Funding Weekly: 32 deals raised approximately $238 million, with various sectors closely matched
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Funding Weekly: 32 deals raised approximately $238 million, with various sectors closely matched
Between February 19 and February 25, nine blockchain projects raised over $5 million each.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: TechFlow
According to RootData data, during the period from February 19 to February 25, blockchain startups raised a total of $238 million.
Projects that raised over $5 million include:
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Anti-MEV protocol Shutter raised $8.31 million through a liquidity bootstrapping pool (LBP);
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Layer 1 blockchain Flare completed a $35 million private placement;
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Ethereum streaming payments protocol Superfluid secured $5.1 million in strategic funding;
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Crypto restaking services provider EigenLayer announced it raised $100 million;
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Solana ecosystem developer platform Helius announced completion of a $9.5 million Series A round;
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Crypto fantasy sports platform Monkey Tilt announced $21 million in funding;
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Decentralized on-chain gaming ecosystem platform and studio Crystal Fun closed a $5 million seed round;
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Web3 social protocol beoble announced completion of its seed round;
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Modular blockchain project AltLayer completed a $14.4 million strategic funding round.
Featured Projects
Shuffle
Overview: Shuffle is a leading cryptocurrency casino and sports betting platform launched in February 2023. Since launch, Shuffle has grown to serve over 35,000 users and facilitated 2.8 billion bets through a series of innovative products.
Investors: Web3 entertainment platform Shuffle announced $2.5 million in new funding, with participation from Karatage, Cypher Capital, Sunforge (Robbie and James Ferguson), ODA Capital, Web3 Wizards, UpsideDAO, Parc Capital, Baboon VC, and angel investors including Andrew Kang of Mechanism Capital and Tristan Yver of Backpack.
Features:
1. The airdrop snapshot was taken on February 1, 2024. 28% of the total SHFL token supply will be distributed via three airdrops.
2. Shuffle has released key details of its ERC-20 token SHFL distribution plan, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens and an initial circulating supply of 71,126,984.56 SHFL. Token generation and airdrop events are expected to occur in the first week of March.
3. SHFL will serve as a staking asset, undergo buybacks and burns, and grant holders early access to new features, exclusive bonuses, and more.
Helius
Overview: Helius aims to help developers overcome barriers by providing APIs (application programming interfaces) for understanding on-chain data and querying transactions, webhooks for automation and bots, and RPC nodes enabling Solana applications to interact with the blockchain.
Investors: Solana ecosystem developer platform Helius announced completion of a $9.5 million Series A round led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One, and Propel.
Features:
1. Helius plans to deliver universal compression for Solana next year, improve RPC state on-chain, build new RPC clients, and bring thousands of Web2 developers and major institutions onto Solana;
2. Helius was founded by former Coinbase software engineer and CEO Mert Mumtaz, along with CTO Liam Vovk and COO Nicolas Pennie, both former AWS software engineers;
3. Helius offers:
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Solana RPCs: Data centers worldwide with up to 99.99% SLA; includes Geyser plugins and 24/7 developer support;
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Enhanced APIs and indexers: Enriched transaction APIs with rich, descriptive context, making Solana data easier to understand;
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Webhooks and WebSockets: Enable real-time responses to on-chain events, support over 70 transaction types, and allow automated interactions between apps and the Solana blockchain. Users can subscribe to various transaction types or account changes, with up to 100,000 addresses per webhook.
Superfluid
Overview: Superfluid is an asset streaming protocol bringing subscriptions, payroll, and rewards to DAOs and crypto-native businesses.
Investors: Ethereum streaming payments protocol Superfluid announced $5.1 million in strategic funding led by Fabric Ventures, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Circle Ventures, Safe Foundation, The LAO, Taavet+Sten, and others.
Features:
1. Launched in 2021, Superfluid allows crypto projects (e.g., DAOs) to pay recurring salaries and rewards in a single on-chain transaction using "super tokens," enabling continuous money flow between two parties;
2. Superfluid launched “Distribution Pools,” allowing funds to be streamed to multiple recipients, enabling scalable streaming smart contracts;
3. Superfluid stated that whether to launch a native token will be decided by the community.
Inco
Overview: Inco is a modular, interoperable Layer 1 blockchain network focused on bringing confidentiality to decentralized applications. Comparable to modular blockchain projects like Celestia and Lava—focused on data availability and data access respectively—Inco specializes in confidentiality.
