Week 27 of 2023 funding selection, Binance Labs participated in the decentralized trading platform Maverick Protocol.
According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 15 financing deals last week, which is consistent with the previous week. However, the total amount of financing decreased by approximately 100.02 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 6.668 million US dollars. The infrastructure sector accounted for the majority of the financing, while the Metaverse/GameFi and digital asset management/payment sectors had relatively more financing. The DeFi sector saw an increase, while other sectors saw a decrease. The NFT/digital fashion and social/creator economy sectors had fewer financing deals. 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 20.57 million US dollars, accounting for 20.57% of the total financing amount last week.
DREST
On June 22nd, fashion metaverse game company DREST announced the completion of a £15 million financing, with the investors yet to be disclosed. As of now, DREST's total financing amount has reached £30 million.
It is reported that DREST integrates luxury fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands with metaverse technology, allowing players to design brand digital clothing and participate in the game on the metaverse Avatar. Its user-generated content platform combines gamification and brand marketing, enabling brand merchants to reach a highly engaged audience. Currently, DREST's fashion brand partners include Breitling, Cartier, Fendi, Gucci, Prada, and Valentino, among others. DREST is exploring the development of games in the Web3 and lifestyle fields and is expected to enter the development phase in the next 18 months.
DREST CEO Lisa Bridgett said: "We are pleased to receive investment to help us expand DREST, especially in such a difficult market. This proves the strength of our product delivery and creative channels. We are now ready to take the business to a new level and provide users with a unique and new experience while maintaining the core elements of the game. Undeniably, the luxury fashion and lifestyle industry has a growing interest in games, and we are very capable of meeting this demand. We look forward to the next chapter."
This funding will enable DREST to develop in gaming, media, data, and e-commerce, as the company prepares to launch a highly improved, metaverse-supported version of its current product globally, which will include a range of new features aimed at becoming a leading creative platform for gamifying fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle. Further plans include expanding DREST through a developer ecosystem, marketing channels, and strategic revenue streams, as well as building on the platform's user growth. Other games in the web3 and lifestyle sectors are being explored and will enter the development phase in the next 18 months.
Anichess
On June 22nd, Anichess, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, completed a $1.5 million seed round of financing. GameFi Ventures, Coin Operated Group, Koda Capital, Bing Ventures, 708 Capital, and Asymmetry Capital participated in this round of financing, which will be used for team expansion and game development.
Anichess is a community-driven free game owned by Animoca Brands and Chess.com's Play Magnus Group (PMG) in collaboration with its Champions Chess Tour. It is known for having a "new strategic layer driven by magic spells." Anichess combines the core rules of classic international chess with so-called "spell mechanisms," including a series of offensive, defensive, and counter-attack tactics. It will also add elements similar to esports through challenges. Anichess is scheduled to release its Alpha version in Q1 2024.
Grant Lee, Chief Strategy Officer of Chess.com, said in a press release: "We are excited to partner with Animoca Brands to provide fun and unique chess experiences for some of the top players and influencers in our ecosystem. This is part of our overall mission to develop the game by showcasing chess to different audiences in new ways."
Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:
On June 20th, Cat Paradise, a GameFi platform based on the TON blockchain, announced the completion of its seed round of financing. The specific amount has not been disclosed. Y2Z, SecondLive, COMBO, Mask Network, EMURGO Ventures, Initiate Capital, Moon Capital and others participated in this round of financing.
NFT/Digital Fashion
There were a total of 1 financing in the NFT/digital fashion field, with a total amount exceeding 500,000 US dollars, accounting for 0.5% of the total financing amount last week.
Open Foodie
On June 21st, NFT project Open Foodie announced the completion of a $500,000 seed round of financing, with participation from Hash Global, Starwin Group, Bitrise Capital, and Teraland.
Open Foodie is a NFT project based on AIGC, with a core focus on creative cartoon food manufacturing laboratory. It aims to combine Web2 and Web3 technologies to promote the future development of the food industry, using cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence to envision the future of human food consumption. The BTC ecosystem of Open Foodie now includes Bitcoin Foodie (BTC NFT) and $f00d (BRC-20). Bitcoin Foodie represents the Genesis series of Open Foodie, with a total supply of 256 NFTs.
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 4 financings were completed with a total amount of over 15.8 million US dollars, accounting for 15.8% of the total financing amount last week.
Maverick Protocol
On June 21st, decentralized trading platform Maverick Protocol completed a $9 million strategic round of financing, led by Founders Fund with participation from Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, and Apollo Crypto. The funding will be used to expand the protocol's scale, deploy it to new chains, and support developers in building on the infrastructure.
Maverick Protocol is a dynamic distributed automated market maker (AMM) that moves according to the transaction price. It aims to provide deeper liquidity, bring the best liquidity to decentralized financial markets, and improve capital efficiency. On this basis, it provides tools to maximize transaction fee revenue, or reduce and avoid gratuitous losses. (BlockBeats Note: For more information about Maverick, please read "What is Maverick? Binance's latest Launchpool has a daily capital efficiency of over 100%".)
Earn Network
On June 21st, DeFi infrastructure Earn Network completed a $2.7 million seed round of financing, led by Shima Capital and with participation from DFG, Jsquare, LD Capital, Cronos Labs, GTS Ventures, Bixin Ventures, ViaBTC Capital, Mars DAO, and Mirana Ventures. The funding will be used for product development and recruitment.
