🗓️ Week of: Aug 4-10, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X: @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$152M+ was raised across 31 funding rounds in Web3. Despite the chaos that opened the week, global markets, including crypto, have relatively rebounded. Macro data shows that markets remain sensitive to unfavorable economic news, with fears of a recession in the U.S. and other G20 economies still top of mind for many investors. Notwithstanding, Web3 venture carried on with deal flow in line with the average. However, considering the market meltdown and general summer slump, projects are likely to continue holding off on new funding announcements until the news cycle is less noisy.

Zooming in, real-world asset (RWA) projects continue to raise more capital as products and services expand beyond general tokenization into Layer 2 specific protocols (e.g., Lumia), lending marketplaces (e.g., Zoth), and expanding asset types like commodities (e.g., Elmnts). This week also highlighted ongoing development around the Move programming language, with new Layer 2s adopting Move-based virtual machines (e.g., Nexio and LYNC). Besides RWA and novel Layer 2s, AI and blockchain remain leading areas attracting investors' capital throughout 2024.

Finally, keeping a close eye on the developments surrounding Customers Bank, which was recently targeted with enforcement action by the U.S. Federal Reserve for inadequately policing illicit activity, particularly with digital asset clients. Customers is one of a limited cohort of banks in the U.S. that accept crypto clients. Without a friendly banking environment in the U.S. for crypto startups and projects, the industry could face major adversity, at least in the context of building and operating a business within the U.S.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Lumia announced the completion of a node sale totaling $25M. The project reported selling over twenty-five thousand "HyperNodes" to institutional investors and community members. Lumia was previously known as Orion Protocol before a strategic shift in February of this year.

Lumia is a Layer 2 blockchain solution focused on DeFi and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. It leverages the Polygon CDK for modular blockchain development and EigenLayer’s restaking capabilities for security and improved capital efficiency, along with other modular technical components. Lumia's architecture includes a private Data Availability Committee (DAC) for data integrity, its own liquidity network (Lumia Stream), and decentralized sequencers for fast transaction finality. It supports zkML-Adapters to integrate off-chain AI models for various DeFi strategies. The native token, LUMIA (formerly ORN), is used for transaction fees, governance, node staking, and liquidity provision, aligning incentives across the ecosystem.

Why this matters?👉 Lumia highlights an emerging method for crypto projects to raise capital through node sales. Under this approach, projects sell the rights to operate network nodes, providing an immediate influx of capital while fostering network decentralization. Unlike token sales (ICOs), node sales can enhance network security and utility by incentivizing participants to contribute resources, potentially reducing regulatory scrutiny and fostering network sustainability. In 2024 alone, $125M has been raised via this method across new Layer 1 and Layer 2 projects, highlighting its growing popularity for bootstrapping new networks.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Cartridge - Series A ($7.5M) | Web3 gaming console, development platform, and game developer enabling Starknet-based games: https://cartridge.gg/

Stabble - Seed ($2.5M) | Solana-native decentralized exchange enabling protocol-managed liquidity features: https://stabble.org/

EthNano - Seed ($5.0M) | Multi-chain decentralized staking platform: https://ethnano.com/

Zoth - Strategic ($4.0M) | Institutional grade marketplace for on-chain tokenized real-world assets (RWA): https://zoth.io/

Elmnts - Seed ($2.0M) | Tokenized commodities platform providing investors access to mineral rights and royalties: https://www.elmnts.io/

Curio (aka. Duper) - Seed ($5.7M) | Game studio building on-chain real-time strategy (RTS) game that stores all game logic and state changes on-chain and allows players to enrich the core game logic via smart contracts: https://www.curio.gg/

MaiCoin - Series B+ (Not Disclosed) | Digital asset trading platform and exchange focused on the Taiwanese market: https://www.maicoin.com/

Lumia (fka. Orion Protocol) - Node Sale ($25.0M) | Layer 2 network enabling aggregated liquidity and built for real-world assets: https://orion.xyz/

Khalani - Seed ($2.5M) | Verifiable oracle protocol that enables AI and compute on any chain: https://khalani.network/

Digihost - Private Placement ($4.0M) | Bitcoin mining company operating various locations across the U.S.: https://digihost.ca/

Payman - Seed ($3.0M) | AI agent to human task and payment platform: https://www.paymanai.com/

Aidatify - Series A ($17.5M) | On-chain decentralized exchange information aggregation platform enabled by AI: https://www.aidatify.com/

DeAgentAI - Seed ($6.0M) | AI agent intelligent neural network enabled by a self-developed LLM model and Agent-Centric Index (AGI) system: https://www.deagent.ai/

Andrena (aka. DAWN) - Series A+ ($18.0M) | Affordable internet provider and developer of DAWN (decentralized autonomous wireless network), a protocol built on Solana designed to offer decentralized internet services: https://andrena.com/

Blockscout - Seed ($3.0M) | Open-source block explorer for all EVM-based chains: https://www.blockscout.com/

Nexio - Seed ($2.2M) | Parallelized Bitcoin rollup and Layer 2 network that leverages the Move virtual machine: https://x.com/buildnexio

Solayer - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Restaking network built natively on Solana: https://solayer.org/

LYNC - Seed ($1.5M) | Consumer and gaming focused Layer 2 network that leverages the Move technology stack: https://lync.world/

UniWorlds - Seed (Not Disclosed) | 3D sovereign personal content creation platform and virtual spaces on the Bitcoin Network: https://uniworlds.io/

Onchain Labs - Seed ($5.8M) | Blockchain consulting firm and services provider for enterprises as well as the developer of the OG Wallet: https://www.onchainlabs.ch/

Vessel - Seed ($10.0M) | Zero Knowledge (ZK) powered decentralized exchange and Layer 3 network for DeFi: https://vessel.finance/

Quantlytica - Private Sale ($1.1M) | AI-powered multi-chain liquidity distribution protocol: https://quantlytica.com/

TONX - Seed ($4.0M) | Development layer and tooling platform designed for the TON network and Telegram: https://tonx.ai/

Moonveil - Seed+ ($3.6M) | Game studio and developer of Astrark, an immersive tower defense strategy game: https://www.moonveil.gg/

375ai - Seed ($5.0M) | Developer of decentralized edge data intelligence network enabled by hardware to collect data and application for users to contribute data: https://www.375.ai/

DeepLink - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 cloud gaming platform and decentralized AI cloud gaming platform: https://www.deeplink.cloud/

Pentagon Games - Seed ($6.0M) | zkEVM chain game publisher powering XR metaverse through deep learning and Web3: https://pentagon.games/

Wirex Pay - Node Sale ($5.0M) | Decentralized payment network incubated by Wirex: https://www.wirexpaychain.com/

BasedVC - Seed ($2.0M) | Token powered, decentralized early stage venture investment platform: https://basedvc.fund/

U2U Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based Layer 1 network with EVM compatibility, designed for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) applications: https://u2u.xyz/

Telverse - Seed ($1.0M) | Gaming infrastructure and development platform designed for Telegram and the TON network: https://www.televerse.xyz/

New Funds

No new funds announced this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

Stay on top of the latest global regulatory and enforcement actions facing the industry via Gibson Dunn Digital Assets Recent Updates

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Jul 28 - Aug 3, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X: @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$246M+ was raised across 32 funding rounds in Web3. While deal flow remained consistent week-over-week and in line with 2024 norms, the broader crypto markets might be signaling a different story for later this year. In the course of just a few days, a ‘perfect storm’ appears to have hit global markets, including crypto. This included a sentiment shift in U.S. economic and jobs data igniting recession fears, rising tensions in the Middle East, and interest rate hikes in Japan leading to a massive unwind of carry trades across all asset classes. On top of this, leading crypto market maker Jump appears to be liquidating their positions, and publicly traded crypto-related companies have witnessed their worst pullback in over a year. With liquidity already thin during the summer months, this all equated to a massive pullback for crypto with most tokens seeing double digit declines.

On the surface, the crypto markets appear to have at least found local bottoms. However, the unexpected declines in token and public company market caps will certainly impact valuations in the near term, likely seeping into the venture markets. There is a good likelihood that this could be the catalyst to slow down the amount and size of deals over the next three months, especially until there is clarity from the U.S. on both the Fed’s rate cuts, the presidential election, and the corresponding regulatory regime. Until then, hang tight.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Alps Blockchain announced $113 million (€105 million) in funding led by global asset manager Azimut Holding. The deal was made through an SPV set up by Azimut and a group of private investors and was structured as debt via a 5-year guaranteed bond with the option of early redemption by the company. This follows a prior financing round in 2023 for €40 million.

Alps Blockchain that focuses on the production of computing power for blockchain applications, specifically through the development and management of high-performance mining farms. They design, build, and operate state-of-the-art mining infrastructure, using advanced cooling systems and renewable energy sources like hydropower and other sustainable energy sources. Alps Blockchain collaborates with global partners to expand their mining operations internationally across 30 sites in Europe, South America, and the Middle East.

Why this matters?👉Cryptocurrency miners have raised over $1.6 billion so far in 2024, with Alps Blockchain marking another nine-figure funding round. As covered in prior editions, post-Bitcoin’s halving, miners continue to raise more capital to deploy into CapEx for more advanced mining rigs and sustainable energy solutions. This effort aims to make operations more efficient as margins grow thin. However, with recent tumbles in the crypto markets, we’ll see in the next few months which miners have been able to pull this off most effectively.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Agent - Seed ($1.0M) | Sub-account management platform enabling trading of points and locked tokens: https://agent.exchange/

Mycel - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized platform that enables the transfer, management, and trading of various accounts across different blockchain platforms: https://mycel.land/

Destiny of Gods - Strategic ($0.5M) | Turn-based strategy card game built on Solana: https://dogame.io/

BlonkFi - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Money market lending protocol on Solana that allows users to collateralize volatile assets such as memecoins to borrow stablecoins: https://x.com/BlonkFi

Axle Automation - Seed ($2.5M) | AI-powered solutions for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance: https://www.axleruns.com/

Pravica - Grant ($0.3M) | Developer of stable management and payment app on the Sui network: https://blog.pravica.io/

Alps Blockchain - Debt ($113.0M) | Technology company specializing in the production and development of computer power for digital asset mining: https://www.alpsblockchain.com/

Liquorice - Seed ($1.2M) | DeFi protocol offering one sided lending pools and enable intent based trading systems: https://www.liquorice.tech/

Argo Blockchain - Private Placement ($8.3M) | Global data center business that provides a powerful and efficient platform for cryptocurrency mining operations: https://argoblockchain.com/

Hyperbolic - Seed ($0.8M) | Open-access AI cloud providing accessible, affordable, and scalable GPU resources and inference services: https://www.hyperbolic.xyz/

Hyperbolic - Seed ($7.0M) | Open-access AI cloud providing accessible, affordable, and scalable GPU resources and inference services: https://www.hyperbolic.xyz/

Mintify - Seed+ ($3.4M) | Modular trading terminal and order book for NFTs that aggregates liquidity from public and private marketplaces: https://mintify.xyz/

Raad Labs - Seed ($2.3M) | Distributed network of meteorological sensors for local, regional, and large-scale weather data and intelligence: https://raad.com/

aPriori (fka. BBOX) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Maximal extractable value (MEV) powered liquid staking platform for Monad: https://www.apr.io/

We.Rich - Seed ($2.0M) | User-Generated Asset (UGA) platform that enables anyone to create and launch any tradable asset or memecoins: https://we.rich/

Icebreaker - Seed ($5.0M) | Web3-focused professional network and social verification platform: https://www.icebreaker.xyz/

Layer2 Financial - Series A ($10.7M) | Regulated payments infrastructure for cross-border money movement, compliant payments, and in multiple currencies: https://layer2financial.com/

Rage Trade - Public Sale ($6.0M) | Multi-chain and exchange aggregator for crypto perpetual futures: https://www.rage.trade/

JKLabs (aka. Jokerace) - Seed ($3.0M) | Web3 governance platform for Web3 communities to make, execute, and reward decisions while offering incentives to members on-chain: https://jokerace.xyz/

Daylight - Series A ($9.0M) | Decentralized protocol, application, and marketplace for energy resources and devices: https://www.daylight.world/

Breakout - Seed ($4.5M) | Crypto-native proprietary trading firm offering centralized exchange liquidity: https://www.breakoutprop.com/

Lukka - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Enterprise data and financial software solutions for crypto assets and blockchain data: https://lukka.tech/

Pichi Finance - Seed ($2.5M) | Points trading protocol, enabling users to trade points from their favorite protocols before token generation events (TGE): https://pichi.finance/

Particle Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Modular Layer 1 blockchain powered by Cosmos SDK enabling Universal Accounts a single account, balance, and address across all chains: https://particle.network/

Morpho - Private Sale ($50.0M) | Decentralized lending protocol offering user-controlled risk assessment platform with a unique lending pooling and matching system: https://morpho.org/

MetaDAO - Private Sale ($2.2M) | Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) responsible for developing and implementing the futarchy governance model: https://metadao.fi/

Layer 3 - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Omnichain identity and distribution protocol for incentivization and rewards: https://layer3.xyz/

DuelNow - Strategic ($11.0M) | Sports prediction marketplace powered by peer-to-peer wagers providing a bookie-free sports prediction experience: https://duelnow.com/

Chateau - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Protocol that connects DeFi participants with institutional-grade real world assets (RWAs) across various asset classes: https://www.chateau.capital/

IX Swap - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi platform for issuance, listing, and trading of real-world assets (RWAs): https://www.ixswap.io/

Oyl - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Wallet and trading platform for holding and investing in bitcoin-native assets: https://www.oyl.io/

Kollectiv - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Web3 membership club and rewards program: https://kollectiv.io/

New Funds

OKX - Ecosystem Growth Fund ($10.0M)

Animoca Ventures - ApeCoin Ventures ($10.0M)

🙌 Cool Resources

Rollup.wtf a real-time performance metrics for rollups built by Conduit.xyz

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Jul 21-27, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X: @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$214M+ was raised across 38 funding rounds in Web3. Despite the prospects of a slowing summer fundraising environment, deal flow continued to hold. There was some positive news on the macro front with inflation showing signs of being tamed and the ETH ETFs finally launching. This all helped broader crypto markets rally before eventually holding steady. Notwithstanding, crypto’s political clout is on the rise, becoming a frontline policy topic potentially influencing the U.S. presidential election this November.

Zooming in, what I dub “AI meets blockchain” projects witnessed another flurry of over a half dozen announced deals this week, including Ceti AI’s eight-figure funding round, covered in this edition. In general, decentralized AI projects coupled with DePIN have been one of the hottest segments pulling in investor capital throughout 2024. Also, this week highlighted the Monad ecosystem with three emerging projects announcing deals (Kuru, Kintsu, aPriori). All projects are building out DeFi infrastructure, including liquid staking protocols, to help Monad grow into the next mainstream Layer 1 network.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ ceτi AI announced $60M in strategic funding from BCII Enterprises. Ceti AI develops decentralized artificial intelligence solutions that integrate blockchain technology to enhance data privacy, security, and efficiency. Their platform focuses on creating AI applications that operate on a decentralized network, enabling users to harness the power of AI without compromising on the integrity and confidentiality of their data. By leveraging blockchain, Ceti AI aims to provide scalable and reliable AI tools that can be used across various industries to improve decision-making processes and operational workflows.

Why this matters?👉AI projects incorporating blockchain or otherwise decentralized AI infrastructure continue to be one of the hottest areas attracting investors' attention in 2024. Given the broader AI narrative driving the S&P and technology disruption, investors have substantial comparisons to draw on when looking to invest in decentralized projects. These projects offer enhanced data privacy and security, as data is processed and stored on a distributed network rather than centralized models or computing resources. This has become especially relevant in light of recent mishaps at Crowdstrike and Microsoft.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Solak - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | AI-powered web browser for exploring decentralized applications and DeFi: https://solak.app/

Etherfuse - Seed ($5.0M) | Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform offering tokenized debt products via "stablebonds": https://etherfuse.com/

NPC Labs (aka. B3) - Seed ($21.0M) | Developer and core contributor to B3.fun, a Web3 game scaling and microservices-like Layer 3 ecosystem built on Base: https://npclabs.org/

Zircuit - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup with AI-enabled sequencer-level security: https://www.zircuit.com/

Ceti AI - Strategic ($60.0M) | Decentralized artificial intelligence enabled through energy-driven infrastructure: https://taoceti.ai/

Space Nation - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 space opera massive multiplayer online and roleplaying game (MMORPG): https://spacenation.online/

Assisterr - Seed ($1.7M) | Decentralized network and AI infrastructure layer for Small Language Models (SLM): https://www.assisterr.ai/

MetaBeat - Strategic ($3.0M) | Music community platform for KPop fans and artist: https://metabeat.foundation/

Bitlayer - Series A ($11.0M) | Bitcoin security-equivalent Layer 2 based on BitVM: https://www.bitlayer.org/

RoboKiden - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 multiplayer party shooter featuring colorful characters, wacky weapons, massive robots, and fast-paced battles: https://robokiden.com/

Arena Games - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 game studio and play-to-earn platform: https://arenavs.com/

Pluto Studio (aka. Catizen) (fka. Cat Paradise) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 game development platform, studio, and developer of Catizen, a game for cat lovers built on the TON network: https://www.pluto.vision/#/

Igloo (aka. Pudgy Penguins) - Seed+ ($11.0M) | Creator of Web3 IP brand, Pudgy Penguins and developer of NFT-centric Layer 2 network, Abstract: https://www.pudgypenguins.com/

Network3 - Seed ($5.5M) | Layer 2 network designed to provide edge AI infrastructure: https://network3.ai/

Multipool - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Limit order decentralized exchange for real-world assets (RWA) and cryptocurrencies built on existing automated market marker protocols: https://www.multipool.finance/

DAOBase - Seed ($6.0M) | Comprehensive aggregator, search engine, and reputation layer for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs): https://daobase.ai/

Roxom - Seed ($4.3M) | Bitcoin-priced and denominated stock, commodities, and futures exchange: https://roxom.com/

Panda Titan - Seed ($3.0M) | Metaverse game ecosystem with pandas as IP: https://x.com/PandaTitan488

Caldera - Series A ($15.0M) | A modular no-code blockchain platform which allows users to launch and run high-performance, customizable, and application-specific Layer 2 blockchains: https://caldera.xyz/

RiskLayer - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Economic security middleware for DeFi built on EigenLayer’s shared security primitives: https://www.risklayer.xyz/

Yup - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 social network and open social aggregator: https://yup.io/

Dakota - Seed ($4.0M) | Crypto-native banking platform for businesses: https://dakota.xyz/

Trust3 - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Real estate tokenization platform enabling fractional ownership through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): https://trust3.co/

Redpill (fka. Cyphermod) - Seed ($5.0M) | AI model aggregation platform enabled by tokenized LLM and model resources: https://red-pill.ai/

STIX - Seed ($1.8M) | Web3 sticker pack competition and promotion platform and spin-off project of Stickerly: https://stix.lol/

aPriori (fka. BBOX) - Seed ($8.0M) | Maximal extractable value (MEV) powered liquid staking platform for Monad: https://www.apr.io/

Hash AI - Strategic ($10.0M) | AI optimized cryptocurrency mining operator and ecosystem: https://hashai.co.uk/

OpenSocial - Strategic ($6.0M) | Open-source social infrastructure layer to power native web3 social experiences: https://www.opensocial.co/

Kintsu - Seed ($4.0M) | Liquid staking protocol built on Monad: https://kintsu.xyz/

Kuru - Seed ($2.0M) | Decentralized central limit order book (CLOB) exchange built on Monad: https://kuru.io/

Multiple Network - Seed ($2.0M) | Decentralized physical infrastructure network that leverages SD-WAN technology to high-powered transmission of digital assets & data: https://multiple.cc/

Mezo - Strategic ($7.5M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 network providing an economic layer that leverages a neutral smart contract infrastructure: https://mezo.org/

BitFi - Seed (Not Disclosed) | CeDeFi platform that combines secure staking mechanisms with on and off-chain synthetic assets: https://bitfi.org/

Turf Gaming - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Permissionless esports engine and predictions market: https://0xturf.gg/

YouSUI - Strategic ($1.0M) | Multi-chain launchpad and DeFi ecosystem built on the Sui Network: https://yousui.io/

LayerPixel - Seed ($2.0M) | TON-based DeFi platform designed for telegram: https://x.com/LayerPixel_io

OneMedNet - Private Placement ($4.6M) | Real-world data (RWD) platform for clinical data, electronic health records, laboratory results, and medical imaging enabled by blockchain: https://www.onemednet.com/

Metabit - Strategic ($10.0M) | High-performance blockchain platform integrating AI: https://metabitglobal.com/

New Funds

Galaxy Digital - Galaxy Ventures Fund I ($113.0M)

Ego Death Capital - Fund II ($43.4M)

🙌 Cool Resources

DAOBase, a comprehensive DAO aggregator and search engine

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Jul 14-20, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X: @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$97M+ was raised across 28 funding rounds in Web3. Absent a large funding round or public markets deal, this week marked the first slowdown in funding for 2024. While summer seasonality is likely the culprit, and companies may be delaying announcements, Web3 venture capital deployment appears to be maintaining a holding pattern, dependent on broader crypto market trends leading into Q4. At the same time, the industry is facing minor wins on the regulatory front within the U.S., and everyone is anxious to see what effect crypto will play in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. While these factors won't explicitly impact venture deal flow, they can certainly sway VC sentiment and capital deployment for the weeks ahead.

