Recent Financing Overview of the Polkadot Ecosystem: Which Projects Are Most Favored by Capital?
The financing process of the Polkadot ecosystem has accelerated, with no less than 17 financing rounds this year.This article is from the Blockchain Research Society, authored by: District Brother, with the original title "Overview of 16 Recent Financing Projects in the Polkadot Ecosystem, What Treasures Are Hidden?"
Recently, the primary market of the Polkadot ecosystem has been very active, with a large number of projects completing financing in quick succession, many of which followed private placements with public offerings.
By sorting through the data, it is evident that recent financing has accelerated significantly. In the cases counted, three financings were completed in December, namely Cere Network, HydraDX, and Tidal Finance; five financings were completed in January, namely Apron Network, OptionRoom, ParaLink Network, ParaState, and Bifrost; seven financings were completed in February, namely Dora Factory, Stone, Plasm, Clover Finance, Kylin Network, TrustBase, and Idavoll Network; and as of March 3rd, five financings were completed, namely Tidal Finance, Apron Network, Dora Factory, Plasm, and Shadows Network.
This article attempts to sort through the projects that have recently completed financing in the Polkadot ecosystem to take a look.
1. Cere Network
Cere Network is a decentralized data cloud platform built on Polkadot, optimized for service data integration and data collaboration. The solutions provided by Cere can capture the entire customer journey on the blockchain and store key user data in the user’s wallet, such as purchases, achievements, and usage statistics.
As the "first decentralized CRM solution," Cere Network initially records customer data on a private chain, and will soon integrate with Binance Chain, ultimately supporting all public chains. CRM is generally translated as "Customer Relationship Management," and the CRM market reached $48.2 billion in 2018, making it a highly competitive and large industry. Cere aims to apply blockchain technology to the CRM field to compete against major rivals like Salesforce, Oracle, and Microsoft.
In traditional fields, data is controlled by a few large companies, leaving users and businesses without control over their data, resulting in data silos. The market controlled by a few large companies poses serious obstacles to user privacy protection and the effective use of data by businesses to improve efficiency. Cere aims to solve this problem.
Cere focuses on data encryption for individual users, privacy compliance, and hyper-personalization. By anonymizing and encrypting customer data on the blockchain, Cere enables businesses to exchange data with partners and analyze it on Cere's open and on-demand data marketplace. Cere allows all business departments, partners/suppliers, and machine learning processes to access data almost in real-time. Conversely, this can also facilitate secure and private data collaboration through Cere's Open Data Marketplace (ODM). Cere Network emphasizes customer data privacy and secure data collaboration.
The Cere team is strong, with co-founder and CEO Fred Jin having founded the gaming company 50CUBES in 2009, supported by Tencent. Prior to this, Jin was the chief developer at the well-known social networking site Bebo, which was acquired by American AOL for $850 million in 2008. The other two co-founders are Kenzi Wang and Ian Duggan; Kenzi Wang was the vice president of Huobi Exchange and graduated with an MBA from Wharton, while CTO Ian Duggan graduated from MIT and previously served as a technical director at Twitch and Amazon.
Recently, Cere announced that Jochum Haakma, former Chief Operating Officer of software giant Salesforce Rajani Ramanathan, and former Vice President of Tencent Games and current CEO of Lime Brad Bao have joined the Cere Network board. Cere stated that these three board members have extensive experience in enterprise software as a service (SaaS), foreign policy, and international business development. Haakma has served as the Dutch ambassador to China since 1997.
After graduating from the Binance incubator, Cere has attracted multiple enterprise clients, including a trucking company with 200,000 users and a cosmetics brand. According to recent announcements, Cere is making rapid progress in customer expansion. Currently, Cere has established partnerships with projects such as Plasm, Torus Labs, Darwinia, Crust, Ankr, and Reef, which will help its business development while also bringing more liquidity and better user experiences to its partners.
Cere has completed multiple rounds of financing, with investment institutions including Binance and Distributed Capital among top-tier firms.
2. HydraDX
HydraDX is a cross-chain liquidity protocol built on Substrate. In addition to DEX, HydraDX's business scope includes options, lending, derivatives, synthetic products, and token issuance, aiming to become a liquidity protocol and cross-chain trading hub.
