During the period from April 29th to May 5th, 11 blockchain projects raised over $5 million in funding.
Authored by: TechFlow of Deep Tide
According to RootData, 27 blockchain startups announced fundraising during the period from April 29th to May 5th, raising a total of $141.4 million.
Projects raising over $5 million include:
Web3 content publishing platform Paragraph announced the completion of a $5 million new round of financing;
Farcaster client Kiosk parent company Reflective Technologies completed a $10 million financing;
Modular liquidity protocol Mitosis announced the completion of a $7 million financing;
Web3 game Shadow War developer completed a $5 million seed round and Series A financing;
Web3 wine market Baxus announced the completion of a $5 million strategic round of financing;
Cryptocurrency voting service platform Agora announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing;
Hybrid cryptocurrency exchange X10 announced the completion of a $6.5 million financing;
Celestia liquidity staking protocol MilkyWay completed a $5 million seed round of financing.
Highlight Projects
MilkyWay
Introduction: MilkyWay is a liquidity staking solution in 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 the staked TIA, called milkTIA.
Investors: Celestia liquidity staking protocol MilkyWay completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Binance Labs, Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital, and LongHash Ventures.
Features:
MilkyWay allows users to earn mPoints by staking TIA, with plans to airdrop 10% of the MILK supply to mPoint holders.
MilkyWay plans to expand beyond Celestia, with its token expected to launch at the end of the second quarter or the beginning of the third quarter.
Recognition from Binance Labs and Polychain Capital.
Blade Games
Introduction: Blade Games is a blockchain-based game studio dedicated to building trustless games and their supporting infrastructure. The team members come from various backgrounds, including game design, DeFi, smart contracts, and zero-knowledge proof research.
Investors: Blockchain game studio and infrastructure provider Blade Games completed a $2.4 million seed round of financing, jointly led by PTC Crypto and IOSG Ventures, with participation from Bonfire Union Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Mantle, ForesightX, Formless Capital, Public Works, Puzzle Ventures, and K300 Ventures.
Features:
Blade Games' in-house game Dune Factory started internal testing on May 1st and announced the testing rules and rewards on April 29th. The game is scheduled for public testing at the end of May.
Games built using Blade Game's in-house zk game engine can run game logic in zkVM and push state differences as zkSNARK proofs to the chain for verification on L2. The zk game engine can currently process up to 12-15 frames per second and is about to update batch proof functionality. The engine currently supports all game studio development of survival, tower defense, RPG, and roguelike card-building games.
Blade Games' founder Zee Cheng is the former investment director of Old Fashion Research, and co-founder Liu Jiapei is the former investment director of IOBC Capital and Matrixport Ventures.
Kiosk
Kiosk is a Farcaster client that helps creators establish a community from 0 to 1 within the app. Creators can share media-rich ideas with the social graph, mint them as NFTs, gather like-minded collectors and collaborators in the channel, establish custom channel economies such as tips and distribution, and chat with their community.
Introduction:
Investors: Farcaster client Kiosk parent company Reflective Technologies completed a $10 million financing, led by Electric Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Variant, for the development of Kiosk.
Features:
Kiosk's founder Denis Nazarov is also the founder of Mirror. Previously, he was an advisor to Uniswap Labs and an investment partner at a16z, and graduated from New York University.
Paragraph acquired the Web3 content publishing platform Mirror, which shifted its focus to developing Kiosk. Currently, users can enter the Waitlist by subscribing to Kiosk in Mirror and minting official announcement articles as NFTs in Kiosk.
The main function of Kiosk is to make it easier for users to embed digital assets directly into their social media posts, meaning users can reference NFTs in their posts, and Kiosk can embed additional blockchain functionality directly into images, such as viewing the blockchain address of the NFT or purchasing it directly through the post.
Specific financing information for each track:
Bitcoin Ecosystem
Bitcoin domain protocol TNA Protocol announced the completion of its first round of financing, with participation from MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, CSP DAO, and the specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. TNA is a Bitcoin domain protocol aimed at improving its usability and expanding the scope of its assets and primitives.
DeFi
Hybrid cryptocurrency exchange X10 announced the completion of a $6.5 million financing, with investors including Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Starkware, Cyber Fund, executives from Revolut, and Lido founder Konstantin Lomashuk, among other prominent angel investors.
Celestia liquidity staking protocol MilkyWay completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Binance Labs, Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital, and LongHash Ventures. It is reported that the structure of this round of financing includes future equity simple agreements for future equity (SAFE) and token subscription rights, as well as future token simple agreements for future tokens (SAFT) for participating investors.
