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Financing Highlights | Binance leads investment in liquidity staking protocol MilkyWay; BlackRock leads investment in tokenization platform Securitize
Summarized by AI
According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 28, an increase from the previous time, with a total amount of approximately US$1276.6 million and an average financing amount of US$45.5929 million. Among them, Web3.0+AI fields accounted for the majority, with relatively more in the infrastructure field and digital asset management/payment field, more in the NFT/digital fashion field and DeFi field, and less in the social/creator economy field, other fields, and the Metaverse/GameFi field. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:
Metaverse/GameFi
In the Metaverse/GameFi field, there were 3 financings with a total amount of US$10.6 million, accounting for 0.83% of the total financing last week.
Blade Games
On May 1, The Blocks reported that on-chain game studio and infrastructure provider Blade Games completed a $2.4 million seed round of financing, which was co-led by PTC Crypto and IOSG Ventures, and participated by Bonfire Union Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Mantle, ForesightX, Formless Capital, Public Works, Puzzle Ventures, K300 Ventures, etc.
Team members have served as game developers, defi builders, smart contract developers, economic research, crypto media, and zkp researchers. Founder 0xBrawler co-founded a crypto media company in Asia and served as a consultant to several crypto game studios in the region.
Games built with Blade Game’s self-developed zk game engine can run game logic in zkVM and push state differences to the chain as zkSNARK proofs, which are then verified on L2. The zk game engine can currently process up to 12-15 frames per second, and will soon update batch proof capabilities. The engine currently supports all game studios developing survival, tower defense, RPG, and roguelike card building games.
Shadow War
On May 2, Patriots Division, a game developer based in Malmö, Sweden, announced that its first Web3 sci-fi action game Shadow War has completed a total of $5 million in seed and A rounds of financing. The A round of financing was led by Momentum 6, and followed by iAngels, Cointelligence Fund, Xborg, Andromeda VC, Cogitent Ventures and Cluster Capital.
Shadow War plans to use the funds to enhance its products, improve user experience and continue to expand its core technology. With the goal of enhancing game functions, Shadow War is committed to continuously growing the community and improving its products through multiple rounds of game testing. The first phase of testing has exceeded 10,000 registered users.
Shadow War is a third-person 5v5 action-competitive game set in a futuristic sci-fi world. It incorporates inspiration from popular games such as Overwatch and LOL, emphasizes melee combat and skill competition, and avoids the "pay-to-win" mechanism. The game adopts a free-to-play model and provides players with a fair opportunity to earn advanced resources. The development team hopes to subvert the image of early blockchain games that "only value money and ignore the game experience".
Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:
On April 29, Web3 game startup GFAL completed a $3.2 million seed round of financing, with investors including Supercell and MitchLasky. GFAL launched the GFAL token in the first quarter of 2023 and raised $4.4 million in funds. The GFAL team is led by Manel Sort, and team members have held positions at companies such as King Entertainment, Activision Blizzard, ElectronicArts, Netflix, and Digital Chocolate.
NFT/Digital Fashion
In the field of NFT/digital fashion, there were 2 financings with a total amount of over 5 million US dollars, accounting for 0.42% of the total financing last week.
Holograph
On April 30, Holograph, a full-chain NFT protocol in the LayerZero ecosystem, announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing of 2.8 million US dollars, led by Mechanism Capital and Selini Capital, and participated by Northrock Capital, Arca, Courtside Ventures and Hartmann Capital from Hal Press. As of now, the total financing of the project has reached 11 million US dollars.
Holograph is a full-chain tokenization protocol that enables asset issuers to mint composable full-chain tokens. Holograph's full-chain technology allows the creation of NFT assets used on multiple Ethereum-compatible blockchains, and the new funds are intended to accelerate its expansion into the growing blockchain game market, focusing on support for Ethereum-compatible network tokens, including Optimism, Arbitrum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Base, Mantle, Zora, and Linea.
