During the period from February 24th to March 1st, a total of 33 investment and financing events occurred in the cryptocurrency market, including 8 in infrastructure, 5 in DeFi, 3 in NFT, 3 in LSD, 2 in wallets, 2 in AI, 2 in modularization, 2 in ZK, 1 in CeFi, 1 in payments, 1 in tools, 1 in gaming, 1 in Depin, and 1 in education.
There were 2 financing events of over tens of millions of US dollars this week:
The liquidity re-staking protocol ether.fi completed a $27 million financing round, led by Bullish and CoinFund.
The modular blockchain project Avail completed a $27 million seed round of financing, led by Founders Fund and others.
The heat of investment and financing in the cryptocurrency market continued to rise this week, with 8 financing events in the infrastructure sector, followed by DeFi. LSD, AI, modularization, ZK, and the Bitcoin ecosystem narrative attracted investors' attention. The financing areas this week were diverse and concentrated in the currently high-heat tracks. The Ethereum liquidity re-staking project and the modular blockchain project received the largest financing this week.
The investment and financing projects this week are sorted by financing amount in the following figure:
Infrastructure
PANews reported on February 27th that according to official sources, Fair Math, a developer of fully homomorphic encryption privacy protection technology, announced the completion of a $1.4 million Pre-seed round of financing, led by gumi Cryptos Capital, Inception Capital, and Polymorphic Capital. Fair Math focuses on developing privacy protection technology based on fully homomorphic encryption, with the core goal of significantly simplifying the development of applications based on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) by establishing a developer community and tools to promote the adoption of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).
Foresight News reported that the institutional staking platform ContributionDAO announced the completion of a $2.8 million seed round of financing, led by KXVC, the venture capital department of Thailand's largest commercial bank KBank, with participation from Axelar, Monad, Connext, and other angel investors. The new funds will be used to develop new institutional staking solutions and help the project expand into the Southeast Asian blockchain market.
ChainCatcher reported that Humanity Protocol completed a strategic financing round with participation from over 20 institutions including Hashed, CMCC, Cypher Capital, Foresight Ventures, and Mechanism Capital, with the specific financing amount undisclosed. This round of financing will be used to accelerate the development and deployment of Humanity Protocol, improve its scalability, efficiency, and user accessibility, and prepare for the upcoming test network.
Foresight News reported that Web3 data flow and infrastructure company Validation Cloud announced the completion of a $5.8 million first round of external financing, led by Cadenza Ventures, with participation from Blockchain Founders Fund, Bloccelerate, Blockwall, Side Door Ventures, Metamatic, GS Futures, and AP Capital. Validation Cloud has built a proprietary system architecture to provide users with Staking, Node API, and data.
According to The Block, the full-chain ledger protocol Cycle Network announced the completion of a multi-million dollar first round of financing and the launch of a test network, led by Vertex Venture, a member institution of Temasek Holdings, with joint investment from Summer Ventures, LTP, Super Chain Capital, GSG Digital, and others, with the specific financing amount undisclosed. Cycle Network is a trustless full-chain distributed ledger that builds a full-chain world state containing all blockchains, aiming to achieve native trustless interoperability through its Rollup+Extended DA technology, solve the problem of fragmented DApps across ecosystems, and help developers build full-chain DApps in different ecosystems.
According to CoinCarp, BuildBear has raised approximately $1.9 million to drive the development of its flagship platform. This round of financing was jointly led by Superscrypt, Tribe Capital, and 1kx, with participation from Iterative, Plug-N-Play, and several prominent angel investors, including Kris Kaczor (creator of Typechain and DethCrypto) and Ken Fromm (former Ethereum Enterprise Alliance). The support from investors will drive the accelerated development of the flagship platform. BuildBear is a professional platform for dApp development and testing, allowing developers to create custom private test network sandboxes across multiple EVM and EVM-compatible blockchain networks.