Cryptocurrency voting service platform Agora announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Consensys Ventures, and others. Agora aims to create a new governance software standard for protocols to help them organize their voting systems more efficiently. Uniswap, Optimism, and Nouns are its early clients.
Multi-chain liquidity re-staking protocol Bedrock announced the completion of a new round of financing, led by OKX Ventures, LongHash Ventures, and Comma3 Ventures, with participation from Waterdrip Capital, Lbank Labs, Amber Group, ArcheFund, Whale Ground, and angel investors including Fisher Yu, co-founder of Babylon. This round of financing aims to accelerate the development of its liquidity re-staking solution and further drive its growth.
Modular liquidity protocol Mitosis announced the completion of a $7 million financing, led by Amber Group and Foresight Ventures, with participation from Big Brain Holdings, Folius Ventures, Citizen X, GSR, Cogitent Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Digital Asset Capital Management, Pivot Global, Everstake, and angel investors from Zellic, XAI, ether.fi, Hyperlane, Osmosis, DefiLlama, Injective, Keplr, Puffer, Curve, and Interchain.
Cross-chain DeFi protocol EYWA completed a $7 million seed round of financing, led by Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, GBV Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Marshland Capital, Mulana Capital, and others. EYWA and Curve are collaborating to develop a trustless bridge that relies on a reliable messaging protocol consensus to eliminate reliance on individual bridges for moving large liquidity positions.
GameFi
Web3 game startup Games for a Living (GFAL) completed a $3.2 million seed round of financing, with participation from Supercell, Mitch Lasky, former co-CEO of ESL Heinrich Zetlmayer, Bonduc Bioscience SL, BCNBCNLVC, CEO of Sandsoft David Fernandez, and others. GFAL launched the GFAL token in the first quarter of 2023, raising $4.4 million.
The platform for 3D assets in the metaverse Style Protocol announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with specific investment institutions undisclosed. According to the project whitepaper: "Style Protocol aims to build on top of Polkadot to increase interoperability with all blockchains and make NFTs available on every blockchain. However, to build a protocol that is flexible and usable on all blockchains, two steps are needed. First, create bridging logic using smart contracts on Solidity and obtain all blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Secondly, create logic on a Parachain on Polkadot to be compatible with all other blockchains."
Blockchain game studio and infrastructure provider Blade Games completed a $2.4 million seed round of financing, jointly led by PTC Crypto and IOSG Ventures, with participation from Bonfire Union Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Mantle, ForesightX, Formless Capital, Public Works, Puzzle Ventures, K300 Ventures, and others.
Swedish game studio Patriots Division has raised $5 million for its Web3 game Shadow War in seed and Series A financing, with Series A financing led by Momentum 6, and participation from iAngels, Cointelligence Fund, Xborg, Andromeda VC, Cogitent Ventures, and Cluster Capital, among others. Shadow War is a 5v5 third-person action game set in a futuristic sci-fi world, drawing inspiration from popular games like Overwatch and League of Legends, emphasizing a fusion of futurism, fantasy, action, and competition.
DWF Ventures announced its investment in the blockchain game studio Overworld. According to its introduction, Overworld recently announced plans to launch a new NFT series and will also introduce Overworld Arena.
SocialFi
Web3 content distribution platform Metale Protocol recently announced the completion of a $2 million seed round extension financing, bringing its total seed round financing to $4 million. The financing was completed in the first quarter of this year, with Aipollo Capital, Waterdrip Capital, and Ultiverse Dao leading the investment, and several seasoned entrepreneurs participating. The funds will be used to build a decentralized short-form content ecosystem.
Farcaster client Kiosk's parent company Reflective Technologies completed a $10 million financing, led by Electric Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Variant, among others, for the development of Kiosk.
Web3 content publishing platform Paragraph announced the completion of a $5 million new round of financing, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures, among others. According to a release from Paragraph, Paragraph founder Colin Armstrong will serve as CEO, and Mirror founder Denis Nazarov will serve in an advisory role.
Web3 content publishing platform Mirror was acquired by Paragraph, and the Mirror team will continue to operate independently, focusing on the development of "Kiosk," a Web3 social application based on Farcaster that integrates blockchain and e-commerce. The founder of Paragraph stated that Mirror and Paragraph will eventually merge into a unified product suite.
