Highlights of this Issue
According to PANews incomplete statistics, there were 30 blockchain investment and financing events worldwide last week (1.29-2.4), with a total funding scale exceeding $130 million, as follows:
- DeFi: There were 11 investment and financing events, including Bitcoin DEX Portal completing a $34 million seed round of financing, with participation from Coinbase Ventures.
- NFT and Metaverse: No investment and financing events were announced in this field.
- Blockchain Games: There were 4 investment and financing events, including Pixelmon completing an $8 million seed round of financing, with participation from Animoca Brands.
- Infrastructure and Tools: There were 11 financing events, including cross-chain domain service Clusters completing a $9 million seed round of financing, with participation from Variant, Coinbase, and others.
- Other Web3/Encryption-related Projects: There were 4 financing events, including Web3 decentralized AI training network PublicAI completing a $2 million seed round of financing, with participation from IOBC Capital.
- Centralized Finance: There was 1 investment and financing event: digital asset startup Mesh received a $6.5 million investment from PayPal.
DeFi
Decentralized exchange (DEX) Portal, based on Bitcoin, raised $34 million in its seed financing round. This round of financing was led by Coinbase Ventures, OKX Ventures, Arrington Capital, and Gate.io Ventures, and will be used for the development of Portal. Portal is a cross-chain atomic swap protocol that provides decentralized trading and wallet services. Portal plans to launch its product on the mainnet and expand its ecosystem to reduce custody risks. This financing round brings Portal's total financing to $42.5 million. In the coming months, Portal also plans to launch an AI-driven investment application to help users make "smart" investment decisions using AI technology.
Hybrid cryptocurrency trading platform Cube.Exchange raised $12 million in its Series A financing. This round of financing was led by 6th Man Ventures, with participation from GSR Markets, ParaFi Digital, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, and Everstake Capital, among others. This financing round valued Cube at $100 million. Cube uses a hybrid model of off-chain order matching and on-chain settlement, allowing users to maintain ownership of assets without transferring them to the exchange's custody account. Cube currently supports native settlements for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Solana, and plans to support more L1 networks in the future.
Stride Association announced the completion of a $4 million strategic financing to drive Stride's development in the modular ecosystem. This round of financing was led by DBA, with participation from 1confirmation, Road Capital, Modular Capital, Chorus One, and Imperator. Earlier, Stride announced the launch of a new LST asset, stTIA, and 5 million STRD (5% of the maximum supply) will be airdropped to early stTIA holders.
Cryptocurrency startup Velar raised $3.5 million in financing, with participation from Bitcoin Startup Lab, CMS Holdings, Black Edge Capital, GBV, Cypher Capital, Trust Machines SPV, Transform Capital, Maple Block, and Samara Asset Group. Velar plans to establish a perpetual derivatives exchange for Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi). Velar is particularly focused on the upcoming Nakamoto Release by Stacks, which is expected to introduce synthetic Bitcoin assets sBTC pegged to BTC, allowing holders to unlock the DeFi value of their Bitcoin without giving up custody.
Decentralized derivatives trading platform BBO Exchange announced that it raised $2.7 million in its pre-seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Hashed and Arrington Capital, with participation from Consensys, CMS Holdings, Flow Traders, Manifold Trading, Mask Network, and Nomura's Laser Digital, among others. BBO Exchange is currently developing its signal-driven AMM based on the zkEVM Layer 2 network and has opened registration for its private test network.
Composable options protocol Ithaca Finance announced that it has completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Cumberland and Wintermute Ventures, with participation from Room40 Ventures, Ghaf Capital Partners, and angel investors including Andrew Keys, co-founder of DARMA Capital, and Georgios Vlachos, co-founder of Axelar. Ithaca Finance's protocol is already live on the Arbitrum testnet and plans to fully launch on the mainnet later this quarter, currently open only to invitees.
