According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 21 financing deals last week, which is an increase compared to previous weeks. The total amount raised was approximately 728.55 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 34.69 million US dollars. The Web3.0+AI sector dominated, while the NFT/digital fashion and infrastructure sectors had relatively more deals. Financing in the digital asset management/payment sector and other sectors increased, while the metaverse/GameFi, social/creator economy, and DeFi sectors had fewer deals. The following chart shows the financing distribution across different sectors last week:

Metaverse/GameFi

There were a total of 2 financings in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of 10 million US dollars, accounting for 1.37% of the total financing amount last week.

Farcana

On December 15th, according to Decrypt, Farcana, a blockchain gaming studio based in the United Arab Emirates, completed a $10 million seed round of financing. The round was participated by Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Rarestone Capital, MMPro Trust, Unpopular Ventures, and others.

The new funding will further develop its third-person multiplayer shooter game Farcana. Farcana has some similarities in game style to Blizzard's Overwatch, but with smaller maps, walls, and game modes reminiscent of Riot Games' Valorant. The story of Farcana takes place in a near-future world where humans have left Earth for Mars and discovered a substance called Axelar that grants superpowers. In the game's lore, Farcana is an ongoing tournament experiment where players with Axelar-induced abilities compete for glory.

According to a statement, Farcana aims to provide blockchain elements such as tournament functionality, rewarding the top 10% of players with Bitcoin. The game is planned to run in free mode and offer optional battle passes, NFTs, and crafting features. Items in the game will exist in the form of NFTs, and Farcana will use the FAR token for all transactions.

MATR1X

On December 12th, Web3 entertainment platform MATR1X announced the completion of a new round of financing (A2+ round), with the specific amount undisclosed. The only investor in this round of financing is OKX Ventures.

MATR1X is a Web3 entertainment platform that combines gaming, esports events, IP, and NFT. The MATR1X team has previously operated a similar mobile FPS game, so they have rich experience in this area and have a considerable TAM, with daily active users ranging from 500,000 to 5 million, making it a top-tier dApp in the Web3 field. The production value and player feedback displayed in the beta version reflect that this game has strong production quality.

Using the recursive loop and wealth effect demonstrated by Axie and StepN, a low-cash-cost viral approach to attracting users has reached its limit. MATR1X, on the other hand, achieves sustainable development through a validated economic model: the separation of investment return rate/consumer assets, a stable priority position set in the CS:GO skin market, and strong cash flow that may consolidate its low position. MATR1X's first game, MATR1X FIRE, is also the first shooting mobile game in the metaverse, with over 200,000 shooting game users, and its platform-level NFT, MATR1X KUKU, is currently being released.

NFT/Digital Fashion

In the NFT/digital fashion field, a total of 3 financings were completed with a total amount of over 148 million US dollars, accounting for 20.31% of the total financing amount last week.

LINE NEXT

On December 13th, LINE NEXT, the NFT subsidiary of Japanese social media giant LINE, completed a $140 million financing round with Crescendo Equity Partners, a private equity firm supported by Peter Thiel, leading the investment. The funds from this round will be used to expand their global business and develop new services.

LINE NEXT plans to officially launch its global NFT platform DOSI in January 2024, which will be integrated with the Japanese NFT market LINE NFT and launched to global users as a mobile application. LINE NEXT will also provide new solutions to help services and brands directly assign ownership and conduct transactions of existing digital products. In addition, LINE NEXT plans to launch new services on the Finschia chain to accelerate the adoption of Web3. These new services include a social application that allows users to communicate based on the characters they create, as well as a new Web3 game that anyone can play using the BROWN & FRIENDS characters.

LINE NEXT is popularizing Web3 through a series of global services based on DOSI. Currently, it has 5.5 million users worldwide and a cumulative transaction volume of over 470,000. Since the launch of its testing service one year ago, it has continued to grow rapidly. In addition, LINE NEXT and Crescendo will participate as governance members in the Finschia Foundation.

Metagood

On December 14th, according to CoinDesk, NFT startup company Metagood completed a $5 million seed round of financing. The round was led by Sora Ventures, with participation from ACTAI Ventures, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Bitcoin Magazine Fund, London Real Ventures, and Peach.xyz. The new funds will support the development and marketing of its Osura technology and products, as well as collaborations with artists.

