This week, there were 6 financing events of over 10 million US dollars:
Open-source encryption company Zama completed a $73 million Series A financing, led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs.
Solana ecosystem DePIN protocol io.net completed a $30 million Series A financing, led by Hack VC.
Cryptocurrency payment company Baanx completed a $20 million Series A financing, with participation from Ledger and others.
L2 network Taiko completed a $15 million Series A financing, with Hashed leading the investment.
Institutional-grade encryption service platform Utila completed a $11.5 million seed round financing, with participation from Framework Ventures and others.
DWF Labs plans to purchase $10 million worth of TokenFi tokens to promote the development of AI products.
This week, the financing heat in the cryptocurrency market remains high, with a surge in financing events of over 10 million US dollars. The AI track and Bitcoin ecosystem financing activities are active, and financing heat continues in the infrastructure and DeFi fields, presenting a diversified trend in financing tracks and sectors. Privacy project Zama harvested the largest financing this week.
The financing projects this week are sorted by financing amount in the following chart:
AI
According to Star Daily, Synnax Tech, a digital asset credit rating project based on artificial intelligence, announced the completion of a $1 million Pre-Seed round of financing on the X platform, led by No Limit Holdings, with participation from Bitscale Capital, MH Ventures, Edessa Capital, and Ryze Labs. Synnax aims to build AI-driven credit rating standards for the digital asset industry and address core issues such as data opacity in the digital asset rating market using decentralized networks.
Foresight News reported that decentralized artificial intelligence network Sahara announced the completion of a $6 million seed round financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, dao5, Geekcartel, Canonical Crypto, Nomad Capital, Dispersion Capital, Alumni Ventures, Tangent Ventures, and angel investor Sandeep Nailwal. Sahara is a trustless, permissionless, and privacy-centric network that can create customized autonomous knowledge agents for individuals and businesses, allowing users to monetize their knowledge capital through artificial intelligence exploration using its decentralized network.
ChainCatcher reported that digital asset market maker and multi-stage Web3 investment institution DWF Labs announced its intention to purchase $10,000,000 worth of TokenFi tokens as part of its vision to support TokenFi in becoming a leader in the tokenization industry. This acquisition will be carried out by the TokenFi finance department over a two-year period and will ensure that TokenFi has sufficient resources to develop innovative and competitive products, including products combining artificial intelligence (AI), such as TokenFi Generative AI for NFTs and TokenFi AI Smart Contract Auditor.
ChainCatcher also reported that DePIN+AI project Privasea announced the completion of a $5 million seed round financing. Early investors include Binance Labs, MH Ventures, K300, Gate Labs, 1NVST, Zephyrus Capital, and others. Privasea will integrate FHEML into a distributed computing power crowdfunding network and combine it with its self-developed DePIN mining machine to form an FHE computing power network supporting all L1 and L2. The funds from this round of financing will be used for the construction of the FHEML network and the promotion of the "Proof of Human" Dapp adopting FHE technology.
Infrastructure
According to The Block, Cosmos ecosystem development platform Cosmology completed a $5 million seed round financing, led by Galileo and Lemniscap, with participation from Dispersion, HashKey, Tuesday Capital, Osmosis Foundation, Chorus One, and Informal Systems, among others. The company did not disclose its valuation. Cosmosology provides a full-stack development environment, including Tendermint developer tools, Cosmos SDK, and Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. These tools (such as Telescope and Cosmos Kit) aim to simplify the development process of applications on Cosmos.
Foresight News reported that Mirana Ventures announced a new long-term partnership with TON, including the purchase of TON for $8 million in the secondary market. As part of this new partnership, Mirana Ventures will have exclusive access to the Telegram advertising platform. This opportunity will enable Mirana and its partners (including Mantle and Bybit) to utilize tailored advertising strategies aimed at promoting community participation and growth within the TON ecosystem.
ChainCatcher reported that cryptocurrency risk analysis and rating startup Agio Rating announced the completion of a total of $4.6 million in two rounds of financing. The financing, which took place in 2023 but was only recently made public, includes investments from Superscrypt, Portage, MS&AD Ventures, and several angel investors. Agio Rating aims to become the "Moody's" of the cryptocurrency industry, primarily helping market makers, brokers, and lenders in the digital asset ecosystem assess the counterparty risk of cryptocurrency transactions. It has already rated 32 cryptocurrency companies.
