Funding Weekly: 26 deals raised over $127 million, Bitcoin ecosystem gradually improving
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Funding Weekly: 26 deals raised over $127 million, Bitcoin ecosystem gradually improving
Between April 15 and April 21, 10 blockchain projects raised over $5 million each.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy TechFlow
According to RootData, between April 15 and April 21, 26 blockchain startups announced funding rounds, collectively raising over $127 million.
Projects that raised over $5 million include:
-
Blast-native DEX Thruster Finance raised $7.5 million in a seed round at a $70 million valuation;
-
Account abstraction application Plena raised $5 million;
-
Stablecoin developer Usual Labs raised $7 million;
-
Perpetual DEX Aark successfully closed a $6 million seed round;
-
RWA lending protocol Centrifuge announced completion of a $15 million Series A round;
-
Real estate tokenization protocol Homium announced completion of a $10 million Series A round;
-
Decentralized exchange CVEX (Crypto Valley Exchange) raised $7 million in pre-seed and seed rounds;
-
DePIN project SendingNetwork completed a $7.5 million seed extension round;
-
Liquidity restaking protocol Puffer Finance announced completion of an $18 million Series A round;
-
Cryptocurrency gaming studio Avalon raised $10 million.
Featured Projects
SendingNetwork
Overview: Sending.Network is a high-performance, open Web3 communication protocol where every component—from message data and user IDs to social graphs—is decentralized. It aims to help developers build social dApps and enable communities to access encrypted, decentralized group chat platforms.
Investors: DePIN project SendingNetwork raised $7.5 million in a seed extension round, with investors including Nomad Capital, Symbolic Capital, Web3.com Ventures, Galxe, SWC Global, Balaji Srinivasan, and Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games.
Features:
1. SendingNetwork builds an incentive layer encouraging users to participate in network growth by sharing idle bandwidth, storage, and IP resources from their devices. Users can pay for internet usage on-demand while earning rewards through resource sharing, enabling resource reuse and a shared economy.
2. SendingNetwork adopts a three-layer architecture—access layer, relay layer, and blockchain layer—to decentralize the TCP/IP stack. This structure provides an efficient, secure, and scalable communication environment for various application-layer protocols, including web apps, email, and streaming services.
3. SendingNetwork plans to launch multiple testnets this year, with future积分 to be exchangeable for tokens at a set ratio, and its mainnet is expected to launch in Q1 2025.
Avalon
Overview: Avalon is building an interoperable digital world empowering gamers, creators, and anyone to create their own worlds. Ultimately, this world will also incorporate content related to education, training, simulation, health, and mental wellness.
Investors: Cryptocurrency gaming studio Avalon raised $10 million, co-led by Bitkraft Ventures and Hashed, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Spartan Capital, Foresight Ventures, LiquidX, and Momentum6.
Features:
1. The team includes members from renowned studios such as Microsoft, Sony, Capcom, Infinity Ward, and Ubisoft. They bring extensive experience in developing AAA games across genres like MMORPGs, adventure games, and competitive shooters, having worked on iconic IPs such as *EverQuest*, *Call of Duty*, and *Assassin’s Creed*.
2. Avalon combines technologies like Unreal Engine 5 with AI-assisted user-generated content (UGC) systems. These AI tools will dramatically accelerate content creation, including modular building kits, lifelike NPCs (non-player characters), and rapid modeling of character and monster variants.
3. An upcoming NFT collection will introduce AI-powered avatar NFTs that may influence players’ appearance, abilities, or other in-game aspects. Avalon is currently developing for PC and cloud streaming, with a closed early access phase expected later this year.
Inference Labs
Overview: Inference Labs focuses on developing AI infrastructure and products on web3, specializing in AI inference interoperability on blockchains. Zero-knowledge proofs ensure privacy and security without sacrificing speed or efficiency. Users can verify off-chain AI outputs on-chain without needing to recompute them.
Investors: Web3+AI startup Inference Labs announced completion of a $2.3 million Pre-Seed round, led by Digital Asset Capital Management, Delphi Ventures, and Mechanism Capital, with follow-on investments from Big Brain Holdings, BitScale Capital, Edessa Capital, ID Theory, Metropolis DAO, Mozaik Capital, Newman Capital, Seed Club Ventures, and others. Industry leaders and builders participating include Lucas (founder of Renzo Protocol), Dan (founder of BENQI), Kalin (Render), Jason Morton (founder of zkonduit & EZKL), Santiago R Santos, Omar Shakeeb (founder of SecondLane), DeFi Dad, and many more.
