According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 16 financing deals last week, a slight decrease compared to previous weeks, with a total amount of approximately 194.22 million US dollars and an average financing amount of 12.1388 million US dollars. The majority of financing deals were in the digital asset management/payment sector, with relatively more deals in the DeFi and NFT/digital fashion sectors. There was an increase in the infrastructure and social/creator economy sectors, while there were no deals in the metaverse/GameFi sector. The following chart shows the financing distribution across different sectors last week:

Digital Asset Management/Payment

In the field of digital asset management/payment, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 102.17 million US dollars, accounting for 52.61% of the total financing amount last week.

BitGo

The cryptocurrency financial services company BitGo has completed a $100 million financing at a valuation of $1.75 billion. The specific investors have not been disclosed, but BitGo said its investors come from the United States and Asia, some of whom are from outside the cryptocurrency industry. This round of financing will be used for strategic acquisitions, with at least two transactions already underway. BitGo is currently the custodian of FTX creditors, and its clients also include financial services company Swan Bitcoin, blockchain developer Mysten Labs, and clothing giant Nike. Earlier reports stated that on August 3, BitGo, the cryptocurrency financial services company, hired former Genesis executive Matthew Ballensweig to lead its new settlement network, Go Network, which aims to establish a comprehensive platform for settling cryptocurrency and dollar transactions.

CityPay

The encryption payment company CityPay has completed a seed round of financing of over 2 million euros, including 500,000 US dollars in cryptocurrency investment, with participation from Tether, Presto Ventures, and other angel investors. This round of financing will be used for market expansion and to promote the development of the B2C platform. It is reported that CityPay was founded by Eralp Hatipoglu (CEO) and Beka Kemertelidze, and the company will help corporate clients receive cryptocurrency payments in four ways: network integrated payments, POS terminals, email bills, and personal initial deposits. Earlier reports stated that on May 31, Tether announced its investment in CityPay, with the aim of expanding the application of cryptocurrency payments in Georgia.

DeFi

In the DeFi field, a total of 4 financings were completed with a total amount of over 40.8 million US dollars, accounting for 21.01% of the total financing amount last week.

ZetaChain

On August 16th, ZetaChain, a Layer 1 network for full-chain interoperability, announced the completion of a $27 million equity financing round. The round was participated by Blockchain.com, Human Capital, VY Capital, Sky9 Capital, Jane Street Capital, Smrti Lab, VistaLabs, CMT Digital, Foundation Capital, Lingfeng Capital, GSR, Kudasai, Krust, and others. ZetaChain's mission is to establish a new standard for blockchain interoperability, allowing users to manage all their assets and data from a single platform, regardless of which blockchain they were created or stored on (including non-smart contract chains such as Bitcoin and DogeCoin), without the need for bridging or token wrapping. According to official data, the ZetaChain ecosystem has deployed over 27,000 dApp contracts, covering cross-chain DeFi, NFT, Web3 social, identity, and gaming protocols. Currently, over 1.7 million users have participated in the ZetaChain testnet and completed over 13 million transactions.

Ellipsis Labs

On August 18th, Ellipsis Labs, a developer of Solana-based DEX, announced the completion of a $3.3 million seed round of financing. Electric Capital led the investment, with participation from Robot Ventures, Anagram, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, and Monad Labs CEO Keone Hon. It is reported that Ellipsis Labs' flagship protocol, Phoenix, is a decentralized limit order book built on the Solana blockchain.

PADO Labs

On August 18th, PADO Labs, a cryptography technology provider, announced that it had completed a $3 million seed round of financing six months ago. The company also stated that its beta version product is about to launch for internal testing. PADO will use cryptographic algorithms, interactive zero-knowledge proofs (IZK), and secure multi-party computation (MPC) technologies to integrate off-chain data into the on-chain world. This ensures compliant, secure, private, and verifiable links, promoting the creation of interconnected and composable user credit credentials. PADO's vision is to establish a user-centric, fully decentralized credit protocol.

Dinari

On August 15th, Dinari, a blockchain-based securities investment platform, announced the completion of a $7.5 million financing round. The investors in this round include SPEILLLP, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Third Kind Venture Capital, Sancus Ventures, and Version One VC. Dinari was founded in 2021 and provides blockchain-supported access to corporate equity through its dShare platform. According to Jake Timothy, co-founder and CTO of Dinari, due to regulatory reasons, the dShare platform provides access to securities such as Apple or Tesla stocks for users outside the United States based on the Arbitrum network.

NFT/Digital Fashion

In the NFT/digital fashion field, a total of 3 financing deals were completed with a total amount exceeding 40.7 million US dollars, accounting for 20.96% of the total financing amount last week.

MasterExchange

On August 18th, MasterExchange, an NFT music royalty market, completed a $2.7 million financing round with participation from Vectr Fintech, Claes-Henrik Julander, and Rob Small, among others. MasterExchange has launched its first Initial Music Offering (IMO) product, "Sofia," which has already sold out. Co-founded by AI and blockchain expert Alexander Fred-Ojala, MasterExchange allows music creators to raise funds by selling a portion of their future income (i.e. music royalties) to support early-stage creation. It is expected to launch more IMO products this fall. According to the MasterExchange website, royalty shares are tradable assets on the platform, with each share associated with an NFT on Polygon that is unique. However, the NFTs are held by external encrypted custodians, and users do not interact directly with them when using MasterExchange.