Zooming in, this week marked a handful of deals for projects building better solutions to ingest and use blockchain data, including Allium (covered in this edition) and Chainbase, as well as Mira, which is building better decentralized data infrastructure for AI. Personally, I think data infrastructure solutions within Web3 have some of the strongest business models and obtainable markets within the industry (everyone, devs and users, touches or uses these products at some point). Also, continue to keep your eyes on the TON ecosystem, which continues to spur new projects building at the application layer and harvesting large user bases, thanks in part to TON’s close integration with the Telegram app and ecosystem.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Allium announced $16.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Amplify Partners, who had previously led the company’s seed round in 2022.

Allium is an enterprise blockchain data platform offering two main products: Allium Developer and Allium Explorer. Allium Developer enables engineers to create custom workflows for real-time blockchain applications. Allium Explorer provides analysts with an intuitive query interface for exploring blockchain data. Allium offers both enriched batch data (Snowflake SQL) and real-time data (PostgreSQL) options, which enables data shares and streaming of blockchain data to enterprise users’ data lakes.

The platform supports over 40 blockchains, providing various schemas and real-time data streams. It also offers other data enrichment and tools for accounting, auditing, stablecoin tracking, institutional staking, wallet analysis, and sybil detection for airdrops. Some of its most notable customers include, Visa, Stripe, Phantom, Wormhole, and Uniswap. Allium also partners with Visa to launch their on-chain analytics dashboard tracking the fiat-backed stablecoin market.

Why this matters?👉Blockchain data and analytic infrastructure providers like Allium continue to face a meaningful market opportunity as the industry expands and the need to “read” blockchain data efficiently and reliably becomes mandatory. By standardizing and making blockchain data more accessible, developers can rely on providers like Allium for critical functions within their applications, from checking wallet balances and fraud detection to real-time accounting data. Moreover, as larger institutions delve deeper into the market and the nexus with AI grows, platforms that abstract the complexities of querying and indexing blockchain data can become just as important as Google in organizing public webpage data.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

XYRO - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Gamified social trading platform, blending GameFi and SocialFi: https://xyro.io/

Beoble - Seed+ ($3.0M) | Communication infrastructure and ecosystem that allows users to chat between wallets: https://www.beoble.io/

Akedo - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Arcade and gaming platform built on the TON network and integrating with Telegram's user base: https://x.com/akedofun

Haruko - Series A ($6.0M) | All-in-one digital asset portfolio management platform across CeFI and DeFI for institutional investors: https://www.haruko.io/

RateX (aka. Rate Labs) - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized exchange built on Solana, specializing in leveraged yield trading via synthetic Yield Tokens (YT): https://rate-x.io/

BIMA Labs - Seed ($2.3M) | Developer of USBD (Universal Stable Bitcoin Dollar), a stablecoin collateralized by Babylon-staked Bitcoin: https://bima.money/

Caliza - Seed ($8.5M) | Fintech platform that enables digital dollar accounts and real-time payments using USDC: https://www.caliza.co/

Mira - Seed ($9.0M) | Decentralized AI development infrastructure platform enabled by a crypto-based economic model: https://mira.network/

PEXX - Seed ($4.5M) | Cross-border payment platform that enables users to off-ramp stablecoins directly into bank accounts: https://pexx.com/

DILL - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Sharding-based Data Availability (DA) network secured by Proof of Stake (PoS) enabled by BTC staking and restaking for participation: https://www.dill.xyz/

Skytrade - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Blockchain-based air rights marketplace for the purchase, sale and lease of airspace: https://sky.trade/

Privy - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Toolkit for progressive authentication flows and embedded wallets for Web3 applications: https://www.privy.io/

Oh Gamers - Seed ($3.0M) | Web3 gamers community platform focused on providing expertly curated on-chain gaming opportunities: https://x.com/0xOhGamers

Pluto Studio (aka. Catizen) (fka. Cat Paradise) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 game development platform, studio, and developer of Catizen, a game for cat lovers built on the TON network: https://www.pluto.vision/#/

Jugemu Labs - Seed ($1.0M) | Layer 2 blockchain democratizing access to generative AI: https://www.jugemu.ai/

Sanctum (fka. Socean Labs) - Public Sale ($7.5M) | Liquid staking token (LST) protocol and multi-LST liquidity pool (LP) built on Solana: https://www.sanctum.so/

Loyi - Seed ($0.5M) | No-code white-label platform to lifestyle brands for boosting Gen Z customer engagement leveraging blockchain technology: https://www.loyi.io/

Owlto Finance - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Intent-centric interoperability protocol providing seamless cross-chain bridging services: https://owlto.finance/

ZKLink - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Trading-focused multi-chain Layer 2 network with unified liquidity secured by zero knowledge (ZK) rollups: https://zk.link/

Liquidium - Seed ($2.8M) | Ordinal lending platform on Bitcoin: https://www.liquidium.fi/

Allium - Series A ($16.5M) | On-chain data infrastructure products ranging from managed blockchain databases, enriched data schemas, and real-time alerting capabilities: https://www.allium.so/

Chainbase - Series A ($15.0M) | Omnichain data network that consolidates all blockchain data into a single platform: https://chainbase.com/

Zivoe - Private Sale ($8.4M) | Real-World Asset (RWA) credit protocol for unsecured consumer loans: https://www.zivoe.com/en

Truvius - Seed ($3.2M) | Digital asset investment platform providing thematic portfolios constructed for both institutional and individual investors: https://www.truvius.io/

JOJO Exchange - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized perpetual futures exchange built on Base: https://jojo.exchange/

U2U Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based Layer 1 network with EVM compatibility, designed for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) applications: https://u2u.xyz/

ZKEX - Seed ($2.5M) | Decentralized multi-chain order book exchange secured by zero-knowledge (ZK) technology: https://zkex.com/

Nirvana Labs - Seed+ ($4.0M) | Web3-native cloud provider designed to reduce cloud centralization and promote decentralized infrastructure: https://nirvanalabs.io/

New Funds

MON Protocol - MON Ventures Fund I (Not Disclosed)

BlueYard Capital - BlueYard Crypto 3 ($75.0M)

Bitrue Ventures - Investment Fund ($40.0M)

Sei Labs - Japan Ecosystem Fund ($50.0M)

🙌 Cool Resources

TokenUnlocks

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Jul 7-13, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$394M+ was raised across 29 funding rounds in Web3. While this week was largely driven by a public markets deal (Core Scientific’s $260 million note conversion), overall deal flow appeared to slow a bit due to summer seasonality. It's too early to tell whether the recent slip in crypto markets will have a continued effect on the funding environment within Web3. However, the political and regulatory environment around digital assets, specifically within the U.S., is forecasting an optimistic future, which could continue to provide investors with a positive outlook for the remainder of 2024.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Core Scientific announced a mandatory conversion of its outstanding Secured Convertible Notes, which were originally issued in 2024. The conversion occurred after the company’s stock price exceeded an applicable threshold over twenty consecutive trading days. This resulted in the elimination of $260 million of debt from the company’s balance sheet. Core Scientific is publicly listed on NASDAQ under the ticker CORZ.

Core Scientific is one of the largest owners and operators of high-powered digital infrastructure for bitcoin mining and hosting services in North America. The company specializes in transforming energy into high-value compute efficiently at scale. This allows them to employ their own large fleet of mining hardware to earn bitcoin for their own account through self-mining and provide hosting services for other large bitcoin miners and high-performance computing customers. The company operates eight data centers across the U.S. and derives a majority of its revenue from earning bitcoin through self-mining.

Why this matters?👉The deal highlights the significant progress Core Scientific has made since emerging from bankruptcy earlier this year. As noted in last week's coverage, with the rising price of BTC and the halving earlier this year, 2024 has marked a wave of restructuring and funding across the mining segment. While alleviating previous debt loads, miners continue to strengthen their balance sheets to support ongoing capital expenditures. This includes investing in new high-performance mining equipment and chips while also expanding compute capacity into other segments, including AI.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Questflow - Seed ($1.5M) | Decentralized AI agentic workflow network that orchestrates multi-agents to take action on autopilot: https://www.questflow.ai/

Maalexi - Strategic ($1.0M) | Cross-border trade platform for agribusinesses: https://www.maalexi.com/

Demether - Seed (Not Disclosed) | DeFi protocol designed to unifiy and mobilizes capital: https://www.demether.io/

Ampleforth - Strategic ($1.0M) | Developer of SPOT, a flatcoin providing decentralized low-volatility commodity-based money: https://www.spot.cash/

idOS - Seed ($4.5M) | Open-source, composable, and chain-agnostic decentralized identity solution across the Web3 space: https://idos.network/

Core Scientific - Convertible Note ($260.0M) | One of the largest blockchain computing data center providers and miners of digital assets in North America, using its facilities and intellectual property portfolio for co-located and self-mining of digital asset: https://corescientific.com/

Term Labs - Seed+ ($5.5M) | Lending and borrowing platform that enables fixed-rate term loans to be issued through on-chain auctions: https://termfinance.io/

Rome Protocol - Seed ($9.0M) | Shared sequencer network leveraging Solana: https://www.romeprotocol.com/

Satoshi Protocol - Seed ($2.0M) | Developer of SAT, a Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin, using collateralized debt positions and enabled by BEVM: https://satoshiprotocol.org/

Trusta Labs - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | AI-powered identity and reputation layer for Web3: https://www.trustalabs.ai/

BublleAI - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized transaction aggregator and data analysis platform enabled by AI: https://bubbleai.xyz/

Tokinvest - Seed ($0.5M) | Marketplace that connects real-world asset issuers with investors globally: https://tokinvest.capital/

Kulipa - Seed ($3.0M) | Payment and cards platform enabled for non-custodial wallets: https://www.kulipa.xyz/

Idle Finance - Seed+ ($1.1M) | On-chain credit and yield aggregation platform providing automation and hedging tools for decentralized finance: https://idle.finance/

Omega - Grant (Not Disclosed) | Modular DeFi infrastructure for omnichain and Bitcoin: https://www.omega.xyz/

BOB (aka. Build on Bitcoin) - Strategic ($1.6M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 network with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility: https://www.gobob.xyz/

Dora - Seed ($5.5M) | Unified multi-chain search engine and explorer: https://www.ondora.xyz/

ThirdFi - Private Sale ($2.0M) | DeFi infrastructure middleware enabled by AI: https://www.thirdfi.org/

Bluwhale - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 wallet analytics tool leveraging personalized AI and contextual data: https://www.bluwhale.com/

Tread Labs - Seed ($3.5M) | Institutional algorithmic trading infrastructure and platform for digital assets: https://www.tread.fi/

RECRD - Seed ($4.0M) | Short form content and creator monetization platform built on SUI: https://www.recrd.com/

Aidatify - Seed ($8.3M) | On-chain decentralized exchange information aggregation platform enabled by AI: https://www.aidatify.com/

Jade City - Seed ($0.3M) | Jade and other mineral tokenization platform: https://www.jadecity.io/

Soccerverse - Strategic ($3.1M) | Multiplayer, community-driven football management simulator and trading game: https://www.soccerverse.com/

Partior - Series B ($60.0M) | Global unified ledger market infrastructure for clearing and settlement, born from the Project Ubin collaboration backed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore: https://www.partior.com/

Pixelverse - Private Sale ($2.0M) | Web3 gaming studio and platform set in a cyberpunk pixelated universe: https://pixelverse.xyz/

ZAP - Private Sale ($3.0M) | Community-driven token launch protocol built on Blast: https://www.zap.tech/

ZAP - Other ($12.1M) | Community-driven token launch protocol built on Blast: https://www.zap.tech/

XRADERS (aka. XR Labs) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | AI-powered curated expert insights platform for crypto investors: https://xraders.xyz/

New Funds

Notcoin - Telegram Gaming Accelerator ($50.0M)

Auros Global - Auros Ventures Fund ($50.0M)

Frictionless Capital - Frictionless Fund I ($20.0M)

Morgan Creek Digital - Fund IV ($500.0M)

🙌 Cool Resources

Dora, an unified multi-chain search engine and explorer

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week(s) of:

Jun 23-29 & Jun 30 - Jul 6, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

Sorry for falling behind the past two weeks. I had been attending to family matters and had to put my funding tracking on the back burner. However, no rest for the wicked, and what a time it has been on the Web3 venture front.

$949M+ was raised across 69 funding rounds in Web3. Just when we thought crypto markets were in turmoil and a bear market was looming, Web3 venture has provided a shimmer of hope. The past two weeks have witnessed some of the heaviest and largest deal flow of 2024 so far. Last week alone recorded the second-highest total capital raised for the year. Whoever said VCs run off to the Amalfi Coast in the summer?

Now, while sudden heavy capital flow amidst a looming slowdown in broader crypto markets could signal a final hurrah before an eventual venture funding freeze (as happened at this point in 2022), I remain optimistic that 2024 will still bring a healthy fundraising environment. Over $1.5B has been announced in new venture funds over the past quarter, providing more dry powder to be deployed later this year. Not to mention, looming regulatory clarity coming out of the US and prospects for an eventual rate cut could foster a healthy crypto market come Q4.

Zooming in, AI enabled by blockchain or Web3 economics is quickly emerging as one of the hottest themes in 2024. The past two weeks alone saw over $150M go into projects and companies building around the decentralized AI stack, including compute, data availability, and model development. Given how well the AI narrative has performed in traditional equity and venture markets, it's no surprise that Web3 founders and venture funds are following the trend.

Funding Round Up #78 (Jun 23-29)

Funding Round Up #79 (Jun 30 - Jul 3)

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Iris Energy announced $413.4M in funding made through an at-the-market stock offering of its public shares. The company sold 39.8M shares during the period from May through June and still has the capacity to sell more shares. The company is publicly listed on NASDAQ under the ticker IREN.

Iris Energy owns and operates next-generation data centers powered by 100% renewable energy. Their facilities are optimized for Bitcoin mining, AI cloud services, and other power-dense computing tasks. The company operates four facilities in North America, specifically in British Columbia, Canada, and Texas, USA.

Why this matters?👉Public Bitcoin mining companies like Iris Energy have been actively raising funds through equity financing since the end of 2023. This coincided with Bitcoin’s rally, which helped companies raise billions in capital to fund new mining equipment and expansion plans both before and after Bitcoin’s halving in April. At the same time, companies are learning from the last cycle, favoring equity over debt financing to provide significant cash buffers without the worries of eventual debt servicing.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Infrared - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Liquid staking platform for Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism pioneered by Berachain: https://infrared.finance/

Hut 8 - Convertible Note ($150.0M) | Cryptocurrency mining and blockchain infrastructure provider established through an exclusive partnership with Bitfury: https://hut8.io/

Net Zero Company - Seed ($5.0M) | Provider of carbon dioxide removal credits from diversified projects, utilizing blockchain technology: https://netzerocompany.org/

Midle - Grant (Not Disclosed) | Platform designed to enhance user acquisition, engagement, and retention for brands utilizing task-to-earn incentives: https://midle.io/

Allora (fka. Upshot) - Strategic ($3.0M) | Self-improving decentralized machine learning (ML) model network: https://www.allora.network/

Shaga - Seed ($1.0M) | Low latency cloud gaming platform enabled by an underlying decentralized physical infrastructure network: https://www.shaga.xyz/

AYDO - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Platform that enables users to stream data from IoT devices to DePIN protocols: https://www.aydo.ai/

Touchbrick - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Privacy-first network for AI training on sensitive enterprise data through synthetic datasets: https://www.touchbrick.com/

Roam Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Platform for sharing real-time wireless network performance leveraging user-labeled data measurements: https://www.roamnetwork.xyz/

YOM - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized pixel-streaming infrastructure network: https://www.yom.ooo/

Kaisar Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | GPU-as-a-service protocol incentivizing both GPU providers and end-users: https://kaisar.io/

ROVR - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized, ultra-high-precision multidimensional digital twin platform for 3D AI engines: https://www.rovr.network/#/home

Enso - Private Sale ($4.2M) | Layer 1 Cosmos-based blockchain network and intent engine: https://www.enso.finance/

Elfin Metaverse (aka. Elfin Kingdom) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | All-in-one eSports gaming platform and open-world metaverse: https://elfinmetaverse.com/

Conduit - Series A ($37.0M) | Infrastructure platform that enables developers to deploy production grade Optimistic (OP) rollups using Optimism Collective's OP Stack: https://conduit.xyz/

NovaNet - Seed ($3.0M) | zkVM and decentralized proving network enabling an incentive layer for zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs): https://www.novanet.xyz/

GolfN - Seed ($1.3M) | Web3 golf play-to-earn (P2E) game: https://www.golfn.com/

AnchorZero - Seed ($8.0M) | Tax planning and Roth IRA platform for founders: https://www.anchorzero.com/

Nexis Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Layer 1 EVM compatible blockchain network catered to artificial intelligence: https://nexis.network/

Crossover Markets - Series A ($12.0M) | Digital assets trading firm and developers of CROSSx, an execution-only cryptocurrency electronic communication network (ECN) for institutional participants: https://crossovermarkets.com/

Covalent - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Modular data infrastructure and decentralized network: https://www.covalenthq.com/

Ora (fka. Hyper Oracle) - Series A ($20.0M) | Verifiable oracle protocol that enables AI and compute on any chain: https://www.ora.io/

TradeDog Market Manager (aka. TDMM) - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Market making platform helping to manage the entire lifecycle of crypto tokens: https://tdmm.io/

Argo Digital Gold - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Online gold dealer offering secure digital gold and precious metals trading and storage: https://www.argovault.com/

Redacted - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Web3 entertainment ecosystem and datasphere powered by blockchain and AI: https://www.multifarm.io/

Fenix Finance - Seed ($0.3M) | Unified trading and liquidity marketplace for Blast: https://www.fenixfinance.io/

U2U Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based Layer 1 network with EVM compatibility, designed for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) applications: https://u2u.xyz/

Rebar Labs - Seed ($2.9M) | Developer of maximum extractable value (MEV)-aware infrastructure, products, and research for Bitcoin: https://rebarlabs.io/

XProtocol - Seed ($4.4M) | Modular entertainment-focused platform leveraging Superchain technology, built on Base: https://xprotocol.org/

XProtocol - Strategic ($0.8M) | Modular entertainment-focused platform leveraging Superchain technology, built on Base: https://xprotocol.org/

Bluefin (fka. Firefly, dTrade) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized orderbook-based cryptocurrency and perpetual futures exchange built for both professional and first-time traders: https://bluefin.io/

XRADERS (aka. XR Labs) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | AI-powered curated expert insights platform for crypto investors: https://xraders.xyz/

MegaETH - Seed ($20.0M) | High-throughput and low-latency EVM-compatible Layer 2 network accelerating the scalability endgame of Ethereum: https://megaeth.systems/

Tomarket - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized marketplace for new digital assets, enabling transactions through a mutual mortgage method: https://tomarket.ai/

Futureverse - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Immersive and vertically-integrated metaverse platform and content company: https://www.futureverse.com/

Balance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 gaming platform and ecosystem, developed by E-PAL: https://balance.game/

Carv - Other ($35.0M) | Credential and self-sovereign identity (SSI) data infrastructure focused on gaming: https://carv.io/

Nubila - Seed ($2.5M) | Data oracle platform specializing in providing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data to the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) ecosystem: https://nubila.ai/

Kana Labs - Seed+ (Not Disclosed) | Web3 middleware solution that enables multi-chain DApps while gaining native liquidity aggregation and cross-chain capabilities: https://www.kanalabs.io/

MonkeyBit - Seed ($2.0M) | Web3 social amusement ecosystem built on Polygon: https://monkeybit.io/

Mamori - Seed ($5.0M) | Machine learning-enabled pathfinder addressing the challenges of blockchain value extraction: https://mamori.xyz/

Solayer - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Restaking network built natively on Solana: https://solayer.org/

Iris Energy - Private Placement ($413.4M) | Next-generation data centers powered by 100% renewable energy optimized for Bitcoin mining, AI cloud services, and other power-dense compute: https://iren.com/

Lombard - Seed ($16.0M) | Bitcoin restaking protocol enabling yield-bearing BTC to move cross-chain without fragmenting liqudity: https://www.lombard.finance/

Sentiment - Seed ($85.0M) | AI research organization fostering an open-source artificial intelligence development platform: https://sentient.foundation/

Prodia - Seed ($15.0M) | Distributed cloud computing platform and network of graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI inference: https://prodia.com/

OpenLedger - Seed ($8.0M) | Sovereign data blockchain infrastructure for artificial intelligence development: https://www.openledger.xyz/

RedStone - Series A ($15.0M) | Decentralized modular cross-chain data oracle: https://redstone.finance/

Avarik Saga - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Web3 anime gaming ecosystem leveraging AI: https://avariksaga.com/

Pi Squared - Seed ($12.5M) | Developer of Universal Settlement Layer (USL) a zero knowledge (ZK) circuit and universal proof system across all languages and virtual machines without requiring any translation to a common language: https://pi2.network/

Ethos (aka. Ethos Network) - Seed ($1.8M) | Web3 credibility scoring, reputation, and social profile platform: https://www.ethos.network/

Cambria - Seed ($2.5M) | Runescape-inspired risk-to-earn massive multiplayer online game (MMO) with onchain stakes: https://lobby.cambria.gg/

Sendblocks - Seed ($8.2M) | Blockchain data management and access platform: https://sendblocks.io/

Onaji - Seed ($2.5M) | Machine learning platform for smart contract blockchains: https://www.onaji.io/

Astria - Strategic ($12.5M) | Modular blockchain that allows rollups to share a decentralized sequencer network: https://www.astria.org/

Trever - Seed ($2.6M) | Unified system for financial institutions to integrate and manage digital assets: https://trever.io/

Pac Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Self-paying lending and margin trading protocol built on Blast L2: https://pac.finance/

Plaza Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cross-ecosystem hub for programmable derivatives: https://www.plaza.finance/

Nycrypto Labs (aka. Tidus) - Seed ($0.8M) | Developer of accessible decentralized products including Tidus, a user-centric decentralized wallet: https://tiduswallet.com/

QED Protocol - Seed ($6.0M) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) native protocol: https://qedprotocol.com/

Compute Labs - Seed ($3.0M) | Developer of Compute Tokenization Protocol (CTP) and GPU Restaking platform: https://www.computelabs.ai/

FreeBnk - Seed ($3.0M) | Crypto focused neobank offering a comprehensive blockchain-based financial ecosystem: https://www.freebnk.io/

Sun Protcol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 cross-chain aggregation protocol designed to aggregate liquidity: https://sunbsc.top/#/

Monad Pad - Seed ($0.9M) | Token and NFT launchpad built on Monad: https://www.monadpad.xyz/

UniSat - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Non-custodial wallet for Bitcoin, Ordinals, and other BRC-20 assets: https://unisat.io/

Swords & Dugeons - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Multiplayer idle roleplay game (RPG): https://swnd.io/

Hello.app - Seed ($0.5M) | Decentralized cloud stroage application: https://hello.app/

XOOB (fka. Launchjoy) - Seed ($1.6M) | Web3 gaming platform providing unquie quest experience combining points farming, mystery box sales and mini-games: https://www.xoob.gg/

Altcoinist - Seed ($1.5M) | Token gated private community and monetization platform for creators: https://www.altcoinist.com/

New Funds

UXLINK - UXLINK Ecosystem Fund (Not Disclosed)

Sollong - Sollong Foundation Fund ($30.0M)

Colosseum - Fund I ($60.0M)

Bitget - TON Ecosystem Fund ($20.0M)

Hash3 - Seed Stage Crypto Fund ($29.0M)

🙌 Cool Resources

StartupsCatalyst, by RootData, a comprehensive list of Web3 hackathons, accelerators, and grants

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: June 16-22, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$159M+ was raised across 31 funding rounds in Web3. Deal flow holds steady as the expected summer slowdown is upon us. Notwithstanding, the broader crypto market slump is causing widespread anxiety among investors, especially within altcoin markets. If the major cryptocurrency prices continue to remain suppressed, there is a good likelihood that projects aiming for token-based raises will hold off until the market improves, causing a natural slowdown in venture deal flow.

