According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 19, which was the same as before, with a total amount of approximately US$263.25 million and an average financing amount of US$13.8553 million. Among them, DeFi occupies the majority, with relatively more infrastructure, less GameFi, and no NFT and digital asset management. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:
Infrastructure, Metaverse/GameFi, Financing in other fields, Digital asset management/payment, NFT/digital fashion, DeFi, Social/creator economy, Web3.0+AI
Metaverse/GameFi
There was a total of 1 financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field, with a total amount of US$3 million, accounting for 1.14% of the total financing last week.
MagicBlock
On September 18, according to official news, MagicBlock, the high-performance engine for Solana ecosystem games and applications, announced the completion of a $3 million pre-seed round of financing, with a16z CSX and others participating in the investment.
It is reported that MagicBlock is a high-performance engine based on Solana, which uses Solana's high throughput and low latency to build a large number of new types of open, decentralized chain games and applications. Developers can delegate the account of any existing Solana smart contract to the MagicBlock engine to achieve faster performance, customizable runtime and/or dedicated block space.
It provides developer-friendly tools and APIs, supports multiple programming languages, and has built-in NFT asset management functions to facilitate the development and trading of virtual assets. MagicBlock also has cross-chain compatibility and scalability, and can support a large number of users to interact online at the same time. Through its security and built-in token economic system, developers can build complex game economies and decentralized applications to promote innovation in Web3 games and applications.
DeFi
There were a total of 7 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount of over 19.35 million US dollars, accounting for 7.35% of the total financing last week.
0xAstra
On September 17, according to official news, 0xAstra, an innovative protocol for the aggregation of gamified full-chain liquidity, announced the successful completion of a $3 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was participated in by many well-known investment institutions and leading projects such as Ace Redpoint, Animoca Brands, Folius Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Orbiter and Ultiverse.
0xAstra uses a unique gamification strategy to energize full-chain liquidity and stimulate on-chain interaction. With deep cooperation with leading blockchain ecosystems, 0xAstra provides a richer and smoother cross-chain trading experience, pushing the potential of liquidity aggregation and re-staking to a new level. Since its launch, 0xAstra has connected to dozens of mainstream L1 and L2 networks, and in just over two months, the platform's cumulative trading volume has exceeded US$90 million.
The 0xAstra team is composed of senior experts in the fields of cryptocurrency, games, and the Internet. They have successfully launched a number of game products with over one million users and millions of dollars in revenue. Through this round of financing, 0xAstra hopes to lead a new round of innovation in the DeFi field and create a more dynamic and interactive decentralized financial ecosystem for global users.
DEX LogX
On September 17, the on-chain perpetual DEX LogX announced the completion of a US$4 million strategic round of financing, bringing its total financing amount to US$10.1 million. Hashed Emergent, Cumberland VC, Saison Capital, Gate Labs, DWF Labs, Antler, Coinswitch Ventures, Wagmi Ventures, Kairos Capital and others participated in the investment.
LogX is a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform (DEX) that focuses on providing users with unmediated on-chain derivatives trading services. By using decentralized finance (DeFi) technology, LogX achieves efficient liquidity aggregation and supports users to conduct trustless and transparent perpetual contract transactions. The platform uses smart contracts to ensure transaction security and avoid the risks of traditional exchanges, while allowing users to directly participate in the highly leveraged derivatives market on the chain. LogX also provides real-time market data and a user-friendly interface, aiming to provide traders in the DeFi ecosystem with a convenient and efficient trading experience.
Yellow Network
On September 17, Cointelegraph reported that the decentralized clearing network Yellow Network completed a $10 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, and Consensys, GSR, NxGen, MV Global, Gate Labs, ZBS Capital, Moonrock Capital, Math, Cobo, NOIA Capital and LD Capital participated.
Yellow Network is a new decentralized clearing network. Through its innovative protocol design, Yellow Network solves the delay and high cost problems in blockchain transactions and improves the overall clearing speed and liquidity. It focuses on providing fast and secure transaction settlement services for decentralized finance (DeFi) and crypto trading platforms. The network uses distributed technology to ensure the transparency and security of the clearing process and supports cross-chain transactions of multiple crypto assets. Yellow Network is committed to becoming a key infrastructure in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and promoting efficient and low-cost transaction clearing processes.
The rest of DeFi funding includes:
On September 13, according to official news, the derivatives trading platform Derive (formerly Lyra) announced the completion of its angel round of financing, with participation from DCFGOD, EtherFi co-founder Rok Kopp, SPREEK and others.
Derive is a decentralized cryptocurrency options and perpetual contracts trading platform that supports financial applications and products for a variety of integrators, traders, and institutions, aiming to make its protocols and infrastructure accessible, paving the way for the next wave of on-chain innovation and breakthroughs.
