2023 Week 17 Funding Picks, DWF Week 4 deals totaling $83 million
According to BlockBeats, the number of deals raised last week increased to 28, totaling about $257.9 million and averaging $9,210,700. Infrastructure financing is still the dominant sector, with relatively large amounts of financing in capital management payments and other areas, with the meta-universe /Gamefi in the middle, and less in social/creator economy, DeFi and NFT. The following chart shows the financing proportion of each sector last week:
Metaverse /GameFi
Five rounds in the Metaverse /GameFi space, totaling $31 million, accounted for 12.02% of last week's total.
Gameta
Why you should watch: Will Binance and Huobi be the next "IE0 Stars"?
On April 10, Web3 NFT gaming platform Gameta closed a $5 million seed round, Binance Labs, Huobi Ventures, Arcane Capital, Ceras Ventures, StartVC, Gate.io Labs, W3Coins, Redline Dao, DefinanceX, Rana Capital and Infinity Labs invested, and the funds raised will be used to accelerate the construction of their game ecosystem, Token and NFT system, and achieve further growth of user volume within the year.
In October last year, Gameta was selected for BNB Chain's fifth batch of Web3 Accelerator program MVB. Gameta will open global beta in the second quarter of this year, and launch the Hippo Club NFT market and its game guild; Governance Token airdrop and Hippo Club incentive program will be launched in the third quarter; The fourth quarter will enter the DAO governance mode. Gameta will adopt a dual coin model. HIP is the governance Token in the Gameta ecosystem, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens for the Gemata platform and P2E games; Gdos are the main in-game rewards that users receive in games.
Mayhem Studios
Why you're interested: Web3, a gaming studio owned by Indian gaming Unicorn.
4 月 11 日，印度 P2E 游戏开发公司 Mobile Premier League (MPL) 旗下工作室 Mayhem Studios 宣布完成 2000 万美元 A 轮融资，本轮融资由红杉资本领投，Steadview Capital、Truecaller 等参投。
The Board of Directors of Mayhem Studios has passed A special resolution to raise $20 million by issuing 18,99,878 Series A preferred shares at an offering price of $1.05 per share, according to regulatory filings. Sequoia Capital led the round with $11.5 million, while Steadview, Truecaller and Hashed Emergent contributed $3.5 million, $3.1 million and $1 million, respectively, in the round. After the capital raising, MPL holds 54.3 percent of the company, while Sequoia Capital holds 19.2 percent. Ojas Vipat, chief executive officer of Mayhem, has a 12.3% stake.
Mobile Premier League (MPL) is the largest mobile gaming platform in India with over 95 million users and over 70 different types of mobile games. In 2021, Mobile Premier League raised $150 million at a $2.3 billion valuation.
Mayhem Studios' first mobile game Underworld Gang Wars, a murder and escape game set in India, debuted in the middle of last year. In June 2022, MPL announced the launch of the Good Game Exchange (GGX), an NFT asset trading marketplace for games, as well as the launch of a Web3 game strategy based on earning P2E while playing, as part of the group's growth plan. Good Game Exchange has its own native token, $GGT, and MPL will control 20% of the initial supply of $GGT.
CEBG Studio
Reasons for concern: A& T and Hashkey participate in the Free To Own mode of MOBA + "eat chicken" game.
On April 12, game Studio CEBG Studio closed a $3 million private funding round led by Youbi Capital, A& Funding from T Capital, Hashkey, Kernel, GSR Ventures, Welight, IGG, Pepper and Bing Venture will be used for research and development as well as community development. Crypto Elite's:
BATTLEGROUNDS(CEBG) A lightweight online multi-man escape and kill game. CEBG is the first blockchain-based anime +MOBA+ beauty + Mecha game. Animation style is also one of the most important aesthetic preferences of young people in this era.
The core gameplay of CEBG is similar to that of the famous game PUBG. In the game, up to 40 players parachute to an island in search of weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding being killed themselves. The available safe areas of the game map shrink over time, directing surviving players into narrower areas to force encounters. The last surviving player or team wins. BlockBeatszhu (BlockBeats Note, for more information about CEBG, please read theGamefi's Game Breaker: CEBG is free forever, and you get paid for funIn addition, CEBG officially launched a one-month Beta Test and Explorer community airdrop on April 8th. The product is expected to be released in June.
