In December, the total amount of financing in the cryptocurrency field was 9.09 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 6.5%, with 98 financing transactions, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%.

Authors: Biscuit & Elvin, RootData

Stimulated by the strong performance in the primary market, the amount of investment and financing in the cryptocurrency field in December still maintained a strong trend compared to the previous third quarter, but it declined from 12 billion US dollars in November to 9.1 billion US dollars. This may be largely due to the impact of the Christmas holiday season in the European and American markets, with many financing news being delayed, and a significant decrease in large financing amounts.

At the same time, there was a significant increase in financing events for Bitcoin ecosystem projects. BitSmiley, a Bitcoin ecosystem DeFi solution, received investments from ABCDE Capital and OKX Ventures, and the Bitcoin chain game Ordz Games completed its seed round of financing, while the Ordinals market continued to receive a lot of attention.

Financing trend in the cryptocurrency field over the past 2 years

In this article, we will focus on specific financing data, active investors, hot search projects, new coin projects, and other aspects to present the changing trends in the cryptocurrency market.

I. Financing Data

The total amount of financing in the cryptocurrency field in December was 9.09 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 6.5% compared to December 2022 (9.73 billion US dollars), and a month-on-month decrease of 25.6% compared to November 2023 (12.22 billion US dollars). There were 98 financing transactions, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%. The characteristics of the cryptocurrency financing market in December are as follows:

a. The decrease in the amount of large financing projects is the main reason for the month-on-month decrease in financing amount in December. There were 4 projects with financing amounts exceeding 100 million US dollars, namely: Bitcoin financial services company Swan, NFT business service provider LINE NEXT, Bitcoin mining company Arkon Energy, and blockchain game ecosystem MapleStory Universe.

b. The number of financing transactions remained stable. According to financing data from the past 2 years, only the average number of financing transactions from June to October 2023 was less than 90. Although the total financing in December decreased month-on-month, the number of financing transactions increased instead of decreasing.

c. The Bitcoin ecosystem investment and financing market was significantly active. Previously, only 1-3 Bitcoin ecosystem projects completed financing each month, but in December, this number increased to 7, including Tonka Finance ($2.5 million), BRC20.com.COM ($1.5 million), Tap Protocol ($4.2 million), Liquidium ($1.25 million), BitSmiley, Ordz Games, and Dovi.

Specifically, in December, there were no financing events with amounts ranging from 50 million US dollars to 100 million US dollars. Well-known projects with financing amounts of 10-50 million US dollars included Layer1 blockchain Babylon, on-chain shooting game Farcana, Web3 authentication platform Dynamic, and Web3 music artist and fan platform Medallion.

Seed rounds remained the most popular financing round, with 19 projects completing seed round financing in December, accounting for 44.19%, a slight decrease compared to the previous month.

Additionally, there were 5 M&A events in December, with leading players in the cryptocurrency field accelerating their strategic layout to find high-quality targets and improve their own strategic weaknesses to expand ecological synergies.

II. Active Investors

In December, the investment activities of cryptocurrency institutions significantly increased, with 12 investment institutions making more than 4 investments, compared to only 5 institutions reaching this frequency last month. Among them, Sora Ventures and NxGen performed most prominently, with 6 investments each.

Sora Ventures is an established institution founded in 2018, with 13 investment rounds in the past year. The institution co-invested 4 times with Bitcoin Frontier Fund, 3 times with Coinbase Ventures, CMS Holdings, and Alliance DAO, and invested the most in fields such as infrastructure, NFT, social entertainment, and DeFi.

Recently, Sora Ventures has made significant investments in the Bitcoin ecosystem, with its investment portfolio including projects such as BRC20.com, Tap Protocol, Liquidium, Ordz Games, and Xverse. In addition, last month, Sora Ventures also participated in The Block's M&A event, which may reflect Sora Ventures' determination to increase its investment in the cryptocurrency market.

