Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author｜Nan Zhi (@Assassin_Malvo)
In early 2024, Binance began frequently listing coins through its Launchpool section, with projects invested by Binance Labs becoming the main force for listings, including Fusionist (ACE), Sleepless AI (AI), NFPrompt (NFP), and others. Mid-year, due to market downturns and controversies over VC coins 'draining' the market, Binance paused listings. Recently, Launchpool has returned, with a significant increase in listing frequency.
Yesterday, Binance Labs 'designated' 12 projects in its investment portfolio, which will be showcased on the innovation stage during 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 with the token' (one of the 12 funded projects). Therefore, due to the relatively high probability of listing, Binance Labs' renewed focus, and strong calls for token issuance, Odaily will summarize the project backgrounds and latest developments of these 12 projects for readers to refer to and judge if there are still opportunities for interaction.
The 12 projects are aPriori, KiloEx, MilkyWay, Movement, OpenEden, Puffer Finance, Solayer, StakeStone, UXUY, ZEROBASE, Zest Protocol, Zircuit.
aPriori
Project business: aPriori is a liquid staking platform within the Monad ecosystem, aimed at providing efficient staking solutions while maintaining asset liquidity.
Funding situation: Received strategic investment from Binance Labs on July 30; completed $8 million seed round financing on July 25, led by Pantera Capital; completed $2.7 million Pre-Seed round financing on January 30, led by Hashed and Arrington Capital.
Latest progress: Due to Monad network being temporarily unavailable, there is currently no direct progress.
KiloEx
Project business: A GMX-like perpetual contract DEX, with a variety of mainstream assets listed mainly due to counterparty reasons.
Funding situation: Received investment from Foresight Ventures on March 21; in August 2023, received investment from Binance Labs. Amounts were not disclosed.
Latest progress: KiloEx was initially deployed on BNB Chain and opBNB Chain, with subsequent business development focusing on multi-chain expansion. In reverse chronological order, networks like Base, B², Taiko, Manta, etc., were launched, and an intention network of dappOS was also integrated (a win-win opportunity).
MilkyWay
Project business: MilkyWay is a liquid staking solution in the Celestia ecosystem, initially deployed and running on Osmosis, currently expanding asset use cases and types.
Funding situation: Completed $5 million seed round financing on April 30, with participation from Binance Labs, Polychain, Hack VC, and others.
Latest progress: Main development directions include expanding core asset milkTIA use cases, bringing this asset into protocols like Demex and Flame; launched new liquid staking assets like milkINIT (INIT being the token of 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, aimed at connecting EVM networks with Move networks.
Funding situation: Received investment from Binance Labs on May 1; completed Series A financing on April 25, led by Polychain; completed $3.4 million Pre-Seed round financing on September 13, led by dao5, Borderless Capital, Blizzard Fund, and Varys Capital.
Latest progress: Movement testnet Odyssey is ongoing, with official disclosure showing 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 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 granted its tokenized U.S. Treasury bond licensed fund an 'A' rating, making it the first RWA token to receive a Moody's rating. Cumulative TVL reached $150 million (using its product requires KYC compliance, not a yield farming project).
Puffer Finance
Project business: One of the re-staking protocols based on Eigenlayer. Compared to other re-staking protocols, its unique point is the launch of the Based Rollup plan UniFi, aimed at solving the liquidity fragmentation problem on Ethereum, bringing value back to Ethereum L1.
Funding situation: Completed four rounds of financing, with $18 million Series A funding on April 16, led by Electric Capital and Brevan Howard Digital; received strategic investment from Binance Labs on January 30.
Latest progress: On October 22, UniFi Devnet went live, open to whitelisted users and protocols, with the testnet and mainnet coming soon. Last week, the protocol token PUFFER airdrop claim opened, along with the pufETH withdrawal feature.
Solayer
Project business: A liquid re-staking protocol on the Solana network.
Funding situation: Completed $12 million seed round financing on August 27, led by Polychain, with participation from Binance Labs and others; completed Pre-seed round financing in July, with participation from Anatoly (founder of Solana) and others.
Latest progress: Launched liquidity re-staking SOL in conjunction with multiple exchanges, including Binance (BNSOL), Bybit (bbSOL), Bitget (BGSOL), allowing users to convert their SOL tokens into these tokens within the exchanges, earning staking rewards, liquidity incentives, AVS delegation, and MEV rewards after staking.
Launched RWA yield-bearing USD sUSD in cooperation with OpenEden, allowing for re-staking and earning interest through U.S. Treasury bonds.
StakeStone
Project business: LSD (Liquid Staking Derivative) protocol supported by ETH staking rewards.
Funding situation: Received investment from Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, and Skyland Ventures on March 25.
Latest progress: Main development direction is multi-chain expansion; launched SBTC and STONEBTC on the berachain bArtio testnet yesterday; announced integration plans with Sonic (new version of Fantom) and others.
UXUY
Project business: A multi-chain DEX based on MPC wallets.
Funding situation: Completed $8 million Pre-A round financing on May 9, with participation from Binance Labs and Bixin Ventures; in August 2023, received investment from MEXC Ventures; in April 2023, completed $3.2 million seed round financing with participation from Waterdrip Capital and others.
Latest progress: According to co-founder 0xKevin—UXUY 'All in TG (Telegram)', the first self-custodial multi-chain wallet on TG was launched, supporting any Bot to connect to any ecosystem without permission via 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 rapid consensus through mechanisms for 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 notable; when it received investment from Binance Labs in May, it was one of the few investments by Binance Labs in the Bitcoin ecosystem in recent years (see 'Binance Labs Investment, An Analysis of the Stacks Lending Market Zest'). However, with Binance Labs investing in projects like Hemi Network and Lombard, investments in the Bitcoin ecosystem are no longer rare.
Funding situation: Completed $3.5 million seed round financing on May 13, led by Tim Draper, with participation from Binance Labs and others.
Latest progress: Launched points system RoboZester, where users can earn points Oranges through various social media tasks, unspecified for
Zircuit
Project business: Zircuit is an EVM-compatible ZK rollup, allowing users to earn various incentives in one stop, including staking rewards, protocol tokens, points, and future airdrops. Zircuit points out that new LRT protocols are constantly emerging, making it difficult for even experienced users to track and select the safest and best protocols to deploy their funds. Zircuit aims to solve this problem and become the main liquidity hub for staking assets (ETH, BTC, LST, and LRT), with funds deployed by Zircuit into secure, high-quality protocols.
Funding situation: Completed one round of financing on July 22, with participation from Binance Labs, Mirana Ventures, and others; received separate investment from Binance Labs on June 11. Amounts and valuations were not disclosed.
Latest progress: Launched Zircuit Liquidity Hub, where staking users will receive partner airdrops, including ZeroLend, Elara, Avalon Labs, Circuit, Ocelex, Gamma, etc. Users staking on Ethereum mainnet can migrate for free to Zircuit L2's Liquidity Hub.
