Highlights of This Issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 14 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (April 21 - April 27); the total funding exceeded $220 million, with inflow funds decreasing compared to the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi reported 1 investment and financing event, with the cryptocurrency staking protocol Symbiotic completing a $29 million Series A financing round, led by Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures;
- Web3 Gaming announced 1 investment and financing event, with MagicBlock completing a $7.5 million seed round financing, led by Lightspeed Faction;
- Web3+AI reported 1 investment and financing event, with decentralized AI startup Nous Research completing a $50 million Series A financing round, led by Paradigm;
- Infrastructure & Tools announced 6 investment and financing events, with the interoperability project Analog completing a new round of financing of $15 million;
- Other applications reported 2 investment and financing events, with London fintech company WineFi completing approximately $2 million in seed round financing, led by Coterie Holdings;
- Centralized Finance reported 3 investment and financing events, including the API platform Alpaca, which focuses on stock and cryptocurrency trading, completing a $52 million Series C financing round.
DeFi
Symbiotic Completes $29 Million Series A Financing, Led by Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures
The cryptocurrency staking protocol Symbiotic has completed a $29 million Series A financing round, led by Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures, with participation from over 100 institutions and angel investors, including Aave, Polygon, and StarkWare. The funds will be used to launch a blockchain security coordination layer called the "Universal Staking Framework." This framework allows any combination of cryptocurrencies (including L1/L2 chain assets) to participate in network validation and has already been adopted by 14 networks, including Hyperlane, with plans to connect to 20 more ecosystem projects.
Web3 Gaming
MagicBlock Completes $7.5 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by Lightspeed Faction
Solana-based gaming company MagicBlock announced the completion of a $7.5 million seed round financing, aimed at building real-time, non-fragmented infrastructure for decentralized games and applications through Solana-native Ephemeral Rollups technology. This round was led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Maven11, Delphi Digital, Robot Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Equilibrium, and Pivot Global. The angel investor lineup includes Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko, Mert Mumtaz, and Tristan Yver. a16z previously participated in early investments, bringing the total financing amount to $10.5 million. MagicBlock plans to expand its engineering team, promote the development of the Solana application ecosystem, and optimize its real-time execution architecture.
AI
Decentralized AI Startup Nous Research Completes $50 Million Series A Financing, Led by Paradigm
Decentralized AI startup Nous Research has completed a $50 million Series A financing round, led almost entirely by Paradigm, with this round valuing Nous's token at $1 billion. The funds will primarily be used to enhance computational power reserves and expand the research team. Previously, the company raised approximately $20 million through seed round financing, with investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital. Notably, this is Paradigm's largest investment in the AI sector since the FTX collapse in 2022, marking an acceleration of crypto capital into cutting-edge technology intersections.
Nous was founded in 2022 by a group of AI researchers focused on developing open-source large language models. Its innovation lies in utilizing the Solana blockchain to coordinate globally distributed computational resources, incentivizing users to contribute idle GPU power for model training. The Hermes series of open-source models developed by the team has gained recognition in the community, and they have published several research papers in collaboration with Diederik P. Kingma, a founding member of OpenAI.
Infrastructure & Tools
Interoperability Project Analog Completes $15 Million New Round of Financing
The blockchain project Analog, which unifies liquidity across multiple networks, announced it has raised $15 million through a token sale, with digital asset financing company Bolts Capital completing the token purchase, bringing Analog's total support to $36 million. Analog plans to use these funds to develop interoperability tools, such as the Omnichain Analog Token Standard (OATS), which supports the transfer of fungible and non-fungible assets across blockchains. Also in preparation is Firestarter, a market for real-world assets (RWA) aimed at tokenizing real estate, collectibles, and revenue-generating items.
Arch Labs Completes $13 Million Series A Financing, Led by Pantera Capital
Bitcoin infrastructure company Arch Labs has completed a $13 million Series A financing round, with a valuation of $200 million. This round was led by Pantera Capital, with other strategic investors participating. The funds will accelerate the development and release of ArchVM, which enables fast, secure, and fully verifiable smart contract functionality on Bitcoin.
Arch Labs is described as a software development company and a core contributor to the Arch Network, a bridge-less execution platform that enables smart contract-like functionality on Bitcoin. Previously, Arch Labs raised $7 million, led by Multicoin Capital.
DAO Infrastructure Provider Tally Completes $8 Million Series A Financing, Led by AppWorks
DAO infrastructure provider Tally has completed an $8 million Series A financing round, aimed at expanding its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). This round was led by AppWorks and Blockchain Capital, with participation from companies like BitGo. Tally's most notable product is the Tally Protocol, which supports infrastructure for leading protocols to effectively govern their DAOs on-chain, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol, and Hyperlane. Initially a DAO governance tool, the platform has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations on Ethereum and Solana blockchains. Tally previously raised $7.5 million through two rounds of financing in 2021.
Inco Completes $5 Million Strategic Round Financing, Focused on On-Chain Privacy Technology
Inco announced the completion of a $5 million strategic round financing led by a16z crypto CSX, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, bringing the total financing amount to $10 million. Inco focuses on solving blockchain privacy issues, aiming to allow users to perform operations such as salary payments and poker without disclosing sensitive information on-chain. Its first product, "Inco Lightning," has been launched on the Base Sepolia testnet.
