Financing Highlights | Polychain leads investment in Solana ecosystem re-staking protocol Solayer; Dragonfly leads investment in stablecoin Level dev

According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was [23], which was the same as before, with a total amount of approximately [217.47] million US dollars, and an average financing amount of [9.4552] million US dollars. Among them,

Digital asset management is the main sector, infrastructure is relatively more, Metaverse investment has increased, and social economy is relatively less. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:

Infrastructure field, Metaverse/GameFi field, Other field financing, Digital asset management/payment field, DeFi field, Social/creator economy field, Web3.0+AI field

Metaverse/GameFi

In the Metaverse/GameFi field, there were 5 financings with a total amount of US$27.17 million, accounting for 12.49% of the total financing last week.

double jump.tokyo

On August 30, according to official news, Japanese Web3 game company double jump.tokyo (developer of the game public chain Oasys) completed the first round of D financing of more than 10 million US dollars, led by SBI Investment, and participated by Sony Group Corporation, Taisu Ventures, Gate Ventures, TM Capital Inc., Bing Ventures Ltd., etc.

Double Jump.Tokyo focuses on the development and operation of games based on blockchain technology. Founded in 2018, the company aims to create a new gaming experience for players by leveraging the unique advantages of blockchain technology, such as ownership and decentralized transactions of digital assets. Double Jump.Tokyo not only develops games, but also provides related blockchain solutions to help other game companies enter this emerging field. In addition, Double Jump.Tokyo has cooperated with some well-known game companies and blockchain projects, such as Square Enix, Atari and other well-known companies to develop blockchain-based game projects.

The new financing will be used to strengthen the strategic cooperation between double jump.tokyo and its investors. Double jump.tokyo will deepen cooperation with SBI Group on Web3 services, including the NFT market, and promote the development of Sony Group's blockchain "Soneium" to expand Web3 content and services.

Gameplay Galaxy

On August 28, The Block reported that the Web3 game development studio Gameplay Galaxy completed a $11.17 million seed round of expansion financing, led by Blockchain Capital and Merit Circle.

Gameplay Galaxy was founded in 2022 by Kagan, a Web3 game development studio. Kagan once formed the game studio Deemedya in 2010 and released a number of successful free web2 mobile games, including the Trial Xtreme series, the Rope Escape series, Game of Winds, and Magic Touch. These games are said to have achieved more than 300 million downloads in total and generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Game Galaxy is currently developing Trial Xtreme Freedom as its first web3 game. Kagan said Gameplay Galaxy integrates web3 functions into the game process, bypassing knowledge barriers such as paywalls for users.

Gameplay Galaxy founder and CEO Doron Kagan said the company began raising funds for a seed extension round in May and closed it last month. The round was in the form of an equity round and came with token warrants, raising the company's valuation to $71 million.

Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:

On August 26, Oneness Labs, a Web3 infrastructure platform that provides traditional game financialization solutions, completed a new round of strategic investment, led by Galaxy Interactive and Web3 boutique game fund Gam3Girl, and followed by top global game companies IGG and Tap4Fun. It is reported that Oneness Labs plans to complete the $ONS token generation event (TGE) by the end of the year, and will release the NFT series GAME XBOX based on the main token $ONS and the issuance of game token mining on September 3, 2024.

On August 28, according to Cointelegraph, the casual game SnakeLite announced the completion of millions of dollars in financing. This round of financing was led by Ace Redpoint Ventures, and One Piece Labs, Mirana Ventures, Sky9 Capital and other well-known institutions participated in the investment. It is reported that SnakeLite has been ranked in the top ten of Google Play's overseas game rankings for three consecutive years since 2022. This time, with the transformation to Web3, SnakeLite will launch the first battle royale PvP mode on the TON blockchain, and integrate mining functions with Telegram, allowing players to earn tokens through simple game interactions.

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On August 31, according to The Block, Web3 game developer Legend of Arcadia completed a $4 million seed round of financing, with participation from Animoca Brands, OKX Ventures, Arche Fund and Selini Capital. It is reported that Legend of Arcadia has currently developed a card role-playing game that can be accessed for free on mobile devices and will launch the in-game cryptocurrency ARCA.

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DeFi

There were a total of 5 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount of more than US$21.6 million, accounting for 10% of the total financing last week.

