Lưu trữ cho từ khóa: funding

Bitcoin

Crypto VC funding: Praxis takes home $525m, Blockstream follows suit with $210m

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Praxis and Blockstream grabbed headlines this week, each with six-figure fundraising rounds, per the latest data.

Crypto VC funding has seen a noticeable spike over the last seven days compared to last week, when Ithaca led the pack with a $20 million raise. However, this week, as Bitcoin (BTC) reclaimed the $68,000 level, crypto.news analyzed and collected data from data from Oct. 13 to Oct. 19.

Here are the firms that topped the list, according to Crypto Fundraising.

Praxis, $525 million

  • Praxis is the first network state, which is building an online community of people with similar national consciousness.
  • The firm leads the week’s crypto VC funding with $525 million raised.
  • The primary investors in the fundraising include Gem Digital, Arch, Manifold, etc.

Blockstream, $210 million

  • Blockstream is building a crypto-financial infrastructure based on Bitcoin.
  • The company has raised $210 million from lead investor Fulgur Ventures.
  • Blockstream’s crypto VC funding stands at $621 million in total.

Azra Games, $42.7 million

  • Azra Games is a gaming studio that focuses on creating immersive-role playing games.
  • In a Series A led by Pantera, the company raised $42.7 million.

Yellow Card Financial, $33 million

  • Yellow Card Financial is a pan-African crypto exchange.
  • The exchange raised $33 million in a Series C led by Blockchain Capital.
  • Yellow Card Financial has raised a total of $89.5 million so far.

Towns, $25.5 million

  • Towns is a web3 group chat protocol that allows communities to build blockchain-based gatherings.
  • The firm has raised $25.5 million in a Series A by a16z Crypto, Benchmark and Framework.

Bitnomial, $25 million

  • Bitnomial is a crypto exchange based in the U.S. that offers futures and options trading for cryptocurrencies.
  • The exchange raised $25 million from Ripple via a Series C funding round.
  • Bitnomial has raised $36.6 million so far.

ZkPass, $12.5 million

  • The identity verification solution has raised $12.5 million in a Series A round, with a round valuation of $100 million.
  • ZkPass has raised $15 million till date.

Opacity Network, $12 million

  • Opacity Network is a zero-knowledge proof protocol that aids in enabling verification without disclosing any details.
  • The firm has raised $12 million in a seed funding round.

Solv Protocol, $11 million

  • Solv Protocol provides investors with access to crypto investments via a trustless fund infrastructure.
  • The company raised $11 million in a strategic round with a round valuation of $200 million.

Mento Labs, $10 million

  • Mento Labs is a platform that creates and operates multi-currency stable assets.
  • The firm has raised $10 million on Oct. 16.

Crypto VC funding rounds < $10 million

  • Predicate: The decentralized network raised $7 million.
  • ZeroBase: The ZK proof generation platform raised $5 million from investors like Binance Labs, Lightspeed Action, etc.
  • Drop Protocol: Drop Protocol raised $4 million in a seed funding round.
  • Plasma: The zero-fee payment platform raised $3.5 million.
  • Pell Network: Pell Network raised $3 million in a pre-seed round.
  • Blockcast: The content delivery network raised $2.85 million in a seed funding round.
  • The Arena: The Arena raised $2 million in a pre-seed round.
  • Hyve DA: The data availability network raised $1.85 million in a pre-seed round.
  • Surge: Surge raised $1.8 million in a pre-seed round from investors like Gerstenbrot Capital, CoinGecko, etc.
  • Hermetica: The DeFi platform raised $1.7 million in a seed round.
  • Lombard: Lombard raised $1 million from Binance Labs.
  • World of Dypians, CCData, Bracket Labs and Marketnode raised undisclosed amounts this week.

Check out our last week’s column from here.

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Theo Crypto News

Bitcoin

Bitcoin-backed Hermetica secures $1.7m to expand stablecoin USDh

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Hermetica, the company behind the Bitcoin-backed stablecoin USDh, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. 

The funding will support the growth of USDh, a stablecoin designed to be backed by Bitcoin (BTC). A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that aims to keep its value tied to a stable asset, like the U.S. dollar, instead of fluctuating like Bitcoin.

