to the main venue activities, there have been more than 150 peripheral activities. There are also new features: first, it has a more representative global presence, with more major WEB3 projects from Europe and the United States attending than last year; second, the topics of blockchain infrastructure and blockchain application protocols are almost equally discussed, and we can clearly feel the wave of blockchain applications coming. Compared with the beginning of Internet applications in 1995, the "1995 moment" of blockchain applications is coming. The next ten years will be the core moment of the explosion and value discovery of blockchain and WEB3 applications.

The "Web3 Insight Summit" conference, jointly organized by ChainCatcher, RootData, and Oak Grove Ventures, was held today at the W Hotel in Hong Kong. During the conference, Tabi CTO Ben shared Tabi's technical innovation and economic model, which is built on Cosmos, a modular game blockchain.Ben mentioned that there is a typical problem in the Web3 gaming industry of "which came first, the chicken or the egg" between users and games. In addition, the scalability, user experience, asset security, game review, and economic model of on-chain games are all issues and challenges that need to be addressed. Tabi solves these problems by providing fast and trustless computing through Omnicomputing and PolymorphismVM, transforming the blockchain's three dilemmas into a unified solution, achieving high throughput, seamless experience, and free-style development of Web2+3 without gas or vouchers. In addition, Tabi's proposed dual flywheel token economics makes the game's economic model more sustainable.The "Web3 Insight Summit" is organized by ChainCatcher and is committed to gathering the most thoughtful and innovative Web3 senior professionals worldwide, outputting more constructive thinking for the industry, presenting more industry insights, and helping Web3 move towards the mainstream.

Venture capital firm Laton Ventures has announced the launch of a new fund worth $35 million to support the AI and Web3 gaming industry and promote the application of AI and Web3 technology in gaming. It is reported that the fund mainly focuses on projects and startups in the Pre-Seed and seed round stages, and has invested in five game studios in the Turkish, European, and US markets.

Eric Vreeland, CSO of Polyhedra Network, a Web3 interoperability infrastructure, gave a speech on "Zero-knowledge, zero limits" at Oak Grove Crypto 2024 on April 5th. He mainly introduced Polyhedra's innovative technology and the potential for zero-knowledge proofs in the field of interoperability.Eric Vreeland mentioned that zero-knowledge technology greatly improves proof efficiency. The zero-knowledge proof solution Virgo++ launched by Polyhedra generates proof in 8 seconds, while generating proof on Ethereum only takes 10-15 seconds. The entire process will be very smooth, helping users control risks and avoid data leakage. Polyhedra has developed the entire data architecture and data analysis since the protocol, building a very good bridge, reducing intermediate information, and helping data to transfer with high quality, helping to establish a good blockchain ecosystem.It is reported that Oak Grove Crypto 2024 was initiated by Oak Grove Ventures and jointly hosted by Polyhedra, Alchemy Pay, Ritual, and ChainCatcher. It aims to bring together elite professionals in the Web3 field to jointly explore and look forward to the development trend of the industry in the next five years. The event is expected to attract 500 to 1000 industry elites, including innovation leaders, technical experts, and industry investors, who will have in-depth discussions on hot topics such as AI, DePIN, games, encrypted payments, and Bitcoin infrastructure.

On April 5th, according to official sources, the Web3 basic layer Mystiko.Network has sold out in the XZK community sale on CoinList, with a total of 75,000,000 XZK coins sold, worth $11.25 million. In addition, over $22.87 million was submitted for participation, with an oversubscription of 300% in the first sale, and a total of 20,260 users participated, making it the largest public sale on CoinList in recent years.

The current landscape of emerging technologies like blockchain, web3, ai-related solutions and others is paving the way for what I see as the rise of composable culture (or modular culture as one of my peers said1). While I have been hinting the concept in my writings before, an explanation of why an there should be an umbrella term, what are it’s characteristics and advantages is needed.