Author: 100y. Translated by: Cointime: QDD.
Noteworthy Projects
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Hourglass, Azteco
Centralized Finance (CeFi): Jia
Non-fungible tokens (NFT), games: Pudgy Penguins
Layer 1、2：Nolus、Anoma
Web3: Magic, Transak, Human Tools, Blockworks, Story Protocol
Infrastructure: Fastlane Labs, Lagrange Labs, Airstack, Auradine, zkLink
1. DeFi
1.1 Entendre Finance (Source)
May 1, 2023
Seed round: $4 million
Lead investor: Basis Set
Investors: Valhalla, Caffeinated, Moonpay, Alumni, MDig, Alpine
Entendre Finance is a Web3 accounting platform based on a user's blockchain history. Entendre provides a service that allows you to apply various filters to your transaction history to categorize and organize it. One of the challenges of using blockchain is tracking and organizing on-chain funds for tax and other purposes, and these services can provide significant assistance.
1.2 Cetus (Source)
May 2, 2023
Seed round
Lead investors: OKX Ventures, KuCoin Ventures
Investors: Comma3 Ventures, NGC Ventures, Animoca Ventures, IDG Capital, Leland Ventures, AC Capital, Adaverse, Coin98 Ventures, etc.
Cetus is a decentralized exchange (DEX) based on the Move language and is a dApp on the Sui and Aptos networks. Cetus is characterized by its ability to provide liquidity within a specific range, such as Uniswap V3, which can achieve high capital efficiency.
1.3 Portals (Source)
May 3, 2023
Seed round: $2 million
Lead investor: Lightshift Capital
Investors: Poolside, Basement Labs, LongHash Ventures, Daedalus Angels, Mechanism Capital, etc.
Portals is a more complex protocol compared to existing general-purpose decentralized exchanges (DEX), supporting various types of ERC-20 token exchanges, including LP tokens, storage tokens, etc., and aggregating yield farming strategies from numerous protocols.
1.4 Fedi (Source)
May 3, 2023
Series A: $17 million
Lead investor: Ego Death Capital
Investors: TBD (part of Block), Kingsway, Trammell Venture Partners, Timechain
Fedi is a company that builds tools to help communities collaboratively manage assets and data using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. The idea is to reduce single points of failure by collaboratively managing assets and data. The main function is a wallet, but the company plans to add chat, web browsing, and the ability to run dApps in the future. Many Bitcoin holders use centralized services like centralized exchanges, but even with personal wallets there is a risk of losing keys, so services like Fedi offer the best of both worlds.
1.5 Tristero (Source)
May 3, 2023
Seed round: $4.8 million
Lead investors: General Catalyst, Steel Perlot
Tristero is a company that is creating an autonomous Darkpool product. In traditional financial markets, a Darkpool is a place where trades are privately executed when it is believed that a certain order will have a large impact on the market. The order prices and quantities are not visible to the outside world, and the entity operating the Darkpool matches these trades. However, this means trusting a centralized entity that can pre-empt trades if it behaves maliciously. To solve this problem, Tristero aims to develop a Darkpool that uses zero-knowledge proofs to execute private transactions in a decentralized manner.
1.6 Opentrade (Source)
May 4, 2023
$1.5 million
投资者：Circle Ventures、Kronos Research、Kyber Ventures、Polygon Ventures、Outlier Ventures
Opentrade is a protocol that allows financial departments or institutions on Web3 protocols to invest in various creditworthy blockchain investments. Examples include US Treasuries and Commercial Paper (CP). Users can easily invest in these instruments by depositing stablecoins. Recently, real world asset (RWA) products have been increasingly accessed on the chain.
