Financing Highlights | a16z crypto leads investment in account abstraction developer Pimlico; 1kx leads investment in GameFi platform Citadel.
According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 17 financing deals last week, which is consistent with the previous week. The total amount raised was approximately $103.85 million, with an average financing amount of $6.1088 million. The infrastructure sector accounted for the majority of the deals, with relatively more deals in the Web3.0+AI sector, digital asset management/payment sector, and DeFi sector. There were fewer deals in the NFT/digital fashion and metaverse/GameFi sectors, and no financing deals in the social/creator economy and other sectors. The following chart shows the financing distribution across various sectors last week:
Metaverse/GameFi
There were a total of 1 financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of 3.3 million US dollars, accounting for 3.18% of the total financing amount last week.
Citadel
On November 8th, according to official sources, GameFi platform Citadel completed a $3.3 million seed round of financing. The round was led by 1kx, with participation from Shima Capital, Hashed, Matchbox DAO, Ready Player DAO, and several angel investors. The funds raised in this round will be used to expand the team and continue developing the protocol.
In its official document, Citadel stated that 100% of the minting funds will flow into the DAO: "We firmly believe that prioritizing the best interests of the DAO in the long run will yield fruitful results. Additionally, this ensures that no one can dump any assets on the community like founders and venture capitalists often do." Meanwhile, Citadel announced the release of Citadel 2.0 on November 14th.
CITADEL is a post-apocalyptic war game built on blockchain technology. In this blockchain, CITADEL is forged, controlled, and besieged in a game of survival, destruction, and conquest. All assets and actions in the game will be fully recorded on the blockchain. All rules of the game will be set on the chain. All outcomes of the game will be determined on the chain.
NFT/Digital Fashion
There were a total of 1 financing in the NFT/digital fashion field, with a total amount exceeding 4 million US dollars, accounting for 3.85% of the total financing amount last week.
Authentick
On November 8th, according to Techinasia, NFT authentication company Authentick announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Menyala, a venture capital platform under Temasek, which will help Authentick expand its user base and product range.
Authentick is a platform that allows users to purchase digital collectibles or NFTs and verify their authenticity, with the aim of making digital collectibles more accessible to users without the need for a Web3 wallet or access to a trading platform. To achieve this, Authentick has established a system that converts these collectibles into a format that allows them to be listed on existing e-commerce platforms such as Lazada. These collectibles can then be used to unlock features in games and applications.
The CEO of the company, Boyko Draganov, said: "This is the first step towards our vision of becoming a digital asset platform, which will eventually include services and products for Authentick's custodial wallet."
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 7.6 million US dollars, accounting for 7.32% of the total financing amount last week.
Definitive
On November 9th, according to The Block, DeFi startup Definitive completed a $4.1 million financing round, led by BlockTower with participation from Nascent, Coinbase Ventures, CMT Digital, and others. The raised funds will be used to create a new capital market platform that makes it easier for Wall Street to enter DeFi. Definitive was founded by three former Coinbase product and engineering personnel.
Definitive is an execution platform and API for DeFi, providing non-custodial smart contracts and automation services across multiple DeFi protocols. Each Definitive smart contract is supported by a powerful and proprietary off-chain engine. They work together to simplify DeFi execution for end users, from complex yield strategies to high-frequency trading algorithms.
Definitive Platform is a web-based application designed for DeFi investors. It operates on six chains and integrates over 20 protocols. Everything can be accessed through a unified UI, so there is no need to switch tabs and constantly refresh DeFi positions. After logging into the platform, users can access two flagship products:
· Advanced Yield: Provides institutional-grade DeFi yield strategies for users. These strategies are composed of selected top-performing DeFi protocols, carefully designed to increase returns while automatically managing risk exposure.
· Upcoming Advanced Trade Execution: Users can configure input/output tokens, quantities, limit prices, start time, and duration. Definitive is responsible for finding the best price on DEX and on-chain to ensure that each order execution has front-running and price impact (PI) protection and minimal slippage. Finally, detailed post-trade execution reports and fill data are provided to enhance the institutional-grade trading experience of DeFi.
