Highlights of this Issue
According to PANews incomplete statistics, there were 22 blockchain investment and financing events worldwide last week (9.16-9.22), with a total fund size exceeding $134 million. Both the fund size and the number of transactions have decreased. An overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 3 investment and financing events, including the derivative platform Drift completing a $25 million Series B financing, with Multicoin Capital leading the investment.
- Web3 Games revealed 4 investment and financing events, with Solana game company MagicBlock completing a $3 million pre-seed financing, with a16z participating.
- AI field announced 2 investment and financing events, including Web3 startup Vana completing a $5 million financing, with Coinbase Ventures leading the investment.
- Infrastructure and Tools track announced 10 financings, including Solana's ecological development platform Helius completing a $21.75 million new round of financing, with participation from Haun Ventures and Founders Fund.
- Other Blockchain/Crypto Applications announced 2 financings, including content delivery network Pipe Network completing a $10 million financing, with Multicoin leading the investment.
- Centralized Finance field announced 1 financing, with TrueX, a crypto exchange founded by former Coinbase executives, completing a $9 million seed round financing.
DeFi
Derivative platform Drift completes $25 million Series B financing, led by Multicoin Capital
The Solana-based derivative trading platform Drift completed a $25 million Series B financing led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Blockchain Capital, Primitive Ventures, and Folius Ventures.
On-chain perpetual DEX LogX announced the completion of a $4 million strategic financing round, bringing its total financing to $10.1 million. Participants include Hashed Emergent, Cumberland VC, Saison Capital, Gate Labs, DWF Labs, Antler, Coinswitch Ventures, Wagmi Ventures, and Kairos Capital. LogX will use the new financing to develop into a DeFi super app, providing leveraged prediction markets and exotic perps, while expanding to the TON, Solana, Bitcoin, Move, and EVM ecosystems.
Aptos on-chain liquidity staking protocol Amnis Finance completed a $2 million financing round, led by Borderless Capital and OKX Ventures, with participation from Aptos Labs, Arkgrow Pte Ltd, Ambush Capital, Gate Ventures, Sky Vision Capital, Old Fashion Research, Chorus One Venture, Re7, and Flowdesk. This new funding will accelerate the integration of Amnis Finance's innovative liquidity staking solution into Aptos' DeFi ecosystem. The platform will continue to enhance its services within Aptos, expand its influence through strategic partnerships, promote innovation, and add more value to its growing user base.
Web3 Games
Solana game company MagicBlock completes $3 million pre-seed financing, with a16z participating
Solana-based game company MagicBlock has completed a $3 million pre-seed financing, with venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) participating. The company plans to use this new funding to expand its team and develop technology, including introducing its game engine to the Solana mainnet and collaborating with online games. MagicBlock was founded in September 2023 and is currently developing a game engine that allows video games to run entirely on the chain.
Gamified cross-chain liquidity aggregation innovation protocol 0xAstra has successfully completed a $3 million seed round financing. This round of financing has attracted numerous well-known investment institutions and leading projects, including Ace Redpoint, Animoca Brands, Folius Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Orbiter, and Ultiverse. With its unique gamification strategy, 0xAstra injects vitality into cross-chain liquidity and sparks on-chain interaction. Through deep cooperation with leading blockchain ecosystems, 0xAstra provides a richer and smoother cross-chain trading experience, pushing the potential of liquidity aggregation and re-staking to new heights. Since its launch, 0xAstra has connected to dozens of mainstream L1 and L2 networks, and within just over two months, the platform's cumulative trading volume has exceeded $90 million, demonstrating remarkable growth momentum.
The 0xAstra team consists of senior experts in cryptocurrency, gaming, and internet fields, who have successfully launched multiple games with millions of users and generated millions of dollars in revenue. With this financing, 0xAstra hopes to lead a new round of innovation in the DeFi field and create a more vibrant and interactive decentralized financial ecosystem for global users.
Chain game developer Ambrus Studio completes multi-million dollar financing, led by The Spartan Group
MOBA game E4C: Final Salvation developer Ambrus Studio announced the completion of a multi-million dollar financing, with the specific amount undisclosed. This financing round was led by The Spartan Group, with participation from IVC, Sui Foundation, Knight Capital, Goodwater Capital, and ZeePrime Capital.