1.7 Smilee Finance (Source)
May 11, 2023
Seed round: $2 million
Lead investor: Dialectic
投资者：Synergis Capital、Concave Ventures、Owl Ventures、Yunt Capital、Dewhales Capital、Outlier Ventures、New Order、Multisig Ventures、GTS Ventures、Hyperpyra等
Smilee is a service that helps you control the inevitable temporary losses (IL) when using AMM DEXs. It introduces a new concept called "Impermanent Gain" that allows users to pay a premium and use it to bet on volatility. This can be used for various purposes, such as before major market events, hedging portfolios, or as a form of insurance against stablecoin decoupling. The premium paid by users of Impermanent Gain is paid to liquidity providers in the form of actual yield. Temporary losses in DeFi have always been a headache, so being able to hedge against these losses would be great.
1.8 Polynomial Protocol (Source)
May 11, 2023
Investors: Road Capital, Caballeros Capital, Archetype
Polynomial Protocol is a decentralized derivatives exchange based on Optimism's Synthetix protocol. It supports not only major tokens such as BTC and ETH, but also tokens that are not well represented in on-chain futures exchanges, such as Blur, dYdX, INJ, FLOKI, and FLOW. Liquidity is provided by Synthetix's SNX stakers, who receive trading fees in return.
1.9 Dolomite (Source)
May 13, 2023
$2.5 million
Lead investors: Draper Goren Holm, NGC
Investors: Coinbase Ventures, WWVentures, 6th Man Ventures, etc.
Dolomite is a money market and DEX protocol based on Arbitrum. In addition to providing over-collateralized lending, it also provides leveraged trading, spot trading and other functions. Existing leveraged trading protocols usually only allow stablecoin-based transactions, while Dolomite is different in that it not only provides stablecoins, but also provides markets that allow you to conduct paired transactions such as WBTC and GMX.
1.10 Asymmetry Finance (Source)
May 16, 2023
Seed round: $3 million (valuation: $20 million)
Lead investor: Ecco Capital
Investors: Republic Capital, GMJP, Ankr
Asymmetry Finance is a liquid staking protocol on Ethereum. When users deposit ETH into Asymmetry Finance, they receive safETH, a token that holds a basket of wstETH, rETH, sfrxETH, sETH2 (coming soon), and ankrETH (coming soon). The advantage of automatically depositing funds into different liquid staking protocols is that it increases the diversity of the protocols and hedges against single points of failure. It is an aggregator of liquid staking protocols.
1.11 Hourglass (Source)
May 17, 2023
Seed round: $4.2 million
Lead investor: Electric Capital
Investors: Circle Ventures, Tribe Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Hack VC
Hourglass is a DeFi protocol that introduces a new concept called Time-Bound Tokens (TBT). As a DEX protocol, liquidity is very important. However, users can withdraw liquidity at any time at many unpredictable points. To solve this problem, Hourglass offers users additional rewards instead of locking their liquidity for a period of time, and on the other hand, DEX protocols can predict liquidity, so it is a win-win situation. The concept of allowing time to be traded on-chain as an asset is very interesting.
1.12 Azteco (Source)
May 18, 2023
Seed round: $6 million
Lead investor: Jack Dorsey
投资者：Lightning Ventures、Hivemind Ventures、Ride Wave Ventures、Aleka Capital、Visary Capital、Gaingels等
Azteco is a platform that makes it easy for unbanked people to use Bitcoin. Users can buy Azteco vouchers online or offline and exchange them for BTC. This is a very convenient way to own Bitcoin because you don't have to buy Bitcoin on an exchange to hold it.
2. CeFi
2.1 River Financial (Source)
May 16, 2023
Series B: $35 million
Lead investor: Kingsway Capital
Investors: Peter Thiel, Cygni, Goldcrest, Valor Equity Partners
River Financial is a Bitcoin-focused platform that offers services such as recurring purchases, custody, and Bitcoin mining. It also provides an API for businesses to utilize the Lightning Network.
2.2 Jia (Source)
May 17, 2023
Seed round: $4.3 million
Lead investor: TCG Crypto
Investors: BlockTower, Hashed Emergent, Saison Capital, Global Coin Research, etc.
Jia is a blockchain-based fintech platform that provides loans to small businesses in developing countries. For small business owners, it makes it very easy to raise funds; for investors, it allows them to lend to businesses in developing countries, which would otherwise be difficult to invest in.
