Financing Highlights | Polychain leads investment in social protocol Tomo; Pantera leads investment in Bitcoin L2 Mezo

According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 26, which is less than before, with a total amount of approximately US$519.25 million and an average financing amount of US$19.9712 million. Among them, the infrastructure field occupies the majority, and the digital asset management/payment field and the metaverse/GameFi field are relatively large. 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$15.4 million, accounting for 2.97% of the total financing last week.

BORED SLOT

On April 11, Bored Slot, a blockchain game based on BAYC NFT, completed a $10 million financing round, with participation from PLUTUS VC and LD CAPITAL.

The new funds will be used to launch an entertainment platform, where users can exchange token rewards for participating in the entertainment platform. Bored Slot's parent company is Spin City, which focuses on digital entertainment and blockchain applications and is committed to redefining games through blockchain technology. The $SPC token launched by Spin City will be used first by Bored Slot.

Bored Slot is a web3 slot game project. The team will use the funds to launch a slot platform and conduct digital token mining activities by playing slots on the platform. It was originally founded in December 2023 by a team of entrepreneurs and BAYC holders to create a unique gaming experience for users and opportunities for BAYC/MAYC holders. Bored Slot has partnered with one of the most successful crypto IPs of all time to bring a whole new narrative to the slot gaming experience.

Sortium

On April 11, Web3 chain game technology developer Sortium completed more than $4 million in financing, led by Signum Growth, with participation from ARK Investment Management LLC, IDG Blockchain, IVC Fund, Polygon and 1881 S Group AG.

Sortium is an entertainment technology company that combines AI and Web3. Sortium focuses on building technical frameworks to help customers understand generative AI systems, blockchains, dynamic economic systems, etc., and use them in application scenarios. Sortium's solutions enable studios to shorten production time and reduce costs, allowing users to focus more on innovation and design.

Sortium launched a P2E game called CosmoGene, in which players can create unique experiences based on their genes through AI-powered virtual DNA.

Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:

On April 14, Web3 game distribution platform GameCene announced the completion of a $1.4 million seed round of financing. The investor information has not been disclosed. Its platform mainly helps developers easily build and distribute blockchain games by building a full-chain game software development kit (SDK).

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NFT/Digital Fashion

A total of 1 financing was raised in the NFT/digital fashion field, with a total amount of US$2 million, accounting for 0.39% of the total financing last week.

Spotlight

On April 8, according to official news, Spotlight, an emerging cultural company on the chain, announced the completion of a US$2 million Pre-seed round of financing, led by Folius Ventures.

Spotlight will facilitate the trading of GameFi assets. As a gamified community network, the project aims to solve the problem of asset liquidity. At the same time, more assets will be launched through the Spotlight launchpad. The team has deep expertise in the CSGO/CS2 skin market, which gives them a big advantage in terms of share growth compared to Dmarket and even existing giants.

Spotlight is committed to improving the liquidity of on-chain and off-chain assets through gamification, while deepening the development of emerging culture. Its founding members come from top international emerging asset trading platforms and have rich experience in global IP trading. The official will also issue platform-level NFTs in the near future.

DeFi

A total of 4 financings were raised in the DeFi field, with a total amount of over US$5 million, accounting for 1.08% of the total financing last week.

Zoth

On April 10, Zoth completed a $2.5 million financing round led by Blockchain Founders Fund, with participation from Borderless Capital, Mindativity Capital, YAP Capital, Momentum6, Singularity DAO, Aztlan Capital, Outlier Ventures, Decubate, and Wormhole Ecosystem Fund.

Zoth is an ecosystem that connects liquidity between TradFi and OnchainFi, aiming to provide sustainable returns supported by RWA and build an RWA ecosystem driven by multi-chain stablecoins to bring native sustainable returns to DeFi.