The rest of the Metaverse /GameFi funding includes:
On April 12, Youli Technology, the core technology provider of Metauniverse, announced the completion of a Pre-B round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan, which was invested by Kunpeng Yichuang, Hecheng Capital and other institutions. Eulee is a core metaverse technology provider, specializing in 3D data management, digital twin creation and application for enterprises. Its products include udStream, a 3D data rendering engine, EuleeVerse, a meta-universe SaaS cloud platform product, high precision modeling technology, and holographic virtual reality applications.
On April 14, blockchain game Medieval Empires closed $3 million in funding, led by DWF Labs. According to the project roadmap, the money will speed up production of the game for a public release by the end of the year. It is reported that Medieval Empires has launched an early access version of the game for its Land NFT holders.
NFT/ Digital Fashion
1 round in NFT/ digital fashion with a total of over $5 million, accounting for 1.94% of last week's total.
Tonic.xyz
Reason for concern: Hosting wallet + credit card payment, committed to let more Web2 users appreciate the art of encryption.
On April 13, blockchain generative art platform Tonic.xyz announced the completion of a $5 million seed round led by Patroon.xyz and TTCER, Reid Hoffman, Ev Williams, Chris Dixon, Jeremy Stoppelman, April Underwood and others contributed.
Tonic.xyz 隶属于 Heretic Ventures 旗下。Heretic Ventures 总部位于旧金山，由 Mariam Naficy 创立和领导，专注于文化商业。Mariam Naficy 有着亮眼的过往战绩，比如在 1999 年创建的世界第一家在线化妆品零售商 Eve.com 在推出一年后以 1.1 亿美元的价格售出，在 2007 年创建的 Minted 年销售额达数亿美元。 据悉，Tonic.xyz 旨在重构艺术藏家体验，并将区块链艺术的访问范围扩展到加密原生消费者之外，让更多人了解和收集连接数字世界和物理世界的生成艺术。用户既可以直接使用 Web3 钱包连接到 Tonic.xyz，也可以使用谷歌账号或电子邮件进行注册登录。对于使用谷歌账号或电子邮件进行注册的用户，Tonic.xyz 将使用 web3auth.io 的服务帮助生成一个托管钱包，用户可以直接使用信用卡进行支付。
Tonic.xyz has now completed three art NFT auctions, all sold out, with primary and secondary market sales totaling more than $4.2 million.
DeFi
There was one round in the DeFi sector with a total amount of $1.25 million, or 0.48% of last week's total.
Pear Protocol
Reason to watch: Arbitrum's Dapp, traders can open long/short positions at the same time
On April 14, Pear Protocol, an on-chain derivatives protocol, closed a $1.25 million seed round with funding from Flow Ventures, RNR Capital, Portico Ventures and JY Capital.
Previously, the inability to take advantage of cross-margin -- the process of offsetting different positions -- made it difficult for traders to pair trades on decentralised derivatives platforms. Pear Protocol enables its users to use the equity in their portfolio to support multiple positions at the same time, and traders are able to use their entire portfolio as collateral to cover various positions.
On-chain cryptocurrency transactions are still driven by rapidly forming narratives. Pear Protocol will help a variety of traders -- retail users, trading communities, DAOs, and institutional portfolio managers -- create unique narrate-based trades with a single click. Pear Protocol allows traders to use their portfolios as collateral to open long or short positions in a variety of assets.
Social/creator economy
In the social space, there were 2 rounds of $7.5 million, which accounted for 2.91% of last week's total.
DappBack
Why we're interested: Greenfield leads the investment, custom community reward system without code
On April 10, Web3 loyalty program platform DappBack closed a $2.5 million seed round of funding led by IOSG Ventures and Greenfield. DappBack provides a codeless self-service platform for Web3 protocols to build customized community rewards systems, capture real users and drive active engagement.