Recently, HydraDX completed the sale of 500 million tokens through the Balancer platform. HydraDX has already launched its testnet, and an incentivized testnet may also be launched soon. HydraDX stated that significant progress will be made in the coming weeks regarding the release of its white paper, connection to Rococo V1, and the launch of the incentivized testnet. HydraDX completed its seed round financing at the end of December.
3. Tidal Finance
Tidal Finance is an insurance market built on the Polkadot ecosystem, capable of creating custom insurance pools for one or more assets across multiple chains.
Tidal uses a funding pool model commonly used in the insurance sector, allowing users to provide funds to different protocols as underwriters and earn premiums. A unique aspect of Tidal is the introduction of a guarantor model, where in the event of a payout, the guarantor's funds have higher priority and also enjoy higher yields. The project team acts as a guarantor for its protocol, which will enhance user confidence.
Tidal Finance has already established partnerships with Crust, Rai, iGaming, Equilibrium, Manta, Bandot, Halborn, Konomi, Deficliq, Cere, and others, and has collaborated with well-known security companies Peckshield and Haechi Audit.
According to the latest news, Tidal is expected to launch its testnet in about two weeks. Tidal has recently completed multiple rounds of financing, with the latest round led by Hypersphere Ventures, a Polkadot ecosystem fund co-founded by Polkadot co-founder Robert Habermeier and former Web3 Foundation advisor Jack Platts.
4. Apron Network
Apron Network aims to establish a decentralized infrastructure service network platform, providing infrastructure services for application developers, application users, and infrastructure operators. Apron Network will provide node services, on-chain data indexing, random numbers, quotes, and other infrastructure services for the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems.
Apron Network offers various integrated APIs and provides middleware services for DApp & DeFi developers. In the future, Apron can connect multiple public chains, including Ethereum, BSC, Filecoin, and Helium, allowing developers to use multiple blockchain ecosystems for cross-chain innovation at a lower cost.
The beta version of Apron has officially launched, initially providing free node service support for DeFi and DApp developers in the Heco ecosystem. The beta version will also soon launch on-chain data retrieval and other infrastructure services.
Apron has completed two rounds of financing in the past two months, including investments from well-known funds in the Polkadot ecosystem.
5. OptionRoom
OptionRoom is a prediction protocol and oracle in the Polkadot ecosystem, aiming to provide community governance through OaaS (Oracle as a Service). OptionRoom adopts a dual-token model, with ROOM as its functional token and COURT as the governance token of the protocol.
The initial version of OptionRoom has been launched, but the oracle and prediction market functions have not yet been implemented. Currently, OptionRoom has established partnerships with Litentry, Bounce, Bridge Mutual, API3, and others.
6. ParaLink Network
ParaLink is a cross-chain oracle protocol built on the Polkadot ecosystem, allowing developers to use blockchain and real-world data through ParaLink's unique query language, Paralink Query Language (PQL). PQL allows users to access Web APIs, scrape websites, and retrieve data from the real world in a manner similar to querying SQL databases. ParaLink aims to bring mainstream real-world data into the crypto world in a more flexible and cost-effective way through PQL.
ParaLink provides a cross-chain oracle platform for DeFi and other blockchain applications. ParaLink Node supports Ethereum and Plasm and will soon support more networks. ParaLink offers hardware-based randomness.
In February of this year, ParaLink launched its developer testnet, and currently, ParaLink has established partnerships with Knit Finance, Konomi, Reef, Edgeware, Bondly, Plasm, Darwinia, and others, most of which are integration partnerships with smart contract platforms. ParaLink has also announced that Denko Mancheski, CEO of Reef Finance, has joined as a project advisor.
According to the roadmap, ParaLink plans to achieve token generation in the first quarter of this year and will later release its own parachain.
7. ParaState
ParaState is a smart contract platform compatible with Ethereum in the Polkadot ecosystem, supporting EVM to ensure seamless compatibility with all existing Ethereum applications while providing developers with the next-generation smart contract execution environment, EWASM, ensuring that these two infrastructures can communicate with each other and share the same account system on ParaState.
ParaState bridges Ethereum and Polkadot by supporting a unified developer community that accommodates more popular programming languages, enhancing the portability of cross-chain software.
8. Bifrost
Bifrost is a cross-chain network specifically designed to release liquidity for Staking assets, allowing users to earn Staking rewards while also enjoying good liquidity. Bifrost has already launched liquidity release services for ETH 2.0 Staking and will also provide liquidity release services for slot auctions. Users utilizing Bifrost's services can earn auction rewards while also gaining liquidity, which will enhance user participation in auctions.