DeFi
According to BlockBeats, on March 6, according to The Block, on-chain transaction fee hedging protocol Hedgehog completed a $1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from Marshland Capital, Tenzor Capital, Prometeus Ventures, 3Commas Capital, and Nothing Research. Angel investors include Vasiliy Shapovalov, co-founder of Lido Finance. Hedgehog aims to solve the problem of significant fluctuations in cryptocurrency transaction fees and create an asset whose price reflects the current transaction fee price of Ethereum. Once such an asset is created, anyone can long or short it to hedge future transaction fee prices.
Foresight News reported that the lending protocol Orbit Protocol of the Blast ecosystem claimed to have received strategic investment from Manifold and established a partnership. The Orbit Protocol is a decentralized lending protocol on Blast designed to enhance the lending experience with native yield. It creates a money market for lenders and borrowers using Blast assets, aiming to introduce a competitive revenue generation method.
ChainCatcher reported that the Scallop lending protocol in the Sui ecosystem announced the completion of a $3 million strategic financing on social platforms, with joint leading investment from THE CMS and 6MV, and participation from KuCoin Labs, 7UpDAO, Side Door Ventures, Oak Grove Ventures, Signum Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund, Cypher Capital Group, Mysten Labs, Kyros Ventures, and others.
Scallop is the currency market in the Sui ecosystem. By emphasizing institutional-grade quality, enhanced composability, and strong security, Scallop is committed to building a dynamic currency market, offering high-yield lending, low-cost lending, AMM, and asset management tools on a unified platform, and providing SDKs for professional traders.
Bitcoin Ecosystem
ChainCatcher reported that Bison Labs announced the completion of a Pre-Seed round of financing, aiming to pioneer a Bitcoin Layer 2 network with trustless and on-chain sovereign Rollup solutions. This round of financing was led by Portal Ventures, with participation from UTXO Fund, Domo (BRC-20 creator), Linus Chuang, Chief Product Officer of Magic Eden, Waterdrip Capital, Bitcoin Startup Labs, Satoshi Lab, and other strategic investors. Bison Labs is a sovereign Rollup solution using ZK proofs on Bitcoin, with the smallest trust assumptions and the highest security in the market. Unlike existing Layer 2 solutions, Bison Labs prioritizes a trustless system without external trust assumptions through client-side verification and asset protection in a co-custodial DLC. This approach ensures security and prevents key leakage.
According to DeepTechFlow, Taproot Labs announced a joint strategic investment from Waterdrip Capital, Satoshi Lab, and Negentropy Capital. Taproot Labs focuses on developing Bitcoin Layer 2 applications and a multi-chain asset trading platform based on the Lightning Network's Taproot Assets Protocol. The company has launched two product lines, Taproot Chain and Taproot Exchange, aiming to provide stable, high-speed, and secure application layer solutions for the BTC ecosystem.
PANews reported that Mirror L2 announced the completion of its first round of financing from UTXO (Bitcoin magazine's investment department), Conflux, and IMO Ventures. Mirror L2 (MirrorL2.com) is a decentralized Proof of Stake (POS) BTC Layer 2 network, compatible with EVM, and using BTC as GAS. Mirror, with a top conference paper, has elaborated on the grid team's multi-signature system algorithm, achieving hundreds of nodes' joint multi-signature governance and truly decentralized Bitcoin staking, while also considering the efficiency of multi-signature staking and ensuring absolute security of staking.
Sports and Entertainment
Jinse Finance reported that the blockchain sports betting platform SX Network announced the completion of a strategic round of financing, led by Draper Dragon, with participation from CMCC Global, CMS Holdings, and several angel investors. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. SX Network aims to enhance fairness and transparency using blockchain, publishing every betting transaction on the blockchain. Its application is expected to be launched on Arbitrum in the coming weeks.
ChainCatcher reported, according to Korean media hankyung, that the Web3 fan collaboration platform Hypercomic completed a Series A financing round, led by Logan Ventures. The valuation of the company in this round of financing is close to 11 billion Korean won (approximately $8.26 million), with the specific amount of financing not disclosed.
Security Solutions
ChainCatcher reported, according to The Block, that security infrastructure company Firewall completed a $3.7 million Pre-Seed financing, jointly led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Hack VC. The raised funds will be used to expand the current team of six full-time employees, develop technology, and support community building and marketing. Firewall is developing firewall solutions for blockchain networks to prevent smart contract vulnerabilities.
Foresight News reported that Web3 security company CredShields announced the completion of a $1.8 million financing, with participation from Draper Associates. The new funds will be used to develop its AI-supported smart contract scanner SolidityScan. CredShields is a network security company specializing in Web3 security and is building SolidityScan.com, a cloud-based smart contract security scanner that provides audit reports with a single click.