Features:
1. Inference Labs launched Omron.ai in collaboration with Bittensor, combining artificial intelligence with liquidity (re)staking in DeFi. Participants contribute LSTs or ETH to create restaked ETH positions. These tokens can then be used within the Ethereum network to earn additional rewards while providing training data to the Bittensor Omron subnet.
2. Omron aims to create the largest peer-to-peer verified intelligence network, using a Proof-of-Inference system to validate the predictions of intelligent networks. This innovative approach ensures the provenance and integrity of AI predictions.
3. Omron’s reward mechanism scores based on cryptographic integrity and time required to generate zero-knowledge proofs. This novel method not only ensures the source model and integrity of AI predictions but also reduces computational load for validators.
Funding Details by Sector:
Bitcoin Ecosystem
Bitcoin Layer 2 solution Merlin Chain announced a new funding round, co-led by Spartan Group and Hailstone Labs, with participation from Amber Group, Presto Labs, and IOBC Ventures.
Bitcoin Ordinals browser Ord.io announced completion of a $2 million Pre-Seed round, led by Bitcoin Frontier Fund and Sora Ventures, with participation from Eden Block, Arca, Longhash Ventures, Daxos Capital, Portal Ventures, UTXO Management, Rubik Ventures, VitalTao Capital, Antalpha Ventures, Kommune Fund, Edessa Capital, PetRock Capital, PG Capital, Shake and Bake Productions, Re7 Capital, and Balaji Fund. The new funds will support platform expansion and integration with Runes. The platform enables users to search, browse, and interact with Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin Layer 2 launchpad MerlinStarter announced completion of a seed round, with 20 institutions participating, including Amber Group, Arkstream Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Mapleblock, CGV, and Sidedoor Ventures. Funds will support ecosystem collaborations with strategic partners to improve BTC Layer 2 liquidity, project incubation, product iteration, and cross-network asset and user interoperability.
Bitcoin ecosystem AMM platform Runes DEX announced completion of a $2 million seed investment, with participation from Kenetic Capital, Mechanism Capital, Auros Ventures, Future Fund, and Boosty Labs. Funds will be used to expand technical infrastructure and enhance the user interface.
Bitcoin ecosystem stablecoin project Lambda Finance announced completion of an $1.8 million angel round, with participation from Michael Egorov (founder of Curve), Hashcow Group, Mr. Qukuai, Threshold Network, DLC.Link, and AladdinDAO.
Runes analytics infrastructure protocol SatScreener announced completion of a $500,000 Pre-Seed round, led by Sora Ventures, with participation from Bitcoin Frontier Fund, UTXO Management, and Moonwalker Capital.
DeFi
Liquidity restaking protocol Puffer Finance announced completion of an $18 million Series A round, led by Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Lemniscap, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Mechanism, Lightspeed Faction, Consensys, Animoca, and GSR. The new funds will support the launch of Puffer’s mainnet.
Decentralized exchange CVEX (Crypto Valley Exchange) raised $7 million in pre-seed and seed rounds, led by Fabric Ventures and Kyber Capital Crypto Fund, with participation from AMDAX, Wave Digital, Funfair Ventures, Seier Capital Family Office, Five T Group, and Saxon. These funds will support the summer launch of CVEX’s DEX mainnet, featuring enhanced trading capabilities, launching on Arbitrum and supporting user wallets on Ethereum, Optimism, BASE, and Solana. Staking deposits on CVEX are denominated in USDC.
Perpetual DEX Aark successfully closed a $6 million seed round, with participation from HashKey Capital, Arrington Capital, Cypher Capital, Morningstar Ventures, IVC, and Metavest. Aark is a 1000x perpetual DEX aiming to revolutionize DeFi by leveraging LRT assets to boost liquidity for perpetual traders.
