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Financing highlights | CoinFund leads investment in LRT protocol ether.fi; Dragonfly leads investment in modular blockchain Avail
According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 22, an increase from before, with a total amount of approximately US$802.8 million, and an average financing amount of US$36.4909 million. Among them, the Web3.0+AI field occupies the main body, the infrastructure field and the DeFi field are relatively large, the NFT/digital fashion field and the Metaverse/GameFi field are increasing, the digital asset management/payment field is small, the social/creator economy field and Financing in other areas is currently unavailable. The figure below shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:
Metaverse/GameFi
There was a total of 1 financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of US$1.5 million, accounting for 10% of the total financing last week 0.19%.
PlayMakers
On February 27, according to VentureBeat reports, Web3 game UGC platform PlayMakers announced the completion of a $1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by RockawayX, Sébastien Borget, Vincent Hart de Keating and Angel investors such as Hugues Ouvard participated.
PlayMakers provides developers with a perfect, easy-to-implement solution to collect, curate and integrate player creations, turning players into creators in Web3 games. PlayMakers' vision is to empower players to become content creators through a platform that allows game studios to tap into the passion and skills of their community. Users can create new game assets such as 3D characters, animations, music, etc. Tailored to the unique characteristics of each gaming community, the platform seamlessly implements player creations into games with just one click. Developers can update gaming experiences with content or monetize creations, unlocking new revenue streams.
The PlayMakers team, founded a year ago by Ilan Nabeth, Maxime Niankouri and Costantino Carrega, is a team of eight made up of former Homa employees who during their tenure Brought total game downloads to 600 million times. Funds raised will be used strategically to enhance PlayMakers’ toolset and expand the team to support a range of studios eager to work with the company.
NFT/digital fashion
A total of 2 financings in the field of NFT/digital fashion, with a total amount of over 4 million US dollars, accounting for 0.5% of total financing last week.
READYgg
According to Decrypt reports, NFT infrastructure startup READYgg completed US$4 million in financing. This round of financing was funded by Delphi Digital, NeoTokyo, Merit Circle, Momentum6, Purechain Capital, Alex Becker and Token Metrics Ventures participated in the investment.
READYgg's vision is to build a user-generated platform based on collective ownership, decentralized decision-making, milestone incentives, cross-game utility, blockchain technology, and NFT-based A collaborative gaming ecosystem characterized by content integration. READYgg focuses on implementing complete "account abstraction" for players and publishers. This ensures that game assets, player identities and inventory can be moved seamlessly between L1 and L2 blockchain providers, removing any friction from the gaming experience for both publishers and players. READYgg owns studios including The Game Storm Studios, Sambrella, N Age Games and more.
RDYX will serve as the native token within the READYgg platform with a fixed supply of 1 billion. Early members will receive the benefits of the ecosystem and enjoy incentives and exclusive Token pricing structure strategically designed for long-term growth. Within the READYgg ecosystem, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) structure has been implemented, allowing RDYX stakeholders to play a proactive and influential role in all decision-making processes within the ecosystem. RDYX enables a large-scale, cost-effective NFT minting process and facilitates the unrestricted movement of in-game items across various games.
Imaginary Ones
On March 1, the NFT project Imaginary Ones announced that it had completed a new round of financing, with participation from Cypher Capital Group, Animoca Brands, MH Ventures, Illuminati Capital, Andromeda Capital, etc.
Imaginary Ones aims to empower everyone to be imaginative, with products designed for web2 and web3 audiences and suitable for everyday use. Imaginary Ones is leveraging the advantages of blockchain technology and the power of the community to co-market it. With enough adoption, Imaginary Ones aims to turn users into loyal fans and paying customers who become part of the community. The official stated that it plans to launch Imaginary Ones tokens to support the Imaginary World ecosystem, and both holders and stakers will be entitled to receive airdrops.
After that, Imaginary Ones plans to launch Imaginary Rides, a larger series than the genesis IO series. Imaginary Ones will release a "mini-game" to the licensed roster, and Imaginary Rides will include in-game partner collaboration. Partners will receive rewards and leaderboards to compete under their banner. Imaginary Ones said it will use this round of financing to accelerate its efforts to become a leading WEB3 entertainment group focusing on games, content and merchandise.