Investors: Modular blockchain developer Inco raised $4.5 million in funding led by 1kx, with participation from Circle Ventures, GSR, Polygon Ventures, Robot Ventures, Alliance DAO, zkSync developer Matter Labs, and others.
Features:
1. Inco has launched its first testnet, Gentry. The second testnet, Paillier, is scheduled for release between Q2 and Q3 this year, with mainnet planned for Q4.
2. Uses fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to provide confidential computation, enhancing privacy and scalability for developers and users within the Ethereum ecosystem;
3. The initial mainnet is expected to handle 10 TPS via CPU with ~8-second block times. It can transition to GPU if needed, scaling to 20–50 TPS. FPGA hardware acceleration expected in 2025 could scale throughput to 100–1,000 TPS.
Below are detailed funding announcements across sectors:
Bitcoin Ecosystem
BRC20 project Jade98 ARdinals completed a new funding round with participation from NewTribe Capital, Rarestone Capital, Normie Capital, Dutch Crypto Investors, Three M Capital, and X21 Digital.
Bitcoin ZK Rollup protocol Citrea raised $2.7 million in seed funding led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Delphi Ventures, Eric Wall (co-founder of Taproot Wizards), Anurag Arjun (co-founder of modular blockchain Avail), and others. Citrea aims to enable Bitcoin to better support DeFi, NFTs, and other use cases previously limited to smart contract platforms. Its ZK Rollup will be built on the Ethereum EVM, simplifying migration for developers building on Ethereum and compatible networks. The team plans to launch its testnet next quarter.
ViaBTC Capital officially announced its angel investment in BTC Layer 2 project BEVM, pledging brand and group resources to support BEVM’s development. ViaBTC Capital is the wholly owned investment arm of Bitcoin mining pool ViaBTC Group, focusing on Web3.0, Layer2, and DApp projects integrating DeFi, NFTs, or DAO elements. BEVM is a BTC-based L2 leveraging Taproot and using BTC as gas.
DeFi
zkSync ecosystem decentralized lending protocol ZeroLend raised $3 million in seed funding at a $25 million valuation. Investors include Momentum 6, Blockchain Founders Fund, Morning Star Ventures, Banter Capital, Newman Capital, dVdT, Transform Capital, Cypher Capital, Bison Fund, Ozaru Ventures, iAngels, Krypital, Genblock, viaBTC, GBV, Asteroid Capital, and angel investors such as Mr.Block of Curve Finance, Pranav Sharma of Woodstock, and Boxmining. Additionally, ZeroLend plans to launch its native governance token ZERO in Q1 2024.
DeFi project INIT Capital announced $3.1 million in seed funding co-led by Electric Capital and Mirana Ventures, with participation from Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom, Robot Ventures, Nomad Capital, TANGENT, BanklessVC, Selini Capital, Faction, Pendle co-founder @tn_pendle, Leptokurtic of Ethena Labs, Aevo co-founder Julian, Dragonfly’s Ashwin, MetaStreet founder David Choi, SCB 10X CEO Tai Panich, and others. INIT will use the funds to strengthen technical capabilities, market strategy, and its position as a core DeFi liquidity layer.
Berachain ecosystem DeFi Hub project Honeypot Finance announced completion of its Pre-Seed round led by AC Capital and DEXT Force Ventures. Amount undisclosed.
Crypto restaking services provider EigenLayer announced $100 million in funding, with participation from a16z. Founded by Sreeram Kannan, EigenLayer enables tokens to be deposited or "restaked" into the network to validate transactions on blockchains, helping new projects built atop Ethereum leverage blockchain security for their own networks.
Institutional-grade privacy DeFi access layer Singularity raised $2.2 million in a new round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Laser Digital (NOMURA's digital asset subsidiary), Eureka Partners, Apollo Crypto, Digital Asset Capital Management, and Gandel Invest. To date, Singularity has raised nearly $4 million. Funds will support protocol development, compliant DeFi access, and protection of commercial confidentiality on-chain. As the first Noir-based zero-knowledge circuit DeFi infrastructure protocol, Singularity focuses on delivering private DeFi access for institutional users and plans to integrate more DeFi protocols to expand user strategies.
Binance Labs announced an investment in Renzo Protocol. The project is a liquid restaking token (LRT) and strategy management infrastructure built around EigenLayer, aiming to deeply develop shared security performance on EigenLayer and establish risk management standards for restaking.