Metagood has always been a pioneer in the NFT field and continues to lead the industry with its team's understanding of Ordinals and the Bitcoin ecosystem. As the company behind one of the most successful NFT series on BTC and ETH, On-Chain Monkey, Metagood is currently dedicated to launching the high-end digital artifact market, Osura. Metagood defines the standard of the cryptocurrency industry by integrating technology, art, and community. The company has a dynamic founding team with extensive experience in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Metagood will use the raised funds to continue building the community and tools for OnChainMonkey. OnChainMonkey, launched in September 2021, is known as "the first fully on-chain generated 10K PFP project". Simply put, OnChainMonkey's image is rendered through code within a smart contract, so they deployed all content to the chain with just one transaction costing 0.798 ETH. The new funds will also help fund Osura's new technology and product development. Osura is building infrastructure for launching and trading assets developed on the Ordinals protocol.

nftperp

On December 14th, according to Chainwire, NFT perpetual contract trading platform nftperp announced the completion of a $3 million Series A financing round. The round was led by 1kx, with participation from Maven 11 and Mechanism Capital, among other investors. Angel investors include Spencer from Spencer Ventures and Gmoney, David Choi from MetaStreet, Nick Emmons from Upshot, and Jonathan Gabler from NFTfi.

Nftperp is a perpetual NFT futures trading platform that tracks the floor price of NFT collections. Built on Arbitrum, users can trade perpetual contracts on blue-chip NFT projects such as BAYC and CryptoPunk with up to 10x leverage using ETH as collateral. Referencing the DropsDAO NFT oracle model, nftperp integrates Chainlink oracle data through the NFT price evaluation protocol Upshot to calculate a tamper-proof "True Floor Price" that is fed to the platform. The data involved in the calculation of the "True Floor Price" is extracted from the APIs of Opensea, LooksRare, and X2Y2 through the oracle operated by nftperp. The calculated price is updated every time a qualified public transaction occurs to ensure that the price is up-to-date and to protect users from price manipulation.

Nftperp adopts the traditional Keeper bots liquidation mechanism, earning 1.25% of the nominal position size during liquidation, and the remaining part enters the protocol's insurance fund. The insurance fund is used to ensure the protocol's ability to pay off bad debts, and the funds in the pool are composed of liquidation and transaction fee income (0.15% transaction fee of the protocol). The size of the insurance fund will increase with the adoption of the protocol, and it will be able to allow for the settlement of more open positions in the future.

Related reading: "Can you short NFTs with leverage? Reviewing the NFT perpetual contract market with nftperp."

DeFi

There were a total of 1 financing in the DeFi field, with a total amount exceeding 1.25 million US dollars, accounting for 0.17% of the total financing amount last week.

Liquidium

On December 11th, Bitcoin Ordinals lending solution Liquidium completed a $1.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Side Door Ventures, Actai Ventures, Sora Ventures, Spicy Capital, UTXO Management, and others.

Liquidium is a P2P lending protocol specifically designed to operate on the Bitcoin blockchain, supporting users to lend and borrow native Bitcoin using native ordinal scripts as collateral. Unlike existing protocols that rely on bridging ordinals to other blockchains, Liquidium allows users to lend and borrow native Bitcoin using native ordinals as collateral in trust-minimized and non-custodial solutions, securely achieved through Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs) and Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs).

Liquidium does not use a loan-to-value (LTV) based liquidation mechanism. The loan status depends on whether the repayment is made within the set deadline. If the repayment is not made, the loan will default and the collateral will be transferred to the lender. As a lender, the maximum amount that a user can provide is related to the bottom price of the corresponding collection, which means that you cannot lend more than the ordinal inscription of the lowest value in the collection. The bottom price information comes from Magic Eden. Currently, Liquidium Points cannot be exchanged, and only Liquidium reserves the right to determine the potential exchange schedule, token issuance, and exchange rate.

Social/Creator Economy

Intract

Seam Social

Dynamic

Andalusia Labs

On December 13th, Japanese stablecoin technology provider GUGroup completed a financing round of 420 million yen (approximately 2.9 million USD), with Japanese investment firm B Dash Ventures participating. GUGroup also raised some funds by selling tokens to overseas investors.