3. NFT, Games
3.1 FARE protocol (Source)
May 1, 2023
Seed round: $6.2 million
Lead investors: C Squared Ventures, Goat Capital
Investors: 6th Man Ventures, Arrington Capital, Eniac Ventures, Spark Digital Capital, Morningstar Ventures, Quantstamp, DWeb3, etc.
FARE protocol is an Arbitrum-based protocol that provides probabilistic smart contracts for dApps. Justin Kan, one of the founders of Twitch, is also a co-founder of FARE protocol. The first game based on FARE protocol is fareplay, where users can bet tokens and play casino-style games. Although many technical details have not been released yet, the official website states that odds can be managed transparently and randomly.
3.2 Vibe (Source)
May 4, 2023
Seed round: $4 million
Investors: Alchemy, Aglaé Ventures, P Nation, etc.
Vibe is a platform designed to add various functions to NFTs. The advantage is that even if you don't know how to program, you can use various practical functions to productize NFTs. By giving NFTs loyalty points or the right to obtain physical goods, creators and collectors can interact with fans in various ways. It is worth noting that P Nation, a music record company run by Korean singer Psy, also participated in the investment.
3.3 Artifact Labs (Source)
May 8, 2023
$3.25 million
Lead investor: Blue Pool Capital
Investors: Animoca Ventures, etc.
Artifact Labs is a company that aims to preserve real-world historical events on-chain. For example, they are NFTing the front page of the South China Morning Post reporting on the UK's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Artifact Labs has set up a non-profit organization called the Artifact Council to manage these standards, and their goal is to establish standards for archiving historical documents on-chain.
3.4 Aether Games (Source)
May 9, 2023
$4.5 million
Investors: Mysten Labs、Polygon、Magic Eden、Polkastarter、Cogitent Ventures、Ultra、GSR Ventures、Emurgo、Master Ventures、Eclipse
Aether Games is an NFT-based game studio that makes various NFT-based games. Games include Cards of Eternity, a collectible card game, and Gate of Eternity, a 3D auto-battle game. In addition to games, the studio also plans to create a film series using the Aether universe.
3.5 Artizen (Source)
May 11, 2023
$2.2 million
Investors: Consensys Mesh, Animoca Brands, Protocol Labs, etc.
Artizen is a Web3 crowdfunding platform that allows you to raise funds for projects related to art, science, technical design, etc. Once you submit your project, it will be reviewed and curated by the Artizen community, and you can start crowdfunding.
3.6 Pudgy Penguins (Source)
May 10, 2023
Seed round: $9 million
投资者：1kx、Big Brain Holdings、Kornos、Ethersole、CRIT Ventures、KuCoin、CoinGecko、Puzzle Ventures、Shima Capital、Old Fashion Research、Origin
Pudgy Penguins is one of the leading PFP NFT projects in the Ethereum ecosystem centered around a cute penguin character. Pudgy Penguins has been in business since April 2022, when Luca Netz purchased the rights to the brand for $2.5 million. Pudgy Penguins not only produces NFTs, but also sells physical toys based on them. Among the existing famous NFT projects, Pudgy Penguins is a noteworthy PFP project because it is actively conducting actual business.
3.7 Anotherblock (Source)
May 16, 2023
Seed round: €4 million
Lead investor: Stride vc
Anotherblock is a Web3 music platform that leverages NFTs. Through Anotherblock, users can co-own the music of their favorite artists and receive royalties on a semi-annual cycle. In the future, the company plans to leverage Superfluid to enable real-time royalty payments. Although the number of supported songs is currently small, the platform already has songs from popular artists such as The Weeknd, Rihanna, and Offset.
