Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 23 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (August 19-August 25), with a total funding amount of over US$203 million. Both the number of events and the amount of funding have decreased. An overview is as follows:
DeFi announced four investment and financing events, among which Bitcoin re-staking platform SatLayer completed a $8 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Hack VC and others;
The Web3 gaming track announced four investment and financing events, among which the Web3 social gaming ecosystem Soulbound completed a $4 million financing, with Animoca Brands and others participating in the investment;
Four investment and financing events were announced in the AI field. Skyfire, an AI proxy encrypted payment network, completed a seed round of financing of US$8.5 million, with participation from Circle and others.
The Infrastructure & Tools track announced 9 financings, among which PIP Labs, the developer of Layer1 IP blockchain Story Protocol, completed a $80 million Series B financing, led by a16z Crypto;
The centralized financial sector announced two financings, among which the digital asset trading platform BiFinance completed a $10 million Series A financing, with Hong Kong-listed company SDM Education and others participating in the investment
DeFi
Bitcoin re-staking platform SatLayer completes $8 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Hack VC and others
SatLayer, a Bitcoin re-staking platform based on Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon, has raised $8 million in a Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Hack VC and Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Franklin Templeton, OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Amber Group, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings and other companies. Undisclosed angel investors from companies such as aPriori, Custodia Bank, LayerZero, Manta Network, Magic Eden, Sui and Pendle also participated in this round of financing. The structure before Pre-Seed financing is a simple future equity agreement (SAFE) with token warrants.
According to reports, SatLayer is a Bitcoin re-staking platform based on the Babylon protocol, which aims to connect Bitcoin to a yield-generating Proof-of-Stake network. With SatLayer, users can now re-stake Bitcoin and Bitcoin liquidity staking tokens minted on Solv Protocol, Lombard, Bedrock, pStake, and PumpBTC, and use secure Bitcoin verification services. SatLayer will provide rewards to users in the form of points. When asked whether these points will be exchanged for SatLayer's native tokens in the future, SatLayer co-founder Luke Xie said: "We don't have a formal token plan yet, and we will announce the details later if there are any."
BSX, the Base Ecosystem Derivatives Trading Platform, has raised $6.2 million in funding
Decentralized financial derivatives protocol BSX successfully raised $6.2 million before launching its tokens, including $4 million in seed rounds led by Blockchain Capital, and another $2.2 million in pre-seed rounds raised a year ago. Investors in both rounds included Bankless Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Cadenza Ventures, Breed VC, and Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom. Its angel investors include Coinbase listing director Zach Segal, Delphi founder Tommy Shaughnessy, and CoinFund investor Isaiah Washington. BSX is a decentralized derivatives trading platform based on Ethereum Layer 2 network Base, which has achieved more than $4 billion in trading volume and $1 million in revenue in four months. BSX plans to launch a Layer 3 network in the first quarter of 2025 to optimize the order book, and plans to release the BSX token by the end of the year for on-chain governance and value transfer.
Credbull Completes $5.2 Million Funding Led by Gnosis VC
Credbull announced the completion of a $5.2 million financing led by Gnosis VC. This round of financing also includes the participation of several strategic investors such as Outlier Ventures and HODL Ventures. Credbull launched the first licensed on-chain private credit fund on the Polygon PoS blockchain in April this year. The project aims to promote the popularization of private credit real-world asset (RWA) investment by connecting traditional finance with Web3.
Bitcoin native stablecoin project Ducat completes $1.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing
Ducat, a Bitcoin native stablecoin project on Runes, has completed a $1.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by UTXO Management, with participation from THECMS, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Revelo Intel, MARIN DIGITAL VENTURES, Samara Asset Group, Bitcoin Startup Lab, Bitflow, X+, etc. Ducat solves the centralization problem in the stablecoin market by providing a Bitcoin native, self-custodial, and permissionless smart contract system to meet Bitcoin holders' preferences for security and autonomy. The governance token DUCAT provides a stablecoin solution that combines Bitcoin's censorship resistance with decentralized native collateral.
Web3 Games
Web3 social gaming ecosystem Soulbound completes $4 million in financing, with Animoca Brands and others participating
Web3 social gaming ecosystem Soulbound announced that it has completed $4 million in financing, with participation from iAngels, Animoca Brands, Big Brain Holdings, NGC Ventures, Panony, Delta Blockchain Fund, and Blocklords CEO David Johansson. The new funds will be used to establish game partnerships, increase social interactions, and expand anchor bounties and social tasks. Soulbound has transformed from Popdrip, an NFT-based sticker and social content publishing platform, and allows players, anchors, and creators to earn non-transferable DRIP tokens through cooperation with the Twitch live broadcast platform. It is reported that TGE is expected to be held in the second half of 2024.
