web3 deal flow archive

From April 28th:

During the last seven days, we identified roughly $158M in new money fundraise
announcements for private blockchain startups.

The largest raise comes from Zodia Custody, a crypto custodial unit spun off from Standard Chartered, has raised $36m in a funding round led by SBI Holdings, a digital asset firm based in Japan. The round saw participation from SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's venture arm, and marks a dilution of the bank's ownership in Zodia after previously owning a 90% stake. Zodia will use the funds to expand its geographic footprint beyond its current markets in Europe and Asia, with a focus on opportunities in the Middle East.

Zodia Custody, a crypto custody arm of Standard Chartered based in London, has raised $36m in a Series A funding round. The funding will be used for geographic expansion and to improve token coverage. SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial services company, became Zodia's second-largest shareholder as part of the investment. Zodia was launched in December 2020 to provide institutional-grade custody services for digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. With the new funding, Zodia aims to expand its services and explore new partnership opportunities.

XRSPACE, a company offering a socialised metaverse experience, has announced a $25m funding round. The round was led by Foxconn Technology Group, and saw Taiwan's National Development Fund invest $10m. XRSPACE will use the capital to conduct research and development in the next generation of 3D live and social experiences. XRSPACE MANOVA is the company's social metaverse where users wear virtual reality headsets to connect with each other through complementary apps PartyOn and GOXR.

Omni Network, an interoperability platform for Ethereum, has closed an $18m funding round with participation from investors including Pantera Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, Jump Crypto, Hashed, The Spartan Group and more. Omni plans to construct a programmable interoperability layer to help developers create global applications without adding to the developer experience's complexity. The company's core technology partners include Arbitrum, Polygon, StarkWare, Scroll, Linea, among others.

Thetanuts Finance, a decentralized finance platform, has raised $17m in a funding round led by Polychain Capital, Hyperchain Capital and Magnus Capital. The startup offers multi-chain structured financial products and has plans to develop a buy-side altcoin options market. The funds raised in the round will be used to create new partnerships with layer 1 and layer 2 networks, liquidity providers, blockchain foundations, market makers and exchanges.

TinyTap, an edtech company owned by Animoca Brands, has raised $8.5m from investors including Sequoia China and Polygon, bringing its valuation to $100m. The funding will be used to "disrupt education with web3" and facilitate growth for the company. The investment was made in a combination of equity via SAFE and token via SAFT. Investors also included Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, and Shima Capital.

Giddy, a crypto wallet startup , has raised $6.9m in a new funding round, bringing the company's total investments to over $15m to date. Investors in this round include Pelion Venture Partners, Peak Capital Partners, Clarke Capital, and others, including a strategic investment from Geremy Mustard, a co-creator of Fortnite. Pelion also led Giddy's $8m funding round in 2022. Giddy's app aims to simplify the process of buying, holding, and selling cryptocurrencies for retail customers while also providing a secure platform. The company plans to use the new funding to continue building out its product and expand its team.

Credora, a lending infrastructure provider, has received a strategic funding round of $6m led by major investors S&P Global and Coinbase Ventures. Credora is focused on rebuilding confidence in credit markets through transparency. Other investors in the funding round included Spartan, Amber Group, CMT Digital, Hashkey, GSR, KuCoin Ventures, Paradigm.co, Pirata Capital, Breed VC, and WAGMI Ventures.

DFlow, a DeFi protocol that enables market makers to buy order flow directly from wallet applications, has raised $5.5m in a financing round led by Framework Ventures, a crypto venture capital firm. Other investors include Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Cumberland, Wintermute Ventures, Spartan Group and ZeePrime. DFlow's platform guarantees that market makers will offer the best execution price against both centralized and decentralized exchanges. The protocol's approach brings a controversial practice in equities trading to the world of decentralized finance.

Teahouse Finance has raised $5m to combat concentrated liquidity in DeFi. The funds will be used to develop more strategy vaults that enable DeFi users to invest and profit more easily. Teahouse Finance is currently developing several vault products, including an enterprise-level Private Vault tailored for organization users like DAOs, traditional funds, and family offices.

Cata Labs, the firm behind the universal liquidity protocol Catalyst, has raised $4.2m in funding to bring liquidity to layer-1 blockchains, according to a recent announcement. The round was supported by investors including Spartan Group, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, Circle Ventures, Polygon Ventures, and Hashkey. Catalyst is working to streamline cross-chain transactions and make it easier for traders to move assets across various blockchain protocols. With the new funding, Cata Labs plans to hire new talent and continue developing its protocol.

