Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, last week (5.11-5.17) there were 13 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector, with a total funding amount exceeding $530 million, as summarized below:
DeFi sector reported 3 investment and financing events, with the BNB ecological DeFi platform Eleutheria completing a $5 million strategic financing round, backed by Alpha Capital;
Web3+AI sector announced 2 investment and financing events, with AI trading laboratory Nof1 completing $15 million in financing, co-led by SUI Group and Karatage;
Infrastructure & Tools sector reported 5 investment and financing events, including a $120 million funding for blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, reaching a valuation of $670 million;
Centralized Finance field reported 3 investment and financing events, with the stablecoin new bank Fasset completing $51 million in Series B financing, backed by SBI Group and others
DeFi
Stablecoin yield project Osero completes $13.5 million financing, led by Sky Ecosystem
Stablecoin yield infrastructure project Osero has completed $13.5 million in financing, led by Sky Ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO), with Plasma participating; the financing is structured entirely as a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT), with valuation undisclosed. Osero is incubated by stablecoin yield data and risk control platform Stablewatch, focusing on providing savings infrastructure for Sky ecosystem stablecoins USDS (formerly DAI) and sUSDS, allowing individuals and institutions to access the Sky Savings Rate through the Osero App and Osero Earn, and integrates with wallets, banks, exchanges, etc. The company will use $10 million as a risk reserve to absorb potential loss buffers, with relevant deployments requiring adherence to the Sky risk assessment framework based on Basel III.
The BNB ecological decentralized finance platform Eleutheria has announced the completion of a $5 million strategic financing round, with Alpha Capital participating; valuation information has not been disclosed, and the new funds will support its building of on-chain financial services through trustless code-driven DeFi and tamper-proof smart contracts.
The stablecoin startup Boundary Labs has completed $2 million in Pre-Seed financing, led by Galaxy Ventures, with First Block Capital and BlackWood participating. The company plans to launch its institutional "verifiable" stablecoin USBD on the Ethereum mainnet in early summer 2026. Boundary's co-founder and CEO Matthew Mezger stated that USBD is designed with an on-chain verifiability mechanism that revolves around reserve capital, net asset value, and protocol performance, providing daily system status reports, including excess collateral levels and real-time NAV calculations, aimed at transitioning stablecoins from trust-based models to trustless tools.
USBD itself does not accrue interest, but the protocol will offer a separate staking token, sUSBD, allowing eligible institutional participants to earn protocol revenues through neutral hedging DeFi strategies. Protocol revenues will be used to build treasury reserves, fund operations, and distribute earnings to sUSBD stakers through an on-chain distribution system.
AI
AI trading laboratory Nof1 completes $15 million financing, co-led by SUI Group and Karatage
AI trading laboratory Nof1 is gaining attention from Wall Street, as its Alpha Arena is testing the autonomous trading capabilities of cutting-edge models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI in real markets. Reports indicate that Nasdaq-listed SUI Group and London hedge fund Karatage co-led Nof1's $15 million financing round, simultaneously investing in the AI startup Recursive Superintelligence. Nof1 stated that its Alpha Arena project trains AI models for risk control, position management, and market adaptation in real funding environments. The company plans to launch a consumer-facing market coding agent platform after the end of the second quarter.
AI-driven character asset economy platform Charms completes $1.5 million Pre-seed financing
AI-driven character asset economy platform Charms has completed $1.5 million in Pre-seed financing, with investors including Lattice Fund, Base Ecosystem Fund, and JME Ventures. Charms is a platform that deeply integrates AI characters with on-chain economies, turning emotional interactions into tradable digital assets, allowing users to create, interact with, own, and monetize AI-driven characters.
Infrastructure & Tools
USDC issuer Circle raised $222 million in the presale of the native token of its new public chain Arc, corresponding to a fully diluted network valuation of about $3 billion. This round was led by a16z crypto, with participation from approximately ten institutions including BlackRock, Apollo Funds, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange ICE, SBI Group, Janus Henderson, Standard Chartered Ventures, and ARK Invest. Arc is positioned as a public chain for institutional finance, with Circle holding 25% of the initial supply of 10 billion tokens and planning to earn fees and staking income through operating validators, with 60% of tokens allocated to participants building and using on the Arc network and 15% as long-term reserves. Circle claims it will launch tools and services supporting AI Agents in trading and payments using USDC around Arc.
It was reported that a16z invested $75 million in Circle's Arc network
According to Bloomberg, blockchain analytics company Elliptic has completed a new round of financing of $120 million, with the latest valuation approximately $670 million. This round was led by investment firm One Peak Partners, with Deutsche Bank, Nasdaq's venture capital division, and British Business Bank participating, alongside continued support from existing shareholders like JPMorgan Chase. Founded in 2013, Elliptic provides cryptocurrency transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering, sanctions compliance tools for financial and law enforcement agencies. Currently, the company screens over 1 billion transactions weekly for more than 700 clients to support the compliance operations needed for large banks, asset management firms, and fintech companies in conducting digital asset business.
