Funding Weekly: 27 Deals Raised Over $141 Million, SocialFi and RWA Sectors Stand Out
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Funding Weekly: 27 Deals Raised Over $141 Million, SocialFi and RWA Sectors Stand Out
Between April 29 and May 5, 11 blockchain projects raised over $5 million each.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy TechFlow
According to RootData, between April 29 and May 5, 27 blockchain startups announced fundraising rounds, collectively raising $141.4 million.
Projects that raised over $5 million include:
Web3 content publishing platform Paragraph announced a new round of $5 million in funding;
Reflective Technologies, parent company of Farcaster client Kiosk, raised $10 million;
Modular liquidity protocol Mitosis announced $7 million in funding;
Web3 game Shadow War developer raised $5 million in seed and Series A funding;
Web3 wine marketplace Baxus announced $5 million in strategic funding;
Crypto voting platform Agora announced $5 million in seed funding;
Hybrid cryptocurrency exchange X10 announced $6.5 million in funding;
Celestia liquid staking protocol MilkyWay completed a $5 million seed round.
Highlighted Projects
MilkyWay
Overview: MilkyWay is a liquid staking solution for the Celestia ecosystem, initially deployed and operating on Osmosis, with long-term plans to migrate to Celestia's Rollkit for native milkTIA issuance. When users stake TIA tokens through MilkyWay, they receive an on-chain representation of their TIA staking position called milkTIA.
Investors: Celestia liquid staking protocol MilkyWay raised $5 million in seed funding, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Binance Labs, Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital, and LongHash Ventures.
Features:
1. MilkyWay states that users can earn mPoints simply by staking TIA, with plans to airdrop 10% of the total MILK supply to mPoint holders.
2. MilkyWay plans to expand beyond Celestia; its token is expected to launch at the end of Q2 or beginning of Q3.
3. Backed by investments from Binance Labs and Polychain Capital.
Blade Games
Overview: Blade Games is a blockchain-based gaming studio focused on building trustless games and supporting infrastructure. The team includes members with backgrounds in game design, DeFi, smart contracts, and zero-knowledge proof research.
Investors: On-chain gaming studio and infrastructure provider Blade Games raised $2.4 million in seed funding, co-led by PTC Crypto and IOSG Ventures, with participation from Bonfire Union Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Mantle, ForesightX, Formless Capital, Public Works, Puzzle Ventures, K300 Ventures, and others.
Features:
1. Blade Games’ self-developed game Dune Factory began closed beta testing on May 1, with test rules and rewards announced on April 29. The public test is scheduled for the end of May.
2. Games built using Blade Game’s proprietary zk-game engine run game logic within a zkVM and push state differences as zkSNARK proofs to the chain, later verified on L2. The zk-game engine currently supports up to 12–15 frames per second and will soon introduce batched proof functionality. It currently enables game studios to develop survival, tower defense, RPG, and roguelike deck-building games.
3. Zee Cheng, founder of Blade Games, was previously Investment Director at Old Fashion Research. Co-founder Jiabei Liu served as Investment Director at IOBC Capital and former Investment Director at Matrixport Ventures.
Kiosk
Kiosk is a Farcaster client enabling creators to build communities from scratch within the app. Creators can share rich media ideas across social graphs, mint them as NFTs, gather like-minded collectors and collaborators in channels, establish custom channel economies (e.g., tipping and distribution), and chat directly with their community.
Overview:
Investors: Reflective Technologies, parent company of Farcaster client Kiosk, raised $10 million, led by Electric Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, Variant, and others, to support Kiosk’s development.
Features:
1. Denis Nazarov, founder of Kiosk, is also the founder of Mirror. Previously, he served as an advisor at Uniswap Labs and as an investment partner at a16z. He graduated from New York University.
2. Paragraph acquired Web3 content publishing platform Mirror, which will now focus on developing Kiosk. Users can join the waitlist by subscribing to Kiosk and minting the NFT of the official announcement post on Mirror within Kiosk.
3. Kiosk’s key feature allows users to easily embed digital assets directly into their social media posts—enabling references to NFTs in posts and embedding additional blockchain functions directly into images, such as viewing an NFT’s blockchain address or purchasing it directly via the post.
Funding details by sector:
Bitcoin Ecosystem
Bitcoin domain protocol TNA Protocol announced its first fundraising round, backed by MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, CSP DAO, and others. The funding amount has not been disclosed. TNA aims to serve as a domain protocol for Bitcoin, enhancing usability and expanding the range of Bitcoin assets and primitives.
