During the period from January 27th to February 2nd, a total of 23 investment and financing events occurred in the cryptocurrency market, including 3 in infrastructure, 9 in DeFi, 3 in the BTC ecosystem, 1 in NFT, 4 in GameFi, 1 in Depin, and 2 in AI.
There was one financing of over tens of millions of US dollars this week: the Bitcoin DEX project Portal completed a $34 million seed round of financing, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others.
The investment and financing heat in the cryptocurrency market remained high this week, with DeFi performing particularly well, with a total of 9 financing reports. The GameFi sector was also relatively active, with 4 financing reports. Investors have shown a higher interest in infrastructure, the BTC ecosystem, and AI 2.
The investment and financing projects this week are sorted by financing amount in the following chart:
Infrastructure
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by "Fortune" magazine, the security protocol Delegate Labs behind the ChainCatcher news completed a $9 million seed round of financing, with participation from Electric Capital, Arca, Variant, Arrington Capital, and others. This round of financing will be used to fund the Web3 variable name protocol Clusters. Previously, Delegate and cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero jointly launched the multi-chain variable name service Clusters. Clusters aims to solve problems such as address fragmentation, complex wallet management, and variable name squatting.
According to The Block, the blockchain focused on zero-knowledge proofs, Gevulot, completed a $6 million seed round of financing, with Variant leading the investment, and support from RockawayX, Volt Capital, Staking Facility, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, Manta Network founder Shumo Chu, and other individual supporters. Gevulot did not disclose its valuation. It is reported that Gevulot plans to use the funds to launch its Layer1 blockchain, enabling developers to utilize ZK proofs and delegate computing tasks to advanced hardware operators. Gevulot is preparing to launch its developer-centric network (or devnet), a restricted test network. The network is collaborating with pledge verification companies such as P2P.org, Supranational, Staking Facilities, and RockawayX Infrastructure.
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by "Fortune" magazine, the cryptocurrency transfer and payment service startup Mesh received a $5 million investment in PYUSD stablecoin from PayPal, in addition to a $1.5 million cash investment from PayPal Ventures. According to RootData market data, the cryptocurrency transfer and payment service startup Mesh (formerly known as Front Finance) completed a $22 million Series A financing in September last year, with lead investment from Money Forward, and participation from Galaxy, Samsung Next, Streamlined Ventures, SNR.VC, Hike VC, Heitner Group, Valon Capital, Florida Funders, Altair Capital, Network VC, and several angel investors.
DeFi
According to Foresight News, cross-chain infrastructure solution Squid completed a $4 million strategic round of financing, with Polychain Capital leading the investment, and participation from Nomad Capital, North Island Ventures, Maelstrom, Chorus One, The Department of XYZ, Breed, Binary Builders, Typhon Ventures, Distributed Global, Fabric Ventures, Node Capital, and Chapter One. The raised funds will continue to expand its team to support chains in the EVM and Cosmos ecosystems and other chains. In addition, the team is integrating with more interoperability networks and plans to bring Squid into more blockchain ecosystems beyond Ethereum and Cosmos.
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by chainwire, the composable options protocol Ithaca Finance completed a $2.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with lead investment from Cumberland and Wintermute Ventures, and participation from Room40 Ventures, Ghaf Capital Partners, and angel investors including Andrew Keys, co-founder of DARMA Capital, and Georgios Vlachos, co-founder of Axelar. The protocol is live on the Arbitrum testnet and is only inviting invitees to participate before fully launching the mainnet later this quarter.
According to Foresight News, decentralized sustainable contract protocol Zeepr Labs announced the completion of a round of financing led by Celestia's ecological incubator Cincubator, with the specific financing amount undisclosed and a post-investment valuation of $150 million. Zeepr is a decentralized sustainable contract protocol that supports the trading of mainstream financial assets and encrypted collateral. Zeepr has proposed a series of innovative solutions, including dual liquidity pools, built-in Oracles, and more.
According to ChainCatcher, according to official sources, the one-stop liquidity protocol NAVI Protocol of the Sui ecosystem announced the completion of a $2 million financing, with joint lead investment from OKX Ventures, dao5, and Hashed, and participation from Mysten Labs, Comma3 Ventures, Mechanism Capital, GeekCartel Capital, Nomad Capital, Coin98 Ventures, Cetus Protocol, Maverick, Viabtc, Assembly Partners, Gate. io, Hailstone Labs, Benqi, LBank Labs, and others. NAVI Protocol will use this round of financing to expand its one-stop lending and LSDeFi platform.