Outside of the broader markets, Web3 venture continue to fund new base protocols (both layer 1 and 2) purpose-built for applications, specifically for gaming and AI. This continues to remain the leading segment attracting investor capital. However, this will obviously hinge on where the market takes us if crypto markets witness a summer slump.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ PQshield announced $37M in Series B funding led by Addition, along with other strategic and financial backers, including Chevron Technology Ventures, Legal & General and Braavos Capital as well as existing investor Oxford Science Enterprises.

PQshield is a cybersecurity specializes in developing cryptographic solutions designed to protect against quantum computer-based attacks. Their products include quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms and secure hardware implementations. They offer software and firmware for secure communications and data protection, including cryptographic libraries that can be integrated into existing systems. Additionally, PQshield provides consulting services to help organizations transition to post-quantum security standards. The company was founded at Oxford University by Dr. Ali El Kaafarani. Some notable customers include AMD, Nivida, as well as also advises the White House, EU Parliament, U.K. National Cyber Security Council and World Economic Forum.

Why this matters?👉While not explicitly a Web3 company, PQshield’s cryptography plays an important role in future-proofing current encryption methods against the rise of quantum computing. Given the billions and trillions of dollars of assets represented on blockchains and smart contracts, post-quantum cryptography will be a critical component in the technology stacks for decentralized platforms in the years and decades ahead.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Renzo Protocol is a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) and Strategy Manager for EigenLayer. It serves as an interface to the EigenLayer ecosystem securing Actively Validated Services (AVSs) and abstracts complexity from the end-user to easily collaborate between them and EigenLayer node operators. $ezETH is the liquid restaking token representing a user’s restaked position at Renzo. Users can deposit native ETH or other LSTs and receive $ezETH. Since launching, Renzo has already seen over $3B in total value locked (TVL) within the protocol.

The project was founded by Lucas Kozinski, James Poole, and Kratik Lodha. Recently Renzo announced $17M in a funding round led by Brevan Howard (BH) Digital’s Nova Fund and Galaxy Digital. Other investors also included Maven11, Figment Capital, Protagonist, SevenX Ventures, Karatage, Bankless Ventures, 280 Capital, Antalpha Ventures, Hermeneutic, and L2 Iterative Ventures. The funding also follows the launch the Renzo’s native token (REZ) in April, which has already reached over $100M in market cap.

Why this matters?👉 Renzo’s growth has followed the path of EigenLayer and restaking overall, now claiming the position of the second largest Liquid Restaking platform based on TVL. By abstracting the complexities of restaking and providing enhanced passive yield, LRT platforms are becoming increasingly adopted among the largest ETH holders and investors. As platforms like Renzo introduce other eligible ERC-20 tokens for restaking, TVL and fees generated are expanding the addressable market.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Tabi (aka. Treasureland) - Public Sale ($16.1M) | Modular Cosmos based gaming Layer 1 blockchain offering compatibility with any VM: https://www.tabichain.com/

Goated - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 casino and gambling platform for Degens: https://www.goated.com/

Artfi - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Fine art investment platform and marketplace enabled by blockchain technology: https://artfi.world/

Wasabi - Seed ($3.0M) | Memecoin and NFT leverage trading protocol: https://www.wasabi.xyz/

Folks Finance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi protocol for lending, borrowing, and trading built on Algorand: https://folks.finance/

Second World Games - Seed ($3.0M) | Web3 mobile game studio building games including, Second World, Ball Guys, and Agar Balls: https://secondworld.io/

Router Protocol - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Modular cross-chain framework for building interoperable applications: https://www.routerprotocol.com/

Ramify - Series A ($11.8M) | Investment management and wealth management service offering diversified portfolios via multiple asset classes including digital assets: https://www.ramify.fr/

Renzo Protocol - Private Sale ($17.0M) | Developer of Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) ezETH and protocol automated restaking strategy management based on EigenLayer: https://www.renzoprotocol.com/

Sonic - Series A ($12.0M) | Gaming focused Layer 2 blockchain network built on Solana with customized VM agnostic game engines and HyperGrid interpreter: https://www.sonic.game/

AgentLayer - Seed ($1.5M) | Decentralized artificial intelligence Layer 2 blockchain network designed for the collaboration and coordination of autonomous AI Agents: https://agentlayer.xyz/

EventCHI - Seed ($1.7M) | Event experiences platform unify payments, ticketing, and intelligence enabled by blockchain technology: https://chi.app/

Bondex - Private Sale ($4.0M) | Web3 Professional network and talent marketplace: https://www.bondex.app/

Rango Exchange - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Cross-chain decentralized exchange and bridge aggregator: https://rango.exchange/

Zodia Custody - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Institutional grade crypto custody platform originally developed by Standard Chartered and in association with Northern Trust: https://www.zodia.io/index.html

PsuB (aka. Payment Swap Utility Board) - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Multi-blockchain payment platform: https://psub.io/

ZKX - Strategic ($3.1M) | Social trading and decentralized exchange for digital asset perpetual futures built on Starknet and Ethereum: https://zkx.fi/

Ordinox - Seed ($1.0M) | Native cross-chain swapping protocol between ERC-20 tokens, Bitcoin Inscriptions, and Runes based tokens: https://ordinox.xyz/

Zeek - Seed ($3.0M) | Decentralized collaboration network for on-chain social bounties and reputations: https://www.zeek.network/

Farworld Labs - Seed ($1.8M) | Farcaster-native gaming company also providing suite of tools for developers to build crypto-native games that integrate with onchain social: https://farcade.xyz/

Particle Network - Series A ($15.0M) | Modular Layer 1 blockchain powered by Cosmos SDK enabling Universal Accounts a single account, balance, and address across all chains: https://particle.network/

Bring - Seed ($1.1M) | White-label crypto cashback service: https://www.bringweb3.io/

Folks Finance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi protocol for lending, borrowing, and trading built on Algorand: https://folks.finance/

Elixir Games - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 and indie game launcher, distribution platform, and community: https://elixir.games/

Gudchain - Seed ($5.0M) | Application focused blockchain designed for gaming: https://gudchain.com/

Zeeper - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized perpetual protocol that supports the trading of mainstream financial assets with crypto collateral: https://www.zeepr.io/

Saltwater Games - Seed+ (Not Disclosed) | Web3 gaming studio including game developers Maze Theory, Nexus Labs and Quantum Interactive: https://saltwatergames.com/

PQShield - Series B ($37.0M) | Cybersecurity firm specializing in post-quantum cryptography for software and hardware: https://pqshield.com/

Verida - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Layer zero DePIN ecosystem enabled by a multi-chain protocol for interoperable database storage and messaging built on decentralized identity: https://www.verida.io/

Decent Land Labs (aka. WeaveVM) - Seed ($3.0M) | Developer of WeaveVM, a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain providing compatibility with EVM and Arweave storage: https://www.decent.land/

SoSoValue - Seed ($4.2M) | AI-driven investment research platform for cryptocurrency investors: https://sosovalue.xyz/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

SoSoValue

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: June 9-15, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$167M+ was raised across 48 funding rounds in Web3. Dealflow remains strong as the summer months approach. Despite seemingly good economic news from the US, with inflation showing signs of slowing and the Fed considering a rate cut later this year, broader crypto markets have taken a tumble. It's still too early to tell what impacts this may have on Web3 venture, but deal making is likely to slow until the fall.

Zooming in, infrastructure led the way, attracting the most capital, primarily through funding rounds for developer tooling platforms and data-oriented services (e.g., Nuffle Labs and Ava Protocol, both rounds led by Electric Capital). Additionally, this week saw the announcement and closing of several new funds, with Paradigm finally closing their $850M Fund III (covered in this edition).

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Nexus announced $25M in Series A financing co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital. The round included participation from Dragonfly Capital, Faction Ventures, and Blockchain Builders Fund. This follows a previously undisclosed initial $2.2M seed funding round led by Dragonfly in late 2022, which included Alliance, SV Angel, and Blockchain Builders Fund.

Nexus focuses on enabling large-scale verifiable computing using zero-knowledge proofs. Founded in 2022 at Stanford University, Nexus developed the Nexus zkVM, a modular, extensible, and open-source virtual machine optimized for provable computation. The zkVM supports high-level languages like Rust and offers tools for highly efficient, incrementally verifiable computation. Nexus is also developing the Nexus Network, a massively parallelized proof network for executing and proving the Nexus zkVM.

Why this matters?👉 Zero-knowledge proof technology remains at the forefront and will play a critical role in the continued development of decentralized networks. By further scaling zero-knowledge cryptography, proof generation, and verification, projects like Nexus make zero-knowledge proofs accessible to developers, while also driving down the cost of generating proofs and required computational resources.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Paradigm is a research-driven technology investment firm focusing on crypto and related technologies at the frontier. The firm was co-founded by Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase, and Matt Huang, formerly of Sequoia Capital, in 2018 and has since grown into one of the largest venture investors within the crypto industry.

Paradigm's investment strategy spans various stages and sectors within the blockchain ecosystem, including an EIR incubation program, early-stage startups, and established companies. Some of its most notable investments include Chainalysis, OpenSea, Fireblocks, and MoonPay. In addition to investing, Paradigm builds and contributes to projects that advance the frontier, including releasing over a dozen open-source projects such as Foundry, Flux, and Reth.

Recently, Paradigm announced the closing of their $850M Fund III. The fund has already been deploying capital throughout 2024, leading notable rounds for Monad, Farcaster, and Succinct Labs.

Why this matters?👉 The cat has been out of the bag for a while on Paradigm’s new fund, so it’s great to see it successfully closed. Despite being smaller than its $2.5B predecessor, which featured a highly publicized write-off on FTX, the fact that Paradigm could still muster over a half-billion in LP commitments is incredible, especially given the crypto winter of 2022-23. More importantly, this represents more capital to further support founders and projects building for the next wave of Web3, which Paradigm will likely be on the forefront.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Arthur Mining - Debt ($2.5M) | Developer and operator of high-performance data centers for bitcoin mining operating in the US and Brazil: https://arthurmining.com

Ink Finance - Seed ($5.0M) | Multichain financial governance protocol for DAOs, protocols, and asset managers: https://www.inkfinance.xyz/

Bitballl - Strategic ($2.0M) | Web3 sports metaverse platform: https://home.bitball.io/

Jellybean - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Transforms ordinary products into exclusive immersive digital experiences for collectors and fans: https://www.jellybean.xyz/

Nexus - Seed ($2.2M) | Massively-parallelized proof network and developer of Nexus Zero Knowledge Machine, an open source virtual machine system capable of generating proofs for any computation: https://nexus.xyz/

Nexus - Series A ($25.0M) | Massively-parallelized proof network and developer of Nexus Zero Knowledge Machine, an open source virtual machine system capable of generating proofs for any computation: https://nexus.xyz/

Zyfi - Private Sale ($2.0M) | Paymaster-as-a-Service protocol providing a gas abstraction layer on zkSync: https://www.zyfi.org/

Squads - Series A ($10.0M) | Multi-signature wallet protocol focused on the Solana ecosystem: https://www.sqds.io/

Honeypot Finance - Strategic ($1.3M) | Community-run DeFi hub built on Berachain: https://honeypotfinance.xyz/

UpBots - Private Sale ($4.0M) | All-in-one trading ecosystem for cryptocurrency including automated bots, social trading, and advanced analytics: https://upbots.com/

Zircuit - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup with AI-enabled sequencer-level security: https://www.zircuit.com/

Bullpen - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Telegram trading bot featuring a mobile first wallet, trading interface, and generative insights: https://www.bullpen.fi/

Qiro Finance - Seed ($1.2M) | Institutional on-chain private credit protocol: https://www.qiro.fi/

Orbital7 - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Modular developer-suite and tools for Runes, BRC20, and other Bitcoin native assets: https://orbital7.io/

CryptoDo - Seed (Not Disclosed) | No-code Web3 DApp builder: https://www.cryptodo.app/

Ava Protocol (fka. OAK Network) - Seed+ ($4.5M) | Intent-based Eigenlayer Actively Validated Services (AVS) that seamlessly enables private autonomous transactions: https://avaprotocol.org/

Symbiotic - Seed ($5.8M) | generalized shared security system (i.e., restaking) system enabling decentralized networks to bootstrap fully sovereign ecosystems: https://symbiotic.fi/

Unite (aka. Taki Games) - Seed+ ($3.0M) | Layer 3 blockchain solution for mass-market mobile games: https://www.unite.io/

Multi Universe Central (aka. MUC) - Private Sale ($4.0M) | Portfolio of decentralized IP assets built on Polygon: https://multiuniversecentral.io/

Cookie3 - Public Sale ($0.4M) | Web3 marketing protocol and AI data layer: https://www.cookie3.com/

BITAI - Seed ($20.0M) | AI powered cryptocurrency exchange and trading system: https://x.com/BITAIOFFICIAL

Codatta - Seed ($2.5M) | Human-centric decentralized data confidence protocol built for AI: https://codatta.io/

Skytopia - Seed ($2.4M) | Web3 entertainment brand that connects games and communities to create an immersive entertainment metaverse: https://skytopia.io/

Yuliverse - Seed+ ($4.0M) | Game-based social application offering an alternate reality meta-universe parallel to the real world: https://www.yuliverse.com/

Irys (fka. Bundlr) - Strategic ($3.7M) | Data provenance layer to scale permanent data and precisely attribute its origin: https://irys.xyz/

Holdstation - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Smart contract based digital assets wallets tailored to on-chain futures trading: https://holdstation.com/

GenomesDAO - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Biotech decentralized autonomous organization developing user-owned genomics database and DNA data vaults: https://genomes.io/

Kima - Seed ($5.0M) | Infrastructure-agnostic money transfer and settlement protocol: https://kima.finance/

Pixelverse - Private Sale ($5.5M) | Web3 gaming studio and platform set in a cyberpunk pixelated universe: https://pixelverse.xyz/

D-Drops - Seed ($0.5M) | Web3 location-based treasure hunting game: https://ddrops.world/

Layer 3 - Series A ($15.0M) | Omnichain identity and distribution protocol for incentivization and rewards: https://layer3.xyz/

Strands - Seed ($3.0M) | Decentralized finance platform offering automated investment strategies and liquidity provision: https://www.strands.finance/

Nexus Network - Seed ($1.0M) | Non-custodial staking platform for bridged assets: https://www.nexusnetwork.live/

Particle - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized leverage trading protocol for any types of digital assets: https://www.particle.trade/

Spiko - Seed ($4.3M) | Financial services firm offering tokenized fund products including US and EU money market funds: https://www.spiko.xyz/

StarNest - Seed ($6.0M) | Web3 music industry ecosystem: https://www.starnest.app/

REVOX (fka. ReadON) - Strategic ($3.5M) | Modular on-chain AI network connecting autonomous agents with smart contracts: https://www.revox.ai/

Carv - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Credential and self-sovereign identity (SSI) data infrastructure focused on gaming: https://carv.io/

Optopia - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Intent-centric Layer 2 blockchain designed for AI applications: https://www.optopia.ai/

Nuffle Labs - Private Sale ($13.0M) | Developer of NEAR Data Availability (DA) and the NEAR Fast Finality Layer (NFFL): https://nuff.tech/

Bondex - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 Professional network and talent marketplace: https://www.bondex.app/

RepoSwap - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized finance platform for token launches, liquidity provisions, and cross-chain trading: https://reposwap.io/

Folks Finance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi protocol for lending, borrowing, and trading built on Algorand: https://folks.finance/

Orbital7 - Private Sale ($0.2M) | Modular developer-suite and tools for Runes, BRC20, and other Bitcoin native assets: https://orbital7.io/

Mirada AI - Private Sale ($0.6M) | Decentralized generative AI platform and tools for audio, visual, animation creation, chatbot, and search engine: https://mirada.ai/

PrivateAI - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | AI protocol to store, process, validate, and sell data assets: https://www.privateai.com/

STAGE - Private Sale ($2.4M) | Web3 music and competition platform: https://www.stage.community/

Elys Network - Seed ($2.5M) | Cosmos SDK based Layer 1 blockchain offering a decentralized suite of financial applications in the Cosmos ecosystem: https://elys.network/

New Funds

Paradigm - Fund III ($850M)

Equilibrium Ventures - Fund I ($30M)

Moonbeam - Moonbeam Innovation Fund ($13M)

SevenX Ventures - AO Ecosystem Fund ($10M)

Manta Foundation - EcoFund ($50M)

🙌 Cool Resources

L2BEAT, an analytics and research website for Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: June 2-8, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$224M+ was raised across 31 funding rounds in Web3. Another solid week of funding as broader crypto markets remain (fairly) stable. We continue to see more seed-stage projects successfully close Series A rounds in under 12 months (e.g., Avail, M^0, Mountain Protocol, Blueberry Protocol). While investor speculation and prospects of future tokens certainly play a major factor, many projects are experiencing reasonable user growth and protocols advancing beyond testnets. Unsurprisingly, base protocols (i.e., Layer 1 and 2) continue to lead as the top category attracting funding this week and throughout 2024.

Outside of venture, M&A within Web3 is also picking up with about a dozen deals announced in the past month. Most notably, Robinhood announced the acquisition of Bitstamp for $200M. For a good analysis, check out Architect Partner’s M&A Alert on the deal. Moreover, an increase in M&A helps to realign multiples and valuations and increases the prospects for exits that don’t rely on launching a speculative token.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Avail announced $43M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Dragonfly, Founders Fund, and Cyber Fund. Other investors participating in the round included SevenX Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Chapter One, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, KR1, Alliance, and Hashkey Capital. The Series A follows just three months after Avail’s announced $27M Seed round in February. In total, Avail has raised over $75M.

Avail is a modular blockchain infrastructure focusing on the unification of Web3. Its architecture is centered around the Avail Trinity, which includes three core components: Avail DA, Avail Nexus, and Avail Fusion (Security).

Its first component, Avail DA, is a highly optimized base layer protocol, specifically constructed for data availability. Avail Nexus is a proof aggregation and sequencer for zero-knowledge rollups on top of Avail DA, allowing for cross-rollup and cross-ecosystem communication and settlement within the Avail ecosystem. Finally, Avail Fusion Security enables a basket of tokens (e.g., BTC, ETH, and others) to pool their crypto-economic security to contribute to the Avail consensus and secure the Avail network.

