Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 15 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (from February 23 to March 1), with a total funding volume exceeding $129 million. The overview is as follows:
- In the DeFi sector, there were 2 investment and financing events announced, among which the Web trading and payment application Based, built on the Hyperliquid infrastructure, completed a $11.5 million Series A financing led by Pantera Capital;
- The Web3+AI track reported 3 investment and financing events, in which t54 Labs completed a $5 million seed round financing, with participation from Ripple and others;
- In the Infrastructure & Tools field, there were 4 investment and financing events announced, including the $40 million investment in digital infrastructure Zetrix AI by the International Finance Corporation under the World Bank;
- The Prediction Market track reported 3 investment and financing events, among which the prediction market protocol TBD completed a $3 million seed round financing, co-led by CMT Digital and ParaFi;
- In the Centralized Finance sector, there were 2 investment and financing events, including the $30 million financing completed by the cryptocurrency trading platform STS Digital, led by CMT Digital;
DeFi
Based completes $11.5 million Series A financing, led by Pantera Capital
Based, a Web trading and payment application built on Hyperliquid infrastructure, announced the completion of $11.5 million Series A financing led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, and Karatage. Based stated that it has over 100,000 registered users, 30,000 monthly active users, a cumulative trading volume of approximately $40 billion, and nearly $14 million in revenue. The company plans to expand its AI-driven "agentic commerce" business and extend into the North American market. This financing round began in the fourth quarter of 2025 and ended last week, structured as equity investment plus token warrants.
NASDAQ-listed Solana treasury company DeFi Development strategically invests in stablecoin protocol Apyx
NASDAQ-listed Solana treasury company DeFi Development announced a strategic investment in the stablecoin protocol Apyx, although the investment amount has not been disclosed. The aim is to establish an early layout in the emerging dividend-supported stablecoin (DBS) category. The Apyx model can transform dividend flows into on-chain yields, providing scarce yield opportunities in the over $300 billion stablecoin market, while aligning with the trend of treasury companies accumulating digital assets through preferred shares.
AI
San Francisco-based AI Agent trust infrastructure startup t54 Labs completed $5 million in seed round financing, led by Anagram, PL Capital, and Franklin Templeton, with participation from Ripple, Virtuals Ventures, Blockchain Coinvestors, ABCDE, and others. Founded in January 2025, t54 Labs focuses on providing identity verification ("Know Your Agent"), real-time risk control, credit limit, and settlement integration tools for AI Agents capable of autonomously initiating payments and transactions, using blockchain as a programmable and auditable settlement and accountability layer. It is currently live on networks such as XRP Ledger, Solana, and Base, and is developing an open-source trust layer for the x402 payment protocol incubated by Coinbase, and has recently reached an integration cooperation with Evernorth, a digital asset treasury company supported by Ripple.
AI native research platform Finrob, targeting financial and cryptocurrency markets, announced the completion of $3.9 million in seed round financing, with investments from Maven 11, Placeholder VC, Node Capital, Archetype, Dispersion Capital, and Fabric Ventures.
Finrob provides specialized AI agents powered by Claude, GPT-5.2, and Gemini 3.1 for financial and cryptocurrency markets, supporting real-time on-chain analysis and market intelligence queries. The platform integrates data sources like Glassnode, CoinGecko, and DefiLlama, allowing users to access complex data through a conversational interface. Additionally, Finrob adopts a pay-per-use model based on the x402 protocol and uses USDC for settlement, aiming to lower the cost barrier for institutional-level research.
PlutonAI completes $2.7 million seed and private placement financing, led by kitchenvc
Project PlutonAI, focused on DeFAI (Decentralized AI Finance) on Telegram, has completed $2.7 million in seed and private placement financing, led by kitchenvc and supported by HyperGPT incubation. This round of funding will be used for core platform development, ecosystem and agent expansion, as well as building scalable, production-ready AI infrastructure, targeting to create an entry point for DeFAI driven by intelligent agents, promoting on-chain real applications and value creation.
OpenAI announces a new investment of $110 billion at a valuation of $730 billion
OpenAI has announced that it completed a record $110 billion financing at a valuation of $730 billion. Amazon stated that it has invested $50 billion in this financing round. OpenAI also stated that SoftBank Group and NVIDIA each invested $30 billion.
(This financing event is not included in the statistics of this week's report)
Infrastructure & Tools
Malaysian digital infrastructure service provider Zetrix AI Bhd. has secured approximately $40 million in equity financing from the International Finance Corporation, an investment arm of the World Bank, to expand digital infrastructure in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and other emerging markets. The two parties will collaborate through a proposed subsidiary that will be listed on NASDAQ to advance projects in Malaysia, supporting the national digital identity system and blockchain service network, among others. Zetrix managing director TS Wong stated that their AI business unit, AI Foundation Lab, aims to complete its NASDAQ listing by the end of 2026.
AurumX's ecological infrastructure manadia completes $7 million seed round financing
The Web3 verifiable data and AI collaborative infrastructure manadia officially announced the completion of $7 million in seed round financing, with investors including OKX Ventures, Pillar VC, One Way Ventures, Quasar Holding Co., and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal also participating in this round of investment.
This project was jointly incubated by AurumX investment institution AUR Labs and global top-tier institutions, focusing on low-trust-dependent data settlement and AI collaboration infrastructure, providing core capabilities such as the VERITAS verifiable oracle, AI Agent collaboration, privacy-preserving settlement, and compliant payments, supporting safe and reliable value exchange and cross-system collaboration for finance, digital assets, and the AI ecosystem.