DeFi Other financing includes:
On November 7th, StablR, a startup company specializing in Euro stablecoins, announced the completion of a €3.3 million (approximately $3.5 million) seed round of financing. Deribit, Maven 11, Theta Capital, Folkvang, and Blocktech were among the investors. StablR began operations in August 2022 and started issuing Euro-backed stablecoins on October 12th of this year, with the code name EurR. Currently, StablR is registered as a virtual financial asset issuer in Malta.
Infrastructure
There were a total of 7 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 49.3 million US dollars, accounting for 47.47% of the total financing amount last week.
Llama
On November 6th, the smart contract platform Llama completed a $6 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was participated by Founders Fund, Electric Capital, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and Aave founder Stani Kulechov.
Llama is a full-stack platform for on-chain access control and governance. With Llama, teams can deploy independent instances that define fine-grained roles and permissions for executing transactions (referred to as "operations"). Llama instances can adapt to constantly changing environments by gradually adding new participants and expanding the available set of operations. Through Llama's native account functionality, teams can set granular rules for token approvals and transfers. They can have multiple accounts to make different capital allocation decisions, rather than establishing a large treasury for each decision.
Llama indicates that it is "designed specifically for role-based governance", with examples of role-based workflows including risk parameters, protocol funding, and emergency updates. Risk parameters refer to risk managers being able to optimistically update risk parameters, with changes being delayed for a period of time unless vetoed by token holders. Protocol funding refers to lower approval thresholds for small funding allocations by funding reviewers, but higher approval thresholds for larger allocations. Emergency updates refer to team members being able to activate emergency pauses at higher approval thresholds and execute actions immediately upon reaching that threshold.
Pimlico
On November 7th, account abstraction developer Pimlico announced the completion of a $4.2 million seed round of financing, with a16z crypto leading the investment. It is reported that Pimlico offers features including ERC-20 token Gas payment, multi-signature schemes, social recovery, and spending limits.
Pimlico is an infrastructure platform for building next-generation smart accounts. It provides bundlers, Paymaster validators, ERC-20 payers, and more for developers who are developing ERC-4337 smart accounts, in order to develop more user-friendly decentralized applications or dApps. Recently, Pimlico has launched permissionless.js. Permissionless.js is a TypeScript library built on viem for interacting with ERC-4337 bundlers, payment managers, and user operations.
Pimlico's Alto, written in Typescript, is a high-performance, type-safe ERC-4337 bundler. Currently, Alto is running smoothly but is still in active development and its functionality is not yet complete. Pimlico's verification Paymaster is a combination of API and on-chain smart contracts that allows developers to sponsor gas fees for users. By calling Pimlico's API, a signature will be received, which will be accepted by Pimlico's smart contract and pay the user's gas fee. Pimlico's ERC-20 Paymaster is an on-chain ERC-4337 Paymaster that can pay for users' gas fees in exchange for ERC-20 tokens.
Galactic Holdings
Kresko Fi
On November 7th, Chintai, a Singaporean blockchain tokenization platform, completed a new round of financing with investment firm B1 leading the way. Chintai is an end-to-end blockchain platform that has been recognized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a Recognized Market Operator (RMO) and a Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) operator for operating a securities digital asset market. It can create regulated digital assets, including bonds, real estate, funds, and carbon credits.
On November 8th, self-hosted encryption investment application Sock announced the completion of a $2.8 million seed round of financing, led by Haven Ventures, with participation from Designer Fund, Expansion, Spacecadet Ventures, Sunflower Fund, and Olive Capital.
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Web3+AI
There were a total of 1 financing in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount exceeding 25 million US dollars, accounting for 24.07% of the total financing amount last week. This includes:
On November 8th, Ritual, a decentralized AI computing platform, announced the completion of a $25 million financing round. Archetype led the investment, with participation from Accomplice and Robot Ventures. Ritual aims to create an "incentive network" that utilizes distributed computing devices to drive various aspects of artificial intelligence.
Co-founder Niraj Pant pointed out that currently, the chips, computing power, and models of AI tools are controlled by a few companies, posing a threat to the future of technology. Ritual aims to break the dependence on these companies, open access to critical infrastructure, and ensure better construction of artificial intelligence. The funds will be used to build network infrastructure, expand the team, and develop the Ritual ecosystem. Ritual plans to launch its Alpha platform early next year.
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