Financing Weekly Selection for Week 30 of 2023: Music NFT platform Sound.xyz completes $20 million Series A financing round, led by a16z.
Metaverse/GameFi
There were a total of 1 financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of 5 million US dollars, accounting for 5.43% of the total financing amount last week.
MetaCene
On July 14th, blockchain MMORPG game MetaCene announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Hash Global and SevenX Ventures. Korean gaming giant WeMade, Cardano founding entity Emurgo, MixMarvel DAO Ventures, Sinovation Ventures founded by Kai-Fu Lee, and LK Ventures, a Web3 fund under Blue Harbour Group, also participated in the investment.
MetaCene is developing a blockchain-based MMORPG that features a surreal post-apocalyptic world, where players use various NFTs to redefine civilization. MetaCene aims to create an accessible Web3 world for the masses, with a focus on player-centric entertainment, governance, and AIGC-driven creation. Founded by gaming experts with over 20 years of industry experience from companies such as Shanda Games, Blizzard, and Perfect World, MetaCene envisions a multi-chain future from the Rangers protocol with real-time confirmation and ultra-low gas fees. The MetaCene Apostle NFT series and Alpha version will be launched in Q2 2023.
In addition, MetaCene has announced a partnership alliance with 24 well-known entities, including blockchain content platform MixMarvel and Space3, Web3 solution provider BlockchainSpace, etc. MetaCene has also partnered with BreederDAO, Ancient8, and Element NFT market.
NFT/Digital Fashion
There were a total of 1 financing in the NFT/digital fashion field, with a total amount exceeding 5.35 million US dollars, accounting for 5.81% of the total financing amount last week.
Florida Street
On July 11th, NFT lending protocol Gondi developer Florida Street completed a $5.35 million seed round of financing. The round was jointly led by Alex Pack of Hack.vc and Rodolfo Gonzalez of Foundation Capital, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Pantera Capital, and 6th Man Ventures.
It is reported that Florida Street is a community-centered NFT marketplace aggregator that allows users to create and follow NFT collections. Florida Street enables users to quickly target new items through real-time and modular activity summaries based on the collections they follow. Florida Street builds a product that brings the community together and raises the standards for other NFT collectors and traders. Through Florida Street, users can create their own NFT collections based on any type of shared characteristic among these items. This may be based on aesthetic patterns, off-chain events, or even niche knowledge about collecting. By creating collections, users can highlight the unique features of any group of NFTs and establish their reputation by sharing with the community.
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 4 financings were completed with a total amount of over 24.5 million US dollars, accounting for 26.63% of the total financing amount last week.
KTX.Finance
On July 12th, KTX.Finance, a decentralized derivatives trading platform for the BNB Chain ecosystem based in Singapore, completed a $4 million seed round of financing. The round was led by Hashed, with participation from AlphaLab Capital, CRIT Ventures, 100&100 Ventures, Trinito Corporation / Morpheus, GSG Asset, Lapin Digital, KuCoin Ventures, and Sky9 Capital. The funds raised in this round will be used to expand operations and business scope. KTX.Finance is operated by Alphamesh and incubated by ByteTrade Lab, a Singapore-based Web 3 infrastructure and venture capital firm.
KTX.Finance is a decentralized derivatives trading protocol on the blockchain that utilizes a unique multi-asset liquidity pool. It enables traders to trade with the KLP pool, which is a multi-asset liquidity pool consisting of 50% stablecoins and 50% blue-chip crypto assets such as BTC, ETH, and BNB. By adopting this model, traders can trade while fully custodizing their assets, while enjoying the benefits of leverage, a good user experience, and low fees. In addition, liquidity providers on KTX.Finance can deposit any blue-chip assets into the KLP pool and receive up to 70% of the trading fees generated by the protocol.
Related reading: "KTX: New "GMX" with $4 million in financing"
Ambient Finance
On July 12th, decentralized trading platform Ambient Finance announced the completion of a $6.5 million seed round of financing, led by BlockTower Capital, with participation from Jane Street, Circle, Tensai Capital, Naval, Yunt Capital, Susa Ventures, Quantstamp, Hypotenuse Labs, Ribbon Finance co-founders Julian and The Block researcher Steven. The funds raised in this round will be used for research and development.
