Highlights of This Issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 15 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (1.12-1.18), with a total funding scale exceeding $414 million. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi reported 3 investment and financing events, including YZi Labs investing tens of millions of dollars in Genius Trading, with CZ joining as an advisor;
- The Web3+AI sector reported 2 investment and financing events, including the Web3 smart agent platform Neuramint completing a $5 million seed round financing;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector reported 3 investment and financing events, including Project Eleven completing $20 million in financing, with a post-investment valuation of approximately $120 million;
- The Centralized Finance sector reported 5 investment and financing events, including Ripple investing $150 million in LMAX to promote the application of the RLUSD stablecoin in institutional market settlements;
- The Other Web3 Applications sector reported 2 investment and financing events, including the "attention market" platform Noise completing a $7.1 million seed round financing, led by Paradigm.
DeFi
YZi Labs invests tens of millions of dollars in Genius Trading, CZ joins as an advisor
YZi Labs, co-founded by Binance co-founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) and He Yi, has made a "tens of millions of dollars" investment in Genius Trading, with CZ also joining the project as an advisor. Genius aims to build a privacy-first on-chain trading platform, offering spot, perpetual contracts, and copy trading, with the goal of becoming a decentralized version of "Binance." The platform has already processed over $60 million in trading volume during its testing phase and plans to launch a public privacy protocol test in Q2 2026.
BeatCoin completes $5 million strategic round financing, led by Cogitent Ventures and Go2Mars Labs
BeatCoin announced the completion of a $5 million strategic round financing, led by Cogitent Ventures and Go2Mars Labs, with participation from Castrum Istanbul, Alpha Capital VC, and several family offices in the Asia-Pacific region. The funds will be used to develop the AI-driven incentive system Beat Points (BP) and the upcoming DEX protocol BeatSwap, aiming to standardize on-chain behavior as credit assets and drive the transition of Web3 from "airdrop-driven" to "value-driven."
Stablecoin protocol USDat developer Saturn announced the completion of $800,000 in financing, with participation from YZi Labs, Sora Ventures, and several angel investors in the crypto space. The USDat protocol's revenue sources primarily combine Strategy perpetual preferred stock STRC with U.S. Treasury bonds. The project team stated that the protocol aims to bring institutional-level credit into DeFi, allowing Strategy's credit to be used on-chain and providing a new model for corporate treasury in decentralized finance.
AI
Konnex completes $15 million strategic financing, promoting "physical economy on-chain"
Konnex announced that it has secured $15 million in strategic investment, aiming to transition the approximately $25 trillion physical labor economy from a closed system to an on-chain collaborative ecosystem. It is reported that participants in this round include Cogitent Ventures, Liquid Capital, Leland Ventures, Covey Network, Ventures M77, and Block Maven LLC, among other high-belief supporters. The project's vision is to create infrastructure that allows autonomous robots to be contractually scheduled, verified, and paid like applications, promoting the operation of robotic labor and services under on-chain contracts, settlements, and incentive mechanisms.
Web3 smart agent platform Neuramint completes $5 million seed round financing
Web3 smart agent platform Neuramint has completed $5 million in seed round financing, with investors including Maelstrom, Borderless Capital, and Symbolic Capital. Neuramint supports cross-chain DeFi, NFT, and DAO automation through a visual drag-and-drop interface, lowering the integration threshold for smart contracts. The funds will be used for platform development, SDK expansion, and the public beta launch of Neuramint.
Infrastructure & Tools
Project Eleven has completed $20 million in financing, with a post-investment valuation of approximately $120 million, dedicated to protecting cryptocurrencies from future quantum computing attacks. The company is developing cryptographic solutions that can withstand quantum computing decryption, aiming to provide an upgrade path for existing public chains and crypto assets to address the risks posed by quantum computing potentially breaking the security of current cryptographic algorithms.
Stablecoin payment infrastructure provider PhotonPay announced the completion of tens of millions of dollars in Series B financing, led by IDG Capital, with participation from Hillhouse Investment, Enlight Capital, Lightspeed Faction, and Shoplazza, with Blacksheep Technology serving as the exclusive financial advisor. The company did not disclose its valuation. The new funds will be used to accelerate the expansion of its stablecoin financial payment channels, recruit key talent, and expand its global regulatory compliance layout, focusing on the U.S. and some emerging markets.
Founded in 2015, PhotonPay currently has 11 centers worldwide and over 300 employees. The company claims that its annualized payment processing volume based on "stablecoin-native" clearing and settlement infrastructure has exceeded $30 billion. The company has established partnerships with financial institutions such as JPMorgan, Circle, Standard Chartered Bank, DBS Bank, and Mastercard, and plans to strengthen its account issuance, acquiring, and foreign exchange service capabilities. Starting in 2026, PhotonPay also plans to launch corporate value-added services, including idle fund yield-generating treasury products and flexible credit tools.
KOLECT completes $1.2 million Pre-Seed financing, led by amber.ac
Emotion-driven quantitative trading infrastructure platform KOLECT has completed $1.2 million in Pre-Seed financing, led by amber.ac, with participation from Wonder Capital Group, GC Capital, and others. The funds will be used to expand emotional data, zero-code strategy builders, backtesting capabilities, and CEX/DEX execution systems, aiming to transform the crypto market sentiment of over 3,000 KOLs into investable strategies.