Why this matters?👉 As Layer 2 blockchains and rollups become prevalent, modular data availability solutions will play a key role in the future Web3 technical stack. Avail is building the infrastructure to support this rollup-centric future and position itself as the ideal base layer for rollups. Additionally, the project benefits from being founded by former founding team members of Polygon and backed by some of the top VCs in the industry.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Zizle - Seed ($3.0M) | Decentralized social network for communities built on Solana: https://www.zizle.com/

Milady - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Memecoin and community of the Milady NFT collection: https://milady.gg/

Hypersonic Laboratories - Series A ($7.0M) | Game studio and developer of HELIX, a metaverse and multiplayer role-playing sandbox platform for user-generated content (UGC): https://www.hypersoniclaboratories.com/

Everclear (fka. Connext) - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Cross-chain interoperability and communication protocol aiming to build the “HTTP of Web3”: https://www.connext.network/

Sidus Heroes - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 gaming metaverse multi-genre adventure game: https://sidusheroes.com/

Starpower - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Layer 2 network serving as a decentralized energy network of energy devices: https://www.starpower.world/

Avail - Series A ($43.0M) | Modular blockchain providing a base data availability layer, a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-based coordination rollup, unified economic security layer: https://www.availproject.org/

Composable Corp (aka. Blueberry Protocol) - Series A ($2.5M) | Developer of the Blueberry Protocol, a decentralized lending and borrowing platform: https://www.blueberry.garden/

Stashh Labs - Seed ($3.3M) | Omnichain, social-first hub, and marketplace for NFT creators and collectors: https://stashh.io/

Ark Labs - Grant (Not Disclosed) | Layer 2 network built on Bitcoin designed for payments: https://arklabs.to/

Fhenix - Series A ($15.0M) | Blockchain powered by fully homomorphic encryption to bring Computation Over Encrypted Data to EVM based smart contracts: https://www.fhenix.io/

Cookie3 - Private Sale ($5.5M) | Web3 marketing protocol and AI data layer: https://www.cookie3.com/

XREX - Strategic ($18.8M) | Blockchain-enabled financial institution offering cryptocurrency exchange, payments, and asset management: https://xrex.io/

Mezzofy - Seed+ ($2.0M) | Global digital coupon platform for merchants: https://www.mezzofy.com/

GoPlus Security - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Decentralized user security network providing developer security API's, token risk classification, personal security products, and smart contract analysis tools: https://gopluslabs.io/

Mythical Games - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Next-generation game technology studio at the intersection of blockchain and games: https://mythicalgames.com/

M^0 (aka. M^Zero) - Series A ($35.0M) | Decentralized network enabling institutional participants to reliably link assets to a decentralized infrastructure layer: https://m0.xyz/

Nubit (aka. Riema Labs) - Seed ($8.0M) | Bitcoin-native data availability layer: https://nubit.org/

Halo Social (fka. KuCoin Wallet) - Seed ($3.0M) | Web3 social app that enables users to monetize their social data through AI, decentralized identity, and a wallet aggregator: https://halo.social/

Almanax - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Developer of AI-powered security tools for Web3: https://www.almanax.ai/

The Sandbox (aka. Bacasable Global) - Convertible Note ($20.0M) | Decentralized, community-driven metaverse and gaming ecosystem: https://www.sandbox.game

Xociety - Seed+ ($7.5M) | Gaming metaverse featuring a third-person shooter and MMORPG hybrid gameplay developed by NDUS: https://xociety.io/

K3 Labs - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 development platform combining kubernetes and template-driven web-services for business workflows and applications that utilize the power of decentralized compute, storage, and execution: https://www.k3-labs.com/

Mountain Protocol - Series A ($8.0M) | Developer of USDM, a permissionless yield-bearing stablecoin: https://mountainprotocol.com/

Glacier Network - Seed ($8.0M) | Programmable, modular and scalable blockchain infrastructure for storing, indexing and querying data tailored for AI and DePIN: https://www.glacier.io/

Ouinex - Public Sale ($1.0M) | Digital assets exchange and trading platform: https://ouinex.com/

COREx Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized exchange built for the Core DAO ecosystem: https://corex.network/

Subsquid - Grant (Not Disclosed) | Peer-to-peer network and indexing toolkit to batch query and aggregate terabytes of on-chain and off-chain data: https://subsquid.io/

Crypto Blockchain Industries - Strategic ($13.5M) | Blockchain-based investment firm and operator of AlphaVerse, a digital metaverse hub, gaming, and interactive entertainment platform: https://www.cbicorp.io/

Datalayer - Seed ($0.5M) | Layer 1 blockchain enabled by localchains, lightweight user-owned chains running in parallel on users' desktops, wallets, browser extensions, or mobile devices: https://datalayer.co/

Folks Finance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi protocol for lending, borrowing, and trading built on Algorand: https://folks.finance/

New Funds

Bain Capital Crypto - Fund II (Not Disclosed)

🙌 Cool Resources

LiquiFi, How to Launch a Token: Post-Launch resource guide

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: May 26 - June 1, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$330M+ was raised across 46 funding rounds in Web3. This week marked a notable uptick in deal flow in over two months. This could be potentially driven by the encouraging shifts being made within the U.S. regulatory landscape covered in last week’s Funding Roundup. At the same time, many of the deals are likely being announced ahead of the summer season when deal making tends to slowdown.

Nevertheless, Series A and beyond rounds are continuing to see funding week-over-week, showing promising signals for later stage Web3 projects. This week also witnessed a handful of new stablecoin and payment projects attracting funding in showing investors are still interested in the potential crypto brings to remittances and cross-border payments.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Bitdeer announced $100M in gross proceeds in a private placement made with the creator of the USDT stablecoin, Tether International Limited (i.e., Tether). The transaction consisted of Tether purchasing 18M in Class A shares of Bitdeer along with $50M worth of warrants that could be exercised in the future. Cantor Fitzgerald served as the acting placement agent for the transaction.

Bitdeer is a high-performance computing and cloud solutions provider. Their solutions are primarily catered to digital asset mining and other compute-intensive workloads, including AI. The company handles complex processes involved in computing, such as equipment procurement, transport logistics, datacenter design, construction, equipment management, and daily operations. Bitdeer has deployed datacenters spanning the U.S., Norway, and Bhutan.

Why this matters?👉 Bitdeer intends to use the new funding for data center expansion and ASIC-based mining rig and chip development with the intentions of expanding its exa hash (i.e., Hash Rate) capabilities. Miners are requiring more efficient equipment post-Bitcoin’s halving, which Bitdeer seeks to ultimately supply. Furthermore, this deal underscores Tether’s expansion into new business lines going beyond its core-USDT stablecoin offering.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Babylon is a protocol designed to enhance the security and decentralization of Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains by leveraging the Bitcoin network. It achieves this by using the Bitcoin network as a timestamping server and integrating Bitcoin as a native staking asset in other blockchains. This approach allows emerging PoS blockchains to secure their networks without relying solely on their native tokens and associated token raises to distribute those tokens to a diversified holder base. Furthermore, Babylon introduces a new method for Bitcoin holders to stake their coins on PoS blockchains, enabling them to earn passive yields.

The project was founded by David Tse and Mingchao Yu. Recently Babylon announced $70M in funding led by Paradigm alongside Polychain, Bullish, Hashkey Capital, HackVC, Galaxy Digital and other prominent venture firms. The round also featured participation from prominent validators including P2P, Everstake Capital, and nine other firms. The latest round follows a strategic round led by Binance earlier this year as well as $18M Series A in December of 2023.

Why this matters?👉 Covered in Funding Round Up #49, Babylon seeks to introduce a new standard for network security centered around Bitcoin. The platform could have profound benefits for new Layer 1 and 2 protocols by essentially renting the security of Bitcoin’s network through a novel staking mechanism. It will also provide BTC holders with a new mechanism to put their BTC to work while passively earning yield. As witnessed with EigenLayer and the adoption of its restaking protocol for ETH, Babylon could see billions in capital locked up in its protocol (e.g., TVL) while also fostering the next wave of billions in TVL-associated restaking derivative types of products.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Song of Rising - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Pixel-style metaverse project: https://www.songofrising.com/

Chainge Finance - Private Sale ($13.0M) | Cross-chain decentralized exchange and liquidity aggregator: https://chainge.finance/

NodeOps - Seed ($5.0M) | Node deployment, operations, and development platform: https://www.nodeops.xyz/

El Dorado - Seed ($3.0M) | Peer-to-peer payments and digital asset wallet focused on Latin America: https://eldorado.io/en/

HMX - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized digital asset perpetual and spot exchange: https://hmx.org/arbitrum

Switchboard - Series A ($7.5M) | Multi-chain oracle protocol for general-purpose data feeds and verifiable randomness: https://switchboard.xyz/

Anzen - Seed ($4.0M) | Developer of USDz, a stablecoin backed by a diversified portfolio of private credit assets: https://anzen.finance/

OpenSocial - Seed ($5.0M) | Open-source social infrastructure layer to power native web3 social experiences: https://www.opensocial.co/

Parasail (fka. Repl) - Seed ($4.0M) | Repledging protocol for pledged decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) assets: https://www.parasail.network/

GaiaNet - Seed ($10.0M) | Decentralized computing infrastructure and network for generative AI agents: https://www.gaianet.ai/

Coinflow - Seed ($2.3M) | Web3 payment infrastructure solutions provider: https://coinflow.cash/

Félix - Series A ($15.5M) | Chat-base payments platform enabled by AI and blockchain technology: https://felixpago.com/

ZTLment - Seed ($2.6M) | Payment and wallet infrastructure to faciliate programmable and peer-to-peer payments: https://ztlment.com/

Zap Africa - Seed ($0.3M) | Digital asset trading platform and cross-border remittance service across Africa: https://zap.africa/

defi.money - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Developer of $MONEY, a USD-based collateralized debt position (CDP) stablecoin protocol and liquidity layer: https://defi.money/

Supervillian Labs - Seed ($4.5M) | Web3 game studio developing socially interactive games: https://supervlabs.io/

Cookie3 - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Web3 marketing protocol and AI data layer: https://www.cookie3.com/

Aperture Finance - Series A ($6.7M) | DeFi automation platform enabled by AI-powered intent based infrastructure: https://www.aperture.finance/

MetaToken - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Immersive casino harnessing Web3 technology: https://www.metatoken.gg/

Lumoz (fka. Opside) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Zero knowledge (ZK) as a service platform that offers 3-layer blockchain architecture: https://opside.network/

API3 - Private Sale ($4.0M) | Oracle solution that bridges the gap between off-chain data and on-chain applications: https://api3.org/

Play AI - Seed ($4.3M) | Modular blockchain infrastructure designed deploy AI agents and models for gaming: https://playai.network/

SCRYPT - Strategic ($5.0M) | Swiss financial service provider specializing in crypto assets for Web3 companies and institutions: https://www.scrypt.swiss/

Fortunafi - Seed ($9.5M) | Developer of Tokenized Asset Protocol (TAP), a cross-chain tokenization platform and investment fund protocol: https://www.fortunafi.com/

XMAQUINA - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) of tokenized autonomous robots: https://www.xmaquina.io/

Smart Transactions - Seed ($5.5M) | Transaction creation and execution framework, run by decentralized solvers: https://www.stxn.io/

Beoble - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Communication infrastructure and ecosystem that allows users to chat between wallets: https://www.beoble.io/

Pakt - Seed ($0.8M) | Developer toolkit and templates for on-chain websites and social networks: https://pakt.world/

Marketnode - Series A (Not Disclosed) | Distributed ledger technology (DLT) digital market infrastructure spanning credit, funds and structured products founded by SGX Group and Temasek: https://www.marketnode.com/

Kuroro Beasts - Private Sale ($2.5M) | Multidimensional Web3 gaming ecosystem centered around animated beast characters: https://www.kuroro.com/

Babylon - Series B ($70.0M) | Protocol that enables time stamping and staking to be shared Bitcoin and other PoS blockchains: https://babylonchain.io/

NexGami (fka. Light eSports) - Seed ($2.5M) | Web3 eSports platform: https://www.nexgami.com/

ARPA - Private Sale ($6.0M) | Secure computation network for blockchain-adapted cryptography using a threshold BLS signature network to provides a reliable infrastructure for verifiable Random Number Generators (RNG): https://www.arpanetwork.io/en-US

UpRock - Seed ($4.0M) | People-powered AI data and decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) built on Solana: https://uprock.com/

Zentry (fka. GuildFi) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Metagame layer for Web3 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG): https://zentry.com/

Neynar - Series A ($11.0M) | Developer platform for building decentralized social networks on the Farcaster protocol: https://neynar.com/

Plural Energy - Seed ($2.3M) | Investment platform for renewable energy projects enabled by blockchain technology: https://www.plural.xyz/

Stable Jack - Seed ($1.0M) | Stablecoin hub built on Avalanche offering a yield-bearing stablecoin, a leverage AVAX token, and stableswap protocol: https://www.stablejack.xyz/

TRALA - Strategic ($5.0M) | Subsidiary of Joycity focused on offering an all-in-one blockchain gaming platform: https://trala.me/

Mint Blockchain - Seed ($5.0M) | Layer 2 network built on OP Stack focusing on the NFT ecosystem: https://www.mintchain.io/

zCloak Network - Grant ($0.1M) | Privacy-first decentralized identity (DID) and verifiable computation infrastructure: https://zcloak.network/

Breezepay - Grant ($0.1M) | Stablecoin payment platform for online purchases: https://www.breezepay.com.au/

Carv - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Credential and self-sovereign identity (SSI) data infrastructure focused on gaming: https://carv.io/

Bitdeer - Private Placement ($100.0M) | High-performance computing provider and data center operator for digital asset mining and AI: https://www.bitdeer.com/

NexGami (fka. Light eSports) - Public Sale ($0.3M) | Web3 eSports platform: https://www.nexgami.com/

E Money Network - Private Sale ($3.3M) | Modular Layer 1 blockchain designed for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs): https://emoney.io/

New Funds

Figment Capital - Fund I (Not Disclosed)

CertiK - CertiK Ventures (Not Disclosed)

🙌 Cool Resources

LiquiFi, How to Launch a Token: Preparing for Launch resource guide

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: May 19-25, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$295M+ was raised across 34 funding rounds in Web3. Deal flow continues to remain stable. This week saw one of the largest deals of 2024, with Farcaster raising $150M.

However, the biggest highlight of the week comes from encouraging signals that the political and regulatory climate towards crypto might be changing in the U.S. This included the House's passage of the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), a bill that would establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the U.S., as well as the approval for ETH ETFs to be listed on major exchanges (although issuers have not been approved yet). While neither is a 'smoking gun' and require multiple other layers of approvals, both demonstrate a changing tone among U.S. lawmakers towards the industry, potentially fostering a more pragmatic approach to naturing crypto development within the U.S.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Farcaster raised $150M in Series A funding led by Paradigm. a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, Haun Ventures, Variant Fund, Standard Crypto, and others also participated. The round valued the project at $1B.

Farcaster is developed by Merkle Manufactory, a software company founded by Coinbase alumni Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan. Farcaster is a blockchain-based public social network similar to Twitter and Reddit, where users can create profiles, post "casts," and follow others. Users own their accounts and relationships with other users (i.e., the social graph) and are free to move between different apps or clients. Warpcast serves as a client for Farcaster, allowing users to create profiles and post public messages.

Why this matters?👉 Covered in Funding Round Up #66, this deal has been known for a while and is also one of the largest rounds of 2024. With over 500K users signed up, Farcaster has positioned itself as the leading Web3 social platform. However, with only 60K monthly active users and over 45K daily active users, it does raise the question of whether Farcaster’s valuation might be too ‘rich.’

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Blockless is an infrastructure platform designed to launch, integrate, and secure Network Neutral Applications (nnApps), a new type of decentralized application compatible with all blockchain networks, but free from their limitations. The platform and underlying network enable users to contribute computational power to applications simply by using them. This approach shifts reliance from institutional operators to a community-driven model, leveraging a framework with nestled node infrastructure for resource sharing.

Blockless allows applications to utilize their users’ devices for computational tasks, rewarding them in the process. This setup supports intensive computations for machine learning, AI, and gaming in a decentralized, efficient off-chain environment, while maintaining governance and data availability on blockchains such as Ethereum and Celestia. By dynamically matching tasks to the most suitable nodes, Blockless ensures optimal performance and security, reducing barriers for both users and developers to engage in decentralized edge computing.

Blockless was co-founded in 2022 by Butian Li, Derek Anderson (formerly of Akash Network), Michael Chen (formerly of Binance), and Liam Zhang. The company recently raised $8M in combined pre-seed and seed funding led by NGC Ventures, M31 Capital, and Frachtis.

Why this matters?👉 The project underscores another decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN), shifting computation off-chain and connecting applications with users to fulfill their computational power needs via its network. DePIN, specifically for computational resources, has been growing as one of the more promising areas of Web3 uses-case and providing sustainable tokenomics.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Sobert - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Global payments platform and tools for creative freelancers: https://mysorbet.xyz/

ElFi Protocol - Strategic ($5.0M) | Decentralized derivatives trading platform offering various portfolio margin solutions: https://www.elfi.xyz/

Blockless - Seed ($8.0M) | Standardized network and framework to build Network Neutral Applications (nnApps), fully integrated with any layer 1 blockchain network: https://blockless.network/

RunesTerminal - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Infrastructure provider for Runes Protocol including runes explorer, launchpad, wiki, and marketplace: https://runesterminal.io/

Nexis Network - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Layer 1 EVM compatible blockchain network catered to artificial intelligence: https://nexis.network/

Aevo - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized derivatives exchange for options and perpetual futures built on the Aevo Layer 2 network: https://www.aevo.xyz/

Farcaster (aka. Merkle Manufactory) - Series A ($150.0M) | Blockchain-based public social network protocol supporting multiple clients: https://www.farcaster.xyz/

Monad Labs - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Proof-of-stake (PoS) Layer 1 blockchain and decentralized computation platform that combines the best of performance and portability: https://www.monad.xyz/

Kelp DAO - Private Sale ($9.0M) | Multichain liquid staking platform and developer of Liquid Restaked Token (LRT), rsETH, designed to offer liquidity to illiquid assets deposited into restaking platforms: https://kelpdao.xyz/

Weather XM - Series A ($7.7M) | Community powered weather network, that rewards weather station owners and provides accurate weather services: https://weatherxm.com/

Dope DAO - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), community driven, gaming metaverse project inspired by hip-hop culture: https://dopewars.xyz/

StripChain - Private Sale ($10.1M) | Intent based interoperability protocol enabling chain abstraction: https://www.stripchain.xyz/

Zaros - Private Sale ($1.8M) | Decentralized exchange that connects Liquid ReStaking (LRTs) and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) with perpetual futures: https://www.zaros.fi/

Aria - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 RPG game where players can freely roam in an open world environment: https://sit.playariagame.com/

UniTap - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi hub and swap protocol for Runes and BRC-20 tokens: https://unitap.io/

MUA DAO - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and developer of AI + Humanity Modular Universal Asset Protocol: https://muadao.build/

Pencils Protocol (aka. PenPad) - Seed ($2.1M) | Launch platform for fair-launch projects built on Scroll: https://penpad.io/

IVX - Seed ($1.2M) | On-chain automated market maker (AMM) for crypto asset options built on Berachain: https://artio.ivx.fi/

Omakase - Private Placement (Not Disclosed) | Web3 infrastructure provider specializing in validator operation, development, maintenance, and technical consulting services: https://0xmakase.co.jp/

Dora Factory - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Developer of protocols, toolings, and public good infrastructures that help open source communities thrive: https://dorafactory.org/

Plume Network - Seed ($10.0M) | Modular Layer 2 blockchain dedicated for development and issuance of real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain: https://www.plumenetwork.xyz/

Fantom Foundation - Private Sale ($10.0M) | High-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain and and secure smart-contract platform: https://fantom.foundation/

Cysic - Seed+ ($12.0M) | Developer of hardware to increase the efficiency of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proof generation including the development of a Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) semiconductor for multi-scalar multiplication (MSM): https://cysic.xyz/

Mantra - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Layer 1 blockchain catered to tokenized real world assets (RWAs): https://www.mantrachain.io/

Unlockit - Seed ($1.5M) | Real estate digitalization and property management platform built using blockchain technology: https://unlockit.io/

Alphaledger - Series A ($9.5M) | Fixed income issuance, management, and trading platform built using blockchain technology: https://www.alphaledger.com/

Master Protocol - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Modularized restaking protocol for multi-chain liquidity staking tokens: https://www.masterprotocol.xyz/

Jambo - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 mobile infrastructure network and developer of the JamboPhone: https://www.jambo.technology/

MetaLex - Seed ($2.8M) | Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) management platform combining onchain protocols and offchain legal arrangements: https://www.metalex.tech/

RunesFi - Private Sale ($0.4M) | DeFI hub and platform for Runes Protocol based assets: https://runesfi.io/

LayerEdge - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Bitcoin layer 2 solution that leverages Optimistic Rollups and a Hybrid Modular Data Availability (DA) layer: https://www.layeredge.io/en

DeepLink - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 cloud gaming platform and decentralized AI cloud gaming platform: https://www.deeplink.cloud/

Applied Digital - Convertible Debt ($42.1M) | Developer and operator of datacenters across North America to provide digital infrastructure solutions to the high-performance computing (HPC) industry: https://applieddigital.com/

IntentX - Public Sale ($2.8M) | OTC derivatives exchange offering perpetual futures trading: https://intentx.io/

New Funds

TrueBridge Capital Partners - TrueBridge Blockchain I ($62M)

🙌 Cool Resources

LiquiFi, How to Launch a Token: Pre-Launch, resource guide

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: May 12-18, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$186M+ was raised across 27 funding rounds in Web3. Crypto markets experienced a slight uptick following positive inflation news in the US and hopes of an eventual rate cut later in 2024. The Web3 venture ecosystem appears unchanged, with the amount of deal flow remaining close to the three-month average. In terms of segments, DeFi saw a slight uptick this week, reaching its highest level in over a month. This increase was largely led by major funding rounds from Polymarket and Re, which are covered in this edition.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Polymarket announced $45M in a Series B funding led by Founders Fund. Other investors in the round included 1confirmation, ParaFi, Dragonfly Capital, and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin. The round also follows a previously undisclosed $25 million Series A round in 2022 led by General Catalyst alongside Polychain and other angel investors.

