Written by: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily
In early 2024, Binance began frequently listing coins through the Launchpool segment, with projects invested by Binance Labs becoming the main forces in coin listings, including Fusionist (ACE), Sleepless AI (AI), NFPrompt (NFP), etc. Mid-year, due to market downturns and controversies over VC coins 'bleeding' the market, Binance paused listings. Recently, Launchpool has returned, and the frequency of listings has significantly increased.
Yesterday, Binance Labs 'designated' 12 projects in its investment portfolio, which will be showcased on the innovation stage at the Dubai Binance Blockchain Week to help them gain exposure and feedback.
Interestingly, the most liked and exposed reply under Binance Labs' tweet was 'I'm tired, can KiloEx hurry up and issue tokens' (one of the 12 funded projects). Therefore, based on the relatively high probability of token issuance, Binance Labs' renewed support, and strong calls for issuance, Odaily summarizes the backgrounds and latest progress of these 12 projects for readers' reference and judgment on whether there are still opportunities for interaction.
The 12 projects are aPriori, KiloEx, MilkyWay, Movement, OpenEden, Puffer Finance, Solayer, StakeStone, UXUY, ZEROBASE, Zest Protocol, and Zircuit.
aPriori
Project business: aPriori is a liquid staking platform in the Monad ecosystem, aiming to provide users with efficient staking solutions while maintaining asset liquidity.
Funding situation: On July 30, received strategic investment from Binance Labs; on July 25, completed an $8 million seed round financing, led by Pantera Capital; on January 30, completed a $2.7 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Hashed and Arrington Capital.
Latest progress: There is currently no direct progress due to Monad network being unavailable.
KiloEx
Project business: GMX-like perpetual contract DEX, due to counterparty reasons, most listed assets are mainstream coins.
Funding situation: On March 21, received investment from Foresight Ventures; on August 4, 2023, received investment from Binance Labs. The amounts were not disclosed.
Latest progress: KiloEx was initially deployed on the BNB chain and opBNB chain, with subsequent business development focusing on multi-chain expansion. In reverse chronological order, it has launched on networks such as Base, B², Taiko, Manta, etc., and has also connected to dappOS's intention network (a chance for dual benefits).
MilkyWay
Project business: MilkyWay is a liquid staking solution in the Celestia ecosystem, originally deployed and operated on Osmosis, currently expanding asset use cases and types.
Funding situation: Completed a $5 million seed round on April 30, with participation from Binance Labs, Polychain, Hack VC, and others.
Latest progress: The main development directions include expanding core asset milkTIA use cases, introducing this asset to protocols like Demex and Flame; launching new liquid staking assets such as milkINIT (INIT is the token of the modular network Initia, which raised $22.5 million and will have its TGE next month).
Movement
Project business: A modular network based on the Move language, aiming to connect EVM networks with Move networks.
Funding situation: On May 1, received investment from Binance Labs; on April 25, completed Series A financing, led by Polychain; on September 13, 2023, completed $3.4 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by dao 5, Borderless Capital, Blizzard Fund, and Varys Capital.
Latest progress: The Movement testnet Odyssey is ongoing, and according to official disclosure, there are currently 10 million addresses and over 458 million transactions.
OpenEden
Project business: RWA tokenization protocol, currently can be considered a U.S. Treasury bond on-chain protocol, allowing users to invest in U.S. Treasury securities through its native stablecoin TBILL.
Funding situation: Received strategic investment from Binance Labs on September 12.
Latest progress: In June this year, Moody's Ratings awarded its tokenized U.S. Treasury bond licensed fund an 'A' rating, making it the first RWA token to receive a Moody's rating. Total TVL reached $150 million (using its products requires KYC compliance, not a pump-and-dump project).
Puffer Finance
Project business: One of the re-staking protocols based on Eigenlayer. Its unique feature compared to other re-staking protocols is the launch of the Based Rollup solution UniFi, aimed at solving the issue of liquidity fragmentation on Ethereum and bringing value back to Ethereum L1.