Web3 Infrastructure Startup Catalysis Completes $1.25 Million Pre-Seed Round Financing
Decentralized service infrastructure startup Catalysis has completed a $1.25 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Hashed Emergent, which focuses on the Indian Web3 ecosystem, with participation from Presto Labs, Spaceship DAO, Funfair Ventures, Cosmostation, and Crypto Times. The funds will be used to develop a "security abstraction layer" for re-staking protocols, aimed at simplifying the process for developers and node operators to obtain economic security from re-staking ecosystems like Eigenlayer.
Co-founder Abhishek stated that the current integration of shared security protocols faces a high degree of fragmentation, and Catalysis's core product will lower the development threshold for AVS (Active Verification Service) applications through standardized interfaces. The company has already collaborated with mainstream re-staking platforms like Eigenlayer and Symbiotic, planning to launch a public testnet in the second quarter of 2025, covering application scenarios in cross-chain bridges, oracles, zero-knowledge proofs, and medical data systems in the Web2 service field.
The payment gateway Inflow has completed a $1.1 million seed round financing, with participation from Rockstart, GnosisVC, Alliance, Plug And Play, and Stake Capital. Angel investors include Ledger co-founder Nicolas Bacca, Primonial REIM co-founder Stephanie Lacroix, and TEMPUS SHOP founder Tempus.
Others
Blockchain-Supported Wine Platform WineFi Completes £1.5 Million Seed Round Financing
London fintech company WineFi announced the completion of £1.5 million (approximately $2 million) in seed round financing, led by UK boutique wine group Coterie Holdings, with participation from SFC Capital, Founders Capital, and an angel investment consortium. The new capital will accelerate product development, including enhanced valuation models and real-time market data feeds. The company was co-founded by Oliver Thorpe and Callum Woodcock, former asset managers at Fidelity International and JPMorgan, respectively, and aims to provide structured premium wine investment channels for high-net-worth clients. To improve liquidity and transparency, WineFi has taken a strategic initiative to collaborate with digital asset provider Lympid to segment premium wine assets on a blockchain platform.
UXLINK Receives Investment from UFLY Labs and Forms Strategic Partnership with Solv Protocol
Web3 social platform UXLINK announced a strategic partnership with Solv Protocol and received investment from the UXLINK ecosystem fund UFLY Labs.
Centralized Finance
API platform Alpaca, focused on stock, options, and cryptocurrency trading, announced the completion of a $52 million Series C financing round. Investors include 850 Management, Derayah Financial, National Investments Company, Portage Ventures, and Unbound. Alpaca is a self-clearing brokerage and brokerage infrastructure company based in the United States, covering stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies, having raised over $170 million in funding. Investors in Alpaca include Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.
Quantitative Trading Startup Theo Completes $20 Million Financing, Led by Hack VC
Quantitative trading startup Theo has completed $20 million in financing, aiming to provide ordinary investors with strategies that were previously exclusive to high-frequency trading firms. The company was co-founded by former Optiver trader Abhi Pingle and TK Kwon, and in March 2024, it secured $4.5 million in seed round financing led by Manifold Trading, followed by an additional $15.5 million investment led by Hack VC and Anthos Capital in April 2025. Other investors include Flowdesk, Selini Capital, and individual investors from Citadel, JPMorgan, Jane Street, and Optiver.
Since its launch in June 2024, the Theo platform has attracted $50 million in deposits, with an average user return rate of 7%-8% over the past three months and an annual return of 18%-20%. The platform's name is derived from the trading term "theoretical price," and it currently primarily interfaces with DeFi protocols like Aave, but plans to expand its business to centralized exchanges like Binance. The founders stated that they will remove deposit limits by the end of April and will also connect to traditional financial markets in the future. Both rounds of financing were conducted in the form of token warrants, and the company's valuation has not been disclosed.
AI-driven digital asset trading platform BitradeX has completed £12 million (approximately $15.96 million) in Series A financing, led by Bain Capital. The funds will be used to establish a global AI strategy lab and upgrade compliance infrastructure. BitradeX was founded in 2022, and its core product, the ARK trading model, is based on a trillion-parameter architecture, integrating methodologies from DeepSeek and Qianfan, providing high-frequency trading execution with sub-second latency. The platform holds licenses from the UK's FCA and the US's MSB. Its innovative AI protection pool mechanism uses 100 BTC as initial reserve capital.
Venture Capital Funds
Solana's Early Supporter RockawayX Launches New $125 Million Fund
Prague-based crypto venture capital firm RockawayX announced the completion of fundraising for its second early-stage fund, totaling $125 million, which closed in the first quarter of this year and will primarily invest in Solana ecosystem startups. This firm, which invested in Solana back in 2018, currently manages approximately $2 billion in assets and has offices in Prague, Dubai, and London, with two-thirds of its 45 employees being engineers. RockawayX CEO Victor Fischer stated that two-thirds of the new fund will be allocated to seed investments, with the remainder in liquid assets.
Despite a 22% decline in crypto venture capital in the US market in the first quarter, RockawayX's 2021 fund has already returned over five times, mainly benefiting from early investments in Solana, market maker Wintermute, and lending protocol Morpho Labs. The firm has invested in over 15 Solana ecosystem projects and will jointly launch the accelerator center "Solana City" in Dubai on May 1 with the Solana Foundation and development company Helius Labs.
Astra Fintech Establishes $100 Million Fund to Support Solana's Development in Asia
Global blockchain payment provider Astra Fintech announced the establishment of a $100 million fund to support the development of the Solana ecosystem in Asia. Through this fund, Astra Fintech plans to invest in accelerating the development of related projects and establish partnerships with developers, companies, and regulatory agencies. The fund's operational base will be located in South Korea and will focus on projects and developers engaged in PayFi solutions, which utilize blockchain technology to facilitate payments.
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