April 18: Safe, a provider of blockchain smart accounts, has "welcomed the senior leadership team of Multis to the Safe Ecosystem Foundation and completed the strategic acquisition of the Multis source code," according to the team: "Thibaut Sahaghian, former CEO of Multis, will take on the role of network abstraction lead within the Safe ecosystem. Together, the Safe and former Multis team will collaborate to solve the complexities of cross-chain interaction through network abstraction, with the goal of enabling users to manage assets across diverse blockchain networks effortlessly." Multis offers a crypto business wallet, according to its website.

Ordz Games Says 'BitBoy One' Sold Out First 1K Units in 2 Minutes

April 18: Ordz Games said its new GameFi-meets-DePIN handheld device, "BitBoy One," sold out its first 1,000 units in two minutes during a public sale, after launching in Paris, Hong Kong and Dubai. The device was featured in Protocol Village on April 7.

ARPA's On-Chain Random Number Generator, Randcast, Launches on Lattice's Redstone Testnet

April 18: ARPA Network, a secure computation network for blockchain-adapted cryptography, said its Randcast, an on-chain verifiable random number generator, has launched on the testnet for Redstone, an optimistic rollup layer-2 framework crafted by the Ethereum-focused engineering company Lattice, built on the OP Stack, according to the team: "The integration of Randcast with Redstone pushes more seamless and enriched on-chain gaming experiences. Together, this streamlines the developer experience for those crafting ambitious applications, games and worlds. Randcast’s dev-friendly Smart Contract SDK allows for the effortless integration of randomness, so with the Redstone integration it pushes the limits of what is possible to build on the EVM."

Nym Joins Liquid Federation to Scale Bitcoin L2 Ecosystem, Deepen Partnership With Blockstream

April 18: Nym Technologies, a blockchain privacy infrastructure project, has joined the Liquid Federation to help secure and scale the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem to meet global demand, according to the team: "This is the first step in a deeper partnership between Nym, the Liquid Federation and Blockstream. The next step will be the integration of Liquid on the Nym mixnet, extending Liquid’s default confidentiality to also protect the patterns of transactions in transit, and enabling strong network level privacy to Bitcoin users who are using layer-2 protocols to stack sats to save on fees and for greater confidentiality."

Nibiru Blockchain Launches $15M Program 'to Prevent a Potential Talent Drain'

April 18: Nibiru, a new blockchain backed by Tribe Capital and led by ex-Google, IBM, and JP Morgan execs, is "launching a $15M program, aiming to prevent a potential talent drain amid the crypto market recovery. The initiative, includes a $5M allocation for Asia, will offer financial incentives and funding to developers driving the adoption of a new L1. The goal is to keep talent building in the Web3 space as the industry struggles to retain skilled developers tempted by opportunities in other sectors."

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.