Financing Highlights | a16z leads investment in Story Protocol, a blockchain-based IP infrastructure; Pantera Capital leads investment in DEX project Brine Fi.
According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 21 financing deals last week, a significant increase compared to previous weeks. The total amount raised was approximately 282 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 13.4286 million US dollars. The majority of the financing deals were in the digital asset management/payment sector, followed by the social/creator economy sector. There was an increase in financing deals in the metaverse/GameFi, DeFi, and infrastructure sectors, while financing in the NFT/digital fashion and other sectors was relatively low. There were no financing deals in the Web3+AI sector. The following chart shows the financing distribution across different sectors last week:
Metaverse/GameFi
In the field of Metaverse/GameFi, a total of 4 financings were completed with a total amount of 51.2 million US dollars, accounting for 18.16% of the total financing amount last week.
Nazara Technologies Limited
On September 7th, Nazara Technologies Limited, a diversified gaming and sports media platform in India, completed a $49.2 million financing round with participation from SBI Mutual Fund, SBI Magnum Global Fund, and SBI Technology Opportunities Fund. The company's valuation reached $230 million in this round of financing. A few days ago, the founder of stock brokerage firm Zerodha announced a $12 million investment in this Indian gaming giant.
Nazara is a leading diversified gaming and sports media platform in India, with operations in emerging and developed global markets such as Africa and North America, offering products for interactive gaming, esports, and gamified early learning ecosystems. In early August, Nazara invested $500,000 in Israeli game developer Snax Games to obtain exclusive rights to distribute their games in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East over the next five years through revenue sharing. In May, the company announced that it would increase its stake in Next Wave Multimedia to nearly 72%.
Kamath Associates and NKSquared partner Nikhil Kamath said, "India's gaming industry is expected to experience strong growth in the coming years, and Nazara has established a diversified, profitable gaming platform that is well-suited to seize opportunities in the future." The gaming giant's net profit for the 23 fiscal year soared to 61.4 Indian rupees, with operating revenue skyrocketing 75% year-on-year to 1,091 Indian rupees. Nazara announced that it will use new funds to invest in new businesses such as esports and blockchain games, as well as strategic acquisitions and investments in some gaming and sports media companies.
GAM3S.GG
On September 7th, according to official sources, Polkastarter Gaming announced its rebranding as GAM3S.GG. It also announced that it has completed a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from Polygon, Double Peak, ArkStream Capital, LD Capital, ROK Capital, Hyperithm, Snackclub, and Emurgo Ventures. GAM3S.GG is a Web3 gaming information platform responsible for planning and creating content, focusing on top games, and showcasing reviews, guides, news, tasks, annual awards, etc. Its goal is to become a one-stop-shop for Web3 gaming. The GAM3S.GG platform will officially launch in November 2022. In the past few months, GAM3S.GG has launched game tasks with API integration, social login, Steam progress tracking, leaderboards, streamer discovery, and games that can be played directly on the platform.
Regarding the performance of GAM3S.GG, Shreyansh Singh, the investment director of Polygon, commented that "it advocates a vision of making Web3 games accessible, high-quality games surpassing noise, and providing trustworthy guidance for gamers in this new field." As of September 2023, GAM3S.GG has over 80,000 gamers on Discord.
Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:
On September 7th, the blockchain gaming project BlockGames was selected for the Google Cloud Web3 Startup Program and completed its Series A financing. The specific investment amount and investors have not been disclosed. After joining the Google Web3 Startup Program, BlockGames will automatically qualify for Google Cloud Scale Tier product access and can use Google Cloud Web3 services.
On September 7th, Crucible, a development company in the metaverse industry, announced that it has completed a new round of financing. Born Ready, a Web3 technology fund under AI metaverse company Futureverse, led the investment, but the specific amount has not been disclosed. In addition, Crucible also announced a partnership with Futureverse.
NFT/Digital Fashion
There were a total of 1 funding round in the NFT/digital fashion industry, with a total amount exceeding 5 million US dollars, accounting for 1.77% of the total funding amount last week.
TRLab
On September 6th, NFT art platform TRLab announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by OKX Ventures and Hivemind Capital Partners, with investment from HashKey Capital, the investment branch of HashKey Group. Hivemind and OKX Ventures will provide strategic support for TRLab in the US and Asian markets, respectively.