ZTX

On August 16th, Zepeto, a well-known metaverse platform in South Korea, announced its entry into the blockchain field through the ZTX (ZepetoX) project created in collaboration with Jump Crypto. ZTX completed a $13 million seed round of financing on August 16th, led by Jump Crypto, with participation from other investors such as Collab+Currency, Parataxis, MZ Web3 Fund, and Everest Ventures Group. According to active user metrics, Zepeto is the largest "Web2" metaverse platform in Asia and the fourth largest in the world, second only to popular games Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. Zepeto is a subsidiary of the South Korean technology group Naver and has attracted over 400 million users since its launch in 2018.

Jada AI

On August 17th, Jada AI, an artificial intelligence project utilizing blockchain technology, completed a $25 million financing round with participation from alternative investment group LDA Capital. The funds will be used to expand the project's development team and add new organizations.

Infrastructure

In the infrastructure field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 8 million US dollars, accounting for 4.12% of the total financing amount last week.

Linera

On August 16th, Layer1 blockchain Linera, created by former Meta employees, completed a $6 million financing round with Borderless Capital as the lead investor. The new funds will be used to "expand the team, launch the development and test network of the protocol, cultivate strategic influence in the Asia-Pacific region, and continue to develop its developer academy." As previously reported by BlockBeats, on June 29th, 2022, Layer1 blockchain Linera announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing, led by a16z, with participation from Cygni Capital, Kima Ventures, and Tribe Capital. Linera plans to use this funding to hire engineers and team members to build the protocol.

JKLabs

On August 15th, on-chain governance platform JKLabs completed a $2 million pre-seed round of financing. Participants in this round of financing include 1kx, Boys Club, Seed Club Ventures, and multiple angel investors. JKLabs solves Web3 governance issues through competitions, hackathons, and grants, replacing traditional models with data-driven voting rights. Potential partners for the platform currently include Polygon Labs, Zapper, Flipside, Boys Club, and Eco.

Social/Creator Economy

There were a total of 3 financings in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount exceeding $250,000, accounting for 0.13% of the total financing amount last week.

Orange Pill

On August 15th, the Bitcoin social networking platform Orange Pill completed a $250,000 Pre-Seed round of financing. The round was led by Lightning Ventures, with participation from NBA star Matthew Dellavedova and Barefoot Bitcoin Fund, among others. The Orange Pill application will be launched in November 2022 and will be available to global users on iOS and Android platforms. The main focus of the application is to form and cultivate a Bitcoin community in real life, strengthen connections beyond online interactions, and lay a solid foundation for the parallel economy of Bitcoin.

Port3 Network

On August 15th, Port3 Network, a "decentralized social data layer" in the Web3 industry, announced the completion of a new round of funding worth millions of dollars. Following the seed round led by Jump Crypto and Kucoin Ventures, institutions such as EMURGO, Adaverse, and Gate Labs participated in its second round of funding, bringing the total amount raised to $10 million. In addition, Port3 Network also received grants from top ecosystems such as Binance Labs, Mask Network, and Aptos Foundation. The new funding and grant money will be used to promote its on-chain interactive automation language, BQL (Blockchain Quest Language). BQL can achieve various on-chain interaction workflows, allowing users to execute complex interactions such as transactions and arbitrage with just one click.

friend.tech

On August 19th, friend.tech announced on social media that it has completed its seed round financing with participation from Paradigm. Earlier this year, friend.tech collaborated with Paradigm to build a new online social interaction tool.

Friend.Tech is a DApp based on the Base ecosystem. By strongly binding with Twitter, users can buy and sell any "shares" of users on Friend.tech through the Ethereum of the Base chain. Investors in KOL shares will have the right to directly communicate with KOL. It allows users to buy and sell shares of related Twitter accounts, and owning shares of a certain KOL will authorize users to enter that KOL's private chat room.

Other Financing

Other financing totaled 2 transactions, with a total amount of 2.3 million US dollars, accounting for 1.18% of the total financing amount last week. Including:

Aegis

On August 17th, Web3 security company Aegis announced the completion of a seed round of funding worth millions of dollars. This round of funding was participated by Generative Ventures, Arctic Ventures, and Risk Peak Evergreen. Aegis was founded in 2022 and was incubated by another global blockchain security company called "Paidu". Aegis has decided to create a low-threshold security platform to serve numerous Web3 C-end users. Currently, Aegis' products exist in the form of plugins in browsers, providing protection functions for pre-, mid-, and post-transaction stages. After the transaction is completed, Aegis reduces asset losses caused by excessive wallet and signature authorization through the use of the deauthorization function.

Shuttle Labs

On August 17th, Shuttle Labs, the parent company of blockchain analysis platform Lore Explorer, completed a new round of funding of $2.3 million, with participation from SALT.org, Arca, Balaji Srinivasan, and Floodgate. The new funds will be used to build Lore's AI browser and EVM-compatible network analysis tools. Lore Explorer is an AI-first on-chain data analysis solution that has integrated a deep language model (LLM), making blockchain analysis conversational.

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