Solayer

On August 28, Solana Ecosystem Re-Pledge Protocol Solayer completed a $12 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Big Brain Holdings, Hack VC, Nomad Capital, Race Capital, ABCDE, and Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom. This round of financing brings Solayer's valuation to $80 million. The round of financing ended in May and was structured as a simple future equity agreement (SAFE) with token warrants.

Solayer is a Solana restaking protocol modeled after the groundbreaking Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer. Restaking allows users to earn additional rewards by re-locking their staked assets in different protocols, called Active Validation Services (AVS), to maximize their income. According to its website, for native solana (SOL) restaking, Solayer first converts SOL into an intermediate form called sSOL-raw, which is a Liquidity Staking Token (LST) issued by the stake pool manager. After another interaction with the Solayer restaking pool manager, the sSOL-raw is converted to sSOL.

Earlier this month, Binance Labs said it had invested in Solayer, and the company's investment was part of the same $12 million seed round. Last month, Solayer also announced a pre-seed round of undisclosed size from angel investors, including Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

Peregrine Exploration

On August 29, TheBlock reported that Peregrine Exploration, the developer of the stablecoin Level, completed a $3.6 million financing, led by Polychain Capital and Dragonfly, with participation from Robot Ventures, Pier Two, EIV and Global Coin Research, as well as angel investors such as Balaji Srinivasan, Jeff Fang, Julian Koh, and Sidney Powell.

It is reported that the new funds will be used to develop a stablecoin protocol called Level. Level aims to be the first stablecoin protocol backed by re-pledged US dollar tokens. These tokens are formed when someone pledges a dollar-denominated token (such as USDC or USDT) on a re-pledge protocol such as EigenLayer to earn re-pledge yields. This yield is generated from tokens used to provide security for other blockchains. The Level platform performs this re-hypothecation on behalf of users as they mint their stablecoins using other stablecoins.

ODOS

On August 31, according to official news, DEX aggregator ODOS announced the completion of Series A financing. This round of financing was participated by CEIC, Uniswap Labs, Curved Ventures, Orbs, Mantle, PAKA and several angel investors. Other specific financing information has not been disclosed.

ODOS is a DeFi aggregator that focuses on optimizing the trading experience of crypto assets. Its main function is to help users find the best trading path between different decentralized exchanges (DEX) to ensure that users can get the best price and the lowest slippage when executing transactions. ODOS integrates multiple DEXs and liquidity pools, and uses intelligent algorithms to automatically calculate the optimal trading route for users, reducing the complexity of users manually finding the best price on multiple platforms.

ODOS has a simple interface design and is easy to operate, suitable for all types of DeFi users, especially those who want to seize the best trading opportunities in a busy market. In addition to providing basic transaction aggregation functions, ODOS also focuses on user privacy and security. All transactions are executed through smart contracts, and users' funds are always in their own hands.

The rest of DeFi financing includes:

On August 27, according to official news, the automated leverage agreement Origami Finance announced the completion of a $1.5 million seed round of financing. Ouroboros Capital, Fjord Foundry, Good Partners, Upside, BeraLand, TempleDAO, Boba Tea Capital, Three Three Ventures, and angel investors such as DCF God, RiffRaff, and janitooor.eth participated in the investment. The relevant valuation information has not been disclosed yet. The new financing will be used to build its automatic leverage protocol launched on Ethereum and BeraChain, which supports integration with third-party lending services, and can realize automated folding yield token (YBT) exposure, thereby improving capital efficiency and reducing liquidation and bad debt risks, with a TVL of more than US$50 million.

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On August 28, according to official news, the general lending market Echelon Market announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by Amber Group, with participation from Laser Digital, Saison Capital, 280 Capital, Cypher Capital, etc. It is reported that Echelon's core currency market enables asset lending through non-custodial pools. All positions are over-collateralized to protect lenders while providing borrowers with the highest capital efficiency and cost-effective interest rates.

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Social/Creator Economy

A total of 2 financings were raised in the social/creator economy field, with a total amount of more than US$4 million, accounting for 0.2% of the total financing last week.

Time.fun

On August 30, the time tokenization platform Time.fun announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing, led by Brevan Howard Digital, Coinbase Ventures, Breed VC, Zee Prime Capital and Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom. Angel investors such as Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, Helius co-founders Mert Mumtaz and Santiago Santos participated in the investment.

