Author: Nancy, PANews
After the large-scale conflict between Palestine and Israel, many Web3 projects headquartered in Israel have attracted industry attention, and related concept tokens have also begun to rise significantly. As a recognized technological power in the world, Israel is a small country, but its encryption technology has become a force that cannot be underestimated. In this article, PANews will take stock of Israeli Web3 projects that have issued tokens, covering Layer2, DeFi, Layer1, NFT, games and many other fields, among which StarkWare is valued at up to US$8 billion.
Infrastructure
Layer2 developer StarkWare (STARK, not yet launched)
StarkWare, an Ethereum Layer2 developer based in Netanya, Israel, was co-founded in 2018 by Professor Eli Ben-Sasson of the Israel Institute of Technology. It provides zero-knowledge proof technology based on STARK to improve the scalability, security and privacy of blockchain. StarkWare has developed two Ethereum expansion solutions based on STARK: StarkEx and StarkNet.
In September this year, StarkWare announced the StarkNet token economic model. The maximum supply of STRK is 10 billion, 7% is allocated to investors, 32.9% is allocated to core contributors, and 50.1% is donated by StarkWare to the foundation. Among them, 8.1% of the tokens have not yet been determined for use, and the specific method is determined by the community. According to the latest news, STRK may usher in the first unlocking on November 29. After a new round of large-scale conflict broke out between Palestine and Israel, some community members asked about the safety of the project and the token airdrop in the community.
So far, StarkWare has received a total of US$273 million in seven rounds of financing, with a valuation of US$8 billion. In January 2018, StarkWare completed a US$6 million seed round of financing, with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Pantera Capital, Paradigm and Naval Ravikant participating in the investment; in July of the same year, StarkWare received a US$12 million grant from the Ethereum Foundation; in October of the same year, StarkWare completed a US$30 million Series A financing with participation from Intel Investment and Sequoia Capital; in March 2021, StarkWare completed a US$75 million Series B financing led by Paradigm, and in November of the same year, completed a US$50 million Series C financing led by Sequoia Capital, with other investors including Paradigm, Alameda Research and Three Arrows Capital; in May 2022, StarkWare completed a US$100 million Series D financing, with Greenoaks Capital and Coatue leading the investment, and Tiger Global participating.
Blockchain IaaS platform Orbs (ORBS)
Current circulating market value: $81.946 million
Orbs is an Israeli blockchain IaaS platform that provides infrastructure for large-scale applications. Its product is positioned as an "independent execution layer between Layer1/Layer2 solutions and the application layer" and is committed to building a decentralized public platform to help the software application industry achieve blockchain technology transformation.
Orbs' president Daniel Peled is the co-founder and CEO of Israeli fintech startup PayKey. He is also a senior member of the Israeli Bitcoin community. Partner Uriel Peled is the former team leader of Israeli high-tech company Mellanox. The VR startup Visualead he founded was acquired by Alibaba. In May 2018, Orbs announced that it had received $118 million in financing from 21M Capital, Kakao Ventures, Nexus One and others. In March this year, Orbs announced plans to raise $10 million from venture capital firm DWF Labs.
Crypto payment infrastructure Fuse (FUSE)
Current circulating market value: $9.192 million
Fuse is an Ethereum-based, plug-and-play, mobile-centric crypto payment infrastructure that provides fast and powerful low-cost plug-and-play, and can also provide a platform for stablecoin issuance and management. In response to the scalability issues of the public chain, Fuse Network launched the Flutter Layer 2 Payments (FL2P) expansion solution, and FL2P is also an SDK that supports developers to integrate ZK aggregation directly into mobile crypto wallet software. As of October 10, Fuse's official website shows that it has completed more than 128 million transactions and has more than 100 ecological partners. As of October 10, Fuse's official website shows that it has completed more than 128 million transactions and has more than 100 ecological partners. In addition, Fuse CEO Mark Smargon founded Israel's first Bitcoin exchange.
In May 2022, Fuse completed US$5 million in financing, with investors including Aleph, Black Edge Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund, Collider Ventures and Tectona Digital Assets.
DApp application platform ChromaWay (CHR)
Current circulation: $51.842 million
Chromia is an innovative cross-functional blockchain-based platform created by the Swedish company Chromaway, which provides developers with easy-to-use scenarios for easily scalable decentralized applications (dApps). The team is located in Israel, Sweden and Ukraine. In January 2022, ChromaWay announced that it had received $10 million in financing from CSP DAO, GEM Capital, Insignius Capital and MiH Ventures.
Layer1
Privacy public chain Secret Network (SCRT)
Current circulating market value: US$53.751 million
Secret Network is a privacy-preserving smart contract public chain built on the Cosmos technology architecture. It is also the first blockchain with privacy-preserving smart contracts. It originated from a project called Enigma at MIT.
In 2017, Secret Network raised US$45 million through IC0; in 2021, Secret Network completed a US$11.5 million seed round of financing led by Arrington Capital and Blocktower Capital; in early 2022, Secret Network announced that it had obtained US$400 million in ecosystem funds, and investors included DeFiance Capital, Alameda Research, CoinFund, HashKey, etc.
Spacemesh (SMH, not yet launched)
Israel-based Spacemesh is a fair and distributed Blockmesh operating system powered by a unique space-time consensus protocol, designed to achieve a highly decentralized, high-throughput, and highly secure blockchain network. In July 2023, Spacemesh announced that the mainnet was up and running, and after the mainnet is launched, any user with a standard consumer-grade PC can mine and earn Smesh coins. It should be noted that Spacemesh has not yet been listed on mainstream exchanges.