The cryptocurrency disclosure company Bluprynt has completed $4.25 million in oversubscribed seed round financing, led by Valor Capital Group, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Robinhood, Selah Ventures, Quona Capital, and Nubank co-founder Edward Wible, among others.
The company was founded by Georgetown University professor Christopher J. Brummer, aiming to provide simplified global compliance solutions for digital assets. Brummer likened the company's business to "tax software in the field of compliance," helping banks, asset management institutions, stablecoin issuers, and payment companies bring their core businesses on-chain under regulated frameworks. Previous seed pre-round investors included former CFTC chairman Chris Giancarlo and entrepreneur Mark Cuban.
Former payment and digital asset professional Aaron announced that his founding company Rhythmic has completed $4 million in seed round financing, led by Dragonfly and HadickM, with participation from Mirana, The Fintech Fund, and others. Rhythmic is building a financial infrastructure platform for consumer internet companies, enabling accounts, storage, cards, and rewards systems to be embedded in a "native" form, with stablecoins completing the flows and settlement at the underlying level. The user interface only reflects "holding balance, receiving rewards, and any consumption," with no need to directly interact with wallets or the concept of "using stablecoins." This round of financing will be used to improve the core platform, connect the first batch of partners, and expand the engineering and compliance teams.
Centralized Finance
The cryptocurrency trading platform STS Digital completes $30 million financing, led by CMT Digital
The cryptocurrency options trading platform STS Digital aimed at institutional investors has completed $30 million in financing, led by CMT Digital, with participation from Kraken, Arrington Capital, and Fidelity’s investment division. STS Digital offers options contracts trading for over 400 cryptocurrencies and acts as an options market maker to provide liquidity to asset pools. The company currently employs nearly 50 staff, with clients including the Uniswap Foundation, and expects to double its annual revenue from 2024 to 2025. This round of financing will be used to expand trading scale and hire more employees.
JPYC, the issuer of the Japanese yen stablecoin, has completed the first phase of Series B financing, raising about 1.78 billion yen (approximately $12 million), led by the Japanese IT solution provider Asteria, with most of the funding coming from domestic Japanese businesses and fund institutions, with BitFlyer Holdings also participating. JPYC launched in October 2025 under Japan's regulatory framework for funds transfer services, and is currently the only onshore yen stablecoin. It has partnered with Densan Systems, which covers about 65,000 convenience stores in Japan, to explore domestic payment, cross-border remittance, and travel payment applications in convenience store scenarios, and participates in Circle's stablecoin forex quotation system StableFX for cross-border settlement.
Prediction Market
The Solana-based prediction market protocol TBD announced the completion of $3 million in seed round financing, co-led by CMT Digital and ParaFi, with participation from Jump Crypto. CMT and ParaFi will gain board observer seats. Additionally, the project previously completed an $800,000 angel round financing with participation from Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and others.
TBD was founded by former dYdX team members and is a prediction market protocol focused on "validating" human opinions. The protocol verifies participants through World ID to ensure that voting participants are real humans, while prediction trades are open to all users. Users can bet on the results of various polls, and voters participating in the surveys can earn USDC rewards. The project has completed a private testing phase and officially launched, recording over 19 million votes during the testing period.
The social-native prediction market platform Kash announced the completion of $2 million in Pre-Seed round financing, with participation from Big Brain Holdings, Spartan Group, Coinbase Ventures, Kosmos Ventures, Halo Capital, MoonRock Capital, Polaris Fund, and Fabric VC. Kash aims to integrate prediction markets directly into social media, launching first on the X platform. Users can interact with @kash_bot to transform daily posts into tradeable markets on real-time events, thus financializing opinions. Kash utilizes on-chain transparent settlements, dynamic multipliers, and leaderboards, enabling users to express positions on topics like elections, macroeconomics, and sports without needing to switch to external apps, pricing truth through market mechanisms.
The prediction market professional trading terminal Fireplace has completed $1.5 million in pre-seed round financing, led by Frachtis, with multiple VCs and angels participating. This round of funding will be used to build cross-platform prediction market trading infrastructure aimed at institutions, including cross-scenario aggregation, intelligent order routing, real-time data, institutional-level execution, charting tools, and features like wallet, whale, and "insider" tracking.
Others
Tether makes a strategic investment in global internet marketplace Whop
Tether announced a strategic investment in the global internet marketplace Whop (exact amount undisclosed). Whop is currently the largest internet marketplace globally, with over 18.4 million users, annual revenue of about $3 billion, and a monthly transaction growth rate of 25%. As part of the investment partnership, Whop will integrate Tether's wallet development kit (WDK), allowing creators and users to use USD₮ and USA₮ for efficient payments. This collaboration aims to leverage stablecoin technology to reduce friction and costs in traditional payment systems, supporting Whop's international expansion into Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.
According to a report from TFN, Whop received a $200 million investment from Tether, with a valuation of $1.6 billion.
(This financing event is not included in the statistics of this week's report)
Gaming:
The blockchain gaming infrastructure platform Power Protocol has received a $3 million investment from Bitkraft Ventures, bringing total financing to $15.5 million. It is reported that Power Protocol constructs infrastructure for several collaborative studios, including the developer of "Fableborne," Pixion Games, with the aim of creating scalable systems for multiple games, enabling game developers to adopt POWER token economics and share on-chain infrastructure, rather than launching isolated chains and tokens.
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