Ambient uses an innovative single-contract architecture that can significantly reduce gasoline and taxes, while allowing users to seamlessly manage collateral on a single platform. It is the first DEX to support centralized, environmental, and "elimination" liquidity in the same liquidity pool. In addition, it introduces extensive quality of life improvements, resulting in a first-class DEX user experience.
DeFi Other financing includes:
On July 14th, according to official sources, Ion Protocol, a liquidity release protocol for pledgers, completed a $2 million Pre-Seed round of financing. The round was jointly led by Portal Ventures and SevenX Ventures, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Hashed, Smrti Lab, Foresight X, Maelstrom Fund, Alexander, Anthony Sassano, founder of The Daily Gwei, and Ryan Watkins, co-founder of Syncracy Capital.
Social/Creator Economy
There were a total of 3 financing deals in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount of over 22.462 million US dollars, accounting for 24.41% of the total financing amount last week.
Sound.xyz
On July 12th, the music NFT platform Sound.xyz announced that it had completed a $20 million Series A funding round in February of this year, with a16z leading the investment and participation from Sound Ventures led by singer Snoop Dogg, artist and producer Ryan Tedder, and actor Ashton Kutcher. The company will use the funds to expand its team and its web3 music strategy. Sound has not yet disclosed its valuation. BlockBeats previously reported that in December 2021, Sound.xyz announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing.
Sound's goal is to disrupt the traditional revenue model of Web2 streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music. The company's platform allows artists to mint their songs as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain and sell them directly to fans. Since its beta launch in 2022, it has helped music creators generate $5.5 million in music sales. Now, it is open to the public, helping more artists earn a sustainable income from their work.
Primal
On July 13th, Primal, a social application based on the Nostr protocol, announced the completion of a $1 million seed round of financing, with participation from Ten31 and Hivemind Ventures. Primal's social application suite combines a Twitter-like interface with the open-source Nostr protocol, which prioritizes censorship resistance, account ownership, and decentralization. Primal will allow users to send small amounts of Bitcoin to other users and their posts anywhere in the world instantly. It is reported that the Nostr protocol has attracted over 30 million users and is still growing. Due to its decentralized nature, the Nostr ecosystem offers a variety of participants, rather than competitors like Threads and Twitter.
Social/Creative Economy Other Financing Includes:
On July 11th, Neoke, a decentralized digital identity startup focused on the travel and tourism market, completed a new round of financing of 1.3 million euros. Dreamcraft Ventures, ff Venture Capital, Vision Hub, and Plug & Play participated in the investment. The new funds will be used to develop decentralized digital identity and biometric solutions for travel. The NeoKe platform uses blockchain and cloud technology to store and share verified user identity information, allowing travelers to fully understand and control their data, and simplifying travel service processes such as registration, guest verification, access control, and data management by creating independent traveler profiles.
Infrastructure
In the infrastructure field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 7.5 million US dollars, accounting for 8.15% of the total financing amount last week.
GEODNET
On July 11th, decentralized network hardware infrastructure company GEODNET completed a $1.5 million financing round, with participation from Borderless Capital's Web3 investment fund EdgeFi Fund, IoTeX, and a group of angel investors. The new funds will be used to expand reliable global coverage and develop a mobile operating system software toolkit to support accurate and trustworthy decentralized location services.
GEODNET is a decentralized network consisting of high-precision multi-frequency GNSS base stations. GEODNET is building a blockchain-based decentralized high-precision multi-frequency GNSS base station network and providing GEOD token incentives based on the Polygon network to provide reliable solutions for real-time motion applications. GEODNET is suitable for AIoT, earth science, and metaverse applications. GEODNET station #MineTheSky provides real-time satellite data and is the foundation of a new distributed SciFi encrypted sensor network driven by blockchain.
