Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 25 blockchain investment and financing events around the world last week (October 28-November 3), with a total funding amount of over US$280 million. This is a significant increase compared to the previous week. An overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 6 investment and financing events, among which BTC native stablecoin protocol bitSmiley.io completed a second round of financing of US$10 million;
- The Web3 game track announced four investment and financing events, among which 81RAVENS, the developer of the Web3 game PARAVOX, completed a $4.5 million financing, led by Digital Hearts Holdings and Gree Ventures;
- One investment and financing event was announced in the AI field. Sapien, an AI data collection startup, completed a $10.5 million seed round of financing, led by Variant.
- DePIN track announced one investment and financing event. Glow, a blockchain solar energy company based on Ethereum, completed a $30 million financing, led by Framework and Union Square Ventures;
- The Infrastructure and Tools track announced 12 financings, including the Optimism Foundation providing 25 million OP tokens (about 42 million US dollars) to Kraken to support its Layer-2 network construction;
- In other blockchain/crypto applications , 1 financing was announced. Libraro, a community-oriented Web3 content platform, completed its first-stage seed round of financing, led by Ayre Ventures.
DeFi
Founders Fund leads Infinex’s “Sponsored” NFT funding round, raising $67 million
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund participated in Infinex's "sponsored" NFT financing model to help it achieve its $67 million fundraising goal. Infinex's financing attracted venture capital, angel investors and community supporters through the sale of Patron NFTs. Other participating institutions include Wintermute Ventures, Framework Ventures and Solana Ventures, and individual investors include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Aave founder Stani Kulechov. Infinex was founded by Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, and is committed to building a decentralized trading experience to compete with centralized exchanges. The platform currently has a total locked value of US$125 million. In the future, it will focus on realizing functions such as spot trading, derivatives and fiat currency entry to further approach the service level of centralized exchanges.
BTC native stablecoin protocol bitSmiley.io completes $10 million second round of financing
BTC native stablecoin protocol bitSmiley.io announced the completion of a $10 million second round of financing, with participation from institutions including MH Ventures, Veris Ventures, Side Door Ventures, KuCoin Ventures, Pragma, NewTribe Capital, Kinetic Kollective, Perlon Capital, IBC, GuildQB, NxGen, Dutch Crypto Investors, Aegis Ventures, ZC, Skyland Ventures and Cypher Capital. This financing will promote bitSmiley's innovation and development in the field of Bitcoin-backed DeFi. bitSmiley.io plans to expand its cross-chain transactions and BTCFi infrastructure by cooperating with platforms such as ZetaChain and Babylon.
Bitcoin liquidity staking platform PumpBTC announced the completion of a $10 million seed round of financing, led by SevenX Ventures and Mirana Ventures, with participation from well-known institutions such as UTXO and Mantle Ecosystem Fund, and attracted many industry partners such as Quantstamp and Veda. This financing will help PumpBTC launch a new product BTC-Fi, a CeDeFi BTC liquidity vault that combines CeFi-level security and DeFi's BTC yield optimization, providing an automated yield strategy that allows Bitcoin holders to maximize their returns. Since its launch in July 2024, PumpBTC has been deployed on more than 10 public chains, attracted a total lock-up of 3,400 BTC (approximately $240 million), and cooperated with more than 70 projects to build a multi-chain, multi-partner ecosystem, further promoting the development of CeDeFi.
Monad ecosystem liquidity pledge agreement Magma announced the completion of a $3.9 million seed round of financing, with Bloccelerate, Animoca Ventures, CMS Holdings, Maelstrom, Veil VC, Builder Capital, Infinity Ventures, RockTree Capital, Wise3 Ventures, Stake Capital, Relayer Capital and others participating. Angel investors participating in this financing include Meltem Demirors, Kartik Talwar, Mike Silagadze, Alan Curtis and Ben Lakoff. According to reports, Magma is a decentralized liquidity pledge protocol built on the Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 blockchain Monad Network. Magma users will be able to pledge their Monad tokens in exchange for gMONAD, a liquidity pledge token (LST). Magma is also building MEV infrastructure for Monad to improve the performance of the Monad network. Magma users will be able to use their LST to obtain re-staking rewards through Ether.Fi.