Centralized Finance
According to announcements from Ripple and LMAX Group, the two parties have reached a multi-year strategic cooperation agreement, with Ripple providing $150 million in financing to support the widespread application of the RLUSD stablecoin as collateral and settlement assets in LMAX's global institutional trading system. RLUSD will support crypto, perpetual contracts, CFDs, and some fiat currency cross products, aiming to enhance cross-asset margin efficiency and achieve 24/7 on-chain settlements. The cooperation also includes RLUSD being custodied through LMAX Custody's isolated wallets and integrated with Ripple Prime to expand institutional liquidity and reduce market fragmentation.
Alpaca completes $150 million Series D financing, led by Drive Capital
Brokerage technology company Alpaca announced the completion of $150 million in Series D financing, with a valuation of $1.15 billion, led by Drive Capital, with participation from Citadel Securities, Kraken, and Banco Sabadell Ventures, and secured a $40 million credit line. Alpaca focuses on providing trading infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, and crypto assets, with annual recurring revenue exceeding $100 million, and is actively seeking to capture market share from Interactive Brokers.
Latin American stablecoin payment company VelaFi completes $20 million Series B financing
Latin American stablecoin payment infrastructure company VelaFi announced the completion of $20 million in Series B financing, led by XVC and Ikuyo, with participation from Planetree and BAI Capital, bringing the total financing amount to over $40 million. The funds will be used to expand compliance, banking connections, and operations in the U.S. and Asia. VelaFi has processed billions of dollars in transactions for hundreds of enterprise clients, providing stablecoin solutions including cross-border payments, multi-currency accounts, and asset management.
Singapore crypto startup Veera completes $10 million financing to expand on-chain financial services
Singapore-based crypto financial platform Veera announced it has raised a total of $10 million in Pre-Seed and Seed rounds, with investors including Sigma Capital, CMCC Titan Fund, 6th Man Ventures, and Ayon Capital. Veera plans to launch its mobile platform in January 2025, which has already surpassed 2 million downloads and has 220,000 monthly active users. The platform supports self-custody wallets and has launched a waitlist for the "Veera Card," which aims to support global on-chain asset payments.
Stablecoin service provider Meld completes $7 million financing, led by Lightspeed Faction
Stablecoin service provider Meld announced the completion of $7 million in financing, led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from F-Prime, Yolo Investments, and Scytale Digital. The total financing amount has now reached $15 million, with specific valuation details not yet disclosed. Meld aims to become a one-stop platform for enterprises and individuals to access and convert digital assets globally, with the goal of creating a "cryptocurrency version of Visa" that supports the purchase or settlement of stablecoins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other type of digital asset worldwide.
Others
"Attention Market" platform Noise completes $7.1 million seed round financing, led by Paradigm
Paradigm led a $7.1 million seed round financing for New York startup Noise, which aims to create an "attention market" based on social media trends, allowing users to bet on whether a topic will remain hot, similar to a "trend stock market." Noise is set to launch on the Base mainnet incubated by Coinbase in the coming months. Previous pre-seed round investors include Figment Capital and Anagram.
P2P competitive platform Slips completes $3.5 million seed round financing
The Slips platform, focused on social peer-to-peer competition, announced the completion of $3.5 million in seed round financing, led by Las Olas Capital and Sunset Bay Capital, with participation from Charlotte Hornets and Leeds United co-owner Andrew Schwartzberg, among others. Slips features a user betting mechanism without a house, achieving 500% annual growth. The new funds will be used for technology upgrades, team expansion, and user growth, while also laying out plans for crypto payments, stablecoin withdrawals, and international market expansion.
Acquisitions
(M&A events are not included in this week's report data statistics)
Polygon Labs spends over $250 million to acquire Coinme and Sequence
Polygon Labs announced the acquisition of two crypto startups, Coinme and Sequence, for over $250 million to strengthen its stablecoin payment network. Coinme holds money transfer licenses in multiple U.S. states and focuses on crypto ATM infrastructure, while Sequence provides wallet and on-chain infrastructure services. Polygon stated that this move is a "reverse benchmark" against Stripe's stablecoin strategy, aiming to build a complete on-chain payment stack.
Bakkt agrees to acquire stablecoin payment infrastructure DTR
Bakkt Holdings (NYSE: BKKT) has reached an agreement to acquire global stablecoin payment infrastructure company Distributed Technologies Research Ltd. (DTR) for approximately 9,128,682 shares of Class A common stock, advancing its integration of stablecoin settlement and digital banking operations. The transaction is expected to be completed upon obtaining regulatory and shareholder approvals, with ICE voting in support of the deal. The company will be renamed "Bakkt, Inc." on January 22 and will hold an investor day on March 17 at the NYSE.
Animoca Brands has completed the acquisition of digital collectibles and gaming company SOMO
Animoca Brands has completed the acquisition of digital collectibles and gaming company SOMO. SOMO owns products such as "SOMO Codex," "SOMO Duel," and flagship game "SOMO Battleground," with its ecosystem dedicated to transforming digital collectibles into playable, livestreamable, and tradable assets across games.
Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu stated that SOMO is building a cultural operating system for collectibles, which complements the company's existing portfolio. By incorporating SOMO into its ecosystem, Animoca Brands plans to leverage its global gaming, community, and partner network to drive cross-platform promotion and community growth for the SOMO brand.
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