Financing Weekly | 22 public financing events; Web3 music company Sound completed $20 million in Series A financing, and a16z crypto participated in the investment

Highlights of this issue

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, last week (July 10-July 16) there were 22 investment and financing events in the global blockchain, with a total fund size of nearly 100 million US dollars, a significant increase compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:

• DeFi announced 5 investment and financing events, Liquid Collective developer Alluviall completed $12 million in Series A financing, led by Ethereal Ventures and iant;
• NFT and Metaverse fields announced 3 financing, and Florida Street, the developer of the NFT lending agreement Gondi, completed a $5.3 million seed round of financing;
• Chain Game Track Announcement** 1** investment and financing: MetaCene, a blockchain-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Hash Global and SevenX Ventures;
• Infrastructure and Tools The track announced 8 financing, among which the blockchain infrastructure startup Artela has raised more than $6 million in seed round financing, led by Shima Capital;
• Other Web3/encryption-related projects announced 5 financings, among which LunarCrush, a cryptocurrency investment decision-making platform, completed a $5 million A round of financing, co-led by Draper Round Table and INCE Capital;
• Centralized finance has not announced financing events.


DeFi

Alluvial, a developer of institutional-grade liquidity staking protocol, completed a $12 million Series A financing, co-led by Ethereal Ventures and iant

Alluviall, the developer of institutional-grade liquidity staking agreement Liquid Collective, has completed a $12 million Series A financing, co-led by Ethereal Ventures and iant, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, Coinbase Ventures, Kraken, Fidelity’s Avon Ventures, and IOSG Ventures. Alluviall is a company incorporated in Delaware and Liquid Collective Foundation is registered in the Cayman Islands. The team is spread across the US, Europe and Dubai. Alluvial plans to use the funds to expand the team to continue product development and expand staking services to other blockchain networks.

Trading platform Ambient Finance completes $6.5 million in seed round financing led by BlockTower Capital

Decentralized trading platform Ambient Finance completes $6.5 million seed round led by BlockTower Capital, with participation from Jane Street, Circle, Tensai Capital, Naval, Yunt Capital, Susa Ventures, Quantstamp and Hypotenuse Labs, as well as angel investor Ribbon Finance co-founder Julian, The Block researcher Steven, etc. Funds raised will support team growth and R&D to create a sustainable decentralized marketplace.

Derivatives trading platform KTX.Finance completes USD 4 million in seed round financing, led by Hashed

Singapore-based KTX.Finance, a decentralized derivatives platform on BNB Chain, completed a $4 million seed round of financing led by Hashed, with participation from AlphaLab Capital, CRIT Ventures, 100&100 Ventures, Trinito Corporation / Morpheus, GSG Asset, KuCoin Ventures, and Sky9 Capital. KTX.Finance utilizes a unique multi-asset liquidity pool. It enables traders to trade against the KLP Pool, a multi-asset liquidity pool comprised of 50% stablecoins and 50% blue-chip cryptoassets such as BTC, ETH, BNB.

Staker liquidity release protocol Ion Protocol raises $2 million led by SevenX Ventures and Portal Ventures

Ion Protocol, a liquidity release agreement for pledgers, announced the completion of a $2 million seed round of financing, co-led by SevenX Ventures and Portal Ventures, with participation from Foresight X, Bankless Ventures, Maelstrom Fund, Alexander, Anthony Sassano (sassal .eth) and Syncracy Capital co-founder Ryan Watkins, among others.

OKX Ventures announces investment in Arbitrum-based on-chain derivative DEX Aark Digital

OKX Ventures announced its investment in Arbitrum-based on-chain derivative DEX Aark Digital. Aark is a next-generation GMX-style perp DEX built for professional traders.

NFT & Metaverse

The developer of NFT lending agreement Gondi completed a seed round of financing of 5.3 million US dollars, led by Hack.vc

Florida Street, the developer of the NFT lending agreement Gondi, completed a $5.3 million seed round of financing, co-led by Hack.vc’s Alex Pack and Foundation Capital’s Rodolfo Gonzalez, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Pantera Capital, and 6th Man Ventures. Gondi has been launched a few days ago. Lenders can sell their NFT at a fixed interest rate on the platform, and borrowers can use NFT as collateral or for NFT-based financial applications. Borrowers only need to pay interest according to the outstanding loan period. In addition, borrowers enjoy instant refinancing, ensuring they always receive the best loan terms even after the loan is originated.