Web3 Gaming
Forge, a Web3 video game platform, announced the completion of a new round of financing on X platform, with participation from Sui Network, Ava Labs, ThunderCore Protocol founder Chris Wang, Dingaling, and consulting firm AP Collective. The specific amount of financing and valuation information has not been disclosed. Forge plans to use the new funds to expand its blockchain-based Web3 video game platform, allowing players to integrate game achievements and activities into their profiles, while providing social engagement and game rewards.
AI
Web3 startup Vana completes $5 million financing, led by Coinbase Ventures
Coinbase Ventures led Vana's $5 million financing, bringing its total financing to $25 million. Vana is a Web3 startup dedicated to building a user data pool network, allowing users to monetize social media data through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and providing training data for AI models. Other notable supporters of Vana include: Casey Caruso, Packy McCormick, Manifold, GSR, Will Price, Jez, SCB 10X, Defiance Capital, Contango, Auros Ventures, MH Ventures, BoxGroup, and Will Manidis. Previously, Vana raised $18 million in a Series A financing led by Paradigm and received a $2 million seed round financing led by Polychain. Vana's Reddit DAO has attracted approximately 140,000 users, who can earn hundreds of dollars by contributing historical data to the platform.
Grass Foundation completes Series A financing, led by Hack VC
Grass Foundation announced the completion of Series A financing, led by Hack VC, with participation from Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Brevan Howard Digital, and Lattice, but the amount of financing has not been disclosed.
Infrastructure & Tools
Solana ecological development platform Helius raised $21.75 million in its latest round of financing, with main investors including Haun Ventures and Founders Fund, and other participants including Foundation Capital, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One, and Spearhead. This funding will be used to further drive the development of developer infrastructure within the Solana ecosystem. Helius is a platform that provides core infrastructure for Solana developers, focusing on RPC services and data APIs. The platform helps developers address pain points on the Solana network and has introduced weighted staking services during network congestion. Helius also supports the issuance of compressed NFTs, with over 500 million compressed NFTs issued through the protocol.
Cryptocurrency startup Hemi Labs raises $15 million, led by Binance Labs
Startup company Hemi Labs, co-founded by Bloq's Jeff Garzik, completed a $15 million financing, led by Binance Labs, Breyer Capital, and Big Brain Holdings, with participation from Crypto.com, Web3.com Ventures, Hyperchain Capital, Alchemy, and SALT Fund, among others. Co-founder Max Sanchez stated that the company plans to use the funds to build Hemi's engineering team, add more Bitcoin interoperability features, and provide advanced customization for developers, as well as incentives, grants, and community adoption. Max Sanchez declined to disclose the company's valuation.
Decentralized clearing network Yellow Network completes $10 million seed round financing
Decentralized clearing network Yellow Network completed a $10 million seed round financing, led by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, with participation from Consensys, GSR, NxGen, MV Global, Gate Labs, ZBS Capital, Moonrock Capital, Math, Cobo, NOIA Capital, and LD Capital. Yellow Network is a new decentralized clearing network aimed at addressing the inefficiencies of cryptocurrencies.
The UAE blockchain and AI company Capstone Technology raised $5.4 million (approximately 20 million dirhams) to support its GAYA blockchain project. The project aims to create an entrepreneurial network for entrepreneurs in the gaming, AI, and entertainment industries, driving the development of a sustainable digital economy. Capstone plans to use the funds to manage technology assets, develop Web3 applications, and expand its regional influence.
General FHE protocol octra completes $4 million Pre-Seed round financing
The general FHE protocol octra announced the completion of a $4 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Finality Capital, with participation from Big Brain Holdings, Karatage, Presto, and Builder Capital. In addition, octra announced the release of a public WASM sandbox to demonstrate the efficiency of hypergraph in FHE.
According to the introduction, octra's architecture is based on "circles," which is an independent execution environment. In simple terms, it is a personal cloud with optional and programmable privacy. Within circles, developers can build backend logic of any complexity for web2 and web3 applications. In addition, the network provides security for personal data through custom consensus using ML for node selection, as well as a combination of PoW and PoS. Developer documentation and templates will be released during the testnet phase (Q4 2024). octra is in the final stages of development, and the mainnet is expected to launch sometime next year. Prior to this, the focus will be on papers, documentation, testnets, sandboxes, libraries for multiple ecosystems, and bug bounties for developers and cryptographers.