Less than a year since its inception, Zoth has deployed $6.5 million in private credit and is raising $140 million. ZOTH-FI is the first product under Zoth and has been launched on the mainnets of Ethereum, Polygon, XDC Network, Metis, Boba and Celo. Users can earn RWA-backed returns by staking stablecoins on the ZOTH-FI market. The project is preparing to launch more regulated products, such as money market funds backed by safe assets such as treasury bills, sovereign bonds and commercial paper issued by AAA-rated companies.

GullNetwork

On April 13, GullNetwork, a decentralized exchange built on Manta Network, announced the completion of a $1.6 million private placement financing round, led by Ozaru Ventures and Morningstar Ventures, with participation from several Web3 native investment institutions including GBV, MH Ventures, Banter Capital, Sky Vision Capital, Asteroid Capital, Andromeda Capital and Momentum 6.

This round of financing will be used to accelerate GullNetwork's product development, enhance network infrastructure, and expand its team of top talents. It is worth mentioning that GullNetwork has also received strategic funding from Manta Network, which will help it integrate the most advanced privacy protection features.

GullNetwork is a native DEX powered by Manta Network for issuing tokens, revolutionizing DeFi through an open and decentralized platform where anyone can operate a node and participate in open governance. It simplifies the creation and management of DeFi products through code-free pools, farms, and customizable token specifications, as well as anti-sniping liquidity regulations. GullNetwork simplifies aspects such as token issuance, liquidity acquisition, and AMM settings through intuitive smart contracts and DApp tools.

The rest of DeFi financing includes:

On April 10, the decentralized derivative trading platform Stream Trading completed a $1.5 million seed round of financing with a valuation of $20 million, with Polychain participating. Diogenes Casares, founder of Stream Trading, said that compared with other competitors, Stream Trading is more concerned about financing rates rather than swap fees.

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On April 11, AI-driven encryption application Sharpe Labs announced the completion of its seed round of financing, with Animoca Brands, GBV Capital, Morningstar Ventures, Maven Capital, Metabros, Contango Digital Assets, Ape Terminal and AIT Protocol participating in the investment. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed.

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Social/Creator Economy

In the field of social/creator economy, there was a total of 1 financing, with a total amount of over 3 million US dollars, accounting for 0.67% of the total financing last week.

Tomo

On April 11, Web3 social protocol Tomo announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Consensys, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, Nomad Capital, Story Protocol, dao5, KuCoin Ventures and HTX Ventures.

Similar to other SocialFi apps like forerunner FriendTech, Tomo uses a “Keys” system that enables users to purchase access to creator content and direct messages, with content moderation subject to its community guidelines. Key transactions are displayed in USD but conducted in ETH, with 10% of royalties split equally between Tomo and content creators.

According to the team, the platform has also launched TomoID — a social wallet for content creators and businesses with linked bio tools and a crypto commission affiliate program that just launched in beta. Tomo also plans to improve its points system in the coming weeks to incentivize early contributors and participants to participate in the app. Tomo has not yet confirmed whether it will launch a token for the platform, but if it does, points may become an important metric for rewarding users.

Infrastructure

A total of 10 financings in the infrastructure sector totaled $387.35 million, accounting for 74.6% of the total financing last week.

Monad Labs

On April 9, Layer 1 blockchain Monad Labs completed a $225 million financing round led by Paradigm, with participation from IOSG Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Electric Capital and Greenoaks. This will be the largest cryptocurrency financing so far in 2024.

Monad Labs is fundamentally optimizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) so that decentralized applications can achieve everyday adoption. The team is building Monad, a new layer-1 blockchain equivalent to the EVM with fundamental improvements to consensus and execution that can handle 10,000 transactions per second, or 1 billion transactions per day. Monad's fundamental improvements enable extremely high throughput and low fees while retaining support for existing Ethereum smart contracts and infrastructure.

Monad is designed for performance. At execution time, Monad pipelines execution - correctly scheduling transactions across cores, and scheduling related transactions serially. Additionally, a custom storage backend for state and contract code greatly speeds up execution. These improvements make each Monad node extremely efficient relative to mainnet and rollup nodes.