3.8 IZUMO (Origin)
May 16, 2023
Angel round: US$2.2 million
Investors: Hiroaki Kitano (CTO of Sony Group), Jaynti Kanani (Founder of Polygon), Justin Waldron (Founder of PlayCo), Keisuke Honda (KSK Angel Fund, professional football player), Kevin Aluwi (former CEO of GoJek) ), Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch, CEO of Metatheory), Reito Hatotani (former CEO of Sanrio Media and Picture Entertainment, consultant to Chiru Labs (Azuki’s creator company)), Richard Ma (Quantstamp CEO), Shintaro Yamada (CEO of Mercari), Sota Watanabe and Dai Ninja (Next Web Capital), Suji Yan (CEO of Mask Network), Taizo Son (CEO of Mistletoe), Zeneca (CEO of ZenAcademy) official) etc.
Izumo is a platform that enables otakus, streamers, illustrators, music and video producers to monetize their content in a sustainable way. Their first project will feature a virtual idol named Ailis.
3.9 Tabi (Origin)
May 29, 2023
Angel round: US$10 million
Investors: Animoca Brands, Draper Dragon, Hashkey Capital, Infinity Crypto Ventures, Youbi Capital, etc.
Tabi is an NFT market based on the BNB network, formerly known as Treasureland. It provides basic NFT trading and issuance services, but also provides various activities through tasks.
4. Layer 1, 2
4.1 Nolus (Source)
May 2, 2023
Seed round: $2.5 million
Investors: Dorahacks, Everstake, Cogitent Ventures, Token Metrics Ventures, Autonomy Capital, etc.
Nolus is a Layer 1 blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK that provides money market services. It differs from other money market protocols in that it is not over-collateralized, allowing more funds to be borrowed relative to the collateral with less risk of liquidation. It also provides IBC and ICA for interoperability with other application chains. You can learn more about how it works in the documentation. Nolus launched its mainnet on May 23.
4.2 Odsy (Source)
May 11, 2023
$7.5 million (valuation: $250 million)
Lead investor: Blockchange Ventures
Investors: Rubik Ventures, Node Capital, FalconX
Odsy is a Layer 1 network, and the biggest difference from other networks is its independent dWallet. The main advantage of dWallet is that it can utilize different digital signature algorithms (ECDSA, EdDSA, Schnorr, etc.), allowing you to connect to multiple other networks through one wallet.
4.3 Anoma (Source)
May 31, 2023
$25 million
Lead investor: CMCC Global
投资者：Electric Capital、Delphi Digital、Dialectic、KR1、Spartan、NGC、MH Ventures、Bixin Ventures、No Limit、Plassa、Perridon Ventures、Anagram、Factor等
Anoma is an architecture for full-stack dApps that is centered around intent. Intent is the desired behavior of network users, a concept smaller than transactions. If transactions are the smallest unit in existing protocols, then in Anoma, intent is the smallest unit. By moving from transactions to intent as the basic unit, Anoma provides many advantages for dApps.
5. Web3
5.1 Blockworks (Source)
May 9, 2023
$12 million
Lead investor: 10T Holdings
Investors: Framework Ventures, Santiago Santos
Blockworks is one of the leading blockchain media organizations, organizing world-class conferences and publishing news, podcasts, and research articles. The company will use the funds to further develop its research and expand its business globally.
5.2 Story Protocol (Source)
May 17, 2023
Seed round: $29.3 million
Lead investor: A16z Crypto
Investors: Hashed, Mirana Corp, DAO5, Samsung Next Fund, Two Small Fish Ventures, Berggruen, SLVC
Story Protocol is a platform for creating and managing intellectual property on-chain. It also allows creators to create narratives through what they call "story legos". There is no publically available information yet, but with investment from leading VCs, we think it's worth keeping an eye on.
5.3 LabDAO (Source)
May 24, 2023
$3.6 million
Lead investors: Gumi Cryptos Capital, Maven 11
Credits: North Island Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, ID Theory, Road Capital, Curve Labs, gmjp.lol, Molecule, Gnosis DAO, The LAO, Orange DAO, Beaker DAO, Spaceship DAO, Balaji Srinivasan
LabDAO is an open research organization for computational life sciences in the form of a DAO. Researchers can propose research ideas on LabDAO to get funding or find partners. The PLEX service operated by LabDAO provides researchers with a library for running BioML tools. PLEX provides a variety of tools from small molecule binding to protein folding.