Funding situation: Completed four rounds of financing, on April 16 completed $18 million Series A financing, led by Electric Capital and Brevan Howard Digital; on January 30 received strategic investment from Binance Labs.
Latest progress: On October 22, UniFi Devnet went live, open to whitelists and protocols, with a testnet and mainnet launching soon. Last week, the protocol token PUFFER airdrop claim opened, and the pufETH withdrawal feature is also available.
Solayer
Project business: Liquidity re-staking protocol on the Solana network.
Funding situation: Completed a $12 million seed round on August 27, led by Polychain, with participation from Binance Labs and others; completed a pre-seed round in July with participation from Anatoly (Solana founder) and others.
Latest progress: Launched liquidity re-staking SOL in collaboration with multiple exchanges, including Binance (BNSOL), Bybit (bbSOL), and Bitget (BGSOL), allowing users to convert their SOL tokens into these tokens within exchanges, earning staking rewards, liquidity incentives, AVS delegation, and MEV rewards after staking.
Launched RWA yield-bearing dollar sUSD in collaboration with OpenEden, this token allows for re-staking and will earn interest through U.S. Treasury bonds.
StakeStone
Project business: LSD (liquid staking derivatives) protocol backed by ETH staking yields.
Funding situation: On March 25, received investments from Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, and Skyland Ventures.
Latest progress: The main development direction is multi-chain expansion, SBTC and STONEBTC were launched on the berachain bArtio testnet yesterday; announced integration plans with Sonic (new version of Fantom), etc.
UXUY
Project business: Multi-chain DEX based on MPC wallets.
Funding situation: On May 9, completed an $8 million Pre-A round financing, with participation from Binance Labs, Bixin Ventures, and others; on August 4, 2023, received investment from MEXC Ventures; completed a $3.2 million seed round financing in April 2023, with participation from Waterdrip Capital and others.
Latest progress: According to co-founder 0xKevin——UXUY 'All in TG (Telegram)', launched the first self-custody multi-chain wallet on TG, allowing any Bot to connect to any ecosystem without permission through the UXUY Wallet Bot, including EVM/Solana/TRON/TON, etc.
ZEROBASE
Project business: ZEROBASE is a real-time ZK prover network designed for speed, decentralization, and compliance, allowing ZK proofs to be generated in hundreds of milliseconds and ensuring decentralization and fast consensus through mechanisms, thus achieving large-scale commercial use.
Funding situation: Completed $5 million financing on October 19, with participation from Binance Labs and others.
Zest Protocol
Project business: Zest Protocol is a native Bitcoin lending protocol on the Stacks network. The protocol itself is not particularly remarkable; it was one of the few investment projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem by Binance Labs in recent years when it received investment in May. However, with Binance Labs investing in projects like Hemi Network and Lombard, investments in the Bitcoin ecosystem are no longer rare.
Funding situation: On May 13, completed a $3.5 million seed round financing, led by Tim Draper, with participation from Binance Labs and others.
Latest progress: Launched a points system RoboZester, where users can earn points Oranges through various social media tasks, not specified for what.
Zircuit
Project business: Zircuit is an EVM-compatible ZK rollup, allowing users to earn multiple types of incentives in one place, including staking yields, protocol tokens, points, and future airdrops, among others. Zircuit points out that new LRT protocols are constantly emerging, making it difficult even for experienced users to track and select the safest and best protocols to deploy their funds. Zircuit aims to solve this problem and become the primary liquidity hub for staking assets (ETH, BTC, LST, and LRT), with funds deployed by Zircuit into safe, high-quality protocols.
Funding situation: Completed a financing round on July 22, with participation from Binance Labs, Mirana Ventures, and others; received standalone investment from Binance Labs on June 11. The amount and valuation were not disclosed.
Latest progress: Launched the Zircuit Liquidity Hub, where stakers will receive partner airdrops, including ZeroLend, Elara, Avalon Labs, Circuit, Ocelex, Gamma, etc. Users staking on the Ethereum mainnet can migrate for free to the Liquidity Hub on Zircuit L2.
