Financing highlights | Polychain leads investment in Bitcoin re-staking protocol Lombard; Placeholder leads investment in modular blockchain Astria
According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 20, an increase from the previous time, with a total amount of approximately US$196.495 million and an average financing amount of US$9.8248 million. Among them, the Web3.0+AI field occupies the majority, and the infrastructure field, DeFi field and other fields have relatively more financing, the Metaverse/GameFi field and the social/creator economy field have increased, and the NFT/digital fashion field and the digital asset management/payment field have less. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:
Metaverse/GameFi
A total of 3 financings were raised in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of US$9.1 million, accounting for 4.63% of the total financing last week.
Swords and Dungeons
On July 4, according to official news, the blockchain game Swords and Dungeons successfully obtained US$5 million in financing, with support from investors such as Mirana Ventures, Qiming VC, OKX Ventures, y2z Ventures, Partners Matrix, Folius Ventures, Mask Network, SNZ Holding, ArkStream, Sky9 Capital, Primal Capital, and Bas1s Ventures.
Swords and Dungeons is a highly playable P2E DeFi MMORPG. It combines the PvE, PvP, and GvG systems of traditional games with the P2E game mode and advanced DAO governance concepts in the Web3.0 era. Players will enter the complex and dangerous metaverse as heroes, with the mission of killing evil creatures to become stronger and master the powerful void power.
Swords and Dungeons will end its second test on July 19, and will reward participants with 5 million GOLD. In addition, participants can choose to return their beta deposits in the form of USDT, SND IDO shares or NFT discounts.
The rest of the financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:
On July 3, the blockchain game Cambria completed a $250 seed round of financing, led by BITKRAFT Ventures, and participated by angel investors such as 1kx and Delphi Ventures partner Piers Kicks. It aims to create a risk-return MMO inspired by RuneScape.
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On July 5, the Web3 game points protocol XOOB (formerly LaunchJoy) completed $1.6 million in financing, including $1.4 million in incubation round financing and $200,000 in Pre-Seed round financing, with participation from Chromia, Mines of Dalarnia, and My Neighbor Alice.
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NFT/Digital Fashion
There was a total of 1 financing in the NFT/digital fashion field, with a total amount of more than US$946,000, accounting for 0.48% of the total financing last week.
Monad Pad
On July 5, according to official news, the token and NFT launch platform Monad Pad announced the completion of a $945,000 seed round of financing, with participation from Cogitent Ventures, CMS Holdings, CSPDAO, Zephyrus Capital, vvvdotnet, FOMO Ventures, Exnetwork Capital, Sneaky Ventures, Legion Ventures, etc.
Monad Pad provides a complete set of tools, including a pre-sale launchpad, Monad utilities, and $MPAD tokens. MONAD Utility will build some utilities for Monad Pad, such as token locking, LP locking, token creation, and pre-sale purchase robots.
Of the MPAD tokens, 10% are allocated to NFT holders, 8% belong to the team, 3 to ecological projects, 5% for airdrops, and 5% to LPs. The team, KOL, and tokens allocated in each financing round have different lock-up times.
DeFi
A total of 2 financings were raised in the DeFi field, with a total amount of over 16 million US dollars, accounting for 8.14% of the total financing last week.
Lombard
On July 2, the Bitcoin re-pledge protocol Lombard completed a $16 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital.
Lombard unlocks liquidity by issuing a liquid and yield-generating staked Bitcoin token, LBTC. LBTC is its flagship product, a yield-generating, cross-chain, liquid Bitcoin backed 1:1 with Bitcoin. LBTC makes Bitcoin available for the first time as both a store of value and for earning yield, staking, trading, and mass participation in DeFi.
With LBTC, holders can earn native yield from Babylon staking, earn Lombard Points from early participation, and gain liquidity to use LBTC in DeFi. LBTC is backed by Bitcoin and can be used as collateral in numerous lending protocols, perp DEXs, and more.
Lombard will use the funds to expand its Bitcoin re-staking ecosystem and grow with Babylon, the Bitcoin staking protocol. Currently, Lombard is in Phase 1 and is in private testing mode on the Ethereum mainnet, where qualified participants are staking native Bitcoin and minting LBTC.