NxGen is a fund with assets exceeding tens of millions of US dollars, focusing on supporting young cryptocurrency enthusiasts and talented builders. The institution has participated in 9 investment rounds in the past year, with only 1 occurring in the first half of the year, and the majority occurring after November. NxGen has had multiple co-investments with Shima Capital, Alliance DAO, Formless Capital, Big Brain Holdings, M-Ventures, and LD Capital.

Some notable projects that active investors participated in in December include:

• Polygon Ventures: Farcana, Mocaverse, Babylon
• OKX Ventures: BitSmiley, Matr1x, Mocaverse, StarryNift, Babylon
• Polychain: Wynd Network, Rio Network, Babylon, Sona
• Animoca Brands: MetaFight, Farcana, Poglin
• Big Brain Holdings: Eclips, Fyde, Wynd Network
• 1kx: Web3mine, nftperp, Seam Social

III. Hot Search Projects

Based on a large amount of user search data from RootData, we have also summarized some of the most searched projects in December, including:

1. Celestia

Celestia is a modular blockchain network that aims to build a scalable data availability layer to achieve the next generation of scalable blockchain architecture - modular blockchain, with the goal of enabling anyone to easily deploy their own blockchain with minimal expenses. Celestia achieves scalability by decoupling execution from consensus and introducing new data availability sampling.

2. Namada

Namada is a Layer 1 protocol that uses a proof-of-stake mechanism for asset-agnostic cross-chain privacy. Namada interoperates locally with fast-finality chains through IBC and interoperates with Ethereum through a trustless bidirectional bridge. For privacy, Namada deploys an upgraded version of the Multi-Asset Shielded Pool (MASP) circuit, allowing all assets to share a common shielded set. Namada is the first fractal instance of Anoma, deploying the v1 protocol of Anoma.

3. Pyth Network

Pyth Network is a next-generation oracle solution designed to provide on-chain valuable financial market data, including cryptocurrencies, stocks, forex, and commodities, to projects, protocols, and the public through blockchain technology. The network aggregates first-party price data from over 70 trusted data providers and publishes it for use by smart contracts and other on-chain or off-chain applications.

4. Marginfi

Marginfi is a decentralized portfolio margin protocol that provides traders with a unified account to access margin, compose portfolios, and improve the capital efficiency of underlying trading protocols.

5. Sleepless AI

Sleepless AI is an AI-based virtual companion game that uses AIGC and LLM to create rich story-based gameplay and interactive character development. The project is currently developing three games, with the first game being HIM, a virtual boyfriend Otome game with unique SBT characters that are immutable and on-chain.

6. Wormhole

Wormhole is a decentralized universal messaging protocol that enables developers and users of cross-chain applications to leverage the advantages of multiple ecosystems.

7. StarkNet

StarkNet is a permissionless decentralized Validity-Rollup (also known as "ZK-Rollup"). It operates as an L2 network on Ethereum, allowing any dApp to achieve infinite scalability of its computations without compromising Ethereum's composability and security, thanks to StarkNet's reliance on the most secure and scalable cryptographic proof system STARK.

8. MultiBit

MultiBit Bridge provides a secure and efficient bridging mechanism, allowing seamless transfer of tokens between the ETH chain, BNB chain, and BTC network. MultiBit Bridge connects ERC20 tokens with BRC20 tokens, enhancing the liquidity of BRC20 tokens and promoting the growth and development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

9. Injective

Injective is an interoperable Layer 1 blockchain that powers the next generation of DeFi applications. Injective uniquely provides plug-and-play financial infrastructure primitives, such as high-performance on-chain decentralized trading infrastructure, decentralized bridges, oracles, and a composable smart contract layer with CosmWasm.

10. Portal

Portal is a cross-chain bridge that provides cross-chain transfer functionality for wrapped tokens and NFTs in Wormhole. Unlike many other cross-chain bridges, users can avoid double wrapping and never have to backtrack.