Amboss Technologies, a data analytics company for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, has raised $4m in seed funding. Backers include Stillmark, Valor Equity Partners, Draper Associates, Fulgur Ventures, and Ride Wave Ventures. Amboss Technologies will use the funds to further its efforts in AI research and product development. The company provides analytics for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, offering routing and tools for decentralized finance using machine learning. Amboss supports merchants and consumers with identifying optimal payment paths based on cost, reliability, or reputation. Amboss also operates Magma, a Lightning Channel buying and selling marketplace, which allows users to earn bitcoin returns from savings without giving up custody.

Crypto-native payroll processor Rise Works has raised $3.8m in a seed round of funding. The round was led by Sino Global Capital and Polymorphic Capital, with participation from other investors including Draper Associates, Hashkey Capital, Paradigm Shift Capital, WW Ventures, P2P and Cosmo Capital. With its crypto-native payment processing services, Rise Works is looking to take advantage of a void in the traditional finance banking sector following the recent blowup in that industry.

Flow, with its "place bid once, buy from everywhere" technology, aims to revolutionize NFT bidding by making it easier for users to bid on NFTs. Flow's powerful order matching and execution engines offer a great user experience while protecting them from frontrunners and unnecessary gas fees by routing transactions via Flashbots. This breakthrough technology has attracted $3m in seed funding, led by Nima Capital and including participation from Shima Capital and other industry heavyweights. With this funding, Flow is well-positioned to conquer the NFT world.

Sphere 3D Corp., a company focused on becoming the leading carbon-neutral Bitcoin mining firm operating at an industrial scale, has entered into a securities purchase agreement with LDA Capital. The aim is to raise up to $3m in capital. The transaction underlines LDA Capital's commitment to doubling down in the crypto ecosystem during a time of uncertainty and doubt, reinforcing its position in the industry.

MetaCRM, a startup focused on providing a one-stop Web3 CRM solution, has raised $2.5m in a seed funding round led by Cherubic Ventures, with participation from Ondine Capital, Red Building Capital, and Tribe Accelerator. MetaForm, one of the main offerings, collects feedback and data, and offers features like smart airdrop, while MetaDesk aggregates customer tickets using on-chain tags to provide a single view of multichain transactions. MetaPanel compiles on and off-chain activities to create comprehensive user profiles and generate insights for brands. MetaCRM plans to integrate an AI chatbot, ChatGPT, into the system and is the first Web3 CRM solution provider for the BNB Chain and the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Tribe3, a social and gamified decentralized NFT futures exchange, has raised $2.1m to date from investors including Spartan Capital, Newman Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Modular Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Blockbuilders, Founderheads, Lapin Digital, Blockhype, and other angel investors. The funding will support the development and launch of the platform's public beta, scheduled for May 3rd, 2023. The platform aims to create a new way for traders and collectors to speculate on NFT values through a futures market with social and gaming features, enabling buyers and sellers of NFTs to connect in a decentralized and transparent marketplace. The funding opens up new opportunities for creators and investors in the NFT space.

VEGA, a Web3 entertainment platform, has raised $2m in a seed round of funding led by Arcane Group, with participation from New Wheel Capital and other investors. The funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand user growth, establish partnerships, and promote technological innovation.

Flappy Moonbirds, a Free-to-Earn casual game, raised $2 million in Pre Series B led by FBG Capital.

iZUMi Finance, a multichain DeFi protocol, has closed a $22m funding round to provide early liquidity for its on-chain order book decentralized exchange, iZiSwap Pro, which is available on the zkSync Era network. iZUMi Finance offers one-step "liquidity-as-a-service", allowing for the conversion of one asset into another asset or cash. The platform boasts around $25m in total value locked, according to Defi Llama data. iZiSwap Pro is an automated market maker-driven order book decentralized exchange designed to lower transaction costs and reduce the custody risks of similar products on the market.

SuperDuperSecretCo. has raised over $1m in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round to develop a new version of the classic chess game, featuring a ten-player battle royale. Investors in the funding round included Round 13 Digital Asset Fund, Merit Circle, Polygon, Solana, Overwolf, Big Brain Holdings, LD Capital, Sebastian Borget, Gabi Dijon and Christian Mane, among others. The company's first game, Royal Chess, is the launch title for its built-in meta-game platform that focuses on immersive, multiplayer gaming.