Decentralized perpetual futures trading platform OX.FUN, initiated by Zhu Su (@zhusu), completed a new $4 million funding round led by Foresight Ventures, with participation from Double Peak Group, EmChain, and Genblock Capital. Funds will be used for product iteration, team expansion, and market growth.
Anti-MEV protocol Shutter raised $8.31 million via a liquidity bootstrapping pool (LBP). The SHU/USDC trading pair is now live on Uniswap V2.
DePIN
Decentralized data coverage solutions provider Silencio Network announced $1 million in funding led by Borderless Capital, with participation from Moonrock Capital and Master Ventures. Silencio Network leverages blockchain technology (particularly the Peaq blockchain) to create large-scale noise-level databases, enabling innovative data solutions.
Layer 1
Blockchain development platform QuickNode announced a $60 million Series B round at an $800 million valuation, led by 10T Holdings, LLC, with participation from Tiger Global, 776, Protocol Labs, and QED. New capital will accelerate global expansion and further empower builders, laying the foundation for a decentralized, globally interconnected future and simplifying the Web2-to-Web3 transition.
Layer 1 blockchain Flare completed a $35 million private placement with participation from Kenetic and Aves Lair. Early investors have voluntarily agreed to extend token allocations from 2024 to Q1 2026. A 0.5% daily sell limit has also been implemented to mitigate market selling pressure.
Meme
Farcaster ecosystem meme project Degen announced $1.47 million ($490.5 ETH) in angel funding led by 1confirmation, with participation from Farcaster OGs. Funds will support the Degen ecosystem and community development.
SocialFi
Web3 social protocol beoble announced completion of its seed round, bringing total funding—including a previously disclosed $2 million pre-seed—to $7 million. Investors include HashKey Capital, Samsung, DCG, DWF Ventures, Nomura Laser Digital, Cypher Capital, and Blockchain Founders Fund. Funds will support the upcoming launch of Beoble V2 next month, improving Web3 social interactions with advanced features such as multi-chain integration, in-app social trading, and OTC functionality.
GameFi
Decentralized on-chain gaming ecosystem platform and studio Crystal Fun announced completion of a $5 million seed round. Investors include Kucoin Ventures, Actoz Soft, Waterdrip Capital, Comma3 Ventures, Stratified Capital, Cypher9 Ventures, Aelf Ventures, W Labs, and Masverse. Funds will be used for game production and operations.
Crypto fantasy sports platform Monkey Tilt announced $21 million in funding, with participation from PolyChain Capital, Hack VC, Poker Go, Accomplice, Paper Ventures, and Folius Ventures. Monkey Tilt also announced the launch of its fantasy gaming platform MTFantasy in over 20 U.S. states, with a beta version coming soon.
Metaverse FPS mobile game Matr1x FIRE announced a new strategic investment from Animoca Brands, amount undisclosed. Matr1x FIRE is a mobile-first-person shooter where players choose playable characters and compete in five-player teams to eliminate enemies. In February last year, Matr1x FIRE raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Hashkey Capital and others.
Web3 entertainment platform Shuffle announced $2.5 million in new funding from angel investors including Karatage, Cypher Capital, Sunforge (Robbie and James Ferguson), ODA Capital, Web3 Wizards, UpsideDAO, Parc Capital, Baboon VC, Andrew Kang of Mechanism Capital, and Tristan Yver of Backpack. Last week, Shuffle revealed key details of its ERC-20 token SHFL distribution plan, with a total supply of 1 billion and initial circulating supply of 71,126,984.56 SHFL. Token generation and airdrop activities are expected in the first week of March.
Modular
Modular blockchain project AltLayer completed a $14.4 million strategic funding round co-led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Bankless Ventures, Primitive Ventures, SevenX, Mask Network, IOSG, and TRGC. The team stated: "With growing strategic partnerships and an increasing number of key projects in development, we are expanding our global team, centering on infrastructure innovation and replay rollups."
Modular blockchain developer Inco raised $4.5 million in funding led by 1kx, with participation from Circle Ventures, GSR, Polygon Ventures, Robot Ventures, Alliance DAO, Matter Labs (zkSync), and others. Founded in August last year, Inco launched its first testnet Gentry today. Its second testnet Paillier is planned for release between Q2 and Q3, with mainnet scheduled for Q4.