Recently, Bifrost conducted a minting airdrop event, completing three rounds of minting incentive activities, totaling 15,000 ETH, approximately $25 million. In the future, as Polkadot's parachains go live, vETH will be able to circulate within the Polkadot ecosystem, introducing vETH as an income-generating asset. At the same time, income-generating assets like vETH can also participate in DeFi, realizing the possibility of multiple income streams.
Bifrost specializes in liquidity release for Staking assets, and as the project develops, it may introduce a large amount of external assets into Polkadot's DeFi ecosystem. Additionally, in Polkadot's own Staking and slot auctions, liquidity release services will significantly reduce the locked amounts of DOT/KSM and increase the amount of circulating assets.
In January, Bifrost stated that the Bifrost network had completed over 80% of its foundational functionality development. Bifrost completed testing for the Asgard CC3 testnet in October, and the Asgard CC4 testnet is about to be launched. Bifrost is among the fourth batch of protocols to connect to the Rococo V1 testnet, which has not yet been connected.
Currently, Bifrost has established partnerships with Apron, Darwinia, Zenlink, and others.
9. Dora Factory
Dora Factory is a DAO-as-a-Service infrastructure based on Polkadot, providing pluggable governance features such as quadratic voting, curve auctions, bounty incentives, and cross-chain asset management for the next generation of decentralized organizations and developers. At the same time, developers can submit new governance modules to this DAO-as-a-Service platform and receive ongoing incentives.
Dora Factory's vision is to establish a DAO-as-a-Service infrastructure that provides suitable toolkits for every DAO. The infrastructure of Dora Factory will ultimately become an open system where developers can develop governance modules on Dora Factory and receive incentives.
Dora Factory consists of three parts: a Polkadot factory, an Ethereum factory, and a virtual bridge. Dora Factory will deploy sub-factories on Ethereum and BSC.
Dora Factory will build a simplified virtual bridge to bring tokens from outside the Polkadot ecosystem into the Dora Factory sidechain, allowing DAOs to store tokens in cross-chain vaults.
Dora Factory has received support from one of the most active blockchain developer communities globally, DoraHacks, and secured investments from institutions like Hypersphere in February.
10. Stone
Stone is a cross-chain yield aggregation platform focused on liquidity tokens for PoS assets, dedicated to building a yield and liquidity aggregation platform.
Its main strategy mechanisms are as follows:
Currently, Stone has launched a stablecoin yield strategy for USDC, while yield strategies for liquidity PoS assets have not yet been launched. From the displayed content, it appears to primarily focus on ETH 2.0 staking token derivatives, such as Ankr's aETH, Lido's stETH, and Stafi's rETH.
Currently, Stafi and RAMP have established partnerships with Stone. From the latest financing information, the aforementioned projects, including Ankr, Stafi, and RAMP, have invested in Stone.
11. Plasm
Plasm Network is a smart contract platform based on Polkadot, with its main advantage being compatibility with Ethereum and Layer 2 solutions. It has already deployed a ZK Rollup scaling solution on the network. Plasm recently secured a parachain slot on the Polkadot testnet and deployed its first smart contract on Rococo, achieving cross-chain communication XCMP transactions with Acala. Plasm has received grants from the Web3 Foundation six times.
Plasm Network is a smart contract platform that introduces EVM and WASM into Layer 1 for connecting Ethereum's smart contracts; to enhance the scalability of the chain, Plasm also has Layer 2 solutions. Plasm's current architecture can be understood as creating an ETH2.0 on Polkadot.
Plasm has conducted two lock-up airdrops, locking up nearly 150,000+ ETH. The third lock-up airdrop will be used for the parachain slot auction on Polkadot.
In February, Plasm completed a $2.4 million financing round led by Binance Labs, and in early March, it received investment from OKEx's Block Dream Fund, marking the first investment in the Polkadot ecosystem since the launch of Block Dream Fund at the end of last year. The two parties may cooperate in public offerings (PLO) for parachain auctions on Kusama and Polkadot.
Currently, Plasm has established partnerships with Moonstake, API3, ParaLink, Zenlink, and others.
12. Clover Finance
Clover Finance is a smart contract platform in the Polkadot ecosystem, dedicated to providing user-friendly blockchain infrastructure to lower the barriers and costs for developers. It released its first version of the testnet in January.