Holograph allows game developers to tokenize assets on multiple chains. The protocol ensures that token addresses remain consistent across all chains, simplifying asset management for developers and providing a smooth experience for players. Not only that, the project also simplifies the deployment process, enabling developers to quickly deploy on new chains. This unlocks asset interoperability between games and NFT markets, promotes liquidity and encourages users to interact between different gaming platforms.
STYLE Protocol
On April 30, the game NFT integration protocol STYLE Protocol announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with Morningstar Ventures, Dutch Crypto Investors, GBV Capital, Protocol Labs, Alpha Ventures and others participating.
In addition to the seed round of financing, STYLE Protocol also plans to launch the first DEX offering (IDO) in 2024, and $STYLE tokens will be available on major launch platforms such as Seedify, Pools and ChainGPT. Token holders will have the opportunity to participate in governance and receive annual rewards, further incentivizing participation within the ecosystem
STYLE Protocol is on a mission to solve the long-standing interoperability dilemma in the gaming space. By enabling players to use their purchased NFTs in multiple gaming environments (from skins to weapons and more), STYLE Protocol is democratizing virtual assets while enriching the gaming experience for enthusiasts around the world. One of the most groundbreaking aspects of the project is its ability to transform online identities and avatars into playable characters in a variety of games within the STYLE ecosystem. This innovative approach guarantees scalability and accessibility, opening the door for players to deeply engage in virtual experiences.
DeFi
A total of 7 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount of US$67 million, accounted for 5.25% of the total financing last week.
MilkyWay
On April 30, according to The Block, Celestia's ecological liquidity pledge agreement MilkyWay completed a $5 million financing, led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, and co-invested by Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital and LongHash Ventures. It is reported that the structure of this round of financing is a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) and token warrants for joint lead investors, and a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) for participating investors.
MilkyWay provides Celestia with a liquidity pledge solution ecosystem, which will initially be deployed and run on Osmosis. In the future, it may migrate to Celestia's rollkit and issue native milkTIA. When users stake their TIA coins to MilkyWay, they receive an on-chain certificate of their TIA stake, called milkTIA. MilkTIA represents the staked TIA assets, preserving their liquidity. Users can trade or use these assets as collateral in various decentralized finance (DeFi) products. This arrangement bypasses the 21-day redemption period common in the Cosmos ecosystem.
MilkyWay is about to work with Initia to enhance modular security, where milkTIA will be used to protect L1 and rollups built on top of it. The team also plans to launch rollups in partnership with Initia, integrate with Celestia to facilitate cross-Celestia aggregated access to MilkyWay's data, and will launch the governance and utility token MILK later this year.
Securitize
On May 1, according to official news, the tokenization platform Securitize completed a strategic financing of US$47 million. This round of financing was led by BlackRock, and Aptos Labs, Hamilton Lane, ParaFi Capital, Tradeweb Markets, Circle and Paxos participated in the investment.
Securitize is a digital asset securities company whose mission is to provide shareholders with opportunities to invest and trade alternative investments, and to raise funds for companies, manage shareholders and provide potential liquidity for shareholders. They have pioneered a fully digital, integrated platform for issuing, managing and trading digital asset securities, which is consistent with the existing regulatory framework in the United States. Their community consists of more than 1.2 million investors and 3,000 related companies.
The funds from this round of financing will be used to accelerate product development and further strengthen its partnerships in the financial services ecosystem. As part of the investment, Joseph Chalom, BlackRock's global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships, has been appointed to the Securitize board of directors.
The rest of DeFi's financing includes:
On April 29, the cryptocurrency trading ecosystem LazyBear announced the completion of a $4 million strategic round of financing, with participation from Gogeko Labs, DWF Labs, Shadow Labs, Salad Labs, Bees Network, REI Network, etc. LazyBear is a low-fee cryptocurrency trading ecosystem for retail traders.
