Financing highlights of the 22nd week in 2023, with increasing financing for Bitcoin service providers.
According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 25 financing deals last week, with little change in quantity compared to the previous week. The total amount was approximately 351.9389 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 14.0776 million US dollars. Infrastructure accounted for the majority, with relatively more financing in asset management payments and other fields. The number of financing deals in the social/creator economy increased, while there were fewer deals in the metaverse/Gamefi, NFT/digital fashion, and DeFi fields. The following chart shows the financing distribution of each sector last week:
Metaverse/GameFi
In the field of Metaverse/GameFi, a total of 3 financings were completed with a total amount of 26.91 million US dollars, accounting for 7.65% of the total financing amount last week.
Super League
On May 15th, the metaverse company Super League completed a $23.8 million private placement financing through two convertible preferred stock transactions. According to NASDAQ rules, the final transaction is expected to be completed later this week. SternAegis Ventures served as the exclusive placement agent for this financing transaction, with participation from existing investors, new investors, and affiliated parties of the placement agent.
Super League provides gaming and digital space experiences on metaverse platforms such as Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite. Its innovative solutions enable consumers to socialize, entertain, explore, collaborate, shop, learn, and create in the metaverse.
Planetary
On May 16th, Web3 and blockchain technology company nChain announced that they have invested £2.5 million to purchase 25% of the shares of 3D metaverse platform Planetary.
Planetary is a virtual 3D world where people can meet, work, and play in a fully functional metaverse. It aims to integrate the NFT community and provide users with a new play-to-earn model, with innovative features such as customizable virtual spaces and various monetization options, providing new revenue opportunities for creators.
Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:
On May 19th, Web3 game publishing platform World Play League (WPL) announced the completion of its pre-seed funding round with participation from Genesis Vault Capital. The specific amount of funding has not been disclosed. WPL aims to create a community-owned Web3 game publishing platform, changing the way game players and studios interact in the Web3 space and increasing player engagement and ownership. WPL has also built an SDK to simplify the process of publishing Web3 games and accelerate player user acquisition.
NFT/Digital Fashion
There was a total of 1 financing in the NFT/digital fashion field, with a total amount exceeding 4.3289 million US dollars, accounting for 1.23% of the total financing amount last week.
anotherblock
On May 16th, music NFT platform anotherblock completed a €4 million seed round of financing, led by Stride.VC, with Swedish producer Axwell and Swedish house music group Swedish House Mafia also participating.
Previously reported, in June 2022, anotherblock completed a $2.5 million financing round led by Inventure, with participants including StableNode, Centrifuge founder Maex Ament, Dune co-founder Fredrik Haga, etc. anotherblock aims to provide NFT solutions for music copyright.
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 1 financing was completed with a total amount of 3 million US dollars, accounting for 0.85% of the total financing amount last week.
Asymmetry Finance
On May 16th, the liquidity staking derivatives (LSD) protocol Asymmetry Finance completed a $3 million financing round with participation from Ecco Capita, Republic Capital, GMJP, and Ankr. Asymmetry's main product is the safETH Token, which represents a basket of liquidity staking derivative tokens, including Lido's wstETH, Rocketpool's rETH, Frax's frxETH, Stakewise's sETH2, and Ankr's ankrETH.
社交/创作者经济
translates to
Social/Creative Economy
in English.
There were a total of 5 financing deals in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount of over 43.9 million US dollars, accounting for 12.47% of the total financing amount last week.
Story Protocol
On May 17th, Web3 startup Story Protocol announced the completion of a $29.3 million seed round of financing, led by a16z Crypto, with participation from Hashed, Samsung Next Fund, Two Small Ventures, DAO5, Berggruen Holdings, Mirana Corp, Foresight Ventures, and SLVC.
Story Protocol provides a way to create, manage, and license intellectual property on the chain, and has formed a Lego-like ecosystem of stories that can be remixed and combined, allowing creators to create stories with ownership and incentives.
CyberConnect
On May 19th, CyberConnect, a Web3 social graph protocol, announced that its token sale on CoinList had ended. All 3 million CYBER tokens were sold at a price of $1.8 per token, raising a total of $5.4 million. CyberConnect reported that 532,000 users from 112 countries participated in the registration process, with 11,540 participants in the token sale (approximately 5,750 from the priority queue and 5,790 from the regular queue).
