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Blockchain Press Releases

Horizon Capital Backs Preply as the First Deal of its Historic Ukraine-focused HCGF IV Fund

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KYIV, Ukraine, July 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Horizon Capital, a U.S. private equity firm investing primarily in fast-growing tech and export oriented companies in Ukraine, announced an investment into Ukrainian-founded Preply, a leading global online language learning platform. This transaction marks the first investment from Horizon Capital’s latest fund, Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV (HCGF IV), which reached $254 million at its Interim Closing on April 28, 2023.

 

 

Founded in 2012 by three Ukrainian founders Kirill Bigai, Serge Lukyanov, and Dmytro Voloshyn, Preply has become a global e-learning powerhouse, connecting 35,000 tutors with the world’s largest live language learning community. Preply revenues have grown tenfold over the last three years, largely due to significant enhancements in product experience for both tutors and learners. The B2B business has also accelerated, with over 200 new deals signed this past year. 

Horizon Capital led Preply’s $70 million capital raise, also backed by Reach Capital, Hoxton Ventures, and other existing investors. The new investor bench will provide a valuable balance of growth stage experience and Edtech expertise to help power the next leg of Preply’s journey.

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Lenna Koszarny, Horizon Capital’s Founding Partner and CEO, said: “We are excited to partner with Preply’s exceptional founders and superb leadership team in delivering on their mission of unlocking human potential through learning. Preply fits perfectly into our investment thesis of backing Ukraine’s new generation of visionary entrepreneurs, while paving the way for others inspired to create their own global champion powered from Ukraine that the entire nation can take pride in. We believe the best is yet to come and are delighted that our capital will fuel future R&D, driving growth as well as high impact by creating jobs, promoting entrepreneurship, supporting tech sector development, and contributing to Ukraine’s ongoing economic resilience.”

Kirill Bigai, Co-founder and CEO of Preply, said: “It is a great achievement to have secured this capital injection while we still have plenty of runway and the majority of the previous raise in the bank; a result of rigorous capital efficiency and a laser focus on performance. The additional funds will enable us to extend our leadership in the category through AI-powered human tutors, providing a learning experience which is quickly becoming a game changer.  Though the team today is truly global, as a Ukrainian founded company with significant R&D in Ukraine, this is a milestone to be celebrated. One that echoes the resilience and determination of the Ukrainian tech sector and all Ukrainians.”

Dmytro Boroday, Partner at Horizon Capital, added: “I first met Kirill in 2012 at the start of Preply’s journey, beginning from a 10-page Powerpoint presentation and now a world-class educational technology company, fueled by bold vision and unwavering determination. Kirill, Dmytro, and Serge have executed meticulously on their vision, and a decade after our first meeting, we are proud to back Preply as a leading global edtech platform in the language learning space. We look forward to our long-term partnership resulting in Preply reaching new heights, grounded in their strong culture of operational excellence and superb performance.”

About Preply
Preply is an online language learning marketplace, connecting tutors to hundreds of thousands of learners in 180 countries worldwide. More than 35,000 tutors teach over 50 languages, powered by a machine-learning algorithm that recommends the best tutors for each learner. Founded in the United States in 2012 by three Ukrainian founders Kirill Bigai, Serge Lukyanov, and Dmytro Voloshyn, Preply has grown from a team of 3 to a company of almost 500 employees of 60 different nationalities. With offices in Barcelona, New York, and Kyiv, employees work across 30 countries in Europe, USA, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

About Horizon Capital
Horizon Capital is the leading private equity firm in Emerging Europe with $1.4 billion in assets from investors with a capital base exceeding $630 billion, raising over $700 million in growth capital to back visionary entrepreneurs from Ukraine and Moldova in just over 5 years. Horizon Capital-managed funds have invested in over 160 companies employing more than 77,000 people in the region.

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Media Contact – Alona Kotsiubynska, [email protected], +380932979487

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Blockchain Press Releases

MEXC Announces Listing of Hyperlane (HYPER) with a 165,000 HYPER and 50,000 USDT Prize Pool

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VICTORIA, Seychelles, April 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — MEXC, a leading global cryptocurrency exchange, announced the Hyperlane (HYPER) listing on April 22, 2025(UTC).To celebrate this significant addition to the exchange, MEXC is launching a special event with a prize pool of 165,000 HYPER and 50,000 USDT for new and existing users.

Hyperlane is the first permissionless, universal interoperability protocol dedicated to building a truly open and decentralized cross-chain communication infrastructure. As “The Open Interoperability Framework,” it enables anyone to freely expand, utilize, and customize the network, allowing developers to easily and securely build cross-chain applications and token bridges. To date, Hyperlane has connected over 140 blockchains, processed nearly 9 million cross-chain messages, and bridged more than $6 billion in volume through its Warp Routes.