DeFi
A total of 3 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount exceeding US$32 million. Accounting for 3.99% of the total financing last week.
ether.fi
On February 28, according to official news, the liquidity re-pledge protocol ether.fi announced the completion of US$23 million in financing. This round of financing was led by Bullish and CoinFund.
etherfi is a decentralized, non-custodial entrusted pledge protocol. Pledgers can control their own keys throughout the entire pledge process from creation to redemption. , and validators can exit at any time to reclaim their ETH, thus preventing node operators from doing so. The ether.fi mechanism also allows for the creation of a node services marketplace where stakers and node operators can register nodes to provide infrastructure services. There are four types of users on ether.fi: pledgers who are Bond holders, pledgers who only hold eETH, node operators, and node service users. The figure below shows the ETH entrusted pledge mechanism.
The ether.fi roadmap is planned to be divided into three phases, with the goal of achieving more complete decentralization at the end of each phase. It has now reached the third stage and is cooperating with EigenLayer to support its node service layer mechanism. Ether.fi stated that it has currently received support from more than 95 investment institutions and individual investors. Including Amber Group, BanklessVC, OKX Ventures, Consensys, Selini Capital, Foresight Ventures, Fourth Revolution Capital, and more.
Related reading: "What are the advantages of Arthur Hayes' optimistic LSD track newcomer ether.fi》
BounceBit
On February 29, according to The Block, the Bitcoin staking chain BounceBit was completed. US$6 million in seed round financing. This round of financing was co-led by Blockchain Capital and Breyer Capital, with participation from CMS Holdings, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures, Matrixport Ventures, DeFiance Capital, OKX Ventures, Bixin Ventures and HTX Ventures. Individual investors include Calvin Liu, Chief Strategy Officer of EigenLayer, etc.
The biggest feature of BounceBit is the introduction of a unique double Pos staking system, mortgaging BTC tokens and BounceBit network native tokens to ensure security. BounceBit's architecture is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Solidity language, which means that a large number of ETH projects can be seamlessly migrated to the BTC ecosystem. BounceBit uses CeFi custody supported by Mainnet Digital and Ceffu to ensure the security of BTC assets by adopting the asset management method of a centralized exchange.
At the end of January this year, BounceBit launched the Water Margin event, which is similar to Blast’s deposit model. Two networks accept deposits: Ethereum and BNB Chain. On the Ethereum network, supported tokens include WBTC, Auction, Mubi, and DAII. BounceBit founder and CEO Jack Lu said the round was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants, but he declined to comment on the valuation.
Related reading: "BTC ecology is turbulent, and BounceBit is beginning to shine》
The rest of DeFi financing includes:
On March 3, Sui Ecological Lending Protocol Scallop announced the completion of US$3 million in strategic financing on the social platform, with THE CMS and 6MV co-leading the investment, KuCoin Labs, 7UpDAO, Side Door Ventures, Oak Grove Ventures, Signum Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund, Cypher Capital Group, Mysten Labs, Kyros Ventures and others participated in the investment.
Infrastructure
A total of 12 financings in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of more than 87.3 million US dollars, accounting for 10% of last week’s financing 10.77% of the total amount.
Avail
On February 26, Polygon’s modular blockchain project Avail announced the completion of a $27 million seed round of financing, led by Founders Fund and Dragonfly, the venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel, and SevenX Ventures, Figment, Nomad Capital and several angel investors participated.
Avail is a general, scalable, data availability-centric solution that provides a universal data availability through the use of secure mathematical primitives Layers available for different execution environments, such as standalone chains, sidechains, and off-chain scaling solutions. In the long term, it will support a variety of experiments in terms of execution environments and ultimately implementations, without requiring teams and projects to initiate their own security. Chains created using the Polygon SDK, Cosmos SDK, or Substrate can benefit from using Avail for this purpose. Avail decouples transaction execution and validity from the consensus layer, so the consensus is only responsible for ordering transactions and ensuring their data availability.
It is reported that Avail was spun off from Polygon in March 2023 and is led by Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun. This round of financing will be used to develop three core products: Data Availability Solutions (DA), Nexus and Fusion. The first iteration of Nexus is expected to go live in 2024, while Fusion Security will be ready in 2025.
Related reading: "Avail: A scalable data availability layer from Polygon》
Backpack
On February 28, according to official news, Backpack was valued at US$120 million Completed US$17 million in strategic Series A financing. This round of financing was led by Placeholder, with participation from Hashed, Robot Ventures, Amber Group, Wintermute, Jump Crypto, Selini Capital, and Delphi Digital. Individual investors include the founders of Solana and Jito, Zeta Founders of other Solana ecological projects including Market, Drift, Monad, and Galxe.
