Blockchain
peaq and EWOR’s new program grants Web3 founders up to €150,000 in funding alongside education and networking support
peaq and EWOR are launching a new program to jointly support five entrepreneurs with early funding, world-leading educational material crafted by serial entrepreneurs, and unparalleled networking opportunities as they build machine-focused dApps on the peaq network
April 25, 2023 — Peaq Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting peaq, the Web3 network powering the Economy of Things, and peaq’s canary network krest, joins forces with EWOR, a blend of a master’s degree and early-stage VC firm that identifies, educates, and invests in the most promising entrepreneurs with early cheques. The result: A Web3-focused program for founders building decentralized applications for machines, robots, and vehicles. This 10-month program will grant prospective builders, hand-picked jointly by peaq and EWOR, a vast array of skills as well as mentoring and networking, while also backing them with funding opportunities of up to €150,000.
Opening the floodgates of the Great Resignation, the pandemic era also brought about an uptick in entrepreneurship. As hundreds of new founders join the fray, though, the old statistic holds true: About 90 percent of startups fail. In the Web3 space, a new frontier for most mainstream entrepreneurs, failure rate for projects is even higher. On top of all that, the risk-averse investment climate among today’s larger macroeconomic pressures keeps founders awake at night with fundraising concerns.
To help daring disruptors reverse these trends, Peaq Foundation and EWOR are launching a unique program for aspiring Web3 founders looking to build Economy of Things dApps on peaq. The 10-month program launched in April, welcoming five entrepreneurs hand-picked by EWOR and peaq from thousands of applicants. The Web3 cohort includes:
- Andres, the founder of the first PropTech company in Latin America,
- Radovan, an LSE graduate who bootstrapped his company Kykeon Advisors from $0 to $300k+,
- Usman, a guest lecturer at Exeter and a passionate technologist with a trove of fintech experience,
- Faizah, an ed-tech startup co-founder and disruptor passionate about financial inclusion,
- Elliot, an experienced data scientist passionate about AI and blockchain.
The program leverages EWOR’s Education Circle platform with high-quality Web3 courses co-created by EWOR and peaq and grants the students a vast array of mentorship, coaching, and networking opportunities with their peers and investors. It also includes weekly online sessions with seasoned entrepreneurs who have already built successful companies such as Adjust co-founder Paul H. Müller and KW Commerce founder Jens Wasel.
The most promising projects will be able to leverage the funding opportunities provided by the two organizations. As part of the collaboration with peaq, EWOR may opt to invest in the most promising Web3 EoT projects, signing tickets of €75,000 up to €150,000. Peaq Foundation, on its end, will bolster the builders with funds from its Ecosystem Grant Program and introductions to investors backing peaq. Where relevant, builders will also get introductions with companies and projects participating in the Gaia-X 4FM moveID project that peaq is part of alongside such enterprises as Bosch, Continental, and Airbus.
EWOR’s mission is to focus the world’s smartest people on the world’s biggest problems. Its partnership with Peaq Foundation, which is working on making the Economy of Things fair and decentralized, can generate a massive impact. The goal of the partnership is to empower a handful of entrepreneurs to work on topics such as:
- Making intimate healthcare data more secure and owned by the people
- Peer-to-peer solar energy trading
- Distributing machine-generated income more fairly
“Disruptive decentralized applications are the crucial component of the Economy of Things on peaq,” says Leonard Dorlöchter, peaq’s co-founder. “By teaming up with EWOR, we are focusing some of the smartest people in the world on some of the world’s most urgent challenges. We are excited to lend our support and skills to the prospective founders and help them transform entire markets and industries with Web3 tech.”
“Impact follows a power law,” says Daniel Dippold, Co-Founder and CEO at EWOR. “A small number of people are responsible for most of the change in the world. Our approach to making impact is to empower the most extraordinary visionaries to build enterprises with global impact. Through our partnership with peaq, we are granting Web3 entrepreneurs a program that will help them bring their ideas to life with all the support they need. We are making sure that the 1% who make 99% of the difference can leverage Web3 to fix the global ills of today.”
Blockchain
Blocks & Headlines: Today in Blockchain – May 7, 2025 | Coinbase, Riot Games, Curve DAO, Litecoin, AR.IO
Today’s blockchain and cryptocurrency landscape is as dynamic as ever, with marquee partnerships, industry-wide reckonings, and groundbreaking applications reshaping how we think about digital assets. In this op-ed style daily briefing, we explore five major developments from May 6 – 7, 2025:
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Coinbase & Riot Games Forge Esports Alliance
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“Too Many Blockchains?” Industry Introspection
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Blockchain’s Health-Tech Revolution
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Valour Adds Curve DAO & Litecoin ETPs in the Nordics
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AR.IO Enables Credit-Card Onramps for Web3 Identity & Hosting
Through concise yet detailed coverage, we analyze each story’s implications for blockchain, cryptocurrency, Web3, DeFi, and NFTs. Welcome to your Blocks & Headlines daily briefing—where opinion meets analysis.
1. Coinbase & Riot Games Forge Esports Alliance
Source: Coinbase Blog
Date: May 6, 2025
In a landmark partnership that bridges digital finance with digital competition, Coinbase has been named the exclusive cryptocurrency exchange and official blockchain technology partner of Riot Games’ global League of Legends and VALORANT esports events. Starting with the VCT Masters tournament in Toronto on June 7, Coinbase will integrate “live Econ Reports” and “Gold Grind” segments into broadcasts, offering running analyses of in-game currency flows, alongside exclusive digital drops like emotes and icons redeemable by viewers.
