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Financing Highlights | OKX invests in Celestia Lab; Pantera Capital leads investment in decentralized derivatives protocol SynFutures.

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According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 14 financing deals last week, which is a decrease compared to previous weeks. The total amount raised was approximately 117.7 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 8.4071 million US dollars. The infrastructure sector accounted for the majority of the deals, followed by the DeFi sector. The Metaverse/GameFi and Web3+AI sectors saw an increase in financing, while the social/creator economy and digital asset management/payment sectors saw fewer deals. There were no financing deals in other sectors or in the NFT/digital fashion sector. The following chart shows the financing distribution across different sectors last week:

Metaverse/GameFi

There were a total of 4 financings in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of 23.5 million US dollars, accounting for 19.97% of the total financing amount last week.

Forge

On October 19th, game startup company Forge completed a $11 million seed round of financing, led by Makers Fund, Bitkraft Ventures, and Animoca Brands. Other participants include Hashkey Capital, Polygon Ventures, Formless Capital, and Adaverse. The financing will be used to establish a platform that connects and rewards game players for their achievements.

Forge was founded by gaming pioneer Dennis "Thresh" Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Taka, and Cyence founder George Ng. Initially a project within GGWP, Forge has just entered the testing phase. Once released, users will be able to link their various online gaming and social accounts to create a Forge profile. Players will then be able to access seasonal battle passes containing missions that allow them to earn XP to level up their battle pass and unlock in-game content and rewards, including in-game content from Forge partner games such as cosmetics, item/character unlocks, virtual currency, and early access to beta testing. All users participating in the beta are also eligible to win additional rewards through Forge's weekly bonus prize, which includes everything from Amazon gift cards to brand new gaming computers.

Forge's mission is to help gamers unlock the value of their game files and be rewarded for their contributions to the gaming community. Kun Taka said, "We hope to create a platform that rewards their true identities through their personal profiles and histories as gamers, their passion, engagement, and community involvement." Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said, "We love Forge because it provides game developers with a real way to connect with real gamers who are interested in their products." "Forge's community-centered spirit aligns perfectly with Animoca Brands, and we are excited to be a part of its development."

Upland

On October 20th, according to Decrypt, Upland, a NFT-based digital real estate trading game, completed a $7 million Series A extension round of financing, led by EOS Network Ventures. This round of financing will be used to add game features to support players in purchasing digital land on a real-world map.

Upland is developed on EOS and has planned to launch tokens on Ethereum. Upland allows players to buy, sell, and trade virtual properties that are one-to-one matched with physical addresses in the real world. The game divides user accounts into two layers: visitors and Uplanders. Visitors are temporary accounts owned by Upland. As visitors accumulate assets and reach a net worth of 10,000 UPX, they graduate to become Uplanders and gain true ownership of their digital assets. This transition involves creating a dedicated EOS account that is associated with the player's Upland account. Then, all digital assets will be transferred from the visitor's free EOS account to the new dedicated account, ensuring that players truly own their assets.

Upland announced that its registered player count has exceeded 3 million, with approximately 30,000 daily active users. The company has also signed partnership agreements with major sports organizations such as FIFA and the NFL Players Association. BlockBeats previously reported that Upland's parent company completed a Series A funding round of $18 million in November 2021, with Animoca Brands leading the investment.

Darewise Entertainment

On October 18th, Darewise Entertainment announced that it has completed a $3.5 million private funding round, with Gamefi Ventures, London Real Ventures, Citizen Capital, Blocore, Animoca Ventures, and Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu among the investors. Darewise Entertainment is a subsidiary of Animoca Brands and is a Web3 game technology company founded by senior professionals in the AAA game industry. It is currently developing a sci-fi MMO game called Life Beyond, which allows players to earn money while playing.

Darewise Entertainment believes that building metaverse technology for online video games can create a positive force for meaningful interactive social experiences. The Darewise ecosystem token is expected to be released on Bitcoin in early 2024, with the upcoming "AAA" MMO game Life Beyond being its first adopter. Life Beyond is a game destination in the virtual universe where players can embark on a journey to establish a new civilization on the planet of Dual Universe. In this player-driven, tokenized economy-driven sci-fi world, player citizens can decide who they want to be and what role they want to play in the complex and multi-layered society of Life Beyond. The project adheres to the concept of open metaverse, creates immersive experiences, and emphasizes true ownership and interoperability.

Blocore founder James Lim said, "We invested in Darewise and Life Beyond because of their pioneering integration into the Bitcoin ecosystem and their potential to reshape the immersive experience of digital exploration and connection." Darewise CEO Benjamin Charbit said, "In this round of financing, we are pleased to welcome meaningful investors who not only believe in our project and values, but also come from various fields of gaming and Web3 culture. This is an important indicator of confidence in building the Bitcoin ecosystem."

Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:

On October 21st, according to Benzinga, blockchain gaming studio Third Time completed a $2 million Seed+ round of financing. The round was led by Sfermion, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, 32-Bit Ventures, and 6th Man Ventures. Third Time has developed a horse racing game called Photo Finish based on Solana. The funding will be used to accelerate game development and promote cooperation with real-world horse racing events.