USDh allows Bitcoin holders to transact with a digital asset pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar without leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem. For example, 1 USDh equals 1 USD worth of Bitcoin.

According to a company press release, UTXO Management led the funding round, which included several major investors such as CMS Holdings, Ethos Fund, and Trust Machines SPV. Strategic backers like Tycho Onnasch of Zest Protocol and Robin Obermaier of Liquidium also contributed.

What is USDh? 

USDh is issued on Bitcoin’s main blockchain, Layer 1, and on Layer 2 networks, allowing faster and cheaper transactions. The stablecoin is available for purchase on decentralized exchanges

Last month, Hermetica launched USDh on the Stacks Layer 2 network. The move offered users the potential to earn yields of up to 25%.

As the stablecoin market grows, USDh targets a share of the estimated $1 trillion in untapped Bitcoin value that could be unlocked in DeFi. Its goal is to enable Bitcoin market participants to securely hold dollars without exiting the Bitcoin ecosystem or converting to fiat.

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Theo Crypto News

Công nghệ

Azra Games raises over $42m to develop blockchain-integrated game

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Azra Games, a video game developer based in Sacramento, has secured $42 million in Series A funding, with investment from Pantera Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and NFX. 

The funds will be used to develop a mobile-first role-playing game that integrates blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens, according to a company press release. This will bring the company’s total funding to $68.3 million.

Mark Otero, Azra’s CEO, previously developed Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, one of Electronic Arts’ most successful games. Otero aims to create a new RPG that leverages blockchain technology.

Azra Games plans to utilize the funding to expand its team and advance its development projects. Additionally, it aims to grow Azra Labs, a research and development initiative.

An institutional nod to blockchain gaming

Pantera Capital, NFX, and a16z are key players in the blockchain and venture capital industries. Their involvement is a formal nod to strong investor confidence in the potential of blockchain gaming.

Their support of Azra Games suggests they see an opportunity for blockchain gaming to finally break through. These investors typically target projects with potential for mainstream adoption and long-term growth.

Combining gaming with blockchain has not been easy. Many developers have attempted to integrate these technologies, but the majority have failed. Despite the challenges, the potential remains, and investors like Pantera Capital and a16z continue to fund new projects in search of a winning formula.

Azra Games plans to develop its RPG first, focusing on creating a compelling and sustainable experience for players before adding blockchain-based features like NFTs. The game would then allow players to own and trade digital assets, according to Fortune. 

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Theo Crypto News

DeFi

Solv Protocol secures $11m strategic funding to drive BTC staking

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Binance Labs-backed Solv Protocol has completed an $11 million raise in a strategic funding round as it looks to bring Bitcoin staking to more investors.

The funding round, which attracted a host of venture capital firms including Nomura’s Laser Digital and Blockchain Capital, brings the total funding for the Bitcoin (BTC) staking platform to $25 million. Other participants included gumi Cryptos Capital, OKX Ventures, and CMT Digital.

Solv Protocol said in its announcement on Oct. 14 that the new fundraising was at a $200 million valuation.

Bitcoin’s growing DeFi market

Solv Protocol plans to use the capital injection to support further adoption of Bitcoin staking through the Staking Abstraction Layer. With SAL, Bitcoin holders can stake their coins on multiple protocols and chains to tap into various staking opportunities in the growing decentralized finance market.

Despite the rise in Bitcoin staking and the emergence of platforms such as Solv Protocol and Babylon, the Bitcoin staking market significantly lags that of Ethereum (ETH). The dominance of the Ethereum network in the staking ecosystem is driven by the massive traction of Lido and EigenLayer, among other platforms.

However, Solv Protocol is eyeing new momentum in bringing Bitcoin staking opportunities to holders of the top digital asset, which currently boasts a market cap of more than $1.3 trillion.

“Bitcoin’s staking rate is currently much lower than Ethereum’s 28%. If we can unlock similar levels of participation, Bitcoin staking could unlock $330 billion in value. We believe BTCFi will drive the next wave of innovation in the blockchain space.”