Lifeform
On May 15th, visual DID infrastructure provider Lifeform announced the completion of a new round of financing with a valuation of $300 million, with IDG Capital leading the investment. IDG Capital will deeply participate in building a digital citizen world and provide more ecological cooperation partners for Lifeform.
Lifeform is a decentralized visual digital identity (DID) project. Visual DID is the visual identity recognition of users in Web 3. It can help everyone create their first Web 3 virtual identity through MPC or zero-knowledge proof, and of course, it comes with more practical functions. For example, users can bind wallets, digital assets, etc. through their own DID image, and apply visual DID to various scenarios such as metaverse, games, live streaming, IP, conferences, etc.
Other financing in the social/creator economy sector includes:
On May 17th, Unitea, a digital music platform, announced the completion of a $7 million seed round of financing, led by 1st Class Guernsey, Chaos Capital, TokenSociety, and Fuel Venture Capital. Unitea aims to incentivize fans to support their favorite artists through a "earn while participating" model. Fans can earn digital tokens called Karma by sharing music and creating content, which can be exchanged for exclusive rewards, from customized digital assets to concert tickets and artist meet-and-greets.
On May 17th, AnotherBall, a Web3 digital entertainment company, completed a $2.2 million angel round of financing. The round was led by Hiroaki Kitano, Chief Technology Officer of Sony Corporation, Jaynti Kanani, founder of Polygon, Suji Yan, Chief Technology Officer of Mask Network, Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, and Rehito Hatoyama, advisor of Chiru Labs, the developer of Azuki. AnotherBall also announced the launch of "IZUMO", an AI and Web3 era VTuber virtual anchor project. Its mission is to use VTubing technology to build a sustainable platform that allows everyone to live freely in the Web3 space.
Infrastructure
There were a total of 6 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 108.2 million US dollars, accounting for 30.74% of the total financing amount last week.
Auradine
On May 16th, Auradine, a startup associated with Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital, completed an $81 million Series A financing round. Celesta Capital and Mayfield led the investment, with participation from Cota Capital, DCVC, and Stanford University.
Auradine was founded in 2022 and is developing a wide range of hardware and software infrastructure, including energy-efficient silicon, zero-knowledge proofs (privacy tools based on blockchain), and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for decentralized applications.
Azteco
On May 18th, Bitcoin voucher company Azteco announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing, led by Jack Dorsey, with participation from Lightning Ventures, Hivemind Ventures, Ride Wave Ventures, Aleka Capital, Visary Capital, Gaingels, David Van Der Weele, Sunil Rajaraman, and others.
Azteco vouchers can be paid online or at hundreds of thousands of retail stores in over 195 countries, allowing people to spend, save, and send small amounts of Bitcoin to friends, family, and merchants. The company plans to use the funds from this round of financing for product development and market expansion in Latin America and Europe.
Airstack
On May 17th, Web3 API platform Airstack announced the completion of a $7 million Pre-Seed round of funding, with Superscrypt leading the investment and Polygon, Hashed Emergent, NGC, Primal Capital, UOB Ventures, and Signum Capital participating.
Airstack allows developers to access and utilize on-chain data using AI-supported natural language requests. With Airstack, developers can query, combine, and integrate on-chain or off-chain, cross-chain, and cross-application data using a single query and response.
Other financing in the infrastructure sector includes:
On May 15th, Israeli encryption startup CryptoHub announced that it had completed a $6 million financing at a valuation of $30 million. Tectona, the lead investor, invested $3 million. It is reported that CryptoHub was founded by Eliran Ouzan and Shlomi Bazel in November 2021, with the aim of providing technical tools and solutions for the blockchain industry. The company is about to launch its first project, CoinScan.com, which is a platform that displays real-time cryptocurrency trading information and provides analysis and research resources.
On May 17th, Hourglass, a time-bound token infrastructure, completed a $4.2 million seed round of financing, led by Electric Capital and with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, and others. Hourglass aims to provide additional rewards to users who are willing to lock their assets in the protocol for a certain period of time. After committing to lock their assets in the protocol for a period of time, users will receive a time-bound token representing their commitment. The protocol can provide additional incentives based on the length of time. Currently, Hourglass has launched the first market where time can be traded.