Stablecoin developer Usual Labs raised $7 million, led by IOSG and Kraken Ventures, with participation from GSR, Mantle, Starkware, Flowdesk, Avid3, Bing Ventures, Breed, Hypersphere, Kima Ventures, Psalion, Public Works, and X Ventures. USD0 is a real-world asset-backed stablecoin. Usual Labs plans to use the funds to support the mainnet launch of USD0 on Ethereum in Q2 2024, requiring funding for testnet phases and smart contract audits. On Wednesday, Usual Labs also announced that USD0 has reached $75 million in total value locked (TVL).
Blast-native DEX Thruster Finance raised $7.5 million in a seed round at a $70 million valuation, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Manifold Ventures, Arche Fund (formerly Coin98 Ventures), and angel investors including Santiago Santos, Sam Kazemian (founder of Frax), TN Lee (founder of Pendle), Alex Lin (founder of Stacked), Kratik Lodha (founder of Renzo), and Georgios Vlachos (founder of Axelar). The funding will support ongoing collaboration with top builders to integrate Thruster’s products and liquidity into other leading protocols in DeFi and NFFTi.
DePIN
DePIN project SendingNetwork raised $7.5 million in a seed extension round, with several investors joining, including Nomad Capital, Symbolic Capital, Web3.com Ventures, Galxe, SWC Global, Balaji Srinivasan, and Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games. SendingNetwork expects to launch multiple testnets this year and its mainnet in Q1 2025.
DePIN project GEODNET Foundation announced completion of a strategic round exceeding $2 million, with participation from CoinFund, Pantera Capital, VanEck, and Santiago R. Santos. GEODNET is a blockchain-based global navigation network, currently operating a real-time kinematic (RTK) network with over 5,000 registered GPS/GNSS reference stations.
L2
Consumer-focused L2 protocol Saakuru Labs announced completion of a $2.4 million private round, led by Based VC and ARC Community, with participation from Kyber Network, PG Capital, Wizard Capital, Decubate Ventures, Oracles Investment Group, BCW Ventures, Steady Stack, W3GG, Calib3r, Rarible, Worlds Beyond, Uptrend Digital, Arclight Studio, and IBC Group.
Zeko Labs, the team behind cross-chain zero-knowledge scaling protocol Zeko Protocol, raised $3 million in a Pre-Seed round, led by YBB Capital, UOB Venture Management, and Signum Capital, with participation from Autonomy Capital, Cogitent Ventures, GBV, Tenzor Capital, 3Commas Capital, ArkGrow, AVID3, Cryptonauts, Nox Holdings, NxGen.xyz, SkyVision Capital (SVC), and Presto Labs. Zeko Protocol is a Mina-based cross-chain zero-knowledge scaling solution. The funds will be used to expand the team, accelerate product development, and incentivize ecosystem contributors.
AI
Web3+AI startup Inference Labs announced completion of a $2.3 million Pre-Seed round, led by Digital Asset Capital Management, Delphi Ventures, and Mechanism Capital, with follow-on investments from Big Brain Holdings, BitScale Capital, Edessa Capital, ID Theory, Metropolis DAO, Mozaik Capital, Newman Capital, and Seed Club Ventures. Industry leaders and builders participating include Lucas (founder of Renzo Protocol), Dan (founder of BENQI), Kalin (Render), Jason Morton (founder of zkonduit & EZKL), Santiago R Santos, Omar Shakeeb (founder of SecondLane), DeFi Dad, and many others. The investment aims to further refine Inference Labs’ innovative AI validation approach, focusing on building a network that uses proof-of-inference consensus for effective AI verification.
GameFi
Cryptocurrency gaming studio Avalon raised $10 million, co-led by Bitkraft Ventures and Hashed, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Spartan Capital, Foresight Ventures, LiquidX, and Momentum6. The studio plans to launch a massively multiplayer online game called Avalon. In a statement, Avalon said it is collaborating with “AI pioneers Didimo and Inworld AI” for game development. Players will be invited to a closed early access version of *Avalon*, launching later this year.
Blast ecosystem SocialFi trading card game project fantasy.top announced completion of a Pre-Seed round, with participation from Alliance, Manifold, Fabric Ventures, and thirty angel investors including Ryan Selkis, founder and CEO of Messari. Funding amount and valuation remain undisclosed. fantasy.top is a SocialFi collectible card game (TCG) where players use tradable cards of crypto Twitter influencers to play online, monetizing their social capital and research expertise.