DeFi
Hybrid cryptocurrency exchange X10 announced $6.5 million in funding, with investors including Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Starkware, Cyber Fund, executives from Revolut, and Konstantin Lomashuk, founder of Lido, among other notable angel investors.
Celestia liquid staking protocol MilkyWay raised $5 million in seed funding, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Binance Labs, Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital, and LongHash Ventures. This round was structured as a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) with warrants for lead investors and SAFTs (Simple Agreements for Future Tokens) for participating investors.
Crypto voting platform Agora announced $5 million in seed funding, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Consensys Ventures, and others. Agora aims to set a new standard for governance software, helping protocols organize voting systems more efficiently. Early clients include Uniswap, Optimism, and Nouns.
Multichain liquidity restaking protocol Bedrock announced a new funding round, co-led by OKX Ventures, LongHash Ventures, and Comma3 Ventures, with participation from Waterdrip Capital, Lbank Labs, Amber Group, ArcheFund, Whale Ground, and angel investors including Fisher Yu, co-founder of Babylon. The funding will accelerate development of its liquidity restaking solution and further growth.
Modular liquidity protocol Mitosis announced $7 million in funding, co-led by Amber Group and Foresight Ventures, with participation from Big Brain Holdings, Folius Ventures, Citizen X, GSR, Cogitent Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Digital Asset Capital Management, Pivot Global, Everstake, and angel investors from Zellic, XAI, ether.fi, Hyperlane, Osmosis, DefiLlama, Injective, Keplr, Puffer, Curve, and Interchain.
Cross-chain DeFi protocol EYWA raised $7 million in seed funding, led by Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, GBV Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Marshland Capital, Mulana Capital, and others. EYWA and Curve are collaborating on a trustless bridge relying on consensus from reliable message-passing protocols, eliminating reliance on single bridges for large liquidity movements.
GameFi
Web3 gaming startup Games for a Living (GFAL) raised $3.2 million in seed funding, with participation from Supercell, Mitch Lasky, Heinrich Zetlmayer (former co-managing director of ESL), Bonduc Bioscience SL, BCNBCNLVC, and David Fernandez, CEO of Sandsoft. GFAL launched its GFAL token in Q1 2023, raising $4.4 million.
Metaverse 3D asset platform Style Protocol announced $2.5 million in seed funding, with investors undisclosed. According to the whitepaper: "Style Protocol aims to be built on Polkadot to increase interoperability with all blockchains and make NFTs available across every chain. To ensure the protocol is flexible and usable across all chains, two steps are required. First, create bridging logic using Solidity smart contracts to support all EVM-compatible blockchains. Second, implement logic on a Polkadot parachain to achieve compatibility with all other blockchains."
On-chain gaming studio and infrastructure provider Blade Games raised $2.4 million in seed funding, co-led by PTC Crypto and IOSG Ventures, with participation from Bonfire Union Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Mantle, ForesightX, Formless Capital, Public Works, Puzzle Ventures, K300 Ventures, and others.
Swedish game studio Patriots Division raised $5 million for its Web3 game Shadow War in seed and Series A rounds. The Series A round was led by Momentum 6, with participation from iAngels, Cointelligence Fund, Xborg, Andromeda VC, Cogitent Ventures, and Cluster Capital. Shadow War is a sci-fi-themed 5v5 third-person action game inspired by titles like Overwatch and League of Legends, emphasizing a fusion of futurism, fantasy, action, and competitive gameplay.
DWF Ventures announced an investment in on-chain gaming studio Overworld. Overworld recently announced plans to launch a new NFT collection and Overworld Arena.
SocialFi
Web3 content distribution platform Metale Protocol announced a $2 million extension of its seed round, bringing its total seed funding to $4 million. Completed in Q1 this year, the round was led by Aipollo Capital, Waterdrip Capital, and Ultiverse Dao, with participation from several experienced entrepreneurs. Funds will be used to build a decentralized short-form video content ecosystem.
Reflective Technologies, parent company of Farcaster client Kiosk, raised $10 million, led by Electric Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, Variant, and others, to support Kiosk development.
Web3 content publishing platform Paragraph announced $5 million in new funding, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures. According to Paragraph, Colin Armstrong, its founder, will serve as CEO, while Mirror founder Denis Nazarov will take on an advisory role.
