Google Cloud will become the default oracle for LayerZero network, securing messages across 15 chains

LayerZero Labs, the team behind cross-chain messaging protocol LayerZero, today announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud to enhance the security of its cross-chain environment with high performance and reliable cloud infrastructure and help accelerate the future of Web3 interoperability.

Through the agreement, Google Cloud will serve as LayerZero's default oracle for securing messages on the LayerZero network. Developers building decentralized applications (dApps) on top of LayerZero will now be able to use the Google Cloud oracle to verify transactions.

LayerZero is an interoperability protocol that allows for seamless communication such as transferring data, assets, and information between blockchains without compromising security. By design, LayerZero offers developers their choice of verifiers called oracles tasked with securing a dApps cross-chain functionality. Each oracle is a distinct network that approves or vetoes cross-chain messages according to their validation logic.

Since its inception, LayerZero Labs has shown continuous growth and now processes roughly 10 million messages per month. The Google Cloud oracle will verify messaging across 15 chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, BNB, and Avalanche. This is the latest initiative undertaken by LayerZero Labs to create a secure cross-chain environment and accelerate enterprise adoption of Web3.

"Google Cloud is the perfect partner to act as the default verifier securing messaging, as they have been a leader in security for multiple decades and now bring that same quality to the core of the LayerZero protocol," said Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs. "From inception, we designed LayerZero to provide ultimate optionality for a truly decentralized architecture. With LayerZero's exponential growth to now handling more than 95% of all cross-chain messaging, Google Cloud is the perfect partner to act as the default oracle."

To ensure a seamless and unmatched user experience, LayerZero has scaled its systems to handle more than 40 billion monthly Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) calls, relying on Google Cloud's fully managed node hosting product, Blockchain Node Engine (BNE) as a core provider for its RPC connections. LayerZero currently has over 24,000 different contracts utilizing its omnichain infrastructure and has experienced over $20B bridged across its platform.

"Core to Google Cloud's Web3 strategy is to collaborate with protocols that bring unique capabilities to the community and help make it easier for developers to build and scale applications on that network," James Tromans, Head of Web3, Google Cloud. "Teaming up with LayerZero as an oracle across 15 chains will not only enhance the security of LayerZero's cross-chain messaging capabilities but further accelerate its commitment to Web3 interoperability and enterprise adoption."

Rounding out ActiveCampaign's executive leadership team, gearing up for its next stage of
growth as the leading sales and marketing automation platform for growing businesses

ActiveCampaign, a leader in marketing and customer experience automation, has appointed Joy Whinery as its CFO, marking the next chapter in the company's growth. Whinery is charged with building a world-class finance organization within ActiveCampaign.

Whinery will report directly to ActiveCampaign founder and CEO, Jason VandeBoom. She will also act as a business partner to the entire executive team in driving long term financial growth, scaling a sustainable business, streamlining operations, and driving key strategic initiatives.

"We are making deliberate moves to set up ActiveCampaign for our next stage of growth, and hiring Joy as our CFO is a critical decision," said VandeBoom. "Her deep financial and operational experience at both private and public companies, paired with a true appreciation for the power of amazing customer experiences, is exactly what we need for our next stage of growth."

Whinery brings more than two decades of financial leadership experience to ActiveCampaign. Most recently, Joy served as the CFO at PlanSource, a SaaS-based benefits administration technology company. Previously, she was CFO at 84.51°, a retail data insights and media division of the Kroger Company. She also spent 9 years at Worldpay in various senior leadership finance roles, including Business Unit CFO and VP, Corporate Finance.

"I am thrilled to be joining the customer-obsessed and growth-minded leadership team and I look forward to helping lead ActiveCampaign through its next stage of growth," said Whinery. "ActiveCampaign's depth of approachable automation capabilities and global customer base is inspiring, and I'm excited to help build upon that momentum and take the company to the next level."

ActiveCampaign has made a number of additions to its executive leadership team in the last 12 months to further scale the company. Earlier this year, the company elevated Kelly O'Connell to Chief Product Officer, and late last year, appointed Shay Howe as Chief Marketing Officer. 

