05. Corporations and Foundations

Corporations and foundations founded or with significant presence in Singapore. This is just what I come across in my research and readings, and nowhere near a comprehensive list.

Corporate

Amber Group

Amber Group is a cryptocurrency trading platform founded in 2017. The company claims to have cumulative transaction volume over $1 trillion and assets under management growing at over $5 billion. It has operations in 12 countries and offers structured product and derivative trading services.

Projects:

• WhaleFin:
  • flagship digital asset platform for individuals.
• OpenVerse:
  • creator-focused venture, which has a strong line-up of gaming studios, sports collectibles, digital artists and other partner brands.

Bitdeer

Bitdeer is the world’s leading provider of digital asset mining services. It is a subsidiary of Bitdeer Group and based in Singapore. Jihan Wu is the founder and chairman of the group.

In Nov 2021, it announced plans to go public on Nasdaq after $4B SPAC merger.

Bud

Founded in 2019, Bud is a Singapore-based metaverse platform. Bud announced in May 2022 that it has raised US$36.8 million in a series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from ClearVue Partners, GGV Capital, and Qiming Venture Partners.

ChainUp

Singapore-based blockchain technology service provider.

Impressive board members announced on 5th anniversary of firm [Sep 2022]:

• Singapore’s former Prime Minister, Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong as a special advisor
• OCBC’s Chairman Ooi Sang Kuang
• Huobi Group’s Co-founder Du Jun
• Ong Chong Tee who is Chairman of Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA)

Enjin

Enjin (Enjin Pte Ltd. UEN: 201201984D) is a blockchain tech company building products that make it easy for everyone to use next-generation non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Since its founding in 2009, Enjin has been deeply involved with the gaming industry. The same year, the company launched a gaming community platform called the Enjin Network and has grown it to more than 20 million users over the course of a decade.

The Enjin ecosystem is fueled by Enjin Coin (ENJ), an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency used to directly back the value of Enjin-powered blockchain assets.

ERC-1155

Witek Radomski, a co-founder and CTO of Enjin Coin, developed ERC-1155 in 2018, a new standard for defining video game tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to mint both fungible and non-fungible tokens in one smart contract.

FOMO Pay

Founded in 2015, FOMO Pay is a Singapore fintech company offering its flagship solutions by helping institutional clients connect to e-wallets, credit cards, cryptocurrencies, and more with its global banking solutions.

In September 2021, FOMO Pay was granted approval by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to offer Digital Payment Token Services.

In August 2022, it secured a US$13 million investment for its Series A funding round led by Jump Crypto. Other participating investors include HashKey Capital, Antalpha Ventures, Ab Initio Capital, and Republic Capital.

Krust

South Korean tech giant Kakao Corp’s overseas base for blockchain businesses. The company has set up a $300-million Klaytn Growth Fund and will invest in startups to globally expand the Klaytn ecosystem.

Kyber Network

The Kyber Network is a decentralized exchange system. It was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Singapore.

Nansen

Nansen is a blockchain analytics platform that enriches on-chain data with millions of wallets labels. Crypto investors use Nansen to discover opportunities, perform due diligence and defend their portfolios with real-time dashboards and alerts.

Founded in 2020, Singapore-based Nansen analyses on-chain data, wallet labels and entities on blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom, Avalanche and Celo. It also tracks decentralized finance (DeFi) projects and non-fungible token (NFT) trades.

Partior

Singapore-based Partior (Partior means to ‘distribute and share’ in Latin) is a joint venture between Temasek and banks DBS and JPMorgan. Partior has its genesis in Project Ubin – a collaboration between the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the financial industry to explore the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology for clearing and settlement services.

It was launched operationally on 26 October 2021 and in its first pilot with participating banks, it achieved end-to-end settlements in Singdollar and US dollars of under 120 seconds.

Paxos

Founded in 2012 as bitcoin exchange itBit, the company later rebranded to Paxos and pivoted into a business focused on providing services using blockchain.

Paxos uses technology to tokenize, custody, trade and settle assets. It builds enterprise blockchain solutions for institutions like PayPal, Interactive Brokers, Meta, Mastercard, MercadoLibre, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Societe Generale and Revolut.

Paxos is a top-funded fintech company with more than $540 million raised from leading investors including Oak HC/FT, Declaration Partners, Founders Fund, Mithril Capital and PayPal Ventures.

Paxos has offices in New York, London and Singapore.

RockX

RockX is a crypto staking platform founded in 2019 by CEO Chen Zhuling.

In April 2022, RockX announced it has raised $6 million in a fundraising round led by Singapore-based crypto financial services firm Amber Group. The deal values the three-year-old crypto staking platform at $30 million.

“The strong support we are seeing in our inaugural round of capital raising is a testament to the potential and strength of our business,” Chen Zhuling, founder and CEO of RockX, said in the statement.

Sygnum Singapore

Swiss crypto bank Sygnum Bank is the world’s first digital assets bank. The bank enables clients to invest in the digital asset economy safely and securely. Founded in 2017, Sygnum established itself in Switzerland and Singapore with a Swiss banking license and a Singapore asset management license.