Time.fun is a time tokenization platform that aims to transform personal time into a tradable digital asset. Through Time.fun, users can create tokens for their own time and trade or auction them on the platform. The core of this concept is to treat time as a scarce resource, allowing users to directly sell their own time services or purchase the time of others for specific purposes.

Time.fun's platform mechanism allows the tokenization of time for various services, such as consulting, artistic creation, and even personal companionship. Buyers can purchase these time tokens through bidding or fixed prices and use them to book related services. This model not only provides individuals with a flexible source of income, but also provides more options for buyers who need specific time services.

The rest of the financing for the social/creator economy includes:

On August 30, according to official news, Aptos Labs announced a strategic investment in the Web3 social interaction stack Mereo. The two parties will work together to change the way fans interact in the music industry and solve the problem of asset reselling in the music industry. It is reported that Mereo uses soul-bound digital assets to help artists directly distribute real assets such as tickets and merchandise to loyal fans, thereby combating asset reselling related to intellectual property rights. This collaboration aims to prioritize fan reputation and real interaction and enhance the experience of fan culture.

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Infrastructure

A total of 4 financings were raised in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of more than US$27.6 million, accounting for 12.69% of the total financing last week.

Solana Optimistic Network (SOON)

Solana Optimistic Network (SOON for short) is an expansion solution based on the Solana blockchain, designed to improve the network's transaction processing capacity and efficiency. It adopts an optimistic approach to processing transactions, which assumes that transactions are valid and submitted to the network immediately without relying on instant verification. This mechanism allows higher transaction throughput and reduces transaction latency, making it particularly suitable for high-frequency trading and complex decentralized applications (dApps).

The funds raised by Solana Optimistic Network will be used to develop its core products, SOON Stack and SOON Mainnet, with the goal of creating the "highest throughput rollup stack" to provide scalability and efficiency for decentralized applications and any Layer 1 blockchain.

On August 27, 2024, Solana Optimistic Network completed a round of financing called "cobuilder". This round of financing is specifically for builders (hence the name), and no venture capital firms participated. Several industry heavyweights participated in the investment, including Solana Foundation Chairman Lily Liu, Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Coinbase Ventures Director Jonathan King, Celestia Labs co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam, Avail co-founder Robinson Burkey, and Wormhole Foundation co-founder Robinson Burkey. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed.

Edge Matrix Chain

On August 29, TheBlock reported that the multi-chain infrastructure project Edge Matrix Chain completed a $20 million financing, led by Polygon Ventures and Amber Group, and participated by One Comma, Kapley Judge and Associated Corporations, and Cyberrock Venture Fund.

The EMC protocol is an edge computing protocol based on blockchain and peer-to-peer networks, including functions such as smart contracts, decentralized storage, and transaction verification consensus mechanisms. It is designed to connect various servers, personal computers, and other devices to form a decentralized computing network. It can serve as an infrastructure to connect decentralized computing power and dApps, providing users with more flexible, reliable, and efficient computing resources, enabling them to share computing resources and process data together.

EMC plans to use the newly raised funds to launch its Layer 1 blockchain, which focuses on applications designed for artificial intelligence. The blockchain "is designed to expand and support GPU computing for encrypted AI projects, while introducing new DeFi asset classes supported by tokenized real-world GPU resources." EMC also said that it launched a two-month public testnet incentive program on August 17, and plans to distribute a $5 million prize pool through a two-stage incentive program.

Space and Time

On August 27, according to Fortune magazine, the decentralized data platform Space and Time completed a $20 million Series A financing, led by Framework Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Arrington Capital and Hivemind Capital.

Space and Time aims to allow applications to quickly retrieve and access data, and is developing software to bring the immutability of blockchain to artificial intelligence applications. Space and Time can expand zero-knowledge proofs on decentralized data warehouses to provide trustless data processing for smart contracts, LLMs and enterprises.

Specifically, Space and Time connects indexed blockchain data from the main chain with off-chain data sets. Proof of SQL is a novel ZK-proof developed by Space and Time that ensures tamper-proof large-scale computing and proves that query results have not been manipulated.

The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:

On August 26, the cryptocurrency RD company Chainbound completed a $4.6 million financing, with Maven 11, Robot Ventures and Bankless Ventures participating. The startup is developing a protocol called Bolt, which will implement cutting-edge pre-confirmation on Ethereum, allowing sub-second transaction confirmation, greatly speeding up the current average confirmation time of seven seconds.