Developer SDK security company Arcjet has completed a $3.6 million seed round financing, with participation from a16z Crypto General Partner Zane Lackey, former LinkedIn Chief Information Security Officer Geoff Belknap, Algolia co-founder Nicolas Dessaigne, Stellate Chief Operating Officer Sue Odio, and SeedCamp, among others. The specific valuation information has not been disclosed. The company is building a set of core security components that allow developers to easily integrate protection features into their applications without modifying the architecture, and to directly address security challenges in the code.
Layer 2 protocol RISE Chain completes $3.2 million seed round financing, led by Finality Capital
Layer 2 protocol RISE Chain has completed a $3.2 million seed round financing, led by Finality Capital, with participation from Orange DAO, DACM, ether.fi Ventures, P2 Ventures, MH Ventures, Public Works, Vitalik Buterin, Stani Kulechov, Anthony Sassano (aka sassal.eth), and DCF God, among others.
Bitcoin infrastructure Bool Network completes $2 million seed round financing, with participation from Spark Digital Capital
Bitcoin ecosystem decentralized validation infrastructure Bool Network has announced the completion of a $2 million seed round financing on X, with participation from Antalpha Ventures, ViaBTC Capital, Spark Digital Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Web3Port, Satoshi Lab, D11 Labs, Sharding Capital, and others. The new financing will be used to further develop Bool Network's decentralized infrastructure, with a focus on unlocking the potential of BTCFi. The integration of DHC technology and Taproot enables Bitcoin holders to seamlessly interact with DeFi applications (including stablecoins, re-staking, and bridging) while maintaining self-custody and ensuring asset security.
T1 Protocol completes Pre-Seed round financing, with participation from a16z Crypto
Layer 2 blockchain protocol T1 Protocol has announced the completion of Pre-Seed round financing, with participation from a16z Crypto, BreedVC, as well as Benedikt Bünz, Sam Kazemian, Amir Bandeali, Eric Chan, Kartik Talwar, Kubi Mensah, and Meltem Demirors, among others. The specific amount has not been disclosed. T1 Protocol aims to address the aggregation fragmentation and composability challenges in Ethereum, and the protocol will also participate in the a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX).
Others
Content delivery network Pipe Network completes $10 million financing, led by Multicoin
Content delivery network Pipe Network's development company Permissionless Labs has completed a $10 million financing, led by Multicoin, with a focus on helping people rapidly expand CDN nodes where they are most needed by borrowing existing computing power, and the project will rely on the Solana blockchain.
The prediction market platform Limitless Network, built on the second-layer blockchain network Base created by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), has announced the completion of a $3 million seed round financing, led by 1confirmation, with participation from Paper Ventures, Collider, and Public Works. The platform processes daily transaction volumes exceeding $200,000.
Centralized Finance
TrueX, a new cryptocurrency exchange based on stablecoins founded by two former Coinbase executives, has completed a $9 million seed round financing. Cryptocurrency investors such as RRE Ventures and Hack VC, as well as cryptocurrency companies Paxos, Solana Foundation, and Aptos, participated. TrueX's operational model is similar to Coinbase's, using PayPal's PYUSD as the default settlement currency. TrueX will launch its trading functionality in the next two to four weeks, initially open to institutional traders for spot trading of top assets.
The parent company of TrueX is True Markets, co-founded by Vishal Gupta, former head of trading at Coinbase, and Patrick McCreary, former Coinbase engineer. Vishal Gupta previously served as head of trading platform at Coinbase and oversaw the launch of the USDC stablecoin during his time at Circle. Patrick McCreary previously worked as a senior engineer at Coinbase. Both have also worked at Goldman Sachs.
Venture Capital Firms
Venture capital firm Patron has raised $100 million for its new consumer risk investment fund
Venture capital firm Patron, led by former gaming industry executives Jason Yeh, Brian Cho, and Amber Atherton, has raised a $100 million new fund, focusing on early-stage consumer tech startups, especially those inspired by gaming technology. The fund has received support from Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Marc Andreessen, Garry Tan, and Ron Conway. Patron plans to invest in 20 to 25 companies over three years, with individual investments ranging from $1 million to $4 million, focusing on leveraging gaming industry experience to drive innovation in other markets, such as AI virtual assistants and smart shopping assistants.
Borderless Capital launches $100 million DePIN fund supported by Peaq and Solana Foundation
Borderless Capital has announced the launch of the third decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) fund, with a size of $100 million. The fund's investors include blockchain Peaq, focused on DePIN, as well as the Solana Foundation and Jump Crypto, among others.
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