Overview: Biscuits, RootData

According to RootData's incomplete statistics, from August 7th to August 13th, 2023, there were a total of 20 public financing events in the blockchain and crypto industry, with a total financing of approximately 78.6 million USD, and a significant increase in the number of financings.

In terms of track distribution, the tracks that received the most financing last week were DeFi and crypto security, with 5 DeFi protocols and 3 security companies disclosing financing, with total financing amounts of 13.7 million USD and 23.4 million USD, respectively.

In terms of financing rounds and scale, early-stage projects accounted for the majority, with a total of 11 seed round financings. The most influential financings were Xverse, a Bitcoin wallet, completing a 5 million USD seed round financing, and the open-source liquidity protocol Helio Protocol receiving a 10 million USD investment from Binance Labs. In addition, there were 3 M&A events last week, including the acquisition of Wolf Game by Pixel Vault.

(Source of data on crypto projects that received financing last week: Rootdata)

I. Infrastructure

1. Bitcoin Wallet Xverse Completes $5 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by Jump Crypto

The Bitcoin Web3 wallet Xverse completed a 5 million USD seed round financing, led by Jump Crypto. Other participants in this round of financing include RockawayX, Sfermion, Alliance, NGC Ventures, V3ntures, Old Fashion Research, 2140 Bitcoin Ecosystem Fund, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Newman Capital, Franklin Templeton, New Layer Capital, Miton C, Gossamer Capital, Daxos Capital, Sora Ventures, Tyhke Block Ventures, IOBC Capital, and Despread.

The new funds will help the company accelerate the development of advanced features related to decentralized finance (DeFi) and solutions for Bitcoin scalability such as Stacks, Lightning, and others. Xverse is headquartered in Hong Kong, supports Ordinals and BRC-20 protocols, and recently announced support for the Ledger hardware wallet. (Source)

2. Open-Source Liquidity Protocol Helio Protocol Receives $10 Million Investment from Binance Labs

Binance Labs has invested 10 million USD in Helio Protocol to help the protocol continue its transition to a liquid staking platform. Helio is currently built on the BNB Chain, and this new funding is expected to help the platform expand to other networks, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, and zkSync.

According to RootData, Helio Protocol is the issuer of the over-collateralized stablecoin HAY. In July, Helio announced a partnership and merger with staking provider Synclub, and the newly formed foundation will manage the complete revenue flow of Synclub and Helio. (Source)

II. DeFi

1. Perpetual Contract DEX Protocol D8X Completes $1.5 Million Pre-Seed Round Financing, Led by Polygon Ventures

The perpetual contract DEX protocol D8X on Polygon completed a 1.5 million USD pre-seed round financing, led by Polygon Ventures. Other participants include Axelar Network, Swissborg Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, Veris Ventures, G1 Ventures, Pragma Ventures, and CryptoDiscover.

D8X is an institutional-grade perpetual contract DEX protocol on Polygon zkEVM, aiming to bring DeFi to institutional investors. D8X is currently live on the Polygon testnet, with USDC or MATIC as collateral assets, offering order types including market and limit orders, with AMM as the counterparty in each trade. (Source)

2. LSD Protocol unshETH Completes $3.3 Million Seed Round Financing, with Participation from MH Ventures

LSD Protocol unshETH announced the completion of a 3.3 million USD seed round financing, with participation from MH Ventures, Soma Capital, ICONIQ Capital, EFENT, 922 Capital, Electric Ant, Backend Capital, The LAO, Fan Zhang (Sequoia China), Epakon, Ross Lipson, Marty Hu, Kevin Li (Goldsky), Jai Prasad, Ejaaz Alhamadeen, and 300DAO. The funds from this round of financing will be used to accelerate protocol development and expand protocol functionality.

It is reported that unshETH has enabled the LSDfi product vdAMM, which can convert unshETH into an AMM pool, allowing users to access deep liquidity in unshETH and exchange between different LSDs. (Source)

3. LSD Protocol Puffer Finance Completes $5.5 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by Lemniscap and Lightspeed Faction

LSD Protocol Puffer Finance announced the completion of a 5.5 million USD seed round financing, led by Lemniscap and Lightspeed Faction. Other participating institutions include Brevan Howard Digital, Bankless Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, DACM, LBK, SNZ, Canonical Crypto, and community funds 33DAO, WAGMI33, and Concave. Angel investors include Anand Iyer (Lightspeed Partner), Sreeram Kannan (Eigen Layer founder), Frederick Allen (Coinbase Staking Business Director), F2pool and Cobo co-founder, Block Gentleman (Curve core contributor), Ramble (President of the North American Blockchain Association), Calvin Liu (Chief Strategy Officer of Eigen Layer), Richard Malone (Chief Business Officer of Obol), and Ladislaus von Daniels (Staking Community Leader).

