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Financing Highlights | 1kx leads investment in Kiln, an Ethereum staking platform; CoinFund leads investment in Digital Infrastructure, a DePIN startup company.

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2024-01-22 12:09

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According to BlockBeats statistics, there were a total of 14 financing deals last week, which is a decrease compared to previous weeks. The total amount raised was approximately 217.5 million US dollars, with an average financing amount of 15.5357 million US dollars. The majority of the financing deals were in the digital asset management/payment sector, followed by infrastructure. There was an increase in financing deals in the DeFi and Metaverse/GameFi sectors, while the Web3.0+AI sector saw fewer deals. There were no financing deals in the social/creator economy, NFT/digital fashion, and other sectors. 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 7.3 million US dollars, accounting for 3.36% of the total financing amount last week.

Talofa Games

On January 19th, according to VentureBeat, Talofa Games completed a $6.3 million seed round of financing, led by Chamaeleon, with participation from A16Z Games Speedrun, Basis Set Ventures, Insight Partners, 1Up Ventures, and a series of strategic investors. The funds will be used to develop fitness games that promote physical health.

Talofa Games has recently launched Run Legends 1.0, a cooperative competitive social fitness game. Players can walk or run with friends and engage in real-time cooperative battles, creating an immersive and healthy gaming experience. These battles last from five to fifteen minutes, and players can participate without constantly staring at their phones. To increase engagement, players can release special combat skills based on their own movement speed and earn rewards through in-game equipment. The game's testing period took place in mid-2023, and the testing community grew from 10,000 to 370,000 players before the release of version 1.0. At its peak, the number of concurrent exercises reached 55,000 people.

It is reported that this company, headquartered in San Francisco, focuses on the concept of "healthy gaming" and is the brainchild of Jenny Xu, a competitive fitness enthusiast who has completed two marathons. Seed funding will play a key role in promoting the continued development of Run Legends and Talofa's future "gaming for charity" plan. The game is currently available for free on iOS and Android platforms.

Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:

On January 16th, Farcaster ecological project Wield announced the completion of over $1 million in Pre-Seed round financing, with Lemniscap leading the investment and Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero, Colin Armstrong, Rueben Brama, Perry Randall, and Henry Shi participating in the investment.

原文链接 translates to "Original Link" in English.

DeFi

In the DeFi field, a total of 2 financings were completed with a total amount exceeding 20 million US dollars, accounting for 9.2% of the total financing amount last week.

Kiln

On January 18th, according to Coindesk, Ethereum staking platform Kiln completed a $17 million financing round. The round was led by 1kx, with participation from IOSG, Crypto.com, Wintermute Ventures, KXVC, and LBank.

As an enterprise-level Ethereum staking platform, Kiln enables institutional clients to stake assets and provide white-label solutions for their own clients. Although it supports multiple proof-of-stake blockchains, most of Kiln's staked assets are on Ethereum, valued at over $3.1 billion according to its Dune Analytics dashboard. The new funding will help Kiln launch new pools, which achieve organic growth in a different way. In addition, as Ethereum staking becomes more centralized over time due to dilution, Kiln pools offer diverse and powerful staking pool options that reduce centralization risks and encourage users to diversify their staked assets across different pools operated by different node operators, promoting network decentralization.

The new round of financing is an extension of Kiln's $17.6 million Series A financing announced in November 2022. It is reported that Kiln has raised a total of $35 million from investors since its launch, including Illuminate Financial, Kraken Ventures, Avon Ventures, Consensys, and GSR. Kiln stated that the funds raised will be used to support the company's global expansion, including the opening of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in the first quarter and further product development.

Renzo

On January 15th, according to The Block, Renzo, a liquidity re-staking protocol in the Eigenlayer ecosystem, announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing. The round was led by Maven11, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Figment Capital, IOSG, and others.

According to reports, Renzo is currently running on the mainnet of EigenLayer. As a native restaking product, its advantage lies in the ability to fully stake without being constrained by the EigenLayer LST deposit limit. The core of Renzo is ezETH, which is a liquid restaking token (LRT). Users can mint this token by depositing Ethereum or LST into Renzo. ezETH can be further used in other DeFi protocols to gain compound returns. Renzo abstracts all the complexity for end users, allowing them to participate in EigenLayer's restaking ecosystem with low barriers to entry.

During the mainnet testing phase, Renzo had over 2,000 users with a deposit amount of $20 million. On January 4th, Renzo announced the launch of the Renzo ezPoints program, aimed at rewarding users who contribute to the protocol. Users can earn points by minting ezETH. Founder Kozinski stated that with the new funds, Renzo plans to conduct additional audits of its protocol, increase bug bounty rewards on the Immunefi platform, integrate with more DeFi protocols, and expand the team to around 10 people through cross-functional hiring.

