Financing selection for the 31st week of 2023, Telegram raised $210 million through issuing bonds.
Metaverse/GameFi
In the field of Metaverse/GameFi, a total of 3 financings were completed with a total amount of 59 million US dollars, accounting for 13.25% of the total financing amount last week.
Futureverse
On July 18th, Futureverse, a metaverse infrastructure company, completed a $54 million Series A financing round. The round was led by 10T Holdings with participation from Ripple Labs and others. Futureverse is composed of 11 different startups from various fields including blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual universe, and gaming. Futureverse aims to combine technological infrastructure with AI-driven content to create an open metaverse that everyone can aspire to. With the help of its strong partners 10T and Ripple, Futureverse aims to transform the metaverse from an abstract concept into a practical, accessible, and interactive destination.
The establishment of Futureverse aims to enable developers and users to create and participate in interoperable content and applications that were previously unavailable in the metaverse. The company's technology platform includes a powerful proprietary artificial intelligence content generation tool designed to enhance the music, objects, characters, and animations that make up the metaverse. By integrating 11 metaverse infrastructure and content companies into a collaborative ecosystem, Futureverse hopes to provide the basic components for building any metaverse application while forming one of the world's largest metaverse communities driven by digital collectibles. Futureverse also aims to become a leader in the new field of AI gaming. Last week, Futureverse partnered with FIFA to launch the AI League, an AI-driven consumer game, on iOS and Android.
Eyeball Games
On July 20th, Web3 game developer Eyeball Games announced the completion of a $1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by White Star Capital with support from Ubisoft's digital asset fund, Polygon Ventures, Immutable, Oular, Great South Gate Ventures, and a group of angel investors.
Eyeball Games, a game studio based in Singapore, plans to release a phased launch of their pool game, Eyeball Pool. First, the studio will release an early access pass NFT called Eyeball Pool and offer the online game Balldroids to NFT holders. The company then plans to fully launch the game to all players in Q1 2024, with the NFTs converting to game entry packs containing exclusive and unique items. The game will initially be released on the Immutable zkEVM chain and will expand to other blockchains.
Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:
On July 18th, Web3 mobile game developer Hexacore announced the completion of a $3.5 million financing round, led by Dubai-based technology venture capital firm Scalo Technologies, with participation from Xsolla, Estoty, and other angel investors. The new funds will be used to accelerate the company's further development of Web3 functionality in mobile games, including in-app purchases, NFT collections, and advertising incentives. Hexacore is committed to building an open game economy based on digital ownership, helping Web2 developers integrate blockchain technology into games, and providing services such as embedded wallets, NFT minting and sales, payment channels, blockchain token economies, and digital asset management.
NFT/Digital Fashion
In the NFT/digital fashion field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount of over 16 million US dollars, accounting for 3.59% of the total financing amount last week.
Jungle
On July 21st, AI NFT market Jungle completed a $16 million financing, and the specific investors have not been disclosed. Jungle aims to create a community that is not centered around a single NFT collection, but rather creates the market itself through a series of innovative features never seen before.
The founding team of Jungle has rich experience in different backgrounds such as e-commerce, web3, and cryptocurrency. They are creating a market that prioritizes user experience, reward systems, and most importantly, security. Although details have not been disclosed, Jungle's goal is to provide many exclusive benefits to community members. The latest platform integration of Jungle is an artificial intelligence search tool designed to improve and simplify the way traders browse the NFT market and find the next major investment opportunity.
NFT/Digital Fashion field's other financing includes:
On July 21st, according to official sources, NFT liquidity solution platform Ra1se has received seed funding from North American mining companies. Ra1se uses multi-chain compatibility and complex algorithms to transform illiquid NFTs into highly liquid blue-chip NFTs. It is reported that the Ra1se platform will launch its beta version in early August and initiate a series of user incentive activities called "100 E subsidies".