Foresight News reported that hedge fund Gotbit Hedge Fund announced a seven-figure investment in Layer1 blockchain 5ireChain. The specific investment amount was not disclosed. Foresight News previously reported that 5ireChain launched a $10 million funding program, the 5ire Grants Program, on February 22, focusing on multi-chain, EVM compatibility, RWA, and other projects.
ChainCatcher reported that the MEV-resistant protocol Shutter raised $8.31 million through a Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool (LBP), and the SHU/USDC trading pair is now live on Uniswap V2. According to RootData, Shutter uses distributed key generation (DKG) protocol based on threshold cryptography to prevent frontrunning on Ethereum and allows users to send encrypted transactions. The protocol previously raised $2.36 million in June 2023, with participation from Alphemy Capital, OKX Ventures, and others.
DeFi
Foresight News reported that the Move ecosystem DEX and liquidity protocol Cetus claimed to have received strategic investment from the Sui Foundation. The official statement mentioned that the support and ecosystem resources from the Sui Foundation will help Cetus grow rapidly in the future.
ChainCatcher reported that the on-chain data analytics platform Octav announced the completion of a $4 million strategic funding round led by high-net-worth individuals in the crypto space, with specific participants not disclosed. This investment will be used to expand the marketing team and accelerate the decentralization and open-source data process. According to the crypto data platform RootData, Octav announced the completion of a $2.65 million seed round of financing in September last year, with investors including Nascent, Polymorphic Capital, Parallel Studio, and institutional investors, as well as individual investors such as Markc Zeller, the strategic lead at Aave, and 0xMaki, former CEO of Sushiswap.
According to CoinCarp, Arkis has completed a $2.2 million seed round of financing to accelerate the adoption of DeFi in large institutions. This round of financing was led by the renowned web3 fund gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from G1 Ventures, Blocklabs, and Roosh Ventures. Arkis is a leveraged protocol without under-collateralization, acting as a decentralized primary broker, providing funding for on-chain asset management companies and traders. Arkis offers under-collateralized leverage provided by portfolio margin.
According to The Block, the US hedge fund Pantera Capital has invested in the DeFi lending protocol Morpho. Foresight News previously reported in July 2022 that Morpho completed an $18 million financing round, led by a16z and Variant. Morpho is a lending protocol that combines the capital efficiency of the current liquidity pool model used in Compound or AAVE with the P2P matching engine used in the order book.
Foresight News reported that the liquidity protocol Aerodrome announced an investment from the Base Ecosystem Fund led by Coinbase Ventures, in the form of purchasing its AERO tokens, with the specific investment amount undisclosed. Aerodrome Finance is a next-generation AMM designed to serve as the hub of decentralized liquidity for Base, combining a powerful liquidity incentive engine, voting lock governance model, and user-friendly experience. Aerodrome inherits the latest features of Velodrome V2. Aerodrome NFT votes allocate token emissions and receive incentives and fees generated by the protocol.
Gaming
According to VentureBeat, the Web3 gaming user-generated content startup PlayMakers announced the completion of a $1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by RockawayX, with participation from angel investors Sébastien Borget, Vincent Hart de Keating, and Hugues Ouvard. The raised funds will be used to enhance PlayMakers' toolset and expand the team. PlayMakers aims to turn players in Web3 games into creators, with its white-label platform customizing content and tokenizing it based on the unique characteristics of each game community.
NFT
ChainCatcher reported that NFT project Imaginary Ones announced the completion of a new round of financing, with participation from Cypher Capital Group, Animoca Brands, MH Ventures, Illuminati Capital, Andromeda Capital, and others. Imaginary Ones stated that with this round of financing, it aims to accelerate its efforts to become a leading WEB3 entertainment group, focusing on games, content, and merchandise.
According to TechFlow, Animoca Brands announced an investment in Co-Museum. Co-Museum is dedicated to breaking the standard traditions of art and redefining how communities collect art. Co-Museum is a community-driven cultural group committed to creating public ownership of the most important digital and physical artworks and artifacts.