$HYPER is the native token of the Hyperlane ecosystem, with an initial total supply of 1 billion tokens. It plays a critical role in securing the protocol through staking, rewarding validators for verifying cross-chain messages, incentivizing user-driven activity, and enabling community governance over protocol development.

To celebrate the listing, MEXC will launch an Airdrop+ event with substantial rewards for users:

Event Period: April 21, 2025, 10:00 – May 01, 2025, 10:00 (UTC)

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Benefit 1: Deposit and share 120,000 HYPER (New user exclusive)

Benefit 2: Spot Challenge — Trade to share 15,000 HYPER (For all users)

Benefit 3: Futures Challenge — Trade to share 50,000 USDT in Futures bonus (For all users)

Benefit 4: Invite new users and share 30,000 HYPER (For all users)

MEXC has established itself as a leading exchange by consistently offering users early access to high-potential crypto assets. In 2024 alone, the platform listed 2,376 new tokens, including 1,716 initial listings. According to the latest TokenInsight report, MEXC led the industry with 461 spot listings between November 1, 2024, and February 15, 2025. During this period, the exchange maintained a high listing frequency, consistently ranking among the top six platforms, demonstrating its agility in capturing emerging market trends. MEXC will continue to expand its asset offerings and help users seize timely opportunities in the fast-moving crypto market.

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For full event details and participation rules, please visit here.

About MEXC

Founded in 2018, MEXC is committed to being “Your Easiest Way to Crypto.” Serving over 36 million users across 170+ countries, MEXC is known for its broad selection of trending tokens, everyday airdrop opportunities, and low trading fees. Our user-friendly platform is designed to support both new traders and experienced investors, offering secure and efficient access to digital assets. MEXC prioritizes simplicity and innovation, making crypto trading more accessible and rewarding.

MEXC Official Website X Telegram |How to Sign Up on MEXC

Risk Disclaimer:

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The information provided in this article regarding cryptocurrencies does not constitute investment advice. Given the highly volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors are encouraged to carefully assess market fluctuations, the fundamentals of projects, and potential financial risks before making any trading decisions.

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Blockchain Press Releases

Introducing Clementine Bridge: Citrea Deploys First Complete BitVM Bridge Design on Testnet

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Citrea’s Clementine Bridge marks the first time that a fully programmable layer is tested for settling on Bitcoin.

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, April 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Citrea, the first ZK rollup to enhance capabilities of Bitcoin blockspace and enable Bitcoin applications (₿apps), has successfully deployed its Clementine Bridge, the first complete BitVM bridge design on Bitcoin Testnet. Citrea has also recently revealed Clementine’s whitepaper, marking the first real-world implementation of a BitVM-based bridge which extends BTC’s utility to decentralized finance in the most Bitcoin-secured and native way possible. With Clementine’s testnet deployment, Bitcoin is for the first time tested for optimistically verifying a fully programmable layer. The Clementine whitepaper is currently the only documentation of how to use BitVM in a bridge design with clear solutions toward a secure and efficient bridge implementation. 

Despite being the world’s largest digital asset, BTC has struggled to build relevance in decentralized finance. A secure bridge between Bitcoin and a secondary layer has always been a bottleneck for using BTC in a programmable environment. This problem has forced users to either keep Bitcoin as a passive store of value or rely on custodians for using BTC in financial activities. Citrea’s BitVM-based Bitcoin bridge Clementine solves this by enabling the safest and most trust-minimized way to bridge BTC and extend its utility to decentralized finance. 

Citrea’s Clementine bridge marks a historic moment for Bitcoin and a new beginning for BTC’s utility. “It felt like magic when we saw all the bridge components work smoothly in our internal tests and that any malicious act is stopped by a single honest actor,” said Ekrem Bal, Co-Creator of Citrea. “We’re now ready to test Clementine in a real Bitcoin Testnet environment and make it more battle-tested for Citrea mainnet.”

With the introduction of BitVM by a Bitcoin developer Robin Linus, verifying computations on Bitcoin and building Bitcoin-secured bridges became a possibility. Very soon after its introduction, Citrea team became a core contributor of BitVM and later a founding member of BitVM alliance, where BitVM’s fundamental technology of executing a fraud proof of a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof on Bitcoin was developed collaboratively. Although accomplishing a ZK proof verification on Bitcoin was a prerequisite, there were still critical problems to address to implement this fundamental technology securely and efficiently into a Bitcoin bridge design. A detailed breakdown of this can be found in Clementine’s whitepaper.