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DeFi

In the DeFi field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount of over 29.5 million US dollars, accounting for 25.06% of the total financing amount last week.

SynFutures

On October 19th, decentralized derivatives protocol SynFutures announced the completion of a $22 million financing round. Pantera Capital led the round with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG DTI) subsidiary SIG DT Investments and HashKey Capital. SynFutures' total funding has now reached $38 million. The V3 mainnet of the SynFutures platform is scheduled to be released in Q4 2023, and the upgraded V3 platform will include Oyster Automated Market Maker (Oyster AMM), which will be fully deployed on-chain. According to SynFutures, Oyster AMM combines the properties of an order book and an AMM model in a single approach, enhancing liquidity and capital efficiency in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

It can list any trading pairs, including Bitcoin (BTC), stablecoins, major altcoins, NFTs, and indices, without requiring permission. The protocol is built on top of Polygon, a blockchain network with fast and inexpensive transactions, and also ensures the existence of bidirectional liquidity, allowing users to provide liquidity with a single token from the trading pair.

SynFutures is a DEX based in Singapore that specializes in perpetual futures. SynFutures is deployed on multiple blockchains and is currently the largest derivatives trading platform on Polygon, as well as one of the three most active decentralized derivatives trading platforms.

Elixir Protocol

On October 18th, according to The Block, DeFi protocol Elixir Protocol completed a $7.5 million Series A funding round at a valuation of $100 million. The round was led by Hack VC, with participation from NGC Ventures, AngelList Ventures, Bloccelerate, BODL Ventures, and others.

Elixir is building a decentralized algorithmic market-making protocol for the industry. The protocol deploys liquidity provided on the order book through algorithms, using an order book that resembles the x*y=k curve to establish liquidity and tighten bid-ask spreads. Elixir is fully composable: allowing order book DEXs to natively integrate Elixir into their core infrastructure to unlock algorithmic market-making for retail liquidity. As a critical decentralized infrastructure, the protocol enables exchanges and protocols to easily route liquidity to their books. The protocol also enables crypto projects to incentivize liquidity provision on centralized exchanges through LP tokens.

Elixir has over 20+ native integrations into leading DeFi DEX core infrastructure and has 60+ protocols dedicated to market-making on CEX using Elixir. Previously reported, DeFi protocol Elixir Protocol announced in January of this year that it had completed a $2.1 million seed round of financing, with participation from FalconX, Commonwealth, OP Crypto, ChapterOne, and Bitmex founder Arthur Hayes.

Social/Creative Economy

There were a total of 1 funding in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount exceeding 1.5 million US dollars, accounting for 1.27% of the total funding raised last week.

Fileverse

On October 17th, "Fileverse", a blockchain collaboration application supported by former Coinbase CTO Balaji, completed a $1.5 million seed round of financing, led by Gnosis Chain and Factor, with participation from Safe, MaskNetwork, Arweave, Waterdrip Capital, Forward Research, Galxe, and others. Prior to this seed round, Fileverse had received approximately $280,000 in grants from the Ethereum community, Gitcoin community, and institutions such as Polygon, ENS, a16z, Filecoin, and Aurora, with support from over 14,000 donors. Lukas Schor, co-founder and CEO of Safe, one of the participating parties, stated in a statement: "Over the past few years, we have conducted extensive research and engineering in the field of cryptographic infrastructure and account abstraction. Fileverse hopes to bring these advances to a range of fields."

It is reported that Fileverse is a dApp for file sharing and collaboration between blockchain addresses, aiming to build decentralized encrypted native applications to replace traditional Web2 internet products. Fileverse allows everyone to securely store and share content (audio, video, images, documents, etc.) with just a few clicks - using only their digital wallet.

Infrastructure

There were a total of 4 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 52.4 million US dollars, accounting for 44.52% of the total financing amount last week.

Celestia Lab

On October 16th, according to a report by PR Newswire, OKX Ventures announced its participation in Celestia Lab's Series B financing. Celestia is the first modular blockchain network, where developers can use Celestia as the underlying layer for consensus and data functionality, and then choose a virtual machine, such as Ethereum, Solana, STARK, or any other compatible smart contract execution layer, to build and deploy their own new blockchain. Celestia is expected to launch later this year as the first blockchain network to use Data Availability Sampling (DAS). DAS is a lighter and faster way to verify blocks without nodes having to download all the data in the block. By allowing nodes to verify smaller, randomly selected data within the block.

Squads Labs

Prove Identity

On October 20th, according to documents submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, cryptocurrency data company Coin Metrics completed a financing round of approximately $6.7 million, which includes various securities such as equity and options. The specific investors were not disclosed. Coin Metrics provides data on cryptocurrency markets, networks, and prices. Prior to this round, Coin Metrics raised $35 million in a funding round led by Mellon Bank and Acrew Capital in New York, and also received support from companies such as Goldman Sachs, Brevan Howard Digital, Cboe Global Market, and Avon Ventures.

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Digital Asset Management/Payment

In the field of digital asset management/payment, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 5.2 million US dollars, accounting for 4.42% of the total financing amount last week.