Written by: Shenchao TechFlow
According to data from RootData, between February 19 and February 25, 2 blockchain startups announced that they had raised US$238 million in funding.
Projects raising more than $5 million include:
MEV-resistant protocol Shutter raises $8.31 million through Liquidity Boot Pool (LBP);
Layer1 blockchain Flare completed US$35 million in private financing;
Ethereum capital flow protocol Superfluid completed US$5.1 million in strategic financing;
Crypto re-pledge service provider EigenLayer announced the completion of $100 million in financing;
Solana ecosystem developer platform Helius announced the completion of $9.5 million in Series A financing;
Crypto fantasy sports platform Monkey Tilt announces $21 million in funding;
Crystal Fun, a decentralized blockchain gaming ecosystem platform and studio, completed a US$5 million seed round of financing;
Web3 social protocol beoble announced the completion of a seed round of financing;
Modular blockchain project AltLayer completed a strategic round of financing of US$14.4 million.
Highlights
Shuffle
Introduction: Shuffle is a leading cryptocurrency casino and sports betting platform launched in February 2023. Since its launch, Shuffle has grown to over 35,000 users and 2.8 billion bets have been placed across a range of innovative products.
Investment institutions: Web3 entertainment platform Shuffle announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$2.5 million from Karatage, Cypher Capital, Sunforge (Robbie and James Ferguson), ODA Capital, Web3 Wizards, UpsideDAO, Parc Capital, Baboon VC, and Andrew Kang of Mechanism Capital Angel investors such as Tristan Yver of Backpack participated in the investment.
Features:
1 The airdrop snapshot was taken on February 1, 2024. 28% of the total SHFL tokens will be airdropped in three times.
2.Shuffle has announced key details of the ERC-20 token SHFL distribution plan, with a total supply of 1 billion and an initial supply of 71,126,984.56 SHFL. It is expected to conduct token generation and airdrop activities in the first week of March.
3. SHFL will be used as a betting asset and can be repurchased and destroyed. SHFL holders can use new features, exclusive bonuses, etc. in advance.
Helium
Introduction: Helius aims to help creators overcome challenges by providing an API (or application programming interface) to understand on-chain data and query transactions, as well as webhooks to support automation and bots, and RPC nodes that allow Solana applications to interact with the blockchain. these obstacles.
Investment institution: Solana ecological developer platform Helius announced the completion of a $9.5 million Series A round of financing, led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One and Propel.
Features:
1. Helius plans to provide universal compression for Solana next year, improve the state of on-chain RPC and create new RPC clients, and introduce thousands of Web2 developers and large institutions to Solana;
2. Helius was launched by former Coinbase software engineer and CEO Mert Mumtaz and former Amazon Web Services software engineers CTO Liam Vovk and COO Nicolas Pennie;
3.Helius provides:
Solana RPCs: Global data center with SLA up to 99.99%. Provide Geyser plug-in and 24/7 developer support;
Enhanced APIs and Indexers: Enhanced transaction APIs make Solana data easier to understand by providing rich, descriptive context;
Webhooks and Websockets: Allow real-time response to on-chain events, support more than 70 transaction types, and automate application interaction with the Solana blockchain. You can subscribe to different transaction types or account changes, and a Webhook can enter up to 100,000 addresses.
Superfluid
Introduction: Superfluid is an asset streaming protocol that brings subscriptions, wages, and rewards to DAOs and crypto-native businesses.
Investment institutions: Ethereum capital flow protocol Superfluid announced the completion of US$5.1 million in strategic financing. Fabric Ventures led the investment, and other companies such as Multicoin Capital, Circle Ventures, Safe Foundation, The LAO, Taavet+Sten participated in the investment.
Features:
1. Superfluid, launched in 2021, allows crypto projects (such as DAO) to pay recurring wages and rewards in a single on-chain transaction through its "super tokens." "Super tokens." enable the flow of currency between two parties;
2. Superfluid launches a “distribution pool” that allows funds to be distributed to multiple recipients, thereby enabling scalable streaming smart contracts;
3. Superfluid said it will be up to the community to decide whether to launch native tokens.
Inco
Introduction: Inco is a modular, interoperable layer 1 blockchain network dedicated to bringing confidentiality to decentralized applications. It can be compared to modular blockchain projects such as Celestia and Lava, which focus on data availability and data access respectively, while Inco focuses on confidentiality.
Investment institutions: Modular blockchain developer Inco completed US$4.5 million in financing, led by 1kx, with participation from Circle Ventures, GSR, Polygon Ventures, Robot Ventures, Alliance DAO, zkSync developer Matter Labs, and others.