Colecti, an upcoming NFT marketplace on the Lisk blockchain, has received a pre-seed investment of 470,000 euros from Lisk. Colecti aims to build a thriving NFT ecosystem on the Lisk blockchain, providing low transaction fees and a user-friendly platform for both creators and collectors at all levels of experience. This investment will enable Colecti to further develop its NFT marketplace and expand its reach.

Fanton, a popular play-to-earn, NFT-based fantasy football game, has raised $300,000 in pre-seed funding from top-tier investors. The investment brings the company's valuation to $5m. So far, over 50,000 users have played Fanton, with the number of players increasing daily. The game allows users to build virtual football teams using NFT cards. Each card represents a real player who participates in actual matches. Users can earn points based on their players' actions in real life and win rewards such as Toncoin or additional NFT cards.

ARPA Network, a decentralized secure computation network, has secured a strategic investment from DWF Labs. The two companies will collaborate to transform the blockchain landscape and establish new standards for privacy, security, and fairness.

Getaverse has completed a financing round with LD Capital, an investment firm focused on blockchain and DeFi projects. The amount raised was not disclosed. The funding will be used to expand the company's decentralized identity (DID) platform, develop the DID credit management system, and enhance AI components for improved user experience. Getaverse's DID platform aims to provide a secure and privacy-focused solution for identity verification and access management. With the new funding, the company plans to accelerate its development efforts and bring its innovative technology to more businesses and users.

—

During the last seven days, we identified roughly $172M in new money fundraise
announcements for private blockchain startups.

There have been notable developments on the IPO front for two blockchain companies. Firstly, Singapore-based Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer went public recently via SPAC. In its first day of trading, shares of the newly public company fell 27%, according to reports.

Secondly, we had Chia's IPO registration proposal. The Chia Network, founded by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, has submitted a confidential draft registration to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering. The size and price range of the offering have yet to be determined, according to a press release by Chia. The firm raised $61M in a Series D funding round with Andreessen Horowitz and Richmond Global Ventures leading the funding with a $500M valuation. In 2021, the then COO Gene Hoffman had stated that the firm was on an "accelerated timeline" to an IPO. 

The largest new-money startup deal comes from Berachain, a new bear-themed crypto project run by a group of pseudonymous co-founders. The project raised $42M in a private token round to launch a new Layer 1 blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK and EVM-compatible. The funding was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hack VC, Shima Capital, Robot Ventures, Goldentree Asset Management and others, in addition to angel investors including Tendermint's Zaki Manian and Celestia's Mustafa Al-Bassam. Berachain started development late in 2021 and began raising funds for the round shortly after FTX exchange crashed in November, closing the deal "not too long after," according to Smokey the Bera, one of the pseudonymous founders. The project aims to allow users to stake tokens while providing liquidity to DeFi protocols in parallel.

The remaining deals are shared below. Our sources for curating these include several newsletters and Twitter feeds.

Unchained shared the announcement they have succeeded with an initial Series B close of $30M. This represents 50% of the round, which remains open to the tune of another $30M. The initial close was led by Valor Equity Partners. Other investors in the first round include NYDIG, Trammell Venture Partners, Ecliptic Capital, and Highland Capital Partners. The Series B round, if/when completed, would bring Unchained's total funding to date to $115M. The company also revealed it raised $15M in a Series A extension led by Ten31 last fall.

Tradier, a retail brokerage company that serves active traders through API-powered platforms and partnerships, has raised $24.6M in a Series B funding round. The funding was led by PEAK6 Strategic Capital, joined by existing investors F-Prime Capital and KF Business Ventures. The firm will accelerate its growth with the funding, giving traders and partners access to advanced features, live content, and other custom services. The funding comes following Tradier's strongest year yet, with traders signing up for subscription plans that average account sizes of $30,000 and an average of 150 trades per month. The platform's equity share and option contract volumes rose 100% year-over-year.

P2P.org, a non-custodial staking provider, has raised $23M in Series A funding led by Jump Crypto, Bybit, and Sygnum. The company offers staking infrastructure for Ethereum and 49 other blockchain programs, including Cardano and Cosmos. Its institutional staking solutions have already been used to stake more than $1.3B worth of assets, according to a press release. P2P.org plans to use the funds to add more chains in the Ethereum space, focusing on building a stronger community, enhancing customer support, improving the customer experience, and expanding its infrastructure. P2P.org attributes the successful fundraising to the recent Shanghai Upgrade with hopes that ETH staking will increase in market size. While Ethereum is seeing more inflows, institutional investors are still prioritizing investments in Bitcoin, according to digital asset management firm CoinShares.