TRLab is located in New York and Hong Kong, collaborating with artists, heritage, and art institutions to conceive, produce, and launch digital-first art experiences for new and old collectors. Since its establishment in 2021, TRLab has worked with several digital and traditional artists to design and launch interactive art collection experiences, including the multi-season educational project "The Calder Question" developed in collaboration with the Calder Foundation; the online collection journey "Your Daytime Fireworks" by contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang, which was nominated for the 2022 Lumiere Award; and the limited edition digital art piece "Exploding Self" developed in collaboration with Cai Guo-Qiang in 2021, which is now permanently collected by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
This round of funding will be used to bring in more artists, foundations, and cultural institutions to collaborate with TRLab, expand the company's market share in the international market, and integrate new technologies to enhance the digital art collection experience. In the next six months, TRLab will launch several digital art experiences in collaboration with renowned artists and foundation institutions, and will hold its first offline art exhibition in November this year.
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 4 financings were completed with a total amount of over 26.5 million US dollars, accounting for 9.40% of the total financing amount last week.
Brine Fi
On September 7th, DEX project Brine Fi completed a $16.5 million financing at a valuation of $100 million. Brine Fi is a non-custodial, decentralized order book DEX supported by Ethereum scaling system StarkWare. As one of StarkWare's projects, Brine Fi uses ZKP technology to protect user privacy, keeping their transaction history hidden from anyone, allowing users to maintain privacy in all transactions. Brine Fi is an end-to-end decentralized (non-custodial) platform that does not require credit limits or transparent collateral proof on the chain.
Unlike traditional DEXs, Brine Fi uses an order book model to solve the problem of slippage, rather than an automated market maker (AMM) model. And because most CEXs are based on order books, switching to Brine Fi is easier than switching to an AMM DEX, with a latency time of just 80 milliseconds, the lowest in the industry. In addition, Brine Fi does not charge any gas fees, but instead charges a fixed 0.1% transaction fee. Depending on the trading level, users can pay as little as 0.05% in transaction fees. On the other hand, users can earn rewards by referring other traders, with up to 50% of the recommended trading fees refunded. With the help of the trading leaderboard, top traders on Brine Fi can earn monthly USDC rewards.
This round of financing was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Elevation Capital, StarkWare Ltd, Spartan Group, Goodwater Capital, Upsparks Ventures, and Protofund Ventures. This financing round is noteworthy given the recent bear market in the cryptocurrency industry, which has led to a decrease in trading volume and a drying up of venture capital. However, the success of Brine Fi demonstrates that investors are still interested in blockchain-based innovative technologies.
LeverFi
On September 7th, according to official sources, LeverFi announced that it has received a strategic financing of $5 million from Unicorn Web3. LeverFi is a decentralized, smart contract-supported platform for leveraged trading. While there are other decentralized leveraged trading platforms in the market, LeverFi offers unique leverage solutions for traders.
LeverFi accepts a wide range of collateral, from major tokens such as BTC and ETH to stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and DAI, as well as LP assets such as Curve-LP, Uni-LP, and Sushi-LP. Collateral is redeployed to platforms such as Convex or Aave to earn returns for users. LeverFi allows users to unify their collateral into one collateral basket and leverage larger trading positions. Unifying collateral also helps to spread risk across the entire collateral basket, reducing (but not eliminating) the possibility of liquidation.
Although leveraged trading is easy for traders on LeverFi, the powerful platform design means that LeverFi can support advanced traders who use leverage for paired trading or hedging/market-neutral strategies. With this funding, LeverFi will expand its deep collaboration with Unicorn-Verse, and the investment will be used to upgrade LeverFi to help the LeverFi ecosystem land and achieve its growth goals.
DeFi Other financing includes:
On September 8th, RWA protocol Helix completed a $2 million pre-seed round of financing. The round was led by Saison Capital and Superscrypt, with follow-on investments from Emurgo Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Outlier Ventures, and Emoote. Helix, incubated by Singaporean private credit company Helicap, aims to provide blockchain-based loans to businesses across Southeast Asia. Its platform combines proprietary credit assessment tools with a range of credit opportunities across multiple industries.
On September 5th, Infinimos, a Cosmos ecosystem liquidity staking derivatives platform, announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing with a valuation of $10 million. DG Capital led the investment, and the funds will be used to accelerate the development of the platform, expand the team, and establish strategic partnerships. Infinimos is committed to changing the staking landscape by providing liquidity staking derivatives specific to the Cosmos ecosystem. By utilizing Web3 technology to create a decentralized and democratic ecosystem, Infinimos helps users maximize the benefits of staking while maintaining liquidity.
