Financing Picks | Multicoin Capital leads investment in cryptography company Zama; Polychain Capital leads investment in De-AI Sahara
According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 21, which was less than before. The total amount was approximately US$184.25 million, and the average financing amount was US$8.7738 million. Among them, the infrastructure field occupies the main body, the digital asset management/payment field is relatively large, the Web3.0+AI field and other fields have increased financing, the DeFi field and the social/creator economy field are relatively small, and the Yuanverse/GameFi field and NFT/ None in the field of digital fashion. The figure below shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:
DeFi
There were 2 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount exceeding US$3.75 million, accounting for 2.04% of the total financing last week.
Hedgehog
On March 6, Hedgehog, an on-chain transaction fee hedging protocol, completed a $1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing. This round of financing was funded by Marshland Capital, Tenzor Capital, Prometeus Ventures, and 3Commas Capital. and Nothing Research participated in the investment. Angel investors include Lido Finance co-founder Vasiliy Shapovalov, among others.
Hedgehog aims to solve the problem of large fluctuations in crypto transaction fees, with the core goal of creating an asset whose price reflects Ethereum’s current transaction fee price. Once such an asset is created, anyone can go long or short on it to hedge against future transaction fee prices. The idea behind Hedgehog is similar to DAI, which is created when crypto tokens are locked up in a vault. It is over-collateralized, meaning the value of the cryptocurrency in the vault is far greater than the value of the amount of DAI created. It also has a minting and redemption process that creates arbitrage opportunities designed to keep the value of the asset at $1.
Hedgehog operates in the same way, using overcollateralized vaults to create derivative tokens called BaseFee. The only difference is that instead of pegging the asset to the U.S. dollar, it uses an arbitrage mechanism to peg it to the average transaction fee price. While the protocol is currently designed to reflect transaction fee prices, it could be used to create other on-chain derivatives as long as there is sufficient demand.
Arkis
On March 5, crypto prime broker Arkis completed a $2.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from G1 Ventures, Blocklabs and Roosh Ventures.
Arkis is focused on Ethereum and aims to expand to future multi-chain solutions including Arbitrum and Polygon. Arkis will provide undercollateralized lending to DeFi hedge funds, asset valuations, custom leveraged positions, and on-chain margin accounts. Arkis aims to bring onboard larger entities, funds with $50 million in assets under management or more, as well as funds with ERC-20 tokens, LP positions and other smart contracts.
Arkis has been trading in closed beta since October 2023 and is scheduled to launch publicly this month. The Arkis team says the products they are building include a low-latency DeFi exchange, prime brokerage, privacy solutions, and powerful building blocks at the custody level. Arkis' solution isn't foolproof, however. In the event of systemic risk, such as a sudden drop in the price of a trading asset or a failure of the margin engine infrastructure, the Company may not be able to effectively liquidate the portfolio.
Social/creator economy
A total of 1 financing in the social/creator economy field , the total amount was not disclosed.
Hypercomic
On March 4, according to Korean media hankyung, Web3 fan collaboration platform Hypercomic completed Series A financing, led by Logan Ventures. It is reported that the company’s valuation in this round of financing is close to 110 100 million won (approximately US$8.26 million), the specific financing amount was not disclosed.
Hypercomic is an alliance composed of the four major Korean webcomic production companies and Netflix's three global drama production companies. It has reached a strategic cooperation with Matter Labs and is committed to the zkSync protocol. software development. HYPERCOMIC will leverage zkSync’s blockchain technology to incentivize fans to interact with, support and grow HYPERCOMIC’s ecosystem IP. The HYPERCOMIC Alliance produces more than 800 web novels, 60 web comics, and 20 drama and film productions every year. As the first step of the collaboration, HYPERCOMIC will create a decentralized IP ecosystem called IP3.0.