Karate Combat closed an $18M funding round led by Bitkraft Ventures. Other investors include Delphi Digital, Alpha Wave Global, The Operating Group, Hashkey, RooxieXBT, and more. The funds will be used to launch a Karate Combat gaming app and a $KARATE token on the Ethereum and Hedera networks on May 10. Karate Combat already has audiences in more than 100 countries with 4.5M followers and over 10M views per event from deals with sports broadcasters like Eurosport, Globo's Combate, BeIN Sports, CBS Sports, and ESPN Deportes. The gaming model's main feature is that the players worldwide who use the app can allocate $KARATE tokens to their favorite fighters and increase the fighters' potential prize pools beyond their contracted pay. The app will launch on iOS next month, followed by an Android app."

Distyl AI, a firm that integrates artificial intelligence into the core business workflows of enterprise-scale companies, has raised $7M in seed funding and announced a Services Alliance with OpenAI. The funding round was led by Coatue and Dell Technologies Capital, with Nat Friedman, Brad Gerstner, and Dr. Jim Cash also participating. Distyl AI was co-founded by Palantir alumni Arjun Prakash and Derek Ho, who believe that integrating generative AI into key processes will give companies a competitive edge. The firm collaborates closely with F1000 enterprises, adapting AI to a company's data and technology for seamless integration into their existing workflows.

Fractal has secured $6M in funding to build a more transparent platform for crypto traders. QCP invested alongside 6th Man Ventures, Archetype, Blizzard, and CMT Digital, with other investors including Golden Tree Asset Management, CoinShares, and Spartan Group. The start-up aims to offer more transparent clearing and settlement services to the digital assets market.

Tonic.xyz, a blockchain gallery offering, raised $5M in a seed funding round co-led by VC firm Patron.xyz and TTCER. San Francisco-based Heretic Ventures created Tonic.xyz to offer highly curated artwork on a blockchain platform, expanding access beyond the crypto-native consumer. The gallery has provided a safe space for collectors to learn about and acquire generative fine art that bridges both physical and digital worlds. Its first three auctions sold out, while its latest release, Strands of Solitude by generative artist William Mapan, was the second-largest launch of the year.

Swaap Labs has raised over $4.5M in seed funding for its Swaap platform, designed to offer liquidity providers profitable market-making strategies while reducing trading costs and addressing impermanent loss issues in DeFi. Swaap v2 features more advanced market-making models built using the AMM simulator developed with the Louis Bachelier Institute and boasts an architecture benefiting from improved data latency for access to a wider range of token options. Signature Ventures led the funding round, which also saw participation from high-profile investors like New Form Capital and C² Ventures.

NATIX Network has raised $3.5M in seed funding in a round led by Blockchange Ventures with CVVC, Mulana Capital, Blockarm Capital, XYO and NectoLabs also participating. Existing investors Techstars, Plug and Play Ventures, and CoinIX Capital also contributed. The company sells smart cameras that scan a space and detect events such as traffic levels or parking availability without capturing personal data. It says the technology has been trusted by clients such as Deutsche Telekom and energy supplier E.ON. NATIX aims to offer a solution to the high costs and need for maintenance associated with installing and maintaining infrastructure for public and private CCTV cameras.

Medieval Empires, a blockchain strategy game, has raised $3M to develop its public release, planned for later in 2022. The round was led by DWF Labs.

EVEN, a platform that enables artists to sell their music directly to fans and grants fans access to exclusive content and experiences, has secured $2.2M in seed funding led by CSA Partners. The platform claims it is the first stop for artists before uploading music to streaming platforms. CEO and founder Mag Rodriguez began building EVEN in February 2020 to support Black and brown artists seeking to maintain equity in their creative work. The platform charges transaction fees and generates revenue through its blockchain technology, which adds transparency to exchanges. Other investors in the round include gANGELS, gener8tor and angel investors Daniel Rotman, Adie Akuffo-Afful and Ogo.

Shield, a member of a16z's Crypto Startup School, has raised $2.1M in pre-seed funding to create an industry standard through its API, Discord Bot and certification program that ensures the security of Web3 projects for businesses and consumers. The funding round saw participation from investors including Kraken Ventures, Eterna Capital, Alchemy, MoonPay and Rob Behnke, CEO of crypto security firm Halborn.