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On August 27, according to Chainwire, the on-chain project financing platform Legion completed a US$2 million seed round of financing, led by Cyber Fund, with participation from AllianceDAO, Delphi Labs, Coingecko, Mike Dudas, Alex Svanevik, Peter Smith, Maggie Love, Jon Wu, Ryan Watkins, LongHash and others. It is reported that Legion aims to provide equal on-chain financing opportunities for new crypto projects, and it achieves this vision through investor reputation and accountability layers, as well as regulatory clarity provided by the latest regulations.

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Digital Asset Management/Payment

A total of 3 financings in the field of digital asset management/payment, with a total amount of over 134.7 million US dollars, accounting for 61.94% of the total financing last week.

Bridge

On August 30, Bridge, a global stablecoin payment network co-founded by former Square and Coinbase executives Zach Abrams and Sean Yu, announced that it had received US$58 million in financing, with Sequoia, Ribbit and Index participating in the investment. Including a new round of financing of US$40 million led by Sequoia and Ribbit, it will challenge the traditional payment system.

The Bridge network aims to use the characteristics of stablecoins to provide a faster, cheaper and more convenient cross-border payment solution. The core idea of Bridge is to simplify the global payment process, reduce transaction costs, and eliminate the delays and complexities in the traditional financial system through blockchain technology and stablecoins.

Bridge network integrates different stablecoins into its payment platform, provides seamless fiat-to-stablecoin conversion, facilitates the transfer of different stablecoins between blockchains, and allows users to transfer value instantly around the world. This not only makes it easy for individuals and businesses to conduct cross-border transactions, but also provides a new option for those who have difficulty accessing financial services in the traditional banking system. Bridge has processed more than $5 billion in annualized payment volume and has worked with high-end customers such as Elon Musk's SpaceX to help it collect payments in different regions and currencies and transfer funds to its global treasury through stablecoins.

Digital Asset Management/Payment The rest of the financing includes:

On August 29, the crypto trading application Neverless completed a $6.7 million Pre-Seed round of financing. Launched by three former Revolut executives, Neverless is an app that allows commission-free crypto trading and the ability to invest in an automated investment account that promises to earn high returns. A few months ago, the company registered as a VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) with the Central Bank of Spain.

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On August 28, The Block reported that Lemniscap, a venture capital firm focusing on cryptocurrency, has raised a new fund of $70 million to invest in early-stage startups. The fund is managed by Accolade Partners, a parent fund based in the United States. Roderik van der Graaf, founder and managing partner of Lemniscap, said that the new fund's main focus areas include zero-knowledge infrastructure, consumer applications, the Bitcoin ecosystem, security and decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN). The average check size of each investment in the fund is between $1 million and $2 million, and it is expected to be fully invested within two years.

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Web3+AI

A total of 2 financings were raised in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of over US$4.9 million, accounting for 2.25% of the total financing last week. Including:

On August 27, Web3 AI immersive companion development company Nectar AI announced the completion of a $3.9 million financing, led by Mechanism Capital and Karatage, with participation from Synergis, Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes), Builder Capital, Baboon and Decima, as well as Dao5 co-founders Tekin Salimi and George Lambeth, YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon and other crypto industry insiders. Nectar AI uses generative AI and Web3 fusion to build multimodal AI partners. Creators have full IP ownership of assets and can also perform permissionless monetization. The company plans to release an on-chain artificial intelligence agent protocol by the end of the year.

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On August 30, Adot, a decentralized artificial intelligence search engine company founded by former engineers from Google's core team, recently received a strategic investment from Aptos, with the specific amount not disclosed. It is reported that Adot has raised a total of US$6 million in previous rounds of financing. Investors in early rounds include gumi Cryptos Capital, Hash Global, SevenX Ventures, Mask Network, MixMarvel, Xin Family and VarCapital.

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Other financing

There were 2 other financings with a total amount of US$2 million, accounting for 0.92% of the total financing last week. Including:

On August 28, Web3 developer experience platform Katara AI Inc. announced the completion of a $2.2 million seed round of financing, led by Diagram Ventures and Sparkle Ventures, with participation from StreamingFast and several angel investors. So far, the company's total financing has reached $2.6 million. The new financing will be used to expand Web2 company business outside of the Web3 customer base. This platform can be deployed on platforms such as Discord, Telegram, Slack, and has been integrated into Web3 protocols and projects such as Avail Protocol, Hivemapper, and Filecoin. (Silicon Angle)

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