Bloomreach, the platform fueling limitless e-commerce experiences, and Talon.One, an all-in-one loyalty and promotion software for enterprises, today announced they have partnered to empower marketers and elevate their personalization capabilities. This integration will add a host of new features for Bloomreach Engagement users, including the ability to build more targeted audiences, further personalize recommendations and promotions, and develop stronger loyalty features. Both Bloomreach and Talon.One are also principal members of the MACH Alliance and are committed to developing open and agile technology systems.

"We are excited to announce our partnership with Bloomreach, which strategically enhances our commitment to building enterprise value through product and partnership,” said Christopher Mills, Chief Revenue Officer, Talon.One. “This partnership brings together two market leaders in the MACH alliance to benefit both our customers and the ecosystem overall."

Talon.One is a leading global promotion and loyalty solution that is scalable without the use of coding. Through its partnership with Bloomreach, Talon.One will provide business users with a more precise way to bolster their targeting and engagement strategy, ultimately driving sales and increasing average order value. From a single dashboard, the integration combines Bloomreach’s powerful CDP and Talon.One’s Promotion Engine to help marketers power seamless and personalized experiences for their customers.

With the speed and scale of AI-optimization, Bloomreach combines customer and product data and empowers businesses to leverage an omnichannel approach to deliver seamless customer journeys. For businesses using Talon.One’s promotional capabilities or loyalty and rewards management, the integration will help them unlock a new level of growth. Through the partnership, brands will be able to integrate incentives and loyalty messaging into Bloomreach Engagement communication, and in return drive more sales and increase loyalty program uptake. Refurbed, an online marketplace for refurbished technology, recently integrated Bloomreach and Talon.One. Both solutions allow Refurbed to create highly customizable and engaging customer experiences, which contribute to both an uptick in retention and substantial business growth.

“The seamless integration of these tools has not only simplified our workflow but also enabled us to craft highly tailored and engaging customer experiences,” said Florian Pirron, CRM Manager, Refurbed. “By harnessing Bloomreach’s CDP and CEP capabilities alongside Talon.One’s versatile promotion management, we’ve been able to connect with our customers on a deeper level, driving retention and ultimately boost business growth.”

''Bloomreach is thrilled to announce our partnership with Talon.One,” said Anand Subbiah, VP, Technical Alliances & Ecosystem Platform, Bloomreach. “Talon.One is an enterprise all-in loyalty and promotion engine that will enable the creation of targeted, personalized and customized marketing promotions with Bloomreach Engagement leveraging customer data, AI, and analytics. As both are part of MACH and Google Cloud, we have a remarkable game changer within the ecosystem to help merchants across our real-time customer journeys.”

QuestN, a leading web3 marketing growth and analysis platform, has teamed up with zkMe to integrate MeID, a groundbreaking Proof-of-Personhood solution. This partnership ensures quest givers protection against bot and sybil attacks while protecting the privacy and data security of sensitive user data.

This is made possible by utilizing zkMe’s cutting-edge fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology. During the liveness verification, a faceprint describing the geometric shape of the user’s facial features is created and immediately encrypted directly on the end user device; no unencrypted private data ever leaves the user device. The FH encryption allows for likeness comparisions to be performed on the encrypted data without requiring data decryption nor direct access to special categories of protected user data. This innovative approach ensures that each user is assigned a unique decentralized identifier (DID) based on their face without compromising on decentralization, nor user privacy. Just like the solution’s motto - "One Face One DID".

Promoters and quest givers can now ensure the maximal effectiveness of any campaigns they run on QuestN, as they no longer have to worry about prizes being claimed by automated or duplicate accoutns. Meanwhile, users can maintain their anonymity while participating in community activities.

zkMe is revolutionizing identity management with this highly private Identity Oracle approach. In addition to anti-bot and anti-sybil services, zkMe offers fully compliant, end-to-end zero-knowledge-proof (ZKP) powered credentials (zkKYC, zkGeofencing) and user profiling (financial, gaming, educational, and fandom footprint) services.
Adhering to their design philosophies - Private-by-design, Secure-by-design, & Decentralized-by-design - zkMe ensures that all data managed by MeID and zkMe products remains completely private. No party, including zkMe, QuestN, or any quest creators, has ever access to the underlying private data, nor is this data stored on the user's device. MeID also provides essential tools for builders to manage incentives, voting, funding, and more in a fair and transparent manner, thereby maximizing user acceptance.