According to ChainCatcher, the liquidity aggregation investment strategy protocol Doubler announced the completion of a seed round of financing, with lead investment from Youbi Capital, and participation from Bixin Ventures, Mask Network, Comma3 Ventures, Pivot Labs, Continue Capital, Sanyuan Capital, Waterdrip Capital, DWF Ventures, Gate Labs, Formless Capital, MT Capital, and CatcherVC, among others. Doubler is an open DeFi protocol that aggregates market liquidity using the Martingale strategy. Its innovative mechanism achieves zero-loss hedging and combines the income betting demand side with speculators, maintaining a high degree of openness and interoperability, providing broad development space for expanding DeFi business.
ChainCatcher reported that Binance Labs announced an investment in the decentralized liquidity staking protocol Puffer. The funds will be used to develop Puffer's open-source technology, nLRP, and a new type of Active Verification Service (AVS), which are part of Puffer's vertical infrastructure, including Layer 2. Puffer will bring its native liquidity revaluation token (nLRT) to BNB Chain users, allowing them to earn Ethereum PoS and revaluation rewards. Puffer is a decentralized native Liquid Restaking protocol (nLRP) built on EigenLayer. It introduces native liquidity restaking tokens (nLRT) that can accumulate PoS and restaking rewards. Nodes in the protocol use Puffer's anti-dilution technology to reduce risk and increase capital efficiency, while increasing their returns through native restaking.
Foresight News reported that decentralized derivatives trading platform BBO Exchange (BBOX) completed a $2.7 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with lead investment from Hashed and Arrington Capital, and participation from Consensys, CMS Holdings, Flow Traders, Manifold Trading, Mask Network, Laser Digital (Nomura Group), Arcane Group, Draper Dragon, Vessel Capital, Aulis Venture, Formless Capital, Press Start Capital, One Piece Labs, Keone Hon, Honbo Tang, and others. BBOX has now opened registration for its testnet.
ChainCatcher reported that TProtocol, the first platform to integrate RWA on-chain, cross-chain, and asset aggregation, announced the completion of an angel round of financing, with specific amount undisclosed. This round was participated in by Summer Ventures (through its Summer Everest Ecological Fund), Matrixport Venture, and Spark Digital Capital. TProtocol stated that this round of financing will accelerate its transformation into a full-chain RWA asset aggregation platform. TProtocol has already integrated asset providers such as Matrixdock, Backed Finance, OpenTrade, and TrueFi, making it the largest on-chain RWA asset aggregation platform. More asset providers are in the process of integration.
ChainCatcher reported that Infrared Finance, the liquidity proof infrastructure of the Berachain ecosystem, announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with lead investment from Synergis, and participation from NGC Ventures, Tribe Capital, CitizenX, Shima Capital, Dao5, Signum Capital, Ouroboros Capital, Decima, Oak Grove Ventures, DoraHacks, Tenzor Capital, Alex Shin, Albert Chon, Charles Lu, Mr. Block, Chris Spadafora, DCFGod, and others. Infrared aims to support liquidity staking in the Berachain ecosystem under the Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) background. These funds will be used to advance its infrastructure development, including validator networks, PoL insurance pools, and native liquidity staking tokens (LST) iBGT.
BTC Ecosystem
ChainCatcher reported, according to CoinDesk, that cryptocurrency trading startup Velar completed a $3.5 million financing round, with participation from Bitcoin Startup Lab, CMS Holdings, Black Edge Capital, GBV, Cypher Capital, Trust Machines SPV, Transform Capital, Maple Block, and Samara Asset Group. Velar plans to launch a sustainable exchange trading platform using the Bitcoin network. The Velar v3 version will support synthetic Bitcoin assets sBTC as collateral for leveraged trading, and the v3 version will be launched in the second quarter of 2024.
Odaily reported that the cross-chain DEX and wallet Portal, based on Bitcoin, announced the completion of a $34 million seed round of financing, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Arrington Capital, OKX Ventures, and Gate.io Ventures. Portal is a DeFi project built on Bitcoin, enabling anonymous, zero-knowledge transactions through cross-chain DEX. It eliminates the risks associated with wrapped tokens (such as wBTC, wETH) or intermediaries. Portal introduces trustless, bridgeless, and wrapperless cross-chain atomic swaps, allowing developers to seamlessly integrate the SDK into their chains or dApps.
