Financing Highlights | Electric Capital leads the investment in Mantle lending protocol with participation from INIT Capital; DWF Ventures invests in Web3 social protocol beoble.
According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 19 financing deals last week, an increase in quantity compared to previous weeks. The total amount raised was approximately 120.92 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 6.3642 million US dollars. The infrastructure sector accounted for the majority of the deals, followed by the Metaverse/GameFi sector. There was also an increase in financing deals in the DeFi sector and the social/creator economy sector, while other sectors had fewer financing deals. The digital asset management/payment sector, NFT/digital fashion sector, and Web3.0+AI sector had no financing deals last week. The following chart shows the financing distribution across different sectors:
Metaverse/GameFi
There were a total of 4 financings in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of 92 million US dollars, accounting for 23.52% of the total financing amount last week.
Monkey Tilt
On February 22nd, GambleFi platform Monkey Tilt announced the completion of a $21 million financing round, with participation from Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Poker Go, Accomplice, Paper Ventures, and Folius Ventures.
This round of investment may be used for further development and expansion of the Monkey Tilt platform, which aims to provide users with decentralized and secure gaming experiences, utilizing blockchain technology to ensure fairness and transparency.
Currently, Monkey Tilt is still in the testing phase and the team consists of 62 people. The founding team has extensive professional knowledge in online gaming, disruptive cutting-edge technology, and complex and scalable systems. Monkey Tilt's advisors have established some of the largest publicly traded gaming companies, designed 10-figure exits, and played a key role in helping Monkey Tilt build its team.
Crystal Fun
On February 20th, Crystal Fun, a decentralized blockchain gaming ecosystem platform and studio, announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing. This round of investment was participated by well-known institutions such as Kucoin Ventures, Actoz Soft, Waterdrip Capital, Comma3 Ventures, Stratified Capital, Cypher9 Ventures, Aelf Ventures, W Labs, and Masverse.
In the Crystal Fun game ecosystem, the token acquisition and destruction mechanism, as well as the game incentive system, have been optimized to avoid the "death spiral" typically associated with GameFi economies. The expansion of the game ecosystem to the multidimensional entertainment industry will continuously empower the Crystal Fun game ecosystem and its governance token CFUN, thereby enhancing its overall value. With the integration of artificial intelligence technology, players can become creators in the game ecosystem system, giving them greater creative freedom in the game. The Crystal Fun team has decades of experience in game development and operation at companies such as Ubisoft, Tencent, Shengqu Games, and Century Games. Several team members have participated in game projects with annual revenues exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars and DAUs exceeding one million.
This fundraising will mainly be used for the development and operation of its games. Currently, Crystal Fun has announced the release of four games: "OUTER", "Endless War", "StarFall", and "Survivor". In addition, Crystal Fun also announced the second internal testing of "OUTER" game on February 20th, mainly testing the balance values and pressure load in the game to ensure that players can enjoy the best gaming experience.
DeFi
In the DeFi field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 2 million US dollars, accounting for 0.51% of the total financing amount last week.
INIT Capital
On February 21st, Mantle's ecological liquidity-linked currency market, INIT Capital, announced the completion of a $3.1 million seed round of financing, led by Electric Capital and Mirana Ventures, with participation from BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes and his family office Maelstrom, Robot Ventures, Nomad Capital, Tangent Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Selini Capital, and Faction.
INIT Capital wants to create a DeFi protocol that seamlessly integrates its Dapp with a large number of liquidity sources in a Money Market. However, the project is currently in its first phase, which only includes basic activities such as deposits, loans, and referrals to earn points. The second phase of the project involves updating the Liquidity Hook, which will allow users to earn profits and INIT points using the yield strategies provided by INIT's Liquidity Hooks. In this phase, various DApps can build Liquidity Hooks by writing smart contracts, integrating or "hooking" into INIT to obtain INIT's liquidity. DApps can enhance their composability by using multiple positions (Multi-Silo Position), flash loans, LP tokens as collateral, and other methods.
INIT Capital's current asset list includes WETH/ETH, MNT, WBTC, USDT, USDC, USDY, and mETH. After the launch of Liquidity Hooks, it will also support wstETH and some UniswapV2 LP tokens. This round of financing will be used to enhance INIT's technical capabilities and market strategy. INIT will also launch a new product called "Looping Hook" on February 28th.
Related reading: "INIT Capital: Leveraging Eigen's Airdrop, Mantle Lending Market with Luxurious Financing Background".
ZeroLend
On February 21st, ZeroLend, a decentralized lending protocol in the zkSync ecosystem, announced that it had completed a $3 million seed round of financing with a valuation of $25 million. Investors included Momentum 6, Blockchain Founders Fund, Morning Star Ventures, Banter Capital, Newman Capital, dVdT, Transform Capital, Cypher Capital, Bison Fund, Ozaru Ventures, iAngels, Krypital, Genblock, viaBTC, GBV, and Asteroid Capital.
