According to ChainCatcher, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that its cryptocurrency working group will hold a roundtable on May 12 titled "Tokenization ------ Asset on the Chain: The Intersection of Traditional Finance and Decentralized Finance."Hester M. Peirce, the head of the SEC's cryptocurrency working group, stated that tokenization is a technological development that could fundamentally change many aspects of financial markets.The meeting will take place from 1:00 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time on May 12 at the SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., and will be open to the public and streamed live on the SEC's official website. Additionally, the SEC announced that the roundtable originally scheduled for June 6, titled "Decentralized Finance and the American Spirit," has been rescheduled to June 9.

ChainCatcher news, Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen posted on the X platform: "Pump.fun will continue to experiment at the intersection of social media and tokenization. Some of these attempts (like live streaming, by the way, which has now fully resumed). Whatever we do, we will do our utmost to ensure alignment with our core user base. That said: don't expect me, pump.fun, or any employees to issue tokens (there will be no 'secret issuance' either)."

ChainCatcher message, Vitalik Buterin stated on social media: We should all agree that finance is "not enough." There are too many rapidly growing centralized points and threats in today's world of technology, such as:Ongoing political attacks on encrypted messaging;Centralized identity systems and credit scoring;Bugs/backdoors in insecure/proprietary operating systems;Social media - censorship imposed by governments on platforms, as well as the opacity/centralization of the platforms' algorithms;The blocking points of a few powerful countries gaining more and more power, allowing people on the other side of the world to be liberated from half of the internet;The risks of surveillance, de-platforming, and economic domination brought by centralized artificial intelligence;Similar concerns about mind-reading technology (BCI) are on the horizon.Even if you could make finance completely perfect, if we get these other issues wrong, the world will still be very bad, along all the philosophical axes we care about, which initially brought us into the cryptocurrency space. Meanwhile, finance is a key part of any strategy that drives these trends. Your VPN is not anonymous unless the way you pay for the VPN protects your privacy, so I appreciate that the RAILGUN project provides me a way to do this. 0xbowio is committed to expanding privacy while minimizing the ability of bad actors to benefit from such protocols, all without backdoors. Polymarket is part of finance, but not just finance. Farcaster is social, but uses financial components to combat spam; I suspect that the sustainable monetization strategy for decentralized social will involve decentralized finance (when anyone can build a client, advertising will essentially be more restricted, so you have to try other methods).Therefore, I believe the intersection between decentralized finance and other decentralized technologies will be very important. "Other decentralized technologies" is an industry that naturally will not receive $100 million in venture capital, so I think it needs high-level explicit support today, although my ideal situation is that we can find stable feedback loops to help it grow.

ChainCatcher news, Icelandic early-stage investment firm Frumtak Ventures has completed the fundraising of $84 million for its fourth fund. The Frumtak IV fund was oversubscribed and is the successor to the $57 million Frumtak III fund from 2021.A report from 2023 shows that foreign investment in Icelandic startups has tripled year-on-year. Frumtak Ventures has previously invested early in digital therapeutics pioneer Sidekick Health and pharmaceutical supply chain innovator Controlant.It is reported that Frumtak Ventures focuses on supporting entrepreneurs who solve real-world problems, primarily investing in B2B SaaS startups. The new fund will continue to seek investment opportunities at the intersection of software, AI, and deep tech, particularly in Iceland's historically strong sectors such as marine technology, logistics, healthcare, tourism, energy, climate, and gender equality.

ChainCatcher news, the Web3 industry research and analysis platform Web3 Caff Research recently released an in-depth report on DeAI. The report points out that the intersection of artificial intelligence and Web3 is attracting widespread attention. The decentralized nature of Web3 technology helps alleviate pain points in AI development, such as data shortages, algorithm breakthroughs, and computing power demands, while advancements in generative AI bring new opportunities and challenges to the Web3 ecosystem. The report further analyzes the development prospects and market potential of the DeAI track, emphasizing that Web3's empowerment of AI is mainly reflected in external influences such as incentive mechanisms, digital assetization, and the establishment of free trading markets.The report further notes that although Web3 introduces economic incentive mechanisms and attempts to establish an open trading market through data or model assetization, its actual effectiveness is limited due to the limited number of crypto users and the significant mismatch between the massive data and computing power requirements for AI model training. Additionally, the report emphasizes that while zero-knowledge proof technology helps achieve model verifiability, challenges remain significant in areas such as quantitative processing, RAM consumption, proof generation time, and responding to adversarial attacks.At the same time, the efficiency and cost issues of the combination of AI and cryptography, deep fakes in AI, and communication bottlenecks in model training also pose severe challenges to the integration of the two. However, the report optimistically envisions that with technological advancements, the intersection of AI and Web3 will continue to strengthen, finding new ways to efficiently serve the digital world through the interaction of AI Agents and smart contracts.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the crypto-focused venture capital firm Contango Digital Assets announced the successful initial fundraising of its new fund, the Contango Blockchain x AI Fund, which has raised $5 million to date, aimed at supporting companies established at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence.It is reported that the fund has allocated some of its capital to projects within the Bittensor ecosystem.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Ethereum early investment firm Cyber.Fund has committed to invest $100 million in projects that intersect blockchain technology with artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).It is reported that Cyber.Fund has also invested in Cosmos, Solana, and Polkadot.According to an email announcement on Thursday, Cyber.Fund focuses on developing a "Cybernetic economy," with blockchain as its cornerstone. The company defines Cybernetic as an interconnected automated economic framework where blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things converge around this framework.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the Cardano ecosystem member organization Intersect has announced the establishment of a funding pool of 2 million AUD (approximately 1.329 million USD) to support empowering the community and promoting active participation in Cardano development projects.The team stated, "We plan to provide 100 grants to strengthen and expand community-led decision-making in Cardano. The application window for various grant categories is now open, with this round focusing on creating strong avenues for the community to discuss Cardano Improvement Proposals."

ChainCatcher news, Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework Ventures, shared the following four predictions about the potential convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology in an interview:AI achieving "autonomy" for DAOs: Spencer believes that AI is expected to enable DAOs to truly achieve "autonomy," eliminating the need for central authority intervention and making them more decentralized.Tokenization of AI models: He predicts that in the future, AI models will be tokenized and become valuable assets, meaning that AI models can be traded and shared on the blockchain.The combination of AI and gaming: Spencer mentioned AI Arena, a decentralized application and game native to Ethereum, where players train AI models to play on their behalf. He believes this approach could change the paradigm of the gaming industry by combining on-chain ownership of AI models with gaming.Growth of decentralized computing markets: He believes that decentralized computing markets, such as Akash Network and Render Network, may play a role in the growth of AI by facilitating the sharing and trading of computing resources through blockchain technology.