On May 18th, ZK startup Lagrange Labs completed a $4 million financing round, led by 1kx with participation from Maven11, Lattice Fund, CMT Digital, Daedalus Angels, and others. The funding will be used to develop their ZK system to achieve secure interoperability across different blockchain networks.
数字资产管理/支付
->
Digital Asset Management/Payment
In the field of digital asset management/payment, a total of 4 financing rounds were completed with a total amount of over 94 million US dollars, accounting for 26.71% of the total financing amount last week.
Red Beard Ventures
On May 16th, Web3 venture capital firm Red Beard Ventures completed a $25 million financing round, with investors including a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen and partner Chris Dixon, Animoca Brands, NFT platform SuperRare, among others.
It is reported that Red Beard Ventures' new round of financing aims to accelerate the adoption of Web3 technology and support the launch of a Token economics accelerator project called Denarii Labs, which is a joint initiative with Horizen Labs Ventures. The program will focus on providing consulting services, weekly educational meetings, guidance, and launch support for people starting Token projects. The first batch of applications is currently being accepted, and each selected company will be eligible for $100,000 to establish its brand, starting in Q3 of this year.
PYOR
On May 19th, PYOR, a digital asset data provider, announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Hash3, Antler, Future Perfect Venture, Force Ventures, CoinSwitch Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan.
PYOR will use the funds from this round of financing to establish its digital asset interpretation layer and accelerate global institutional participation in digital assets, promoting the expansion of its core infrastructure and product platform. In addition, these funds will also be used to expand the team and recruit new members.
Other financing in the field of digital asset management/payment includes:
On May 16th, Bitcoin technology and financial services company River completed a $35 million Series B financing round, led by Kingsway Capital and with participation from Peter Thiel, Cygni, Goldcrest, and Valor Equity Partners. It is reported that River provides a wide range of Bitcoin-related services for individuals and businesses, including a brokerage firm with full reserve custody and wallets that support on-chain and Lightning Network transactions.
On May 16th, Bitcoin mining startup Cormint completed a $30 million Series A financing round. Cormint's CEO Jamie McAvity and Nav Sooch, Chairman of semiconductor company Silicon Laboratories (SLAB), led the investment, with former Cormint CTO Alessandro Piovoccari also participating. It is reported that the funds from this round of financing will be used to establish a data center with a computing power of 2.4 EH/s in Texas.
On May 17th, according to an official announcement, generative AI startup Together announced the completion of a $20 million seed round of financing, led by Lux Capital, with participation from PayPal co-founder Scott Banister, Cloudera co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher, Oasis Labs co-founder Dawn Song, OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah, and Uniswap COO MC Lader. Together has established partnerships with decentralized infrastructure providers, open source communities, and academic and corporate research labs. Through its research on distributed optimization, it has built a dedicated cloud platform for large-scale model construction, which can effectively scale training and inference. The platform is planned to be open for access in the coming months.
On May 18th, Antimetal, a cloud cost optimization platform, announced the completion of a $4.3 million seed round of financing. Framework Ventures led the investment, with participation from Louis Guthmann, the head of the Starkware ecosystem, Kelvin Fichter, a software engineer at Optimism, and others. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team and continue developing the platform. Antimetal provides a solution that uses AI to automatically optimize costs throughout the entire process of infrastructure purchasing, sales, and risk management. In the private beta, the Antimetal platform helped more than 35 companies reduce their cloud costs by up to 75%.
On May 17th, Jia, a blockchain-based financial technology company, completed a $4.3 million financing round with TCG Crypto leading and participation from BlockTower, Hashed Emergent, Saison Capital, and Global Coin Research. Jia aims to provide loans for small and micro enterprises in emerging markets. This round of financing will be used to expand into the Kenyan and Philippine markets, as well as explore emerging markets in West Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
On May 16th, the decentralized AI integration platform AiONE announced that it has completed a $3 million private placement round of financing. The project is currently live on Binance Smart Chain. AiONE primarily assists enterprises and project parties in integrating AI design into various business development processes. Previously reported, AiONE had obtained a $1 million seed round of financing from private investors in the first quarter of 2023.
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