On September 13, the liquidity re-staking platform Eigenpie announced that it had received strategic investment and completed its seed round of financing. The specific amount has not been disclosed yet. Arbitrum Foundation, Robot Ventures, PancakeSwap, Relayer Capital, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen, Frax Finance founder Sam Kazemian, Zircuit co-founder Angel Xu and others participated in the investment.
On September 12, according to official news, the Solana ecosystem DeFi project Carrot announced the completion of a US$600,000 Pre-Seed round of financing, with BOOGLE, TraderKoz, Iced and others participating in the investment.
According to reports, Carrot helps users earn high returns on stablecoins in an automated manner. Carrot uses a single yield token to simplify investment and continuously monitors and optimizes yield opportunities in Solana lending platforms such as Kamino, MarginFi, etc.
On September 12, BTA Protocol, a DeFi protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem, announced the completion of a US$1.75 million Series A+ financing round. This round of financing was led by Crypto Labs, with participation from Cityblok, BlackBridge and others.
BTA Protocol provides applications such as staking, liquidity, RSP, Launchpool and lending.
Social/Creator Economy
There were 2 financings in the social/creator economy sector, with a total amount of over 2 million US dollars, accounting for 20.13% of the total financing last week.
Tune.FM
On September 12, according to Cointelegraph, Tune.FM, a Web3 music platform based on Hedera, completed a US$50 million financing, with Global Emerging Markets participating in the investment.
The new investment will be used to provide liquidity for the protocol’s JAM token, which is used within the platform to reward artists and users. Tune.fm’s previous investors include LDA Capital, Alpha Token Capital, Block Alpha, Animoca Brands, HBAR Foundation, and GDA Capital.
The platform provides a music streaming service with an integrated NFT market. It enables artists to directly publish music and earn instant income through JAM tokens, eliminating the middlemen of traditional music platforms, while users can earn tokens by discovering and listening to newly promoted songs, aiming to provide a decentralized music experience for artists and fans. By using blockchain technology, the platform uses Hedera's efficient and low-cost network to ensure smooth micropayments and royalty distribution. Tune.FM promotes the development of the music creator economy and brings a fairer and more transparent revenue model to the global music market.
Other social/creator economy financing includes:
On September 17, Coindesk reported that the prediction market Limitless Labs completed a $3 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by 1confirmation, with participation from Paper Ventures, Collider and Public Works. The company built a prediction market on the Layer 2 network Base created by Coinbase (COIN).
Infrastructure
There were 5 financings in the infrastructure sector with a total amount of over US$20.9 million, accounting for 7.94% of the total financing last week.
Fermah
On September 17, The Block reported that Fermah, a developer of the universal proof generation layer, completed a $5.2 million seed round of financing, led by a16z's CSX and Lemniscap, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Longhash Ventures, P-OPS team, Public Works, ZK Validator, Lambda Class, Daedalus, Zero DAO, Velocity Capital, Daemon Ventures, and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal.
Fermah is a developer focused on the universal proof generation layer, dedicated to providing efficient proof generation solutions for the blockchain ecosystem. Through its innovative technology, Fermah is able to generate zero-knowledge proofs (ZK Proofs) to ensure data privacy and transaction security while improving the efficiency of on-chain operations. Its solutions are widely used in privacy protection, decentralized applications, and DeFi protocols, helping users and developers verify transactions and data while maintaining privacy. As part of the blockchain infrastructure, Fermah promotes the development of privacy and scalability of decentralized networks.
Pipe Network
On September 16, CoinDesk reported that Pipe Network, an Internet infrastructure network that supports crypto incentives, completed a $10 million financing round led by Multicoin Capital.
David Rhodus, CEO of Permissionless Labs, a startup that built Pipe Network, said that in the conception, people can quickly expand CDN nodes where they are most needed by lending existing computing power. Their computers will help end users access cached content that may be difficult to deliver quickly because it is far away from the hosting server.
Pipe Network is a network focused on Internet infrastructure, aiming to improve the efficiency and security of data transmission through decentralized technology. It solves the centralization problem of the traditional Internet through a distributed network architecture, providing higher privacy and anti-censorship capabilities. Pipe Network supports the interoperability of multiple blockchains and decentralized applications (dApps), helping users and developers build a more secure and efficient Internet infrastructure. Its vision is to provide an open, scalable and efficient decentralized data transmission network for users around the world. Pipe Network will be built on the Solana network and plans to launch a test network at the Breakpoint conference in Singapore.
The remaining infrastructure financing includes:
On September 16, The Block reported that Layer 2 protocol RISE Chain completed a $3.2 million seed round of financing, led by Finality Capital, with participation from Orange DAO, DACM, ether.fi Ventures, P2 Ventures, MH Ventures, Public Works, Vitalik Buterin, Stani Kulechov, Anthony Sassano (also known as sassal.eth), DCF God and others.
It is reported that RISE Chain aims to open a new generation of Gigagas applications. The RISE technology stack provides a throughput of more than 1 billion gas per second, which can achieve this breakthrough through step-by-step technical improvements, solving execution and state access problems, including pevm-the fastest public EVM execution engine, continuous execution, versioned Merkle tree and RiseDB.