5.4 Tools For Humanity (Source)
May 25, 2023
Series C: $115 million
Lead investor: Blockchain Capital
Investors: a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, Distributed Global
Tools For Humanity is the company behind the Worldcoin project, which has attracted a lot of investment despite the weak market. Worldcoin rewards people around the world for verifying their human identity in the form of World ID and Worldcoin tokens. It uses a device called Orb to verify human identity by recognizing irises. Sam Altman, the co-founder of Worldcoin, is better known for his role as CEO of OpenAI, and interestingly, a leading figure in the field of artificial intelligence is also running a blockchain project. Sam Altman believes that in the future, artificial intelligence will make most people unemployed, and a basic income policy will be crucial. In order to prepare for this, the project called Worldcoin aims to 1) verify people's identities in the digital world, and 2) provide them with a basic income.
5.5 Transak (Source)
May 31, 2023
Series A: $20 million
Lead investor: CE Innovation Capital
投资者：SBI Ven Capital、Sygnum、Azimut、Third Kind Venture Capital、UOB Venture Management、Signum Capital、Animoca Brands、Genting Ventures、Istari Ventures、No Limit Holdings、Woodstock Fund、IOSG Ventures、KX、Axelar、Tokentus、The Lao等
Transak is a Web3 payment service that provides users with convenient cryptocurrency buying and selling services. Transak is one of the world's largest cryptocurrency payment services, providing support in more than 150 countries and 75 blockchains. Transak provides APIs, SDKs, widgets, etc. to make it easy for services to adopt Transak.
5.6 Magic (Source)
May 31, 2023
Strategic investment: US$52 million
Lead investor: PayPal Ventures
Investors: Cherubic, Synchrony, KX, Northzone, Volt Capital, etc.
Magic is a wallet-as-a-service company that provides cryptocurrency wallets for various services. It provides a wallet SDK that enables developers to easily introduce non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets, and users can easily access their wallets using magic links without passwords. This round of financing was led by PayPal Ventures, and it is worth noting that PayPal services can provide entry services on Magic.
6. Infrastructure
6.1 zkLink (Source)
May 4, 2023
Strategic investment: US$10 million
Investors: Coinbase Ventures, etc.
zkLink is a multi-chain transaction infrastructure protocol based on zk-SNARKs. Users' transactions are collected in batches and submitted to multiple L1 chains together with zkp. zkLink's unique oracle network ensures that the Merkle root submitted to each chain is the same, which helps to achieve cross-chain communication. Based on these communication protocols, zkLink will launch AMM, order book decentralized exchanges and NFT markets.
6.2 Webb (Source)
May 8, 2023
Seed round: $7 million
Lead investors: Polychain Capital, Lemniscap
Investors: Zee Prime, CMS Holdings, etc.
Webb is a protocol that provides cross-chain privacy services using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). Webb allows users to transfer assets or verify their identities in a cross-chain ecosystem by depositing assets on one network and verifying their identities through ZKP on another network. While most privacy protocols are limited to one network, Webb extends it to multiple networks.
6.3 Blocktorch (Source)
May 9, 2023
Seed round: $4.2 million
Lead investor: Ideo CoLab Ventures
Investors: Speedinvest, RockawayX, Alchemy Ventures, etc.
Blocktorch is a Berlin-based startup that provides developers with a dashboard that allows them to understand the operation of their dApps. Once a developer registers a smart contract, they can collect and analyze historical data of the smart contract, provide charts and react to specific events. Due to the security-critical nature of blockchain dApps, managing dApps after deployment is also very important, and Blocktorch is expected to be of great help in this regard.
6.4 Cookbook (source)
May 12, 2023
$2 million
Lead investor: Dialectic
Investors: MaC Venture Capital, Tagus Capital, etc.
Cookbook is a smart contract registry and platform that enables developers to easily develop dApps. It provides easy access to open source smart contract code for various protocols, explains how to use them, and allows you to ask questions through the chat GPT. In the future, they plan to create free educational materials.