NFT ticketing solution GET Protocol completed a $4.5 million seed round of financing

Amsterdam-based NFT ticketing solution GET Protocol completed a $4.5 million seed round led by Flow Ventures, with participation from individual investors including Animoca Brands, Redbeard Ventures, Funfair Ventures and The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget. The funding also comes with a new agreement between Get and the Tezos Foundation, through which Get will offer NFT ticketing services to Tezos’ partners. This will be achieved by fully integrating Get Protocol’s NFT ticketing facility on Tezos’ upcoming EVM network upgrade. Tezos will also be the company’s default blockchain.

Metaverse brand marketing company Karta completes $1.1 million in seed round financing led by GameTech Ventures

Metaverse brand marketing company Karta announced the completion of a $1.1 million seed round of financing, led by GameTech Ventures, Amy Thomson, former executive of Toikido, Sports Loft, Hipgnosis, Charlie Greenwood, CEO of Sports Loft, Robert Wigley, chairman of UK Finance, founder of Powster Founder and CEO SteThompson and BigIdeas Group participated in the round. It is understood that Karta, headquartered in London, England, was founded in 2021. It provides metaverse marketing services for brands and bands on platforms such as Roblox, Fortnite and Decentraland. The company has worked with brands including Unilever, Amazon Music, and the House of McDonald’s to create advertising and marketing opportunities in Metaverse projects.

Chain Games

Chain game MetaCene completes USD 5 million seed round financing, co-led by SevenX Ventures and Hash Global

Blockchain-based MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) MetaCene completes USD 5 million seed round financing, led by Hash Global and SevenX Ventures, WeMade, Emurgo, MixMarvel DAO Ventures, Sinovation Ventures (Innovation Works) and LK Ventures, etc. Participate in voting. MetaCene is making a blockchain-based game featuring a surreal post-apocalyptic world where players can leverage various NFTs to redefine gaming civilization. It envisions a multi-chain future for the Rangers Protocol, with real-time confirmations and ultra-low gas fees. The MetaCene Apostle NFT series and Alpha version have been launched in the second quarter of 2023.

Infrastructure & Tools

Blockchain infrastructure startup Artela completes $6 million in seed round financing led by Shima Capital

Blockchain infrastructure startup Artela has raised more than $6 million in seed round financing led by Shima Capital, with participation from A&T Capital, Big Brain Holdings, SevenX Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Amino Capital and others. Artela has an extension layer that allows adding user-defined native extensions called aspects, which enhance programmability while ensuring compatibility with existing smart contracts. Artela plans to release the Aspect white paper and launch an initial testnet later this year.

Privacy solution Silent Protocol completes $5 million financing, led by Sora Ventures

Silent Protocol, a privacy solution launched by researchers at TÜBİTAK BİLGEM, a leading technology and science center in Turkey, closed a $5 million funding round led by Sora Ventures. According to reports, Silent Protocol’s main focus is to develop a scalable privacy layer for existing applications, thereby eliminating the need to exchange liquidity from existing pools. The goal is to facilitate their cooperation with traditional institutions by building a security layer for their applications that complies with EU MiCA (Markets in Cryptoassets) regulations. Silent Protocol is poised to play a major role in institutions transitioning to the Web3 space, providing a critical layer of data privacy.

Encryption security company Olympix completes $4.3 million seed round financing, led by Boldstart Ventures

Crypto-focused cybersecurity software company Olympix has raised a $4.3 million seed round led by Boldstart Ventures, with participation from Robot Ventures, Shrug Capital, Blockdaemon’s Konstantin Richter and Gauntlet Networks’ Tarun Chitra. Olympix is working on building an encrypted cybersecurity stack with AI-powered tools and is currently in alpha testing.

Start-up company Narval completes $4 million in seed round financing, led by BlockTower VC

French startup Narval has raised a $4 million seed round led by BlockTower VC, with participation from a16z (via its Crypto Startup School), Fabric Ventures, Cherry Crypto, Motier Ventures, First Capital and Bpifrance, among others. The company is building what it calls a “web3 wallet usage platform,” which Narval hopes will give organizations a more secure way to interact with digital assets. Narval’s governance layer comes in the form of an API designed to provide financial managers with a safer way to navigate DeFi and NFTs.

Giza completes USD 3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by CoinFund

Giza, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for smart contracts and web3 protocols, closed a $3 million Pre-Seed round led by CoinFund, a leading cryptocurrency investment firm and registered investment advisor, Arrington Capital, StarkWare and TA Ventures and Famous angel investors Rand Hindi and Julien Bouteloup are involved. The platform will support web3 and AI developers to integrate machine learning into smart contracts and decentralized protocols.