On April 30, Chakra, a Bitcoin re-pledge protocol based on zero-knowledge technology, announced the completion of a new round of financing. StarkWare, Bixin Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, Trustless Labs and others participated in the investment. The specific amount and valuation information have not been disclosed. Chakra allows users to retain asset ownership while pledging Bitcoin, allowing users to participate in the consensus and governance of PoS blockchains (including Bitcoin L2), and promote the creation of derivatives that interact with DeFi applications.
On May 2, multi-chain liquidity re-pledge protocol Bedrock announced the completion of a round of financing, which aims to accelerate the development of its liquidity re-pledge solution and drive its further growth. This round of investment was led by OKX Ventures, LongHash Ventures and Comma3 Ventures, and participated by Waterdrip Capital, Lbank Labs, Amber Group, ArcheFund, Whale Ground and angel investors including Babylon co-founder Fisher Yu. Bedrock will soon release the first liquid pledged Bitcoin (uniBTC) based on the Babylon protocol to provide Bitcoin staking services to users.
On May 3, the cross-chain DeFi protocol EYWA completed a $7 million seed round of financing, led by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, GBV Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Marshland Capital, and Mulana Capital. It is reported that EYWA and Curve are jointly developing a trustless bridge to solve the problem of inter-chain liquidity fragmentation by combining the Curve pool and the actual cross-chain bridge.
On May 5, Amphor, a DeFi protocol incubated by hedge fund MEV Capital, announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, with more than 80 angel investors in the crypto industry participating. The project aims to use algorithms and on-chain technology solutions to simplify the investment of ordinary investors in the DeFi field. Its specific valuation data has not been disclosed. The new funds will be used to expand the team, build its technology stack, and expand other blockchain networks.
Social/Creator Economy
A total of 4 financings in the social/creator economy field, with a total amount of more than 16 million US dollars, accounting for 1.3% of the total financing last week.
Metale Protocol
On May 2, according to official news, Web3 content distribution platform Metale Protocol recently announced the completion of a $2 million seed round of extension financing. As of now, its total seed round financing amount has reached 4 million US dollars. This round of financing was completed in the first quarter of this year, led by Aipollo Capital, Waterdrip Capital, and Ultiverse Dao, and participated by many senior entrepreneurs.
Metale Protocol is building a decentralized content distribution platform. It aims to build a decentralized content storage and rights confirmation protocol through blockchain, and build an application ecosystem on the network to provide decentralized paid broadcast, crowdfunding governance, traffic purchase, data analysis, AI creation tools and other services for the content industry.
The project can also provide highly customized smart contracts for single content. Creators in the content industry are no longer restricted by the content review and high fees of centralized distribution platforms, and have complete autonomy and the greatest benefits. At present, Metale Protocol has 80,000 daily active users and 500,000 registered users. It is reported that Read2N, an application under Metale Protocol, completed a $2 million seed round of financing in March last year.
Paragraph
On May 3, according to The Block, Web3 content publishing platform Paragraph, in addition to acquiring Ethereum-based blogging platform Mirror, also raised $5 million in new financing, with Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures participating in this round of financing. Paragraph founder Colin Armstrong will serve as CEO, and Mirror founder Denis Nazarov will serve as an advisor.
Paragraph was founded by Colin Armstrong in 2021 to help Web3 creators, DAOs, and NFT communities monetize their content through an all-in-one communication service. Paragraph is leveraging novel on-chain mechanisms such as enabling creators to turn posts into collectibles, send newsletters to wallet addresses, monetize through recurring memberships, and leverage decentralized social protocols (such as Farcaster, Lens, XMTP) to build and cultivate their communities.
Social/Creator Economy Remaining financing includes:
On May 1, Web3 startup Matera announced the completion of $3.6 million in financing to build a platform that solves monetization challenges in the creator economy. This round of financing includes Sidedoor Ventures, HighCass Crypto, Medusa Ventures, The Sandbox, and Saxon Partners.
On May 4, Farcaster Ecosystem SocialFi company Airstack completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Red Beard Ventures, with participation from SuperLayer, Polymorphic Capital, Superscrypt, Hashed Emergent, Delta Blockchain Fund, CSP DAO, NGC, Primal Capital, Kyber, Resolute Ventures and others. It is reported that Airstack provides products and development tools to empower creators and developers and help them profit.