IP3.0 will better incentivize fans to grow the brand and share rewards, providing more opportunities for the next generation of IP to grow globally. The platform will be available through the newly launched HYPERCOMIC Play decentralized application, the Web3.0 Webtoon/Manhwa Reward App, which will be built on zkSync Era. Through the dApp, users can earn rewards for playing games, reading and participating in webcomics, which can be redeemed for HYCO tokens.
Infrastructure
A total of 13 financings in the field of infrastructure, with a total amount exceeding 143.4 million US dollars, accounting for 77.83% of total financing last week.
Zama
On March 7, according to The Block, cryptography company Zama completed a $73 million Series A financing. This round of financing was led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, Vsquared Ventures and Stake Capital also participated in the investment. Angel investors include Filecoin founder Juan Benet, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood.
Zama provides a range of open source FHE tools for cryptographic and non-cryptographic use cases. Its fhEVM library supports private smart contracts, ensuring on-chain confidentiality and composability. FHE is considered the "holy grail" of cryptography, enabling end-to-end data encryption even during the processing stage. Leveraging FHE technology, it allows applications to perform calculations or perform mathematical operations on the encrypted data itself and generate an encrypted response for the user that only they can access. However, currently Zama’s technology is not ready for large-scale applications like ChatGPT.
Zama was co-founded in early 2020 by Hindi and Pascal Paillier. Paillier is a renowned cryptographer and one of the inventors of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology, which is at the heart of Zama’s products. Co-founder and CEO Rand Hindi said Zama raised the huge amount of funding in two tranches over the past two years, a round of equity financing that brings Zama's total funding to date to more than $80 million, but declined to comment. ValuationLeave a comment.
io.net
On March 5, Solana ecological DePIN protocol io.net announced the completion of a US$30 million Series A financing, led by Hack VC, Multicoin Capital, 6th Man Ventures, M13, Delphi Digital, Solana Labs, Aptos Labs, Foresight Ventures, Longhash, SevenX, ArkStream, Animoca Brands, Continue Capital, MH Ventures, and OKX Ventures, as well as Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenk, Aptos founders Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, Animoca Brands founder Yat Siu, and Industry leaders including Jin Kang of Perlone Capital participated in the investment
At io.net, users can obtain GPUs at 90% cheaper prices. If they need high performance, It's possible to recreate an AWS-like experience using top-of-the-line hardware like the A100 and still be cheaper than AWS. In some cases, io.net even offers better performance than AWS, which can be critical for certain industries like hedge funds. io.net’s platform is user-friendly and permissionless, unlike AWS which may require detailed details like a business plan. Anyone can join and spin up a cluster instantly, whereas with AWS it can take days or weeks.
Compared to its decentralized competitors, io.net is instant, cheaper and permissionless. Funds raised will be used to build the world’s largest decentralized GPU network and address the AI computing shortage. io.net has launched the first phase of its points rewards program on March 1. The program, called Ignition, runs until April 28. The program will award points based on the GPU users provide to the network.
Related reading: "Talk to io.net: Hope to compete with AWS cloud services and provide more convenient decentralized GPU》
Utila
On March 5, institutional crypto wallet provider Utila announced the completion of US$11.5 million in financing, led by NFX, Wing Venture Capital, and Framework Ventures, with Fasanara Digital Ventures, North Island Ventures, Republic Capital, and Liquid2 , Inspired Capital, Lyrik Ventures, DCG Expeditions, Launchpad Capital, Shima Capita, K5 Global, Big Brain Holdings and Impressive, as well as angel investors including Balaji Shrinivasan.
Utila is an enterprise-grade MPC wallet that brings not only security but usability designed for use by CFOs and their teams every day. Utila is designed to help institutions and crypto companies manage their digital asset holdings in a non-custodial, secure crypto wallet compatible with multiple blockchains. It uses multi-party computation (MPC) technology to distribute a single private key to multiple parties, thereby eliminating single points of failure. Create and manage wallets, set up users and roles, define transaction policies and restrictions, interact with any blockchain, execute payments and transfers in and out of bank accounts.