Sui ecosystem one-stop liquidity protocol NAVI Protocol announced the completion of a $2 million financing, with OKX Ventures, dao5, and Hashed jointly leading the investment, and participation from Mysten Labs, Comma3 Ventures, Mechanism Capital, GeekCartel Capital, Nomad Capital, Coin98 Ventures, Cetus Protocol, Maverick, Viabtc, Assembly Partners, Gate.io, Hailstone Labs, Benqi, LBank Labs, and others. NAVI Protocol will use this round of financing to expand its one-stop lending and LSDeFi platform. According to the introduction, NAVI Protocol allows users to borrow and lend different assets on the Sui network, while providing innovative features such as liquidity staking and leveraged treasury. In the coming months, NAVI Protocol plans to launch new features such as flash loans and isolated pools.
Bitcoin L2 Stablecoin Infrastructure Bmaker Completes $1.2 Million Pre-Seed Round of Financing
Bitcoin L2 stablecoin infrastructure Bmaker announced the completion of a $1.2 million pre-seed round of financing on the X platform, with investors including C3u Capital, Tangle Capital, and Droplet Capital. The Bmaker team has developed a Bitcoin Layer 2 over-collateralized stablecoin protocol, modeled after MakerDao, and aims to provide more liquidity to the BTC ecosystem. The project is scheduled to conduct the first issuance of multi-chain ID0 on February 2nd.
The liquidity aggregation investment strategy protocol Doubler successfully completed its seed round of financing, led by Youbi Capital, with participation from Bixin Ventures, Mask Network, Comma3 Ventures, Pivot Labs, Continue Capital, Sanyuan Capital, Waterdrip Capital, DWF Ventures, Gate Labs, Formless Capital, MT Capital, and CatcherVC, among others. Doubler is an open DeFi protocol that aggregates market liquidity using the Martingale strategy. Its unique innovative mechanism combines the demand for zero-loss hedging with the profit betting demand of speculators, while maintaining a high degree of openness and interoperability, providing ample room for the expansion of DeFi business.
LK Venture, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-listed company Bluehole Interactive, announced its participation in the first round of financing for Bitcoin DeFi infrastructure bitSmiley through the Bitcoin network ecosystem investment management fund BTC NEXT. According to the introduction, bitSmiley is a Bitcoin blockchain protocol based on the Fintegra framework, consisting of three main components: a decentralized over-collateralized stablecoin protocol; a local trustless lending protocol, and a derivatives protocol.
RWA Asset Aggregation Platform TProtocol Announces Completion of Angel Round Financing, with Participation from Summer Ventures and Others
The first platform to integrate RWA on-chain, cross-chain, and asset aggregation, TProtocol, announced the completion of its angel round financing, with the specific amount yet to be disclosed. This round was participated in by Summer Ventures (through its Summer Everest ecosystem fund), Matrixport Venture, and Spark Digital Capital. TProtocol stated that this round of financing will accelerate its transformation into a comprehensive RWA asset aggregation platform. Currently, TProtocol has integrated asset providers Matrixdock, Backed Finance, OpenTrade, and TrueFi, making it the largest on-chain RWA asset aggregation platform. More asset providers are in the process of integration.
Blockchain Games
Pixelmon Completes $8 Million Seed Round of Financing, with Participation from Animoca Brands
NFT project Pixelmon completed an $8 million seed round of financing, with participation from Animoca Brands, Delphi Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Amber Group, 9GAG founder Ray Chan, and Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson, among others. Previously, Pixelmon raised $70 million through NFT financing in February 2022. However, after the NFT launch, it was criticized for a significant gap between actual and expected results, leading to strong community protests. Since September of the same year, Pixelmon has been working with a new team under LiquidX Studios to reshape its decentralized game series. Pixelmon is a decentralized gaming brand composed of mythical creatures of the same name. It is owned by Singapore Web3 venture capital LiquidX Studios subsidiary Pixelation Labs.
Web3 social game Forgotten Playland announced the completion of a $7 million financing, with participation from Merit Circle, Spartan Group, C² Ventures, and Paper Ventures, among others. Forgotten Playland aims to redefine social gathering games and is set to release in the first quarter of 2024, featuring a series of mini-games. Bump-A-Ball and Jungle Rumble are currently confirmed, with more games in development.