原文链接 translates to
Social/Creative Economy
There were a total of 2 financing rounds in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount of over 58 million US dollars, accounting for 20.57% of the total financing amount last week.
Story Protocol
On September 6th, the on-chain IP infrastructure Story Protocol has raised a total of $54 million, with a16z leading the investment and participation from Hashed, Endeavor, Samsung Next, dao5, Insignia Venture Partners, and others. In May of this year, Story Protocol announced a $29.3 million seed round of financing, led by a16z Crypto and with participation from Hashed, Samsung Next Fund, Two Small Ventures, and others. Story Protocol brings IP into the internet age by providing an open IP repository and a set of modules that interact with IP in a frictionless way. Its open IP repository allows creative IP to record its evolution from birth to digital collaboration, with the aim of becoming the source layer for creative IP. In addition, the module also supports seamless composability, allowing anyone to contribute to IP and capture its contribution value.
Story Protocol's protocol architecture consists of two elements, data structure and modules. The data structure is the "noun" of the protocol, storing related IP metadata in "IP Lego blocks". These modules are the "verbs" that provide various functions for IP assets registered on the protocol. Story Protocol's data structure captures the core components of IP, and its modules represent the operations that can be performed on the data structure.
Pop Social
On September 8th, Web3 social platform Pop Social announced the completion of a $4 million seed and strategic round of financing, with angel investors including Fundamental Labs, Ceras Ventures, Chainlink, Cointelegraph, Fusion Labs, Promatrix Capital, as well as former executives from Binance and OKX.
Pop's SocialFi model aims to inspire lasting value by emphasizing dynamic rewards, enhancing creator empowerment, and redefining incentives for users and creators. Creator staking is a key strategy for shaping the future and influencing platform direction, and the success of popular social is crucial throughout the ecosystem. The Pop ecosystem operates on a sustainable economic model. The stable flow of PPT in the Pop ecosystem enables Pop Treasury to capture value from users and creators and redistribute that value back to the community based on contributions.
Pop has solved a key pain point in the industry by addressing content ownership issues head-on. Traditional platforms centralize user-generated content and retain ownership of internal social archives. Pop ensures true content ownership through the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Binance Greenfield's use of decentralized cloud storage. This approach not only protects the privacy of creators but also enhances the content's resistance to censorship and strengthens content ownership security. By storing content on decentralized platforms, creators can enjoy true ownership, enabling them to monetize their content, share it on various platforms, and even transfer royalty rights to other users.
Infrastructure
There were a total of 5 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 13.9 million US dollars, accounting for 6.84% of the total financing amount last week.
Socket Protocol
On September 7th, cross-chain protocol Socket Protocol announced the completion of a $5 million financing round, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Framework Ventures. The new funds will be used to expand Socket's partnership with Coinbase, including providing cross-chain services for developers and users of Coinbase Wallet and the Base network.
Socket is an interoperable protocol infrastructure for cross-chain data and asset transfer, aimed at providing secure, efficient, and seamless asset and data transfer for cross-blockchain protocols and dApps. Its feature is that developers can use Socket to build interoperable products for different targets and trade-offs, providing users of applications with a seamless multi-chain experience. Developers can add cross-chain asset transfer and data transfer functionality to their applications by calling APIs, or they can directly use pre-packaged cross-chain functional modules and tools.
Since its launch in November 2021, Socket has facilitated over 2.5 million cross-chain transactions on 15 chains, serving over 80 protocols and dApps with a total transaction volume of $3.5 billion. It covers areas such as software and hardware wallets, browsers, and DeFi, including mainstream wallets such as Coinbase Wallet, Coinbase, and MetaMask.
D3 Global
On September 5th, according to The Block, domain startup D3 Global completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Shima Capital with participation from companies such as Arthur Hayes' Maelstrom. D3 Global is a startup dedicated to integrating the practicality of Web3 with existing internet infrastructure, bringing more interoperability, practicality, and security to both Web2 and Web3 versions of the internet.
D3 Global provides customized tokenization, compliant domain name creation, management, and sales services for user communities, and promises to provide a range of identity solutions to ensure the digital world remains accessible, secure, and constantly evolving. D3 Global claims that with its native Web2 and Web3 compatibility, users can be protected from insecure parsers, complex third-party integrations, and user hacking attacks.