On September 16, CoinDesk reported that T1 Protocol, a Layer 2 blockchain protocol designed to solve the challenges of Ethereum rollup fragmentation and composability, completed its Pre-Seed round of financing. a16z Crypto, BreedVC, Benedikt Bünz, Sam Kazemian, Amir Bandeali, Eric Chan, Kartik Talwar, Kubi Mensah, Meltem Demirors and others participated in the investment. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed yet.
On September 15, Gradient Network, the open layer of edge computing in the Solana ecosystem, completed a new round of financing. The specific amount has not been disclosed yet. This round of financing was participated by Multicoin Capital, Pantera Capital and Sequoia Capital.
Gradient Network's vision is to make computing services accessible to everyone, easily accessible to everyone, and affordable. We firmly believe that edge computing will lead this transformation. Among the emerging use cases, AI reasoning, content delivery, and serverless functions stand out and are expected to shape the future of computing consumption.
On September 11, according to Chainwire, the blockchain interoperability protocol Hyperbridge completed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, led by Web3 Foundation and Scytale.
Hyperbridge, a cross-chain interoperability solution, has also secured a parachain slot in the Polkadot ecosystem, reinforcing its commitment to deep integration and leveraging Polkadot’s unique strengths.
Web3+AI
There were 3 financings in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of over 155 million US dollars, accounting for 58.88% of the total financing last week. Including:
Grass Network
On September 14, people familiar with the matter disclosed to BlockBeats that Grass Network, an AI and data project, completed a new round of financing, led by Hack VC, with participation from Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Lattice and Brevan Howard Digital. The amount of financing has not yet been disclosed, but people familiar with the matter said that the new round of financing has brought Grass's valuation to nearly $1 billion. BlockBeats previously reported that Grass completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing in December last year, led by Polychain Capital and Tribe Capital.
Grass aims to redefine the incentive structure of the Internet by allowing users to share unused Internet bandwidth resources. Today, the network has more than 2 million users running nodes, crawling a large amount of data for AI models. Grass's infrastructure also gives the team an advantage in building the first user-owned Internet-scale web crawler. Currently, only two companies in the world (Google and Bing) have the ability to crawl the entire Internet, and this ability is the backbone of their trillion-dollar businesses. Grass's goal is to replace them and build the first user-owned full-Internet knowledge graph.
Poolside
On September 13, people familiar with the matter revealed that Poolside, a startup developing artificial intelligence writing software, is in talks for a new round of financing, which will give it a valuation of $3 billion before the release of its initial product. People familiar with the matter said that the company will raise nearly $500 million. Poolside's existing investor Bain Capital Ventures is in talks to lead the investment round. Poolside and Bain Capital Ventures declined to comment.
Poolside was founded in early 2023 by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant. The startup moved to France last year after raising $126 million in seed funding. In addition, two other Paris startups, Mistral AI and H, have also received significant funding to create generative AI models.
Poolside is a startup company that focuses on developing artificial intelligence software and is committed to using AI technology to simplify code writing and software development processes. Its AI writing tools can automatically generate high-quality code, helping developers improve productivity and reduce development time. Poolside's technology is particularly suitable for rapid prototyping and code optimization, solving efficiency bottlenecks in traditional software development. By combining machine learning and natural language processing, Poolside is driving innovation in the field of software development, aiming to make programming more intelligent and automated.
Other funding for Web3+AI includes:
On September 11, Coindesk reported that Cudis, a wearable device developer based on Solana, completed a $5 million financing round led by Draper Associates. The team said that this investment will increase the production of its ring products to 1 million, posing a challenge to existing companies such as Oura.
It is reported that the CUDIS ring uses the Solana blockchain to protect biometric data, provides gamified health challenges, and is equipped with a personalized AI coach that provides actionable insights and rewards for healthy behaviors.
Other financing
There was one other financing, with a total amount of US$12 million, accounting for 4.56% of the total financing last week. Including:
Fuse
On September 13, according to official news, renewable energy company Fuse announced the completion of a US$12 million strategic financing, led by Multicoin Capital and participated by Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and others.
Fuse is a renewable energy company that focuses on providing clean energy solutions to the world through innovative technologies. The company is committed to developing and deploying green energy projects, such as solar and wind power, to help reduce carbon emissions and promote sustainable development. Fuse also uses blockchain technology to optimize energy transactions and management, and improve the transparency and efficiency of energy use. By promoting the application of renewable energy, Fuse is committed to providing environmentally friendly energy options for the future and helping businesses and individuals use green energy more efficiently.
Fuse plans to use the funds to launch Project Zero, a decentralized renewable energy physical infrastructure network. Currently, Fuse operates utility-scale solar and wind power plants, has distributed energy resources (DER) installations, power trading and power retail businesses, and serves tens of thousands of households as a regulated electricity supplier in the UK.
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