The Backpack ecosystem consists of a variety of products and services, including the popular Backpack non-custodial wallet, Backpack Exchange, a regulated global crypto trading platform, and the Solana ecosystem Blue chip NFT Mad Lads. At the same time, Backpack is also the creator and developer of Anchor, the Solana smart contract framework, the executable NFT (xNFT) token standard, and more.
Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said: "Backpack not only creates great products such as Backpack Wallet, but also cultivates an exceptional community through Mad Lads. Founder Armani and the Backpack team have proven what it means to focus on building great products and user experiences over the long term."
Related reading: "Exclusive interview with the founder of Backpack: completely different from FTX’s technical structure, Solana is outstanding enough in the cycle》
Taiko
On March 3, according to The Block, Ethereum Layer 2 network Taiko has completed US$15 million in Series A financing. This round of financing was co-led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures and Token Bay Capital, with participation from Wintermute Ventures, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures and GSR.
It is unclear when Taiko will begin raising capital for its latest round and whether it will use equity, tokens or a hybrid structure. Taiko co-founder and chief operating officer Terence Lam declined to comment on timelines, structure and valuation, but said all three funding rounds were structured the same. (Taiko previously disclosed two rounds of financing totaling $22 million in June 2023) Taiko currently has about 40 employees and is still hoping to continue hiring to expand the size of the team. Taiko also plans to establish an ecosystem investment fund with its investors, but the amount has not yet been finalized.
It is reported that Taiko originally planned to launch its mainnet in the first quarter of this year. When asked whether the plan can proceed as planned, Lam said: "We must upgrade the Katla test network to support EIP-4844 and conduct another round of stress testing and security audits on the main network. This work is currently expected to be completed in the second To be completed before the end of the second quarter."
Related reading: "Q1 will be launched on the mainnet, don’t miss Taiko’s zero-cost interactive tutorial on L2 network》
The remaining financing for infrastructure includes:
On February 27, Layer 1 Blockchain Initia completed 7.5 million US dollar financing, this round of financing was co-led by Delphi Ventures and Hack VC, with participation from Nascent, Figment Capital, Big Brain and A.Capital. Angel investors include pseudonymous crypto trader Cobie, DCF God, Split Capital co-founder Zaheer Ebtikar, Fiskantes, WSB Mod, Celestia COO.
Initia is currently running on a closed testnet. Several projects have already built DeFi applications on testnets and plan to launch them once the incentivized testnet goes live in early April. Once any issues are resolved, the project will launch its mainnet, with initial plans to launch in the second quarter.
3 On March 1, the decentralized reputation protocol OpenRank development team Karma3 Labs completed US$4.5 million in financing, led by Galaxy and IDEO CoLab Ventures, with participation from Spartan, SevenX, HashKey, Flybridge, Delta Fund, Draper Dragon and Compa Capital. The funding will be used to drive adoption of OpenRank and help launch the initial version of the protocol for developer use.
On March 1, Singapore-based Web3 development tools company BuildBear Labs completed US$1.9 million in financing, with Superscrypt, Tribe Capital and 1kx co-leading the investment, Iterative, Plug-N- Play and angel investors including Kris Kaczor (creator of Typechain and DethCrypto) and Ken Fromm participated.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of its flagship platform, providing developers with testing and verification solutions to create secure decentralized applications.
BuildBear Labs provides a dedicated platform for dApp development and testing, providing developers with the ability to create customized dApps on multiple EVM and EVM-compatible blockchain networks. Private testnet sandbox capabilities. Its key features include unlimited private faucets for native and ERC20 token minting, enabling developers to efficiently build and test dApps.
On February 29, Web3 network security company Silence Laboratories completed US$4.1 million in financing, jointly by Pi Ventures and Kira Studio Leading the investment, angel investors and others participated. The startup will use the funds to expand its team and strengthen its research and development. It is reported that Silence Laboratories builds infrastructure through multi-party computation (MPC) to help enterprises protect data privacy and security.
On March 2, the blockchain security solution CredShields announced the completion of a US$1 million strategic round of financing, with Draper Associates participating. The company’s total financing so far has reached 1.8 million Dollar. CredShields primarily provides Web3 security services, providing solutions to protect digital assets and ensure the integrity of blockchain-based transactions. The new funds will be used to accelerate the development of its automated and simplified smart contract audit tool SolidityScan.
On February 28, the palm scanning ID project Humanity Protocol announced Completed a round of financing, the specific investment amount has not yet been disclosed. This round of financing was participated by more than 20 venture capital institutions including Hashed, CMCC, Cypher Capital, Foresight Ventures, and Mechanism Capital. Individual investors include Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu.