Nexus Interactive has completed a $2 million seed round of financing, with Jump Crypto and others participating
Web3 game development company Nexus Interactive announced on the X platform that it has completed an oversubscribed seed round of financing of US$2 million, with participation from Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, Maven Capital, GameFi ventures, Sky Vision Capital, Aquanow, OIG (Oracles Investment Group), Virtuals IO, Atesis Capital, Enzac Research Avocado Guild, Good Games Guild, RR2 capital, etc. Currently, Nexus Interactive owns three infrastructures: internal development studio Nexus Play, Web3 game distribution service Nexus Build, and content and community growth project Nexus Share. It is reported that the public beta version of its flagship game Everdawn Champions will be launched in September this year.
Fantasy football platform Fanton completes $1 million seed round, with Animoca Brands and others participating
Fanton, a blockchain-based fantasy football platform, announced the completion of a $1 million seed round of financing from well-known institutions including Animoca Brands, Delphi Ventures, HashKey x TON Accelerator, PAKA Fund, Sign VC and Kenetic Capital. Fanton has grown rapidly using the Telegram ecosystem, attracting more than 3 million users and 300,000 wallets, and has received support from Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. The financing will be used to upgrade platform functionality, expand the market and further integrate blockchain technology to promote its innovation in the GameFi and SocialFi fields.
Last Odyssey Completes Seed Round with Animoca Brands and OKX Ventures
Last Odyssey, a social-based strategy game, has completed its seed round with investments from well-known VCs OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Coin98 Ventures, Selini Capital, and Summer Capital. Built by Everest Ventures Group, Last Odyssey will continue to refine its gameplay, focusing on esports elements to expand the immersive Web3 gaming experience and grow its community. Last Odyssey launched the social airdrop event "1st X-Kingdom" on August 20, 2024, in anticipation of the game's release at the end of 2024. By completing various tasks, including daily check-ins, inviting friends, and social media interactions, players will earn Gold and use it to upgrade their Kingdom level. Participating users will receive $ODY tokens (in-game governance tokens) as rewards through airdrops based on the level of their Kingdom and the amount of Gold they hold.
AI
Skyfire, an AI-powered encrypted payment network developed by former Ripple employees, completes $8.5 million in seed round financing
Skyfire, an AI agent crypto payment network, announced the completion of a $8.5 million seed round of financing. Investors include USDC issuer Circle, Ripple, Gemini, and the venture capital firm of Tim Draper, a well-known Silicon Valley billionaire and Bitcoin advocate. Founded by two former Ripple developers, Skyfire is an open source payment system that will allow autonomous AI agents to move quickly on the Internet and purchase any goods needed to complete designated tasks - from data storage and creative assets to air tickets and groceries. All of these transactions will be supported by the stablecoin USDC. Skyfire currently runs on the Ethereum extension network Polygon, but the company says it plans to expand to other blockchains soon. Skyfire is currently free to use, but says it may soon charge transaction fees of between 2% and 3%.
YeagerAI, the developer of decentralized AI network GenLayer, completes $7.5 million seed round
YeagerAI, the development company behind the decentralized artificial intelligence network GenLayer, has completed a $7.5 million seed round of financing, led by North Island Ventures, with participation from venture capitalists such as Node Capital, Arrington Capital, ZK Ventures, WAGMI Ventures, BlockBuilders, Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom, and several angel investors. The YeagerAI team is pioneering a technical solution called "smart contracts," which are blockchain-based systems that use large language models connected to the Internet to perform functions. GenLayer also uses artificial intelligence in its custom delegated proof-of-stake algorithm, which randomly selects a chief validator to propose an output, which is then voted on by four other validators connected to different LLMs. If the subjective output receives majority support, the transaction is processed.
Modular AI data processing layer DIN completes new round of financing of US$4 million
Modular AI data processing layer DIN has completed $4 million in pre-listing financing, with participation from Manta, Moonbeam, Ankr, Maxx Capital and others. According to reports, DIN is currently focusing on expanding its ecosystem through the sale of DIN Chipper Node to provide early access and global participation in the AI data economy. The total financing of the project has reached $8 million. In May this year, Web3 data intelligence company Web3Go changed its name to DIN. Earlier in July last year, it was reported that Web3Go completed a $4 million seed round of financing led by Binance Labs.
