posted by Team XYZ on September 10, 2026
Prelude.xyz – Cloudflare customer – (United Kingdom)
TL;DR:
- Prelude.xyz is the online home of Prelude, a first-check venture fund that invests in early-stage crypto and blockchain founders.
- The firm rebranded from Cherry Crypto (Cherry.xyz) to Prelude in April 2025, adopting a name it says reflects its focus on investing before companies become obvious.
Prelude.xyz Overview
- What: Prelude.xyz is the online home of Prelude, a first-check venture fund that invests in early-stage crypto and blockchain founders. According to the website, Prelude backs teams as early as the idea stage, typically leading or co-leading rounds with checks between $500,000 and $2M.
- Why: Prelude describes its investment approach as getting involved before companies become obvious to the broader market, a philosophy reflected in its April 2025 rebrand from Cherry Crypto to Prelude.
- The firm’s announcement states it is optimistic about the “next phase” of crypto, pointing to established infrastructure, a shifting regulatory landscape, and products beginning to reach broader audiences.
- Where: According to the website, Prelude operates as a London-based team, while the firm’s Imprint lists Prelude Management GmbH as registered in Berlin, Germany.
- How: Prelude.xyz states that each fund invests in approximately 30 companies, with the firm working closely with teams from the initial check through later stages. Prelude invests in both equity and tokens across a range of verticals and business models and takes a global approach to sourcing founders.
Notable Prelude.xyz Portfolio Investments
- Anboto.xyz: Built for crypto hedge funds, OTC desks, and institutional traders, the platform offers algorithmic trade execution across more than 20 centralized and decentralized exchanges, according to its website.
- HairDAO.xyz: A network built on open-source principles, according to its website, where researchers and patients work together funding and studying potential hair loss treatments.
- Narval.xyz: A platform giving institutional custody providers a way to route wallet activity into onchain protocols, according to its documentation.
Prelude.xyz Leadership
- Patrick Mayr: PMayr.xyz, Co-founder and Partner
- Brett Sun: Co-founder and Partner; GitHub history shows prior contributions to Aragon, an Ethereum-based framework for building decentralized organizations
- Yannis Heyken: Co-founder and Operating Partner; listed as Managing Director of Prelude Management GmbH on the firm’s Imprint page
Connect with Prelude.xyz
Why .xyz is a great choice for Prelude.xyz
- .XYZ’s generic, open-ended nature suits a fund that, according to Prelude.xyz, invests across multiple verticals, business models, and asset types.
- Several of Prelude’s own portfolio companies also use .xyz domains, aligning the fund’s web presence with the broader founder community it backs.
- According to Prelude’s own announcement post, the fund operated as Cherry Crypto on Cherry.xyz before becoming an independent fund and rebranding to Prelude in 2025, carrying .xyz over into a new, short, easy-to-type domain under its new name.
More blockchain investment from the #GenXYZ community
- Blockchain-focused investor Mirana.xyz invests in blockchain and AI infrastructure projects.
- Technology investment firm Infinite.xyz supports decentralized networks and deep tech innovation, from Ethereum to Tesla.
- Early-stage venture firm GenVentures.xyz backs machine economy projects across AI, DePIN, and blockchain.
posted by Team XYZ on September 9, 2026
ButterflyEffect.xyz – Squarespace Domains customer – (United Kingdom)
Key Takeaways
- Founded by Elfried Samba (CEO) and Michael Heaven (Co-Founder/Managing Director), both with prior leadership roles at established agencies (Gymshark, Offbeat, SocialChain)
- Client roster includes McDonald’s, Netflix, Square, and Bumble
- Square’s content strategy with the agency continued for more than nine months after launch
- Backed by venture company Ioconic, which invested under $1M in the agency in exchange for services
About the Team
- Elfried Samba: CEO of Butterfly Effect; also founder of House of Samba; previously Chief Community Officer at Ioconic and Global Head of Social Content at Gymshark
- Michael Heaven: Co-Founder and Managing Director; previously General Manager and Media Director at Offbeat, managing communities reaching 200M+ users; founding partner at SocialChain, helping lead its US launch
Creative agencies use .xyz domains to develop their online hubs and showcase their portfolios. Global production company TwentyfourSeven.xyz supports creative campaigns for brands including Oakley Meta, Adidas, and Squarespace. Production studio FutureFrank.xyz creates media for Nike and Weight Watchers. Web3 marketing agency Distractive.xyz brings crypto-native strategy to blockchain brands. In this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, we’ll introduce you to a London-based influencer and community marketing agency working with brands across the United Kingdom and North America: ButterflyEffect.xyz.