Web3 Game Company Saltwater Completes $5.5 Million Seed Round of Financing
Web3 game company Saltwater completed a $5.5 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by crypto investment firm Deus X and Fourth Revolution Capital (4RC). Saltwater plans to use the funds to increase its staff, invest in new technologies, and expand its business into new areas. This financing round took place after Saltwater acquired game developers Maze Theory, Nexus Labs, and Quantum Interactive, which developed games such as "Doctor Who" and "Gangster Squad".
Web3 Game Platform Yooldo Completes $1.5 Million Financing
Web3 game platform Yooldo announced the completion of a $1.5 million financing at a valuation of $13 million, with participation from Bedrock Ventures, Double jump.tokyo, Edimus, Hyperithm, Klaytn Foundation, Manta Network, Neopin, Planetarium, Presto Labs, and Vista Labs. In addition, grant sponsors include Aptos Foundation, BNB Chain, Immutable X, and Oasys. The new financing will be used to improve the technology, bring more games to the platform, and develop its community. Yooldo aims to build a next-generation gaming ecosystem that brings together players, creators, and builders, with "Trouble Punk: Cyber Galz" as its in-house game. Yooldo has been included in the Consensys Scale Program and Google for Startups Program.
Infrastructure & Tools
Cross-chain domain name service Clusters announced the completion of a $9 million seed round of financing, with participation from Variant, Collab+Currency, Arrington Capital, Mask Network, Electric Capital, PalmTree Crypto, Bloccelerate, Arca, Coinabse, Polygon, and MetaStreet. Clusters is a product of Delegate Labs, the development company of Web3 identity provider Delegate Protocol, and the platform utilizes LayerZero's cross-chain protocol for domain name services. The platform allows users to purchase domain names from any chain and automatically display them on other chains. The development of Clusters domain name service aims to address the fragmentation challenges in the blockchain industry, where users traditionally have to use multiple wallets to interact with specific blockchains. Through Clusters, users can interact with multiple blockchains without switching wallets.
Delegate Labs announced the completion of a $9 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was participated in by Electric Capital, Arca, Variant, and Arrington Capital, with some of the funds intended to support its latest protocol, Clusters. Clusters is a cross-chain, multi-wallet naming service designed to address the fragmentation issues encountered by users when transacting across different networks.
Gevulot has completed a $6 million seed financing round, led by Variant. Gevulot plans to use this funding to launch a Layer 1 blockchain utilizing zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs). This technology will enable developers to delegate computational tasks on advanced hardware networks, creating new opportunities for scalable applications. Gevulot is set to launch a developer network (devnet) in collaboration with multiple validator companies.
Cross-chain Protocol Squid Completes $4 Million Strategic Financing, Led by Polychain Capital
Cross-chain liquidity routing protocol Squid announced a $4 million strategic financing led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Nomad Capital, North Island Ventures, Maelstrom, Chorus One, XYZ, Breed, Binary Builders, Typhon Ventures, and additional investment from Distributed Global, Fabric Ventures, Node Capital, and Chapter One. This funding will be used to accelerate development to achieve more complex transaction sequence bundling and more efficient asset routing. Additionally, the team is integrating with more interoperable networks and plans to introduce Squid into blockchain ecosystems beyond Ethereum and Cosmos. Previously, Squid completed a $3.5 million financing in February of last year, with North Island Ventures leading the investment and participation from Distributed Global, Fabric Ventures, Galileo, Chapter One, and Node Capital, among others.
Bitcoin Ecosystem Composable DID Protocol BRC-137 Completes $2.5 Million Seed Round of Financing
The Bitcoin ecosystem composable DID protocol BRC-137 announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Basics Capital, DFG, Gate Labs, JSquare, and other institutions. The funds will be used to accelerate the development and growth of the protocol to create a native social universe within the Bitcoin ecosystem. According to the BRC-137 whitepaper, BRC-137 aims to build a more robust DID ecosystem by introducing composable prefixes and suffixes to enhance asset liquidity. Additionally, the protocol introduces a royalty mechanism to promote the development and innovation of on-chain social patterns.