Ryan Chow, co-founder and chief executive officer of Solv Protocol

Currently, SolvBTC has attracted over 20,000 Bitcoin, worth more than $1.3 billion in total value locked. This value is staked on 10 blockchain networks, Solv Protocol said in the announcement.

In September, Solv Protocol expanded its Bitcoin staking service to Base, the Ethereum layer-2 chain launched by Coinbase. The platform offered Base users the chance to participate in Bitcoin DeFi via the wrapped token cbBTC, which Coinbase unveiled that month.

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Theo Crypto News

Altcoin

Crypto VC funding: SecondLive bags $12m, RD Technologies raises $7.8m

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SecondLive and RD Technologies are the top two startups with the largest volume of fundraising for the week, the latest data shows.

While the amount of disclosed venture rounds this week was comparatively less than what was announced in recent weeks, crypto venture capital activity for the year is on pace to dethrone 2023’s total of $2.6 billion, according to PitchBook.

Some $2.2 billion had been raised as of July 30. The amount, raised across 24 funds, is still far behind 2022’s total of $22.7 billion.

Crypto.news compiled the data from Sept. 29 to Oct. 5 from Crypto Fundraising. Here’s what we found.

SecondLive, $12 million

  • SecondLive is a metaverse platform that lets users create their own avatars.
  • The firm has raised a total of $15 million so far.
  • The latest $12 million raised was in a private round led by Crypto.com.

RD Technologies, $7.8 million

  • RD Technologies is a fintech firm that has a primary focus on payments and commerce.
  • The firm has raised $7.8 million in a Series A round led by HongShan, HIVEMIND and Aptos Labs.

LAYER, $6 million

  • LAYER is an Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution that allows developers to write blockchain applications in various languages.
  • The firm recently raised $6 million in a seed funding round, which was led by 1Kx.

Synnax Technologies, $1.55 million

  • Synnax is a platform that introduced AI credit intelligence for privacy-focused credit analysis.
  • The firm has raised a total of $2.55 million so far.
  • The latest fund raised was $1.55 million in a round led by WINTERMUTE and Ton Ventures.

Sophon, not disclosed yet

  • Sophon provides an architecture for seamless handling of applications like gaming and socialfi.
  • The firm has raised a total of $70 million so far.
  • The latest amount invested by Binance Labs hasn’t been disclosed yet.

Read last week’s column here.

Tổng hợp và chỉnh sửa: ThS Phạm Mạnh Cường
Theo Crypto News

Công nghệ

Crypto VC funding: The Open Network raises $30M, Drift Protocol brings in $25M

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The Open Network and Drift Protocol emerged as the top two firms with the highest funds raised in the last seven days.

Per a report by Galaxy, 2024 has been a good year for the fundraising industry, as there has been a steady uptick in the funds raised. As of July 1, founders are reporting an active fundraising environment.

Even though there was a drop in deal count from 603 in the first quarter to 577 in the second, capital invested paints a different picture with a rise to $3.2 billion in Q2 from Q1’s $2.5 billion.

Data shows a 28% increase in capital invested quarter over quarter. When it comes to geographical location, United States-headquartered companies accounted for more than 40% of all deals in Q2.

The United Kingdom followed suit with 10%, and Singapore enjoyed 8.7% of all deals.

As for the most recent crypto VC funding rounds, crypto.news compiled the latest announcements from Sept. 15 to Sept. 21 using data obtained from Crypto Fundraising. Let’s look at the companies that grabbed headlines with million dollar-plus rounds.

The Open Network, $30 million

  • TON is a layer-1 blockchain that was originally developed as the Telegram Open Network.
  • Now known as The Open Network (TON), it raised $30 million this week and over $54 million since its inception in 2018.
  • Bitget and Foresight Ventures contributed to the latest fundraising effort.

Drift Protocol, $25 million

  • Drift Protocol is a Solana-based DEX that offers spot trading, swaps and perpetual futures.
  • It closed a $25-million Series B funding round led by Multicoin Capital.
  • The firm has raised over $52.3 million so far.