Crypto Insurance Broker Native Completes $2.6 Million Seed Round, Led by Nexus Mutual
Decentralized insurance platform Nexus Mutual supports new crypto insurance broker Native, which has received $2.6 million in a seed round led by Nexus Mutual. Native will provide $20 million in on-chain insurance for each risk and run a capital pool on Nexus Mutual to increase the industry's insurance capacity. Native CEO Ben Davies said the move is aimed at addressing the long-standing problem of insufficient insurance in the crypto industry and driving growth in the field. In addition, Nexus Mutual has launched an insurance product called Base DeFi Pass, which provides unified coverage for mainstream protocols including Uniswap, Compound and Morpho through Coinbase's second-layer network Base. The product was developed by OpenCover and covers risks such as smart contract vulnerabilities and hacker attacks. OpenCover CEO Jeremiah Smith pointed out that Base DeFi Pass simplifies the insurance purchase process and is suitable for users' "set and forget" insurance needs.
Stablecoin project CAP Labs announced the completion of a US$1.9 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from Kraken Ventures, Robot Ventures, ANAGRAM, ABCDE Labs, SCB Limited, and several individual investors.
According to reports, CAP Labs is building scalable crypto-native stablecoins; these stablecoins will connect users to the full range of crypto-native yields: MEV, arbitrage and other types of yields; its mainnet is scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
Web3 Games
Alliance Games has completed a $5 million Series A financing, led by Animoca Brands and Asymm Ventures, with participation from The Spartan Group, Dialectic, Kyros Ventures, Coin98 Ventures and investors Loi Luu and Sebastien. Together with its previous seed round financing, Alliance Games' total financing has reached $8 million. It is reported that Alliance Games is a decentralized AI infrastructure built specifically for games, using distributed computing power to achieve democratized access to advanced AI tools, enabling developers of all sizes to unleash their creativity and enhance player experience.
81RAVENS, the developer of Web3 game PARAVOX, completes $4.5 million in financing
81RAVENS, the developer of the Web3 game PARAVOX, announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$4.5 million, led by Digital Hearts Holdings and Gree Ventures. The injection of new capital will accelerate development and marketing and promote the continued expansion of the game on Solana. According to reports, PARAVOX is a 3v3 competitive shooting game, and its global open Alpha stage has been downloaded more than 100,000 times on the Epic Games Store. To celebrate the migration to Solana, PARAVOX launched a limited edition Solana-themed skin.
On-chain game developer Delabs Games completes strategic financing, with TON Ventures participating
Delabs Games, a game developer on the blockchain, announced on the X platform that it has completed a new round of strategic financing, with TON Ventures participating. The specific amount of financing and valuation information have not been disclosed yet. The new funds will be used for the growth of Delabs Games and the deployment of its game projects on the TON blockchain. It is reported that Delabs Games' PC game "Rumble Racing Star" and space survival game "Space Frontier" were previously built on the Polygon blockchain, but in July this year, Delabs Games began to expand the TON ecosystem and launched the Telegram click game Giga Chad Bat.
VanEck has invested in Web3 gaming startup Gunzilla Games
VanEck said its private crypto fund has invested in game startup Gunzilla Games, the asset management company's second bet on Web3 games. VanEck's Matt Maximo posted on the X platform that Gunzilla is the developer of the dystopian cyberpunk shooting game "Off The Grid", and players can earn Gunzilla's native GUN tokens in the game. Maximo said: "We believe that cryptocurrency is a tool to enhance the gaming experience and improve monetization strategies."
AI
AI data collection company Sapien completes $10.5 million seed round led by Variant
Sapien, an AI data collection startup, announced the completion of a $10.5 million seed round of financing, led by venture capital firm Variant, with participation from Primitive Ventures, Animoca, Yield Game Guild and HF0. Angel investors such as YGG founder Gabby Dizon and SoftBank Vision Fund alumnus Kevin Jiang also participated in this round of financing. Sapien is led by Rowan Stone, co-founder of Coinbase Layer 2 network Base, and Trevor Koverko, founder of Polymath, and incentivizes global data providers through USDC stablecoins or reward points. Users need to pledge funds to participate in the work. If they perform well, they can get extra rewards. If there is cheating, the pledge will be deducted. Sapien currently provides data support for 17 large companies including Alibaba and Baidu, and has attracted more than 100,000 AI data labelers to join.
DePIN
Glow, an Ethereum-based blockchain solar company, has raised $30 million in funding led by Framework and Union Square Ventures. Glow operates a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) consisting of solar power plants in the United States and India, aiming to promote the development and management of clean energy through blockchain technology.
