RWA deposits in DeFi surged to $7.44B YoY as tokenized assets move from passive holdings to productive integration — Solana now dominates tokenized stock trading with 90%+ of June volume.
DeFi & Yields ·
Paradigm, the crypto-focused venture firm established in 2018, has secured $1.2 billion for a fund targeting what it describes as the "technical frontier," marking an expansion into artificial intelligence and robotics beyond its traditional crypto focus. The firm has already committed capital to non-crypto ventures including drone-delivery company Zipline and space-defense startup True Anomaly. Managing partner Alana Palmedo framed the move as opportunistic rather than a retreat from crypto, citing the overwhelming concentration of recent venture funding in AI startups, which captured roughly 70% of global venture capital last quarter.
Paradigm has maintained active involvement in crypto investments, having co-led Morpho's $175 million funding round in June and invested in tokenized-Treasury platforms and prediction-market firms this year. Rather than creating a separate team for AI deals, the firm is leveraging its existing technical staff to evaluate opportunities across both sectors, reflecting the view that crypto and AI represent complementary rather than competing investment landscapes.
BNB Chain has announced plans for a new Layer-1 blockchain optimized for autonomous AI agents, targeting mainnet deployment in early 2027. The network is designed to support agentic trading at millisecond latencies with over 100,000 transactions per second and sub-second finality, removing the public mempool in favor of private transaction flow to prevent front-running. The roadmap also incorporates account abstraction, native privacy features, and post-quantum cryptography research, positioning the infrastructure for machine-driven settlement rather than human interaction.