Helius, $21.75 million

  • Helius is a provider of RPC Nodes, APIs, webhooks and developer tooling.
  • Lead investors of the $21.75 million include HAUN, Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, 6MV, Chapter One and Spearhead.
  • Helius has raised a total of $34.35 million so far.

Hemi Labs, $15 million

  • Hemi Labs is a layer 2 protocol focusing on security and interoperability across Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
  • The firm raised $15 million from investors including Binance Labs, Breyer Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Crypto.com, etc.

Pipe Network, $10 million

  • Pipe Network, is an incentivized internet infrastructure, clinched $10 million from Multicoin Capital.

Yellow Network, $10 million

  • Yellow is a blockchain product and infrastructure company.
  • Investors like Consensys, GSR, Global, Gate.io Labs, ZBS Capital and others contributed toward the startup’s $10 million fundraising round.

Additional funding rounds under $10 million

  • TrueX: The non-custodial, stablecoin-native exchange officially launched with $9 million in funds courtesy of RRE Ventures, Paxosm Accomplice, Hack VC, Solana Foundation and Aptos.
  • Fermah: CSX, Lemniscap, Bankless Ventures and LONGHASH Ventures are among the backers of a $5.2-million round
  • Vana: Coinbase Ventures, Manifold, GSR, DeFiance Capital and Auros participated in a $5-million fundraising effort.
  • Cudis: The startup collected $5 million from Draper Associates, Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital, Penrose, Block Patch, Trinito and other investors.

For last week’s column, click here.

Tổng hợp và chỉnh sửa: ThS Phạm Mạnh Cường
Theo Crypto News

Công nghệ

Huma secures $38m investment, eyes expansion to Solana and Stellar

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Huma Finance, a tokenized real-world assets platform, has raised $38 million in funding as it looks to scale its payment financing network.

According to an announcement on Sept. 11, Distributed Global led the platform’s equity round, with participation from Hashkey Capital, the Stellar Foundation, Folius Ventures, and Turkish private bank İşbank.

Huma plans to use the $10 million in equity financing and $28 million investment via yield-bearing RWAs to expand its PayFi network globally. In its blog post, Huma stated that it plans to go live on Solana (SOL) and Stellar (XLM)’s smart contracts network in coming months.

The platform will also launch the Huma Foundation later this year. Meanwhile, it is set to co-host its inaugural PayFi Summit at Singapore Token 20149 alongside the Solana Foundation and Stellar Development Foundation.

Huma Finance to hyper-scale its network

Huma Finance offers a payment financing platform that provides access to liquidity on the blockchain, allowing businesses and individuals to benefit from global money transfers, blockchain efficiency, and lower transaction costs.

Huma’s PayFi network aims to leverage the growing adoption of RWA, payments, and decentralized finance to bring the advantages of crypto and blockchain to the mainstream market. The company sees potential to carve out a portion of the $16 trillion credit card financing market for global merchants and the $10 trillion B2B market.

“PayFi is the creation of new financial markets around the time value of money. On-chain finance can enable new financial primitives, product experiences, and financial access that are impossible in traditional or even Web2 finance. When I met the Huma team, it was immediately apparent that they’d be a great anchor for the PayFi ecosystem within Solana.”

Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation.

The real world assets market is seeing significant developments and adoption, with trends including the expansion of tokenization beyond real estate into sectors such as intellectual property and non-fungible tokens. It’s a growth trajectory likely to put NFTs off the ‘dead’ path, Huma recently noted.

Untapped opportunities in the market have driven institutional interest, as blockchain solutions bring transparency, efficiency, and accuracy to data in the RWA space.

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Theo Crypto News

DeFi

Echelon raises $3.5m to advance DeFi lending on Move-based blockchains

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Decentralized lending protocol Echelon has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round led by Amber Group, with backing from several crypto venture capital firms.

The platform plans to use the funding to promote the decentralized finance ecosystem, according to details in a press release on Aug. 27.  

Echelon will utilize the seed funding to expand its product offerings, grow its team, and implement a treasury, cross-chain vaults, and real-world asset-backed strategies.