Solayer
On July 2, the Solana on-chain re-staking project Solayer officially announced the completion of the Builders Round round of financing. Solana co-founder Toly, bonk_inu founder Nom, Solend co-founder Rooter, Drift co-founder Cindy Leow, Solana Foundation Adam Jin and others participated in the investment, and the specific amount was not disclosed.
Solayer is a re-staking protocol built on the Solana blockchain that aims to leverage Solana’s economic security and efficient execution to provide application developers with a higher degree of consensus and blockspace customization. Users of Solayer can increase the security and decentralization of the Solana ecosystem by re-staking SOL tokens and becoming part of a decentralized validator network.
Through re-staking and a shared validator network, Solayer provides economic security and quality of service for both off-chain and on-chain applications. BlockBeats previously reported that on May 1, Solana re-staking project Solayer Labs said it is now looking to raise $8 million at a $80 million valuation in a seed round led by Hack VC. Rachel Chu of Solayer Labs said the startup (which was founded two months ago) has raised nearly $10 million, with investment from Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.
Social/Creator Economy
A total of 1 financing in the social/creator economy field, with a total amount of over 2 million US dollars, accounting for 1.02% of the total financing last week.
MonkeyBit
On July 2, according to Coinspeaker, the on-chain social gaming platform MonkeyBit announced the completion of a $2 million seed round of financing, led by the Middle East Web3 Fund 3KBTC Capital, and participated by Hongyi Labs and other funds.
MonkeyBit is committed to creating long-term value in the new on-chain entertainment ecosystem and providing players with a brand new gaming experience. It not only provides users with a diverse decentralized gaming experience, but also provides a variety of rewards for various ecosystem participants. As a provider of infrastructure technology, MonkeyBit ensures decentralized operation of games, guarantees fairness and transparency, and encourages more users to participate in games through incentives.
MonkeyBit has launched a global ambassador recruitment program, where ambassadors will enjoy stable and diverse incentives and receive a variety of benefits. The funds raised will be used to further develop decentralized social gaming platforms and game creator tools.
Infrastructure
A total of 9 financings in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of over 60.45 million US dollars, accounting for 30.76% of the total financing last week.
RedStone
On July 2, the blockchain oracle project RedStone completed a $15 million Series A financing, led by Arrington Capital, Kraken Ventures, White Star Capital, Spartan Group, Amber Group, SevenX Ventures and IOSG Ventures, as well as Smokey the Bera and Homme Bera of Berachain, Mike Silagadze, Jozef Vogel and Rok Kopp of Ether.Fi, and angel investors such as Amir Forouzani, Jason Vranek and Christina Chen of Puffer Finance participated in the investment.
RedStone is a blockchain oracle, similar to popular oracles such as Chainlink and Pyth Network, but based on a modular design. In April, RedStone signed an agreement with Ether.fi, the largest re-staking service on EigenLayer, to obtain $500 million in funding to help introduce RedStone's data oracles to its ecosystem. In addition to providing oracles for the re-staking protocol, RedStone also provides data sources for Ethereum, zkSync Era, Avalanche, Base, Polygon, Linea, Celo, Optimism, Arbitrum, Fantom, BNB Chain, and Blast.
The new round of funds will be used to hire new team members.
Pi Squared
On July 2, ZK technology verification company Pi Squared completed a $12.5 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from ABCDE, Bloccelerate, Generative Ventures, Robot Ventures and Samsung Next, as well as angel investors including Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation and Sreeram Kanaan, founder of EigenLayer.
Pi Squared’s first product is a “universal settlement layer” that can settle blockchain transactions in any programming language. The project is led by Grigore Rosu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the company plans to use the new funds to expand its products.
Rosu said the company is also developing “universal zero-knowledge circuits,” which will enable “trustless remote computing, AI, and interoperable smart contracts for any blockchain or dApp” through zero-knowledge technology. The project is expected to enter the testnet stage by the end of 2024.
