Highlights of This Issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 17 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (1.27-2.2); the total funding exceeded $236 million, significantly decreasing compared to the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 4 financing events, among which Elastos announced a $20 million financing to expand the Bitcoin DeFi protocol BeL2;
- Web3 Games reported 2 financing events, with Web3 game studio Pixion Games completing a $12.4 million financing led by Delphi Ventures;
- AI+Web3 saw 2 financing events, with AI Web3 company Bluwhale completing a $100 million financing, with participation from Cointelegraph, SwissBorg, and others;
- Infrastructure & Tools reported 7 financing events, including Web3 domain infrastructure company D3 Global announcing a $25 million Series A financing led by Paradigm;
- Other categories reported 1 financing event, with crypto accounting platform Cryptio completing a $15 million Series A extension financing led by Alven;
- Centralized Finance announced 1 financing event, with payment company Cedar Money completing a $9.9 million seed round financing led by QED Investors.
DeFi
Elastos announces $20 million financing to expand Bitcoin DeFi protocol BeL2
Decentralized infrastructure provider Elastos has raised $20 million from private investment firm Rollman Management to expand its Bitcoin DeFi protocol BeL2 and promote its merged mining token ELA as a Bitcoin reserve asset. BeL2 allows Bitcoin holders to collateralize BTC and access Ethereum smart contract services, such as stablecoin minting and peer-to-peer lending. Elastos aims to leverage Bitcoin's nearly $2 trillion market cap to introduce richer DeFi applications to the BTC ecosystem, enhancing liquidity and security while addressing the shortcomings of Bitcoin's DeFi usability.
Decentralized liquidity re-staking protocol Inception announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round financing, with participation from London Real Ventures, Gallet Capital, Metazero Capital, Kinetic Kollective, Zephyrus Capital, DSRV, Dewhales, Connectico Capital, Unreal Capital, Absoluta Digital, and others. The new funds are intended to support the construction of a modular risk management framework, allowing users to choose reward-generating assets to maximize point rewards and liquidity staking token (LST) utility.
Bitcoin re-staking network Pell Network announced on platform X the completion of a $3.5 million strategic round financing, with participation from D11-Labs, Web3Port Foundation, ArkStream Capital, Taisu Ventures, Core Ventures, GoPlus Security, Astrarizon Ventures, and Multiversᕽ. The new funds are intended to support the construction of an AI-driven decentralized finance (DeFAI) full-chain infrastructure to address the complex cross-chain operations, data acquisition and verification difficulties, and multi-chain interaction security issues faced by current AI agents.
DeFi staking service provider Amerany completes $2 million Series A financing
DeFi staking service provider Amerany announced the completion of a $2 million Series A financing, with investor information not yet disclosed. The new funds are intended for infrastructure upgrades to its multi-chain staking platform, which currently supports over 10 blockchains, including Ethereum (ETH), Aptos (APT), and Optimism (OP). It is reported that Amerany has also launched a bug bounty program with a scale of $100,000.
Web3 Games
Web3 game studio Pixion Games completes $12.4 million financing, led by Delphi Ventures
Web3 game studio Pixion Games announced the completion of $12.4 million financing, led by Delphi Ventures, with participation from Spartan Capital, Sky Mavis, L1D, Arete Capital, Animoca Brands, YGG, and others. The new funds are intended to create a seamless, mobile-first Web3 gaming experience.
Little Umbrella completes $2 million seed round financing, with participation from Workplay Ventures and others
AI social gaming platform Little Umbrella completed $2 million in seed round financing, with participation from a16z SPEEDRUN, Workplay Ventures, Ubiquoss Investment, Disrupt.com, Breakpoint Ventures, GFR Fund, Virtual Reality Fund (VRF), and others. The game "Death by AI" launched by Little Umbrella supports cross-platform participation on Discord, web, and iOS. The new funds are intended to expand its online operations and accelerate the launch of its cross-platform social gaming suite Playroom.
AI
Cipher Mining receives $50 million investment from SoftBank to expand AI data center business
Cipher Mining has received a $50 million investment from SoftBank, which will purchase approximately 10.4 million shares of the Bitcoin miner's common stock. This financing was conducted through a public equity investment, and the funds will be used to support the construction of Cipher's high-performance computing (HPC) and AI data center infrastructure. Cipher has signed a one-month exclusivity agreement with SoftBank, ensuring that SoftBank cannot sell its 300-megawatt mining facility in Barber Lake, Texas, or enter into agreements with other parties during this period. Cipher CEO Tyler Page stated, "SoftBank's entry as a significant investor marks an important moment for Cipher's growth." Analysts view SoftBank's investment as a signal of Bitcoin miners diversifying into the AI sector. Cipher's mining facility is the world's tenth-largest publicly listed Bitcoin miner, with a market value of $1.6 billion, and is seeking to diversify its business to mitigate risks from Bitcoin market volatility.
Silicon Valley-based AI Web3 startup Bluwhale announced the completion of a total of $100 million in financing, with sources including $7 million in venture capital, $85 million in token purchase commitments, and $8 million in node sales and grant revenues. Investors include numerous institutions such as Cointelegraph, SwissBorg, Awaken Finance, DWF Labs, as well as support from Arbitrum and Movement Labs.
It is reported that Bluwhale was co-founded by machine learning experts from Stanford and Berkeley, as well as former TikTok AI team members, and is dedicated to empowering users to achieve data ownership and privacy protection through blockchain technology. The company plans to use the funds to expand its Web3 smart layer across multiple L1 and L2 blockchains. Bluwhale is also collaborating with Caldera to build Oceanum, an L3 layer based on zk-rollup, aimed at optimizing the privacy, speed, and cost efficiency of AI applications, initially deploying on Arbitrum. Additionally, Bluwhale's technology allows users to run verification and data nodes on mobile devices, providing storage and computing resources for the AI layer while earning economic returns through contributions.