Eyeing DeFi across Move-based ecosystem

Echelon offers a money market platform for borrowing and lending of crypto assets through non-custodial pools. This enables its customers to earn interest as well as leverage their assets to increase their buying power.

 Users on the decentralized lending platform can achieve these further earning opportunities via staking and real-world assets.

Echelon wants to bring its products such across DeFi and RWA to Aptos (APT) and other proof-of-stake blockchains built with the Move programming language. The Rust-based language has increasingly become popular in the smart contracts space since its use in Meta’s Diem project.

Sui (SUI) is another project that uses the Move programming language.

Echelon will also target Movement, a network of modular Move-based blockchains on which developers can build interoperable dApps that bridge Move-based platforms and Ethereum (ETH) virtual machine ecosystems. Movement is Ethereum’s first Move-EVM layer-2 network.

Movement Labs raised $3.4 million in its pre-seed funding round, with funds going into a softwared development kit aimed at the web3 interoperabilty ecosystem.

Apart from Amber Group, Echelon’s seed round attracted participation from several strategic partners, including Laser Digital, Selini Capital, Interop Ventures, Saison Capital, and Re7.

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Theo Crypto News

Công nghệ

Crypto VC funding: Chaos Labs tops our roundup with $55m series A

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This week saw over $130 million raised across various crypto VC funding rounds.

Here’s a breakdown of the activity from Monday, Aug. 12 through Saturday, Aug. 17:

Chaos Labs, $55 million

On-chain risk management company Chaos Labs raised $55 million in a series A round.

Haun Ventures led the effort. Lightspeed Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, and Wintermute also participated.

According to the team behind Chaos Labs, the project has tripled its customer base over the past year, with over 20 protocols, including Aave (AAVE) and GMX (GMX), relying on its technology. 

To date, the platform has $860 billion in cumulative trading volume and $25 billion in loans. The team said it will use the new funding to improve real-time, contextualized risk management for DeFi protocols.

Sahara AI, $43 million

Sahara AI, a decentralized AI blockchain platform, grabbed headlines by securing $43 million in funding co-led by Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital.

An array of notable investors also contributed, including Samsung, Sequoia Capital, and Matrix Partners.

Since its founding in April 2023, Sahara AI has grown rapidly, partnering with over 35 tech giants including Microsoft and Amazon.

The company aims to disrupt the centralized AI landscape by creating a more “equitable” decentralized ecosystem. 

As such, the funding will further their mission to ensure fair compensation for contributors, protect data sovereignty, and promote inclusivity across all stages of AI development.

Sling Money, $15 million

Fintech startup Sling Money collected $15 million in a series A round, per a report from Axios.

Union Square Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and Slow Ventures led the initiative following a $5-million seed round.

The Sling Money platform uses stablecoin technology to enable money transfers across more than 50 countries in Europe and Africa.

Users of the platform can send money instantly, whether to others, between their own accounts, or even to non-Sling users.

Transfers are conducted using Pax Dollar, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Essential, $11 million

Essential, the company behind the first declarative blockchain, also had a share of this week’s VC funding pie.

The company secured $11 million in a series A round led by Archetype.

Other participants in the round included IOSG, Spartan, and Mirana, alongside a host of founders and angel investors from the web3 space. 

According to Essential, the funding will help accelerate the development of its blockchain, which is intended to reframe interactions in terms of outcomes rather than instructions.

Other notable crypto VC fundraising

Coinduit, a B2B cross-border payments platform, clinched $6 million in a seed extension round led by Helios Digital Ventures.

The capital injection will support the platform’s expansion into Africa, where it aims to help tackle the region’s cross-border payment challenges.

On its part, Ion Protocol raked in an extra $4.8 million after previously raising $2.2 million in another fundraising round. The fresh capital was provided by Gumi Capital, Cryptos, and more than 90 other investors. 

It now brings the total amount raised by the liquidity protocol, which specializes in staked and restaked assets, to $7 million.

According to an Aug. 12 post on X, the company will use the funds to develop Nucleus, a native yield primitive meant to address the monetization challenges faced by Ethereum (ETH) rollups.

Tổng hợp và chỉnh sửa: ThS Phạm Mạnh Cường
Theo Crypto News