The funds from this round of financing will be used to further develop Puffer Finance's open-source project "Secure-Signer," aimed at preventing potential slashing situations for validators during the verification process. The project has received a $120,000 grant from the Ethereum Foundation and the personal involvement of core researcher Justin Drake as an advisor. In addition, Puffer Finance is creating a permissionless staking pool that reduces the entry threshold for independent validators from 32 ETH to 2 ETH, improving capital efficiency.

Puffer Finance received a pre-seed round investment of 650,000 USD in June last year, led by Jump Crypto, with participation from Arcanum Capital and IoTeX.

4. DeFi Lending Protocol GoldLink Finance Completes $1.4 Million Pre-Seed Round Financing, Led by Polychain Capital

DeFi lending protocol GoldLink Finance announced the completion of a 1.4 million USD pre-seed round financing, led by Polychain Capital. Participants include Kronos, Modular Capital, Reverie, Veda, SkyVision Capital, Double Peak, as well as angel investors George Zeng and Vijay Chetty.

GoldLink Finance provides high-transparency DeFi lending services based on modular risk management, supporting real-time feedback of lending data to allow users to stay informed about changes in their positions. GoldLink's co-founder and CEO, Sam Weinberg, was previously a protocol and backend engineer at dYdX. (Source)

5. Decentralized Derivatives Trading Platform Holdstation Secures $2 Million Financing from K300 Ventures

Decentralized derivatives trading platform Holdstation announced on social media that it has secured a $2 million seed round investment from K300 Ventures. The funding will accelerate the development of smart contract wallets for on-chain futures trading, with a focus on Layer 2 and privacy transactions to drive Web3 adoption and development in more areas. (Source)

III. AI+Web3

1. AI and Web3 Startup Moonbox Completes $1 Million Financing, Led by OKX Ventures

AI and Web3 startup Moonbox has completed a $1 million financing round, led by OKX Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate product growth and continue developing its core technology, which is focused on building applications supported by the latest generative AI technology for Web3 and NFT applications.

Moonbox, headquartered in Hong Kong, has acquired the IP rights to the films "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons," "Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back," and "The Mermaid," directed by Stephen Chow. The company plans to launch a series of AI-driven NFTs and applications inspired by the art and film industry by the end of 2023. (Source)

2. Web3 AIFi Platform BubbleAI Completes Multi-Million Dollar Pre-Seed Financing, Led by Luxtech Capital

Web3 AIFi platform BubbleAI has announced the completion of a multi-million dollar pre-seed financing round, led by Luxtech Capital and an undisclosed publicly listed WEB3 company in Hong Kong. The funding will drive BubbleAI's product development, deep data mining, and AI large model analysis engine to empower global users with the most difficult and complex data in the fastest and simplest way.

BubbleAI's vision is to become everyone's Trading Copilot, building a Web3 off-chain data intelligence system combined with the team's self-developed AI large model analysis engine to create an "All in One" AIFi ecosystem. (Source)

IV. NFT

1. Generative Art NFT Platform fxhash Completes $5 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by 1kx

Generative art NFT platform fxhash has completed a $5 million seed round financing, led by 1kx, with participation from Fabric Ventures, Bright Opportunities DAO, Union Square Ventures, Tezos Foundation, and others. fxhash plans to use the funds to expand its team and undergo significant platform upgrades within the next six months. (Source)

V. Web3 Security

1. Cybersecurity Startup SphereX Completes $8.2 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by Aleph

Cybersecurity startup SphereX, valued at $24 million, has completed an $8.2 million seed round financing. The round was led by Aleph, with participation from Pillar VC, Fabric Ventures, and Mensch Capital Partners. SphereX's main product, SphereX Protect, aims to mark and block suspicious transaction executions through blockchain applications. The funding will be used for product promotion and team expansion. (Source)

2. Web3 Security Company Cube3.ai Completes $8.2 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by Blockchain Ventures

Web3 security startup Cube3.ai has completed an $8.2 million seed round financing, led by Blockchain Ventures, with participation from Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, ICLUB, and TA Ventures.