The founder of D3 has launched and managed about 50 TLDs since 2013, including .XYZ, .LINK, and .GAME. D3 also stated that it plans to "apply for and obtain new top-level domain names during the upcoming ICANN application window to provide secure identities supported by all browsers and devices."
Infrastructure's remaining financing includes:
On September 5th, Discord chatbot completed a $4.9 million oversubscribed financing, with participation from Slow Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, South Park Commons, Spartan Group, and Coinshares. Angel investors include Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, Mike Derezin, former COO of Chainlink, Will Papper, co-founder of decentralized investment protocol Syndicate, and ISM Angels. The new funds will be used for building, driving sales, and marketing. Glenen aims to provide Discord chatbot services to Web3 users, but currently serves mainly non-Web3 users.
On September 6th, Web3 domain and TLD provider Freename completed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, led by Sparkle Ventures, with participation from Blockchain Founders Fund, Golden Record Ventures, Abalone Asset Management, and others. It is reported that Freename allows users to create their own top-level domains (TLDs) and second-level domains (SLDs) on multiple blockchains. These Web3 domains can represent digital identities and can be used for various functions, such as sending and receiving encrypted payments, sending Web2 and Web3 emails, browsing traditional websites, and building decentralized websites.
On September 7th, Nestcoin, a Web3 startup based in Nigeria, announced the completion of a $1.9 million strategic round of financing. Adaverse, Base Ecosystem Fund, Alter World, CMT Digital, Magic Fund, 4DX Ventures, and a group of angel investors participated in the round. This financing round will strengthen Nestcoin's balance sheet and further promote its efforts to create equal economic opportunities through Onboard.
数字资管/支付
translates to
Digital Asset Management/Payment
There were a total of 4 financing deals in the digital asset management/payment industry, with a total amount exceeding 118 million US dollars, accounting for 41.84% of the total financing amount last week.
Zopa
On September 8th, according to TechCrunch, the UK digital bank Zopa announced the completion of a £75 million (approximately $93 million) financing, led by IAG SilverStripe. As of now, the total amount of financing for the company has reached £530 million. It is reported that Zopa currently does not support direct cryptocurrency transactions, but its customers can invest in digital assets by transferring pounds (GBP) from their accounts to third-party trading platforms approved and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (such as eToro). Earlier this year, the UK digital bank Zopa completed a $300 million financing at a valuation of $1 billion, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
数字资管/支付其余融资包括：
translates to
Digital Asset Management/Payment and Other Financing:
in English.On September 7th, Trident Digital Group, a cryptocurrency lending platform founded by former Coinbase executives, completed an $8 million seed round of financing. The round was led by White Star Capital and New Form, with participation from CMT Digital, Joint Effects, and Permit Ventures. Founder DeMartino previously worked at UBS, Barclays, and HSBC, and joined Coinbase in 2021 as the Head of Risk Strategy, focusing on DeFi and derivative trading.
On September 5th, Swiss fintech platform GenTwo completed a $15 million Series A financing round, led by Point72 Ventures. The company plans to use the funds for international expansion and to develop its financial engineering platform. GenTwo's PRO platform allows investors to securitize any asset or investment strategy in a bankable form and push it to the market, and allows all investors to access non-bank assets, including real estate, art, or digital assets. Pete Casella, Senior Partner and Co-Head of Financial Technology Investing at Point72 Ventures, also joined GenTwo's board of directors.
On September 5th, Kotani, a startup company in the encryption payment industry, completed a $2 million pre-seed round of financing, with P1 Ventures leading the investment and DCG/Luno, Flori Ventures, and others participating. It is reported that Kotani Pay, headquartered in Nairobi, connects blockchain with local payment networks through a middleware it has built, aiming to help users in Africa who have difficulty accessing banking services to easily make cross-border remittances.
Other Financing
Other financing totaled 1 transaction, with a total amount of 4 million US dollars, accounting for 1.42% of last week's total financing. Including:
On September 7th, OpenCover, a decentralized insurance distributor for cryptocurrency and Web3 platforms, completed a $4 million seed round of financing. NFX and Jump Crypto led the investment, with Coinbase also investing $200,000 to support its launch on Base. OpenCover will also be launching on Optimism and is collaborating with projects such as Aave, Uniswap, Curve, Safe, Morpho, Synthetix, Beefy, Angle, 1inch, and Yearn.
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