Decentralized finance (DeFi) oracle Umbrella Network, which acts as a bridge between smart contracts and off-chain data feeds, is shifting its base from Ethereum to relatively low-cost smart contract platform Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

“Integrating with BSC offers Umbrella multiple advantages when compared to working on other platforms, including transaction fees that are over 90% lower than what is incurred on Ethereum,” the company said in an announcement on Monday. “For example, while the Ethereum transaction to get a data point onchain might cost $50, that same transaction might only cost 50 cents via BSC.”

So, with the BSC integration, Umbrella Network can run frequent data updates and provide the most current price for smart contracts using its feeds.

BSC has been on a tear of late, having surpassed Ethereum in daily unique active wallets and transaction count early this year. Ethereum has become a victim of its own success, with record activity leading to network congestion and high transaction costs and increased demand for rival blockchains, layer 2 sidechains.

On Saturday, BSC processed 7.3 million transactions, nearly six times greater than Ethereum’s tally of 1.42 million, according to data source BscScan.com.

Per DeBank, PancakeSwap, the top BSC-based decentralized exchange, now has a total value locked of nearly $10.4 billion, making it bigger than the top three Ethereum-based DeFi protocols – Uniswap, Compound and DeFi.

“From our first product roadmap, we have planned to integrate into BSC, and the timing couldn’t be better, given the platform’s exploding ecosystem,” Umbrella’s founding partner Sam Kim said.

Some researchers have recently voiced concerns about possible centralization on BSC, as the smart contract platform relies on just 21 validators selected daily to approve transactions. Meanwhile, ether (ETH, +4.52%) has more than 125,000 validators, data source BeaconScan shows.

Umbrella Network, however, said it is confident that the shift to the less decentralized BSC will facilitate faster decentralization of its own network.

“Lower operating costs on BSC will allow Umbrella to move faster toward its goals of full decentralization by giving more members of the community the opportunity to participate as validators almost immediately,” Kim noted in the press release. “On Ethereum, that network’s prohibitive costs required node operators to have large capital bases to operate effectively.”

The oracle network plans to use the savings generated from the shift to BSC to deepen its data library. “The low-cost structure enables Umbrella to add more data points to the industry-leading 1,000+ data pairs already available via the Umbrella Network,” Kim said.

The migration kicks off Umbrella’s “BSC Month” event, during which the oracle network will announce new partnerships with more than 10 BSC-based projects, beginning this week with the first three: Smoothy, BlockBank and UnoRe.

In addition, Umbrella Network recently signed partnerships with cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, and Asia-based infrastructure provider HashQuark. In the future, the project envisions interoperability with other layer 1 platforms, including Avalanche, Solana, Polkadot and others, according to the press release.

Developing decentralized apps (dapps) on the Ethereum scaling project Polygon is set to be a simpler affair with the network now supported by two tools from ConsenSys. 

• Being added to ConsenSys' Infura and Truffle products, alongside Ethereum and IFPS, allows developers to program and run dapps on Polygon's network as easily as they would on a cloud platform, according to an announcement Wednesday.
• Infura enables developers to connect to Ethereum via an API without having to run a full node, and it underpins the majority of dapps on the network.
• Polygon, formerly known as Matic, is now looking to offer this same accessibility to the decentralized finance (DeFi)-focused protocols it supports.
• Truffle, meanwhile, brings tools that help developers build and deploy their dapps, like boilerplate projects.
• Polygon recently announced the launch of a $100 million “#DeFiforAll” fund to make DeFi more accessible to a larger number of users in the face of mounting Ethereum gas fees.
• With those fees currently at recent highs – and seen as an urgent problem for the Ethereum ecosystem – Polygon says its average cost per transaction of $0.000371 will cut costs for users making swaps.
• At time of writing, the project's MATIC token is trading at $1.19, having hit an all-time high of $1.22 earlier on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko.

See also: Scaling Narrative Propels Polygon’s MATIC Token Closer to $1

Multicoin Capital and YouTube megastar Mr. Beast are preparing to make fractionalized non-fungible token (NFT) bets through JennyDAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization with $7 million to splash on crypto collectibles. 

The DAO, launched earlier this week, now plans to begin acquiring rare NFTs for fractionalization through Unicly, another newcomer to Ethereum’s busy digital collectibles space. Other NFT DAOs are already on the scene, having made flashy purchases in January in the run-up to NFT mania.

