According to Blockworks, this week saw significant funding announcements in the tech and crypto sectors. Andrena, an Internet Service Provider (ISP), revealed plans to launch a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) for decentralized broadband. The Decentralized Autonomous Wireless Network (DAWN) secured $18 million in a funding round led by Dragonfly, with contributions from CMT Digital, Castle Island Ventures, and Wintermute Ventures. Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter stated, “Andrena has been on the forefront of DePIN before the term existed. Since we first backed the firm, they have built a significant install base and are perfectly positioned to layer on the DAWN network. We are strong believers in the notion that households will both consume and provide network resources, and Andrena is an emerging market leader in this domain.” The funds will be used to complete the protocol and expand Andrena’s subscriber base, as well as migrate its end-users' transactions on-chain with DAWN.

Another notable funding announcement came from zk-powered exchange Vessel, which raised $10 million in a seed round with participation from Sequoia, Scroll, and Folius Ventures. The project aims to combine the efficiency and user-friendliness of centralized exchanges (CEX) with the transparency and security of decentralized platforms (DEX). The team stated, “Our mission is to transform cryptocurrency trading into a secure and seamless journey, improving transparency, accessibility, and efficiency for all users. We are poised to revolutionize cryptocurrency trading with superior services in spot trading, perpetual trading, and other innovative derivatives.”

Other significant funding rounds included Zoth, a DeFi yield infrastructure company, which raised $4 million in a strategic funding round with investors such as Taisu Ventures, Fat Cat Ventures, and AstraX Capital. Payman AI, focused on building AI to human payments, announced a $3 million pre-seed round with investors including Visa, CB Ventures, and Untapped Capital. Blockscout, a block explorer for EVM-based chains, raised $3 million in a round led by 1kx, with additional investments from Gnosis and Primitive Ventures. Nexio, a parallelized Bitcoin rollup, announced a $2.2 million pre-seed round led by Lattice.

Disclosure: Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks and host of Empire, also participated in the DAWN round.