What's Possible: 18th September, 2021

We hope you enjoy this week's hand-picked selection of important and interesting stories from the frontiers of tech.

Global early-stage fund rebrands with bold initiative

Technological progress has been the catalyst for improving our lives and our planet. Consider the advances in artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and quantum computing. Or emerging paradigms like the metaverse and the creator economy.

We're unabashed optimists when it comes to the power of technology to solve problems. And we plan to invest our time and capital to help make these tech innovations a reality.

Immutable raises $60M for its carbon-conscious NFT platform

“The biggest thing we’re looking to build is a set of tools that mainstream developers can use to build NFT games without ever having to worry about blockchain.”

The tools include ways to enable credit card purchases, anti-money laundering services, know-your-customer regulatory compliance, and more when it comes to implementing NFTs in games.

NASA picks SpaceX's Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon

In 2020, NASA awarded contracts to three commercial teams — SpaceX, Dynetics and Blue Origin — for the agency's Human Landing System (HLS) program. They asked each of these companies to develop an innovative landing system to be used under the Artemis program to ferry astronauts down to the lunar surface.

On Friday (April 16), NASA announced that SpaceX's Starship had beat out the other two competitors, winning the $2.9 billion contract to build the Artemis lunar lander.

Three ways Singapore is designing urban farms to create food security

Singapore, a city-sized country that aims to produce 30% of its own food by 2030. But with 90% of Singapore’s food coming from abroad, the challenge is a tall order. The plan calls for everyone in the city to grow what they can, with government grants going to those who can use technology to yield greater amounts.

In response to climate change, citizens in advanced economies are willing to alter how they live and work

Conducted this past spring, before the summer season ushered in new wildfires, droughts, floods and stronger-than-usual storms, the study reveals a growing sense of personal threat from climate change among many of the publics polled.

OpenSea admits incident as top exec is accused of trading NFTs on insider information

A top executive at NFT platform OpenSea was accused of front-running sales on the platform, purchasing pieces from NFT collections before they were featured on the homepage of the platform. According to Twitter user @ZuwuTV, the startup’s Head of Product was using secret crypto wallets to buy drops before they listed on the main page of OpenSea, selling them shortly after they were highlighted publicly by OpenSea, and funneling the profits back to his main account.

Alphabet’s laser-Internet system has sent 700TB of data with 99.9% uptime

Google's parent company, Alphabet, is still experimenting with hooking up remote towns to the Internet via frickin' laser beams. Today, Alphabet's moonshot "X Lab" shared an update on Project Taara, its experimental point-to-point optical communication system, often described as "fiber optics without the fiber."

The beguiling promise of decentralised finance

Digital libertarians would prefer that DeFi remain autonomous—imperfect but pure. Yet to succeed it must integrate with the conventional financial and legal systems, as Gary Gensler, a crypto-expert who is America’s financial watchdog, has outlined.

Biology Starts to Get a Technological Makeover

Proponents of synthetic biology say the field could reprogram biology to increase food production, fight disease, generate energy and purify water. The realization of that potential lies decades in the future, if at all. But it is no longer the stuff of pure science fiction because of advances in recent years in biology, computing, automation and artificial intelligence.

Solana's Market Value Plunges $20 Billion After Outage

Though it's been one of the year's fastest-appreciating cryptocurrencies, Solana's sol token has given up much of its massive gains this week, plunging more than 35% from last week’s record high following a network outage that some experts believe could bolster the case for more-established platforms like Ethereum.

The Stock Market Fails a Breathalyzer

Joby Aviation, which plans to begin an electric air taxi service in 2024, is worth more than Lufthansa , EasyJet or JetBlue . Does that seem right? In this market, why not? Heck, earlier this year, Tesla was worth more than the next nine car manufacturers combined, though now only the next six. Beyond Meat, made with pea protein, is worth more than the entire market for peas eaten globally

Interesting adjacencies

• Ben Evans: Ads, privacy and confusion (link)
• Mark Suster: The changing venture landscape (link)
• Tyler Cowen: Gaming will change humanity (link)

‍

‍