According to Decrypt, NFT infrastructure startup READYgg completed a $4 million new round of financing, with participation from Delphi Digital, NeoTokyo, Merit Circle, Momentum6, Purechain Capital, Alex Becker, and Token Metrics Ventures. The company is preparing to launch the cryptocurrency token RDYX later this year to reward early users.
CeFi
According to the Korean media hankyung, tokenized asset issuance company Open Asset completed a 2.3 billion Korean won ($1.916 million) seed round investment, with participation from Hana Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, and Mashup Ventures, among others. Open Asset aims to enable financial institutions to adopt blockchain and trade token assets, and has participated in the token securities issuance infrastructure construction project under the Korea Investment Securities, responsible for the development of distributed ledger systems and token securities smart contracts.
Wallets
According to TechCrunch, cryptocurrency security startup Silence Laboratories completed a $4.1 million new round of financing, co-led by Pi Ventures and Kira Studio. The total financing for Silence Laboratories has reached $6 million. Silence Laboratories was initially a multi-factor authentication (MFA) company, but later shifted its business to establish a cryptocurrency security company, leveraging multi-party computation (MPC) to build infrastructure to help enterprises protect data privacy and security.
ChainCatcher reported that Tools for Humanity, the main developer of Worldcoin, has acquired the Solana-based on-chain wallet startup Ottr Finance. Following the acquisition, Ottr Finance will shut down its on-chain wallet based on the Solana network and merge into Tools for Humanity to help Worldcoin attract new users. The Ottr Finance wallet previously launched features such as "seamless integration with US bank accounts, gas-free transfers and transactions, and passwordless cloud backup." The integration with US banks may help Tools for Humanity in the future.
Payments
ChainCatcher reported that enterprise blockchain platform Crossmint has acquired NFT payment infrastructure startup Winter, backed by Y Combinator. Crossmint did not disclose the acquisition amount, but its co-founder Rodri Fernandez stated that the transaction was cash-based. Crossmint has also launched a new cross-chain payment product, and the acquisition of Winter has helped Crossmint expand the functionality of the new product, allowing users to purchase NFTs from any chain in a single transaction and pay with cryptocurrency. Through Crossmint's checkout feature, users can purchase NFTs on different chains in seconds with low costs.
Tools
ChainCatcher reported that Web3 traffic aggregation marketing platform LinkTo announced the successful completion of a seed round of financing, with investment institutions including Adaverse, Ruby Capital, Warrior Wealth Fund, BitValue Capital, and Block Infinity Limited. LinkTo aims to solve the core challenges of advertising and marketing in the current Web3 ecosystem, including improving advertising efficiency, ensuring marketing transparency, and optimizing user engagement. By introducing advanced ad flow technology and AI algorithms, LinkTo aims to provide a platform for brands and advertisers to accurately target and effectively reach their target audience, while ensuring data security and user privacy.
Depin
Foresight News reported that decentralized network hardware infrastructure company Geodnet completed a $3.5 million financing round, led by North Island Ventures, with participation from Modular Capital, Road Capital, Tangent, Reverie, and existing investors Borderless and IoTeX. Geodnet is a community-based DePIN project, where anyone can contribute to the network by installing and operating a Satellite Miner.
AI
TechFlow News reported that PredX announced the completion of a Preseed round of financing in February this year, led by Penrose Tech and with participation from Malana Ventures. PredX is currently undergoing a seed round of financing with a valuation of $20 million. The funding will be used to train AI for Prediction Market and build a global community. PredX is a prediction market event exchange incubated by SEI Chain, where users can trade their views on popular event trends on the platform.
Foresight News reported that the AI blockchain platform Talus Network completed a $3 million financing round, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from dao5, Hash3, TRGC, WAGMI Ventures, and Inception Capital. The raised funds will be used for continued product development. Talus Network is a blockchain platform focused on decentralized artificial intelligence innovation, utilizing the features of Move to emphasize security, speed, and developer experience.