Infrastructure & Tools
Kraken, a US cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it will build the Layer-2 network Ink based on Optimism's OP Stack framework and become part of the "super chain" ecosystem. In an agreement reached earlier this year, the Optimism Foundation agreed to provide Kraken with 25 million OP tokens, which were worth about $100 million at the time and are now worth about $42.5 million. The agreement allows Kraken to use OP Stack to create its custom Layer-2, and the tokens will be unlocked in batches on a monthly basis. In addition, Kraken has become another large participant in the development of Layer-2 networks using OP Stack technology after Coinbase, Uniswap and Sony, further promoting the rapid expansion of the Optimism ecosystem.
Nillion, a privacy-preserving computing network, announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$25 million, led by Hack VC and participated by a group of venture capitalists and angel investors. So far, its total financing has exceeded US$50 million. According to reports, Nillion was founded three years ago with the aim of creating a privacy-preserving computing network through decentralization and privacy-enhancing technologies such as secure multi-party computing and homomorphic encryption to provide better protection services for high-value data. Nillion has created the world's first blind computing infrastructure, which can provide private data storage and computing capabilities for AI agents, data markets, private DeFi, healthcare analysis, etc.
Ellipsis Labs Completes $21 Million in New Funding to Launch L2 Blockchain Atlas
Ellipsis Labs, the team behind Solana's DEX Phoenix, has completed a new round of financing of $21 million, including $20 million from Haun Ventures and $1 million from other investors to accelerate the launch of Atlas, a Layer2 blockchain focused on verifiable finance. Ellipsis aims to solve key problems in DeFi, such as inefficient price discovery and high transaction costs, which make it difficult for decentralized financial platforms to compete with traditional financial systems. Ellipsis said it plans to apply the experience of building Phoenix to Atlas, which was originally launched as a Layer2 solution on Ethereum and aims to access the liquidity pools of Ethereum and Solana; key features will include low-latency transaction processing, reliable oracle updates, and sorting of non-custodial on-chain price discovery. Earlier news , Ellipsis completed a $20 million Series A financing round led by Paradigm in April.
Bitcoin rollup project Citrea completes $14 million Series A financing, led by Founders Fund
Bitcoin rollup project Citrea announced the completion of a $14 million Series A financing round, led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with participation from angel investors such as Erik Voorhees and Balaji Srinivasan. Citrea aims to use zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to transform Bitcoin into a programmable asset, introducing smart contract functionality similar to Ethereum. Citrea uses the BitVM computing model to make it compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing applications on Ethereum to be deployed on Citrea without modification. Citrea said that Bitcoin lacks scalability solutions in the DeFi field and may gradually be marginalized if its practicality is not enhanced. Through ZK technology, Citrea expands the capacity of Bitcoin's block space, providing a foundation for it to support a variety of on-chain applications and avoiding the impact on Bitcoin's position in decentralized finance.
Rollup-as-a-Service Platform Gelato Completes $11 Million Series A+ Funding, Led by Hack VC
Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform Gelato has raised $11 million in its latest Series A+ round of funding, led by Hack VC, with participation from Animoca Brands, IOSG Ventures, and Bloccelerate VC. The funding will be used to expand the team and services, support more enterprise-level rollup applications, and strive to become the preferred platform for launching blockchain projects. Gelato's new customers include Kraken's Layer 2 blockchain Ink, which is expected to be launched on the mainnet in early 2025. Ink will be part of the Ethereum Superchain ecosystem and adopt Optimism's OP Stack architecture. This financing brings Gelato's total financing to $23.2 million.
Ethereum Scaling Infrastructure Company Spire Labs Completes $7 Million Seed Round
Spire Labs, a startup focused on Ethereum expansion, has completed a $7 million seed round of financing, led by Maven 11 Capital and Anagram, with participation from a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, Digital Currency Group, and others. This round of financing will be used to develop "Based Stack", a rollup framework that helps developers deploy Ethereum Layer 2 application chains (appchains). Kaito Yanai, co-founder of Spire Labs, said that Based Stack allows application chains to use Ethereum Layer 1 as a sorting layer to ensure Ethereum's composability, fairness, and censorship resistance. In addition, Based Stack supports the internalization of MEV (maximum extractable value), allowing appchain to capture the MEV it generates. Spire plans to launch the first testnet of Based Stack by the end of this year and launch the mainnet in the first quarter of 2025.
OpenOrigins, a blockchain software company that fights deep fakes, announced that it has completed a $4.5 million financing round, led by Galaxy Interactive. Valuation information has not been disclosed. Founded in 2021, OpenOrigins uses blockchain technology to verify the authenticity of photos, videos and other digital content to combat fake media. The relevant information will be recorded on the Hyperledger blockchain. It is reported that the new funds will be used to expand into global markets such as India and the United States.