It is reported that ZeroLend will launch its native governance token ZERO in the first quarter of 2024. Validators and attestors among ZERO holders will manage the chain and earn transaction fees as rewards. In addition, ZERO can also be used to pay transaction fees. ZeroLend plans to introduce a privacy layer (Layer 3) supported by zkStack in early 2025. Through regulatory compliance and KYC checks, user transactions in ZeroLend will be protected by Layer 3 and supported by Aztec.
As a key component of the ZeroLend economic structure, Ve-tokenomics aims to reward long-term investment and active participation in governance. Its core involves participants locking ZERO tokens for a predetermined period of time and receiving voting power (ve) tokens as a reward. These ve tokens not only represent the user's rights, but also increase their earnings proportionally based on the lock-up period.
DeFi Other financing includes:
On February 23rd, Singularity, an institutional-grade privacy DeFi access layer, completed a new round of funding of $2.2 million, led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Laser Digital, a subsidiary of Nomura Securities Digital Asset, Eureka Partners, Apollo Crypto, Digital Asset Capital Management, and Gandel Invest. To date, Singularity has raised nearly $4 million. The funds will be used to support the development of the protocol, promote compliant access to DeFi, and ensure the confidentiality of on-chain activities. Singularity is reportedly the first DeFi infrastructure protocol to use Noir zero-knowledge circuits, dedicated to providing privacy DeFi access services for institutional users. The protocol will integrate more DeFi protocols and expand user strategy choices.
On February 22nd, Superfluid, a fund flow protocol, completed a strategic financing round of $5.1 million. The round was led by Fabric Ventures, with participation from IOSG Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Circle Ventures, Safe Foundation, The LAO, Taavet+Sten, and others. Part of the funds raised in this round will be used to hire marketing personnel. The financing round ended at the end of last year and has the same structure as the seed round financing, which includes token subscription rights. Superfluid was launched in 2021 and completed a seed round financing of $9 million in the same year. The project allows encrypted projects such as DAOs to pay recurring salaries and rewards in a single chain transaction through its "super tokens", which can create fund flows between parties.
On February 22nd, Berachain's native DeFi Hub project, Honeypot Finance, announced the completion of its pre-seed funding round, led by AC Capital and DEXT Force Ventures. The amount of funding has not been disclosed. Honeypot Finance is reportedly building a community-operated DeFi center that integrates a unique AMM model, as well as community-led launchpad (Dreampad) and DEX (HenloDex) to address the low liquidity utilization problem in DeFi.
Social/Creative Economy
There were a total of 2 financing rounds in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount exceeding 2 million US dollars, accounting for 0.51% of the total financing amount last week.
beoble
On February 19th, according to official sources, Web3 social protocol beoble completed a $5 million seed round of financing, with participation from Hashkey, Samsung Next, DCG, DWF Ventures, Nomura Laser Digital, Cypher Capital, and Blockchain Founders Fund. On November 16th of last year, beoble completed a $2 million pre-seed round of financing, with participation from DCG, Samsung Next, HashKey Capital, GBV Capital, Token Bay Capital, and Momentum 6.
Beoble is a communication infrastructure and ecosystem that allows users to chat between wallets, supporting formats such as files, emojis, images, and NFTs. Beoble's products include a web-based chat application and a toolkit that allows for Dapps integration. The Beoble Labs team is composed of former employees from well-known companies such as Citadel, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Meta. Beoble currently supports all EVM networks (such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, etc.), and the team plans to expand to other blockchains such as Solana, Cosmos, Flow, Aptos, and Sui.
Currently, Beoble's token BBL is undergoing an IDO on Ape Terminal at a price of $0.025. According to the team, there may be airdrop activities in the future, and their CAT point plan is also underway. The funds raised in this round will be used to launch beoble V2 next month, which will improve Web3 social media interaction, provide advanced features such as multi-chain integration, in-app social trading, and OTC functions.
Related reading: "What are the characteristics of Beoble, a Web3 ToB social protocol that has received investment from Hashkey? (with interactive tutorial)."
AltLayer
Helius
Citrea
There were 4 other financing deals totaling $36.83 million, accounting for 9.42% of last week's total financing amount. These deals include:
On February 21st, Farcaster's meme project Degen announced the completion of a 490.5 ETH (approximately $1.47 million) angel round financing, with 1confirmation leading and Farcaster OG participating. The funds will be used to develop the Degen ecosystem and community.
On February 24th, Web3 education platform HackQuest announced the completion of a $1.1 million Pre-seed round of financing. Participating investors include Find Satoshi Lab, the parent company of StepN, HashKey Capital, ByteTrade Lab, and Gitcoin co-founder Scott Moore, with support from Open Campus OCX. Currently, HackQuest has reached official developer education or ecological construction cooperation with more than 10 first-line public chains such as Mantle Network, Solana, and Arbitrum, and plans to cooperate with universities such as Nanyang Technological University for course development. HackQuest stated that it will use this funding to launch more diverse courses and support more Web3 builders to launch their own projects.
原文链接 translates to
Welcome to join the official community of BlockBeats by Lu Dong.
Telegram subscription group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
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