6.5 Auradine (Source)
May 16, 2023
Series A: $81 million
Lead investors: Celesta Capital, Mayfield
Investors: Marathon Digital Holdings, Cota Capital, DCVC, Stanford University
Auradine develops hardware and software for blockchain, artificial intelligence, and privacy technologies in the digital world. Founded in 2022, the company is made up of top talents in fields such as security, SaaS, and semiconductors, and raised $81 million in this round of financing.
6.6 Cormint (Source)
May 17, 2023
Series A: $30 million
Lead investors: Jamie McAvity (Cormint President), Nav Sooch (SLAB Chairman)
Cormint, a bitcoin mining startup, has raised investment to build a mining data center in Texas.
6.7 Airstack (Source)
May 17, 2023
Pre-seed: $7 million
Lead investor: Superscrypt
Investors: Polygon, Hashed Emergent, NGC, Primal Capital, UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, etc.
Airstack is a platform that enables Web3 developers to query data from multiple networks. What is particularly interesting is that it has an AI assistant that can be queried through natural language. For example, "Give me Vitalik Buterin's apecoin balance" or "List ENS addresses with more than 10,000 MATIC."
6.8 Lagrange Labs (Source)
May 18, 2023
Pre-seed: $4 million
Lead investor: 1kx
Investors: Maven11, Lattice Fund, CMT Digital, Daedalus Angels
Lagrange is a cross-chain infrastructure that utilizes ZKP. DApps that adopt the Lagrange protocol can create ZKPs that can be verified on multiple networks, making them securely verifiable on other networks. It uses a similar concept to the zkLink we discussed above. Initially, it will work for EVM-compatible chains, with future plans to support non-EVM networks such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos.
6.9 PYOR (Source)
May 19, 2023
Seed round: $4 million
Lead investor: Castle Island Ventures
投资者：Hash3、Antler、Future Perfect Venture、Force Ventures、CoinSwitch Ventures、Coinbase Ventures、Balaji Srinivasan
PYOR is a data analytics platform for organizations. Users can access a variety of data and can easily customize their dashboards. It is currently in private beta and there is not much information publicly available.
6.10 Openfort (Source)
May 22, 2023
Seed round: $3 million
Lead investors: Gumi Cryptos Capital, Maven 11
Investors: Game7, NGC Ventures, Newman Capital
Openfort provides a backend for Web3 gaming platforms to easily introduce and manage accounts. Since Openfort applies account abstraction to wallet technology, game users who adopt it will be able to easily create blockchain wallets with excellent user experience. I think this will be a useful service for many Web3 games.
6.11 Sort (Source)
May 23, 2023
Seed round: $3 million
Lead investors: Lemniscap, The General Partnership
Sort is a developer platform that makes it easy to create blockchain dApps. With just the address of the smart contract, you can build the front end with HTML or Javascript and easily configure your application. It also supports SQL, so you can query data in real time.
6.12 Tanssi Network (Source)
May 23, 2023
Seed round: $3 million
Lead investor: Arrington Capital
Investors: Borderless Capital, HashKey Capital, D1 Ventures, Hypersphere, C² Ventures, Jsquare
Tanssi Network is a Substrate service based on the Polkadot ecosystem that enables developers to easily create application chains. Since it is based on Substrate, it can take advantage of Polkadot's cross-chain features, such as XCM. In Polkadot's parallel chain, there is an entity called "collator" responsible for collecting transactions. Tanssi provides a set of shared "collator" sets so that developers do not have to create new "collator" sets.
6.13 FastLane Labs (Source)
May 24, 2023
Seed round: $2.3 million
Lead investor: Multicoin Capital
FastLane Labs uses the auction system as a MEV solution for the EVM network, allowing validators to earn additional MEV income. The first product is applied to Polygon. It can be considered as a concept similar to the MEV-Boost of Flashbots for the Ethereum network. Since Polygon is one of the major networks, there are many MEV-intensive events such as arbitrage and liquidation, and it is very important to extract MEV income from it.