On February 28, Geodnet completed a new round of financing of US$3.5 million. This round of financing was led by North Island Ventures investment, with participation from Modular Capital, Road Capital, Tangent and Reverie. Geodnet is a community-based decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) where anyone can contribute to the network by installing and operating a reference station called a satellite miner. Standard GPS typically has an error of two meters, while devices connected to Geodnet’s global RTK network can achieve instantaneous pinpoint positioning within 1-2 centimeters.
On February 27, Web3 data flow and infrastructure company Validation Cloud announced the completion of 5.8 million The first round of external financing in US dollars was led by Cadenza Ventures, with participation from Blockchain Founders Fund, Bloccelerate, GS Futures and AP Capital. Validation Cloud builds a proprietary system architecture that includes several major breakthroughs in Web3 and is a fast, scalable, and intelligent global platform that provides users with staking, node APIs, and data. This infrastructure brings high-throughput applications such as video streaming to the masses, creating trillions of dollars in market value.
On February 27, the full-chain ledger protocol Cycle Network announced that it had completed the "The first round of financing, the specific amount has not been disclosed yet, was led by Temasek Holdings' Vertex Ventures and Summer Ventures, with participation from LTP, Super Chain Capital, GSG Digital and others. Cycle Network has launched a solution to the interoperability problem in the blockchain field. Through its innovative fully distributed ledger technology (ODLT), it introduces a trustless method of interactive information to the blockchain and solves the problem of blockchain network the problem of fragmentation.
Digital asset management/payment
There is a total of 1 financing in the field of digital asset management/payment, and the total amount is not Disclosure.
MNNC Group (formerly LedgerPrime)
On February 29, the digital asset hedge fund LedgerPrime, which was once affiliated with the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has restarted under a new name "MNNC Group". The Cayman Islands-domiciled multi-strategy hedge fund has raised an undisclosed sum from backers including former LedgerPrime investors. While MNNC Group failed to attract all of its former LedgerPrime investors, the fund raised "some eight figures," according to Shiliang Tang, a general partner and special adviser.
MNNC Group’s flagship quantitative market neutral strategy fund launched in January and ended the month with a return of approximately 4%, Head of Business Development & Strategy Laura Vidiella del Blanco said. The fund's new directed fund is expected to launch in March. MNNC Group currently has 11 employees, the majority of whom come from LedgerPrime. MNNC Group’s new chief investment officer will be Boris Iyutin, formerly of high-frequency trading firm Tower Research Capital, who will succeed Shiliang Tang.
MNNC Group is not the only new fund to spin out of LedgerPrime. Zaheer Ebitkar, a former portfolio manager at LedgerPrime, now runs cryptocurrency fund Split Capital.
Web3+AI
There are a total of 3 financings in the field of Web3+AI, with the total amount exceeding US$678 million, accounting for 84.45% of the total financing last week. Including:
On March 1, AI robot company Figure completed US$675 million in financing at a valuation of US$2.6 billion. This round of financing was funded by Microsoft, OpenAI Venture Fund, NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures also participated.
Figure also signed a collaboration agreement with OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence models for next-generation humanoid robots. The partnership aims to help accelerate Figure's commercial timeline by enhancing the humanoid robot's ability to process and reason about language. The new funds will accelerate Figure’s commercial deployment schedule for humanoid robots and will be used for: artificial intelligence training, manufacturing, deploying more robots, expanding the scale of engineering staff, advancing commercial deployment efforts, etc.
On February 26, Talus Network, an on-chain artificial intelligence network platform based on MoveVM, announced the completion of a first round of financing of US$3 million. This round of financing was led by Polychain Capital and included dao5, Hash3, TRGC , WAGMI Ventures and Inception Capital, as well as angel investors from major technology and blockchain companies such as Nvidia, IBM, Blue7, Symbolic Capital and Render Network. It is reported that Talus Network mainly promotes consumer-friendly network artificial intelligence applications, especially intelligent agents, to seamlessly integrate into daily on-chain content.
On February 29, the Web3 traffic aggregation marketing platform LinkTo announced the successful completion of a seed round of financing from investment institutions including Adaverse, Ruby Capital, Warrior Wealth Fund, BitValue Capital and Block Infinity Limited. LinkTo is committed to solving the core challenges of advertising and marketing in the current Web3 ecosystem, including improving advertising efficiency, ensuring marketing transparency, and optimizing user engagement. By introducing advanced streaming technology and AI algorithms, LinkTo aims to provide brands and advertisers with a platform that can accurately position and effectively reach target audiences while ensuring data security and user privacy.
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