Web3 content publishing platform Mirror was acquired by Paragraph. The Mirror team will continue operating independently, focusing on developing "Kiosk," a Web3 social application based on Farcaster that integrates blockchain and e-commerce. Paragraph’s founder stated that Mirror and Paragraph will eventually merge into a unified product suite.
Farcaster-based SocialFi project Airstack announced $4 million in seed funding, led by Red Beard Ventures, with participation from SuperLayer, Polymorphic Capital, Superscrypt, Hashed Emergent, Delta Blockchain Fund, CSP DAO, NGC, Primal Capital, Kyber, and Resolute Ventures. Airstack provides products and developer tools empowering creators and developers to monetize their work.
RWA
Real estate NFT investment platform Balcony DAO announced pre-seed funding, with participation from the Avalanche Blizzard Fund. Specific amounts and valuation details remain undisclosed. The new funds will support operational expansion and development. Balcony focuses on building an RWA blockchain platform for institutional and government entities, offering on-chain trading and asset settlement services, primarily in real estate.
Web3 wine marketplace Baxus announced $5 million in strategic funding, led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Solana Ventures, Narwhal Ventures, FJ Labs, and a group of angel investors. Built on the Solana blockchain, its Web3 marketplace allows buyers to use credit cards, ACH, wire transfers, or cryptocurrencies including USDC. A beta version was launched last summer.
Swiss-based tokenized asset issuer Backed announced $9.5 million in funding, led by Gnosis, with follow-on investments from Exor Seeds, Cyber Fund, and others. The round will help Backed accelerate its private token issuance services and onboard more asset management firms to blockchain. As a regulated and compliant entity, Backed has issued over $50 million in tokenized real-world assets, including ETF tokenization products and individual stock tokens such as Coinbase (COIN) and Tesla (TSLA).
RWA tokenization firm Securitize raised $47 million, led by BlackRock, with participation from Hamilton Lane, ParaFi Capital, and Tradeweb Markets. Securitize will use the proceeds to accelerate product development, expand globally, and strengthen partnerships within the financial services ecosystem. Joseph Chalom, Head of Global Strategic Ecosystems at BlackRock, has been appointed to Securitize’s board of directors.
Infrastructure & Tools
LayerZero-based omnichain tokenization protocol Holograph announced $3 million in new strategic funding, led by Mechanism Capital and Selini Capital, with participation from Northrock Capital (Hal Press), Arca, Courtside Ventures, and Hartmann Capital. Holograph’s total funding has now reached $11 million. The funds will advance omnichain gaming initiatives. Since launching mainnet in 2023, Holograph has enabled over 1.5 million unique wallets to mint more than 10 million omnichain tokens and facilitated over 2 million cross-chain transactions via LayerZero’s messaging protocol.
Binance Labs announced an investment in Movement Labs, with the amount undisclosed. Movement Labs will support Sui Move, Aptos Move, and the embedded EVM interpreter MEVM, enabling Sui, Aptos, and EVM users to leverage L2 solutions to bring smart contract security and parallelization to Ethereum.
Pantera Capital announced an investment in TON, with the amount undisclosed. Pantera Capital, a crypto venture firm managing over $5 billion in assets, believes TON has the potential to bring crypto to the masses due to its widespread integration within the Telegram network.
Dynamic modular service platform Crestal announced $2 million in pre-seed funding, with participation from MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, and NxGen. The funds will accelerate development of modular services. Crestal is a dynamic modular service platform allowing developers to discover, deploy, and upgrade modular services by binding decentralized providers with verifiable Proof of Performance (PoP™).
CeFi & Others
Retail-focused crypto trading ecosystem LazyBear announced $4 million in USDT strategic funding. Participating investors and strategic partners include Gogeko Labs, DWF Labs, Shadow Labs, Salad Labs, Bees Network, REI Network, IBIT, Crypto Bullish, SYNBO Protocol, Bazaars, Sypool, Bitcoin Gbox, GemX Crypto, and Wikibit. LazyBear is a crypto trading ecosystem dedicated to providing users with low fees, inclusivity, and enjoyable trading experiences.
Web3 comprehensive cybersecurity provider Resonance Security raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding, jointly led by Arca, Fabric VC, and Blockchain Founders Fund. The funds will accelerate expansion efforts.
RWA marketplace Ironlight announced $12 million in funding, with investor details undisclosed. Founded by Rob McGrath and Matt Celebuski, Ironlight aims to tokenize typically illiquid private securities such as real estate, natural resources, fine art, public infrastructure, and private equity. It intends to become an SEC-regulated marketplace for tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and will initiate registration processes soon.
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