Infrastructure
A total of 5 financings in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of US$29 million, accounting for 2.27% of the total financing last week.
Mitosis
On May 2, L1 blockchain Mitosis announced the completion of US$7 million in financing. This round of financing was led by Amber Group and Foresight Ventures, and participated by Big Brain Holdings, Folius Ventures, Citizen X, GSR, etc.
Mitosis is a liquidity protocol born to solve the scalability problem of cross-chain liquidity in the modular era. Mitosis's cross-chain liquidity is built on permissionless interoperability, which is the core concept of its strategic partner Hyperlane. Anyone can quickly deploy Mitosis smart contracts and connect to other modular chains through the fast governance process on Mitosis. By releasing liquidity from the subordinate structure of the AMB solution, Mitosis ensures sovereignty and brings cross-chain interoperability to the same level as the ongoing modular transition.
Mitosis enables cross-chain LPing with liquidity. Mitosis LP receives derivative tokens that can be exchanged 1:1 with their locked assets. LPs can use these derivative tokens to participate in various DeFi applications on supported Ethereum L1 chains and L2 Rollups, essentially enabling LPs to earn additional returns on their cross-chain assets on top of the default fee sharing.
Balcony
On May 3, according to Finsmes, Balcony, a blockchain infrastructure company in New Jersey, USA, announced the completion of a Pre-Seed round of financing, with Avalanche Blizzard Fund participating. The specific amount and valuation information have not been disclosed. The new financing will be used to expand operations and development work.
Balcony Technology Group is a technology company dedicated to modernizing real estate by partnering with governments and leveraging blockchain technology to enable secure, transparent transactions. Its solutions streamline processes, keep government records secure, increase transparency, and move the industry into the digital age.
Balcony strategically created a purpose-built real-world asset (RWA) blockchain platform that is designed to meet the needs of governments and institutions, providing them with a secure and efficient on-chain transaction and asset settlement platform. As a federal network, Balcony's subnets combine the transparency of public blockchains with the security of private networks, ensuring the highest level of security and data fidelity.
Agora
On May 1, the crypto voting service platform Agora announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Seed Club Ventures and Consensys Ventures.
Agora hopes to create a new governance software standard for protocols to help protocols organize their voting systems more efficiently. Uniswap, Optimism and Nouns are its early customers. Agora is ready to use out of the box and supports all the tools that users' communities and investors like, including Coingecko, Coinmarketcap, Anchorage, Coinbase Custody, etc.
The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:
On April 30, TNA Protocol announced the completion of its first round of financing, with MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures and CSP DAO participating in the investment. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. It is reported that TNA is a domain name protocol for Bitcoin, which aims to improve its usability and expand the range of its assets and primitives.
On May 5, the dynamic modular service platform Crestal announced the completion of a $2 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures and NxGen. The new funds will be used to accelerate the construction of modular services. It is reported that Crestal is a dynamic modular service platform where developers can discover, deploy and upgrade modular services by binding decentralized providers to verifiable proof of performance (PoP TM). Anyone can work with service providers and be rewarded for maintaining high-quality modular infrastructure that supports Web3 builders on all chains.
Digital Asset Management/Payment
A total of 5 financings in the field of digital asset management/payment, with a total amount of more than US$43 million, accounting for 3.38% of the total financing last week.
Backed
On April 30, Backed, a tokenized asset issuer headquartered in Switzerland, announced the completion of a US$9.5 million financing round, led by Gnosis, with participation from Exor Seeds, Cyber Fund, Mindset Ventures, Stake Capital Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, Blue Bay Capital and Nonce Classic.
This round of financing will help Backed accelerate its private token issuance services and introduce more asset management companies to the blockchain. As a compliant institution under regulation, Backed has issued more than $50 million worth of tokenized physical assets, including ETF tokenized products and individual stock tokens such as Coinbase (COIN) and Tesla (TSLA).