ChainCatcher reported that the Bitcoin Layer2 over-collateralized stablecoin protocol Bmaker has completed its $1.2 million pre-seed financing, with lead investment from C3u Capital and Tangle Capital; and several other capital firms have confirmed their intention to invest in the seed round. The Bmaker team has developed the first Bitcoin Layer2 over-collateralized stablecoin protocol, aiming to provide more liquidity to the BTC ecosystem. The project will conduct its first multi-chain IDO issuance on February 2nd to increase the number of early token holders.
NFT
Foresight News reported that the NFT art platform Art Blocks has acquired the digital art marketplace Sansa. The acquisition is expected to enhance community interaction and increase interest in minting within the Art Blocks ecosystem. Additionally, Sansa will continue to operate as an independent application.
GameFi
ChainCatcher reported that the first decentralized game IP system Pixelmon completed an $8 million seed round of financing, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Animoca Brands, Delphi Ventures, Amber Group, Bing Ventures, Bitscale Capital, Cypher Capital, Mechanism Capital, Sfermion, Spartan Labs, VistaLabs, and angel investors including 9GAG Inc. founder Ray Chan, Crunchyroll founder and former CEO Kun Gao, Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson, Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon, and Emfarsis founder.
Foresight News reported that the blockchain gaming platform Yooldo completed a $1.5 million financing at a valuation of $13 million, with participation from Bedrock Ventures, Double jump.tokyo, Edimus, Hyperithm, Klaytn Foundation, Manta Network, Neopin, Planetarium, Presto Labs, and Vista Labs. Additionally, grant sponsors include Aptos Foundation, BNB Chain, Immutable X, and Oasys. The raised funds will be used to improve the platform's technology, bring more games to the platform, and develop its community.
Foresight News also reported that the Web3 social game Forgotten Playland completed a $7 million financing round, with participation from Merit Circle, Spartan Group, C2 Ventures, and Paper Ventures. The product is set to be released in the first quarter of 2024, including a series of mini-games. Forgotten Playland redefines social gathering games, with a platform that includes a series of mini-games such as Bump-A-Ball and Jungle Rumble. The Social Hub is a dynamic interactive space where players can socialize and engage in games.
BlockBeats reported that on January 30th, the developer of "Solana Hunger Games," GG, announced strategic investment from Delphi to build an online game that combines augmented reality and SocialFi. Currently, the game can be experienced through an invitation code, and the official version is expected to launch in New York in the spring of 2024, with players being able to exchange the "G" obtained for rewards in the fall of 2024.
Depin
Foresight News reported, according to FinSMEs, that DePIN project Hivello completed a $1.5 million financing round, with participation from Blockchange, Cypher Capital, MH Ventures, Primal Capital, Contango Digital Assets, Candaq, NGC, Blockchain Founders Fund, and IDG. The raised funds will be used to expand its technical capabilities, accelerate product development, and solidify its market position in the DePIN service. Previously, Hivello completed a $1 million Pre-Seed round of financing on December 19th last year, with participation from NGC, Blockchain Founders Fund, Side Door Ventures, IDG, Bing Ventures, MEXC Exchange, XT.com Exchange, Genesis Block, and NxGen.
AI
ChainCatcher reported that the AI-focused Web3 underlying protocol KIP Protocol completed a strategic round of financing, led by Animoca Ventures, with participation from B.Army (Vietnam), CSP DAO (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), MQdao, Spicy Capital (Latin America), Skyvision Capital (Hong Kong), and Purechain Capital (UK). KIP Protocol is a decentralized Web3 protocol layer built for AI models, applications, and data owners to securely transact and monetize in Web3. KIP will build a new AI business ecosystem to address the challenges in decentralized AI deployment and ensure valuable knowledge and data are protected and monetized as intellectual assets. The first dApp on KIP Protocol is planned to launch in the first or second quarter of 2024.
ChainCatcher also reported, according to The Block, that Web3 distributed AI training network PublicAI completed a $2 million seed round of financing, led by IOBC Capital, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Solana Foundation, and Everstate Capital, as well as several renowned academic professors in the field of artificial intelligence. The raised funds will be used to accelerate the launch and commercialization of its training network. PublicAI aims to use blockchain technology to scale the production of high-quality training data, solving all the challenges faced by artificial intelligence and allowing the entire human race to participate in and share the benefits of artificial intelligence.
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