This week saw a number of important collaborations and investment transactions that have ignited the cryptocurrency and Web3 space. These six deals, which have a combined value of an astounding $231 million, cover a wide range of industry topics, from GameFi improvements and Bitcoin’s development to state-of-the-art AI research and layer-2 scaling solutions.
Galaxy Ventures Fund I Secures $113M for Crypto Startups
$113 million has been raised by Galaxy Asset Management for a new venture fund that will concentrate on blockchain and cryptocurrency startups in their early stages. The Galaxy Ventures Fund I LP fund seeks to invest in about thirty firms that are creating financial apps, infrastructure, and crypto software.
Galaxy intends to keep up its fundraising efforts in order to meet its goal of $150 million by 2025. According to the company, blockchain technology has the potential to settle most international transactions in the next several decades. The financing range for each project is $3–5 million, which is essential for supporting cutting-edge crypto platforms and protocols.
The launch of this new fund coincides with a resurgence of venture capital interest in the cryptocurrency market. Following a phase in which VC interest was mostly focused on AI businesses, Galaxy’s successful funding suggests that blockchain and cryptocurrency projects are once again receiving attention. The creation of the fund may encourage further institutional investment in the industry, therefore fostering the subsequent wave of innovation and acceptance in the crypto sector.
NPC Labs Raises $21M to Build Gaming Ecosystem on Base
Established by former Coinbase staff members, NPC Labs has raised $21 million to expedite GameFi development on Coinbase’s Base network. Pantera Capital led the round with a $18 million investment. Hashed, Mirana Ventures and Makers Fund were among the other investors.
The business wants to help game developers who are building on Base by offering them infrastructure and assistance. A major contributor to B3, a layer-3 blockchain with a gaming focus, will be NPC Labs. Compared to typical publishing strategies, the team thinks this strategy will offer creators and players more power back. B3 relieves creators of the burden of managing asset bridging and transactions so they can focus on crafting captivating gameplay.
NPC Labs is taking advantage of Coinbase’s large user base, which may make it simpler for popular gamers to get started. One major obstacle to widespread acceptance in the GameFi sector is addressed by the company’s focus on making the crypto gaming experience simpler. By putting accessibility and user experience first, NPC Labs hopes to close the divide between conventional gaming and games built on blockchain.
SingularityNET Invests $53M in Modular AI Supercomputer
The $53 million commitment to construct a modular supercomputer devoted to decentralized AGI research was announced by the AI platform SingularityNET. $26.5 million is set aside in the first phase for AI servers, high-performance GPUs, and CPUs from top hardware manufacturers, as well as modular data centers.
As computing demands increase, straightforward expansion is made possible by the flexible design. SingularityNET seeks to maximize training efficiency for hybrid neural-symbolic systems, huge language models, and deep neural networks. The supercomputer will facilitate large-scale knowledge processing and multi-step machine reasoning by advancing AGI’s continuous training and development capabilities.
This investment might democratize access to AI technology and is a major step towards the creation of decentralized AGI. SingularityNET aims to lead the next wave of AI breakthroughs by establishing a specialized infrastructure for AGI research. By allowing more intricate and sophisticated AI applications, the initiative may affect a range of industries, including financial services and scientific research.
Bitlayer Labs Secures $11M Series A for Bitcoin Layer-2 Development
Bitlayer Labs has secured $11 million at a $300 million value in Series A investment. Leading the round were Franklin Templeton and ABCDE, indicating traditional finance’s rising interest in decentralized systems. By extending the BitVM paradigm, Bitlayer is able to integrate Ethereum-style smart contracts into Bitcoin without sacrificing security.
The trillion-dollar asset manager Franklin Templeton’s engagement suggests that developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem are becoming more widely recognized. Bitlayer’s strategy seeks to achieve Turing completeness on the original blockchain in order to open up new use cases and increase the usefulness of Bitcoin.
The creation of Bitlayer has the potential to greatly improve Bitcoin’s functionality and close the gap between Ethereum’s programmability and Bitcoin’s strong security. This development could encourage additional programmers to expand on Bitcoin, broadening its ecosystem beyond straightforward transactions. The startup’s ability to obtain capital from a key player in conventional finance further points to the growing intersection of the TradFi and DeFi sectors.
Caldera Closes $15M Series A for Rollup-as-a-Service Platform
Caldera, a supplier of Layer-2 infrastructure, recently closed a $15 million Series A fundraising round headed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The business integrates with widely used frameworks and provides a streamlined interface for initiating personalized Ethereum rollup chains.
With the money, Caldera intends to grow its workforce and create the Metalayer, an interoperability framework for distributing apps across several blockchains. The platform’s goal is to simplify layer-2 scaling solutions for projects, enabling developers to do rollups without requiring substantial internal technical resources.
The Caldera investment shows how layer-2 solutions are becoming more and more important in solving Ethereum’s scalability issues. Through the simplification of rollup launch and maintenance procedures, Caldera may hasten the deployment of layer-2 technology throughout the Ethereum network. This might thus result in dApps that are more productive and economical, which could encourage a broader use of blockchain technology among developers and end users.
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