Cube3 intends to use the funds to expand the platform to enhance Web3 security and educate the community on transaction security risks and their exploitation. (Source)

3. Web3 Security Company Spearbit Secures $7 Million Financing, Led by Framework

Web3 security company Spearbit has secured $7 million in financing, led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Nascent, 1kx, Volt Capital, Breed VC, and Robot Ventures. The funds will be used to build Cantina (an open marketplace for Web3 security auditors) and hire more software engineers to automate service and product market workflows. According to crypto data platform RootData, Spearbit previously announced a $1.5 million Pre-Seed financing round in February 2022, with investment from 1kx and others. (Source)

VI. Mergers and Acquisitions

1. Wolf Game Acquired by Pixel Vault on August 8th

Wolf Game is an Ethereum-based game that allows players to earn money while playing, incorporating mechanisms of NFTs and DeFi. Players aim to use digital land (with a supply limit of 20,000 pieces) to gain economic dominance over each other.

Pixel Vault is a Web3-centric media company that has expanded the stories and legends of some of the most popular static on-chain assets through PUNKS Comics. Additionally, Pixel Vault is the creator of MetaHero Identities (a blockchain-based collection of villains and heroes) and MetaHero Universe (a social and gaming platform managed by planet token holders).

2. Swaraj Labs Acquired by Juno on August 8th

Swaraj Projekt is a music NFT platform that allows independent artists to create music NFTs and earn royalties through auctions and secondary sales. Juno is a cryptocurrency investment platform that offers a range of services to users, allowing them to earn, invest, and use their cryptocurrencies through a simple checking account.

3. Honey Finance Acquired by Sharky.fi on August 9th

Honey Finance is a lending protocol for illiquid assets, introducing the most scalable approach to NFT lending, allowing lenders to earn stablecoin returns and borrowers to gain immediate liquidity for NFTs. Sharky.fi is a non-custodial NFT lending protocol that connects NFT holders with lenders.

VII. Other

1. Web3 Luxury Brand Juhnz Completes $1 Million Seed Round Financing, Led by Bixin

Web3 luxury brand Juhnz has completed a $1 million seed round financing, led by Bixin, with participation from LK Ventures, family offices in Singapore and Hong Kong, and individual investors from the US real estate industry. The funding will be used to explore the combination of physical goods and blockchain digital applications, accelerating the expansion of the Phygital track.

Additionally, Juhnz will release 500 limited edition Chinese top-grade Fujian Silver Needle white tea NFTs, each equipped with advanced dynamically encrypted NFC chips for authenticity detection and traceability. Upon receiving the product, users can tap the chip with their phone to access all information about the tea. Participation in this sale is by invitation only. (Source)

2. Web3 Community Management Tool Rep3 Completes Pre-Seed Financing, Led by Better Capital

Web3 community management tool Rep3 announced on Twitter that it has completed a pre-seed financing round. The specific amount of funding has not been disclosed. Better Capital and Lightspeed India led the investment, with participation from former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Superteam's Akshay BD and Tanmay Bhat, Bankless podcast host Ryan Sean Adams, Ren Roy, Polygon founders Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani, Biconomy founder Aniket Jindal, JediSwap founder Rohit Goyal, and Artium founder Supriyo.

Rep3 uses gamified tools to help crypto projects manage their communities, members, and contributions. It allows communities to provide dynamic, upgradable NFTs to their members, representing their identity within the community to build online reputation, and subsequently gain benefits such as low-cost staking and fair voting. (Source)

3. Web3 Advertising Startup HypeLab Completes $4 Million Financing, Co-Led by Shima Capital and Makers Fund

Web3 advertising startup HypeLab has completed a $4 million seed round financing, co-led by Shima Capital and Makers Fund. Specific details of the financing have not been disclosed.

HypeLab is a Web3 advertising startup that aims to utilize on-chain data personalization and provide advertising services to help clients grow their businesses and user base. It was founded by Ed Weng, a former Google product manager with a background in digital advertising. (Source)

4. Crypto Accounting and Tax Startup Node40 Completes $12 Million Financing, Led by Card1Ventures

Crypto accounting and tax startup Node40 has announced the completion of a $12 million financing round, led by Card1Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of its tool products, expand its IT team, and strengthen its collaboration with regulatory authorities. Node40 previously completed a $4 million financing round on April 19th of this year. (Source)

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