To achieve sustainable development and better develop the Clover ecosystem, Clover has designed a gas allocation model that directly sends gas fees to network maintainers and DApp developers. Clover also supports paying gas fees directly with the transferred currency instead of requiring a base currency like ETH, optimizing the user experience.
Currently, Clover has established partnerships with Litentry, DODO, EasyFi, BoringDAO, Prosper, Injective, Bella Protocol, and others, most of which will connect to the Polkadot ecosystem through Clover. Additionally, Clover Finance is included in CoinList's list of projects to watch in 2021.
13. Kylin Network
Kylin Network aims to establish a cross-chain platform that provides verified, secure, cost-effective, and easily coordinated data sources and data analysis for the data economy on Polkadot. Kylin Network mainly includes solutions for data analysis, data oracles, and data markets.
Kylin Network's future plans are divided into four phases, but specific timelines have not been disclosed.
Phase 1: Kylin Network aims to achieve all basic functionalities of current price feeding and verification solutions, starting to build a non-traditional data source selection array for DApp developers and a one-stop automated data source store.
Phase 2: Kylin Network aims to build a cross-chain data query and data structure tool, similar to a cross-chain version of The Graph on Polkadot.
Phase 3: As the data market matures, its stability and coverage improve, Kylin Network will design analytical tools for data discovery, data patterns, and data interpretation, while developing low-cost commercialization features for the public.
Phase 4: Kylin Network's ultimate goal is to provide necessary Open APIs and SDKs through the above tools to fully support the data economy on Polkadot.
Currently, Kylin has established partnerships with Xangle, DefiCliq, Shadows Network, YOP, Bridge Mutual, Equilibrium, Polkamarkets, Edgeware, PlasmaPay, Reef Finance, DefiCliq, Tidal Finance, RioDeFi, Ramp Network, and others, and has also joined the Polkadot DeFi Alliance.
14. TrustBase
TrustBase independently developed the Subscript smart contract language, creating a smart contract parachain built on Polkadot. TrustBase aims to help more developers participate in Polkadot construction by providing more lightweight underlying development tools, enabling one-click DApp deployment, and supporting the development of the Polkadot ecosystem.
Substrate uses Rust's ink! language for development, but compared to traditional languages like Java and C/C++, Rust has a higher learning curve, which limits the development of the Polkadot developer ecosystem. To address this issue, TrustBase launched the lightweight WASM smart contract language Subscript, helping traditional web developers and Java engineers participate in Polkadot ecosystem construction without barriers, meeting the needs of traditional developers to break industry barriers and engage in blockchain development.
TrustBase is committed to helping more developers participate in Polkadot construction by providing more lightweight underlying development tools.
The TrustBase CC1 testnet has been launched in January. In the official follow-up plans, TrustBase will carry out a series of related activities around the developer ecosystem, CC2 testnet, slot auctions, and NFT sales, and is expected to land on exchanges in the second quarter of 2021.
15. Idavoll Network
Idavoll Network is a cross-chain DAO protocol developed based on the Substrate framework, allowing any organization to create and manage cross-chain DAO platforms based on Idavoll. Idavoll aims to provide a universal DAO service management platform to quickly help users create DAO organizations and provide and manage decentralized organizations on the blockchain.
Idavoll Network will build a complete set of governance tools with a modular design, enabling any organization to legally and transparently manage community voting, funds, and organizational activities. Idavoll Network provides templates for creating various types of organizations, such as companies, memberships, reputations, and other governance modules for defining different types of organizations.
The roadmap for Idavoll Network is as follows, but no timelines have been disclosed.
It is reported that the Alpha internal test version of Idavoll is expected to go live at the end of March, and the token has already been listed on exchanges.
16. Shadows Network
Shadows Network is a synthetic asset platform in the Polkadot ecosystem. The synthetic assets are backed by the Shadows token DOS through over-collateralization, and the trading of synthetic assets essentially involves the transfer of debts, characterized by the absence of counterparties and unlimited trading depth. According to the white paper, the design logic is quite similar to existing asset synthesis platforms.
Shadows Network has received a grant from the Web3 Foundation and will soon launch liquidity mining. Shadows has completed its token public offering.
Its roadmap is as follows:
Currently, Shadows has established partnerships with YOP, Linear, and Kylin.