Ra1se's solution can improve the liquidity of various NFT projects and help the development of the NFT industry. Ra1se's product starts from the perspective of NFT players, converting NFTs with poor liquidity in wallets into treasure boxes. Players have the opportunity to obtain more valuable NFT projects when they open them. Ra1se is a one-stop solution. Traditional NFT gameplay can no longer meet players' diversified needs for NFTs, so new gameplay is needed to stimulate players and reignite their passion for NFTs.
原文链接 translates to "Original Link" in English.
Social/Creative Economy
There were a total of 2 financing rounds in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount of over 211.4 million US dollars, accounting for 47.47% of the total financing amount last week.
Interface
On July 20th, social feed stream application Interface announced the completion of a $1.4 million seed round of financing, with Polymorphic Capital and Mask Network leading the investment. Seed Club, Caballeros Capital, Safe Ecology Fund, and angel investors Blake Gao, Anton Bukov, Sergej Kunz, Arthaud Mesnard, Andrey Scherbovich, and Will Papper also participated in the investment.
Interface believes that the discussion of developing social protocols and applications in the cryptocurrency industry has overlooked an important aspect: Ethereum itself serves as a social network to some extent. Through various applications in the Ethereum ecosystem, users can participate in activities such as publishing content, contacting friends, and exchanging messages. However, until recently, this experience has been fragmented, with most available front-ends focused on single applications or technical and financial aspects in the on-chain world. Interface aims to change this by providing a general front-end customized for social use cases, turning Ethereum into a comprehensive social network.
Other financing for social/creator economy includes:
On July 19th, Telegram completed a $210 million financing through the issuance of bonds, with Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov among the investors. Currently, Telegram has approximately 800 million monthly active users, with over 300 million new users added in the past two and a half years, attracting 2.5 million new registered users every day. BlockBeats reported yesterday that Pavel Durov stated in a statement that he personally purchased a quarter of the newly issued Telegram bonds, investing tens of millions of dollars to support Telegram's growth.
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 3 financings were completed with a total amount of over 18 million US dollars, accounting for 4.04% of the total financing amount last week.
Ethena
On July 17th, Ethena, a cryptocurrency startup, completed a $6 million seed round of financing, led by Dragonfly and supported by trading platforms such as Deribit, Bybit, OKX, Gemini, Huobi, and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes and his family office. It is reported that Ethena's stablecoin, USDe, hedges price risk by using user collateral and maintaining its anchor to the US dollar through perpetual swaps shorting Ethereum. Unlike other stablecoin projects, Ethena has learned from the challenges faced by projects such as Terra and has modified a new approach to ensure that USDe remains pegged to the US dollar. Ethena's stablecoin achieves stability by using user-provided collateral and hedging price risk through shorting Ethereum perpetual swaps.
By holding an equal amount of pledged ETH and perpetual contracts, Ethena ensures that the returns and losses of any asset are effectively balanced. In addition to stablecoins, Ethena is also developing a dollar-denominated digital native internet savings bond. The bond generates returns by combining collateralized ETH and exchange margin, providing investors with an opportunity to earn passive income. Ethena aims to differentiate itself from previous attempts to build algorithmic stablecoins, such as Terra, which faces significant challenges and deviates from being pegged to the US dollar.
Radiant Capital
On July 20th, Binance's venture capital department, Binance Labs, invested $10 million in cross-chain lending protocol Radiant Capital. This round of funding will drive further product development and expansion to other Ethereum-compatible chains.
Radiant's Radiant V2 release will allow seamless deposit and lending on any main chain - and has a powerful cross-chain protocol fee sharing mechanism. Radiant hopes to share cross-chain currency markets with its community for protocol fees. Radiant believes that the first major expansion will enable Radiant to gain a TVL of about $6 billion on the BNB chain. With the new chain, Radiant will understand the importance of perfecting the RDNT emission structure to best establish a long-term stable platform across multiple markets.
DeFi Other financing includes:
On July 18th, DeFi mortgage lending protocol PWN announced that it had completed a $2 million financing round with a valuation of $42 million, with participation from Digital Finance Group and others. PWN is a peer-to-peer platform that allows individuals to use digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs as collateral to support loans. Borrowers can use any ERC token as collateral without the need for risk liquidation before the loan matures.