Opinion: This move is a masterstroke for mainstream crypto adoption. Esports’ digitally native fanbase aligns perfectly with blockchain’s ethos of transparency and community governance. Coinbase’s embrace of in-game analytics not only educates viewers on micro-economies but also paves the way for future on-chain game mechanics—potentially unlocking true digital ownership of skins and items as NFTs. Expect other exchanges to follow suit or risk missing out on Gen Z’s next frontier of fandom.
2. “Too Many Blockchains?” Industry Introspection
Source: Blockworks
Date: May 6, 2025
As venture capital floods yet another dozen Layer-1 protocols each quarter, seasoned observers are questioning sustainability. Donovan Choy of Blockworks highlights that new chains like Camp Network, Unto, and Miden collectively raised north of $70 million in the past week alone—despite Sui’s market-cap spike lacking any commensurate fee revenue. While some attribute this proliferation to speculative greed chasing the elusive L1 premium, others credit genuine technical divergence—differing visions on execution environments, MEV capture, and data-availability layers.
Opinion: The free market appears to be self-correcting: L1 valuations are compressing, and public markets are already signaling fatigue. Yet, technical fragmentation has its merits—competition drives innovation in consensus, sharding, and gas-fee economics. The looming challenge is application-chain misalignment: developers face choice paralysis and liquidity fragmentation. A pivot toward cross-chain composability—and perhaps the rise of federated execution environments—will determine which chains survive the next cycle. Investors should look for interoperability roadmaps rather than mere tokenomics hype.
3. Blockchain’s Health-Tech Revolution
Source: DataHorizzon Research via OpenPR
Date: May 7, 2025
Blockchain in healthcare is projected to surge from a $4.57 billion market in 2023 to $34.7 billion by 2033 (CAGR 22.9%). Key drivers include:
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Data Integrity & Security: Immutable ledgers ensure tamper-proof electronic health records, bolstering HIPAA and GDPR compliance.
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Interoperability: Permissioned smart contracts automate cross-institutional data access, alleviating EHR fragmentation.
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Supply-Chain Traceability: Real-time drug tracking combats counterfeits and streamlines recalls.
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Claims Automation: Shared ledgers reduce fraud and billing lags via automated smart-contract adjudication.
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Research Collaboration: Timestamped trial data and consent forms create verifiable audit trails.
Leading players—IBM Watson Health, Guardtime, Longenesis, Chronicled, BurstIQ, and more—are moving beyond pilots in Estonia and Merck’s vaccine cold-chain projects toward enterprise-scale rollouts.
Opinion: Healthcare’s conservative nature makes blockchain’s strides here particularly noteworthy. The confluence of AI analytics with secure datasets promises predictive diagnostics powered by immutable provenance. Yet, regulatory uncertainty and integration with legacy EHR platforms remain significant hurdles. The winners will be those who offer turnkey compliance frameworks and hybrid on-chain/off-chain models that respect “right to be forgotten” laws while preserving auditability.
4. Valour Adds Curve DAO & Litecoin ETPs in the Nordics
Source: GlobeNewswire (via GlobeNewswire and CoinCentral)
Date: May 7, 2025
DeFi Technologies’ subsidiary Valour has listed single-asset SEK-denominated ETPs for Curve DAO (CRV) and Litecoin (LTC) on Sweden’s Spotlight Stock Market—bringing its Nordic ETP lineup to over 67 products on the path to 100 by year-end. Upcoming listings include Tron (TRX), Stellar (XLM), and leveraged Bitcoin (BTC 2×) and Ethereum (ETH 2×) products.
Opinion: ETPs bridge traditional capital markets with on-chain assets, offering regulated wrappers for institutional and retail investors. Valour’s Nordic expansion underscores Europe’s leadership in crypto security tokenization. However, as ETP count balloons, product fatigue may set in. Success lies not in sheer quantity but in thematic curation and transparent fee structures—particularly for DeFi-native tokens like CRV, where governance risk and protocol upgrades can materially impact value.
5. AR.IO Enables Credit-Card Onramps for Web3 Identity & Hosting
Source: Chainwire (as published by MENAFN)
Date: May 6, 2025
AR.IO—the world’s first permanent cloud network built on Arweave—has launched “Turbo,” an open-source bundler that lets users purchase Arweave credits via credit card for its ArNS domain‐name and web-hosting service. ArNS domains are immutable smart contracts on Arweave, offering permanent websites and on-chain identities without renewal fees, served by 400+ decentralized gateways.
Opinion: Simplifying fiat → crypto onramps remains a critical barrier for mainstream Web3 adoption. By integrating credit-card payments, AR.IO lowers friction for developers and businesses wanting censorship-resistant hosting. The true long-term play is embedding real-world payment rails into decentralized infrastructure—setting a precedent for other ledger-based services (e.g., Filecoin, IPFS pinning). If AR.IO can combine permanency with user-friendly billing, we may witness a tipping point in Web3’s shift from hobbyist experiments to enterprise solutions.
Conclusion
Today’s slate of headlines spans from consumer-facing esports innovations to deep industry self-reflection, from life-saving healthcare applications to sophisticated investment vehicles, and finally, critical infrastructure enabling mainstream onramps. Across every sector—gaming, finance, healthcare, asset management, and infrastructure—the recurring theme is bridging gaps:
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On-chain & off-chain: through fiat onramps and traditional ETP listings
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New chains & legacy systems: via interoperability and hybrid architectures
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Speculation & real-world utility: with tangible ROI in healthcare and esports
For enthusiasts and professionals alike, the imperative is clear: focus on solutions that marry blockchain’s core benefits—transparency, security, decentralization—with seamless user experiences and regulatory alignment. Only then will we see blockchain and crypto transcend niche fervor to become indispensable pillars of tomorrow’s digital economy.
The post Blocks & Headlines: Today in Blockchain – May 7, 2025 | Coinbase, Riot Games, Curve DAO, Litecoin, AR.IO appeared first on News, Events, Advertising Options.
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