Pendle Finance has received an investment from Bixin Ventures. Pendle tokenizes the yield of a yield-bearing asset into YT, which receives the yield, and PT, which represents the principal investment amount. Users are able to purchase PT at a discount, as the yield component of YT is stripped away. The discount rate is determined by market demands for the PT-GLP token. Pendle recently grew its total value locked to $60.5m from $7.8m in December and is currently deployed on Ethereum and Arbitrum.

Wallet Guard, a user-centric security browser extension that protects users' digital assets and data from theft, scams, and fraud, has raised a pre-seed funding round led by Ethereal Ventures. ConsenSys and IOSG Ventures participated, as did Chainlink's Ben Chan and Phantom's Dave Pazdan, among other notable angels in Web3. The suite of tools created by Wallet Guard aims to empower users by providing multi-layered defense from phishing detection to transaction simulation, helping to protect users from a range of malicious activities. The company plans to create a future where tooling protects users in real-time and makes security accessible to everyone.

GOMBLE, a South Korean developer of blockchain-based casual games, secured a seed round investment from Binance Labs. GOMBLE, an affiliate of 111Percent, aims to enable casual gamers globally to experience blockchain games with sustainable reward mechanisms. The company also seeks to advance NFT interoperability through the development of mobile-based blockchain. Led by Jihoon Byun, GOMBLE's core team includes experts in game development and publishing with extensive experience in both Web2 and Web3 platforms. The team has worked for companies like Google, Kakao Brain, SK Telecom, and crypto exchange platforms.

Week of April 14th

During the last seven days, we identified roughly $147M in new money fundraise announcements for private blockchain startups. Turning to venture capital raises, Bitkraft launched a $220.6M fund. 

The largest new-money startup deal comes from DWF with their $45M EOS token purchase. According to CoinTelegraph, the investment was matched with a $15M pledge for EOS-based projects, bringing the total deal size to $60M.

The largest (and only) fund raised by private investors came from Bitkraft and their $220.6M fund. According to CoinDesk, the firm launched a similar fund in October 2021, with $75 million in committed capital that was seeking to invest in blockchain gaming and digital entertainment. Bitkraft brings a background in funding Web2 studios that build complex environments and are looking for similar Web3 projects. The firm favors developers that have a higher-than-average amount of experience, often gained through decades of experience at Web2 studios.

The remaining deals are shared below. Our sources for curating these include several newsletters and Twitter feeds. To receive these updates as a weekly digest, consider subscribing below:

Sei, a layer-1 blockchain focused on trading, raised $30M in a round valued at $800M. Investors in the new round include Jump Crypto, Distributed Global, Multicoin Capital, Asymmetric Capital Partners, Flow Traders, Hypersphere Ventures and Bixin Ventures. The funding will be used to build strategic partnerships heading into the mainnet launch. The start-up's team is comprised of former employees from Goldman Sachs, Databricks, Robinhood, Google and Nvidia.

CryptoGPT, a zero-knowledge layer 2 blockchain network attempting to leverage GPT, announced $10M in a Series A funding round from DWF Labs at a $250M valuation. However, according to The Block, only $420,000 of the total amount has thus far been invested by DWF Labs. The VC firm began investing in early April and the rest of the amount will be invested over 285 days. As part of the deal, DWF Labs, a web3 investment firm that is also a market maker, will also make a market for CryptoGPT's GPT token. 

Note: While we cannot say for certain, it seems likely to us that DWF has orchestrated a favorable agreement where it can likely earn back its monthly investment via market-making activity. If the payback period is shorter than approximately 285 days (i.e., short enough to capitalize on the AI funding environment) then it could quickly prove to be a very savvy investment on their part. 

RSS3, an "information protocol," announced $10M in new money via a token sale to DWF Labs. RSS3 aims to be a bridge between blockchain technology and AI, search engines and social media. The protocol's latest investment follows its unveiling of RSS3 AIOP, an AI training environment providing Web3 information to the likes of ChatGPT. It previously raised from Coinbase, Dragonfly and noted entrepreneur and former Andreessen Horowitz partner Balaji Srinivasan.