ButterflyEffect.xyz: A community-first marketing agency
ButterflyEffect.xyz is the online home of Butterfly Effect, an influencer and community marketing agency working with brands across the United Kingdom and North America. According to the website, the agency describes its mission as building “brands people belong to, not just buy from.”
Building brand communities through the CDMI framework
According to the Mission page, Butterfly Effect organizes its work around an operating framework it calls CDMI, short for Community Strategy, Distribution, Media, and Intelligence. The website describes the four areas as follows:
- Community Strategy: Brand and community relationship-building, described on the website as the foundation of how a brand earns trust and participation from its audience.
- Distribution: Reaching audiences on the platforms and in the moments where their attention already exists.
- Media: Content production, with the website describing an approach where every client operates like a media company to keep audiences engaged over time.
- Intelligence: Measurement across each stage of the brand-community relationship, tracking movement toward what the website calls belonging.
Exploring ButterflyEffect.xyz: From Square to Netflix and Bumble
Visitors to the Work page can find case studies organized by category, including Influencer, Creative, Social, and Strategy. Client work featured on the website includes McDonald’s, for whom the agency built a campaign called “The Crispy Chicken Sandwich,” and streaming service Netflix, for which the agency built a social campaign supporting the final season of the show “Top Boy.” The agency also worked with payments company Square, and developed an ongoing content strategy pairing the brand’s point-of-sale product with creators in the food and beverage, beauty, and retail spaces. According to the website, Square continued that strategy for more than nine months following its initial rollout.
One of the agency’s case studies, titled “You Don’t Know Me… Yet,” covers a campaign the agency built for dating app Bumble. According to marketing publication Prolific North, the agency built the campaign after research showed 53% of Black people in the United Kingdom felt absent from depictions of romance online. Bumble’s campaign aimed to close this gap, particularly for Black women. The resulting video features women speaking candidly about the dating stereotypes they’ve run into online.1
Butterfly Effect’s founders: Elfried Samba and Michael Heaven
Elfried Samba and Michael Heaven co-founded Butterfly Effect. Elfried serves as CEO, and also founded House of Samba, a platform for speaking and creator partnerships separate from Butterfly Effect.2 Before Butterfly Effect, Elfried served as Chief Community Officer at venture company Ioconic, which invested under $1M in Butterfly Effect in exchange for services, according to Prolific North.3 Earlier in his career, Elfried was Global Head of Social Content at fitness apparel brand Gymshark, following earlier roles there as Head of Digital Community, Digital Community Manager, Social Media Manager, and Social Media Executive, according to the Experience section of his LinkedIn profile.4
Michael Heaven serves as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Butterfly Effect. Before Butterfly Effect, Michael was General Manager, and previously Media Director, at social media company Offbeat Media Group, where his teams oversaw social media communities with a combined audience topping 200 million people, according to the Experience section of his LinkedIn profile. Earlier in his career, Michael was a founding partner at social-first creative agency Social Chain, where he helped lead the agency’s expansion into the U.S. market, according to the Experience section of his LinkedIn profile.5
The evolution to ButterflyEffect.xyz
Butterfly Effect upgraded its domain from butterfly3ffect.io to the friendlier ButterflyEffect.xyz. The move gives the company a domain that is easier to remember, share, and type. Butterfly Effect works across community strategy, content, and measurement for brands including McDonald’s and Square, with a stated focus on building brand communities that extend beyond a single campaign. .XYZ is an open, generic domain ending that works across industries, and it has become widely used by creators, agencies, and technology-focused businesses building an online presence. That makes it a bold choice for an agency working across community strategy, content, and creator partnerships for brands spanning multiple industries. We look forward to seeing how Butterfly Effect continues to grow its client roster and community-focused approach. You can learn more by following the agency on LinkedIn @butterflyeffectxyz and Instagram @butterflyeffect.xyz, and by visiting ButterflyEffect.xyz.
1. https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/feature/why-the-time-is-right-for-2m-creative-agency-butterfly-3ffect-to-take-flight/
2. https://www.houseofsamba.io/
3. https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/feature/why-the-time-is-right-for-2m-creative-agency-butterfly-3ffect-to-take-flight/
4. https://uk.linkedin.com/in/elfriedsamba
5. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mheaven/
posted by Team XYZ on September 8, 2026
GrowGood.Beauty – GoDaddy customer – (United States)
TL;DR:
- GrowGood.Beauty is the online home of Grow-Good, a haircare brand founded by Grammy-winning artist Cardi B, born Belcalis Almánzar.