IV. Project Dynamics

In December, RootData also recorded many events such as mainnet launches and new coin issuances for various projects, helping users understand important project dynamics in the market and gain access to earlier alpha opportunities. Among them, RootData recorded 27 projects issuing tokens, setting a new high for the year.

Projects with mainnet launches in December (sorted by date from recent to far):

1. Infinex

Infinex is a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform launched by Synthetix. Infinex will generate revenue through various mechanisms, including additional trading fees, integration fees through the Synthetix Integrators program, and fees from SNX LPing. All generated revenue will be used to accumulate more SNX, meaning that as the trading volume of Infinex increases, the SNX LP position of Infinex will also increase.

2. Divergence

Divergence is a decentralized derivatives platform for volatility hedging and advanced financial products centered around blockchain-native asset prices. The Divergence team is currently developing a series of decentralized volatility derivatives and volatility index products, aiming to become the preferred platform for users seeking to hedge one-sided and two-sided volatility risk, users seeking leveraged exposure to volatility, and risk-neutral users seeking to participate in the volatility market by providing liquidity and earning fees.

3. YLDR Protocol

YLDR is a lending protocol specifically built for liquidity providers, allowing anyone to increase LP returns, borrow digital assets based on LP positions or other assets, and provide liquidity to earn yields.

4. MainnetZ

MainnetZ is a layer1 blockchain that is fully EVM-compatible, with cost-effective transactions and ultra-fast speeds of up to 2000 TPS.

5. ZKFair

ZKFair is a community ZK-Rollup based on Polygon CDK and Celestia DA, supported by ZK-RaaS provider Lumoz. ZKFair uses the stablecoin USDC as the gas token. 100% of ZKF tokens will be airdropped to the community immediately after the mainnet launch. After the ZKF token airdrop, 100% of L2 gas fee profits will be returned to the community.

6. Surf Protocol

Surf Protocol is a decentralized derivatives trading platform that supports the creation and trading of the widest range of crypto assets. Surf implements a unique profit-sharing strategy. The first user to create a pool will indefinitely receive 5% of the trading fees from that pool, provided the pool remains above the set minimum threshold. Surf Protocol aims to provide users with a variety of tradable Perp assets while keeping fees as low as possible.

7. Alkimi

Alkimi is a decentralized advertising trading platform that makes it possible to buy and sell ad space in a fully decentralized manner through blockchain infrastructure. Alkimi is also a custom Layer 2 scaling solution on the Ethereum network specifically designed for advertising. Leveraging the principles of generative economics, the Alkimi exchange will reward users, publishers, and advertisers to rebuild the expected value exchange of an open network.

8. Nume

Nume is a gas abstract, scalable, and secure Web3 payment aggregator with primitives tailored for business. Nume Pay is the first product of Nume Crypto, making it exceptionally simple and economical for merchants/companies to accept cryptocurrency payments. All operations on Nume are priced entirely based on fixed fees. Nume also offers network subscriptions, providing unlimited free operations to users at a fixed price of 1.99 DAI per month.

9. MilkyWay

MilkyWay is a liquidity staking solution within the Celestia ecosystem, initially deployed and operated on Osmosis, with long-term plans to migrate to Celestia's rollkit for native milkTIA issuance. When users stake TIA tokens in MilkyWay, they receive an on-chain representation of their staked TIA called milkTIA. This allows Celestia token holders to gain liquidity for their staked assets, enabling them to trade or use them as collateral for various DeFi products.

10. Aori

Aori is a high-frequency on-chain order book for market makers, providing non-custodial, on-chain settlement for spot trading. It offers market makers various features such as pre-confirmed internal pricing, gas-free order creation and cancellation, and dynamic traditional limit orders.

11. Glow

Glow is establishing a Proof of Physical Work (PoPW) protocol for carbon credits, incentivizing the creation of carbon credit quotas by rewarding solar panel operators with tokens and displacing unclean energy from the grid.