Polymarket is a decentralized predictions market built on Polygon. The marketplace allows users to speculate on a wide range of real-world events, from political outcomes, cultural phenomena, and events impacting crypto markets. Users interact with the platform by depositing USDC, into their Polymarket wallets, then buying and selling Outcome Tokens for specific predictions markets. Each token’s price represents the probability of that outcome occurring, with successful predictions being cashed out at $1 per token.

Why this matters?👉 Prediction markets have long been an economist’s Shangri-La. Polymarket represents one of the most successful attempts at scaling a prediction market, partially enabled by blockchain technology. In recent years, the marketplace has gained a foothold in forecasting the outcomes of political elections, especially within the US. This has contributed to the platform's rapid growth and adoption, which has already seen over $100M in bets placed so far on the 2024 US presidential election. Given the sometimes speculative nature of these markets, combining prediction markets with crypto seems like a match made in heaven.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Re is a decentralized reinsurance marketplace. This platform is enabled by an underlying smart contract protocol built on the Avalanche blockchain, which acts as a global transaction layer for various insurable risks. Re accommodates a wide range of real-world insurance needs including general liability, commercial, workers' compensation, homeowners, and aviation, among others. By allowing participants to back insurance programs with capital and earn yields, Re aims to increase transparency and efficiency in the insurance sector.

The company was founded by Karn Saroya and Ben Aneesh in 2022. It recently announced a $7M funding round led by Electric Capital. Alongside the funding, Re has also launched a tokenized reinsurance fund on the Avalanche blockchain with a $15 million commitment from Nexus Mutual and the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) focused Vista fund of Ava Labs, an ecosystem developer organization for the Avalanche network.

Why this matters?👉 The global reinsurance market is valued at close to half a trillion dollars, with nearly trillions in premiums annually. While decentralized reinsurance marketplaces still have a long way to go in terms of user adoption, premiums from reinsurance contracts can offer DeFi investors stable and predictable yields, which Re aims to cater to and develop further. By initially offering a baseline for decentralized reinsurance marketplaces, Re could also pave the way for further innovation within insurance contracts built on-chain.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Note: Polymarket’s Series A was closed in 2022. However, it was reported alongside its Series B announcement and thus included in this week’s data.

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

UXLINK - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Web3 social infrastructure featuring social protocols and series of social networking DApps: https://www.uxlink.io/

Zest Protocol - Seed ($3.5M) | On-chain lending protocol, built for Bitcoin: https://www.zestprotocol.com/

ChainML (aka. Theoriq) - Seed+ ($6.2M) | Web3 enabled AI firm and developer of Theoriq a modular and composable AI Agent base layer: https://www.chainml.net/

Baby Shark Universe - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Gaming platform and metaverse centered around the Baby Shark official IP: https://babysharkuniverse.io/

Sekuya - Seed ($1.6M) | Anime game metaverse that incubated by SingularityDAO, Powered by Immutable: https://sekuya.io/

Zeta Markets - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Decentralized exchange for trading crypto perpetuals built on Solana: https://www.zeta.markets/

Polymarket (aka. Adventure One QSS) - Series A ($25.0M) | Real-time predictions market built using blockchain technology: https://polymarket.com/

Polymarket (aka. Adventure One QSS) - Series B ($45.0M) | Real-time predictions market built using blockchain technology: https://polymarket.com/

Re - Seed+ ($7.0M) | Protocol and platform providing a global transaction layer for insurable risks and enabling a decentralized reinsurance marketplace: https://re.xyz/

Anomaly - Seed ($1.5M) | AI-Powered Layer 3 for Gaming powered by Arbitrum Orbit, built using Gelato’s Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS): https://www.theanomaly.xyz/

Hylé - Seed ($2.6M) | Minimal Layer 1 network focussed only on verifying zero knowledge proofs: https://www.hyle.eu/

Gamic - Seed ($1.8M) | Decentralized messaging platform and social platform for communities engaging with Web3 products and services: https://gamic.app/

SPARK - Seed ($1.5M) | DeFi platform built on the Fuel network offering high performance order book, perpetual contracts, lending, and borrowing: https://sprk.fi/

Chainalysis - Secondary (Not Disclosed) | Blockchain data and analytics platform used for investigations and intelligence: https://www.chainalysis.com/

FIreblocks - Secondary (Not Disclosed) | Enterprise-grade platform for storing, transferring, and issuing digital assets enabled by MPC-based wallet infrastructure: https://www.fireblocks.com/

Cross The Ages - Strategic ($3.5M) | Mobile-first Web3 card game set in a dystopian clash of worlds: https://www.crosstheages.com/

Raven - Seed ($2.7M) | Proprietary high-frequency algorithmic trading firm and market maker specializing in CeFi market making and DeFi liquidity: https://www.ravendao.net/

Humanity Protocol - Private Sale ($30.0M) | Sybil-resistance network of blockchains providing developers with unique-human authentication mechanisms, and users complete ownership over data and identity: https://cfh.xyz/

Pencils Protocol (aka. PenPad) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Launch platform for fair-launch projects built on Scroll: https://penpad.io/

STON.fi - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized exchange and automated market maker (AMM) built on the TON blockchain: https://ston.fi/

Intensity Labs (aka. Shogun) - Seed ($6.9M) | Developer of Shogun, a liquidity routing protocol that combines intent-centric fulfillment with on-chain routing: https://twitter.com/shogunfi

Chainstack - Seed ($6.0M) | Web3 infrastructure-as-a-service provider offering managed node support and blockchain data API's: https://chainstack.com/

Param Labs - Seed ($7.0M) | Game developer specializing in multiplayer blockchain games including Kiraverse and Pixel to Poly: https://paramlabs.io/

Marginal - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Permissionless spot and perpetual exchange that enables leverage on any asset with an Uniswap V3 Oracle: https://marginal.network/

peaq - Public Sale ($20.0M) | Multi-chain layer one blockchain purposely built and optimized for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN): https://www.peaq.network/

FantaGoal - Seed ($3.0M) | Web3 fantasy football ecosystem and community: https://fantagoal.io/

Focus Tree - Seed ($2.0M) | Web3 productivity app that rewards users for putting down their phones: https://www.focustree.app/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: May 5-11, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$222M+ was raised across 40 funding rounds in Web3. The broader crypto markets remain resilient despite the pullback earlier this month, which appears to have had minimal immediate effect on Web3 ventures, as deal flow continues to maintain a rate of 30+ deals per week. However, with the crypto markets expected to experience a “crab walk” this summer, it's inevitable that the pace of deals will begin to slow as we head into June.

This week was notable for a series of new interoperability and cross-chain data protocols announcing funding. Additionally, tokenization projects show no signs of slowing down, with more new entrants in the space and seed rounds being announced, following major rounds from Centrifuge and Securitize.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Sophon raised $60M through a public node sale. Investors in the round included Maven 11, Paper Ventures, Spartan Group, and SevenX Ventures, along with other individual participants. The sale initially offered 200,000 nodes with a tiered pricing model, ranging from 0.0813 ETH to 2.0556 ETH per node. Investors purchased 121,000 nodes, with the remainder being bought by retail participants.

Sophon is a Layer 2 network constructed as a modular rollup leveraging zkSync's Hyperchain technology. The network is powered by a centralized sequencer, and node license holders can delegate their licenses to Sophon to earn a share of the network fees. Although the network has not yet been launched, it aims to provide an entertainment-focused ecosystem.

Why this matters?👉 Node sales are becoming a noteworthy trend for raising capital, with Sophon representing the largest raise so far. These rounds offer a unique alternative to traditional token launches, which are currently facing increasing headwinds under global securities laws. At the same time, selling nodes enables communities to have a direct, early stake in the operations and maintenance of the network, which may offer better incentive alignment than simply launching a token.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Arbelos Markets is a principal trading firm specializing in crypto derivatives. The firm provides liquidity to centralized and decentralized exchanges across spot, options, and futures markets. It also offers OTC derivatives transactions and bespoke hedging and yield solutions for leading crypto foundations, projects, and companies. The company leverages its proprietary Transparency Engine to offer real-time visibility and verifiability across its derivative operations and positions. In just six months following its launch, the company facilitated over $25 billion in derivatives trading volume across various trading channels.

Arbelos was founded by Joshua Lim and Shiliang Tang, the former head of derivatives at Genesis Trading and CIO of LedgerPrime, respectively. The company recently raised $28M in seed equity and debt financing led by Dragonfly Capital, alongside other investors such as Room40 Ventures, Selini Capital, and Breed VC, as well as FalconX, Circle Ventures, Paxos, P2 Ventures (formerly known as Polygon Ventures), Deribit, Chorus One, StarkWare, Immutable, and many angel investors

Why this matters?👉 Within a short period of time, Arbelos has become one of the largest options block liquidity providers. It aims to serve the liquidity and hedging needs of institutional investors, addressing the gap left by credible service providers following the crypto credit crisis in 2022. By offering enhanced transparency and reporting to creditors, the firm also seeks to mitigate counterparty risk across the broader markets, which was a major risk factor during the last cycle.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Bondex - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 Professional network and talent marketplace: https://www.bondex.app/

MetaPhone - Strategic ($1.0M) | Web3-native mobile network and smartphone built on the TON blockchain: https://metaphone.io/

BitTap - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized non-custodial wallet for Taproot-based assets: https://www.bittap.org/

DwellFi - Seed ($3.0M) | Private fund administration and tokenization platform: https://dwell.fi/

XSwap - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Cross-chain swap protocol powered by Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP): https://xswap.link/

DeepLink - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 cloud gaming platform and decentralized AI cloud gaming platform: https://www.deeplink.cloud/

Liquidium - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Ordinal lending platform on Bitcoin: https://www.liquidium.fi/

Anapaya Systems - Strategic ($11.0M) | Developer of SCION-based networking software and solutions intended to provide secure inter-domain routing: https://www.anapaya.net/

Galaxis - Private Sale ($10.0M) | No-code Web3 and NFT toolkit for creating decentralized communities and memberships: https://galaxis.xyz/

Blade of God X - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Dark-themed, cross-platform action RPG game developed by Void Labs: https://bladeofgod.net/

Botanix - Seed ($8.5M) | Developer of Spiderchain, a decentralized Layer 2 EVM on Bitcoin: https://www.botanixlabs.xyz/

Lava - Private Sale ($11.0M) x| Modular data network of node providers focused on providing data access on any blockchain through remote procedure calls (RPCs), API's, and indexing: https://www.lavanet.xyz/

ZKM - Seed ($5.0M) | General purpose zero-knowledge Virtual Machine (zkVM) providing a unified settlement layer across blockchains: https://www.zkm.io/

Ambient Network - Seed ($2.0M) | Decentralized physical infrastructure network of environmental sensors and ambient dat: https://ambient.network/

Hemera (fka. W3W) - Seed ($2.6M) | Decentralized programmable indexing network and analytic tools for account-centric blockchain ecosystems: https://thehemera.com/

Electron - Seed ($1.0M) | Zero knowledge based universal proof aggregator (UPA) for proof-of-stake blockchains: https://www.electronlabs.org/

NuLink - Private Sale ($6.9M) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) provable data privacy platform and data availability layer for DApps: https://www.nulink.org/

Owlto Finance - Private Sale ($8.0M) | Intent-centric interoperability protocol providing seamless cross-chain bridging services: https://owlto.finance/

BlockBooster - Seed ($1.5M) | Venture studio centered in Asia, facilitating the development of next-generation protocols and software infrastructure in Web3: https://www.blockbooster.io/

Laagrange Labs - Seed ($13.2M) | Cross-chain infrastructure that enables the creation of generalized state proofs across all major blockchains using zero knowledge (ZK) proof technology: https://www.lagrange.dev/

CityPay - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Platform for business to accept cryptocurrency payments across web-payments, email payment orders, point of sale (POS) terminals, and initial deposit channels: https://www.citypay.io/

Slingshot - Private Sale ($3.0M) | Community organized and run centered around games and experiences: https://slingshotdao.com/

Arbelos Markets - Seed ($28.0M) | Digital assets trading firm providing principal liquidity across crypto derivatives markets: https://arbelos.xyz/

Sophon - Other ($60.0M) | Entertainment-focused ecosystem built as a modular rollup leveraging zkSync's Hyperchain technology: https://sophon.xyz/

GoMining - Strategic ($3.0M) | Global digital asset mining company and developer of liquid Bitcoin hashrate protocol: https://gmt.io/

Telos - Private Sale ($1.0M) | Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) Layer-1 blockchain network enabling zero knowledge technology: https://www.telos.net/

DEGEN WAR$ - Seed (Not Disclosed) | On-chain player-versus-player NFT card game built on Blast: https://degenwars.gg/

Seeds Labs - Seed ($12.0M) | Game studio and developer of Web3 battle royale game, Bladerite: https://www.theseeds.io/

DLC.Link - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cross-chain infrastructure to enable smart contract settlement on native Bitcoin using Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs): https://www.dlc.link/

Zeal - Strategic ($2.0M) | Web3 wallet with embedded safety checks: https://www.zeal.app/

UXUY - Seed+ ($7.0M) | Cross-chain liquidity aggregation protocol to seamlessly swap and exchange tokens across multiple blockchain networks: https://uxuy.com/

AgriDEX - Seed ($5.0M) | Agricultural commodities tokenization platform and marketplace built on Solana: https://agridex.com/

Arcium - Private Sale ($5.5M) | Parallelized confidential computing network secured by multiparty computation execution environments (MXEs): https://arcium.com/

Arch Network - Seed ($7.0M) | Bitcoin-native application layer providing smart contract functionality via a Rust-based zero-knowledge (ZK) virtual machine: https://www.arch.network/

Elys Network - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Cosmos SDK based Layer 1 blockchain offering a decentralized suite of financial applications in the Cosmos ecosystem: https://elys.network/

Glacis - Seed ($2.1M) | Aggregator, router, firewall for cross-chain messages: https://glacislabs.com/

Euclid Protocol - Seed ($0.6M) | Decentralized unified cross-chain liquidity infrastructure powered by Nibiru: https://www.euclidprotocol.io/

BAC Games - Seed ($1.5M) | Web3 racing game based on the Blast blockchain: https://www.bacgame.io/

StakedGain - Seed ($0.5M) | Multi-chain decentralized staking platform: https://www.stakedgain.com/

0xGen - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi liquidity aggregator enabled by AI: https://0xgen.io/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

a16z Token Launch Playbook, covering: operational guidelines for token launches, from creation to custody, 5 rules for token launches, and how to navigate token launch risks.

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week(s) of:

Apr 21-27, 2024 & Apr 28 - May 4, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$331M+ was raised across 66 funding rounds in Web3 over the past 2 weeks. My apologies, I needed to take a break last week. Thus edition will combine the funding data over this time period.

Broader crypto markets remain relatively horizontal, which appears to also be spilling over into venture markets. The largest deals have mainly taken place in Q1 while the market was on a clear bull run. Despite this, deal flow continues to hold steady at around 30 deals per week. with capital appearing to be shifting more so to earlier-stage seed rounds.

In terms of trends, new Layer 2s, projects focused on tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs), and those merging AI and blockchain continue to attract consistent capital. Restaking has also been capturing investors' attention the past 2 months, with more projects developing around the EigenLayer ecosystem and offering varying forms of Actively Validated Services (AVS). Additionally, there has been a recent uptick in funding for new Web3 social projects, as the Farcaster ecosystem continues maintain activity and projects like Friend.tech garner attention with their airdrop.

Funding Round Up #69 (Apr 21-27)

Funding Round Up #70 (Apr 28 - May 4)

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Securitize announced a $47M in a strategic funding round led by BlackRock and included participation from Hamilton Land, ParaFi Capital, Tradeweb Market, Aptos Labs, Circle and Paxos. The round also coincided with the launch of BlackRock’s first tokenized fund issued on Ethereum, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which Securitize help develop.

Securitize is an all-in-one platform for issuing, managing, and trading digital asset securities through tokenization. The platform simplifies investor onboarding, compliance, and reporting for issuers, while providing a secondary market and trading venues for tokenized securities. The company's broader platform includes a U.S.-registered broker-dealer, a primary marketplace, an SEC-licensed alternative trading system (ATS), a transfer agent, and an exempt reporting adviser.

Why this matters?👉 Tokenization represents a trillion-dollar opportunity for Web3. Securitize has emerged as a leading player, turning this lofty opportunity into a reality while working with some of the world's largest financial institutions, such as BlackRock and KKR. Their journey hasn't been easy, as the company has been around since 2017 and has gone through over half a dozen funding rounds. However, with the launch of BUIDL and numerous other issuances, they're demonstrating a product-market fit for their platform and for tokenization as a whole.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Movement Labs is developing a modular framework to design and deploy Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment. Its products include M1, a community-focused blockchain aiming to become a decentralized shared sequencer, and M2, a Move-based Layer 2 network built on Ethereum with an embedded EVM interpreter for Move to Solidity. Ultimately, the project aims to leverage the Move smart contract programming language and its parallelization capabilities to advance blockchain development.

The company recently announced a $38M Series A funding round led by Polychain, with participation from Hack VC, Placeholder, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, and several other venture investors and angels. The round was shortly followed by a strategic investment from Binance Labs, the venture arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange.