Astria
On July 1, modular blockchain Astria completed a strategic financing of US$12.5 million, led by dba and Placeholder VC, and participated by RockawayX, Maven11, 1kx, Figment Capital, Batu, Yuki, DCBuilder, Hasu, Will Price, Jason Yanowitz, and Bankless Ventures.
Astria has previously launched the shared sequencer Astria Dusknet, which allows users to deploy Rollup to a remote shared sequencer network without permission. Developers only need to run their Rollup node to configure the node to use the remote shared sequencer network.
The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:
On July 1, Web3 security company Mamori completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Velocity Capital, Web3.com, Micheal Heinrich and Antonio Viggiano. It is reported that Mamori aims to enhance the security of Web3 by developing an algorithm that can discover problems with blockchain software. The software does not rely on knowledge of past attack methods; instead, it looks for possible vulnerabilities by extracting value from blockchain-based software.
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On July 2, blockchain data management startup SendBlocks announced the completion of a $8.2 million seed round of financing, led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Pitango, Illuminate Financial, Laser Digital (Nomura), and Starkware. SendBlocks allows blockchain enterprises, ecosystems, protocols, and applications to define the data that is important to them. Its platform supports customization, and its current customers include Bancor and SphereX.
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On July 3, the on-chain reputation network Ethos Network completed a $1.75 million Pre-Seed round of financing, aiming to solve the problem of fraud on the Web3 chain.
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On July 3, onaji, a machine learning platform for smart contract blockchain, completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Stratos, with participation from Maven11, Uniswap Labs Ventures, and IOSG Ventures. It is reported that onaji has established a platform for training and deploying AI models that can autonomously participate in DeFi on Ethereum and Layer 2.
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On July 4, Solana-based GPU tokenization protocol Compute Labs completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing at a valuation of $30 million. This round of financing was led by Protocol Labs, the development company behind Filecoin, and participated by Blockchain Coinvestors, OKX Ventures, CMS Holdings, HashKey Capital, Amber Group and P2 Ventures (formerly Polygon Ventures). Angel investors include Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon and Austin Federa of Solana Foundation.
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On July 4, it completed the Pre-A round of financing in May this year, led by Binance, and the specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. The announcement stated that this strategic investment strengthened the existing technical and business partnership between the two parties and laid a solid foundation for further cooperation in the future.
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Digital asset management/payment
A total of 1 financing in the field of digital asset management/payment, the total amount is not disclosed.
Plaza Finance
On July 5, according to official news, programmable derivatives protocol Plaza Finance announced the completion of the Pre-Seed round of financing, the specific amount of financing was not disclosed, Anagram led the investment, Interop Ventures, Cosmostation and others participated.
Plaza is developing a cross-ecosystem public facility for the financialization of digital assets, where programmable derivatives can be self-hosted, traded on DEX, and used as collateral for farms, lending, etc.
Web3+AI
A total of 2 financings were raised in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of over US$93 million, accounting for 47.33% of the total financing last week. Including:
On July 2, the open source AI platform Sentient completed a US$85 million seed round of financing, which was jointly led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures, and participated by Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, etc.
One of Sentient's core contributors is Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. Sentient's advisor is EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan. Sentient is committed to building open source AI models through community contributions to address the centralization and security ethics issues in the current AI field. Sentient plans to launch a testnet in the third quarter of this year and plans to use Polygon's technology for development.
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On July 2, Web3 AI company OpenLedger announced the completion of an $8 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital, with participation from HashKey Capital, Finality Capital, Hash3, STIX, MH Ventures, Sreeram Kannan of EigenLayer, Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon, and Kenny Li of Manta.
OpenLedger has built a permissionless, data-centric infrastructure for AI development, and the new funds will be used to expand the team and strengthen its data pipeline infrastructure.
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Other financing
There was 1 other financing with a total amount of US$15 million, accounting for 7.63% of the total financing last week. Including:
On July 2, the distributed cloud computing company Prodia completed a $15 million seed round of financing, led by Dragonfly, with participation from HashKey Capital, Web3.com, Index Ventures, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, EV3, Artichoke, TRGC, Folius, etc.
Prodia has built a distributed GPU network. It aims to use the Web3 infrastructure to provide more efficient cloud computing services at a lower cost.
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