GuGroup has a subsidiary called GUCoin Studio, which provides stablecoin issuance solutions. The company has launched stablecoin pilots with four banks, Minna no Bank, a digital bank in Fukuoka, and Tokyo Kiraboshi Financial Group. GUGroup is also the initiator of Japan Open Chain, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain. Currently, companies such as Sony subsidiary Corgear, NTT Docomo, and Dentsu have joined the blockchain as validator nodes.

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On December 13th, NodeKit team, which focuses on the Avalanche network, announced that it has completed a pre-seed round of financing of $1.2 million. The round was led by Borderless Capital, with participation from Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Polygon Ventures, and Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund. NodeKit is building SEQ - a shared sorter Layer 1 network designed to help Rollup chains launch and decentralize their transaction sorting. SEQ will operate as an independent blockchain or subnet within the Avalanche ecosystem.

SEQ's design will also support various data availability layers, such as Celestia. The testnet for SEQ is planned to launch in 2024, followed by the mainnet release. SEQ is one of the major projects developed using Avalanche's HyperSDK software toolkit. HyperSDK provides builders with customization while optimizing the customization of blockchain built on Avalanche.

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On December 14th, the decentralized physical infrastructure network project DePIN's Hivello completed a $1 million Pre-Seed round of financing. NGC, Blockchain Founders Fund, Side Door Ventures, IDG, and Bing Ventures were among the investors in this round. It is reported that Hivello is committed to changing the popularity of decentralized services worldwide and is expected to integrate up to 100 DePINs within the next 12 months.

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Digital Asset Management/Payment

There were a total of 3 financing rounds in the field of digital asset management/payment, with a total amount exceeding 52 million US dollars, accounting for 7.14% of the total financing amount last week.

GFO-X

On December 11th, according to businesswire, GFO-X, a UK-based digital asset derivatives trading platform, announced the completion of a $30 million Series B financing round. The round was led by M&G Investments, who will also join the GFO-X board of directors. Specific financing information has not yet been disclosed. This strategic investment will provide funding for GFO-X's upcoming products and support future innovation in the regulated digital asset field, thereby enhancing market trust and credibility.

Rulematch

On December 14th, according to Bloomberg, David Riegelnig, former private banking executive at Credit Suisse AG, launched Rulematch, a cryptocurrency trading platform for institutional clients that supports Bitcoin and Ethereum trading. The platform has been made available to clients in most EU countries, the UK, and Singapore.

It is reported that Rulematch has completed a $14 million financing round, with participation from ConsenSys Mesh, Flow Traders, and FiveT Fintech. The company is currently undergoing a new round of financing.

数字资产管理/支付其余融资包括：

Translation:

Digital asset management/payment and other financing including:

On December 14th, Bitcoin rebate platform Lolli completed an $8 million Series B financing round. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from Sfermion, Ulta Beauty's Prisma Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, ZebPay CEO Rahul Pagidipati, 2 Punks Capital, MZ Web3 Fund, Seven Seven Six, Founders Fund's Pathfinder Ventures, and MrBeast's Night Media.

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Web3+AI

There were a total of 1 financing in the Web3+AI industry, with a total amount of over 415 million US dollars, accounting for 56.96% of the total financing amount last week. This includes:

On December 11th, French AI startup Mistral AI announced the completion of a €385 million ($415 million) financing round, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures. The company is currently valued at approximately $2 billion. The funds will be used to develop its technology and open-source software.

Mistral AI focuses on open-source technology for generative AI tools, chatbot development, and customizable features. The goal is to offer its products to the public in early 2024.

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Original article link.

Other Financing

Other financing totaled 1 transaction, with a total amount of 25 million US dollars, accounting for 3.43% of last week's total financing. Including:

On December 13th, Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) announced that it has completed the first round of preferred stock financing, raising a total of $25 million. On November 27th, 2023, Canaan Inc. signed a securities purchase agreement with an institutional investor. According to the agreement, Canaan Inc. will issue and sell up to 125,000 shares of Series A convertible preferred stock to the investor at a price of $1000 per share. In the first round of preferred stock financing, Canaan Inc. issued 25,000 shares of preferred stock at a price of $1000 per share and delivered 8,000,000 American Depositary Shares (ADS) representing 15 Class A ordinary shares of Canaan Inc. per ADS to Mellon Bank in New York at a price of $0.00000075 per ADS.

Jianan Yunzhi plans to use the net proceeds from the sale of these securities for research and development, expanding production scale, and other general corporate purposes.

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