Farcaster ecosystem SocialFi project Airstack announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Red Beard Ventures, with participation from SuperLayer, Polymorphic Capital, Superscrypt, Hashed Emergent, Delta Blockchain Fund, CSP DAO, NGC, Primal Capital, Kyber, and Resolute Ventures, among others. Airstack provides products and development tools to empower creators and developers and help them profit.
RWA
Real estate NFT investment platform Balcony DAO announced the completion of a Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from Avalanche Blizzard Fund, but specific amounts and valuation information have not been disclosed. The new financing will be used to expand operations and development. Balcony is dedicated to building an RWA blockchain platform for institutions and government agencies, providing on-chain transaction and asset settlement services, primarily in the real estate sector.
Web3 wine market Baxus announced the completion of a $5 million strategic round of financing, led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Solana Ventures, Narwhal Ventures, FJ Labs, and a group of angel investors. Its Web3 market is built on the Solana blockchain, allowing buyers to transact using credit cards, ACH, wire transfers, or cryptocurrencies including USDC, and it launched a beta version last summer.
Swiss tokenized asset issuer Backed announced the completion of a $9.5 million financing, led by Gnosis, with participation from Exor Seeds, Cyber Fund, and several other institutional investors. This round of financing aims to help Backed accelerate its private token issuance services and bring more asset management companies onto the blockchain. As a regulated compliance entity, Backed has issued over $50 million worth of tokenized real-world assets, including ETF tokenized products and tokens for stocks such as Coinbase (COIN) and Tesla (TSLA).
RWA tokenization company Securitize completed a $47 million financing, led by BlackRock, with participation from Hamilton Lane, ParaFi Capital, and Tradeweb Markets. Securitize will use the proceeds from this round of financing to accelerate product development, expand its global footprint, and further strengthen its partnerships in the financial services ecosystem. Joseph Chalom, Global Head of Strategic Ecosystems at BlackRock, has been appointed to the Securitize board of directors.
Infrastructure and Tools
LayerZero ecosystem full-chain tokenization protocol Holograph announced the completion of a $3 million new round of strategic financing, led by Mechanism Capital and Selini Capital, with participation from Northrock Capital from Hal Press, Arca, Courtside Ventures, and Hartmann Capital. The project's total financing has now reached $11 million. This financing will be used to advance full-chain gaming. Since launching its mainnet in 2023, Holograph has helped mint over 10 million full-chain tokens for 1.5 million unique wallets. Additionally, Holograph has facilitated over 2 million cross-chain transactions using LayerZero's cross-chain messaging protocol.
Binance Labs announced its investment in Movement Labs, with the specific amount undisclosed. Movement Labs will support Sui Move, Aptos Move, and the embedded EVM interpreter MEVM, enabling Sui, Aptos, and EVM users to use L2, bringing smart contract security and parallelization to Ethereum.
Pantera Capital announced its investment in TON, with the specific amount undisclosed. Pantera Capital is a crypto venture capital firm managing over $5 billion in assets, and they believe TON has the potential to introduce cryptocurrencies to the masses, as the token has seen widespread use on the Telegram network.
- The dynamic modular service platform Crestal announced the completion of a $2 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, and NxGen, among others. The new funds will be used to accelerate the construction of modular services. Crestal is a dynamic modular service platform where developers can discover, deploy, and upgrade modular services by binding decentralized providers with verifiable Proof of Performance (PoP TM).
CeFi and Others
Cryptocurrency trading ecosystem for retail traders LazyBear announced the completion of a strategic financing of 4 million USDT, with investors and strategic partners including Gogeko Labs, DWF Labs, Shadow Labs, Salad Labs, Bees Network, REI Network, IBIT, Crypto Bullish, SYNBO Protocol, Bazaars, Sypool, Bitcoin Gbox, GemX Crypto, and Wikibit, among others. LazyBear is a cryptocurrency trading ecosystem dedicated to providing users with industry-low fees, inclusive, and enjoyable trading experience.
Web3 comprehensive network security service provider Resonance Security completed a $1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with joint leading investment from Arca, Fabric VC, and Blockchain Founders Fund. The new financing will be used to further accelerate expansion.
RWA market Ironlight announced the completion of a $12 million financing, with specific investor information undisclosed. Ironlight, founded by Rob McGrath and Matt Celebuski, aims to tokenize traditionally illiquid private securities such as real estate, natural resources, fine art, public infrastructure, and private equity. Its goal is to become a SEC-regulated Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization market and will initiate the registration process in the future.
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