Dappback is a Web3 platform for community engagement and user acquisition. The Web3 protocol can deploy both off-chain and on-chain tasks on DappBack to acquire new users and increase user activity on its protocol. In addition, DappBack enables non-Web3 players to create loyalty programs for their customers through NFT rewards. DappBack provides a code-free self-service platform for the Web3 protocol to build customized community rewards systems to acquire new users and drive user engagement.
In addition, DappBack's self-service platform enables Web2 native players to create NFT or token-based loyalty programs to reward their customers in a simple way, just as large companies such as Starbucks have successfully completed their NFT loyalty programs.
Joseph and Jonathan, the two co-founders of DappBack, have a lot of experience. Joseph's expertise in sales and building reward and loyalty systems using consumer-facing applications complements Jonathan's legal experience in Web3 and Web2, game development, and data analytics. Their passion for cryptocurrencies and NFT brought them together and drove their work at DappBack.
HUG
Why we're interested: With strong investors like OKX Ventures, HUG Bridges the gap between NFT utilities, art, and the general public.
HUG closed a $5 million seed round of funding led by DIGITAL on April 12, OKX Ventures, L 'Oreal's BOLD Enterprise Venture Fund, Venrex, Jae Holdings, Cryptology, Samara and Aa Sons are among the investors.
According to Grand View Research, the NFT market is expected to exceed $210 billion by 2030. HUG aims to build a social marketplace that connects digital art and NFT creators with current and potential collectors. Focus on helping artists deepen their connection with collectors and provide features to support that connection.
Currently HUG provides artists with customizable and shareable profiles to showcase their various collections and social links, while making it easier for collectors to discover artists and can participate in the curatorial process. Collectors can vote on artists on the platform, leave their own comments and interact directly with creators. Such processes will earn HUG points, which can be redeemed for rewards.
In the future, artists will be able to publish and share updates directly to collectors, while also turning their profiles into storefronts that support physical and digital products.
infrastructure
There were 10 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, totaling more than $152.38 million, accounting for 59.08% of last week's total.
Sei Labs
Reasons to care: Valuation of 800 million yuan, total financing of 120 million yuan, Layer 1 optimized for DeFi
On April 12, Sei Labs announced that its Eco-Fund has raised $50 million from Bitget and Foresight Ventures, following a fresh round of funding valued at $800 million. The company has raised $120 million so far.
Sei is the first Layer 1 blockchain optimized specifically for DeFi. In order to provide the best Layer 1 for DeFi, Sei optimizes every part of the network, giving an unfair advantage to DeFi applications. Optimization includes a built-in order-matching engine that any application can take advantage of, the fastest final certainty in any chain, and native preemptive trade resistance.
One of the killer application types on the Sei is the order book-based exchange. Any application can take advantage of Sei's built-in order matching engine to instantly launch and customize order books for spot, derivatives, options, sports betting, and more. The Sei's fastest final certainty and native preemptive trade protection also make it attractive for large order book transactions.
Ramper
Reasons for concern: Providing Web 3 social infrastructure and lowering the threshold of Web 3 social networking; The development team is hardcore, consisting of developers with backgrounds from Tesla, Facebook, Uber, Apple and Google
Ramper, a Web3 social login solution, received an undisclosed amount of money from Coin98 on April 11. Ramper is developing a set of SDKS/apis for authentication, key management, and cryptocurrency /NFT purchases for Dapps built on multi-chains to simplify usage for Web3 users.