Mezo

On April 9, Bitcoin's second-layer network Mezo completed a $21 million Series A financing round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Multicoin, Hack VC, Draper Associates, etc. Mezo's approach prioritizes the economic needs of users and Bitcoin holders to create the first Bitcoin economic layer.

Mezo was launched by Thesis, a startup studio founded in 2014, using HODL Proof as a consensus mechanism. Users secure the network by locking BTC and MEZO tokens and verifying transactions through the CometBFT consensus. HODL proof starts with the Mezo Portal, where users can lock BTC and make a statement of belief. The longer the deposit is locked, the higher the HODL score. When the Mezo mainnet is launched, users can contribute to network security through HODL proof and earn returns in return.

Mezo aims to deepen the functionality of Bitcoin infrastructure by assisting in cheaper and faster transactions without deviating from the underlying principles of the network.

Berachain

On April 12, the new public chain Berachain announced the completion of a $100 million Series B financing, about 45% higher than the previously reported amount. This round of financing was jointly led by Brevan Howard Digital's Abu Dhabi branch and Framework Ventures, with participation from Polychain Capital, Hack VC and Tribe Capital.

Berachain has now developed into a high-performance EVM-compatible blockchain, built on the Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism, with the goal of adjusting the network incentive mechanism by strengthening the synergy between Berachain validators and the project ecosystem. In addition, Berachain's technology is based on Polaris, a high-performance modular framework for building EVM-compatible chains on top of the CometBFT consensus engine.

Berachain's three-token model and PoL consensus mechanism are good designs in an efficient market, ensuring that the value flow continues to flow back to users. In addition, on Berachain, users are not only investors, but also active participants in the ecosystem. This combination of deep participation and incentive mechanism is also the core advantage of Berachain that distinguishes it from traditional Meme chains.

The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:

On April 8, blockchain expansion infrastructure provider Lumoz (formerly Opside) completed a $6 million financing with a valuation of $120 million. OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Kronos Ventures, Kernel Ventures and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal participated in the investment.

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On April 9, open source software studio Storm Labs completed a $3 million financing round led by Electric Capital, with participation from Accomplice, Robot Ventures and others. The new funds will be used to build Cove, an on-chain portfolio manager. Cove allows users to build and manage customized DeFi portfolios without manual operation.

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On April 10, Bitcoin Layer2 developer Alpen Labs completed a $10.6 million financing round, led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Robot Ventures and Axiom Capital. It is reported that Alpen Labs is trying to scale the Bitcoin blockchain through zero-knowledge proofs.

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On April 11, DePIN platform Uplink completed a $10 million financing round, led by Framework Ventures, and other specific financing information has not yet been disclosed. It is reported that Uplink provides decentralized network connections and aims to create better distributed and user-operated infrastructure. Users and businesses will be able to earn tokens as rewards by contributing to the network or using the network. The company plans to launch tokens later this year.

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On April 11, the cross-chain auction protocol Mayan completed a $3 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was co-led by 6th Man Ventures (6MV) and Borderless Capital, and Solana Ventures, Hash3, Big Brain Holdings, Arrington Capital, Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Wormhole Labs co-founder Saeed Badberg participated in the investment.

Mayan is built on Solana and finds the best rates for users to perform transactions from any blockchain. The protocol converts input tokens into USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, and then sends it to the final destination using Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). This on-chain system facilitates inter-blockchain transfers by burning USDC on the source chain, minting USDC again on the target chain, and communicating the two processes between Circle and the source chain.

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On April 11, the blockchain prediction layer Azuro completed a $3.5 million financing, increasing the total funds raised to $11 million (it raised $7.5 million in 2022). This round of financing was participated by SevenX Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Dewhales and G1 Ventures. Azuro is an on-chain prediction market network that provides users with a decentralized platform to support the creation of diverse applications, integrations and products, supporting thousands of sports markets and other games.

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On April 11, decentralized GPU infrastructure company GPU.net announced the completion of a $5.25 million Series A financing round, with Momentum 6, Spicy Capital, Exnetwork Capital, BlackDragon, Crypto Banter and others participating in this round of financing. GPU.Net aims to meet the computing power requirements of new technologies such as generative AI, Web3 metaverse, cryptocurrency mining, and high-end graphics rendering by providing decentralized GPU infrastructure.