12. Logearn

Logearn.com is a platform focused on on-chain automated copy trading (supporting derivatives, spot, NFTs, tokens, DeFi, DEX, etc.).

13. Pharaoh Exchange

Pharaoh is a centralized liquidity DEX optimized for high-frequency LP and performance. The result is an ultra-efficient liquidity layer designed to attract the most effective liquidity providers while providing traders with a clean and simple user experience.

14. Texture

Texture is an NFT lending platform on Solana, providing instant liquidity for Solana NFT holders across all markets. Texture users can borrow, extend, or repay NFT loans from any major Solana lending institution such as Sharky, Citrus, or Rain.

15. Wildcat

Wildcat is an Ethereum lending protocol that allows borrowers to parameterize their credit lines according to their preferences and deploy under-collateralized credit limits. Lenders benefit from novel interest rates and withdrawal mechanisms.

Projects that launched their testnets in December (sorted by date from recent to far):

1. Anzen

Anzen is a decentralized lending platform aimed at bringing stability to the DeFi space and providing more use cases for stablecoins. Users can lend on the platform to earn income backed by real-world assets (RWA). Loans are collateralized with secure, tangible, and appreciating assets, providing lenders with predictable income linked to RWA performance.

2. Over Protocol

Over Protocol is a Layer 1 blockchain developed by Superblock based on a protocol called "Ethanos," which only considers active accounts as valid, allowing full nodes to discard outdated data and operate with less storage, reducing storage requirements. With Over, anyone can run a node on their home PC and become a validator.

3. Data Ownership Protocol

Data Ownership Protocol (DOP) is leveraging zero-knowledge proofs to achieve flexible transparency on Ethereum L1. DOP allows users and DApps to store and trade assets privately or selectively disclose token holdings and historical information.

4. Pike Finance

Pike Finance is a native cross-chain lending market that enables direct and secure interaction between different blockchains. Pike is built on Wormhole's cross-chain data messaging protocol and Circle's native USDC minting protocol CCTP.

Projects that launched tokens in December (sorted by date from recent to far):

1. SoBit (SOBB)

SoBit bridges BRC20 to Solana, aiming to seamlessly bridge BRC20 tokens with the Solana network. Users initiate the bridging by depositing BRC20 tokens into a dedicated SoBit address. The platform confirms these deposits and mints equivalent tokens on the Solana blockchain.

2. Reboot (GG)

Reboot Protocol is a decentralized, scalable framework for building skill-based games that reward players and developers.

3. NFPrompt (NFP)

NFPrompt (Non-Fungible Prompt) is a platform for artists in Web3 that allows users to infuse their imagination into AI-generated NFTs. NFPrompt offers five different AI-empowered creation tools for images, videos, pfp, music, etc., making it easy for everyone to create NFTs.

4. Aki Protocol (AKI)

Aki Protocol is a data-driven consumer network for Web3, focusing on local influencer marketing in Web3. The network aims to incubate the voices of Web3 and empower the industry with quantifiable information flow.

5. Eclipse Fi (ECLIP)

Eclipse Fi is a modular token issuance and liquidity solution supporting innovation on Cosmos and other platforms. Eclipse Fi provides a comprehensive modular solution for token and liquidity needs, allowing projects to be responsible for the entire token issuance process from the start and customize their issuance methods and processes based on their distribution and liquidity requirements.

6. TonUP (UP)

TonUP is a launchpad on TON aimed at identifying and supporting breakthrough projects in the cryptocurrency space.

7. DuckDAO (DD)

DuckDAO is a decentralized incubator that helps promising projects realize their full potential by leveraging the investment power and creative potential of the community.

8. AIT Protocol (AIT)

AIT Protocol is an artificial intelligence data infrastructure providing Web3 AI solutions. AIT's decentralized marketplace offers millions of cryptocurrency users a unique opportunity to participate in "earn while training" tasks, allowing them to contribute to the development and advancement of AI models while earning rewards.