Features:
1.Inco has launched the first testnet Gentry, the second testnet Paillier is planned to be released between the second and third quarters of this year, and the mainnet is scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter.
2. Use fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to provide confidential computing and enhance on-chain privacy and scalability for developers and users in the Ethereum ecosystem;
3. The expected initial mainnet is capable of processing 10 TPS via CPU with a block time of approximately 8 seconds, and can transition to GPU and scale to 20-50 TPS if needed. It is expected that FPGA hardware acceleration will allow scaling to 100-1000 TPS in 2025.
The following is the specific financing information for each competition belt:
Bitcoin Ecology
BRC20 project Jade98 ARdinals completed a new round of financing, with participation from NewTribe Capital, Rarestone Capital, Normie Capital, Dutch Crypto Investors, Three M Capital, and X21 Digital.
Bitcoin ZK Rollup protocol Citrea completed a $2.7 million seed round of financing, led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Delphi Ventures, Eric Wall, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, and Anurag Arjun, co-founder of modular blockchain Avail. Citrea is committed to helping Bitcoin better adapt to DeFi, NFT, and other use cases that were previously only possible on smart contract-based blocks and that Bitcoin can handle these use cases in the future. Citrea's ZK Rollup will be built on the Ethereum EVM, making it easier for developers to migrate applications they build for Ethereum and other compatible networks. The team plans to release the test network next quarter.
ViaBTC Capital officially announced that it has completed angel round investment in the BTC Layer2 project BEVM and will rely on its own brand and group resources to support the development of the BEVM project. ViaBTC Capital is a wholly-owned investment brand of the Bitcoin mining pool ViaBTC Group, focusing on investing in Web 3.0, Layer2 and DApp application projects that combine DeFi, NFT or DAO elements; BEVM is a BTC L2 built on Taproot with BTC as Gas .
DeFi
zkSync ecological decentralized lending protocol ZeroLend completed a US$3 million seed round of financing at a valuation of US$25 million. Investors include Momentum 6, Blockchain Founders Fund, Morning Star Ventures, Banter Capital, Newman Capital, dVdT, Transform Capital, Cypher Capital, Bison Fund, Ozaru Ventures, iAngels, Krypital, Genblock, viaBTC, GBV and Asteroid Capital, as well as angel investors such as Mr. Block of Curve Finance, Pranav Sharma of Woodstock, and Boxmining. Additionally, ZeroLend plans to launch its native governance token ZERO in the first quarter of 2024.
DeFi project INIT Capital announced the completion of a US$3.1 million seed round of financing. Electric Capital and Mirana Ventures co-led the investment, and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom, Robot Ventures, Nomad Capital, TANGENT, BanklessVC, Selini Capital and Faction, Pendle jointly created (@tn_pendle), Ethena Labs founder Leptokurtic, Aevo co-founder Julian, Dragonfly’s Ashwin, MetaStreet founder David Choi, SCB 10X CEO Tai Panich and other investors participated in the investment. INIT will use this round of funding to enhance its technical capabilities, go-to-market strategy, and overall position as a major DeFi liquidity layer.
Berachain ecological DeFi Hub project Honeypot Finance announced the completion of a Pre-Seed round of financing, led by AC Capital and DEXT Force Ventures. The specific amount was not disclosed.
Crypto re-pledge service provider EigenLayer announced the completion of $100 million in financing, with a16z participating. Founded by Sreeram Kannan, EigenLayer allows tokens to be deposited or "remortgaged" into the network to support verification of transactions on the blockchain, helping new projects built on Ethereum to use the security of the blockchain to protect their own network.
Institutional-grade privacy DeFi access layer Singularity completed a new round of financing of US$2.2 million, led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Nomura Securities’ digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital, Eureka Partners, Apollo Crypto, Digital Asset Capital Management and Gandel Invest. To date, Singularity has raised nearly $4 million in funding. It is reported that these funds will be used to support the development of the protocol, promote DeFi compliance access and ensure the commercial confidentiality of on-chain activities. Singularity is the first DeFi infrastructure protocol to utilize Noir zero-knowledge circuits and is committed to providing private DeFi access services to institutional users. The protocol will integrate more DeFi protocols and expand user strategy options.
Binance Labs announces investment in Renzo Protocol. This project is a liquid re-pledge token (LRT) and strategy management infrastructure built around EigenLayer. It is committed to in-depth development of shared security performance on EigenLayer and setting standards for risk management in re-pledge.
OX.FUN, a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform initiated by Zhu Su (@zhusu), completed a new round of financing with a financing amount of US$4 million. This round of financing was led by Foresight Ventures, with participation from Double Peak Group, EmChain, Genblock Capital and other institutions. This round of financing will be used for product iteration, team building, market expansion, etc.