Why this matters?👉 Covered in Funding Round Up #37, Move is growing in popularity amongst developers with Movement Labs enabling further interoperability between Move-based and EVM-based networks. Moreover, this is also capturing investors attention with the company raising its Series A within less than 9 months from its initial seed round.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Only1 - Strategic ($1.3M) | Membership-based social platform to enable creators to earn and engage with fans built on Solana: https://only1.fyi/

Roam (fka. MetaBlox) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized global WiFi network: https://weroam.xyz/

Shiba Inu - Private Sale ($12.0M) | Decentralized memecoin, community, and ecosystem consisting of a layer 2 blockchain network and decentralized exchange: https://shibatoken.com/

Scallop - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Peer-to-peer money market for the Sui ecosystem: https://www.scallop.io/

PairedWorld - Private Sale ($1.5M) | Social protocol purposely built to authenticate and reward human interactions in the real world: https://www.paired.world/

Othentic - Seed ($4.0M) | Modular components library to simplify development on EigenLayer and other restaking protocols: https://www.othentic.xyz/

Uncharted - Strategic ($1.7M) | GameFi ecosystem and developer of Gangster Arena, a idle strategy game where players can grow gangs, engage in gang wars, and compete for ETH: https://www.uncharted.gg/

Y8U - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized protocol built on top of the Humans blockchain allowing users to create a self-custodial digital representation of their personality and traits: https://y8u.ai/

Iskra - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 gaming and community hub to explore new and existing games: https://iskra.world/

TOKERO - Seed ($1.4M) | Crypto trading aggregator across centralized and decentralized exchanges as well as CryptoATM services: https://tokero.com/en/

LightLink - Public Sale ($5.3M) | Enterprise-grade Layer 2 solution built for Metaverse, NFT, and gaming applications: https://www.lightlink.io/

Turnkey - Series A ($15.0M) | Private key infrastructure built for developers in Web3: https://www.turnkey.io/

Prime Intellect - Seed ($5.5M) | Decentralized AI platform to find global compute resources and train models across clusters: https://www.primeintellect.ai/

PenPad - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Launch platform for fair-launch projects built on Scroll: https://penpad.io/

Wild Forest - Seed ($0.5M) | Card-collecting real-time strategy game featuring an open economy and player-vs-player battles: https://playwildforest.io/

Tevaera - Seed ($5.0M) | Multi-genre game platform using the zkStack-based L3 gaming chain interoperable within the zkSync Era ecosystem: https://tevaera.com/

Puffverse - Private Sale ($3.0M) | Disney-like dreamland multi-end interactive metaverse with characters as NFT assets: https://puffverse.pro/

Moso - Seed ($2.0M) | Crypto rewards site and browser extension that lets users earn crypto when they shop with partnered merchants: https://moso.xyz/

DARKTIMES - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 game where players battle friends and enemies to survive in a Nordic-style, immersive medieval fantasy Dark Ages world: https://playdarktimes.com/

InfiniGods - Series A ($8.0M) | Game studio developing a suite of free-to-play Web3 games based on ancient mythologies and civilizations: https://www.infinigods.com/

Aligned Layer (aka. Yet Another Company) - Series A ($20.0M) | Developers of Yet Another Bridge and Aligned Layer focusing on providing bridging Ethereum Layer 2 networks using zero-knowledge (ZK) based Storage Proofs: https://blog.yetanothercompany.xyz/

Adot - Seed+ ($3.0M) | Decentralized search network providing an intelligent Web3 content search experience: https://www.a.xyz/

Anichess - Seed+ ($1.8M) | Decentralized blockchain based chess game built in partnership with Animoca Brands (via Lympo) and Chess.com: https://anichess.com/

Movement Labs - Series A ($38.0M) | SDK and modular framework to build and deploy Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment: https://movementlabs.xyz/

CARV - Series A ($10.0M) | Credential and self-sovereign identity (SSI) data infrastructure focused on gaming: https://carv.io/

TARS Protocol - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Multi-modular unified platform for AI-powered tools and services for blockchain development: https://tars.pro/

Natix Network - Private Sale ($4.6M) | Global mapping network of smart cameras: https://www.natix.network/

Creator.Bid - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Digital content monetization and ownership for AI creator agents: https://creator.bid/

L3E7 - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Web3 open world RPG game based on location service using 3D map graphics rendering: https://www.l3e7.io/

OpenDelta - Seed ($2.2M) | Developers of USDO, a delta-neutral, yield-bearing synthetic dollar powered by Bitcoin derivatives: https://www.opendelta.com/

Hinkal - Strategic ($1.4M) | Zero-knowledge based privacy perseving protocol and smart contract wallet experience: https://hinkal.pro/

Chakra - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Bitcoin restaking protocol based on zero knowledge (ZK) proofs: https://chakrachain.io/home

Astra Nova - Seed ($1.0M) | Free-to-play Web3 RPG: https://astranova.world/

Games for a Living - Seed ($3.2M) | Web3 video game development and publishing studio: https://gfal.com/

LazyBear - Strategic ($4.0M) | Crypto trading ecosystem for retail traders, offering perpetual contracts, copy trading and more: https://lazybear.vip/

Holograph - Strategic ($2.8M) | Omnichain tokenization protocol, enabling asset issuers to mint natively composable omnichain tokens: https://www.holograph.xyz/

TNA - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Protocol for issuing and managing unique name assets native to the Bitcoin mainnet: https://tna-btc.com/

STYLE Protocol - Seed ($2.5M) | Decentralized infrastructure to enable licensing and interoperability of assets and NFTs across any virtual environment: https://www.protocol.style/

Harris and Trotter Digital Assets - Seed ($10.0M) | Full-service accountancy firm for crypto-native clients: https://harrisandtrotter.co.uk/

BEVM - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized EVM-compatible Layer 2 network for Bitcoin: https://www.bevm.io/

MilkyWay - Seed ($5.0M) | Modular liquid staking protocol for the Celestia ecosystem: https://www.milkyway.zone/

X10 - Seed ($6.5M) | Hybrid Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) exchange offering full self-custody and on-chain transaction settlement: https://x10.exchange/

Backed - Series A ($9.5M) | Tokenization platform issuing ERC-20 tokens that track the value of real-world assets: https://backed.fi/

Matera - Seed ($3.6M) | Loyalty program rewarding creators for their engagement on their favorite social media platforms: https://www.matera.club/

Blade Games - Seed ($2.4M) | On-chain game studio and infrastructure provider offering zero knowledge (ZK) proof game egine: https://www.bladedao.games/

Securitize - Strategic ($47.0M) | All-in-one platform for issuing, managing, and trading digital asset securities consisting of a registered broker-dealer, a primary marketplace, an alternative trading system, transfer agent, and an exempt reporting adviser: https://securitize.io/

Agora - Seed ($5.0M) | Cross-chain platform providing governance tools for decentralized protocols: https://nounsagora.com/

Movement Labs - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | SDK and modular framework to build and deploy Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment: https://movementlabs.xyz/

BAXUS - Seed ($5.0M) | Peer-to-peer marketplace for buying, selling, trading, and storing valuable spirits and wine: https://www.baxus.co/

Resonance Security - Seed ($1.5M) | Cybersecurity aggregation software for applications, smart contracts, and digital assets: https://www.resonance.security/

Bedrock - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Multi-asset liquid restaking protocol: https://www.bedrock.technology/

Metale Protocol - Seed+ ($4.0M) | Decentralized content distribution protocol: https://www.metale.world/

Patriots Division - Series A ($5.0M) | Game studio and developer of Shadow War, a Web3 5-versus-5 third-person sci-fi action game: https://www.shadowwar.com/

Mitosis - Seed ($7.0M) | Layer 1 blockchain enabled by Ecosystem-owned liquidity (EOL): https://mitosis.org/

The Open Network (aka. TON) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Proof of stake layer 1 blockchain network designed by Telegram: https://ton.org/

Kiosk - Seed ($10.0M) | Farcaster client where social meets onchain: https://kiosk.app/

Ironlight - Seed ($12.0M) | Tokenization platform and alternative trading system (ATS) for public and private fund managers: https://ironlight.io/

Balcony - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Real estate digitalization and tokenization platform: https://www.balcony.technology/

Paragraph - Seed ($5.0M) | On-chain creator monetization and written content publishing platform: https://paragraph.xyz/

Popset - Seed ($1.0M) | Mobile-native onchain social application: https://popset.xyz/

Airstack - Seed ($4.0M) | Web3 data APIs to instantly integrate on-chain and off-chain data into any applications: https://www.airstack.xyz/

TRALA - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Subsidiary of Joycity focused on offering an all-in-one blockchain gaming platform: https://trala.me/

EYWA - Private Sale ($7.0M) | Web3 interoperability ecosystem enabled by a consensus bridge and cross-chain trading and yield protocol that leverages Curve Finance: https://eywa.fi/

Volta - Seed ($4.1M) | Developer of Volta Circuit, a multi-signature non-custodial platform designed to provide institutional investors secure and exclusive control over cryptocurrency assets and tokenized real-world assets: https://www.voltacircuit.com/

Crestal - Seed ($2.0M) | Modular blockchain infrastructure maintained by decentralized service providers verified by Proof of Performance (PoP): https://www.crestal.network/

Amphor - Seed ($4.0M) | Decentralized finance protocol for yield automation and enhancement: https://amphor.io/

New Funds

Pantera Capital - Fund V ($1,000.0M)

🙌 Cool Resources

RWA.xyz the most comprehensive reference data set for tokenized real-world assets (RWA’s) including dashboards of the top issuances by asset class.

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Apr 14-20, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

Happy halving! $144M+ was raised across 36 funding rounds in Web3. Despite a roller-coaster ride in the broader crypto markets, deal flow remained consistent with only a slight dip in total capital raised. The week also coincided with Token2049 in Dubai, which provided ideal timing for many of this week’s announced deals. Additionally, the Bitcoin halving has been completed, setting a new phase for the supply dynamics of the largest cryptocurrency. This will likely affect the broader crypto markets in the months ahead and simultaneously provide a catalyst for the funding environment in Web3 venture. However, these developments will likely hinge on macro factors, specifically inflation in the US and globally, which could continue to drag on the crypto markets and venture capital if we don’t see signs of improvements.

Diving in, DeFi leads the week as the largest category receiving funding, composed of a diverse mix of projects. These range from tokenization (Centrifuge) to liquid restaking (Puffer and YieldNest), as well as new asset-backed stablecoins (Usual and Lambda Finance). Additionally, base protocols, specifically Layer 2s, continue to provide persistent deal flow, with another three funding rounds including Merlin Chain, another Bitcoin Layer 2

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Puffer announced an $18M Series A funding round led by Electric Capital and BH Digital, reportedly valuing the project at $200M. Other notable investors in the round included Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Lemniscap, Franklin Templeton, Avon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, ConsenSys, Animoca Brands, and GSR, among other venture and angel investors. This round follows a $5.5M Seed round that closed in August 2023 and a strategic round from earlier this year.

Puffer is a decentralized native liquid restaking protocol (nLRP) built on Eigenlayer via an activity validated service (AVS) and is designed to enhance the accessibility and efficiency of Ethereum's Proof of Stake (PoS) system. With as little as 2 ETH, anyone to become a node operator (NoOp) and allows users to run Ethereum validators and leverage features such as anti-slashing hardware and autonomous MEV strategies. This protocol supports liquid staking where stakers can also stake any amount of ETH and receive pufETH tokens, which grow in value through a combination of staking and restaking rewards.

Why this matters?👉 With over $14B in total value locked (TVL), restaking has quickly grown into the fifth-largest category of decentralized finance based on TVL. This growth is largely attributable to the launch of EigenLayer earlier this year, which enables third-party platforms, including Puffer, to easily deposit ETH into the restaking protocol while providing derivative liquid (re)staked tokens. Within this segment, Puffer has already become the second-largest liquid restaking protocol with over $1B in TVL.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Centrifuge is a blockchain-based protocol designed to bridge real-world assets (RWAs) with decentralized finance (DeFi) by tokenizing these assets and facilitating borrowing against them. The core of Centrifuge's technology involves converting off-chain assets and data into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing individual, verifiable claims on underlying assets, allowing them to be financed without intermediaries. The assets can then be pooled together and securitized by issuer into liquidity pools, which can be integrated into leading DeFi protocols like Maker and Aave.

Supporting the platform, Centrifuge operates on a purpose-built Layer-1 proof-of-stake and EVM-compatible blockchain, Centrifuge Chain. It utilizes the Substrate framework, making it compatible with the Polkadot network, which enhances interoperability with other blockchain systems. The Centrifuge App provides an interface for issuers to manage their asset pools and draw financing from tokenized assets, and for investors to invest in real-world assets (RWAs). Centrifuge's Liquidity Pools are sets of smart contracts accessible on any EVM network. Additionally, each pool is legally structured as a special purpose vehicle (SPV), with legal ownership of the assets transferred to the SPV and bankruptcy remote from the asset originator. The platform also incorporates a decentralized governance model, allowing token holders to vote on significant protocol decisions and upgrades.

Centrifuge was founded in 2017 with the mission to solve inefficiencies in the financial system with blockchain technology. In 2021 it integrated the first real-world asset pool with MakerDAO and in 2022 it worked with BlockTower to bring the first institutional credit fund fully on-chain. Recently, Centrifuge announced a $15M Series A led by ParaFi and Greenfield alongside other notable investors including Circle Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Arrington Capital, the Spartan Group, and Wintermute.

Why this matters?👉 Tokenization represents one of the greatest opportunities for DeFi, aiming to tap into an addressable market worth trillions of dollars. Like many other tokenization platforms, Centrifuge offers novel solutions to bring off-chain assets on-chain. However, through its technological infrastructure and corresponding legal structuring, Centrifuge enables robust decentralized financing for tokenized assets, which ultimately provides issuers of RWAs a more productive use of their assets on-chain and liquidity.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Cspro - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Regulated issuance, subscription, distribution platform for security tokens and other tokenized real-world assets (RWAs): https://hk.cspro.io/

Yet Another Company (aka. Aligned Layer) - Seed ($2.6M) | Developers of Yet Another Bridge and Aligned Layer focusing on providing bridging Ethereum Layer 2 networks using zero-knowledge (ZK) based Storage Proofs: https://alignedlayer.com/

Interence Labs - Seed ($2.3M) | Open source AI infrastructure leveraging zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs and liquid staking-backed proof of inference: https://inferencelabs.com/

Avalon Corp - Seed+ ($10.0M) | Web3 gaming studio developing an interoperable gaming platform for the metaverse: https://playavalon.com/

YieldNest - Seed ($5.2M) | Liquid restaking protocol built on EigenLayer: https://www.yieldnest.finance/

RWA Inc - Private Sale ($1.2M) | Tokenization platform and marketplace for real-world assets (RWA): https://www.rwa.inc/

Puffer - Series A ($18.0M) | Anti-slashing liquid staking protocol built on EigenLayer: https://www.puffer.fi/

Sending Labs - Seed+ ($7.5M) | Web3 native communications protocol supporting a fully decentralized private community chat app: https://sending.me/

Crypto Valley Exchange (aka. CVEX) - Seed ($7.0M) | Decentralized trading platform for options and futures designed with on-chain portfolio risk management: https://cvex.xyz/

Saakuru - Private Sale ($2.4M) | Consumer-centric Layer 2 protocol with zero transaction fees: https://saakuru.com/

GEODNET - Private Sale ($2.0M) | Decentralized network of space weather mining stations that report influence of the sun’s solar winds on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals: https://geodnet.com/

Integral - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Financial management and accounting software for Web3 teams: https://integral.xyz/

Homium - Series A ($10.0M) | Fully digital lender leveraging blockchain to underwrite tokenized home equity lines of credit (HELOC): https://www.homium.io/

Joba Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized marketplace for blockchain and AI related jobs enabled by an on-chain identity and reputation layer: https://www.joba.network/

Plena Finance - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Multi-chain, self-custodial wallet that supports account abstraction and offers encrypted news and insights: https://www.plena.finance/

Centrifuge - Series A ($15.0M) | decentralized real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform and asset finance protocol: https://centrifuge.io/

NEBRA - Seed ($4.5M) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) proof research organization and developer of universal proof aggregator (UPA) service to scale ZK proof verification: https://www.nebra.one/

Merlin Chain (aka. Bitmap) - Seed+ (Not Disclosed) | Bitcoin Layer 2 solution created by Bitmap Tech that integrates a zero-knowledge (ZK) based rollup: https://merlinchain.io/

Aark - Seed ($6.0M) | The "leverage-everything" perpetuals decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Arbitrum: https://aark.digital/

Usual - Seed ($7.0M) | Developer of USD0, a stablecoin protocol collateralized and backed by real-world assets (RWA): https://usual.money/

Ord.io - Seed ($2.0M) | Bitcoin ordinals and runes explorer and marketplace: https://www.ord.io/

fantasy.top - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Social trading card game built on Blast of crypto Tiwtter influencers: https://www.fantasy.top/

Zeko - Seed ($3.0M) | Layer 2 zero knowledge (ZK) based rollup designed for zero-knowledge applications (zkApps), settled by the Mina Protocol: https://zeko.io/

Merlin Starter - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Native launchpad for the Merlin Chain, Bitcoin Layer 2 ecosystem: https://merlinstarter.com/

Runes DEX - Seed ($2.0M) | Decentralized exchange and automated market maker (AMM) protocol for runes on Bitcoin: https://www.runesdex.com/

Thruster - Seed ($7.5M) | Decentralized exchange protocol built on Blast offering custom liquidity solutions: https://www.thruster.finance/

FilmChain - Seed+ ($3.0M) | End-to-end fintech payments platform for creative industries and rights holders leveraging blockchain technology: https://filmchain.co/

Circle of Games - Strategic ($1.0M) | Web3 multi-gaming and reqards platform: https://circleofgames.com/

HQLAx - Series C (Not Disclosed) | Distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform for collateral mobility and management focusing on the securities finance and repo markets: https://www.hqla-x.com/

Superlogic - Seed+ ($7.6M) | Enterprise-grade integrated commerce and loyalty system using first-party data and enabled by AI and blockchain technologies: https://www.superlogic.com/

Lambda Finance - Seed ($1.8M) | Developer of BTCUSD, a Bitcoin-backed USD stablecoin: https://lambda.finance/

Skynet Trading - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Algorithmic trading and investment firm in the digital assets market: https://skynettrading.com/

Klaytn - Private Sale ($1.0M) | Highly optimized, BFT-based public Layer 1 blockchain originally developed by Kakao focused on the metaverse, gaming, and the creator economy: https://www.klaytn.foundation/

SatScreener - Seed ($0.5M) | Real-time data aggregator for Bitcoin ecosystem based assets: https://www.satscreener.com/home

TeleportDAO - Private Sale ($9.9M) | Trust-minimized interoperability protocol that serves as a light-client bridge between blockchains : https://teleportdao.xyz/

TradeTogether - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Digital asset investment platform offering personalized investment strategies: https://www.tradetogether.com/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

SatScreener, data aggregator for Bitcoin ecosystem based-assets including, BRC-20 tokens, Runes, Ordinals, and others

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Apr 7-13, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$649M+ was raised across 37 funding rounds in Web3. Despite an unfavorable inflation print in the US, rising geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East, and an unexpected pullback in the crypto markets, the Web3 venture market appears to have shrugged off these developments, with this week marking one of the highest total capital raises in 2024. Excluding public company-related deals (such as Galaxy's bought deal financing), this week was highlighted by Monad’s $225M second raise and Berachain's $100M Series B, both of which had been reported on earlier.

Outside of these major Layer 1 networks, this week also saw a continued flow of more announced Layer 2 deals, specifically building on top of Bitcoin, which has been the growing trend as the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem continues to expand. Notably, there is an increasing number of companies closing rounds following an earlier round within less than 12-18 months, featuring close to a dozen this week, including Auradine’s $80M Series B. This has been one of the most promising signals for the growing resurgence of Web3 venture so far in 2024, demonstrating the resilience projects and investors have shown despite the 2022-23’s crypto winter.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Monad announced $225M in a funding round led by Paradigm. The round included over 40 investors including notable VC’s Electric Capital, Greenoaks Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Egirl Capital, along with several angel investors.

Monad is a Layer 1 blockchain network designed for high performance and is also EVM-compatible. It innovates through a "Deferred Execution" mechanism, which separates the execution of transactions from consensus, aiming to enhance network speed and efficiency. Monad also utilizes a pipelined architecture similar to Solana, enabling parallel transaction processing, allowing the network to reach up to 10,000 transactions per second. The network's consensus protocol, MonadBFT, leverages a mechanism optimized with pipelining and simplified through the use of threshold signatures for validating transactions, further reducing latency and improving throughput.

Additionally, Monad introduces concepts like shared mempools for transaction hashes and parallel execution to mitigate the bottlenecks typical in traditional blockchain systems. This architecture aims to provide rapid state finality while maintaining robust security and decentralization.

Why this matters?👉 Monad’s latest round represents the largest funding round so far in 2024 (excluding public company-related deals) and one of the largest since Q4 2023. The total capital raised is unsurprising, considering other blockchains with parallel transaction architectures, such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos, have been able to raise similar sums of capital, with their tokens reaching multi-billion market capitalizations. Monad also highlights the growing trend of projects in 2024 continuing to favor token launches over traditional equity raises, likely driven by investors' desires for near-term liquidity, especially while the broader crypto markets have experienced a bull run over the past six months.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Note: Berachain’s latest round was previously reported in Funding Roundup #63. However, formal announcement of its Series B was made this week and had been included again.