Berachain ecosystem liquidity proof infrastructure Infrared Finance announced the successful completion of a $2.5 million seed round of financing led by Synergis. This round of financing also included participation from NGC Ventures, Tribe Capital, CitizenX, Shima Capital, Dao5, Signum Capital, Ouroboros Capital, Decima, Oak Grove Ventures, DoraHacks, Tenzor Capital, as well as investors such as Alex Shin, Albert Chon, Charles Lu, Mr. Block, Chris Spadafora, DCFGod, and others. Infrared Finance is dedicated to redefining liquidity staking in the context of proof-of-liquidity (PoL). This funding will be used to advance infrastructure development, including validator networks, PoL treasury, and the first native liquidity staking token (LST) iBGT.
Decentralized Finance
DePIN infrastructure service provider Hivello announced the completion of a new round of financing of $1.5 million, with participation from Blockchange, Cypher Capital, MH Ventures, Primal Capital, Contango Digital Assets, Candaq, NGC, Blockchain Founders Fund, IDG, and others. The company intends to use the new financing to expand its technical capabilities, accelerate product development, and consolidate its market position in the DePIN field. DePIN refers to the use of blockchain technology and token incentives to build a physical infrastructure network, allowing other projects to avoid the cost of purchasing and operating their own equipment. Previously in December last year, Hivello completed a $1 million Pre-Seed round of financing.
Ethereum Infrastructure Company Yet Another Company Completes $1 Million Financing
Ethereum infrastructure startup Yet Another Company announced the completion of a $1 million financing. This round of financing was led by the venture studio LambdaClass, with participation from Gagra Ventures, C² Ventures, and several angel investors.
ABCDE Leads Investment in Bitcoin Asset and Scaling Ecosystem Bitmap.tech
Singapore fund ABCDE announced on the X platform that it has led the investment in the Bitcoin asset and scaling ecosystem Bitmap.tech, with the specific amount undisclosed. Bitmap.tech has established an asset community in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including the Blue Box with a market value of $350 million in the Bitcoin ecosystem NFT, a community of 33,000 Bitmap holders, the BRC420 asset protocol, which is the second largest in the Bitcoin ecosystem by market value, and the Bitcoin Layer2 scaling solution Merlin Chain. Merlin Chain, launched today, unlike other Bitcoin Layer2 solutions, will continue to support Bitcoin native wallets and addresses, allowing users to transfer, authorize, and receive assets on Merlin Chain using UniSat Wallet or OKX Web3 wallet.
KIP Protocol, a Web3 underlying protocol focused on AI, has completed a round of strategic financing. This financing was led by Animoca Ventures and received participation from various investment institutions from different regions, including B.Army (Vietnam), CSP DAO (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), MQdao, Spicy Capital (Latin America), Skyvision Capital (Hong Kong), and Purechain Capital (UK), among others.
RGB Protocol Infrastructure Bitlight Labs Completes Seed Round of Financing, Jointly Led by Gate Ventures and HV Capital
RGB protocol infrastructure Bitlight Labs has completed a seed round of financing, dedicated to driving the development of the Lightning Network ecosystem. This round of financing was jointly led by renowned investment institutions Gate Ventures and HV Capital, with participation from MH Ventures, Fundamental Labs, Oak Grove Ventures, Waterdrip Capital, and others. Bitlight Labs has launched multiple product lines, with its core foundational application Bitlight Wallet as the first non-custodial Lightning Network asset wallet in the RGB ecosystem, which will be the first to achieve compatibility between RGB assets and the Bitcoin Lightning Network, building the RGB-LN ecosystem. It has now entered the Alpha Test phase and is expected to go live on the Bitcoin mainnet and Lightning Network in a few weeks.