MEV-resistant protocol Shutter raised $8.31 million through the Liquidity Boot Pool (LBP), and the SHU/USDC trading pair is now listed on Uniswap V2.
DePIN
Silencio Network, a provider of decentralized data coverage solutions, announced the completion of US$1 million in financing, led by Borderless Capital, with participation from Moonrock Capital, Master Ventures and others. Silencio Network leverages blockchain technology, specifically Peaq Blockchain, to create large-scale noise-level databases to enable innovative data solutions.
Layer1
Blockchain development platform QuickNode announced the completion of a $60 million Series B round of financing at a valuation of $800 million. 10T Holdings, LLC led the investment, with participation from Tiger Global, 776, Protocol Labs and QED. The new funds will be used to accelerate the company's global expansion and further strengthen the builder's capabilities to lay the foundation for a decentralized, globally connected future and simplify the Web2 to Web3 transition.
Layer1 blockchain Flare completed US$35 million in private placement financing, with participation from Kenetic, Aves Lair and others. Early investors in the project voluntarily agreed to extend the token distribution from 2024 to the first quarter of 2026. A selling limit of 0.5% of daily trading volume has also been implemented to alleviate selling pressure in the market.
meme
Farcaster ecological meme project Degen announced the completion of 490.5 ETH (approximately US$1.47 million) angel round financing. 1confirmation led the investment and Farcaster OG and others participated. The funds will be used to develop the Degen ecosystem and community.
SocialFi
Web3 social protocol beoble announced the completion of seed round investment, including the previously announced Pre-Seed round of US$2 million, bringing its total financing to US$7 million. Investors include HashKey Capital, Samsung, DCG, DWF Ventures, and Nomura Laser Digital, Cypher Capital and Blockchain Founders Fund. Funds raised will be used to launch Beoble V2 next month to improve Web3 social media interactions, providing advanced features such as multi-chain integration, in-app social trading and OTC functionality.
GameFi
Crystal Fun, a decentralized blockchain gaming ecosystem platform and studio, announced the completion of a US$5 million seed round of financing. Investment institutions include Kucoin Ventures, Actoz Soft, Waterdrip Capital, Comma3 Ventures, Stratified Capital, Cypher9 Ventures, Aelf ventures, W Labs and Masverse, etc. This financing will be used for the production and operation of its games.
Crypto fantasy sports platform Monkey Tilt announced the completion of $21 million in financing, with participation from PolyChain Capital, Hack VC, Poker Go, Accomplice, Paper Ventures and Folius Ventures. Monkey Tilt also announced the launch of fantasy gaming platform MTFantasy in more than 20 states across the U.S., with an upcoming beta launch.
Metaverse shooting mobile game Matr1x FIRE announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, with Animoca Brands participating in the investment. The specific amount has not yet been disclosed. Matr1x Fire is a first-person shooter for mobile devices that allows players to choose from a roster of playable characters and compete as a team of five to eliminate enemies. In February last year, Matr1x FIRE completed a $10 million Series A round of financing, with participation from Hashkey Capital and others.
Web3 entertainment platform Shuffle announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$2.5 million from Karatage, Cypher Capital, Sunforge (Robbie and James Ferguson), ODA Capital, Web3 Wizards, UpsideDAO, Parc Capital, Baboon VC, and Mechanism Capital’s Andrew Kang and Backpack’s Angel investors including Tristan Yver participated. Last week Shuffle announced key details of the ERC-20 token SHFL distribution plan, with a total supply of 1 billion and an initial supply of 71,126,984.56 SHFL. It is expected that token generation and airdrop activities will occur in the first week of March.
Modular
Modular blockchain project AltLayer completed a $14.4 million strategic round of financing, co-led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Bankless Ventures, Primitive Ventures, SevenX, Mask Network, IOSG and TRGC. "With the company's growing number of strategic partnerships and key projects in development, we are eyeing the expansion of our global team, centered around our infrastructure innovation and replay aggregation," the team said.
Modular blockchain developer Inco completed US$4.5 million in financing, led by 1kx, with participation from Circle Ventures, GSR, Polygon Ventures, Robot Ventures, Alliance DAO, zkSync developer Matter Labs, and others. Inco was founded in August last year and launched its first test network Gentry today. Its second testnet, Paillier, is scheduled to be released between the second and third quarters of this year, with the mainnet scheduled for release in the fourth quarter.
NFT
ERC404 improvement protocol project LoongCity announced the completion of a US$2 million seed round of financing, invested by MAZARINE SEA. The funds will be mainly used for LoongCity’s NFT market value management and subsequent Gamefi development. LoongCity will launch an improved ERC1321 protocol based on the ERC404 protocol, which will solve the problem of the ERC404 protocol being unable to determine the rarity of NFTs by introducing on-chain oracles. LoongCity is an imaginary Chinese steampunk-themed metaverse that will conduct its first NFT casting tomorrow.