Absolute Labs, builder of a web3 CRM platform, announced $8M in seed round funding. Investors included: Aglaé Ventures, Alpha Praetorian Capital, The Luxury Fund, Near Foundation, MoonPay, Plassa Capital, Punja Global Ventures, Samsung Next, Sparkle Ventures (Animoca Brands), and W3i. The company claims a customer list that includes LVMH, The Sandbox, Moonpay, and Mocaverse (Animoca Brands).

Brassica, a fintech company building investment infrastructure API for the alternative investment ecosystem, closed an $8M seed round. According to their press release, the round was led by Mercury Fund, with participation from Valor Equity Partners, Long Journey Ventures, NGC Fund, Neowiz, Broadhaven Ventures, Armyn Capital, VC3DAO, Alpha Asset Management, and other global FinTech investors. The seed funding brings the total capital raised by Brassica to date north of $12M.

Xclaim, a bankruptcy trading platform, raised $7M. Xclaim allows for the trading of major bankruptcy creditor claims, including FTX, CoinDesk sister company Genesis and BlockFi. According to CoinDesk's article on April 11th, "FTX claims are going for 19 cents on the dollar, up from 13 cents earlier this year, while Genesis is going for 52.5 cents and BlockFi for 18 cents." Xclaim isn’t the only platform offering bankruptcy claims trading. Recently Three Arrows Capital co-founders Kyle Davies and Su Zhu launched OPNX, which is short for Open Exchange.

Hug, a platform connecting artists with collectors through curation and discovery, closed a $5M seed round. The company, describing itself as "Facebook meets Etsy", will use the funding to evolve beyond social discovery into a social marketplace.
 
Fire raised $3.5M to grow its browser extension that aims to prevent crypto fraud. The funding round was led by venture studio Atomic, according to Axios. Prior to launching the product, Fire's waitlist reached over 20,000 sign ups within weeks, driven by a few viral twitter posts and a referral program.

Huddle01 raised $2.8M in a seed round led by Hivemind, taking the company's total raise to $4.5M to-date. This round was participated by funds that include Superscrypt, M31 Capital, Protocol Labs, East Ventures, Longhash Ventures, Good News Ventures, and notable angel investors like Balaji Srinivasan, Stani Kulechov, Dan Romero and Juan Benet amongst others. Huddle01 has taken a 3-pronged approach to make audio/video communication more efficient, reliable, and secure. With its new round of funding, Huddle01 plans to grow its ecosystem to support thousands of apps and launch its network of nodes to facilitate communication at scale and reward them with Huddle01 tokens. Furthermore, Huddle01 will roll out grant programs to empower developers to build breakout applications on Huddle01's infrastructure and increase their global network.

Pear Protocol, an on-chain spread trading platform launching on Arbitrum, raised $1.25M in a seed round backed by investors from Flow Ventures, RNR Capital, Portico Ventures, Jy Capital, and others.

LABEL Foundation, a MOOC platform, announced $1M in funding from DWF Labs. The funding will be used to continue developing their Listen-and-Earn TRACKS dApp. Their roadblock includes a framework for "NFTs for music" and tokenization of music rights.

Fingerlabs completed its Series A funding rounds.

Chingari, an on-chain short-form video app, raised funding from Jump Capital. The company tweeted that "the firm generated revenue of $6.4 million in FY22 and more than $10 million in FY23". The team had previously raised funding from Aptos Labs.              
Ramper received a strategic investment from Coin98 to accelerate the building of its suite of SDK/SPI for auth, key management, and swapping.

Metalpha, a Hong Kong-based asset manager, is reportedly in the middle of raising a $100M fund. The firm seeks to act as a regulated conduit for investments in crypto. We did not include this deal in the total fundraise value data presented above. When the closing of the fund is announced with a firm dollar amount, we will include that number, at that time.

Week of April 7th:

During the last seven days, we identified roughly $111M in new money fundraise announcements for private blockchain startups. Turning to venture capital raises, Re7 Capital and Republic Crypto launched a $100M fund. 

The largest new-money startup deal was from Swissborg closing a community funding round of $23M and 16,600 investors. The startup is a Venture Leaders Fintech alum. The equity fundraising campaign was launched at the end of last year on their Multi-Asset Launchpad.

The largest (and only) fund raised by private investors came from Re7 Capital and Republic Crypto and their $100M fund for investing in liquid tokens. The fund, named RxR Opportunities Fund, provides qualified investors with the ability to get exposure to a group of hand-picked crypto tokens, focusing on those with medium-sized market caps.

The remaining deals are shared below. Our sources for curating these include several newsletters and Twitter feeds.