- According to WWD, the brand launched its debut collection on April 15, 2026, developed in partnership with Revolve Group as part of a multicategory venture announced in 2025.
GrowGood.Beauty Overview
- What: Grow-Good is a haircare line developed around ingredients and remedies drawn from Cardi B’s Dominican family background and her own hair-repair routine.
- Debut collection: Six products at launch, including Wash Cycle and Wash Cycle+ Repair Shampoo, Soft Serve and Soft Serve+ Repair Conditioner, the Get Rich Hydrating Mask, and the Everything Serum.
- When: According to WWD, the brand launched its debut collection on April 15, 2026, developed in partnership with Revolve Group as part of a multicategory venture announced in 2025.
- How: The line is built around Fibrelace, a complex the website states is designed to seal and smooth the hair cuticle, support internal bond strength, and reduce breakage over time.
- Growth: The debut collection sold out within 45 minutes of going live. Subsequent restocks have also sold out quickly, with the hair mask and serum reportedly selling out in as little as 8 to 10 minutes.
Company Leadership and Partnership
- Cardi B: Founder; Grammy-winning recording artist
- Jenny Baxter Moser: CEO since March 2026; previously Managing Director at TSG Consumer Partners for 16 years, where she invested in and served on the boards of consumer brands including e.l.f. Beauty, PAIGE, Backcountry, and REVOLVE.
- Partnership: Developed with Revolve Group; WWD reports the venture also involves Revolve co-founders and co-CEOs Michael Mente and Mike Karanikolas, chief brand officer Raissa Gerona, Cardi’s manager Patience Foster, stylist Kollin Carter, and Walker Drawas co-founders Jennifer Walker and Adam Drawas.
Connect with GrowGood.Beauty
Why .Beauty is a great choice for GrowGood.Beauty
- .Beauty immediately signals the website’s product category, pairing a descriptive domain extension with a brand name centered on a hair-care routine.
- The availability of .Beauty domains made it possible for Grow Good to secure GrowGood.Beauty, pairing the brand name directly with a beauty-focused domain extension.
- The company has also registered GrowGood.Hair, which redirects to GrowGood.Beauty. Securing the closely related .Hair domain alongside the .Beauty domain helps the brand capture visitors who search or guess using either extension, while keeping a single, consistent destination for the business.
More .Beauty from the #XYZCommunity
- Award-winning beauty-tech brand Celf.Beauty transforms Oral-B toothbrushes into at-home skincare tools
- Charlis.Beauty is the online home of CHARLÍS, a skincare brand offering products with a focus on ingredient transparency, faith-based values, and U.S. production.
- Fiera.Beauty is a cosmetics brand centered on confident aging and skin-first beauty. Its products are formulated with input from women across life stages, focusing on makeup and skincare designed to support natural radiance at any age.
posted by Team XYZ on September 7, 2026
FD.xyz – GoDaddy customer – (United States)
TL;DR:
- FD.xyz is the online home of Finance District, a stablecoin payment platform designed to let AI agents hold, send, swap, and earn on behalf of the people they serve.
- First Digital, the company behind the FDUSD stablecoin, built Finance District and launched the ecosystem in December 2025.
FD.xyz Overview
- What: FD.xyz is the online home of Finance District, described on the website as financial infrastructure designed to serve both individuals and the AI agents acting on their behalf.
- Why: Finance District was launched to address a payment challenge for AI agents: giving them the infrastructure to make and receive payments autonomously on behalf of the people and applications they serve.
- When: First Digital, the company behind the FDUSD stablecoin, launched Finance District in December 2025.
- How: According to FD.xyz, Finance District groups its offerings into six connected products:
- Agent Wallet: A non-custodial wallet designed to give AI agents their own credentials, with private keys secured in a hardware-based trusted execution environment, per the website.
- Prism: A payment gateway that settles AI shopping agents’ purchases in stablecoins with immediate finality, according to the website, and supports commerce protocols including ACP, UCP, and x402 through a single integration.
- AI Assistant: The website describes AI Assistant as a conversational tool that carries out requests such as sending money, swapping assets, or scheduling payments based on plain-language input, and breaks each action down step by step so a user can see what happened.
- District Pass: The website describes District Pass as a single sign-on layer for the ecosystem: a person authenticates once, and the agents transacting on their behalf carry a verifiable link back to that person, building a track record over time.
- FDFI: Designed to function as the ecosystem’s governance and utility token, providing holders with a way to vote on and stake toward decisions about the platform’s direction.