Infrastructure
There were a total of 8 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 124 million US dollars, accounting for 27.85% of the total financing amount last week.
Cosmic Wire
On July 19th, Web3 and blockchain solution provider Cosmic Wire completed a $30 million seed round of financing, led by the Solana Foundation and Polygon.
Cosmic Wire is a web3 and blockchain solution technology company. The funds raised in this round of financing will be used to promote the development of decentralized applications and expand the Web3 ecosystem. In addition, Cosmic Wire is also building blockchain technology that is platform-agnostic, scalable, and interoperable. Cosmic Wire aims to give users full control over their data and online interactions through its platform.
The game, entertainment, and media general manager of the Solana Foundation, Johnny Lee, said that Cosmic Wire's web3 infrastructure will be built on the Solana network. "Their Metaverse SDK solution significantly shortens the development time of high-fidelity, 3D, browser-based Metaverse experiences, and integrates physical web3 digital products, content CDNs, payment solutions, and avatar UGC all together. The Solana Foundation has always supported tool and infrastructure builders, and we are excited that Cosmic Wire is providing an unprecedented new metaverse experience on the Solana network," Lee added.
除了筹款之外，Cosmic Wire was also selected as a participant in Google Cloud's Web3 Launch Program before its official launch, allowing the company to access customized resources and Google Cloud credits. The Solana Foundation is one of the partners of Google Cloud in this program.
DappOS
On July 21st, Web3 operating protocol DappOS announced the completion of its seed round financing with a valuation of $50 million. IDG Capital and Sequoia China led the investment, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, and others. DappOS was selected for Binance Labs' fifth season incubation program in November 2022 and received pre-seed financing from Binance Labs in June of this year.
DappOS is the first Web3 operating protocol designed to make dApps as user-friendly as mobile applications. Thanks to the DappOS solution based on account abstraction and execution network, dApps can easily integrate with DappOS and users can seamlessly and intuitively interact with any Web3 dApp on any chain. DappOS introduces unified account functionality, providing a CeFi-like user experience while offering complete decentralization.
RISC Zero
On July 19th, Web3 infrastructure company RISC Zero completed a $40 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Galaxy Digital, IOSG, RockawayX, Maven 11, Fenbushi Capital, Delphi Digital, Algaé Ventures, IOBC, Tribute Labs' Zero Dao, and Alchemy. RISC Zero is an infrastructure company aimed at helping developers create zero-knowledge proof software. They are about to launch the Bonsai computing platform, which is a decentralized proof engine that allows developers to integrate zk proofs into their applications and chains to improve security. RISC Zero's ZK virtual machine (zkVM) allows developers to create ZK-supported applications using familiar languages such as Rust and C++. The difference between ZkVM and the popular zkEVM architecture is that it is chain-agnostic and does not have predefined concepts such as wallet addresses or other blockchain components used to verify transaction data.
RISC Zero announced that through a new round of financing, it will be able to release its Bonsai computing platform, which allows for the quick creation and deployment of applications in both cloud and decentralized environments. Bonsai frees developers from tedious proof composition and server architecture, allowing them to focus on creating applications.
Infrastructure remaining financing includes:
On July 22nd, Cymbal, a blockchain technology startup based in Menlo Park, California, announced the completion of a $18.5 million financing round. First Round Capital, Solana Ventures, CAA Connect, Coinbase Ventures, and others participated in this round of financing. The funds raised in this round will be used to expand the business and increase development efforts. Cymbal is building a "readable" Ethereum blockchain browser that converts complex on-chain data into visual and easy-to-understand transaction summary analysis, such as wallet investment portfolio rankings, NFT buyer numbers, and specific cryptocurrency project sales, making it easier for ordinary users to understand. At present, Cymbal supports the analysis and processing of Ethereum blockchain data, and will expand to Solana blockchain in the future.