Web3 gaming platform Circle of Games raised $1 million in equity funding, with participation from Nazara Technologies and Hashgraph Association. The funds will accelerate its go-to-market strategy, enhance platform capabilities, and expand international presence in the U.S., EU, Middle East, Africa, and Asia in 2024.
SocialFi
Solana ecosystem NFT social platform Only1 announced completion of a $1.3 million strategic round, led by Newman Group, with participation from Folius Ventures, Modular Capital, PetRock Capital, and angel investors. With this round, the project has raised a total of $4.3 million to date.
RWA
RWA Inc. announced completion of a $1.175 million private sale, supplementing previous commitments totaling over $9 million, with participation from Castrum Capital, Maven Capital, Unreal Capital, Decubate.com, SkyGardians Capital, Undefined Capital, and DuckDAO.
Real estate equity mortgage and securitization platform Homium announced completion of a $10 million Series A round, led by Sorenson Impact Group and Avalanche ecosystem fund Blizzard, having already launched its first home equity loan on Avalanche.
RWA lending protocol Centrifuge announced completion of a $15 million Series A round, led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield, with participation from Circle Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Arrington Capital, Spartan Group, and Wintermute Ventures. Additionally, Centrifuge stated it will launch a lending market called Centrifuge Pools on the Base network.
Infrastructure
Aligned Layer, Ethereum’s first decentralized ZK proof verification layer powered by EigenLayer, raised $2.6 million in a seed round, led by Lemniscap, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Paper Ventures, Sreeram Kannan, Brandon Kase, Daniel Lubarov, DCbuilder, Chainyoda, Weikeng Chen, Sami BENYAKOUB (samnode_), Peter Fittin (SizeChad), Lucas Kozinski, and strategic investments from StarkWare and O(1)Labs. The funds will support team expansion and accelerate the mainnet launch, planned for Q2 2024.
Blockchain and ZKP research organization Nebra announced completion of a $4.5 million pre-seed and seed round, led by Nascent and Bankless Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Tim Beiko, Kartik Talwar (ETHGlobal), Nick White (Celestia), Sandy Peng, and Haichen Shen (Scroll). Nebra plans to use the funds to advance and democratize zero-knowledge proof technology, reducing proof settlement costs on Ethereum and other blockchains, thereby creating what they call a shared settlement layer for the new internet.
Account abstraction application Plena raised $5 million, with participation from Big Brain Holdings, DeWhale, GBV, WebWise, Galxe, Normie Ventures, and FounderHeads. Plena plans to conduct a PLENA token generation event (TGE) and a series of community-driven Plena Quests in 2024.
CeFi and Others
Crypto wallet infrastructure provider Safe acquired Sequoia-backed crypto vault management platform Multis. The acquisition brings Multis’ technology and senior leadership team into the Safe Ecosystem Foundation. Thibaut Sahaghian, former CEO of Multis, will become a core contributor in the Safe ecosystem, serving as Head of Network Abstraction.
Crypto wallet Zengo announced the acquisition of Minke, a stablecoin-focused digital wallet, with the acquisition amount undisclosed. Minke was founded in Australia in 2021 and had around 50,000 users at its peak.
Ethereum-based film and media payment platform FilmChain raised €2.8 million, led by Holt InterXion, with participation from Roca X, DeBa Ventures, TechAngels, and HearstLab. FilmChain leverages blockchain to enhance transaction transparency and auditability, tracking ownership within payment architectures to bring trust and accountability to payments in the film, television, and gaming industries.
Enterprise loyalty platform Superlogic completed a $7.6 million strategic round, with participation from Amex Ventures, Sangha Capital, 10SQ Capital, Nima Capital, Actai Unicorn Fund, and Chainlink Capital. Superlogic uses blockchain to tokenize traditional reward points and convert redeemable products and service experiences into "digital badges," helping brands manage loyalty programs effectively. Its clients include payment giant American Express.
Web3 venture capital firm Taisu Ventures announced an investment in CSpro Global Holding Limited (Gaopu / CSpro) and will serve as its strategic advisor. Investment amount and valuation remain undisclosed. CSpro is a core business unit of Gao’er Street Group (Coinstreet), focusing on global real-world asset (RWA) tokenization opportunities, primary market brokerage, and distribution of security tokens to professional investors.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
深潮TechFlow