Harris and Trotter Digital Assets
On April 30, Harris and Trotter Digital Assets, a London-based cryptocurrency accounting firm serving the world, announced the completion of a $10 million strategic financing to solve the accounting problems faced by all Web3 projects. This round of financing was led by Orbs, and Kingsway Capital, RE7 Capital and other well-known individuals in the Web3 community also participated. The financing was carried out in an equity pricing manner, valuing Harris and Trotter Digital Assets at $85 million.
Harris and Trotter Digital Assets' executive team has worked for large accounting firms such as PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and BDO, with a total team of more than 45 people. CEO Nicholas Newman said that digital assets are a rapidly developing technology field and its needs can only be met by professional service companies with equally strong technical capabilities. This strategic investment aligns the company with the industry's largest promoters and leaders, helping to further enhance its technical capabilities as it releases its growing SAAS products and services.
This round of investment will further promote the rapid growth of Harris and Trotter Digital Assets, and continue to expand on the basis of about 500 existing crypto-native customers. Ran Hammer, vice president of business development at Orbs, said that Harris and Trotter Digital Assets combines expertise with blockchain technology, and now the team hopes to operate at the forefront of fintech, providing tools such as proof of reserves.
Digital Asset Management/Payment The rest of the financing includes:
On April 30, X10, a hybrid cryptocurrency exchange based in the United Kingdom, announced the completion of a $6.5 million financing round. Investors include Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Starkware and Cyber Fund, as well as well-known angel investors such as executives from Revolut and Lido founder Konstantin Lomashuk. X10 operates in a hybrid centralized limit order book (CLOB) model. Order processing, matching, position risk assessment and transaction sorting are completed off-chain to ensure high performance.
On May 2, XYZ, a crypto fund founded by Matthew Homer, a former senior director of cryptocurrency affairs at the New York Department of Financial Services, completed a $5.1 million financing, with participation from Compound founder Robert Leshner, Multicoin managing partner Kyle Samani and Gemini co-founder Winklevoss brothers. In an interview with Fortune magazine, Homer said that XYZ does not aim to dominate financing rounds, but rather serves as an important advisory resource on the financing table for startups.
On May 2, the RWA market Ironlight announced the completion of a $12 million financing, and the specific investor information has not been disclosed. It is reported that Ironlight was founded by Rob McGrath and Matt Celebuski, aiming to tokenize private securities that are usually illiquid, such as real estate, natural resources, fine arts, public infrastructure and private equity. Its goal is to become a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market regulated by the US SEC, and the registration process will be initiated later. (CoinDesk)
Web3+AI
A total of 1 financing was raised in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of US$1.1 billion, accounting for 86.17% of the total financing last week. Including:
On May 2, CoreWeave, a cloud service provider focusing on artificial intelligence, announced the completion of a US$1.1 billion Series C financing round, led by Coatue, with participation from Magnetar (the main investor in the previous round), Altimeter Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company and Lykos Global Management.
The new financing will be used to support the rapid growth of CoreWeave's business areas and expansion into new regions to meet the continued explosive global demand for GPU-accelerated cloud infrastructure. CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Mike Intrator said that CoreWeave's position as a key infrastructure provider for artificial intelligence development continues to be consolidated, and the continued trust of high-level investors validates its huge opportunity in defining the next generation of cloud computing.
Other financing
There was 1 other financing with a total amount of US$5 million, accounting for 0.39% of the total financing last week. Including:
On May 1, Web3 wine market Baxus completed US$5 million in financing, led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Solana Ventures, Narwhal Ventures, FJ Labs and a group of angel investors. BAXUS aims to solve market inefficiencies by connecting buyers and sellers by integrating the market into one application. Its Web3 market is built on Solana, allowing buyers to trade using credit cards, ACH, direct wire transfers or cryptocurrencies including USDC. The beta version was launched last summer and has facilitated US$8 million in transactions so far.
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