9. Artyfact (ARTY)

Artyfact is a game metaverse with a Play-and-Earn economy, where players can explore the metaverse world, play games, showcase and trade NFTs, create events, and more.

10. Restake Finance (RSTK)

Restake Finance is a protocol for modular liquidity staking introduced by EigenLayer. Restaking allows LST to be used as part of the cryptographic economic security for EigenLayer's active validation services. The protocol allows users to earn Ethereum staking rewards and EigenLayer native rewards without locking assets or maintaining staking infrastructure.

13. MainnetZ (NETZ)

MainnetZ is a layer1 blockchain that is fully EVM compatible, with cost-effective transactions and ultra-fast speeds of up to 2000 TPS.

14. The Grapes (GRAPE)

The Grapes is an interesting and attractive NFT collection consisting of 3,333 carefully crafted NFTs, generated from 200 expressions, headwear, glasses, and more. It is a cross-media NFT project covering games, animated series, merchandise, and licensing. The NFTs were created in May 2023.

15. Rebase (IRL)

Rebase is an AR adventure and M2E platform aimed at bringing the metaverse into the real world. The core mechanism of Rebase's geolocation technology essentially layers the virtual world onto the real world. By combining augmented reality (AR) applications, Rebase can gamify the NFT minting experience into an immersive and engaging treasure hunt. Rebase users will need to physically move, locate, and track the NFTs they want to mint in the real world. They can only successfully mint and collect NFTs when they discover them through the AR lens.

16. Capverse (CAP)

Capverse, set against the backdrop of an interstellar civilization, has built a virtual gaming world based on Web3.0, allowing players to own, use, and trade virtual NFT assets—Sumers. Sumer is the native inhabitant of the Capverse world. Through a complex random algorithm that combines race, body parts, and skills, each Sumer is unique. Different Sumers can be combined to form endless team configurations. Players can summon Sumers to team up, battle evil virus forces through pet battles, and gain entertainment and social experiences.

17. Fusionist (ACE)

Fusionist is a game world with collectible NFTs, consisting of three types of games: Colonize (establish simulation), Conquer (turn-based tactics), and Unite (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate). Players will play as mech commanders, manage their own planets, collect rare resources, upgrade technology, scan blueprints to manufacture mechs, and establish production lines. They will engage in PvP and PvE battles, build starship fleets for interstellar warfare, and conquer the galaxy. Endurance is the mainnet of Fusionist, targeting the social and gaming infrastructure layer.

18. Talis Protocol (TALIS)

Talis Protocol is an NFT marketplace that empowers artists and bridges physical and digital art on the Cosmos ecosystem.

19. Seamless Protocol (SEAM)

Seamless Protocol is a decentralized, non-custodial liquidity market that creates a more seamless experience for both market participants (liquidity providers and liquidity borrowers). Seamless Protocol aims to unlock undercollateralized borrowing through innovative concepts in comprehensive liquidity markets. This community-driven protocol inherits the security of audited smart contracts forked from AAVE and Ampleforth.

20. Jito (JTO)

Jito Labs is building high-performance MEV infrastructure for Solana. It aims to improve Solana's efficiency and minimize the negative impact of MEV on users.

21. Inspect (INSP)

Inspect is a Web3 social data protocol for navigating the complex structures of cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and blockchain technology. As a pioneering center for comprehensive insights, trend analysis, and community engagement, Inspect is dedicated to enhancing the capabilities of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, investors, and creators. The platform provides real-time analytics, performance tracking, and actionable insights.

22. 5ireChain (5IRE)

5ire is a sustainable layer 1 blockchain that rewards its validators and users for taking sustainable actions.

23. xPET (xPET)

xPet.Tech combines the fun of owning virtual pets with the transformative power of blockchain technology. Users install its extension and receive pets directly in the X interface, taking care of pets to earn profits.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。