Funding Weekly: 23 funding rounds raised $90 million, Bitcoin ecosystem gradually emerging
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Funding Weekly: 23 funding rounds raised $90 million, Bitcoin ecosystem gradually emerging
Between December 4 and December 10, a total of seven blockchain projects raised over $5 million each.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy TechFlow
According to RootData, between December 4 and December 10, 23 blockchain startups raised over $90 million.
Projects that raised more than $5 million include:
1. Mocaverse, an NFT project under Animoca Brands, completed a $11.88 million Series B funding round;
2. Babylon, a Bitcoin ecosystem staking infrastructure, completed an $18 million Series A funding round;
3. Sindri, a ZK infrastructure platform, completed a $5 million seed funding round;
4. Sona, a Web3 streaming protocol, completed a $6.9 million seed funding round;
5. QANplatform, a quantum-resistant Layer 1 project, received a $15 million investment from MBK Holding;
6. Shadow, a crypto data analytics platform, completed a $9 million seed funding round;
7. Ten (formerly Obscuro), an Ethereum Layer 2 Rollup project, announced it had raised $7.5 million.
Highlighted Projects
Pyth Network
Overview: Pyth Network is an oracle network that allows users to access prices for cryptocurrencies, real-world stocks, and other assets, helping them stay updated on the latest market values.
Investors: The Swiss nonprofit organization Pyth Data Association, dedicated to developing Pyth Network, completed a strategic funding round with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and Wintermute Ventures.
Features:
1. VanEck team predicts $PYTH will replace $LINK in the TVS sector by 2024;
2. The total token release period spans approximately 42 months, with a significant portion of tokens scheduled to be released in May 2024;
3. Pyth was incubated by Jump Trading, and its team consists of multiple former executives from Jump Trading.
StarryNift
Overview: StarryNift is a collaborative creation platform integrating gaming, social interaction, and entertainment. Its launched projects, including Code Green NFT and Citizenship DID series, have already built a community of 150,000 cardholders.
Investors: The NFT metaverse project StarryNift secured strategic investment from OKX Ventures, having previously raised venture capital from SIG, Binance Labs, DFG, Leland Ventures, and others.
Features:
1. The first integrated gamified platform and one-stop shop offering creation, incubation, auctioning, and trading for NFT collectibles.
2. StarryNift's team comprises blockchain veterans and hardcore gamers from elite fintech institutions such as Google, Alibaba, and JPMorgan Chase, including Martha Zhang, former Bitmain partner.
3. According to the official whitepaper, in Q4 2023, the platform will expand its participation program by introducing staking, liquidity mining, and a comprehensive token economy, rewarding users who contribute to community and ecosystem growth.
Babylon
Overview: Babylon is a Bitcoin ecosystem staking infrastructure designed to bring Bitcoin’s security to all PoS blockchains without additional energy costs, by transforming up to 21 million BTC into decentralized staking assets.
Investors: Babylon raised $18 million, led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC, with participation from Framework Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, OKX Ventures, Finality Capital, Breyer Capital, and Symbolic Capital.
Features:
1. Key members of the Babylon team include Stanford professor David Tse and founding CTO Mingchao (Fisher) Yu, an expert in wireless communications. Advisors include Sunny Aggarwal, co-founder of Osmosis Lab, and Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer.
2. Babylon enables BTC holders to stake their assets to strengthen network economic security while earning potential returns.
3. Babylon is extending Bitcoin’s security to Bitcoin’s data availability layer and Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions.
Below are detailed funding updates by sector:
DeFi
Jelly Labs AG and Fintonomy LTD, developers of jellyverse, announced they raised $2 million from private investors to support the development of Jellyverse, a decentralized financial services platform. Jellyverse, initiated by the core team of DeFiChain Accelerator, aims to integrate real-world assets into the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, building next-generation DeFi 3.0.