Infrastructure & Tools
Web3 domain infrastructure D3 Global completes $25 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm
Web3 domain infrastructure company D3 Global announced the completion of $25 million in Series A financing, led by Paradigm. Other investors include Coinbase Ventures, Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah, and Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall. D3 Global is dedicated to transforming domain names into tokenized real assets and developing financial application tools based on domain lending, decentralized ownership, and digital identity. The company plans to use this round of financing to launch the decentralized network Doma Protocol, which aims to connect traditional Web2 domains (such as .com and .net) with Web3 domains (such as .shib and .ape) to achieve cross-domain interoperability.
ZKP infrastructure startup Irreducible (formerly Ulvetanna) has completed a $24 million Series A financing, co-led by Paradigm and Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, L2 Iterative Ventures, and Robot Ventures. It is reported that Irreducible began fundraising last August, confirmed its lead investors in September, and completed the financing last month. The latest Series A financing structure is equity financing, but the company's co-founder and CEO Radisav Cojbasic declined to comment on the post-investment valuation.
Identity verification blockchain company Humanity Protocol announced on Monday that it has raised $20 million in a financing round co-led by Pantera Capital and Jump Crypto, bringing the company's fully diluted valuation to $1.1 billion.
The company is building a system that will use palm scanning to verify whether online accounts belong to real users. The company plans to use the funds to launch its product more widely in the coming months. Humanity Protocol is also set to launch its own cryptocurrency token, with founder Terence Kwok stating, "Final preparations are underway to ensure a smooth launch."
Yzi Labs announces $16 million investment in token distribution infrastructure Sign
Yzi Labs announced a $16 million investment in Sign, an on-chain infrastructure for token distribution and credential verification. It is reported that Sign is aggregating verified credentials on-chain to build a larger network, thereby creating a more transparent and secure token distribution infrastructure.
Layer 1 network developer Pod completes $10 million seed round financing, led by a16z CSX and 1kx
Layer 1 network developer Pod announced the completion of a $10 million seed round financing, planning to build a "no-consensus" Layer 1 network with transaction speeds comparable to Google's search response time. This round of financing was led by a16z CSX and 1kx, with participation from Flashbots, Blockchain Builders Fund, Protagonist, and several angel investors from Celestia, Babylon, and Axelar. Pod expects to launch a developer network (devnet) in the coming weeks, with a testnet scheduled for Q3 2025 and a mainnet planned for Q1 2026. It has not yet been decided whether to launch a token simultaneously. Pod's core team consists of five members and is supported by the technical team from Common Prefix.
It is reported that Pod was incubated by blockchain consulting firm Common Prefix, aiming to address the latency issues caused by reliance on consensus mechanisms in traditional blockchains. Pod employs a "streaming" transaction design, sending transactions directly to validation nodes for signing and timestamp processing without waiting for block generation, achieving a transaction confirmation speed of about 200 milliseconds. Pod has also launched the EVMx framework, allowing developers to continue using the Solidity language, reducing migration costs. Pod plans to support decentralized applications in areas such as gaming, social networks, stablecoin payments, and decentralized exchanges, but adjustments will be needed for DeFi applications that strictly rely on transaction order to fit its network design.
Blockchain interoperability protocol Analog completed a $5 million financing at a $300 million valuation before its token issuance, with participation from Gate Ventures, BackerDAO, Foresight Ventures, the venture capital arm of film production company Black Label Media, and angel investors including Sam Kazemian, founder of Frax Finance, and three co-founders of Black Label Media, Molly Smith, and twin brothers Thad and Trent Luckinbill.
MEV execution platform Mevvy completes $2.8 million seed round financing, led by Multicoin Capital
MEV execution platform Mevvy announced the completion of a $2.8 million seed round financing, led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Chapter One Ventures, Hypersphere, and several strategic angel investors. Investors include Nathan Allman, founder of Ondo, TN Lee, founder of Pendle, Guy Young, founder of Ethena, Georgios Vlachos, founder of Axelar, and Jeffrey Feng and Jay Jog from Sei Network. Mevvy aims to simplify the technical complexities in blockchain transaction ordering and execution, making MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) easier for traders to use. Its platform supports Ethereum, Sui, and Sei, providing an integrated development environment (IDE) for pre-loaded open-source strategies, helping traders focus on optimizing strategies such as arbitrage, backrunning, and liquidation without maintaining complex infrastructure.
Others
Accounting/Tax:
Crypto accounting platform Cryptio completes $15 million Series A extension financing, led by Alven
Crypto accounting platform Cryptio has completed a $15 million Series A extension financing, led by Alven, with participation from 1kx and Ledger Cathay Capital. Cryptio aims to provide backend operations and infrastructure for traditional financial (TradFI) entities, enabling them to offer digital asset products such as StableCoins, Crypto Basket Based Loans, and Crypto Savings.
Centralized Finance
Stablecoin cross-border payment service provider completes $9.9 million seed round financing
Payment company Cedar Money announced the completion of a $9.9 million seed round financing led by QED Investors, with participation from North Island Ventures, Wischoff Ventures, Lattice, and Stellar. The funds will be used to accelerate the company's mission to leverage modern payment infrastructure to drive the transformation of stablecoin cross-border payments. Cedar Money aims to address inefficiencies in the traditional correspondent banking system, using stablecoins to provide faster, more reliable, and cost-effective cross-border payments.
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