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Ritual - Series A+ (Not Disclosed) | AI coprocessor and execution layer built for smart contracts: https://ritual.net/

Lumoz (fka. Opside) - Private Sale ($6.0M) | Zero knowledge (ZK) as a service platform that offers 3-layer blockchain architecture: https://opside.network/

Yield Guild Games - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Play-to-Earn gaming guild and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), bringing players together to earn via blockchain-based economies: https://yieldguild.io/

NuLink - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) provable data privacy platform and data availability layer for DApps: https://www.nulink.org/

Mezo - Series A ($21.0M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 network providing an economic layer that leverages a neutral smart contract infrastructure: https://mezo.org/

Monad Labs - Private Sale ($225.0M) | Proof-of-stake (PoS) Layer 1 blockchain and decentralized computation platform that combines the best of performance and portability: https://www.monad.xyz/

Cove Finance (aka. Storm Labs) - Seed ($3.0M) | DeFi portfolio management platform offering a suite of products to boost users earnings: https://www.cove.finance/

OpenTrade - Seed+ ($3.2M) | Provides Web3 treasurers and institutional investors access to on-chain structured financial products backed by investment grade financial assets: https://www.open-trade.io/

KIKI World - Series A ($7.0M) | Customer-owned beauty platform that provides physical beauty products and on-chain products: https://www.kiki.world/

Aizel Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | On-chain verifiable AI inference network that empowers blockchains with trustless AI abilities: https://aizelnetwork.com/

Galaxy Digital - Private Placement ($125.0M) | Full suite digital assets financial services firm providing, trading, asset management, investment banking, mining, and venture capital: https://www.galaxy.com/

Zoth - Seed ($2.5M) | Institutional grade marketplace for on-chain tokenized real-world assets (RWA): https://zoth.io/

Sapien - Seed ($5.0M) | Gamify human-in-the-loop data labeling platform: https://www.sapien.io/

Stream - Seed ($1.5M) | Vault structured protocols for effective liquidity provisions allowing users to take advantage of various yield strategies: https://streamprotocol.money/

Auradine - Series B ($80.0M) | Developer of hardware and software solutions catered to use-cases in blockchain, zero knowledge (ZK) proofs, and AI: https://auradine.com/

Alpen Labs - Seed ($10.6M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 enabled by zero-knowledge (ZK) proof rollups: https://www.alpenlabs.io/

Tomo - Seed ($3.5M) | All-in-one Web3 social wallet: https://tomo.inc/

Jigsaw - Seed (Not Disclosed) | DeFi platform for real-world assets: https://www.jigsaw.finance/

GPU.Net - Series A ($5.3M) | Decentralized network of graphics processing units (GPUs): https://gpu.net/

ILLIUS - Seed ($2.2M) | Gamified sports training platform leveraging AI and Web3 based rewards: https://www.lillius.net/

Sortium - Seed+ ($4.0M) | Entertainment tech company combining AI and Web3 to generate game content that is tokenized: https://www.sortium.com/

Playtron - Seed ($10.0M) | Linux based lightweight gaming OS optimized for handheld gaming and compatible with every game store: https://www.playtron.one/

Spin City - Strategic ($10.0M) | Developer of Bored Slot, a Web3 slots game: https://www.boredslot.com/

Sharpe AI - Seed (Not Disclosed) | All-in-one, self-custodial DeFi automation platform to manages positions across top DeFi protocols using AI-powered tools: https://www.sharpe.ai/

GameCene - Seed ($1.4M) | Web3 gaming development and distribution platform: https://www.gamecene.com/

1self.world - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 advertising and marketing platform providing direct targeting via Soul Bound Tokens (SBT): https://1self.world/

Veremak - Series B ($3.0M) | Pre-employment screening and background check service enabled by blockchain technology: https://www.veremark.com/

BounceBit - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Layer 1 blockchain secured by BTC and providing restaking infrastructure for Bitcoin: https://bouncebit.io/

Uplink - Seed ($10.0M) | Decentralized telecommunications and connectivity network: https://www.uplink.xyz/

Azuro - Private Sale ($3.5M) | On-chain predictions infrastructure and liquidity layer: https://azuro.org/

Mayan - Seed ($3.0M) | Intent-based cross-chain swap auction protocol: https://mayan.finance/

NavyAI - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Blockchain layer for AI model training and self-learning: https://navyai.xyz/

BorpaToken - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Memecoin and community centered around Borpa memes: https://borpatoken.com/

Berachain - Series B ($100.0M) | EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, built using the Cosmos SDK, and secured by the Proof-of-Liquidity Consensus Protocol: https://berachain.com/

Gull Network - Private Sale ($1.6M) | Layer 3 solution for customizable token launches powered by Manta Network: https://www.gullnetwork.com/

Multisynq - Seed ($2.2M) | Decentralized low-latency Synchronization Network for surplus internet connections and bandwidth: https://multisynq.io/

Black Panther - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | DeFi asset management protocol enabled by automated trading strategies: https://blackpanther.fi/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

10X Research, Digital Asset Research for Traders and Institutions. Also be sure to check out their daily markets newsletter.

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Mar 31-Apr 6, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$234M+ was raised across 45 funding rounds in Web3. Deal flow remains consistent with over 40 announced deals, and the distribution by stage also remains consistent. Base protocols (i.e., Layer 1 & 2 networks) and DePIN continue as segments and sub-segments that are drawing investor interest and capital.

Overall, the funding environment remains strong as the broader crypto markets continue to be resilient. A number of eight to nine-figure deals are also in the pipeline and potentially closing soon. This includes Merkle Manufactory (developer of Farcaster), which is reported to be nearing the close of a round that would value the company at over $1B, marking another potential unicorn born in 2024. Additionally, more funds are raising capital, with news of Paradigm raising a $750-$850M fund, Galaxy launching a $100M venture fund, and Neoclassical making its formal launch. While these are not the mega funds announced in 2021-22, the influx of more dry powder into the Web3 venture ecosystem is always a good thing.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ IoTex announced $50M in a private token sale. The funding round saw participation from SNZ Capital, Foresight Ventures, Borderless Capital, Amber Group, FutureMoneyGroup, Metrics Ventures, EV3, Waterdrip Capital and others.

IoTeX is a modular infrastructure platform designed for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) projects, aiming to bridge smart devices and real-world, off-chain data with blockchains. The platform boasts an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, purpose-built for DePIN applications. It also features W3bstream, an off-chain computing middleware that offers a computing framework for smart devices and real-world data, powered by zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology. Additionally, IoTeX promotes open hardware standards to facilitate the connection of billions of smart devices, machines, sensors, and dApps across both physical and digital realms.

Furthermore, IoTeX has developed DePINscan, a comprehensive explorer tailored for DePIN projects, and the DePIN Liquidity Hub, which encompasses a bridging protocol, wallet, and decentralized exchange specifically designed for tokens related to DePIN.

Why this matters?👉 DePIN represents a burgeoning area of growth and development within Web3, with projects in this space capturing over $40B in market capitalization. It has also been a leading segment for new investment in 2024, with close to $100M raised across more than 20 projects so far. By providing a base layer protocol, IoTeX’s network positions itself to offer more efficient infrastructure to power further DePIN networks and participate in their economics (via transaction fees). However, while DePIN shows great promise, the aggregate annual revenues of DePIN-specific projects represent less than $100M, raising questions about whether these projects can eventually grow into their valuations.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Merkle Manufactory is a software company contributing to the development of the Farcaster protocol and the protocol's working clients. The company boasts two flagship products: the Farcaster protocol, which it originally developed, and Warpcast. Farcaster is a blockchain-based public social network similar to Twitter and Reddit, where users can create profiles, post "casts," and follow others. Users own their accounts and relationships with other users (i.e., the social graph) and are free to move between different apps or clients. Warpcast serves as a client for Farcaster, allowing users to create a profile and post public messages. Farcaster also released Frames, which allows users to turn casts into interactive mini-apps.

The company was founded by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan in 2020. They started working together on an idea called “RSS+,” aiming to build a credibly neutral protocol where users have direct relationships with their audiences, and developers have the freedom to permissionlessly build new clients, which eventually became Farcaster. The company raised $30M in July 2022 in a funding round led by a16z, with participation from VC firms Standard Crypto, 1confirmation, Scalar Capital, First Round Capital, Ribbit Capital, Coinbase Ventures, as well as angel investors Balaji Srinivasan and Elad Gil. Recently, the company also unveiled an ongoing funding round led by Paradigm, which when closed, would value the company at over $1B.

Why this matters?👉 Decentralized social media holds tremendous potential, aiming to tackle an industry with an addressable market of billions of users and revenues in the hundreds of billions. While the opportunity is massive, the current adoption of Web3 social platforms has so far been underwhelming, with daily and monthly active user volumes only a fraction of what is seen on incumbent Web2 platforms. However, Farcaster has shown some early signs of traction, with monthly active users (MAU) reaching over 40K and daily active users (DAU) holding over 20K. While early adoption appears promising, the protocol and company will need to find a reasonable way to generate network value and justify a valuation that assumes over $20K per MAU!

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Merkle Trade - Seed ($2.1M) | Decentralized trading for crypto, forex, and commodities trading with gamified trading features: https://merkle.trade/

Burnt (aka. XION) - Series A ($25.0M) | Web3 foundry and developer of XION, a layer 1 blockchain network purpose-built for consumer adoption: https://xion.burnt.com/

Lockchain - Seed ($5.0M) | AI enabled risk management platform for digital assets aggregating on-chain data and open source intelligence: https://lockchain.ai/

BSX - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Self-custodial crypto derivatives decentralized exchange (DEX), built on Base L2: https://www.bsx.exchange/

Moongate - Seed ($2.7M) | Modular Web3 engagement layer for real-world activations including ticketing and membership: https://www.moongate.id/

DeepLink - Series A ($8.0M) | Web3 cloud gaming platform and decentralized AI cloud gaming platform: https://www.deeplink.cloud/

XRADERS (aka. XR Labs) - Seed ($2.1M) | AI-powered curated expert insights platform for crypto investors: https://xraders.xyz/

PrismaStake - Seed ($6.0M) | Multi-chain staking platform providing a staking middleware infrastructure layer: https://prismastake.finance/

DOS Labs - Seed ($2.5M) | Game studio and developer of MetaDOS, a blockchain-enabled battle royale metaverse: https://metados.com/

Gomble Games - Series A ($10.0M) | Web3 strategic casual game studio: https://gomblegames.com/

Agora - Seed ($12.0M) | Developer of AUSD, a US Dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by cash, US treasury bills, and overnight repurchase agreements: https://www.agora.finance/

IoTeX - Private Sale ($50.0M) | Modular layer 1 blockchain network optimized for Decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN): https://iotex.io/

Camp Network - Seed ($4.0M) | Modular Layer 2 network that leverages offchain data from Web2 streaming and social platforms to enable onchain value creation: https://www.campnetwork.xyz/

AutoLayer (fka. Tortle Ninja) - Seed ($2.5M) | Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT) Finance app built on Arbitrum providing various yield strategies: https://autolayer.io/

Young Protocol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Multi-chain SocialFi protocol: https://docsend.com/view/uim7srt8pq4ks3ke

BonusBlock - Private Sale ($2.3M) | On-chain marketplace for user engagement and onboarding: https://www.bonusblock.io/

Station70 - Seed ($5.0M) | Wallet-agnostic platform for scalable and secure digital asset key backup and recovery: https://www.station70.com/

Coadjute - Strategic ($12.6M) | Property technology platform that connects parties involved in property transactions using blockchain: https://coadjute.com/

SOAI - Seed ($5.0M) | Immersive AI companion platform enabled by Web3 technology: https://www.soai.org/

Legitimate - Seed ($4.3M) | On-chain framework designed to keep physical assets in-sync with their digital counterparts: https://www.legitimate.tech/

Gasp (fka. Mangata) - Seed+ ($5.0M) | Cross-chain and cross-roll-up swap protocol: https://www.gasp.xyz/

Privasea - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized AI network of distributed computing resources enabling Fully Homomorphic Encryption Machine Learning (FHEML): https://www.privasea.ai/

Raiinmaker - Seed ($7.5M) | Protocol and network catered to decentralized AI, content generation, and distribution: https://www.raiinmaker.com/

Sanctum - Seed+ ($0.4M) | Liquid staking token (LST) and unified liquidity layer for Solana: https://www.sanctum.so/

Zeus Network - Private Sale ($8.0M) | Permissionless cross-chain communication layer between the Bitcoin and Solana networks: https://zeusnetwork.xyz/

Sofamon - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cultural platform for crypto natives and social expression layer: https://www.sofamon.xyz/

SatoshiSync - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cross-chain liquidity market for inscriptions: https://satoshisync.com/

UTXO Stack (aka. Cell Studio) - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Modular Bitcoin Layer 2 network: https://cell.studio/

bythen - Seed ($3.0M) | Decentralized AI product protocol for AI-powered 3D avatar agents: https://www.bythen.ai/quest

Seismic Finance - Seed ($1.0M) | Blast native lending protocol: https://twitter.com/seismicfinance

NAV - Seed ($3.0M) | DeFi investment platform providing access to quantitative hedge fund strategies and Structured Investment Products (SIPs): https://www.nav.finance/

Phoenix (aka. Ellipsis Labs) - Series A ($20.0M) | Decentralized exchange and fully on-chain limit orderbook built on Solana: https://ellipsislabs.xyz/

Zulu Network - Seed ($3.0M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 network enabled by a two-tiered architecture for EVM and UTXO capabilities: https://zulunetwork.io/

LightLink - Seed+ ($1.7M) | Enterprise-grade Layer 2 solution built for Metaverse, NFT, and gaming applications: https://www.lightlink.io/

Planet Mojo - Strategic ($5.5M) | Imaginative Web3 gaming metaverse platform: https://www.planetmojo.io/

Web3Firewall - Seed ($2.5M) | Enterprise-grade security and risk management platform used for detecting and responding to malicious transactions and AML/KYC threats: https://web3firewall.xyz/

Cellula - Seed ($2.0M) | On-chain autonomous life simulation strategy game: https://www.cellula.live/

ANVM (aka. AINN Layer2) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | EVM-compatible Bitcoin Layer2 network: https://anvm.io/

AgentFi - Seed (Not Disclosed) | On-chain AI agents for automating DeFi farming and trading: https://agentfi.io/

Spotlight - Seed ($2.0M) | Gamification platform for cultivating attention around on-chain subcultures: https://www.0xspotlight.com/

RootData - Seed ($1.3M) | Web3 asset and ecosystem data platform encapsulating both on-chain and off-chain into structured data: https://www.rootdata.com/

Bonsai - Private Sale ($1.0M) | Memecoin for early adopter of on-chain social across the Lens ecosystem: https://www.bonsai.meme/

TODAY - Seed ($5.0M) | Web3 social simulation game featuring AI-powered intelligent NPCs and no-code creator tools: https://www.todaythegame.com/

QuantAMM - Seed ($1.9M) | On-chain asset-management infrastructure provider and developer of DeFi native Blockchain Traded Funds (BTFs): https://www.quantamm.fi/

Master Protocol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Modularized restaking protocol for multi-chain liquidity staking tokens: https://www.masterprotocol.xyz/

New Funds

Paradigm - Paradigm Two Crypto VC Fund ($750M)

Galaxy Digital - Galaxy Ventures Fund I ($100M)

Neoclassic Capital - Fund I (Not Disclosed)

🙌 Cool Resources

DePINscan powered by IoTex

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Mar 24-30, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$298M+ was raised across 37 funding rounds in Web3. While deal count saw a slight slip, total capital raised remains consistent throughout most of March. More notably, 2024 is witnessing a steady stream of Series A (or beyond) deals, averaging over three per week, a trend not observed in 2023. There's a resurgence in deals being reported as oversubscribed, indicating more competitive deals and potentially overly generous valuations. Some of this enthusiasm is grounded in actual traction and product-market fit, but it's also buoyed by the stable broader crypto markets thus far in 2024.

Drilling in deeper, base protocols including Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks, continue to be focal points for deal flow, with Bitcoin Layer 2 networks attracting more than a half-dozen deals this week alone. Projects that bridge AI with blockchain and those building DePIN networks are emerging as the leading trends in the first quarter of 2024 as they draw development interest and capital.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ 0G (ZeroGravity) announced $35M in a Seed round (pre-seed). The round was led by HackVC with participation from over 40 separate institutions including notable investors such as Dispersion Capital, Animoca Brands, OKX Ventures, Samsung Next, Alliance DAO, and Delphi Digital. Originally setting a target of $5M, 0G attracted over $100M in interest, before ultimately closing the round 7x oversubscribed.

0G is developing a modular blockchain aimed at enhancing the performance and cost efficiency of on-chain AI applications. Their technology emphasizes modularity, with a key feature being a programmable data availability layer that allows developers to create scalable and secure applications based on verifiable, low-latency data feeds, boasting a throughput of up to 50 Gbps. Additionally, 0G is working on a Uni-Chain architecture to enable seamless interoperability between different blockchains, while maintaining security.

Why this matters?👉 Modular blockchains and new data availability layers are increasingly attracting investor interest as the ecosystem for Layer 2 networks expands, highlighting the growing demand for a trusted data layer beyond Ethereum. At the forefront, 0G is merging AI with blockchain technology, aiming to establish a more suitable platform for future AI and blockchain development, which if successful could be big. That said, the project was able to raise a significantly oversubscribed round before ever launching a testnet. Either this signals the emergence of a next major crypto project or a sign of bull market exuberance.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ DappOS is an intent-centric operating protocol designed to enhance the user-friendliness of decentralized applications (DApps). Intents are predefined actions or objectives that users seek to accomplish through interactions with blockchain networks or DApps, such as executing trades, transferring assets, or engaging in smart contract operations. The protocol acts as an intermediary layer between users and the crypto infrastructure, efficiently routing users’ intents. DeFi applications like GMX, BENQI, KyberSwap, and Stader have begun using DappOS.

DappOS consists of two main components:

• DappOS Account: Are based on account abstraction, enables automated workflow execution and offers flexible recovery options, functioning as a “virtual wallet.”

• DappOS Network: A decentralized network that facilitates the use of DappOS accounts and interaction with DApps. It assigns users' transactions to one of the permissionless nodes, ensuring either successful execution or compensation for any loss. Nodes are incentivized through the network's reward system to efficiently process transactions.

The company was founded by Ty Shen, former CTO and co-founder of Alchemy Pay, and Isabella Yang, a former software engineer at Google. DappOS recently secured $15.3M in a Series A funding round led by Polychain, valuing the company at $300M. This round saw participation from Flow Traders, NGC, IDG Capital, Amber Group, and over ten other prominent, Asia-focused crypto venture firms. In July 2023, DappOS also completed a Seed round led by IDG Capital with participation from Binance, Sequoia China, and others.

Why this matters?👉 Intent-based architectures and applications are rapidly emerging as crucial infrastructure components across Web3. DappOS, in particular, is gaining momentum, with over 20 applications utilizing the protocol. This adoption likely contributed to the company's ability to secure a Series A funding round less than 9 months after its initial Seed round. DappOS highlights a broader 2024 trend among companies that raised Seed rounds in 2023 and have now been successful to raise a Series A grounded in traction.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Gameplan - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized sports league and metaverse: https://twitter.com/meta_gameplan

BEVM - Series A (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized EVM-compatible Layer 2 network for Bitcoin: https://www.bevm.io/

Meson Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) and marketplace for bandwidth: https://www.meson.network/

StakeStone - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Omni-chain Liquid Staking Token (LST) protocol aiming to bring native staking yields and liquidity to Layer 2 networks: https://stakestone.io/

GraphLinq - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Blockchain network enabled by Proof-of-Authority (POA) and built for on-chain automation and applications powered by AI: https://graphlinq.io/

BlockGames - Private Sale ($6.0M) | cross-chain, cross-game, decentralized player network and Universal Player Profiles: https://blockgames.com/

Nubit (aka. Riema Labs) - Seed ($3.0M) | Bitcoin-native data availability layer: https://nubit.org/

Satoshi Protocol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Developer of SAT, a Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin, using collateralized debt positions and enabled by BEVM: https://satoshiprotocol.org/

AIET - Seed ($8.5M) | Decentralized protocol for distributed AI training and inference: https://aiet.io/

0G (aka. ZeroGravity) - Seed ($35.0M) | Modular blockchain network built for AI providing a scalable programmable Data Availability (DA) layer for decentralized AI applications: https://0g.ai/

ALEX - Strategic ($10.0M) | Decentralized exchange (DEX) and DeFi platform for Bitcoin enabled by Stacks: https://alexgo.io/

Gunzilla Games - Series A ($30.0M) | Game studio and developer of Off The Grid (OTG), a next-gen cyberpunk battle royale game enabled by Web3: https://gunzillagames.com/en/

Ordinalsbot - Seed ($3.0M) | Creators and developers platform for inscriptions on Bitcoin’s Ordinals protocol: https://ordinalsbot.com/

Reya Network - Seed ($10.0M) | Trading optimized modular Layer 2 network built for DeFi: https://reya.network/

MetaBlox - Strategic ($5.0M) | Decentralized global WiFi network: https://metablox.io/

Neutronpay - Seed+ ($1.5M) | Payment provider that enables consumers and businesses to send and receive payments using Bitcoin's Lightning Network: https://neutronpay.com/

MyPrize - Seed ($5.0M) | Online crypto casino supporting multiplayer games: https://myprize.com/

MyPrize - Seed ($8.0M) | Online crypto casino supporting multiplayer games: https://myprize.com/

Illuvium - Series A ($12.0M) | Decentralized game studio building an Interoperable Blockchain Game (IBG) universe centered around role playing games (RPG): https://illuvium.io/

Bitlayer - Seed ($5.0M) | Bitcoin security-equivalent Layer 2 based on BitVM: https://www.bitlayer.org/

peaq - Private Sale ($15.0M) | Multi-chain layer one blockchain purposely built and optimized for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN): https://www.peaq.network/

Myshell - Seed+ ($11.0M) | Decentralized AI consumer layer, connectiong, creators, and open-source AI researchers: https://myshell.ai/

Hive - Series A ($13.0M) | Distributed cloud storage platform: https://www.hivenet.com/

BOB (aka. Build on Bitcoin) - Seed ($10.0M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 network with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility: https://www.gobob.xyz/

Unstable - Seed ($2.5M) | Liquid Restaking Token Finance (LRTfi) lending protocol for re-staked ETH: https://www.unstable.money/

Elixir Games - Seed ($14.0M) | Web3 and indie game launcher, distribution platform, and community: https://elixir.games/

7 Digital Labs - Seed ($4.0M) | Web3 game studio and developer of, BloodLoop, a hero shooter game: https://bloodloop.com/home

RUG.AI - Seed ($1.1M) | On-chain trading infrastructure powered by AI: https://rug.ai/signin

Parallel - Private Sale ($35.0M) | Science fiction trading card game enabled by NFTs: https://parallel.life/

Parameta (fka. Icon Loop) - Strategic ($6.7M) | Blockchain development company serving public and enterprise sectors: https://www.parametacorp.com/

Taproot Chain - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Bitcoin-based application layer Layer 2 network: https://taprootchain.io/home

DappOS - Series A ($15.3M) | Operating protocol designed to lower the barriers of interacting with crypto infrastructure using account abstraction and its own network to bridge transactions across DApps and chains: https://dappos.com/

FLock - Seed ($6.0M) | Decentralized, privacy-preserving AI development platform enabled by blockchain Federated Maching Learning: https://www.flock.io/#/

Midas - Seed ($8.8M) | Asset tokenization protocol to issue tokenized real-world assets including US Treasury Bills via mTBILL: https://midas.app/

Biconomy - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Account Abstraction toolkit and Smart Accounts Platform enabling simpler UX for wallet and DApp developers: https://www.biconomy.io/

sophon - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Modular blockchain: https://sophon.xyz/

Arrow Markets - Series A ($4.0M) | Decentralized protocol and trading platform for digitial asset options: https://www.arrow.markets/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

DePIN Ninja, analytics and metrics on the DePIN Ecosystem

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Mar 17-23, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$283M+ was raised across 50 funding rounds in Web3. Dealflow shows no signs of slowing, with this week recording the highest number of announced deals since the start of 2023. Capital is certainly flowing into startups and projects as the broader crypto market maintains optimism, despite a BTC correction last week and a flurry of exuberance in memecoins that has seen millions in capital flow into many short-lived projects. Given these continued favorable market conditions, Layer 1 & 2 projects launching native tokens continue to lead funding, with financial services (i.e., CeFi) also attracting venture capital as trading volumes and transaction fees reach levels seen in 2021-22. Moreover, the venture environment shows signs of improvement as a growing cohort of Web3 companies are able to raise funds beyond Seed and Series A stages.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Figure Markets announced a $60M Series A funding round. The round was led by Jump Crypto, Pantera Capital, and Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Distributed Global, Ribbit Capital, CMT Digital, among others.

