1 big thing: Adobe is buying online design startup Figma for $20 billion in cash and stock, a significant jump from its $10 billion valuation in August last year. This is the largest acquisition of a private software firm.

• Figma is expected to add approximately $200 million in net new ARR (annual run rate) this year, surpassing $400 million in total ARR exiting 2022.

In today's newsletter:

• Byju's tryst with deadlines
• Ethereum goes green
• GenZ seeks more than love

Before we start, here’s some heartbreaking news for tennis fans: 20-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer has announced his retirement after next week’s Laver Cup. Do read his heartwarming farewell note.

Byju tends to push through deadlines.

First, the filing of the audited financials was 15 months late. Now, time is running out to complete the billion-dollar acquisition of Aakash.

Byju’s has about eight days left to pay Blackstone nearly Rs 2,000 crore ($250 million) for its $950 million Aakash Educational Services deal, according to the company’s official financial report accessed by us.

• The first payment deadline was in June, when Byju's requested an extension due to a regulatory hurdle on pricing.
• If Byju’s fails to complete the payment by September 23, the company will have to seek an extension from the RBI for closing the transaction.
• After the payment on September 23, it must make a further payment of Rs 2,000 crore once the merger has received all required regulatory clearances.

Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms, had refused to sign off on the company's financials due to certain revenue recognition practises.

After thousands of extra work hours were spent plugging those holes, the auditor made some pointed remarkswhile signing off on the edtech company's financials.

• Deloitte stated that it discovered 'material weaknesses' in the company's internal controls. For context, the $22 billion company has been without a CFO since December 2021.

According to Byju's, the auditor pushed out 40 percent of its revenue to subsequent years. It effectively resulted in a 67 percent drop in revenue in FY21. But why was that done?

• Firstly, the auditor noted that revenue in the subscription business model can only be recognised after the service is delivered.
  
  
• The second issue is more complicated. When customers take out loans from Byju's financing partners to pay for its courses and study materials, the company acts as a guarantor. When a customer falls behind on their payments, the company is obligated to make the loan payments.

It’s a new era for the world’s second-largest blockchain, something which has been in the works for years.

The blockchain network of Ethereum has undergone a significant upgrade, making it the most ambitious software upgrade in the cryptocurrency space to date.

• The upgrade, known as the Merge, was finished early on Thursday.

The "Merge" modifies how Ethereum handles transactions and generates new ether tokens. The Ethereum blockchain was combined with a new separate blockchain. The new "proof-of-stake" system reduces the Ethereum blockchain's energy consumption by 99.9%.

In order to validate new transactions, add them to the blockchain, and produce new tokens, cryptocurrencies primarily use "proof of work" and "proof of stake."

Mining is used by proof of work, a concept that Bitcoin invented first. To accomplish the same goals, proof of stake, which is used by Cardano, the ETH2 blockchain, and other systems, uses staking.

Experts estimate that PoS can save up to 99 percent of the energy used in mining when compared to Bitcoin.

• Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and creator of Ethereum, said that with PoS, he aims to reduce the amount of energy required by 99.95%. Reduced energy consumption will allow institutional investors to trade more.

However, some concerns remain. One of them being that control of the Ethereum blockchain network will eventually fall into the hands of a few validators with larger holdings. This calls into question the truly decentralised nature of cryptocurrency transactions.

After the Ethereum blockchain completed the upgrade, Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool provider in the world based on processing power, shut down its servers for miners, significantly lowering the energy consumption of the network. Ethermine will automatically reimburse its miners for any unpaid balances a few days following the Merge.

Did you know several youngsters are now using dating apps to make friends? Yes, that’s right!

Dating apps like Bumble, QuackQuack, and TrulyMadly are now going beyond their original purpose, helping new people meet.

For example, 23-year-old Sanjana Rao, who works remotely for a US firm, has been working from home since she joined, and has no way to make friends other than joining a hobby class or via these dating apps.

The pandemic prompted many such changes on dating and matrimonial apps. For many, adjusting to work from home infrastructure and fewer outdoor activities was challenging, which increased dependence on these apps.

Due to these activities, the time spent by users on these apps have shot up, with video and audio calls becoming a regular thing. More importantly, these apps are seeing a lot of new users who got comfortable with such apps, with first-time users joining from places such as Jammu, Shillong, Imphal.

• QuackQuack added 12 million users in the last two years, while the app added only 8 million over the last ten years.

At the same time, matrimonial apps are competing to stay relevant and are now devising ways to cater to the younger generations, from video and voice calls to personalisation.

Just in case you’re single and you think one would judge you for using a dating app, think twice..you may be missing out on a lot of fun!

Read the story

• Ownera, a startup creating the framework to link the tokenized asset networks of traditional finance, has raised $20 millionin a Series A fundraising round from investors including banking behemoth JPMorgan and private asset management company LRC Group. JPMorgan Chase was one of the first of the major banks to invest in digital assets last year, despite the fact that its chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon had previously been a vocal critic of bitcoins.
  
  
• In an interesting turn of events, Coinbase is turning political. The crypto exchange has added new features to help users evaluate lawmakers, register to vote and find political events on the mobile app.
  
  
• The European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation is likely to be adopted across the world as the standard for regulatory oversight, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao said yesterday.

“I was in Forbes magazine listed as a billionaire, which really, really pissed me off…I don’t have $1 billion in the bank. I don’t drive Lexuses”

This was Yvon Chouinard, the founder of outdoor apparel maker Patagonia, on what triggered the ownership transfer of the $3 billion company to a nonprofit. This is one of the rare instances where a billionaire is giving away his fortunes in order to save the planet.

• The Forbes ranking, and then the Covid-19 pandemic, helped set in motion a process that would unfold over the past two years.

Chouinard is transferring the company to a newly established trust and nonprofit to ensure that its profits go toward combating the climate crisis.

“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” he says.

The brand's website now states: "Earth is now our only shareholder."