DWF Labs announced a 7-figure strategic investment in gaming NFT marketplace Prom at X.
Infrastructure & Tools
Blast native robot Tornado Blast for trading and sniping tokens completed strategic financing, led by Syndicate, OzDAO, Normie Capital, X Ventures, ATKA, 3AC (3 Asians Capital), Underground, Nftperp, Creed Alpha, Morningstar Ventures, Punk DAO , Metadrop, Fantasy top, vopa fnf, Flowdesk, etc. participated in the investment, and the amount raised was not disclosed.
Multi-chain wallet Nest Wallet announced the completion of over US$3.6 million in financing from Inception Capital, Orange DAO, Ascensive AssetsSnack Clube, gumi Cryptos Capital, INCE Capital, as well as YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-creator Kevin Lin, The Sandbox co-creator Sebastien Borget, etc. Participate in investment. The wallet is similar to Robinhood and has been integrated with DexScreener and Birdeye and has joined the Blast ecosystem, supporting keys and biometric signatures on mobile devices. However, earlier this year its co-founder Bill Lou lost $125,000 to a fake LFG phishing scam. (52 stETH).
Decentralized cloud service provider NodeShift announced the completion of a $3.2 million seed round led by Inovo.vc, with participation from Notion Capital, 10X Founders and Kestrel0x1, and Epic Games also participating as an angel investor. NodeShift aims to provide a single API to access surplus compute, storage and graphics accelerators from independent data center operators and connect to low-cost decentralized web services such as Akash and Filecoin.
Solana ecosystem developer platform Helius announced the completion of a $9.5 million Series A round of financing, led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One and Propel.
Fintech dApp startup Fintech dApp Clave completed a $1.6 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Matter Labs. Participating investors include Safe, Lambda Class, Mirana Ventures, and Scroll’s angel investor Sandy Peng, Portal’s angel investor Raj Parekh, Avail’s angel investor Anurag Arjun and many industry leaders. Clave is building a non-custodial wallet that provides users with a comprehensive financial experience through hardware-level security elements. Its leading account abstraction technology does not require mnemonic words, eliminating the problem of users forgetting mnemonic words.
Cryptocurrency financial infrastructure provider Januar ApS announced the completion of a €1.5 million seed round of financing, with participation from CMT Digital, Third Prime and Skyfall Ventures, as well as Chainalysis co-founder and CEO Michael Grønager and existing investors. It is reported that so far it has raised The total amount of financing has reached 7.5 million euros, and the new funds will be used to launch its B2B encryption service platform and institutional wallet and cryptocurrency trading solution "Januar Crypto".
Ethereum capital flow protocol Superfluid announced the completion of US$5.1 million in strategic financing. Fabric Ventures led the investment, and other companies such as Multicoin Capital, Circle Ventures, Safe Foundation, The LAO, Taavet+Sten participated in the investment. Launched in 2021, the Superfluid protocol allows crypto projects such as decentralized autonomous organizations to pay recurring salaries and rewards in single-chain transactions through its “super tokens.” Super tokens can create a flow of funds between two parties. Today, Superfluid launched “Allocation Pools” that create a pool of funds that can be distributed to multiple recipients.
CeFi and others
Singaporean fintech startup Xalts has announced the acquisition of Contour Network, a digital trading platform built by eight major banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered and BNP Paribas. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the purchase price is in the millions of dollars and is made up of cash and stock. Backed by Accel and Citi Ventures, Xalts enables financial institutions to build and manage blockchain-based applications. Contour was launched in 2017 by a consortium of eight banks to digitize trade and is currently used by 22 banks and more than 100 global corporates, including Tata Group, Rio Tinto Group.
Magic Square, a Web3 application store backed by Binance Labs and others, acquired token issuance platform TruePNL, but the specific acquisition amount has not yet been disclosed. Magic Square founder and CEO Andrey Nayman revealed that the acquisition was paid entirely in cash. Under the deal, Magic Square will acquire TruePNL’s entire front-end and back-end infrastructure, excluding the brand name, domain names, social media accounts and TruePNL (PNL) tokens.
Web3 education platform HackQuest announced the completion of US$1.1 million in pre-seed financing. StepN parent company Find Satoshi Lab, HashKey Capital, ByteTrade Lab, Outlier Ventures, Hash Global, OnePiece Labs, Gitcoin co-founder Scott Moore, Signum Capital partner YY, etc. Participate in the investment and receive support from Open Campus OCX.