Web 3 社交登录是推动区块链行业向前发展并吸引更多用户的重要条件。对于 Coin98 来说，他们希望支持增强钱包基础设施的初创公司，从而促进 Web 3 的大规模采用。而 Ramper 与 Coin98 的愿景都是旨在降低 Web 3 用户的门槛，促进更多采用。Ramper 团队开发了一种新的密钥管理架构，称为恢复性能多重加密系统 (RPMS)。RPMS 的构建专注于速度、安全性、便携性和易用性，以获取下一个十亿用户。 此前报道，2022 年 3 月 1 日，Ramper 宣布获得 300 万美元种子轮融资，由 Hashed 领投。
Absolute Labs
Reasons for concern: CRM solutions have been used by many well-known brands
4 月 12 日，Web3 CRM 解决方案开发商 Absolute Labs 完成 800 万美元种子轮融资，Agla Ventures、Alpha Praetorian Capital、The Luxury Fund、Near Foundation、MoonPay、Plassa Capital、Punja Global Ventures、Samsung Next、Sparkle Ventures（Animoca Brands）和 W3i 参投。 新资金将用于扩大业务，旨在加快品牌在 Web3 中获取、吸引、转化和留住更多客户的方式。Web3 CRM 解决方案使营销人员能够获得对潜在客户和客户的重要见解，统一 Web2 和 Web3 链上数据，确定可操作的细分，并自动化跨渠道活动，包括整个营销渠道中的 NFT 空投。
Absolute Labs believes that the existing Web2 CRM solution neither meets nor meets the requirements and opportunities of blockchain-based marketing. Wallets are the key to everything in Web3 -- from proving identity, providing access to a value-rich brand experience, facilitating payments, creating ownership opportunities for customers, and more.
Currently used by Brands such as LVMH, The Sandbox, Moonpay, and Mocaverse (Animoca Brands), Absolute Labs is the solution to Web3 CRM, enabling marketers to gain important insights into prospects and customers, Unify data on Web2 and Web3 chains, identify actionable segments, and automate cross-channel activities, including NFT drops across marketing channels.
The remaining financing for infrastructure includes:
On April 10, zero-knowledge Proof Layer 2 CryptoGPT raised $10 million at a $250 million valuation, led by DWF Labs. The new funds will be used to grow its development team globally and establish a regional presence in the Asian market. CryptoGPT aims to let users make money by monetizing data in areas such as fitness, dating, gaming and education, while there are plans to launch NFT, which stores data on owners' activities.
On April 11, Web2.5 financial infrastructure company Brassica announced an $8 million funding round led by Mercury Fund, Valor Equity Partners, Long Journey Ventures, NGC Fund, Neowiz, Broadhaven Ventures, Armyn Capital, VC3DAO, Alpha Asset Management and other investment, so far the total amount of the company's financing has reached 12 million dollars. Brassica primarily serves the private investment and digital asset industries, providing a secure and seamless transition between traditional finance and Web3 innovation, with institutional solutions that make digital asset investments more compliant and secure.
On April 11, DWF announced a $10 million investment to acquire $10 million worth of tokens from RSS3. Earlier, RSS3 announced that it will launch AIOP, an open AI platform, to provide Web3 information sources for AI models such as GPT. RSS3 aims to be an innovative protocol that organically combines Web3 with AI, search engines and social media. To date, RSS3 has raised more than $30 million in cumulative funding from investors and individuals including Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase, Dragonfly and GGV Capital. According to statistics, this is the tenth time that DWF Labs has invested at least $10 million in less than two months.
On April 13, EOS Network received a $60 million investment from Web3 Ventures and DWF Labs, a market maker for digital assets. The two have signed a $45 million EOS Token purchase agreement and a $15 million investment commitment. EOS Network will launch its enterprise-class EOS Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) on April 14.
Ryodan Systems AG, the Intmax developer of zkRollup's Layer 2 network project, announced the completion of a seed round of approximately 650 million yen (US $4.88 million) on April 13, The round was funded by HashKey Capital, Scroll, Yusaku Maezawa's MZ Web3 Fund and Alchemy Venture, And angel investors like Ethereum cryptographer Justin Drake and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.
On April 14, Protecc Labs, a project that aims to build a simplified layer and ecosystem for NFT, announced a $1.5 million seed round of funding led by Dialectic Group, UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital, Interlinked Capital, Side Door Ventures, 0xVentures, Kronos Ventures, 3.0 Capital, Concave Ventures and Cogitent Ventures are the competing bidders.
Encryption startup Gauntlet has received funding from the Uniswap Foundation to focus on designing and developing incentive plans to benefit the Uniswap protocol, the company announced on April 12. Gauntlet plans to launch a new division, Gauntlet Applied Research, that will focus exclusively on issues related to the DAO ecosystem. Gauntlet has raised $23.8 million in funding, led by Ribbit Capital, Polychain and Paradigm.