Figure Markets is a standalone company that was spun out from fintech firm Figure Technologies, co-founded by Mike Cagney and June Ou, who are also the founders of SoFi. Figure Markets is set to launch a crypto exchange and blockchain-native security marketplace. This exchange plans to leverage a decentralized custody model, incorporating Multi-Party Computation (MPC) wallets to eliminate the need for a central custodian or clearing agent and to mitigate counterparty risk. The platform will also offer liquidity features, providing investors with options for lending and borrowing assets. Moreover, the exchange will start with crypto products but intends to offer trading in a variety of equity, fixed income, and alternative investment products. It will also use the Provenance Blockchain, which was originally developed by Figure Technologies.

Why this matters?👉 Figure Technologies is a sleeping giant in the space of tokenization, having brought over $8 billion worth of consumer loans on-chain. Figure Markets serves as a natural progression as the company doubles down on providing a platform to trade and invest in blockchain-native assets. Not to mention, the founders have successfully built two unicorns. However, while the company shows great promise, over 75% of daily trading volumes occur on the top 10 crypto trading platforms, demonstrating power-law distribution effects in the relatively mature segment for crypto exchanges. This could make it a tough "hill" to climb for a new entrant to capture marketshare, regardless of their pedigree.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Succinct Labs build developer tooling and infrastructure for zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology, aiming to lower the barriers for developers in utilizing ZK proofs.

Its inaugural product, SP1, is an open-source zkVM that enables developers to write in Rust without sacrificing performance. It facilitates the reuse of existing crates and libraries and allows for quick iterations with auditable and maintainable code, eliminating the need for hand-written, specialized approaches to build ZK proofs. Additionally, Succinct plans to launch the Succinct Prover Network, a hosted infrastructure layer allowing any application to outsource proof-generation. This network aims to provide fast and affordable proofs generated by a cadre of specialized provers. Currently, teams such as Celestia, Wormhole, Lido, Avail, Near, and Gnosis utilize Succinct’s infrastructure to develop ZK-enabled applications.

Founded by Uma Roy and John Guibas, Succinct recently announced a combined funding round totaling $55 million ($12 million Seed + $43 million Series A), led by Paradigm with contributions from Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Geometry, ZK Validator, and angels, including Sreeram Kannan from Eigenlayer, Sandeep Nailwal and Daniel Lubarov from Polygon, Elad Gil, among others.

Why this matters?👉 ZK technology has been a frontier technology that historically required specialized expertise and custom cryptography, creating substantial barriers to its effective implementation in everyday applications. Succinct is pivotal as it provides the core tools to simplify the use and potential widespread adoption of ZK proofs. The wide adoption of ZK proofs allows for the verification of information without disclosing specific details, thereby facilitating decentralization at scale and reducing the computational burden on blockchain networks and their applications.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Note - This list does not included the 33 memecoin private sales that have been reported this past week. For a full list of the projects check out ZachXBT’s post or DeFiLlama for further info

TunaChain - Public Sale ($8.9M) | Modular Layer 2 solution on Bitcoin, featuring a ZK-OP hybrid approach that integrates Ethereum's EVM capabilities: https://tunachain.io/

Crypto Rogue Games - Seed ($1.5M) | Web3 game studio and developer of Crystals of Naramunz, a blockchain action role-playing game: https://naramunz.com/

XPLA - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) x| Content-driven, universal gaming and entertainment focused Layer 1 blockchain network developed by Team C2X: https://xpla.io/

Zone (fka. Appzone) - Seed ($8.5M) | Layer 1 blockchain network that enables payments and acceptance of digital currencies: https://zonenetwork.com/

Figure Markets - Series A ($60.0M) | Crypto exchange and blockchain-native security marketplace enabled by decentralized custody via Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology: https://www.figuremarkets.com/

Flash Protocol - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Taproot-powered decentralized protocol to mint, trade and earn Bitcoin native assets: https://flashprotocol.xyz/

Entangle - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Omnichain infrastructure consisting of interoperability primitives and tools including messaging protocol and high-frequency data feeds: https://entangle.fi/

Juice Finance - Seed ($1.0M) | Cross-margin lending platform built on Blast: https://www.juice.finance/

NMKR - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Tokenization service to create and managed tokenized assets or NFTs on the Cardano blockchain network: https://www.nmkr.io/

Tokenize - Series A+ ($11.5M) | Digital asset exchange catered to the South East Asian market: https://tokenize.exchange/

Keyring Network - Seed ($6.0M) | Institutional-grade compliance solution and permissioning tools for compliant transactions on-chain, powered by zero-knowledge (ZK) technology: https://keyring.network/

Mantra - Private Sale ($11.0M) | Layer 1 blockchain catered to tokenized real world assets (RWAs): https://www.mantrachain.io/

ZKasino - Series A (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized crypto betting and blockchain casino leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology: https://play.zkasino.io/

Bitbrand - Seed ($0.5M) | Luxury digital products and content platform enabled by blockchain technology: https://bitbrand.com/

Trex20 - Seed ($1.0M) x| GameFi platform built on Bitcoin: https://trex20.xyz/

Metaverse HQ - Seed ($1.1M) | Web3 technology community and membership program: https://www.mvhq.io/

GRVT - Strategic ($2.2M) | Hybrid exchange (HEX) for cryptocurrency derivatives enabled by zero-knowledge (zk) proof technology built on zkSync: https://grvt.io/

CarrieVerse - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Content-rich metaverse platform built around a virtual character called Carrie and her friends: https://www.carrieverse.com/

Umoja - Seed+ ($2.0M) | Digital asset hedging protocol to minimize cryptocurrency exposure risk from market losses: https://umoja.xyz/

HyperPlay - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 game launcher that enables players to carry their wallet, NFTs, tokens, and achievements into every game: https://www.hyperplay.xyz/

Dolomite - Strategic ($0.9M) | Decentralized margin trading and lending protocol built on Arbitrum: https://dolomite.io/

Gull Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Layer 3 solution for customizable token launches powered by Manta Network: https://www.gullnetwork.com/

Cathedral Studios - Seed ($6.7M) | Game studio and developer of Bornless, a free-to-play first-person-shooter horror game: https://www.thebornless.com/

Kemet Trading - Seed+ ($5.0M) | Institutional-grade single access point for digital asset derivatives trading, liquidity, data, trade execution and post-trade workflows: https://www.kemettrading.com/

EarlyFans - Seed ($1.5M) | SocialFi app built on Blast enabling creators to monetize their content: https://www.earlyfans.xyz/

Morph - Seed ($20.0M) | Consumer-centric layer 2 blockchain combining optimistic rollups and zero-knowledge (ZK) technology: https://www.morphl2.io/

Ooga Booga - Seed ($1.0M) | Decentralized exchange aggregator based on Berachain: https://www.oogabooga.io/

eesee - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Gamified social marketplace for digital assets: https://eesee.io/

Mystiko.Network - Seed ($18.0M) | Zero knowledge (ZK) technology general infrastructure layer for Web3 providing a universal ZK protocol and a ZK software development kit: https://mystiko.network/

Castle of Blackwater - Private Sale ($1.0M) | Web3 social deduction game: https://castleofblackwater.com/

Asterix - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Developer of DND404 contract that interlinks a fungible ERC-20 and non-fungible ERC-721 token contracts: https://www.asterixlabs.io/

Cluster Protocol - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized network for compute resources enabling AI applications: https://www.clusterprotocol.io/

Nebula Revelation - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Web3 space-themed open-world game: https://nebularevelation.com/

Savage - Seed ($1.5M) | NFT ecosystem for photographers and videographers: https://savage.app/

KiloEx - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | User-friendly decentralized exchange for perpetual futures: https://www.kiloex.io/

OpenStamp - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Marketplace and mint service for BTC Stamps (SRC20, STAMPS, and SRC721) built on the STAMP Protocol: https://openstamp.io/home

CoinMart - Strategic ($3.0M) | Crypto trading platform and personal AI assistant: https://www.coinmart.nl/en

Tensorplex Labs - Seed ($3.0M) | Decentralized platform for open-source AI development and applications, leveraging existing principles of decentralized finance and proof-of-stake networks: https://www.tensorplex.ai/

Tanssi Network (Moondance Labs) - Private Sale ($6.0M) | Infrastructure protocol for deploying appchains via parachains on the Polkadot network: https://www.tanssi.network/

Bi.Social (aka. Bit Islands) - Seed ($3.0M) | Web3 social network for investment and trading: https://bi.social/

ANVM (aka. AINN Layer2) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | EVM-compatible Bitcoin Layer2 network: https://anvm.io/

Espresso Systems - Series B ($28.0M) | Decentralized sequencer infrastructure for rollups enabled by the HotShot Layer 1 network: https://www.espressosys.com/

Succinct Labs - Seed ($12.0M) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) proof infrastructure including SP1, an open-source zkVM, and the Succinct Prover Network: https://succinct.xyz/

Succinct Labs - Series A ($43.0M) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) proof infrastructure including SP1, an open-source zkVM, and the Succinct Prover Network: https://succinct.xyz/

Rails - Seed ($6.2M) | Self-custodial crypto and derivatives exchange that leverages a central order book: https://rails.xyz/

Rollie Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized perpetual exchanges built on Scroll: https://www.rollie.finance/

GAM3S.GG (fka. Polkastarter Gaming) - Private Sale ($2.0M) | Web3 game discovery and content aggregation platform formerly known as Polkastarter Gaming: https://gam3s.gg/

Sablier Finance - Seed ($4.5M) | Digital asset and token distribution streaming protocol: https://sablier.com/

Plena Finance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Multi-chain, self-custodial wallet that supports account abstraction and offers encrypted news and insights: https://www.plena.finance/

Botto - Private Sale ($1.7M) | Decentralized autonomous artist platform that creates fine art NFTs based collective feedback from the community: https://botto.com/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

Dragonfly 2023 Crypto Compensation Report

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.

🗓️ Week of: Mar 10-16, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$1.74B+ was raised across 43 funding rounds in Web3. The week was marked by two significant public market deals, including Coinbase's $1.1B convertible note deal and Bitfarms' announcement of a $375M at-the-market equity offering program. However, excluding these two transactions, over $274M in capital was raised in venture-backed rounds, a level consistent with what we've observed since February. Both deal flow and capital investment continue to remain strong as crypto markets rally further into a bull market.

The rally in 2024 also appears to be impacting the types of projects obtaining the most funding given crypto’s overall market cap is over $2.7T. Base protocols, including Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain networks, have seen an uptick in funding since February. Many of these projects opt for private token raises, given the role that tokens play for utility and security within the networks. Most notably, this includes Berachain's $69M raise (covered in this edition) and Monad's reported $200M raise, which is set to close soon. Moreover the market is providing optimal timing for projects looking to launch a token while also capturing very healthy valuations.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

(Note: Excludes public market deals)

➡️ Berachain announced $69M in a private token sale co-led by Brevan Howard's crypto arm, BH Digital and Framework Ventures. The round reportedly valued the project at $1.5B. The funding round also comes less than 12 months from a $42M token raise in April 2023, which included notable investors Polychain, Hack VC, Shima Capital, and Robot Ventures amont others.

Berachain is a high-performance EVM-compatible modular Layer 1 blockchain. The network uses Proof-of-Liquidity, a novel consensus mechanism adapted from CometBFT (a fork for Tendermint Core, pioneered by the Cosmos network) that aims to align network incentives, creating synergies between Berachain validators and the ecosystem of projects and minimizing the adverse impacts of staking centralization. The Berachain Protocol is built on Polaris, a high-performance blockchain framework for building EVM-compatible application, which allows for smart contracts compiled from Solidity or Vyper. Furthermore, the network is enabled by three main tokens:

• BERA, a transactional utility token used to pay transaction fees,

• BGT, a governance token used to secure the network through staking with validators,

• Honey, a native stablecoin for the network pegged one-to-one with USDC

The project was originally started as a NFT collection geared to the DeFi community, before eventually shifting development towards a DeFi focused Layer 1 network. The project's co-founders remain pseudonymous, including Smokey The Bera and Dev Bear, who all boast pseudonyms in line with the project's cartoon-bear theme.

Why this matters?👉 2024 has minted yet another unicorn, at least on the basis of protocol valuation. Berachain has already built an extensive following among DeFi enthusiasts and was of the talks at ETH Denver. With a sizable valuation, it remains to be seen if the project can live up to expectations once it releases its mainnet later this year. Much of its appeal comes from the creation of a purpose-built Layer 1 network aimed at DeFi, made possible by the increasing trend towards modular blockchain architectures.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Elixir is a modular delegated proof of stake (DPoS) network designed to enhance liquidity on orderbook exchanges. It allows users to supply liquidity to trading pairs in order to earn rewards. The protocol is cross-chain and composable, enabling orderbook decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to natively integrate Elixir into their infrastructure. This integration allows exchanges to bootstrap liquidity by tapping into the Elixir network, thereby offering greater liquidity for various trading pairs. Currently, there are 30+ native integrations across leading DEXs.

Recently, Elixir announced a $8M Series B funding round, valuing the project at $800M. The round was co-led by Mysten Labs, developers of the Sui blockchain, and Maelstrom, the family office of Arthur Hayes, with participation from Manifold Trading, Amber Group, GSR, and Flowdesk. This round follows a $7.5M Series A in October 2023 led by Hack VC, and a $2.1M Seed round in January 2023.

Why this matters?👉 Elixir was first featured in Funding Round Up #42. Most noteworthy is the company's ability to close three funding rounds in under 18 months, clearly signaling that the project is demonstrating promising signs of traction and potential profitability. The project appears to have been successful in pooling liquidity and making it available across multiple DEXs, which is likely becoming a valuable resource as trading volumes have been soaring since the start of 2024.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: hello@aweb3vc.com

All Rounds

Bitfarms - Private Placement ($375.0M) | Global vertically integrated Bitcoin mining operation: https://bitfarms.com/

Tookeez - Seed ($1.5M) | Blockchain-based loyalty points and rewards platform for brands and retailers: https://www.tookeez.com/

DreamOS - Seed ($2.1M) | Intuitive, and user-centric way multi-chain wallet: https://www.dreamos.app/

UniSat - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Non-custodial wallet for Bitcoin, Ordinals, and other BRC-20 assets: https://unisat.io/

Bluwhale - Seed ($7.0M) | Web3 wallet analytics tool leveraging personalized AI and contextual data: https://www.bluwhale.com/

Eclipse - Series A ($50.0M) | Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain network built to leverage the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM): https://www.eclipse.xyz/

Blockus - Seed ($4.0M) | All-in-one Web3 game development stack: https://www.blockus.gg/

NFTfi - Series A+ ($6.0M) | Peer-to-peer, decentralized lending protocol for NFT collateralized loans: https://nftfi.com/

XLink - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Universal bridge protocol connection Bitcoin assets to other Bitcoin Layer 2 and EVM chains: https://www.xlink.network/

MetaCene - Series A ($10.0M) | Blockchain based massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG): https://metacene.io/

Elixir - Series B ($8.0M) | Automated market maker protocol across centralized and decentralized exchanges: https://elixir.finance/

Kaskade Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cross-chain incentivization layer solving for liquidity bootstrapping: https://www.kaskade.finance/

SnowSeed (aka. PT. Gaudi Verse) - Strategic ($5.0M) | NFT and asset-backed token issuance and crowdfunding platform: https://www.snowseed.io/

Oneness - Seed ($4.0M) | Modular gaming-intent Bitcoin Layer 2 network designed for consumer-grade games: https://onenesslabs.io/

Studio 369 (aka. Metalcore) - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Web3 game studio and developer of Metalcore, a mechanized combat NFT-based game set in a chaotic alien world: https://www.metalcore.gg/

DeMAR - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized Mixed Reality (MR) infrastructure network (MR-DePIN) built on Solana: https://www.demr.xyz/#/

Muchables - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Gamefi game based on Blast: https://www.munchables.app/

Asterix - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Developer of DND404 contract that interlinks a fungible ERC-20 and non-fungible ERC-721 token contracts: https://www.asterixlabs.io/

UXLINK - Private Sale ($9.0M) | Web3 social infrastructure featuring social protocols and series of social networking DApps: https://www.uxlink.io/

ClearToken - Seed ($10.0M) | Developer of clearing house and Central Counterparty (CCP) for digital asset markets: https://cleartoken.io/

OrangeDX - Private Sale ($1.5M) | Bitcoin and BRC20 DeFi hub, offering trading, swap, lending, and more: https://orangedx.com/

BitRealms - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Open metaverse social gaming platform built on Merlin Chain within the Bitcoin ecosystem: https://bitrealms.ai/

Eyris - Seed ($3.0M) | Cybersecurity and data protection platform enabled by private blokchain technology: https://eyris.tech/

Fjord Foundry - Seed ($4.3M) | Liquidity Bootstrapping Platform (LBP) connecting projects with engaged backers to generate liquidity for new tokens: https://www.fjordfoundry.com/

Coinbase - Convertible Note ($1,100.0M) | Cryptocurrency exchange and cryptocurrency wallet platform that allows users to buy, sell, and store various cryptocurrencies: https://www.coinbase.com/

DLC.Link - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Cross-chain infrastructure to enable smart contract settlement on native Bitcoin using Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs): https://www.dlc.link/

SHUI - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Liquid staking protocol built for the Conflux network: https://app.shui.finance

Polyhedra Network - Private Sale ($20.0M) | Interoperability, privacy, and scalability platform that uses zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology to develop applications including, a ZK bridge (zkBridge), a ZK decentralized identity solution (zkDID) and a scalability solution using a large-scale distributed proof generation network (ParaPlonk): https://polyhedra.network/

Clique - Series A ($8.0M) | Compute coordination network organizing various heterogeneous compute resources to be allocated for general applications and smart contracts: https://www.clique.tech/

mmERCH - Seed ($6.4M) | Web3 fashion brand leveraging generative algorithms to create digital and physical garments: https://www.mmerch.xyz/

Pallet Exchange - Seed ($2.5M) | Social NFT marketplace based on the Sei blockchain: https://pallet.exchange/

Param Labs - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Game developer specializing in multiplayer blockchain games including Kiraverse and Pixel to Poly: https://paramlabs.io/

Range - Seed ($2.7M) | Security infrastructure for sovereign blockchains and rollups, focusing on the Cosmos and modular ecosystems and bridges such as the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC): https://www.range.org/

D2X - Series A ($10.0M) | Pan-European institutional exchange for digital asset futures and options: https://www.d2x.com/

Carbonated - Series A ($13.0M) | Web3 gaming studio and developer of MadWorld, an apocalyptic NFT shooting game: https://playmadworld.com/

Berachain - Private Sale ($69.0M) | EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, built using the Cosmos SDK, and secured by the Proof-of-Liquidity Consensus Protocol: https://berachain.com/

Syntropy - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized, multi-purpose on-chain data streaming oracle for applications and blockchains: https://www.syntropynet.com/

9 Lives Interactive (aka. Nyan Heroes) - Strategic ($3.0M) | Developer of Nyan Heros, a third-person shooter game built on the Solana blockchain: https://nyanheroes.com/

Meson Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) and marketplace for bandwidth: https://www.meson.network/

Avalon Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized lending protocol built on Merlin Chain within the Bitcoin ecosystem: https://www.avalonfinance.xyz/

Ten (fka. Obscuro) - Private Sale ($9.0M) | EVM-based encrypted Layer 2 for Ethereum using Secure Enclave technology: https://www.ten.xyz/

Pac Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Self-paying lending and margin trading protocol built on Blast L2: https://pac.finance/

Honeypot Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Community-run DeFi hub built on Berachain: https://honeypotfinance.xyz/

New Funds

Thirdweb - Superchain App Accelerator ($3M)

🙌 Cool Resources

BTC ETFs Dashboard by hildobby

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.