Utila co-founder and CEO Bentzi Rabi said the platform offers a streamlined user interface, a quick onboarding process of less than five minutes, and recently added Enhanced tokenization capabilities to better serve token issuers. It is reported that the company has so far onboarded 35 institutions and digital asset companies on its platform and facilitated $3 billion in cryptocurrency transactions in the past six months.
The remaining financing for infrastructure includes:
On March 5, the Web3 integration platform Stack has Completed US$3 million in financing, with participation from Archetype, Coinbase Ventures, etc. The funds raised will be used to develop on-chain points, loyalty programs and identities. Stack’s Typescript SDK enables teams to seamlessly integrate these points and loyalty systems into products, with features like event-based point distribution, including cross-chain token redemption, leaderboards, analytics, and GraphQL APIs.
On March 7, Cosmos ecological development platform Cosmology completed a US$5 million seed round of financing, led by Galileo and Lemniscap, with Dispersion, HashKey, Tuesday Capital and others participated in the investment. Cosmosology, which provides a full-stack development environment including Tendermint developer tools, the Cosmos SDK and the Internal Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, did not disclose its valuation for this round. The team says its goal is to make dapp development accessible to anyone interested in Cosmos development, reducing the need for specialized knowledge.
On March 7, modular blockchain Blackwing completed US$4.5 million in financing, led by Hashed and Gumi Cryptos. Blackwing will develop a modular Layer2 blockchain designed for liquidation-free leveraged trading of assets. Blackwing uses a method called Limitless Pools to enable users to trade using borrowed funds without facing forced liquidation. By converting liquidity provider positions into collateral, the platform ensures that the original positions used for borrowed funds trades can be recreated regardless of asset price movements.
On March 8, Bitcoin infrastructure company Oyl completed The $3 million Pre-Seed round was led by Arca, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Arthur Hayes family office Maelstrom, Domo, UTXO Management, Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Werthheimer, Kanosei and FlamingoDAO. Oyl is developing full-stack development tools and wallets so users can use the latest trading tools in one application. In addition, Oyl Wallet will launch in the coming weeks, including market aggregation tools for BRC-20 and token exchange integration with Bitcoin DeFi protocol Omnisat.
On March 9, GoPlus Security, committed to providing leading network security solutions for the Web3 ecosystem, announced that it has successfully completed a Private II+ round of financing totaling US$4 million with participation from Redpoint China, Skyland and others. The funds raised in this round will be used to continue to provide decentralized data and computing infrastructure for user security, and to accelerate the development of user security industry applications. GoPlus Security is actively developing an open, transparent, user-driven security network for Web3 users, providing user-verifiable open security data, and a powerful decentralized data and computing layer. In addition, GoPlus has officially launched the personal security service platform "SecWareX" to provide security services to end users.
On March 8, Web3 application programming interface service provider Kravata announced the completion of a US$3.6 million seed round of financing from Volt Capital, Framework Ventures, Circle Ventures, Magma Partners and SIMMA Capital participated in the investment. It is reported that Kravata helps users connect to Web3 and obtain Web2 experience through application programming interfaces, while integrating the advantages of Web3 into its services without bearing the burden of internal technology development.
On March 7, Bison Labs announced the completion of a Pre-Seed round of financing, aiming to pioneer Trustless and on-chain sovereign Rollup solutions. Bitcoin layer 2 network. The round was led by Portal Ventures, with participation from UTXO Fund, Domo (creator of BRC-20), Magic Eden’s Chief Product Officer Linus Chuang, Waterdrip Capital, Bitcoin Startup Labs, Satoshi Lab, and other strategic investors.
Bison Labs is a sovereign rollup scheme using ZK proof on Bitcoin, with the smallest trust assumptions and highest security on the market. Unlike existing Layer 2 solutions, Bison Labs prioritizes a Trustless system that requires no external trust assumptions through client-side verification and securing assets in co-hosted DLCs to directly share Bitcoin layer one. safety.
On March 7, security infrastructure company Firewall completed $3.7 million in Pre-Seed financing. This round of financing was co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital and Hack VC. . As Firewall’s first round of funding, the funds raised will be used to expand its current team of six full-time employees, develop technology and support community building and marketing efforts.