Some of the key features of MeID include:

• Airdrop eligibility verification
• Prevention of flash loan exploits from unverified users
• Fair voting based on verified entities

Best-of-breed digital commerce approach gives brands the freedom to advance commerce initiatives without replatforming

Elastic Path, the leader of the Composable Commerce movement, is unveiling Elastic Path Composable Commerce, a fully modular family of products that can work seamlessly together or independently to address digital commerce pain points and create innovative experiences. Elastic Path's unique approach enables brands to add commerce capabilities on top of their existing platform, empowering them to Unplatform™ and focus on initiatives that drive business growth instead of expensive, multi-year technology projects.

Elastic Path Composable Commerce includes:

• Product Experience Manager: empower merchandisers to create unique product experiences without waiting on custom development work
• Composer: reduce the cost, resources, and time required to orchestrate and manage a composable solution with the only commerce-intelligent integration platform-as-a-service
• CX Studio (formerly known as Unstack): accelerate composable commerce adoption and drive revenue with personalized turn-key storefronts and shoppable landing pages
• Payments: easily facilitate any method of checkout in any channel with concierge-level service, full price transparency, and no hidden fees
• Self-Managed Commerce: give your technical teams flexibility and control over data and infrastructure so they can build commerce solutions that address unique requirements

These products work seamlessly together, but are completely modular and integrate with other leading commerce solutions on the market. Elastic Path Composable Commerce is available now for organizations inspired to Unplatform. Products can be purchased individually or bundled together.

“At Pella we focus on creating intuitive buying experiences that delight our customers. We began Unplatforming by highlighting specific business challenges and solving for them, piece by piece. Elastic Path Composable Commerce gives us the flexibility and confidence to solve our challenges and take advantage of new opportunities in a modular way, so we don’t have to complete a massive rip-and-replace replatforming project,” said Rebecca Hicks, eCommerce leader at Pella. “After successfully optimizing our checkout with Elastic Path, we have been able to move on to ensuring our customers see the right product in the right context.”

Over the last three years, composable commerce has gained traction for its promise of choice, speed, and innovation. While this represents a significant advancement in digital commerce, brands still struggle with the complexity of integrating and operating a multi-vendor solution while also running mission-critical business. And despite the promise of a modular approach, many vendors that claim to offer composable solutions continue to promote large replatforming projects as the preferred option for implementations.

Brands have the freedom to design their architectures from best-in-class components – commercial or homegrown – to create solutions that meet their unique needs.

Elastic Path Composable Commerce enables the Unplatform. Whether brands want to tackle a specific initiative, or implement a comprehensive digital solution they now have the standalone products and connective tissue to embrace composable commerce on their terms, no replatform required. This approach reduces apprehension around change and allows commerce teams to continuously deliver on big ideas and focused growth initiatives at a speed in line with, or even ahead of, changing consumer behavior and market dynamics.

“At Elastic Path, our goal is to reduce the struggle for brands to keep up with buyers’ relentless shifts in expectations for digital commerce experiences, made nearly impossible using commerce platforms,” said Jamus Driscoll, CEO at Elastic Path. “The time has come for brands to break free from the confines of rigid commerce platforms by embracing the Unplatform to gain complete flexibility to design and launch differentiated experiences across every route to market, without the need for a long and complex replatforming.”

Vivid Seats Inc. a leading marketplace that utilizes its technology platform to connect millions of buyers with thousands of ticket sellers across hundreds of thousands of events each year, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of WD Holdings Co., Ltd. (“Wavedash”) in an all-cash transaction. Wavedash is an online secondary ticket marketplace in Japan with a market-leading position and accretive Adjusted EBITDA margins.

“Today marks the beginning of a thrilling international journey for Vivid Seats,” said Stan Chia, Vivid Seats CEO. “International markets collectively represent a compelling growth opportunity as concerts grow in popularity worldwide and as international secondary ticketing continues to develop. We are excited to leverage learnings from Wavedash as we contemplate additional opportunities to drive profitable growth in the long-term.”

The effect of approximately four months of contribution from Wavedash was contemplated in Vivid Seats’ financial guidance provided on August 8. Wavedash will be included within the Marketplace segment.