On July 21st, DAO registration service provider MIDAO completed a $1 million financing round with participation from The LegalTech Fund, FJ Labs, and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase. The funding will enhance MIDAO's core product, providing legal recognition for Web3 projects and DAOs, and helping to ensure contributor liability protection. It will also expand MIDAO's global network of Web3 lawyers and professional service providers, and broaden its service scope worldwide. MIDAO is a partner network of over 300 reviewed Web3 lawyers, whose mission is to enable Web3 organizations in various industries to access legal and regulatory frameworks, and provide services to existing DAOs seeking legal recognition.
On July 21st, Side Labs, the parent company of Side Protocol, a Cosmos-based interoperable financial protocol, completed a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round. The round was participated by Hashkey Capital, KR1, Continue Capital, Symbolic Capital, Informal Systems, and others. The new funds will be used to expand their team, ensure compliance with legal and regulatory standards, and establish a mesh liquidity network aimed at eliminating bridges and intermediary tokens for cross-chain asset exchange through liquidity center networks.
On July 22nd, Superblock, the developer of the lightweight node Layer 1 blockchain protocol Over Protocol, announced that it has raised a total of $8 million through two financing transactions. Investors include SK, Netmarble, DSC, E&Investment, Schmidt, SpringCamp, and NaverZ. Over Protocol is a Layer 1 blockchain built using the Ethanos protocol, which aims to reduce storage requirements so that anyone can use a PC to run a node and become a validator, thereby reducing the cost of maintaining blockchain nodes. The new funds will be used to further expand the Korean market.
Digital Asset Management/Payment
There were a total of 2 financing rounds in the digital asset management/payment industry, with a total amount exceeding 15 million US dollars, accounting for 3.37% of the total financing amount last week.
Echooo Wallet
On July 17th, Echooo Wallet, an abstract encrypted wallet, completed a $15 million financing round with a valuation of $100 million. Skyview Capital and A&T Capital were among the investors in this round. Echooo Wallet will launch a "limited-time free account abstract wallet giveaway" at 22:00 on July 17th. Echooo is a hybrid architecture wallet (EOA+CA). EOA wallet: Echooo generates wallet private keys, but unlike traditional wallets, it uses mnemonic words for users to save. It encrypts the private key through an algorithm and stores the encrypted file in the cloud. In the future, the wallet will also have the ability of MPC (multi-party secure computation). CA wallet: multi-signature and social recovery mechanism.
Even if the account is stolen. For EOA wallets, the private key used for transactions is still in the user's hands (backed up in the cloud), which ensures that the user's assets will not be lost. For CA wallets, transactions require multiple confirmations, which also ensures that the user's assets will not be lost. Both can register new accounts and then use cloud keys or social recovery mechanisms to retrieve wallets in the new accounts.
数字资产管理/支付其余融资包括：
Translation:
Digital asset management/payment and other financing including:
On July 21st, the hybrid trading platform OpenEx completed a Pre-A round of financing with a valuation of $50 million. The amount was not disclosed, and C² Ventures, Agallochum Capital, and TKX Capital participated, with Galxe and Fenbushi Capital's founder and CEO participating as individuals. The financing will be used to improve the DApp trading experience and develop new financial products. OpenEx is a hybrid trading platform that combines CEX and DEX.
原文链接 translates to
Other Financing
Other financing totaled 1 transaction, with a total amount of 1.92 million US dollars, accounting for 0.43% of last week's total financing. Including:
On July 18th, Tromero, a machine learning training and hosting platform based in London, completed a £1.5 million seed round of financing, led by BlueYard Capital. Tromero will use this investment to build a team and deliver a fully functional platform prototype within the next 12 months. Tromero is a blockchain based on a consensus protocol, where proof of work is machine learning training and hosting. Proof of work provides the cornerstone of the blockchain's consensus and provides a trained ML model, which the startup calls "useful proof of work" service. For data processors, Tromero provides encrypted rewards to miners and compensation for completed work in fiat currency.
Welcome to join the official community of BlockBeats by LUDONG
Telegram subscription group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram communication group: https://t.me/theblockbeatsApp
Twitter official account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
Related Articles