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Digital Asset Management/Payment

A total of 2 financings were raised in the digital asset management/payment field, with a total amount of US$83.2 million, accounting for 16.02% of the total financing last week.

OpenTrade

On April 10, Web3 institutional lending and yield product platform OpenTrade completed a $3.2 million seed round of financing, with participation from a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), CMCC Global, Draper Dragon, Ryze Labs and Plassa Capital.

OpenTrade is built on Circle's payment and DeFi infrastructure. Through OpenTrade, regulated asset managers can create on-chain lending products that can afford yields and deposit USDC or EURC into on-chain vaults with certain investment standards and target returns.

Auradine

On April 10, Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer Auradine completed $80 million in Series B financing, with Maverick Capital and others participating in this round of financing. StepStone Group, Top Tier Capital Partners, MVP Ventures, Maverick Capital, Celesta Capital, Mayfield Fund and Marathon Digital participated in this round of financing. In May last year, Auradine completed $81 million in Series A financing, led by Celesta Capital and Mayfield, with participation from Cota Capital, DCVC and Stanford University.

Founded in 2022, California-based Auradine launched the Teraflux Bitcoin mining machine in November last year. Auradine co-founder and CEO Rajiv Khemani said the company initially hoped to raise $70 million but ended up oversubscribing due to greater investor interest.

It is reported that Auradine's Series B financing is also a mixture of equity and debt, including $60 million in equity and $20 million in debt. Khemani said that Teraflux Bitcoin mining machines are in strong demand. "$80 million in reservations have been achieved, and the order pipeline exceeds $200 million."

Web3+AI

A total of 2 financings in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of more than $10 million, accounting for 1.93% of the total financing last week. Including:

On April 10, Web3 AI startup Sapien completed a $5 million seed round of financing, with Primitive Ventures, Animoca, Ravikant Capital and Yield Guild Games participating. Sapien will use the funds to enhance its artificial intelligence to better guide and assist its data labeling. The funds will also be used to expand Sapien's blockchain infrastructure to build its human labeling team.

Sapien uses rewards on the blockchain to essentially gamify data labeling, an integral process for advancing AI-driven language learning models such as OpenAI's Chat GPT. Data labeling involves marking text, images, and various types of files with labels, enabling machine learning models to interpret and learn from the data.

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On April 11, Singaporean AI startup Mindverse completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Square Peg. The startup will use the funds to further research and product development to advance its large-scale personalization model. Mindverse was founded in 2022 by former Meta executives and artificial intelligence researchers. Its flagship products include MindOS Studio and Mebot.

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Other financing

There were 3 other financings with a total amount of US$12.2 million, accounting for 2.35% of the total financing last week. Including:

On April 9, Web3 beauty startup Kiki World completed a US$7 million seed round of financing, which was participated by a16z, Estee Lauder's New Incubation Ventures, OrangeDao and 2Punks Capital. Kiki allows community members to vote on the features they want before beauty products are produced. As a reward, voters can earn points to buy free products and get the company's digital tokens. Members' product votes will be recorded on Ethereum.

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On April 11, blockchain recruitment and background check service company Veremark completed a $3 million financing, led by Samaipata and Stage 2 Capital, with participation from ACF Investors and Vulpes Investment. Founded in 2019, Veremark provides companies with background screening services for recruitment and assessment, and can also be used to screen existing employees, business partners, limited partners and founders.

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On April 13, the decentralized Internet bandwidth sharing network Multisynq announced on the X platform that it had completed a $2.2 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Manifold, and ARKN Ventures, PHD Capital, EnigmaFunge, AlphaCrypto, Republic Crypto, and a group of angel investors participated. Multisynq enables individuals to sell excess Internet bandwidth to developers, thereby realizing monetization and achieving the goal of Internet bandwidth sharing.

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