Sygnum Singapore (Sygnum Pte Ltd) conducts asset management activities under a capital markets services (CMS) licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

In March 2022, Sygnum Singapore received in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to conduct three additional regulated activities under its CMS licence. With the additional permitted regulated activities, Sygnum intends to offer its tokenization solution in Singapore with an initial focus on the tokenization of fund units.

Three Arrows Capital (3ac)

Three Arrows Capital Ltd. is a cryptocurrency hedge fund established in 2012 founded by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies.

In April 2022, Three Arrows Capital announced it was shifting its headquarters to Dubai.

TripleA

Founded by Eric Barbier in 2017, TripleA (UEN 201717321C) is headquartered in Singapore, offering crypto payment services, including white-label crypto trading to financial platforms.

TripleA is the fourth in Singapore to receive the Digital Payment Token (DPT) licence in Singapore under the Payment Services Act (PSA).

VerifyVASP

Based in Singapore, VerifyVASP provides a one stop Travel Rule solution encompassing counterparty due diligence, Travel Rule messaging and integrated risk monitoring for over 70 digital asset businesses from 24 countries, globally.

So far [Sep 2022], the company has processed more than 1,500,000 Travel Rule compliant digital asset transfers amounting to USD $40 billion in value.

Zilliqa

Official Site: https://www.zilliqa.com/

Launched in 2017, Zilliqa is a blockchain platform born out of peer-reviewed academic research conducted at the National University of Singapore, by a team of academics, entrepreneurs, and developers from Singapore and the UK.

• Zilliqa Network is able to process around 1000 transactions per second(TPS)
• Zilliqa is powered with ZIL cryptocurrency, which is used to pay fees during transactions

Zilliqa is the world’s first public blockchain built on sharded architecture. Sharding is a database management technique that breaks a database into smaller segments, allowing transactions to be processed in parallel and at scale.

Scilla (short for Smart Contract Intermediate-Level Language) is a smart contract language developed for the Zilliqa blockchain. Smart contracts make it possible for mutually distrusting parties to execute an agreement with efficiency and transparency without the need of an arbitrator.

$XGD launch in 2019

In late 2019, the first SGD-pegged stablecoin ($XGD) was launched on the Zilliqa blockchain, in a joint project with Xfers. This has allowed SGD-denominated trades and transactions to occur on the blockchain.

ZILSwap DEX

ZILSwap is the first decentralised exchange on the Zilliqa blockchain which went live in 2020.

Partnerships

Over 60 project teams from over 20 countries have contributed to Zilliqa’s ecosystem. ZIL continues to collaborates with Singapore based companies like Switcheo, Xfers, Aquilliz, HGExchange, SG Blockchain Association and many others.

Foundations

Algorand Foundation

The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem.

Algorand Foundation Ltd. is a company limited by guarantee incorporated in Singapore with its registered address at 1 George Street, #10-01, One George Street, Singapore (049145)

In September 2022, Algorand Foundation revealed a $35 million USDC hole in its balance sheet caused by exposure to embattled crypto lending platform Hodlnaut.

Klaytn Foundation

Klaytn Foundation is a non-profit entity in Singapore established to accelerate the sustainable growth of Klaytn. It was established by South Korea’s tech giant Kakao Corp in 2021.

Klaytn Foundation:

• supports developers to strengthen the technology of the Klaytn Network.
• facilitates businesses to participate in Klaytn’s global ecosystem.

MVL Foundation Pte. Ltd

Operates ride-hailing service TADA using the MVL blockchain

Litecoin Foundation

Litecoin is an open-source cryptocurrency that was forked from Bitcoin, and has much faster transaction times compared to Bitcoin.

Litecoin was founded in Singapore by Charlie Lee and the non-profit organization Litecoin Foundation is registered in Singapore.

Luna Foundation Guard (LFG)

Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) is a non-profit organization established in the Republic of Singapore in January 2022. It is dedicated to supporting the advancement of open-source technology, facilitating the growth of the Terra ecosystem, and improving the sustainability and stability of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoins.

In 2022, Luna Foundation Guard raised $1 billion to form a Bitcoin reserve for the UST stablecoin, that can act as a “release valve” for UST redemptions during selloffs in crypto markets. Jump Crypto and Three Arrows Capital led the raise, with Republic Capital, GSR, Tribe Capital, DeFiance Capital and others also participating.

ParaState Foundation

ParaState is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) funded by:

• The STATE token which is backed by a basket of native crypto currencies from other platforms where ParaState technology is deployed
• License fees as a percentage of gas fees generated by transactions on other networks using ParaState technology

The ParaState Foundation will manage the developer treasury and execute the decisions of the DAO at the very beginning. Ultimately, all STATE Token holders as part of the DAO will oversee and exercise decentralized governance.

PARASTATE FOUNDATION LTD. (UEN ID 202040151K) is a corporate entity registered with Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority.

Media

Chain Debrief

Founded in early 2021, Chain Debrief aims to inform, educate and connect the global investment community through its editorial platform, video series and crypto communities.

It announced on 4 January 2022 that it has raised US$900,000 in its seed funding round.