Li.Fi raised $17.5M in a Series A round led by CoinFund and Superscrypt. Li.Fi is a cross-chain bridge and decentralized exchange aggregator.

Polyhedra Network, a startup that provides Web3 infrastructure backed by zero-knowledge proofs, raised $15M in a funding round led by Polychain. The Web3 infrastructure provider has now raised money twice in 2023. The fundraise comes a little over a month after the startup closed a $10M strategic funding round from Binance Labs and Polychain. Getting two deals done so quickly stands out amid the crypto bear market that has nearly stalled investments in the industry. Polyhedra is building a suite of systems focusing on blockchain interoperability, scalability and privacy. Those systems include zkBridge, which facilitates cross-chain asset and data transfers.

Alchemy Pay, a payments provider based in Singapore, has received $10M in investment from market maker DWF Labs at a $400M valuation as it eyes expanding its business in South Korea. The funding came from DWF Labs, its eighth investment of $10M or more in the last six weeks. The company, which provides a way for crypto companies to access the fiat payment system, aims to capitalize on South Korea's "high level of crypto acceptance" and assist local firms in achieving greater internationalization. It has previously worked with the likes of Visa, Mastercard, Google Pay and Apple Pay to this end.

IOST raised $10M from Canadian Web3 investment firm BitValue Capital. The investment is aimed at enhancing IOST’s mainnet capabilities and supporting the continuous development of its ecosystem. BitValue Capital will also play an advisory role.

Nibiru Chain, a DeFi hub in the Cosmos ecosystem, closed an $8.5M seed funding round at a $100M valuation that was co-led by Tribe Capital, Republic Capital, NGC Ventures and Original Capital. The capital will help build out the tech stack, team and community.

Astria raised $5.5M in seed funding to develop its shared sequencer network. The funding round was led by Maven 11 and included contributions from various prominent crypto investment firms including 1kx, Delphi Ventures and Figment Capital. Astria's aim is to enable anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant rollup without having to rely on a centralized sequencer.

Granary Finance, an emerging DeFi lending protocol, raised $5M from DeFi in a community-driven fundraise. The round is designed to support the development of Granary V2, developed with assistance from the EVM-focused Byte Masons Group. Developers behind Granary are categorizing the fundraise as a “liquidity generation event” (LGE) intended in part to power the release of the upcoming launch of Granary’s governance token. The governance initiative is designed to power the team’s vision of  becoming the “first truly user-centric decentralized lending platform.”

Satsuma, a blockchain data indexing platform, announced that it raised $5m in a seed funding round co-led by Initialized Capital and Archetype. Other investors included OpenSea, Y Combinator, Homebrew and South Park Commons.

Ecosapiens raised $3.5M in seed funding towards its mission to make blockchain collectibles more environmentally conscious. The round was led by Web3 fund Collab+Currency, with participation from investors including gmoney, the founder of digital fashion company 9dcc; Shan Aggrawal, vice president and head of corporate development at Coinbase Ventures; and Ryan Carson, former chief operating officer of Moonbirds, among others. The project allows users to purchase carbon credits through its nature-themed NFTs to offset the environmental impact of blockchain technology.

Franklin, a crypto payroll company, raised $2.9M in a seed round. The payroll company is the second spin-off project developed internally at boutique Web3 marketing firm Serotonin, founded by Ethereum mainstay Amanda Cassatt.  The project’s backers include crypto notable Arca, and the round was co-led by Gumi Cryptos Capital and CMT Digital. The project, which is built on the Ethereum mainnet and scaling solution Polygon, offers tools to automate payroll expenses and tax filings for a selection of cryptocurrencies. Franklin provides a tool for firms to make payments to employees and contractors in crypto, across the world, including the U.S.

ENS Vision, a marketplace for ENS names, raised $2M, led by 1confirmation.

PoseiSwap raised $1.5M in strategic funding. PoseiSwap runs on a Layer 3 blockchain, 
the Nautilus Chain, which implements a modular rollup chain.

GoJoe raised £1.2M led by Superbet Ventures and includes Animoca Brands and ex-Manchester United footballer, Michael Carrick.

Ensemble raised a $1M seed round led by Collab+Currency, with participation from Lattice, Builder Capital, and angels Manu Andorra and Ben Roy. On Ensemble, artists mint artifacts from their creative process, presented within stories about their work. Artifacts can take many forms – storyboards in movies, studies in art, sketches in design, etc.