Earn Network claims that existing centralized and traditional investment platforms are unable to leverage the enormous value generated by the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem and its broader environment. As a result, billions of dollars in potential investment opportunities and economic growth remain untapped, limiting the potential benefits for investors and hindering the overall development of the global economy.
Therefore, Earn Network solves this problem by providing a "no-code" solution, allowing anyone to create their custom financial products such as staking or lending pools using secure and audited templates. There are no more hidden fees, intermediaries, or cumbersome processes.
Other financing in the DeFi field includes:
On June 22nd, Northstake, a cryptocurrency staking platform for institutions, completed a €2.8 million (approximately $3 million) financing round with participation from PreSeed Ventures, Morph Capital, The Aventures Fund, Funfair Ventures, and Delta Blockchain Fund.
On June 20th, DeFi privacy infrastructure Portal Gate completed a $1.1 million seed round of financing, led by Apollo Crypto. Portal Gate will launch its first privacy pool product on the mainnet in Q3 2023. Founded at the end of 2022, Portal Gate aims to build DeFi infrastructure that is compliant and privacy-focused, enabling institutional users to conduct more efficient on-chain transactions. The first product from Portal Gate will be a privacy pool that enhances the anonymity of on-chain transfers. The main product from Portal Gate will be a decentralized dark pool, allowing users to simultaneously hide the price and order size during transactions.
Infrastructure
There were a total of 3 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 37.7 million US dollars, accounting for 37.69% of the total financing amount last week.
Arkon Energy
On June 20th, Arkon Energy, an Australian data center infrastructure provider, completed a $26 million financing round with participation from Sandton Capital Partners. The company is expanding its business to the United States by acquiring a site in Ohio. The designed capacity of the data center is 100 megawatts (MW).
As previously reported by BlockBeats, Arkon Energy, an Australian mining company, announced a $28 million financing round in November 2022, led by Blue Sky Capital.
Neutro
On June 21st, Neutro, a Cosmos ecosystem smart contract infrastructure company, announced the completion of a $10 million financing round led by Binance Labs and CoinFund. Neutron is a blockchain network aimed at integrating smart contracts into the Cosmos network using CosmWasm (Cosmos WebAssembly). With several audits completed, core module implementation, and successful deployment of the testnet, Cosmos Hub initiated an on-chain vote to determine if Neutron is ready to launch on Replicated Security (RS).
RS, formerly known as Interchain Security, is a shared security model designed by Cosmos Hub to provide enhanced security for projects launched as consumer chains on the Hub. Through revenue sharing, consumer chains can benefit from the validator network of Cosmos Hub and enhance their security.
Other financing in the infrastructure sector includes:
On June 22, the shared sequencer solution Radius completed a $1.7 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with Hashed leading the investment and Superscrypt, Lambdaclass, and Crypto.com participating. It is reported that Radius protects users from harmful MEV by using practical verifiable delayed encryption (PVDE) with its shared sequencer.
Digital Asset Management/Payment
In the field of digital asset management/payment, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 16.5 million US dollars, accounting for 16.5% of the total financing amount last week.
dtcpay
On June 21st, dtcpay, a digital payment platform in Singapore, announced the completion of a $16.5 million Pre-A round of financing. The round was led by Kwee Liong Tek, Chairman of Pontiac Land Group, with participation from David Tung, former Managing Director/Partner of Carlyle Group, Jean Marc Poullet, Chairman of BURGESS Asia, and Tham Sai Choy, former Senior Partner of McKinsey & Company and former Chairman of KPMG Singapore and Asia Pacific. The funds from this round of financing will be further invested in product development, establishing stronger operational/infrastructure capabilities, and expanding dtcpay's global influence.
EDX Markets
On June 20th, EDX Markets (EDX) announced the successful launch of its digital asset market and completed a round of investment with new equity partners including Miami International Holdings, DV Crypto, GTS, GSR Markets LTD, and HRT Technology. The new funding will support EDX in continuing to develop its trading platform and solidify its market leadership position.
Later this year, EDX will launch EDX Clearing to settle trades matched on EDX Markets. EDX Markets, a new cryptocurrency trading platform supported by Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab, has begun executing trades in recent weeks and is expected to announce its launch on Tuesday evening local time. EDX Markets is a non-custodial trading platform that does not directly handle customers' digital assets or serve individual investors. EDX Markets will offer four cryptocurrencies for trading, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash (assets that have not been classified as securities by the US Securities and Exchange Commission).
Other Financing
Other financing totaled 2 transactions, with a total amount of 8.95% of last week's total financing, amounting to 8.95 million US dollars. This includes:
On June 22nd, AI encryption search engine Kaito completed a Series A financing round of $5.5 million with a valuation of $87.5 million, led by Superscrypt and Spartan. It is reported that Kaito is creating a Web3 search engine based on large language models and has gradually opened the beta version to 35,000 users on the waiting list since June 20th.
On June 19th, Vantient, a Singaporean Web3 customer relationship management company, completed a $3.45 million financing round with participation from Cercano Management (formerly Vulcan Capital), Saison Capital, and AC Ventures. It is reported that Vantient mainly provides on-chain and off-chain customer data aggregation and analysis services for enterprises and Web3 projects to support companies in acquiring, attracting, and retaining their users.
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