On March 5, Web3 wallet operating platform DreamOS announced the completion of US$2.1 million Seed round of financing, led by Arca, with participation from Hack VC, Mantle, Polygon Ventures, Karatage, Selini Capital, No Limit Holdings and angel investors. The team is committed to changing the way users interact with digital assets through DreamOS, and making it easier for people without encryption experience to enter the Web3 field through a good interactive experience.
On March 4, BTC L2 network Mirror L2 announced the completion of its first round of financing. The specific amount has not been disclosed yet. This round of financing was funded by UTXO (Bitcoin magazine investment department) , Conflux and IMO Ventures participated in the investment. Mirror L2 is a decentralized Proof of Stake (POS) BTC L2 network that is EVM compatible and utilizes BTC as GAS. Its team has top academic background and project experience, coming from Microsoft, Google, MIT, Yao Class of Tsinghua University, Samsung, Hyundai, Conflux, Decus, etc. Mirror has a grid group multi-signature system algorithm, which realizes joint multi-signature governance of hundreds of nodes and truly decentralized Bitcoin pledge. It also takes into account the multi-signature efficiency of Bitcoin pledge while ensuring the absolute security of pledge. safety.
Digital asset management/payment
A total of 1 financing in the field of digital asset management/payment, with a total amount exceeding 20 million US dollars, accounting for 10.85% of the total financing last week.
Baanx
On March 5, cryptocurrency payment company Baanx completed a $20 million Series A financing, with Ledger, Tezos, Chiron and British Business Bank participating. It is reported that Baanx is a cryptocurrency payment company authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Web3+AI
There are a total of 2 financings in the field of Web3+AI, with the total amount exceeding US$11 million, accounting for 5.97% of total financing last week. Including:
On March 5, the decentralized artificial intelligence network Sahara completed a US$6 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, dao5, Geekcartel, Canonical Crypto, Nomad Capital, Dispersion Capital, Alumni Ventures, Tangent Ventures and Coho Deeptech and angel investor Sandeep Nailwal participated.
Professor Sean Ren, co-founder and CEO of Sahara, said: "The cooperation between humans and artificial intelligence is at a turning point, and artificial intelligence is supported by human data. "
It is reported that Sahara is a trustless, permissionless and privacy-centered network that can create customized autonomous knowledge agents (Sahara KA) for individuals and enterprises . By leveraging this decentralized network, everyone can leverage their intellectual capital to explore monetization and automation opportunities through artificial intelligence.
On March 4, DePIN+AI project Privasea announced the completion of a US$5 million seed round of financing. Early investment institutions include Binance Labs, MH Ventures, K300, Gate Labs, 1NVST, Zephyrus Capital, etc. It is reported that Privasea has integrated FHEML into the distributed computing power crowdfunding network and combined it with its independently developed DePIN mining machine to form an FHE computing power network that supports all L1 and L2. This round of financing will be used for the construction of the FHEML network and the promotion of the “Proof of Human” Dapp using FHE technology.
Other financings
There were 2 other financings with a total amount of US$6.1 million, accounting for 10% of last week’s financing 3.31% of the total. Including:
On March 9, blockchain loyalty program startup tookeez announced the completion of US$1.5 million in financing, with the participation of Moroccan investment institution Azur Innovation Fund. It is reported that tookeez is setting new standards for customer reward systems by enabling seamless conversion and redemption of loyalty points across an extensive network of brands and retailers.
On March 6, the encryption risk rating company Agio Rating announced that it had passed Two rounds of transactions completed a total of US$4.6 million in financing, with investors including Superscrypt, Portage, MS&AD Ventures, and several angel investors. Agio Rating hopes to become the "Moody's" in the crypto industry, mainly helping market makers, brokers and lenders in the digital asset ecosystem assess cryptocurrency counterparty risks. It has currently rated 32 cryptocurrency companies.
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