A Deep Dive into Five Major Recent Funding Projects in the DeFi Sector
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A Deep Dive into Five Major Recent Funding Projects in the DeFi Sector
DeFi Funding Landscape and 5 Recently Funded Projects
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Ignas
Compiled by: TechFlow
What’s new in DeFi? Every month I track funding flows to find out. Early projects that raise capital during bear markets have a strong chance of thriving when the bull market returns. Here's the current state of fundraising and the top 5 recently funded projects:
First, the downward trend in fundraising has finally reversed.
In January, there were 105 cryptocurrency fundraising deals worth $1.27 billion—up from 83 deals in December 2022. If both deal volume and dollar value continue to rise, this is a strong bullish signal.
Web3 and infrastructure saw the most deals. DeFi accounted for 18 of them—up from 10 in December. However, in terms of value, DeFi lagged behind all other sectors, raising only $68.2 million in total.
I focused on seed-stage investments from well-known venture capital firms. Most of these projects don’t yet have tokens, but if market sentiment continues to improve, I expect them to launch tokens soon.
1. Diva
Diva is an Ethereum liquid staking derivative (LSD) protocol powered by Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). Stake $ETH and receive tradable divETH to earn staking rewards.
You can also install the "diva operator" and run a node to earn additional rewards on your ETH.
Diva aims to further decentralize Ethereum staking. The protocol relies on distributed key generation to enhance resilience against downtime and censorship.
The team raised $3.5 million from Gnosis, Bankless, OKX, and numerous investors.
2. Elixir
Elixir is building an algorithmic market-making (MM) protocol that enables anyone to participate in market-making across CEXs and DEXs. Their protocol features a liquidity model that allows dApps to share MM returns with their communities.
Elixir has already been used by teams such as Perpetual Protocol, dYdX, Sudoswap, and Perennial.
Elixir raised $2.1 million from FalconX, Op Crypto, KuCoin, and Arthur Hayes personally.
3. Architect
Brett Harrison, former president of FTX, raised $5 million to build Architect.
Architect will provide institutional-grade infrastructure services for crypto connectivity across exchanges. It is a single trading platform that simplifies access to custodial and self-custody options.
4. Vest Exchange
A favorite among Arbitrum fans, Vest Exchange is a perpetual futures exchange where you can trade "almost any asset you can think of."
The team promises improved risk management, clear risk/reward profiles for liquidity providers, and support for long-tail assets.
5. Blue
Blue enables KYC/AML-compliant trading on DeFi protocols like Uniswap and Curve.
The solution is based on Safe Token, an ERC20-wrapped token that performs KYC/AML checks on wallets involved in transactions.
KYC- and AML-verified wallets are recognized via BlueID, a credential aggregator. The goal is to bring in institutional participants and reduce retail risk by creating "permissioned pools."
Blue raised $3.2 million in funding co-led by Blockchange Ventures and Fenbushi Capital.
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Ignas | DeFi Research