Digital Asset management/Payments
There were 4 financing deals in the digital asset management/payments sector, totaling more than $38.1 million, accounting for 14.77% of last week's total.
Xclaim
On April 11, Xclaim, A bankruptcy claims trading platform, announced the completion of a $7 million Series A funding round. Xclaim allows trading of major bankruptcy creditor claims, including FTX, Genesis and BlockFi. FTX's claim is now 19 cents, up from 13 cents earlier this year, compared with 52.5 cents for Genesis and 18 cents for BlockFi.
Tradier
On April 11, decentralized trading platform UXUY announced a $3.2 million seed round, Investors include Bixin Venture, WaterDrip Capital, KuCoin Ventures, Pionex, LK Venture, Arcane Group, Daoverse Capital, Lapin Digital and others. UXUY is the next generation of innovative decentralized trading platform based on the MPC wallet. By providing mnemonic-free and gas-free solutions for users, the threshold of use is greatly lowered, and the one-stop cross-chain transaction DEX experience is finally created.
The remaining financing for infrastructure includes:
On April 13, Helio announced a $3.3 million seed round of funding led by Peak and Lightspeed Faction, RockawayX, Solana Labs, and a host of angel investors. Helio helps merchants, DApps, and creators easily accept instant encrypted payments across chains. It currently supports Solana, Polygon, and Ethereum blockchains. Its services range from e-commerce, NFT sales, SaaS subscriptions, content paywalls, and other payments.
4 月 13 日，提供加密货币零售交易的金融服务公司 Tradier 宣布完成 2460 万美元 B 轮融资，PEAK6 Strategic Capital 领投，Prime Capital 和 KF Business Ventures 参投。 据悉，Tradier 的全功能平台支持加密货币、股票和期权交易，用户能在 Tradier Brokerage 和加密账户之间无缝导航，该公司计划利用新资金扩大产品范围、拓展 API、以及提升全球借记融资、期货和加密货币细分市场。
Other financing
Five other financing deals totalled $22.67 million, accounting for 8.79 per cent of last week's total. Include:
CAT Labs, a crypto asset forensics and cybersecurity company, raised $4.3 million on April 11, Castle Island Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, CMT Digital, RW3 Ventures and Newark Venture Partners contributed. CAT Labs founder Lilita Infante spent 10 years as a special agent with the U.S. Department of Justice and created the first-ever federal task force focused on cryptocurrencies.
On April 11, crypto fraud prevention solution Fire announced a $3.5 million round of funding led by Atomic. Launched as a browser extension in October, Fire now has more than 50,000 users, 50 percent of whom are monthly active users as of April. The browser extension currently supports wallets based on Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum.
On April 14, Distyl AI announced a $7 million seed round led by Coatue and Dell Technologies Capital, Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Altimeter founder and CEO Brad Gerstner contributed. In addition, Distyl AI has formed an alliance with OpenAI, a leading research institute in this field. Distyl AI was founded by Arjun Prakash and Derek Ho, who previously worked at data mining company Palantir. They say their goal is to integrate AI into core business processes of enterprise-class companies, such as marketing, sales, customer service and product development.
On April 14, Natix Network, a decentralized geographic mapping network, closed a $3.5 million seed round of funding led by Blockchange Ventures, XYO, Mysterium Network, CVVC, Mulana Capital, Blockarm Capital, and existing investors Techstars, Plug and Play Ventures, and CoinIX Capital Participate in the project. Natix Network is a decentralized, blockchain-based geographic mapping network that uses Natix's artificial intelligence technology to map the world in real time while not collecting any private data.
On April 13th Taylor &, a jewellery company using blockchain technology; Hart has raised £3.5 million ($4.37 million) from Virgin Money, Active Partners and individual Seedrs investors. Taylor & Hart, which uses blockchain technology to let clients track every step of a diamond's journey, will use the funding to develop its technology to ensure the authenticity of its stones.
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