DeFi platform Curvance completed a $3.6 million seed funding round, with participation from Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs, cross-chain messaging platform Wormhole, and Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon. Curvance is a full-service omnichain money market for yield, LSDfi, tokenized treasury bills, and native assets.
Intent-based derivatives protocol SYMMIO raised $1.1 million in an OTC financing round led by 0x_Messi, with MS2 Capital, Selini Capital, and Tangent co-founder Wangarian among participants. SYMMIO plans to achieve negotiated targets with market makers and exchanges through a 4.85% dilution, backed by 18% team commitment.
BNB Chain’s liquidity market THENA received a $600,000 strategic investment from Orbs Network, an open-source blockchain infrastructure project.
Decentralized derivatives trading platform Rollup.Finance announced the acquisition of automated market maker protocol CherrySwap. The merger statement indicated both projects will operate independently, with no immediate integration of product features or services. CherrySwap token holders will be able to exchange their tokens for Rollup.Finance’s platform token, with the conversion ratio disclosed upon issuance.
Layer1
Quantum-resistant Layer 1 project QANplatform received a $15 million investment from MBK Holding. QANplatform is an Ethereum EVM-compatible, "quantum-resistant" Layer-1 blockchain, with a testnet launch imminent. A unique feature is its support for writing smart contracts in any programming language. The QAN Virtual Machine (QVM) allows developers to use any Linux kernel-compatible programming language to write smart contracts.
Bitcoin ecosystem staking infrastructure Babylon raised $18 million, led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC, with participation from Framework Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, OKX Ventures, Finality Capital, Breyer Capital, and Symbolic Capital. Babylon will use these funds to advance the development of its staking protocol.
Layer2
Ethereum Layer 2 Rollup project Ten (formerly Obscuro) announced a $7.5 million funding round, with Republic Capital, KuCoin Labs, R3, Big Brain Holdings, Magnus Capital, Builder Capital, DWF Labs, Pragma Ventures, and GTS Ventures participating.
Ethereum scaling startup Versatus (formerly VRRB Labs) raised $2.3 million in a seed round at a $50 million valuation, with NGC Ventures, Republic Crypto, and Hyperithm participating. The company previously focused on building a Layer 1 network but has now pivoted to blockchain scalability. Versatus is currently building LASR, a stateless Rollup. LASR is in Alpha phase and is expected to launch on the Ethereum testnet in the first week of January 2024, with mainnet launch planned for mid-March.
Bitcoin Layer 2 project MAP Protocol received a strategic investment from Waterdrip Capital. Founded in 2019, MAP Protocol is a Bitcoin Layer-2 enabling peer-to-peer cross-chain interoperability. By leveraging Bitcoin’s security mechanisms, it allows assets and users from other public chains to seamlessly interact with the Bitcoin network, enhancing network security and enabling BRC20 cross-chain capabilities.
Gaming
Endless Clouds, developer of blockchain game Treeverse, completed a $2.5 million strategic funding round, with founders and executives from Animoca Brands, Sky Mavis, YGG, Faze Clan, Immutable, Pudgy Penguins, Pixelmon, Pixels Online, and Pixel Vault participating. Endless Clouds will use the funds to continue developing MMORPG games Treeverse and Capsule Heroes, and build out related game IPs.
Gacha Monsters, developer of Web3 game Poglin, completed a $3 million seed funding round led by Animoca Brands, with Infinity Ventures Crypto, FBG, and Big Time Games participating. Gacha Monsters’ first self-developed game, Poglin, will launch its alpha version in Q1 2024, aiming to establish Poglin as a multimedia IP spanning anime, gaming, Web3, and physical merchandise.
Metaverse
Metaverse project StarryNift received strategic investment from OKX Ventures. StarryNift is a collaborative platform integrating gaming, social interaction, and entertainment, with its launched Code Green NFT and Citizenship DID series already forming a community of 150,000 cardholders. It previously raised venture capital from SIG, Binance Labs, DFG, Leland Ventures, and others.