Other
Web3 Decentralized AI Training Network PublicAI Completes $2 Million Seed Round of Financing
Web3 decentralized AI training network PublicAI has completed a $2 million seed round of financing, with participation from IOBC Capital, Foresight Ventures, Solana Foundation, and Everstate Capital. The new funds will primarily be used to accelerate the network's launch and listing. The project team is composed of PhDs and professors from Stanford University, as well as former employees of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. PublicAI utilizes Web3 to build a decentralized AI training network, allowing anyone to earn rewards by providing data work. PublicAI founder Steven Wong stated, "PublicAI aims to use blockchain technology to generate a massive amount of high-quality training data at scale, solving all the problems that artificial intelligence has faced so far, including ethical issues, human preferences, 'illusions,' data pollution, etc., allowing everyone to participate in the development of artificial intelligence."
Blockchain Privacy Protection Solution BlokID Completes $1.25 Million Seed Round of Financing, Led by AVV
Developer of a blockchain-based privacy protection solution for the digital advertising industry, BlokID, announced the completion of a $1.25 million seed round of financing this Wednesday, led by Ascend Vietnam Ventures (AVV) and AppWorks. With this round of financing, BlokID will accelerate product development, focus on user acquisition, and initiate market expansion. The product is planned to be launched in the second quarter of 2024. The company plans to introduce Google Analytics plugins and financial identity features to further enhance user rights and protect their information. Established in July 2023, BlokID is the next-generation developer of privacy protection solutions for the digital advertising industry, using blockchain technology to provide independent, immutable, and authentic data sources for digital advertising.
Gamified social platform SoulLand announced the completion of a multi-million dollar (RMB) financing, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Redline DAO, Zonff Partners, MEXC, Mandala Ventures Limited, Stratified Capital, Basics Capital, and Onemax Capital. The specific amount of financing was not disclosed. The funds will be focused on developing gamified solutions, allowing users to earn token rewards through gameplay such as participating in game battles and staking while obtaining first-hand information from KOLs through social interactions, providing an engaging learning experience with profitable goals. SoulLand is a gamified social subscription platform that has garnered 500,000 registered users within two weeks and has been launched on the App Store and Google Play. SoulLand addresses Web3's immersive information and social needs by introducing gamified elements.
Centralized Finance
Digital Asset Startup Mesh Receives $6.5 Million Investment from PayPal
PayPal's venture capital department has invested $5 million in the digital asset startup Mesh. It is worth noting that this investment was made through PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, which was launched in August last year. In addition to the investment in the form of PYUSD stablecoin, PayPal Ventures also added an additional $1.5 million in cash. Mesh is a company founded by cybersecurity professionals, focusing on secure communication and cryptocurrency-based financial transactions. Described as the Plaid of the cryptocurrency world, Mesh aims to simplify the transfer of funds from exchanges to wallets and then to cryptocurrency-supporting financial applications. Mesh currently has an annual revenue of over $1 million, is not yet profitable, but according to the founder, achieving profitability is feasible.
Venture Capital Institutions
Salil Deshpande of venture capital firm Uncorrelated Ventures has successfully raised $315 million for a new fund. Despite recent challenges faced by startups globally, especially in the crypto industry, Deshpande stated that the fundraising process went surprisingly smoothly. The new fund will primarily invest in early-stage projects in traditional foundational software (80%) and similar startups in the crypto industry (20%). Deshpande believes that blockchain technology still holds value in the storage and computing fields. Uncorrelated Ventures currently manages assets exceeding $700 million, focusing on the U.S. and global markets, particularly the Indian market.
Web3 Accelerator Beacon Completes $150 Million Financing
Beacon, a Web3 accelerator launched by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, has raised over $150 million in funding within its first year of operation. Currently, applications for the S24 cohort are officially open, with a deadline of March 18, 2024.
Sanctor Capital Raises $10 Million for its Early-Stage Web3 Investment Fund
Sanctor Capital has raised $10 million for its early-stage Web3 investment fund. The team also announced a partnership with Press Start to launch a pre-accelerator program called "The Multiplayer Fellowship." Sanctor and Press Start plan to fund 100 teams over the next 18 months. Half of Press Start's previous alumni projects have successfully raised funds or joined top accelerators such as Alliance DAO, a16z Crypto Startup School & SPEEDRUN, Binance Labs, and Y Combinator.
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