LSD
Binance Labs announced an investment in the Bitcoin collateral protocol Babylon to support the development of Bitcoin collateral, with the specific amount of financing undisclosed. With the investment from Binance Labs, Babylon plans to hire more developers and aims to launch its mainnet Phase 1 by the end of this year. Previously, Babylon raised $18 million in Series A financing in December 2023 and $8.8 million in seed financing in 2022, as reported by Foresight News.
ChainCatcher reported that the Bitcoin-native collateral chain BounceBit completed a $6 million seed round of financing, co-led by Blockchain Capital and Breyer Capital, with participation from CMS Holdings, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures, Matrixport Ventures, DeFiance Capital, OKX Ventures, HTX Ventures, and angel investors including Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, Ashwin Aiyappan, portfolio manager at Brevan Howard, and Calvin Liu, Chief Strategy Officer at EigenLayer. According to crypto data platform RootData, BounceBit is a native BTC collateral chain that ensures security through collateralizing Bitcoin and BounceBit tokens.
ChainCatcher reported that the liquidity re-collateralization protocol ether.fi announced the completion of a $27 million financing round, led by Bullish and CoinFund, with participation from Amber Group, BanklessVC, OKX Ventures, Selini Capital, Consensys, Foresight Ventures, Relayer Capital, and others.
Modular
ChainCatcher reported that Layer 1 blockchain Initia completed a $7.5 million financing round, co-led by Delphi Ventures and Hack VC, with participation from Nascent, Figment Capital, Big Brain, A.Capital, and angel investors including well-known crypto trader Cobie, DCF God, Zaheer Ebtikar, Fiskantes, WSB Mod, and Celestia's Chief Operating Officer. Initia is currently running on a closed testnet. Some projects have already built DeFi applications on the testnet and plan to go live after the launch of the incentive testnet in early April. Once any issues are resolved, the project will launch its mainnet, with preliminary plans to launch in the second quarter.
According to CoinDesk, the modular blockchain project Avail on Polygon announced the completion of a $27 million seed round of financing, led by Founders Fund and Dragonfly, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Figment, Nomad Capital, and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, Sunny Aggarwal, co-founder of Osmosis, Mudit Gupta, Chief Information Security Officer at Polygon, and Amrit Kumar, Chief Operating Officer at AltLayer. Avail was spun out of Polygon in March 2023, led by Anurag Arjun, co-founder of Polygon. The funding will be used to develop three core products: its Data Availability solution (DA), Nexus, and Fusion.
ZK
ChainCatcher reported that the ZK-native blockchain protocol QED announced the completion of a $3 million financing round, led by Arrington Capital, with participation from Starkware, Draper Dragon, Blockchain Builders Fund, Lbk Labs, Paper Ventures, Valhalla Capital, Edessa Capital, and Anagram Ltd. QED aims to combine the scalability of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs with the liquidity and security of Bitcoin (BTC).
Foresight News reported that OKX Ventures announced an investment in the trustless computing platform provider Delphinus Lab, with the specific investment amount undisclosed. Delphinus Lab aims to build the zkWASM cloud suite and is committed to providing the zkWASM-based application rollup platform zkWASM Hub, which offers automatic proof and batch processing services for application workloads through customizable WASM extensions. In addition to continuing to improve and innovate the original implementation of zkWASM, Delphinuslab will define zkWASM application communication standards in zkWASMHUB to achieve broader interconnection and collaboration among Rollup applications on different underlying blockchains. Changing Bitcoin.
Education
ChainCatcher reported that the Web3 education platform HackQuest announced the completion of a $1.1 million Pre-seed financing, with support from StepN's parent company Find Satoshi Lab, HashKey Capital, ByteTrade Lab, Outlier Ventures, Hash Global, OnePiece Labs, Gitcoin co-founder Scott Moore, and support from Open Campus OCX. HackQuest has already established official developer education or ecosystem construction partnerships with more than 10 leading public chains such as Mantle Network, Solana, and Arbitrum, and plans to collaborate on courses with universities such as Nanyang Technological University. HackQuest stated that it will use this funding to launch a more diverse range of courses and support more Web3 builders in launching their own projects.
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