Infrastructure

There were a total of 5 financing deals in the infrastructure sector, with a total amount of over 23.9 million US dollars, accounting for 10.99% of the total financing amount last week.

Root Protocol

On January 19th, according to CoinDesk, Web3 digital identity service provider Root Protocol completed two rounds of seed funding totaling $10 million. Animoca Brands led the investment, with participation from DFG, Signum Capital, Ankr Network, CMS Holdings, and angel investors Tekin Salimi and Meltem Demirors. Root Protocol's valuation reached $100 million.

It is reported that Root Protocol is building a Web3 operating system that will serve as a digital identity aggregator. With components such as Root Wallet, Root Account, Root Omni Protocols, Root Chain, and Root SDK, it aims to become a "one-stop service for all decentralized identity-related transactions" by unifying digital identities, social networks, and various decentralized protocols, making access to different Web3 platforms more seamless. This latest development includes account abstraction, all of which are related to a person's decentralized identifier (DID). Root Protocol leverages the huge appeal of its existing B2C product, which has grown to 250,000 users verified by DID in three months.

The founding team and advisors of Root Protocol come from Consensys, Bankless Ventures, Ontology, Polygon, CoinShares, Morgan Stanley, DCG, Stanford University, and MIT. They are a group of long-term crypto and Web3 builders and enthusiasts. Key advisors include Meltem Demirors, Evin McMullen, Ben Lakoff, and Tekin Salimi. The team's vision is that as the internet, its architecture, and applications shift from Web2 to Web3, DID will be as important as the blockchain itself.

Digital Infrastructure

On January 16th, Digital Infrastructure, the startup company behind the construction of the DIMO network, completed a $11.5 million Series A financing round. The round was led by CoinFund, with participation from Slow Ventures, ConsenSys Mesh, Borderless Capital, Bill Ackman's Table Management, and former CEO of General Motors, G. Rick Wagoner Jr.

Digital Infrastructure is building the DIMO Network and DIMO Mobile. DIMO is an automotive IoT platform built on Polygon that allows drivers to collect and share their vehicle data, including mileage, speed, location tracking, tire pressure, battery/engine health, and more. By analyzing vehicle data, the DIMO platform can predict when maintenance is needed and alert users in a timely manner. This not only allows drivers to gain a deeper understanding of their vehicles, but also contribute data to the DIMO ecosystem and earn DIMO tokens as rewards through Drive-to-Earn. DIMO Mobile is an application that allows drivers to collect and view their own vehicle data and collect rewards through DIMO tokens.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the circulating supply of DIMO exceeds 198 million, with a fully diluted market value of $481.1 million. Digital Infrastructure stated that the DIMO network grew by 900% in 2023, with the number of cars increasing from 3,000 to an undisclosed amount. Alex Felix, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of CoinFund, will join Digital Infrastructure's board of directors. A company spokesperson stated that the Series A funding brings Digital Infrastructure's total funding to $22 million.

Safary

On January 19th, Web3 analytics platform Safary announced the completion of a $2.4 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Lemniscap, with participation from Arca, SevenX, Big Brain Holdings, Saison Capital, Diaspora Ventures, and 20 Web3 angel investors (14 of whom are members of the Safary community).

Safary aims to be the Web3 alternative to Google Analytics, allowing users to track visitors, wallets, and other content in an intuitive, no-code dashboard. As a cookieless Web3 tracking platform, Safary allows marketers to centralize their growth data and measure the results of any Web3 marketing activity, from organic content to KOLs, tasks, ad networks, and more, providing valuable insights without compromising user privacy. Safary tracks wallets, displays Web3 conversions, and links to on-chain operations in an intuitive, no-code dashboard.

This funding will be used to expand the Safary team and accelerate the development of the Safary marketing analytics platform. Roderik van der Graaf, founder of Lemniscap, said: "As the era of third-party cookies comes to an end, the landscape of digital marketing and data privacy is at a crossroads. Safary provides a timely lifeline for marketers, offering a way to collect information without compromising user privacy."

Infrastructure remaining financing includes:

On the 18th of the month, Web3 advertising platform Linkko received a strategic investment led by Web3 Media (W3M) Ventures, with the specific amount of funding undisclosed. The new funds will be used to develop features, expand partnerships, and increase user base. It is reported that Linkko was established in 2023 and is headquartered in Singapore. Its goal is to provide "accurate" positioning for advertisers using on-chain analysis, and target users can watch ads and receive rewards. The rewards for each ad range from a few cents to a few dollars.