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Clementine’s design and whitepaper introduce novel solutions to two main research topics in BitVM-based bridge implementation, namely Bitcoin chain fork selection and capital efficiency of operators. These topics have been critical to solve as they ensure both the bridge’s security and efficiency. Citrea’s Clementine bridge offers clear solutions to both of these problems:

  1. Bitcoin Chain Fork Selection: This is related to ensuring that the bridge follows the longest Bitcoin chain. It has been an open research topic where the BitVM creator introduced superblocks approach but its security was later found to be broken. Citrea introduces a new Bitcoin Light Client design that uses succinct Header Chain Proofs of Bitcoin. These proofs are aggregated by operators into a single BitVM proof. 
  2. Capital Efficiency of Operators: This has been another limitation of implementing BitVM efficiently into a bridge design. With Citrea’s approach to non-standard Bitcoin transactions, operators can now process hundreds of withdrawals in parallel with a single collateral. Disproving only one withdrawal is enough to stop other malicious withdrawal processes.

Clementine’s design relies on zero-knowledge proofs, Bitcoin data availability, a novel Bitcoin Light Client design and BitVM. In the case of a malicious act, an honest watchtower provides a proof of the longest Bitcoin chain. Then the operator generates a proof verifying Citrea’s state, watchtowers’ challenges and payout for the withdrawal. If the operator is malicious, it won’t be able to generate such proof, resulting in slashing the operator. Clementine has three main bridge actors to ensure the system’s integrity:

  • Signers enforce BitVM spendings by managing peg-ins through presign transactions
  • Watchtowers are tasked with monitoring operators and challenging any malicious behavior by sending a proof of longest Bitcoin chain
  • Operators, a group of profit-seeking entities, temporarily cover users’ withdrawals and are later reimbursed with presigned transactions.

Citrea: Bitcoin’s Application (app) Layer

Citrea extends Bitcoin’s utility without sacrificing its security. With zero-knowledge technology, Citrea enables Bitcoin to function as a fully programmable layer. With its Bitcoin bridge Clementine, Citrea offers the safest and most trust-minimized way to bridge BTC to a fully programmable secondary layer. 

For the first time in its history, Bitcoin Network will be able to support diverse on-chain applications and its utility will be extended to decentralized finance. 

Apply to Citrea’s unique incubation program ‘Citrea Origins‘ to build ₿apps.

For more information, please visit: Citrea website | Citrea X Account

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Blockchain Press Releases

BingX Brings Balance (EPT) to Spot with a 200 Million EPT Xpool

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PANAMA CITY, April 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — BingX, a global leading cryptocurrency exchange, announces the listing of EPT, the native token for Balance.fun, for both spot trading and also on the BingX Xpool. The spot listing will commence on April 21 at 12:00 (UTC) while the Xpool launch will start on April 22 at 10:00 (UTC). BingX users can stake BTC and EPT in Xpool, though new users will have an additional option to stake USDT to win a bigger share of the reward pool that includes 2,000,000 EPT Points. The first 1000 new users who stake a minimum of 100 USDT will also be able to earn an additional bonus voucher worth 100 USDT.

EPT is the governance token of Balance, an AI-powered web3 experience infrastructure designed for the masses. This new digital asset will fuel the new Balance Platform to create an open and inclusive gaming ecosystem for both gamers and developers with fairness at its core. With the integration of AI and blockchain technology, games can be built and marketed more easily while allowing players to benefit from the enhanced and diversified gaming experience.

Users of the existing Epal platform can transfer their EPT tokens to BingX, enabling a reliable method to trade EPT or, alternatively, purchase EPT for governance purposes. Having a solid exchange to further explore the vast world of cryptocurrencies, this new listing further empowers both Epal and Balance users in the process.

Vivien Lin, Chief Product Officer of BingX, shared her thoughts on the new trading option and Xpool listing: “I think providing users with these new trading and early investment options is our responsibility as a responsible cryptocurrency exchange since some of our users rely on us to introduce such projects with such numerous functions across multiple subcategories”.

Visit bingx.com to join the Xpool starting April 22 and start trading EPT on spot from April 21. Whether you’re a gamer, builder, or crypto enthusiast, this is your chance to be part of a new decentralized chapter in entertainment.

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About BingX 

Founded in 2018, BingX is a leading crypto exchange, serving over 20 million users worldwide. BingX offers diversified products and services, including spot, derivatives, copy trading, and asset management – all designed for the evolving needs of users, from beginners to professionals. BingX is committed to providing a trustworthy platform that empowers users with innovative tools and features to elevate their trading proficiency. In 2024, BingX proudly became the official crypto exchange partner of Chelsea Football Club, marking an exciting debut in the world of sports.

For more information, please visit: https://bingx.com/

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