On December 10th, Decrypt, a cryptocurrency media outlet, signed a letter of intent to merge with Web3 media outlet Rug Radio. The two companies will merge to form a new holding company that has not yet been named, while retaining their respective brands and independence. The holding company will be chaired by Josh Quitner, current CEO of Decrypt. Loxley Fernandes, current co-CEO of Rug Radio, and founder Farokh Sarmad will respectively serve as CEO and president of the new holding company. Decrypt hopes to expand into new areas such as longevity and emerging technologies/artificial intelligence beyond the blockchain field. The new holding company plans to work exclusively with Arbitrum. While the two companies will operate independently, they plan to collaborate on advertising transactions to promote business development for both companies. Rug Radio currently has 12 full-time employees, while Decrypt has 22. After the transaction is completed, all employees will remain with the two companies. Executives state that their goal is to complete the transaction by early 2024 and anticipate that regulatory approval will not be necessary.

On December 9th, the "2023 Web3 Social Change and Innovation Global Summit," sponsored by Web3 social application INTO, was held in Kuala Lumpur. The summit was supported by many global institutions and media, attracting hundreds of top experts, industry leaders, and technological pioneers in the Web3 social field from around the world.<br>The summit focused on the theme of "INTO Web3 · Lighting up the Future," and discussed many key issues, including the application of Web3 technology, Web3 social graph, data sovereignty, and the globalization trend of social networks. The aim was to explore the role of Web3 technology in social change and pave the way for the future development of Web3 social networks.

Web3 digital fashion company Cult &amp; Rain has decided to cease operations. According to a public letter from the company's founder and CEO, George Yang, the financial impact of cryptocurrency and Web3 market fluctuations, as well as a failure to secure external investment, led to the decision to shut down business operations and end the Cult &amp; Rain 2.0 plan.

Web3 social protocol Inspect has announced its support for the Avalanche ecosystem. Inspect has introduced a new dedicated collection ranking system for Avax NFTs, and its web application now provides a detailed view of the Avax-based NFT community. Inspect is prepared to continue expanding its partnerships and further exploring the depth of its dynamic ecosystem.

Web3 startup Lantern Finance has launched a user-friendly staking platform in 15 states in the United States, including major markets such as California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, and Massachusetts. According to the team, "Lantern aims to redefine the cryptocurrency landscape with a focus on clarity, security, and regulatory compliance. The platform's goal is to democratize cryptocurrency banking services, making complex tasks such as staking and lending simple and intuitive for everyday users, while adhering to the highest standards of security and compliance."

Golden Finance reported that SupraOracles has announced its integration with the full-stack Layer-1 smart contract platform Radix. This combination will allow Web3 developers to quickly build decentralized applications using Radix's Scrypto programming language, along with Supra's data on more than 100 encrypted transaction pairs and the verifiable decentralized randomness function (VRF) through Supra. This integration will accelerate the growth of the Supra and Radix ecosystems.

Sona Stream, a Web3 music streaming marketplace, has launched with a $6.9 million seed round from Polychain Capital, Haun Ventures and Rogue Capital. The platform allows artists to sell "digital twins" of their songs as SONAs (Music NFTs) to collectors, who can promote the songs by sharing them on social media. SONA owners receive 70% of the streaming revenue on a pro-rata basis, while artists get 30%. The company redistributes the revenue every two weeks, proportional to how much the specific song is streamed. Sona currently features music tracks from several artists and aims to raise the number to over 16 million tracks by 2024.

Web3 infrastructure provider Ankr has partnered with Matter Labs to launch Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) service, supporting zkSync Hyperchains built using the ZK Stack.Ankr's customers can now use RaaS to create dedicated blockchains to serve specific use cases, although the deployment of Hyperchains is currently limited to testing environments.

Sky Mavis, the team behind the Web3 game Axie Infinity, has announced a partnership with Singaporean game developer Foonie Magus. This will involve the introduction of the new game "Apeiron" to the Ronin blockchain. A demo version of Apeiron is already available on the Epic Game Store, with a mobile version expected to be released globally in the first quarter of 2024.

Heartcore Capital, a venture capital firm, has raised €15 million ($16.3 million) for its first Web3 fund, which will focus on the cryptocurrency infrastructure sector. Heartcore was founded in 2007 and has invested in more than 100 Web2 companies. In recent years, the firm has entered the Web3 field, providing support to teams from companies such as Panoptic, Elusiv, Li.Fi, Superform, Rhinestone, and MakerDAO. In addition, Heartcore made a private investment in Ethereum as early as 2014 and invested in projects such as Polkadot and Cosmos in 2017. (Blockworks)