Partnered With:

Circle's 15 potential projects to watch in 2023.

Read this article in 14 Minutes

Potential projects favored by major institutions that are worth knowing and investing in ahead of time.

Original author: MooMs, a cryptocurrency researcher.

Translated by: Leo, BlockBeats.

The issuer of USDC, Circle, is one of the largest companies in the cryptocurrency industry. According to CoinGecko data, the current market capitalization of USDC is approximately $28.4 billion. Circle Ventures, its investment department, currently holds a large amount of funds available for investment. Cryptocurrency researcher MooMs has written an article about "Circle's 2023 Investment Projects," which BlockBeats has compiled as follows:

Circle, valued at 9 billion USD, is one of the largest companies in the cryptocurrency industry. Below is the complete list of investment projects by Circle Ventures from 2023 to present:

Alkimiya

Alkimiya is a decentralized protocol dedicated to the blockchain consensus capital market, which enables consensus producers (PoW miners, staking validators) to create contracts supported by underlying "consensus resources" (such as hash power).

Funding amount: 720 million US dollars or more, investors include Dragonfly and others.

Hourglass

Hourglass is a time-bound token market that binds trading time. Through TBT (Time-Bound Token), the market will allow users to obtain liquidity for their locked assets by selling time-limited rights on the secondary market, enabling users to find committed liquidity through long-term consistency and protocol to achieve returns.

Funding amount: 4.2 million US dollars, investors also include Eletric Capital and others.

LI.FI Protocol

LiFi Protocol is a cross-bridge and DEX aggregator. LiFi can cross any asset on any chain to the desired asset on the selected chain, providing an excellent user experience.

Funding amount: $23 million, investors include 6MV, Coinbase Ventures, etc.

DFlow

DFlow is a decentralized order flow market supported by the Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) model of the DFlow protocol. It aims to support order flows from various L1 chains and aggregators. On one hand, brokers create, manage, monitor, and analyze order flow auctions, while market makers submit bids to the auction on the other hand. The winner of the auction gains exclusive rights to execute the relevant orders.

Funding amount: $7.5 million (Note from BlockBeats: The total amount of two rounds of funding is $7.5 million, with Circle Ventures participating in the $5.5 million round of funding), other investors include The Spartan Group, Multicoin Capital, etc.

Affine DeFi

Affine is an investment platform that allows users to purchase a basket of assets (rebalanced treasury) to invest in multiple strategies simultaneously.

Funding amount: $6.9 million, investors also include The Spartan Group, Jump Crypto, etc.

Term Labs

Term is an extensible, fixed-rate DeFi liquidity solution, characterized by participants being able to determine a fair and transparent single market liquidation rate through weekly auctions.

Funding amount: $2.5 million, investors include Robot Ventures, Electric Capital, etc.

Catalyst

Catalyst is an open-source protocol that also serves as a permissionless liquidity layer for the modular blockchain of the future. With Catalyst, any new modular chain can automatically connect to liquidity and exchange with any chain, including liquidity centers such as Ethereum and Cosmos. This achieves seamless liquidity connection and asset exchange between blockchains.

Funding amount: $4.2 million, investors include Robot Ventures, The Spartan Group, etc.

Architect

Architect is an infrastructure solution that provides low-latency trading for traders, designed specifically for institutions and large traders seeking secure, robust, and customizable trading tools.

Funding amount: 5 million US dollars, investors also include Coinbase Ventures and others.

Huma Finance

Huma Finance is a DeFi project that allows users to borrow without collateral by using future income streams as collateral. Similarly, users can contribute to liquidity pools and earn rewards from idle funds while supporting the community.

Funding amount: 8.3 million US dollars, investors also include ParaFi Capital and others.

OpenTrade

OpenTrade provides access to on-chain structured financial products backed by investments in real-world assets (RWA) for Web3 financial management. It obtains short-term RWA investments through a global network of financial institutions, asset management companies, and B2B networks, and builds them into on-chain financial products that generate returns.

Funding amount: $1.5 million, investors include Polygon Labs and others.

Fractal

Fractal allows all on-chain assets - from cryptocurrencies to real-world assets - to interact and collateralize each other through a universal margin account.

Funding amount: $6 million, investors include The Spartan Group and others.

Other than introducing Circle's recent DeFi investments, I have also listed their recent investments related to blockchain services and infrastructure as follows:

TipLink: TipLink is a lightweight wallet designed to make transferring digital assets as simple as sending a link. People who own cryptocurrencies can create TipLink and send the link to anyone through any platform (text, discord, email, etc.). Once the user connects their wallet to TipLink, they can deposit funds and then transfer ownership by sharing the link. Each transaction also creates a new wallet, so the recipient doesn't need to download a new browser extension or application to use the money. Additionally, if the recipient doesn't claim the funds, the sender can still retrieve them.

zkME: Zero-knowledge identity oracle provider zkMe allows users to encrypt their data and use ZKP to prove their statements on their own devices, effectively verifying their eligibility while protecting their privacy and security.

Msafe: The first and only multi-signature, non-custodial digital asset management solution on Aptos to date.

Rarimo: Rarimo is a multi-chain protocol designed to address liquidity, accessibility, and interoperability issues between non-fungible and fungible use cases. Rarimo makes it easier to work across different chains, allowing you to perform operations such as transferring tokens, staking tokens, and providing cross-chain ownership proofs. Rarify Labs is a service provider and community member dedicated to Rarimo.

其中 TipLink is my favorite and very creative project.

Finally, in 2023, Circle was also one of the investors in LayerZero Labs' $120 million Series B financing round. LayerZero is also a highly regarded cross-chain interoperability protocol, and we hope for a bright future for L0!