- Keychain: The website describes Keychain as a security layer for managing agent keys, letting developers approve individual transactions, limit what each agent can do, and cut off an agent’s access without reissuing the user’s own keys.
Leadership
- Vincent Chok: Founder and CEO of First Digital; also CEO of Legacy Trust Company and previously managing director of Sprint Capital Limited
- Janno Järv: CTO of First Digital since 2023; also founder of IT consulting company Welton OÜ and previously CTO of Foxway Recommerce
Connect with FD.xyz
Why .xyz is a great choice for FD.xyz
- FD.xyz is a premium domain: Short, direct, easy to remember, type, and say, which can make it easy for people to find the platform on the first try, especially on mobile.
- As a generic domain ending, .xyz helps Finance District build its online identity around the FD name while supporting its work across AI, stablecoins, payments, and other areas as the platform evolves.
- .XYZ is the go-to domain ending for the next generation of internet users, with startups and technology platforms across AI, blockchain, quantum computing, and other emerging fields using the extension for their online identities.
More AI innovation from the #GenXYZ community
- AI-powered wallet platform Talisman.xyz expands into DeFAI with AI agents, market intelligence, and automated trading tools
- Open-source hardware company Foundation.xyz builds dedicated devices for Bitcoin, identity, and AI agent authorization
- Fortune-featured Icebreaker.xyz introduces a trust-based professional network for AI-driven environments
posted by Team XYZ on September 3, 2026
Panoptic.xyz – Cloudflare customer – (United States)
TL;DR:
- Panoptic.xyz is the online home of Panoptic, a decentralized finance protocol built on top of Uniswap liquidity that facilitates the trading of perpetual options.
Panoptic.xyz Overview
- What: Panoptic.xyz is the online home of Panoptic, a protocol offering perpetual options trading, described on the website as oracle-free and built on Uniswap liquidity.
- Why: Panoptic is designed to give users more ways to put deposited assets to work, including through options strategies, lending, and market making.
- How: Panoptic uses Uniswap liquidity positions as the underlying building blocks for perpetual options, with the protocol’s smart contracts handling options positions, collateral, and streaming premia, small payments made between option buyers and sellers over time.
- Audits: Panoptic’s smart contracts have undergone audits from three separate smart contract security firms, Code4rena, Nethermind, and Obsidian. Multiple independent audits are one way DeFi protocols try to catch vulnerabilities in their code before they can be exploited.
Updates
- Panoptic V2, released in June 2026, restructured the protocol around vault-based deposits, adding lending and borrowing markets alongside portfolio-aware margin for options positions.
- Panoptic reports that V2 launched with two vaults, a Volatility Harvesting Vault, which trades market-neutral strategies designed to generate yield from price volatility rather than directional bets, and a Panoptic Liquidity Provider (PLP) Vault, which deposits WETH into lending markets and market-making activity. Both vaults are managed by Panoptic with no performance fees.
Venture Funding
- Seed round: Panoptic raised $4.5M in December 2022, backed by gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Uniswap Labs Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Jane Street, and Avalanche Foundation’s Blizzard fund.
- Seed round II: Panoptic raised an additional $7M in November 2023, backed by Greenfield Capital, with participation from HashKey, gumi Cryptos Capital, L1D, Heartcore Capital, Comma3, and Zee Prime Capital, bringing the company’s total raise to $11.5M.
Panoptic.xyz Leadership
- Guillaume Lambert: Co-founder and CEO; previously an assistant professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell University.
- Jesper Kristensen: Co-founder; served as Chief Operating Officer through December 2023; previously Head of Research at Advanced Blockchain AG.
Connect with Panoptic.xyz
Why .xyz is a great choice for Panoptic.xyz
- .XYZ’s open, generic nature gives Panoptic the flexibility to expand its decentralized finance offerings as the protocol evolves.
- Panoptic.xyz pairs the protocol’s name with a memorable domain extension, reinforcing the Panoptic brand across its online presence.
- .XYZ aligns naturally with Panoptic’s focus on blockchain technology and DeFi, providing a fitting online home for its Uniswap-based protocol.
More DeFi innovation from the #GenXYZ community
- Woman-led financial platform AvalonFinance.xyz develops Bitcoin-backed lending and stablecoin solutions
- Solana-based protocol Squads.xyz develops multisig, treasury, and payments tools for the stablecoin economy
- Yield optimization protocol YO.xyz, by former Uber leaders, tracks risk-adjusted returns across DeFi platforms and chains