Mocaverse, an NFT project under Animoca Brands, completed an $11.88 million second funding round, with Block1, OKX Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Polygon Ventures, and Dapper Labs participating. The new funds will be used to advance Mocaverse’s digital identity and points system for Web3 gaming, culture, and entertainment.
Infrastructure
Candlestick raised $1.2 million in a Pre-Seed round led by BoostVC and AllianceDao, with WAGMI Ventures participating. Candlestick aims to provide transparency and trust for on-chain traders, offering tools like TraderScan, stealth money, and top profit leaderboards. It plans to launch a blockchain version of eToro, removing centralized barriers and enabling anyone to trade with any address.
Crypto data analytics platform Shadow raised $9 million, led by Paradigm, with Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap, and Flashbots participating. The funds will be used to reduce Ethereum development costs.
The Swiss nonprofit Pyth Data Association, focused on developing Pyth Network, announced completion of a strategic funding round, with Castle Island Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and Wintermute Ventures participating. New partners received PYTH tokens, which will serve as voting rights within the protocol’s governance system.
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) oracle and data-sharing protocol CARV announced a recent strategic funding round from HashKey Capital and other VCs. Users can participate in “Data-to-Earn” via an ID NFT minting event starting December 6, 2023, establishing their ID and account systems, with the first users gaining access on December 12, 2023.
ZK infrastructure platform Sindri completed a $5 million seed round led by CoinFund. The funds will support expanding the team and developer outreach. Sindri enables developers to verify data using zero-knowledge proofs.
Rhinestone, a startup building modular account abstraction infrastructure, completed a Pre-Seed funding round with participation from 1kx, Safe, Lattice, Heartcore, Calvin Lui (Chief Strategy Officer of EigenLayer), Georgios Vlachos (co-founder of Axelar), and Waikit Lau (Lau Ventures). Rhinestone’s infrastructure allows developers to easily build self-contained components by opening up programmability of smart accounts to third parties. These smart account modules can be integrated with existing accounts via the Rhinestone Protocol, enabling developers to distribute and monetize their modules, while allowing users or dApp developers to discover and install them. Rhinestone is developing a modular smart wallet interface.
Others
Decentralized agricultural financing protocol LandX announced it oversubscribed its $915,000 private sale, bringing total funding above $5 million. Additionally, the LandX platform will officially launch on December 15, opening its public token sale. LandX brings agricultural assets and tokenized farmland into the DeFi ecosystem, providing farmers with upfront capital in exchange for a share of future harvests. Financing is backed by underlying farmland, offering investors potential access to tangible asset-backed sustainable yields.
Web3 streaming protocol Sona completed a $6.9 million seed funding round, with Polychain Capital, Haun Ventures, and Rogue Capital participating. Sona uses DeFi-based modules to offer artists tokenized streaming content, music auctions, governance rewards, and more, distributing auction proceeds between artists and the platform. Sona’s marketplace allows artists to auction their SONA tokens to collectors within 24 hours, setting minimum prices and selling to the highest bidder for instant liquidity. SONA holders receive 70% of streaming revenue based on total platform streams.
Bitcoin investment platform Swan announced expansion into institutional products, including Bitcoin-backed loans, raising $40 million in 2023 for expansion and an additional $125 million for its own venture and private equity investments. Swan also plans to raise another $150 million in 2024 for further expansion. Founded in 2019, Swan is a leader in Bitcoin-focused financial services, offering core Bitcoin asset management solutions.
Web3 gaming publishing platform Elixir Games announced the acquisition of LitLab Games, developer of CyberTitans.
Digital asset brokerage firm Nonco completed a $10 million seed funding round, co-led by Valor Capital Group and Hack VC, with participation from Morgan Creek Digital, CMCC, Lvna Capital, Theta Capital, Bullish, Bastion Trading, and Libra Capital Ventures. The company was spun off from OSL Digital Limited, the Americas division of Hong Kong-based digital asset platform OSL, and is run by the same team. OSL retains a minority stake in the new company.
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