CeFi
According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency payment company Baanx announced the completion of a $20 million Series A financing, with investments from Ledger, Tezos, Chiron, and a UK commercial bank, bringing the company's total funding to over $30 million. Baanx is a cryptocurrency payment company authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and operates the Ledger card product. It recently signed a three-year partnership with Mastercard in the UK and Europe.
Gaming
Jinse Finance reported that according to the official announcement, the RIFT Foundation announced the completion of a $3 million strategic financing to support the ChronoForge ecosystem. This round of financing was participated in by well-known web3 and gaming content creators such as Alex Becker, FaZe Banks, EllioTrades, as well as some funds and communities, including Citizen Capital, SwissBorg, XBorg, MH Ventures, and others. ChronoForge is a multiplayer action role-playing game built on Immutable and Raid.
Modular
Foresight News reported that modular blockchain Blackwing completed a $4.5 million financing, led by Hashed and Gumi Cryptos. Blackwing will develop a modular Layer 2 blockchain designed for non-liquidation leveraged trading of assets. Blackwing adopts a method called Limitless Pools, allowing users to trade with borrowed funds without facing forced liquidation.
ZK
ChainCatcher reported that the Ethereum Layer 2 network Taiko, based on zkRollup, announced the completion of a $15 million Series A financing, led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures, and Token Bay Capital, with participation from Wintermute Ventures, Presto Labs, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures, GSR, WW Ventures, and others. According to data from the crypto data platform RootData, Taiko has currently completed a total of $37 million in financing through three rounds. Since 2022, Taiko has released six testnets and has over 1.1 million independent wallets. Its Alpha-6 testnet, Katla, has executed over 13 million transactions as of January this year. Taiko plans to introduce new technology to solve liquidity fragmentation issues and launch the second phase of developer incentive programs in December 2023. Additionally, Taiko has committed to allocating 1% of the token supply to the Ethereum core development organization Protocol Guild.
Social
According to Cryptonews, Web3 social platform Beoble announced the completion of a strategic round of financing with investment from Animoca Brands, although the specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. Beble will provide its chat functionality to companies and projects under Animoca Brands to enhance community engagement and interactivity in the entire Web3 ecosystem.
Privacy
According to The Block, open-source encryption company Zama announced the completion of a $73 million Series A financing, jointly led by Multicoin Capital and Filecoin developer Protocol Labs, with participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, Vsquared Ventures, and Stake Capital. In addition, angel investors including Filecoin founder Juan Benet, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood also participated in this round of investment. Zama, co-founded by Hindi and Pascal Paillier in early 2020, plans to use the new financing to continue researching and developing its FHE tools. Hindi stated that since the early research, Zama has achieved a 100x performance improvement, and now its goal is to achieve another 1,000x performance improvement to support large-scale applications.
Depin
ChainCatcher reported that the Solana ecosystem DePIN protocol io.net announced the completion of a $30 million Series A financing, led by Hack VC, with participation from Multicoin Capital, 6th Man Ventures, M13, Delphi Digital, Solana Labs, Aptos Labs, Foresight Ventures, Longhash, SevenX, ArkStream, Animoca Brands, Continue Capital, MH Ventures, and OKX, as well as industry leaders including Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenk, Aptos founders Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, Animoca Brands' Yat Siu, and Perlone Capital's Jin Kang. io.net is a decentralized computing network that supports the development, execution, and expansion of ML applications on the Solana blockchain, combining 1 million GPUs to form the world's largest GPU cluster. DePIN.io.net aggregates GPUs from underutilized resources (such as independent data centers, crypto miners, and projects like Filecoin and Render) to solve this problem, combining these resources in a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) to provide engineers with a large amount of computing power in an accessible, customizable, cost-effective, and easy-to-implement system.
Wallet
According to The Block, institutional-grade crypto service platform Utila announced the completion of a $11.5 million seed round financing, with participation from NFX, Wing VC, and Framework Ventures. Utila primarily helps institutions and developers securely manage digital assets through its non-custodial, chain-agnostic wallet. The company claims to have been used by dozens of institutional investors and cryptocurrency native companies, facilitating over $3 billion in transactions in the past six months.
Marketing Solutions
According to The Block, on-chain points infrastructure startup Stack completed a $3 million seed round financing, led by venture capital firm Archetype, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Scalar Capital, A.Capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Nadav Hollander, Henri Stern, Cooper Turley, and Colin Armstrong. Stack has built a framework for on-chain allocation and tracking of points, including point distribution, leaderboards, and trustless token exchange. Users can exchange points for ERC-20 tokens, ETH, or other assets.
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