Automated customer support company AwesomeQA completes $2.8 million in seed round

Automated customer support company AwesomeQA has completed a $2.8 million seed round led by cryptocurrency-focused investment firm North Island Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Uniswap Labs Ventures.

AwesomeQA, whose automated customer support service plans to use artificial intelligence to automatically answer user questions in Discord and Telegram channels, will use the new funding to expand its team and improve its custom-trained artificial intelligence models. It also provides customer support for more than 60 web3 companies, including AAVE, Dune, and Scroll, among others.

The network hardware infrastructure GEODNET completed a financing of 1.5 million US dollars, IoTeX and others participated in the investment

GEODNET, a decentralized network hardware infrastructure company, completed a financing of US$1.5 million. Borderless Capital’s Web3 investment fund EdgeFi Fund, IoT blockchain IoTeX and a group of angel investors participated in the investment. It is reported that GEODNET positioning service provides reliable centimeter-level positioning accuracy for applications such as drones, robotic vehicles, augmented reality and Internet of Things/mobile devices. GEODNET is building a blockchain-based decentralized high-precision multi-band GNSS base station network, and provides GEOD token incentives based on the Polygon network to provide a reliable solution for real-time motion applications.

Crust Network, a decentralized storage network, received millions of dollars in investment from DWF Labs

The decentralized storage network Crust Network announced on Twitter that it has received millions of dollars in investment from DWF Labs. The new funds will allow Crust Network to further enhance its infrastructure and expand its business in the field of decentralized storage. In addition, Crust Network will launch the EVM storage service on July 17, providing decentralized storage solutions for EVM-based blockchains, and plans to use its new features to seamlessly extend the Crust storage protocol to the entire EVM ecosystem.

other

Web3 music company Sound completes $20 million in Series A financing, led by a16z crypto

Web3 music company Sound has raised $20 million in Series A funding from a16z crypto and other investors. Other investors include Palm Tree Crew, A Capital, Sound Ventures, Collab +Currency, Scalar Capital, Snoop Dogg, Ryan Tedder and Tay Keith. In addition to announcing the new funding, Sound also opened up its web3 minting tool. Sound allows artists to create and sell music in the form of NFTs. The platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain and deploys the ERC-721A token standard. Sound also added Optimism support last month to reduce gas fees and speed up transaction times. Users can purchase music with ETH or credit cards.

Encrypted currency investment decision-making platform LunarCrush completes US$5 million in Series A financing, co-led by Draper Round Table and INCE Capital

LunarCrush, a platform that helps users make cryptocurrency investment decisions based on social media trends, completes $5 million in Series A financing, co-led by Draper Round Table and INCE Capital, with participation from Draper Associates, WWVentures, TRGC, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Draper Goren Holm, Blockchain Founders Fund, Side Door Ventures, MoonPay, etc. Founded in 2018, Los Angeles-based LunarCrush initially collected social media data on digital assets, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and stocks to help users make trading decisions based on trends. LunarCrush is releasing a beta version of its social search tool this week.

Investment app Roi completes $3.6 million financing, led by Spark Capital

Investment application Roi completed a $3.6 million financing, led by Spark Capital, with participation from NBA star Durant’s venture capital firm 35 Ventures, Google’s Gradient Ventures, and angel investor Coinbase’s former chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan. Roi allows users to add stocks, bonds and retirement accounts to view in one place, and provides one-stop trading for users’ Robinhood, Coinbase, TD Ameritrade and WeBull accounts. In addition to traditional assets, Roi also provides users with an overview and granular data of all their cryptocurrency and NFT holdings.

NeoKe, a decentralized digital identity company, completed a financing of 1.3 million euros, with participation from Dreamcraft Ventures and others

NeoKe, a decentralized digital identity start-up, completed a financing of 1.3 million euros, with participation from Dreamcraft Ventures, ff Venture Capital, GHARAGE, and Plug & Play. The NeoKe platform uses blockchain and cloud technology to store and share verified user identification information, enabling travelers to fully understand and control their own data, and simplify the registration, guest verification, and access control of travel services by creating independent traveler profiles and data management processes. The company recently launched two core products: Neoke Wallet, a digital wallet that allows travelers to securely store and share their personal data at their discretion; and Neoke Connect, an identity management and automation platform for travel providers.

Nostr-based social app Primal completes $1 million in seed round financing, Hivemind Ventures participates

Primal, a Nostr-based social app, announced the completion of a $1 million seed round, with participation from Ten31, Hivemind Ventures and other funds. Primal’s suite of social apps combines a Twitter-like interface with the open-source Nostr protocol, which prioritizes censorship resistance, account ownership, and decentralization.