Web3 AI virtual personality social platform Reflection AI completes seed round financing, CGV FOF and others participate
Web3 AI virtual personality social platform Reflection AI has completed its seed round of financing, with participation from CGV FOF, K24 Ventures and CatcherVC. Reflection AI aims to provide users with a decentralized, secure and highly personalized virtual social space by combining cutting-edge AI and blockchain technologies. Reflection AI's core advantages include a unique AI computing system, a distributed computing network, and an innovative computing power token conversion mechanism. The platform supports users to create and cultivate AI virtual personalities with autonomous learning capabilities, and to interact deeply in an AI-driven virtual world.
Infrastructure & Tools
PIP Labs, the developer of Layer1 IP blockchain Story Protocol, completes $80 million Series B financing, led by a16z Crypto
Programmable IP (PIP) Labs, the developer of the Layer1 intellectual property blockchain Story Protocol, has raised $80 million in a Series B round led by a16z Crypto. Other investors in the round include Polychain Capital, Scott Trowbridge, senior vice president and board member of Stability AI, Adrian Cheng, founder and billionaire of K11, and Cozomo de' Medici, a digital art collector.
Story Protocol is a Layer1 blockchain that aims to tokenize intellectual property to make it programmable in the AI era. The Story blockchain aims to allow creators to register their IP to track its usage and protect their rights, ensuring that they are rewarded when their content is used or shared. Story's mainnet is expected to launch later this year. The Layer1 blockchain is being developed through the Cosmos SDK and will be fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). San Francisco-based PIP Labs currently has about 40 employees, and the company is looking to hire about 20 more employees in functional areas such as engineering, marketing, APAC functions, product and design.
Fabric, a cryptographic "VPU" chip developer, completes $33 million Series A funding round led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx
Fabric Cryptography, a company developing cryptographic "VPU" chips, announced the completion of a $33 million Series A financing round, led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx, with participation from Offchain Labs, Polygon, and Matter Labs. The new funds will be used to build computing chips, software, and encryption algorithms. According to reports, the project had previously raised $6 million in a seed round led by Metaplanet. Fabric's founders include MIT and Stanford dropouts Michael Gao and Tina Ju, and hardware industry veteran Sagar Reddy. The core of Fabric's roadmap is to build a new processing unit called a "verifiable processing unit (VPU)", which will be specifically used to process encryption technology. Fabric said the new chip is expected to go into production later this year.
Crypto startup Sorella Labs completes $7.5 million seed round led by Paradigm
Sorella Labs, a crypto startup that aims to solve the Ethereum MEV problem, has completed a $7.5 million seed round of financing, led by Paradigm, with participation from Uniswap Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot Ventures and Nascent. It is reported that Sorella Labs is developing tools to solve the problem of Ethereum's maximum extractable value (MEV). MEV refers to a validator or robot that extracts profits by reordering, inserting or reviewing transactions within a block. Common MEV strategies include front-running (executing transactions before others), sandwich attacks (trading before and after large transactions), and arbitrage (profiting from price differences between different platforms). These practices impose higher costs on DeFi users and bring unfair advantages to those with more resources. To curb MEV attacks, Sorella Labs is developing two tools, Brontes and Angstrom. Brontes has been launched today, and Angstrom is expected to be released after Uniswap V4 goes online on the mainnet later this year.
Bitcoin Ecosystem Income Network Corn Completes $6.7 Million in Funding, Polychain Leads Investment, Binance Labs and Others Participate
Corn, a Bitcoin ecosystem income network, has completed a $6.7 million financing round, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Binance Labs, Framework Ventures, HTX Ventures and Relayer Capital. The project aims to enhance the utility of Bitcoin and introduce new income-generating opportunities. Corn is a new Ethereum L2 network that uses a tokenized Bitcoin as the network's gas fee and economic incentives, codenamed BTCN. Corn went live on August 19, and unlike most income-generating protocols, Corn had no fixed income at launch. The percentage of income will mainly depend on the growth of the ecosystem and the number of protocol participants achieved through Corn's flywheel mechanism.
Web3 oracle provider Stork Network completes $4 million seed round
Web3 oracle provider Stork Network has completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Lattice, CMS, and Wintermute. The company will use the funds to enhance its product offerings, especially Stork Perps. It is reported that Stork Labs is a core contributor to Stork Network, aiming to create simpler, cheaper, and more flexible on-chain data options for decentralized protocols. One of the tools the company has developed for this purpose is the Open Data Market. The tool connects data publishers with protocols, decentralized applications, and other data consumers through composite oracle services. Stork Perps is the company's first COS.