Artela
On July 13th, blockchain network Artela announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing, led by Shima Capital, with participation from A&T Capital, Big Brain Holdings, SevenX Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Amino Capital, and others.
Artela's mission is to establish a foundational blockchain network to meet the growing demand for large-scale decentralized applications. Artela's innovative design allows developers to build native extensions on top of the blockchain's foundational layer in a modular way, enabling more on-chain programmability. This approach will support developers in implementing custom functionalities in a lightweight and dynamic manner, opening doors for faster innovation and more possibilities. Artela has an extension layer that allows for the addition of a user-defined local extension called Aspect, which enhances programmability while ensuring compatibility with existing smart contracts. Artela plans to release the Aspect whitepaper later this year and launch an initial testnet.
Digital Asset Management/Payment
There were a total of 1 financing in the field of digital asset management/payment, with a total amount exceeding 3.6 million US dollars, accounting for 3.91% of the total financing amount last week.
Roi
On July 13th, investment application Roi completed a $3.6 million financing round, led by Spark Capital, with participation from 35 Ventures (NBA star Kevin Durant's venture capital firm), Google's Gradient Ventures, and former Coinbase CTO and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan. The new funds will be used to develop applications for tracking cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and traditional assets. Roi allows users to add stocks, bonds, and retirement accounts to a platform for viewing, and provides one-stop trading functionality at no extra cost, supporting accounts such as Robinhood, Coinbase, TD Ameritrade, and WeBull. It also provides users with an overview of all their cryptocurrency and NFT holdings, as well as more detailed data.
Other Financing
Other financing rounds totaled 6, with a total amount of 23.6 million US dollars, accounting for 25.65% of last week's total financing. Including:
On July 10th, Web3 startup Narval completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by BlockTower VC, with participation from Fabric Ventures, Frst (French seed specialist) Capital, a16z, Cherry Crypto, Motier Ventures, Bpifrance, Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon), Seb Borget (The Sandbox), Fred Montagnon (Arianee), and others. Narval aims to provide organizations with a more secure way to interact with digital assets, helping them manage and use assets such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
On July 11th, Giza, an AI-based encryption project, completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing. The round was led by CoinFund, with participation from StarkWare, TA Ventures, and Arrington Capital. Giza is committed to introducing artificial intelligence into the blockchain field and attempting to integrate zero-knowledge proof technology with artificial intelligence to complete blockchain verification transactions with less computing power. Giza is expected to release its infrastructure next week and fully launch the platform by 2023.
On July 11th, Olympix, a network security software company focused on encryption, completed a $4.3 million seed round of financing. The round was led by Boldstart Ventures, with participation from Robot Ventures, Shrug Capital, Konstantin Richter of Blockdaemon, and Tarun Chitra of Gauntlet Networks. Olympix is committed to building an AI-driven tool for constructing a secure stack for encrypted networks and is currently in the alpha testing phase.
On July 12th, LunarCrush, a cryptocurrency investment decision-making platform, completed a $5 million Series A financing round. The round was jointly led by Draper Round Table and INCE Capital, with participation from Draper Associates, WWVentures, TRGC, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Draper Goren Holm, Blockchain Founders Fund, and MoonPay. LunarCrush will release a beta version of its social search tool next week, which will allow users to search for any topic on the platform, not just financial products. The new tool enables users to search across all social media platforms to extract the most relevant content around established interests.
On July 12th, AI startup company AwesomeQA completed a $2.8 million seed round of financing, led by North Island Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Uniswap Labs Ventures. AwesomeQA plans to use the new funds to expand its team and improve its custom-trained AI model. It also provides customer support for over 60 Web3 companies, including AAVE, Dune, and Scroll. AwesomeQA primarily offers automated customer support services, using AI to automatically answer user questions in Discord and Telegram channels.
On July 12th, NFT ticketing solution GET Protocol completed a $4.5 million strategic round of financing, led by Flow Ventures and including Animoca Brands, Redbeard Ventures, Funfair Ventures, and individual investor Sebastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox.
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