In May 2018, Spacemesh announced that it had received $3 million in seed round financing from Iangels, Sinopac Bancorp, BRM Capital and others; in September of the same year, Spacemesh completed a $15 million Series A financing led by Polychain, with participation from MetaStable, Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, Bain Capital and 1kx. In December 2021, Spacemesh again received $4 million in new financing from investors including Leland Ventures.
Privacy Project Beam (BEAM)
Current circulating market value: $3.723 million
Beam is a privacy coin project developed based on the MimbleWimble protocol. Unlike Monero, Zcash, etc., MimbleWimble coins enforce privacy at the protocol level instead of adding a layer on top of the original blockchain to achieve privacy.
In February 2019, Beam completed a US$5 million financing round invested by Recruit Strategic Partners; in May 2021, Beam completed a US$2 million financing round with participation from Collider Ventures, Altonomy, LionsChain and Alternity Capital.
DeFi
DEX Bancor (BNT)
Current circulating market value: US$76.267 million
Bancor was launched in 2017 by the Bprotocol Foundation, which was founded by a group of Israelis with Silicon Valley entrepreneurial backgrounds. It is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, and operates a research and development center in Tel Aviv, Israel. In June 2017, Bancor raised $153 million worth of ETH through IC0.
Bancor is a DEX based on Ethereum that allows the creation of liquidity pools to trade assets. It is designed to execute algorithmic token trading and on-chain liquidity pooling smart contracts. Bancor is also the first project to adopt AMM, but due to centralization and security issues, it has been overtaken by Uniswap and other latecomers. According to DefiLlama data, as of October 10, Bancor's total locked value (TVL) was approximately US$68.6 million, down approximately 97.2% from its peak of US$2.4 billion.
On-chain service tool Dot Finance (PINK, not yet launched)
Dot Finance was originally a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol based on BSC. It announced its migration to the Polkadot parachain Moonbeam in January 2022, providing users with access tools for a wide range of smart contract services. These tools are built on the fast, secure and resilient Polkadot platform, including various on-chain services. PINk has not yet been listed on mainstream exchanges.
Liquidity Protocol B.Protocol (BPRO)
Current circulating market value: $3.027 million
B.Protocol is a liquidity support protocol designed to better handle liquidations on DeFi lending platforms, allowing the DeFi ecosystem to safely and stably expand to the CeFi level. Its creator, Yaron Velner, was the CTO of Kyber Network and co-designer of the WBTC protocol.
In December 2021, B.Protocol announced the completion of a $2.2 million seed round of financing led by 1kx, with participation from Robot Ventures, Spartan Group, Primitive Ventures, and Angel DAO.
DeFi Platform Voltage Finance (VOLT)
Current circulating market value: $307,000
Voltage Finance is a decentralized financial platform based on the Fuse network founded in 2019. The platform launched Voltage DAO and Volt (VOLT) governance tokens. In February 2022, Voltage Finance completed a $3.4 million financing, with investors including Spark Capital, TRGC, Collider Ventures, GBV Capital and Tectona. A month later, Voltage Finance was hacked and about $4 million was stolen.
other
Web3 education platform Open Campus (EDU)
Current circulating market value: US$77.142 million
Open Campus is a Web3 chain version of the education platform TinyTap, a user-generated content (UGC) technology startup headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, which was acquired by venture capital firm Animoca Brands in June 2022.
Open Campus is a Web3 education protocol platform that combines blockchain technology, aiming to create a fairer and more inclusive ecosystem for learners, educators, content creators, etc., providing them with more access to resources, new compensation opportunities, and true ownership of educational content, shaping a new education paradigm defined by the community. Open Campus is Binance's 31st Launchpad project and raised $6 million in a private token sale in 2022.
Crypto exchange INX Limited (INX)
Current Circulation: $62.2 million
INX Limited is an Israeli private company registered in Gibraltar and founded in 2017. In 2019, INX Limited plans to raise $129.5 million through an IPO, the first security token transaction registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
P2E GameKryptomon (KMON)
Current circulating market value: $5.402 million
Kryptomon is a P2E game that combines NFTs. Inspired by classic games such as Pokemon and Tamagotchi, players can find and cast NFTs in the real world through the "Full Moon Treasure Hunt Game" to the blockchain. Kryptomon has set NFT blind box sales records twice on the Binance platform and achieved $13 million worth of on-chain NFT transactions in 5 months.
In August 2021, Kryptomon raised approximately US$1.2 million through IC0; in May 2022, Kryptomon announced the completion of a US$10 million financing round led by NFX, and other investors included PLAYSTUDIOS, Griffin Gaming Partners, Tal Ventures and former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.
NFT platform NFTrade (NFTD)
Current circulating market value: $582,000
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, NFTrade is a decentralized cross-chain NFT platform that allows anyone to easily and seamlessly create, buy, sell, trade and earn NFTs, creating a one-stop shop for all NFT-based operations.
In September 2021, it completed a US$3.7 million seed round of financing with the participation of SparkPoint, Magnus Capital, AU21 Capital and Autonomy Capital; in March 2022, BNB Chain Fund announced the strategic acquisition of NFTrade's utility and governance token NFTD.
Crypto app store Magic Square (SQR, not yet online)
Magic Square is a multi-chain, community-driven crypto app store that combines the functions of Web2 app store and Web3's DAO mechanism. Through the community's review mechanism, it helps users more easily access high-quality crypto products, including various applications, CeFi and DeFi, NFTs, games and other services.
In February 2021, Magic Square completed US$1 million in Pre-Seed financing; in July 2022, Magic Square completed a US$3 million seed round of financing led by Binance Labs and Republic, with participation from KuCoin Labs, GSR, IQ Protocol, Gravity Ventures and Alpha Grep, and in September of the same year, it completed US$1 million in financing with a valuation of US$74 million.