ZK identity verification solution zkMe completes $4 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital
ZK identity authentication solution provider zkMe announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from OKX Ventures and Robot Ventures. The funds will be used to optimize the zkMe zero-knowledge identity protocol, which has been online for 13 months, and develop zero-knowledge identity layer infrastructure to build a more complete zkMe privacy identity layer network, which is expected to be officially launched in Q4 2024. According to reports, zkMe is committed to providing decentralized compliance services that meet FATF standards through cryptography, and providing the Web3 industry with comprehensive credential verification solutions to cope with the EU MiCA regulations that will soon take effect. At the same time, zkMe also gives users the right to control their identity credentials, and users can achieve maximum privacy protection and value creation by participating in verification.
Bitcoin payment company Ark Labs completes $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Draper Associates
Bitcoin payment company Ark Labs has completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Draper Associates, with participation from Fulgur Ventures, Axiom Capital and angel investor Stephen Cole. Ark Labs was launched in May and plans to develop a new Bitcoin Layer2 payment network based on the Ark protocol. Draper Associates has participated in seed rounds for companies such as Tesla, Skype and Hotmail.
Bitcoin Lightning Network Payment Company TMRW Completes $1.3 Million Pre-Seed Round of Financing, Led by Maple VC
TMRW, a Miami-based Bitcoin Lightning Network payment startup, announced the completion of a $1.3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Maple VC and participated by angel investors such as Brad Mills. TMRW mainly uses the speed and low cost of the Lightning Network and the open payment standard Universal Money Addresses built on the Lightning Network to achieve cross-border peer-to-peer payments through Lightspark and ZeroHash. The new funds are intended to be used to expand the US market. It is reported that TMRW has now opened its iOS beta version to US users.
Web3 security and transparency platform g8keep completes $1.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing
Web3 security and transparency platform g8keep announced the completion of a $1.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from Robot Ventures, Base Ecosystem Fund, Azuki, Sappy Seals, Guardian, Audit Wizard, cygaar, devops199fan, etc. The new funds will be used to expand its security transparency platform to address defects in token issuance and transactions, including correcting vulnerabilities exposed by users and ensuring a safe and reliable digital asset usage environment for users. The beta version of g8keep is being conducted on the Base mainnet, and registration for this version is now open.
Centralized Finance
Digital asset trading platform BiFinance completes USD 10 million Series A financing, with participation from Hong Kong-listed company SDM Education and others
Digital asset trading platform BiFinance announced the completion of a $10 million Series A financing, with a valuation of over $100 million. Sunfund Fortuna Global Opportunities led the investment, and Eternal Asia Group, SDM Education and TigerBCDAO participated in the investment. The new funds will be used to further connect traditional financial assets such as stocks and bonds with the Web3 ecosystem and provide asset-backed tokens (RWA/STO) to enterprises. According to reports, BiFinance is an institutional-level digital asset trading platform, with businesses including digital currency trading, digital derivatives trading, Launchpad and DeFi asset management.
Crypto lending platform Arch completes $5 million seed round of financing, led by Morgan Creek Digital and others
According to Fortune, the crypto lending platform Arch announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, co-led by Morgan Creek Digital and Castle Island Ventures. At the same time, Galaxy provided it with $70 million in debt financing. The funds will be used to serve institutional clients and individual investors. Arch was founded in February 2022 by financial industry veterans Dhruv Patel and Himanshu Sahay to revive the crypto lending industry, which has been hit by the collapse of companies such as BlockFi and Genesis. Arch co-founder Dhruv Patel said the company adopts a conservative strategy and only accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum and SOL as collateral, and does not re-mortgage, but instead uses BitGo to hold collateral on behalf of customers. Arch currently has 5 full-time employees and plans to expand the team and launch other investment products later this year.
Institutional Funds
Gate.io to Launch $100 Million Innovation Fund in Partnership with Abu Dhabi Blockchain Center
Gate Ventures, the venture capital arm of Gate.io, has partnered with the Abu Dhabi Blockchain Center to announce a $100 million fund dedicated to driving Web3 innovation. On August 19, Gate.io announced the establishment of Falcon Gate Ventures, a joint venture to support Web3 builders. The exchange’s venture capital arm said the fund aims to “advance decentralized infrastructure and applications and accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies.” The two institutions will pool their respective expertise and resources to help talent from major regions such as the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Abdulla Al Dhaheri, CEO of the Abu Dhabi Blockchain Center, said that the cooperation aims to cultivate and expand "high-potential" blockchain projects, and Gate Ventures is committed to accelerating the adoption and impact of blockchain innovation in the UAE and around the world. It is reported that the Abu Dhabi Blockchain Center was officially unveiled on August 1. The organization aims to make Abu Dhabi a global leader in blockchain and create an ecosystem that supports academic institutions, enterprises and start-ups through initiatives and comprehensive services.