Financial infrastructure platform Stitch completes $25 million Series A financing, led by a16z
Financial infrastructure platform Stitch announced it has completed its Series A financing of $25 million, led by a16z, with participation from Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed VC, and SVC. Stitch states that current financial institutions are slow to initiate due to fragmented legacy systems and cannot keep up with AI development, while Stitch addresses this issue by providing a unified platform and API through unified ledgers, financial primitives, and workflows.
Cryptocurrency wallet and key management infrastructure company Turnkey has completed $12.5 million in strategic financing, with Archetype, Circle Ventures, and existing investors participating, bringing the total financing amount to over $65 million. Bain Capital Crypto, Galaxy Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Variant, and Lightspeed Faction also participated in this round of financing. The new funds will primarily be used to develop and publicly launch Turnkey Verifiable Cloud, a product positioned as a secure computing platform for digital assets and sensitive workloads.
Turnkey was founded by former Coinbase Custody employees Bryce Ferguson and Jack Kearney, and its infrastructure is currently applied in scenarios such as non-custodial wallets, automated on-chain transactions, and intelligent signature control, with clients including Flutterwave, World App, Polymarket, and Anchorage Digital.
Digital Asset Clearing Center (DACC), a tokenized financial market infrastructure, has announced the completion of $10 million in strategic financing, with Conflux, Global InfoTech, Fosun International, Blockstone, Avior Capital, Fintech World, Satoshi Ventures, and BridgeTower participating. DACC currently provides end-to-end "Clearing-as-a-Service" to financial institutions, and the new funds will support building compliant financial settlement and clearing infrastructure.
Centralized Finance
Stablecoin-driven new bank Fasset has completed $51 million in Series B financing, with participation from Japan's SBI Group, Investcorp, and Turkish asset management company Arz Portföy, with specific valuation undisclosed. Fasset stated that the new funds will be used to expand into more markets, develop loan and trade finance products for small and medium-sized enterprises, and extend its stablecoin payment and custodian infrastructure "Own Network."
Fasset is headquartered in Los Angeles and currently operates over 50 payment corridors in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, using stablecoins for cross-border transfers. The company claims that its platform covers 125 countries, serving over 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, with an annual transaction volume exceeding $32 billion. Additionally, Fasset previously collaborated with Tether to launch a new card product tied to tokenized assets.
Augustus announces $40 million financing and obtains rare banking license from the OCC
New bank Augustus has received a nationwide bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and has completed $40 million in financing. Founded in 2022, the bank holds a European license and can clear cross-border euro transactions, serving clients such as cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, with an annual processing volume reaching billions of euros and growing tenfold year-on-year. The OCC has only issued this type of license to a few institutions; others such as Ripple are primarily limited to trust licenses. Augustus plans to leverage AI and stablecoins to reconstruct the cross-border clearing system, bypassing the traditional intermediary banking model reliant on human approval, with its management team comprising former OCC executives and ex-JPMorgan management.
Bitcoin custody platform Onramp has completed $12.5 million in Series A financing, with a pre-financing valuation of $135 million. This round was led by Early Riders, with Onramp CEO Michael Tanguma also being a partner at Early Riders. Onramp adopts a multi-institution joint custody model, requiring joint authorization from multiple custodians before transferring Bitcoin assets. Its cooperative custodial institutions include BitGo, Coincover, and Tetra Trust. Its current clients are mainly high-net-worth individuals and family office clients, with plans to open custody infrastructure licensing services to banks, fintech companies, and exchanges in the future and expand financial services such as treasury tools, Bitcoin IRAs, payment cards, and cash accounts.
DAT
French listed company Capital B (ALCPB) has announced the completion of €15.2 million in financing, with investors including global institutional investors as well as strategic investors Adam Back and TOBAM, to accelerate its Bitcoin treasury company strategy.
Equity Acquisition
Yonhap: Korean Investment Securities and OKX promote joint acquisition of Coinone shares
According to sources cited by Yonhap, Korean Investment Securities is advancing a joint acquisition plan for shares of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinone with global cryptocurrency exchange OKX, with both parties discussing acquiring approximately 20% of the shares, potentially through a new stock issuance aimed at maximizing capital inflow. The share participation is expected to be of a financial investment nature, with no change in Coinone's management rights. Current major shareholders of Coinone include The One Group (34.30%), Com2us Holdings (21.95%), and CEO Cha Myung-hoon (19.14%).
Hana Financial Group will invest approximately 1 trillion won (approximately $667 million) to acquire a 6.55% stake in Dunamu, the operator of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit.
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