NFT
ERC404 improvement protocol project LoongCity announced $2 million in seed funding from MAZARINE SEA. Funds will primarily support LoongCity’s NFT market cap management and subsequent GameFi development. LoongCity will introduce the ERC1321 protocol—a refinement of ERC404—by incorporating on-chain oracles to resolve ERC404’s inability to assess NFT rarity. Set in a fictional Chinese steampunk metaverse, LoongCity will conduct its first NFT mint tomorrow.
DWF Labs announced a seven-figure strategic investment in game NFT marketplace Prom via X.
Infrastructure & Tools
Blast-native bot for trading and sniping tokens, Tornado Blast, completed a strategic funding round led by Syndicate, with participation from OzDAO, Normie Capital, X Ventures, ATKA, 3AC (3 Asians Capital), Underground, Nftperp, Creed Alpha, Morningstar Ventures, Punk DAO, Metadrop, Fantasy Top, vopa fnf, Flowdesk, and others. Amount undisclosed.
Multi-chain wallet Nest Wallet announced over $3.6 million in funding, with participation from Inception Capital, Orange DAO, Ascensive Assets Snack Clube, gumi Cryptos Capital, INCE Capital, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, and The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget. The wallet, similar to Robinhood, is already integrated with DexScreener and Birdeye and part of the Blast ecosystem, supporting key and biometric signatures on mobile devices. However, earlier this year, co-founder Bill Lou fell victim to a fake LFG phishing scam, losing $125,000 (52 stETH).
Decentralized cloud service provider NodeShift announced $3.2 million in seed funding led by Inovo.vc, with participation from Notion Capital, 10X Founders, Kestrel0x1, and Epic Games as an angel investor. NodeShift aims to offer a single API to access surplus computing, storage, and graphics accelerators from independent data center operators, connecting them to low-cost decentralized web services like Akash and Filecoin.
Solana ecosystem developer platform Helius announced completion of a $9.5 million Series A round led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One, and Propel.
Fintech dApp startup Clave raised $1.6 million in a Pre-Seed round led by Matter Labs, with participation from Safe, Lambda Class, Mirana Ventures, Sandy Peng (angel investor in Scroll), Raj Parekh (angel investor in Portal), Anurag Arjun (angel investor in Avail), and many industry leaders. Clave is building a non-custodial wallet offering comprehensive financial experiences powered by hardware-level secure elements. Its leading account abstraction technology eliminates seed phrases, solving the problem of users losing access due to forgotten recovery phrases.
Cryptocurrency financial infrastructure provider Januar ApS announced €1.5 million in seed funding from CMT Digital, Third Prime, Skyfall Ventures, Michael Grønager (co-founder and CEO of Chainalysis), and existing investors. To date, Januar has raised €7.5 million. New funds will support the launch of its B2B crypto platform and institutional wallet and trading solution, “Januar Crypto.”
Ethereum streaming payments protocol Superfluid announced $5.1 million in strategic funding led by Fabric Ventures, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Circle Ventures, Safe Foundation, The LAO, Taavet+Sten, and others. The Superfluid protocol launched in 2021, enabling crypto projects like DAOs to pay recurring salaries and rewards in a single chain transaction via “super tokens,” which create continuous fund flows between parties. Today, Superfluid launched “Distribution Pools,” enabling pools of funds to be distributed to multiple recipients.
CeFi and Others
Singapore-based fintech startup Xalts announced the acquisition of digital trade platform Contour Network, established by eight major banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and BNP Paribas. Terms were not disclosed but reportedly amount to several million dollars in cash and stock. Backed by Accel and Citi Ventures, Xalts enables financial institutions to build and manage blockchain-based applications. Contour, launched in 2017 by a consortium of eight banks to digitize trade finance, is now used by 22 banks and over 100 global enterprises, including Tata Group and Rio Tinto.
Web3 app store Magic Square, supported by Binance Labs and others, acquired token launch platform TruePNL, with acquisition amount undisclosed. Magic Square founder and CEO Andrey Nayman confirmed the deal was paid entirely in cash. Under the agreement, Magic Square will acquire TruePNL’s entire front-end and back-end infrastructure, excluding the brand name, domain, social media accounts, and TruePNL (PNL) token.
Web3 education platform HackQuest announced $1.1 million in Pre-Seed funding, with participation from StepN parent company Find Satoshi Lab, HashKey Capital, ByteTrade Lab, Outlier Ventures, Hash Global, OnePiece Labs, Scott Moore (co-founder of Gitcoin), YY (partner at Signum Capital), and support from Open Campus OCX.
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