Partnerships & Ecosystem

Digital payments platform Wirex integrated the Gauntlet-managed Morpho vault into its enterprise accounts on March 20, enabling automatic conversion of corporate funds to USDC or EURC and deposit into the vault. Over $10 million has already been earning yields through this feature. Future expansions will include British pound, Australian dollar, and Hong Kong dollar accounts, along with the launch of enterprise loans backed by Bitcoin collateral.

AlphaTON Capital announces the acquisition of a 60% controlling stake in gaming platform GAMEE for up to $11 million, taking over its daily operations. It will establish a strategic alliance with Animoca Brands, with an agreement prohibiting the latter from acquiring a controlling stake within two years.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang praised the technological achievements of decentralized AI network Bittensor in an All-In interview, noting that its Subnet 3 successfully conducted distributed training of large language models. These remarks prompted the TAO token to rise approximately 20% within 24 hours of the announcement. Huang also pointed out that decentralized and proprietary models can coexist in parallel, further bolstering market confidence in distributed AI.

Major League Baseball (MLB) has entered into a partnership with prediction market exchange Polymarket, securing exclusive trademark and data usage rights with anticipated annual sponsorship fees reaching $300 million. This collaboration aims to ensure event integrity and work in conjunction with the CFTC to restrict risky predictions. Polymarket continues to expand within the sports betting market.

Gate News reports that on March 20, international payment company Wise received approval from Nigerian regulators and officially entered the Nigerian market. Additionally, a certain CEX recently announced the launch of a prediction market feature.

The World Gold Council has introduced 'Gold as a Service' to standardize tokenized gold in digital finance. This initiative aims to enhance liquidity and accessibility for investors, encouraging the adoption of gold-backed digital assets.

Crypto accelerator Alliance announced its ALL16 cohort list on March 20, featuring 18 teams covering stablecoin payments (such as Allod, Superbank, etc.), prediction markets (such as Predexon, Freeport, etc.), and AI applications and RWA tokenization projects (such as Givance, Graded, etc.).

Anchorage Digital announced on March 20th an expansion of its Atlas network, adding collateral management functionality to provide institutional clients with cryptocurrency-backed lending infrastructure that reduces operational and counterparty risks. Currently supporting nearly 600 institutions and processing hundreds of billions of dollars in settlements, it helps institutions efficiently manage crypto collateral and facilitates the integration of crypto finance with the U.S. financial system.

Chris Larsen controls substantial voting rights in Evernorth through RippleWorks, potentially creating conflicts of interest. Documents show that his nonprofit organization possesses material influence over voting decisions, despite not directly controlling equity ownership. This arrangement could adversely affect the interests of Evernorth common shareholders, and investors should monitor associated risks.

Gate News: On March 20th, Web3 embodied AI robotics company PrismaX joined NVIDIA's Inception program. Through this program, PrismaX will gain access to development tools, technical resources, training support, priority infrastructure access rights, and support from a broader ecosystem comprised of builders and investors. The Inception program is a free virtual accelerator initiative launched by NVIDIA specifically designed to help startups in the fields of AI, data science, and high-performance computing (HPC) accelerate their growth.

European asset manager Amundi has partnered with tokenization platform Spiko to launch a $100 million Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund (SAFO), selecting Chainlink as its oracle infrastructure. However, LINK has failed to break above $10 since February. Despite on-chain data showing declining LINK holdings and increased ETF inflows, market sentiment remains cautious, making it difficult for prices to rise in the short term, and institutional adoption has yet to become a price catalyst.

Startup t54 announces that its AI agents can now autonomously make payments using XRP and RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, achieving the first integration of AI agents with on-chain payments. t54's x402 protocol enables AI agents to autonomously take on tasks, verify them on-chain, and settle payments via smart contracts. Ripple's strategic investment signals its early positioning in the AI agent economy, which could potentially increase demand for XRP, though success will require time to verify.

Mastercard acquires stablecoin startup BVNK for approximately $1.8 billion, strengthening its competitiveness in blockchain and digital payment sectors. This marks Wall Street's accelerated push to secure stablecoin settlement and on-chain finance entry points. Financial institutions are intensifying their blockchain deployment to navigate complex fiat-to-stablecoin conversions. With global stablecoin market value exceeding $300 billion, future competition will concentrate on infrastructure and user access points.

Tether is accelerating the introduction of USDT into the Bitcoin Lightning Network to enhance transfer efficiency and expand application scenarios. This move combines stablecoins with Bitcoin, promoting efficient payments and cross-chain application development, and is expected to improve the usability of cryptocurrency payment systems, though it faces market competition and technical challenges.

The World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group have jointly launched the "Gold-as-a-Service" white paper, aimed at establishing a unified open platform framework that connects physical gold with tokenized products to enhance gold's usability and transaction convenience in the financial system. This framework features six key functionalities including standardized issuance, high transparency, and improved liquidity, and is expected to accelerate institutional investors' entry into the tokenized gold market.

Major League Baseball (MLB) announced a partnership with prediction market platform Polymarket to serve as the official prediction market exchange, and jointly established risk control measures to limit high-risk markets. The move aims to ensure game integrity and promote the development of legal prediction markets, while raising concerns about manipulation risks and legal positioning. Supporters believe that through cooperation, clear rules can be established and market transparency can be improved.

The World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group released a white paper proposing a "Gold as a Service" framework aimed at standardizing the issuance and management of tokenized gold, challenging the existing market dominated by Paxos and Tether. The framework will lower barriers to entry and encourage greater institutional participation. However, implementation timelines and specific plans remain unclear, and whether the WGC's brand influence can shake up the existing market remains to be seen.

Figure co-founder Mike Cagney announced the launch of the Figure Forge service, which aims to turn blockchain-native loans and other RWAs into participation tokens. The service will be used in the Democratized Prime DeFi market and will offer additional yields through the Hastra protocol, with the liquidity limit order book funded by Figure.