JennyDAO’s fractionalization approach aims to put a distributed spin on the gilded halls of high-end NFT ownership. Pricey non-fungibles are, by their nature, inherently singular, and the most sought-after pieces can go for millions of dollars. But by fractionalizing a collection of valuable NFTs JennyDAO says it can make rare internet art more “accessible.”

“You could have a bunch of small NFTs but together within the collection it’s worth a lot more,” project lead Jae Chung told CoinDesk. “Therefore people will be interested in getting exposure to the collection,” he added, comparing it to an exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Chung said anyone with the project’s uJENNY governance token will get a say in the collection’s shape. Thirty-six percent of uJENNY’s 10 million token supply will go to the DAO’s launch community.  

“We want to increase accessibility and basically whatever amazing collection we make, the value and upside of it is shared by the supporters,” he said. 

Those supporters include a number of notable crypto VCs, Chung said: 0xb1, IOSG Ventures, Moonrock Capital, Morningstar Ventures, Spartan Group, 3Commas, Vendetta Capital, Hillrise Ventures and Building Blocks. Each VC chipped into JennyDAO’s $7 million launch pool.

JennyDAO plans to keep its NFT collection in smart contracts on Unicly, an Ethereum-based protocol that specializes in fractionalized NFTs. Works will be added into Jenny’s Unicly vault based on simple majority votes, according to a blog post. Proceeds of a full liquidation would be divided up among governance token-holders, the white paper said.

“Fractionalization protocols allow access to liquidity of a patron/curator holding a collection, and reward retail collectors for recognizing the value of a collection and getting exposure to a fraction of it,” Multicoin partner Mable Jiang said in a Telegram message.

“JennyDAO, in this case, is a realization of the idea of ‘patronage as an asset class,’” she added.

Three funds are set to inject $60 million into projects built on the Solana blockchain in emerging markets.

According to the Wednesday announcement, the funds will focus on four separate markets: Brazil, Russia, India and Ukraine. Hacken, Gate.io, Coin DCX and BRZ will make investments to support projects working on the development of blockchain applications, including decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces and cybersecurity, according to a representative. The Solana Foundation will not be directly benefiting from the investments; the funds will go directly to different initiatives within the Solana ecosystem.

Earlier this month, five investment funds worth $100 million launched to drive Solana growth and development in China. 

The Solana Foundation has worked with crypto firms in the new markets to support the development of new projects built on the Solana blockchain.

“In each of these regions we’ve seen strong engagement in Discord, local Telegram groups and other community spaces, so we set out to find partners in those regions,” Anatoly Yakovenko, president of the foundation, told CoinDesk in a written statement. 

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are being adopted more and more in emerging markets. For instance, despite regulatory uncertainty, crypto assets are being used as speculative tools and stores-of-value in Brazil and India. In 2020, Ukraine topped the global crypto adoption index compiled by blockchain research firm Chainalysis.   

In Brazil, Solana has partnered with Brazilian Digital Token (BRZ). According to the announcement, BRZ’s fund will support projects that are developing real-world DeFi applications focused on lending, financing and payments. 

“Working with Solana will bring innovation and tackle inefficiencies inherent to the Brazilian financial system,” Thiago Cesar, CEO of Transfera Swiss, the creator of the Brazilian stablecoin, said in a press statement.

Solana’s partner in India is CoinDCX, and the fund is set to support projects building new Web 3.0 products, including DeFi systems, NFT marketplaces, wallets, exchanges and decentralized apps (dApps) on top of Solana. 

The remaining fund, coming from Hacken and Gate.io, will focus on cybersecurity and DeFi projects in Ukraine and Russia, a foundation representative told CoinDesk. 

The representative also said the Solana Foundation doesn’t provide regulatory guidance to anyone building on its blockchain, adding there are no preset minimums or maximums for investments in projects. 

The funds are being allocated to projects built on Solana in these markets, the representative said. 

UPDATE (May 13, 2021, 16:47 UTC): After the publication of this article, the Solana Foundation said it was combining the Hacken and Gate.io funds, meaning it’s only launching three in total. Updated to clarify Solana is working with four parties to launch the funds. Updated to clarify the Solana Foundation isn’t raising the funds for itself, but helping direct them to the blockchain it supports.