Security protocol Phylax Systems completes $4.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing
Security protocol Phylax Systems has completed a $4.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Nascent and Figment Capital. Other investors include: Robot Ventures, Hash3, Bankless Ventures, Breed VC, Public Works, Banteg, Hari Mulackal, Laurence Day, Ryan Lackey, Nic Carter, Nader Dabit, Eric Wall, etc. The company will use the funds to develop The Credible Layer, a hacker prevention protocol. Currently, it is building a trusted layer, an active security layer that allows dApps to define hacker prevention rules and communicate them to block builders, specifying the states they want to prevent. It is functionally a coordination mechanism between dApps and the base layer that ensures the sovereignty and security of dApps. Regarding the transparency of the trusted layer, anyone can view the security rules of the dApp and verify its execution. dApps pay for this verification to ensure that their assets are protected.
Solana Scaling Infrastructure Developer Nitro Labs Completes $4 Million Seed Round Led by Lemniscap
Nitro Labs, the team behind Solana's scaling infrastructure platform Termina, has raised $4 million in a seed round led by Lemniscap, with participation from Animoca Ventures, Borderless Capital, Finality Capital, Race Capital, and No Limit Holdings. In addition, undisclosed angel investors from the Solana Foundation, Jump Crypto, and Spartan also joined this round of financing. Nitro Labs founder Yiwen Gao revealed that the round of financing was completed this summer and adopted a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) structure with token warrants. He declined to disclose the company's valuation. According to reports, Termina is an open source platform designed to enable developers to easily deploy customized Solana Rollup or SVM "network extensions", which are essentially Layer2 networks.
Axal, a startup focused on the development of autonomous agent networks, announced the completion of a $2.5 million pre-seed financing led by CMT Digital, with other participants including a16z Crypto Startup School, Escape Velocity, IDG Vietnam and Artichoke Capital. Axal plans to use the funds to expand its team and launch its first product, Axal Autopilot, an autonomous agent-driven trading automation platform that provides users with personalized trading strategies, including price tracking, on-chain transaction execution and yield management. Axal founder Ash Ahmed said the company is committed to developing verifiable autonomous agents to simplify users' lives with practical automation functions, rather than just creating tokens or entertainment products.
London-based KRNL Labs announced the completion of a $1.7 million pre-seed round of financing to create the largest multi-chain software registry in the Web3 space. This round of financing was supported by well-known investors, including TRGC, Superscrypt, Ryze Labs, Builder Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund, WAGMi Ventures, STIX, YAP Capital and several strategic angel investors. KRNL Labs is committed to building a node package management system for decentralized computing through cross-chain communication, similar to the Node Package Manager (npm) in JavaScript development. The platform supports cross-chain modular execution sharding, enabling developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) that utilize multiple blockchains simultaneously, improving efficiency and scalability.
Saudi Web3 provider Tharawat Green Exchange completes $450,000 in funding, with Adaverse participating
Tharawat Green Exchange, a Saudi Arabia-based Web3 provider, has completed a $450,000 financing round, with participation from Web3 and blockchain investment fund Adaverse. The project is committed to using blockchain technology to achieve environmental sustainability in line with Saudi Vision 2030. The new funds will be used to support infrastructure and blockchain development, strengthen sales and marketing, and help its carbon credits obtain Vera certification.
other
Libraro, a community-oriented Web3 content platform, completes its first seed round of financing, led by Ayre Ventures
Libraro, a community-oriented Web3 content platform, announced the completion of its seed round of financing (Phase I), led by Ayre Ventures. The specific amount of financing and valuation information have not been disclosed. The new funds will be used to expand its Web 3 loyalty program and on-chain author identity functions, prevent copyright infringement, and increase transparency of content ownership and distribution rights.
Investment institutions
Web3 data and entertainment company Redacted Group announced the launch of a new early crypto fund, Redacted Fund, to support Web3 startups and game developers. The fund is supported by Saison Capital, Expert Dojo and Frekaz Group. Currently, part of the funds have been invested in seven initial projects in the Redacted ecosystem, namely: Biptap, LegendaryWeb3, Hub.xz, Numa social, Spaace.io, Ammalgam and iAgentProtocol. Redacted Fund will mainly provide assistance in listing strategy and token economics development. It is reported that the fund is about to launch the token RDAC and will allocate part of the token to the Redacted Fund's portfolio as an additional incentive to promote growth, using RDAC tokens to improve and iterate products to verify product-market fit.
