Hotcoin Investment and Financing Weekly Report | 38 public investment and financing events from April 20 to April 26, with infrastructure leading the way, and active financing related to gaming and DeFi

From April 20 to April 26, the crypto market saw a total of 38 financing events, including 10 in infrastructure, 10 in gaming, 6 in DeFi, 3 in AI, 2 in Depin, 2 related to NFTs, 1 in SocialFi, and 4 in other categories.

This week, there were 5 financing events over ten million dollars:

The modular Move blockchain framework Movement completed a $38 million Series A financing round, with investors including Polychain, Hack VC, and others.

The ZK verification layer Aligned Layer on EigenLayer completed a $20 million Series A financing round, with investors including Hack VC, dao5, and others.

The liquidity guidance platform Fjord Foundry completed a $15.35 million IDO, with unknown investors.

The crypto wallet infrastructure Turnkey completed a $15 million financing round, with investors including Faction, Galaxy Digital, and others.

The decentralized meme token Shiba Inu completed a $12 million financing round, with investors including Cypher Capital, P2 Ventures, and others.

This week, the crypto market's financing activity showed a relative rebound compared to last week, with 10 financing events in the infrastructure sector, followed by gaming, while DeFi and other narratives attracted investor attention. This week's financing landscape is rich and diverse, concentrated in currently popular sectors. The modular Move blockchain framework Movement.

This week's financing projects sorted by amount are shown in the figure below:

Infrastructure

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 26, Chakra completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including ABCDE Capital, Bixin Ventures, and others. Chakra is a Bitcoin re-staking protocol based on ZK proofs. It uses STARK to prove staking events on Bitcoin and validate proofs on the second-layer chain.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 26, Hinkal Protocol completed a $1.4 million strategic financing round, with investors including SALT Fund, SNZ Holding, and others. Hinkal is a ZK-based solution that provides a privacy smart contract wallet experience, allowing users to participate in their favorite dApps directly from their privacy addresses without withdrawing assets for obfuscation. The protocol allows professional traders to run strategies on their favorite dApps in a fully private and compliant environment, avoiding copy trading and front-running, and achieving trading and asset privacy across core DeFi applications and functions, including trading, farming, staking, and lending.

3. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 26, BEVM completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Bitmain. BEVM is a decentralized Bitcoin L2 compatible with EVM, using BTC as gas. It allows all DApps that can run in the Ethereum ecosystem to operate on Bitcoin L2.

4. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, TARS Protocol completed a financing round with an unknown amount in a private placement, with investors including NewTribe Capital, Contango Digital Assets, and others. TARS Protocol is an AI-driven, scalable Web3 modular infrastructure platform designed to provide cutting-edge AI solutions and one-stop BaaS services for projects. By providing a unified AI tools and services platform, TARS aims to bridge the gap between AI and the Web3 world, helping institutions and individuals smoothly transition from Web2 to Web3.

5. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, Movement completed a $38 million Series A financing round, with investors including Polychain, Hack VC, and others. Movement is a modular framework for building and deploying Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment. The team is building a suite of products and services that allow non-Move protocols to leverage the powerful capabilities of the Move programming language without writing a line of Move code. The team's first version, M1, redefines L1 as a vertically composable and horizontally scalable first-layer framework that is compatible with Solidity, connects EVM and Move liquidity, and allows builders to customize modular and interoperable application chains with different user bases and liquidity out of the box.

6. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, Aligned Layer completed a $20 million Series A financing round, with investors including Hack VC, dao5, and others. Aligned Layer is a ZK verification layer developed on EigenLayer. This will make the verification of any SNARK proof cost-effective, leveraging the security of Ethereum validators without being constrained by Ethereum. As Eigen Layer AVS, it promises affordable verification and multifunctional proof systems for L2 and bridges, meeting critical needs in the blockchain ecosystem. The project is developed by Yet Another Company.

7. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, Turnkey completed a $15 million financing round, with investors including Faction, Galaxy Digital, and others. Turnkey is a private key infrastructure built specifically for cryptocurrency developers. It enables developers to dynamically generate thousands of wallets using a simple API and sign tens of thousands of transactions on any chain, with flexible, programmable permissions to ensure they only sign what they want.

8. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, PenPad completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Animoca Brands, Gate Labs, and others. PenPad is a fair publishing platform that leverages Scroll's native capabilities to provide builders with a complete toolkit for ZK solutions.

9. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, Lightlink completed a $5.28 million IDO, with unknown investors. Lightlink is an enterprise-level L2 solution built for Metaverse, NFT, and gaming applications. LightLink uses Optimistic Rollup technology and is fully EVM compatible, with its native currency being ETH.

10. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, Othentic completed a $4 million seed round financing, with investors including Finality Capital Partners, Breyer Capital, and others. Othentic Stack is a Web3 component library for building modular networks in a shared security environment. The self-deployable framework can create modular networks with underlying shared security, abstracting the integration with re-staking protocols.

GameFi

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 26, L3E7 completed a $10 million financing round, with investors including Spartan Group, SevenX Ventures, and others. L3E7 is an open-world RPG game based on location-based services (LBS), allowing players to immerse themselves in a 3D metaverse world through map graphics rendering technology. In L3E7, NFTs are not only game tickets but also equity certificates—holding NFTs allows players to share in the game's profits.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, Carv completed a $10 million Series A financing round, with investors including IOSG Ventures, Tribe Capital, and others. Carv aims to establish a user-owned gaming identity, enabling achievement display, friend and game discovery, direct monetization, and portability.

3. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, Anichess completed a $1.8 million financing round, with investors including Sfermion, Amber Group, and others. Anichess is a blockchain-based chess game, developed in collaboration with Play Magnus Group, a leader in the chess industry, by Animoca Brands and its subsidiary Lympo, featuring a betting and earning ecosystem.

4. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, Wild Forest completed a $500,000 seed round financing, with investors including Animoca Brands, OKX Ventures, and others. Wild Forest is a free card collection, real-time strategy P2E game with an open economy and fast-paced PvP battles.

5. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, InfiniGods completed an $8 million Series A financing round, with investors including Pantera Capital. InfiniGods is a blockchain game studio with a suite of engaging free Web3 games centered around ancient mythology and civilizations. InfiniGods is developed by veterans in mobile and social gaming, unlocking the true potential of blockchain technology by lowering the entry barrier for casual gamers and creating an interoperable ecosystem of owned assets within its game suite.

6. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 24, DARKTIMES completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Sfermion, Animoca Brands, and others. DARKTIMES is a Web3 game where players fight for survival in a Nordic-style, immersive medieval fantasy dark age world against friends and foes.

7. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 24, Puffverse completed a $3 million financing round, with investors including Animoca Brands, Spartan Group, and others. Puffverse is a dreamland in the 3D metaverse, aiming to connect the virtual Web3 world with the real Web2, providing an NFT character-driven environment for players to experience a magical new metaverse.

8. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 24, Tevaera completed a $5 million seed round financing, with investors including Laser Digital, HashKey Capital, and others. Tevaera is an L3 gaming chain based on zkStack, an innovative gaming stack with multiplayer capabilities and a user experience-focused gaming application layer, simplifying the launch and play of various types of games. Tevaera's native interoperability with zkSync Era and all zkStack-based superchains allows for the free flow of users, liquidity, and builders within zkNation.

9. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 24, Iskra completed a financing round with an unknown amount in strategic financing, with investors including Animoca Brands. Iskra is a blockchain gaming hub that brings together gamers and game studios. The platform allows gamers to explore and enjoy high-quality blockchain games and create their own communities. Interested users will have the opportunity to explore new game projects for the first time through the Launchpad. Users can also freely trade in-game tokens and other in-game assets minted as NFTs outside of the game.

10. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, Uncharted completed a $1.7 million strategic financing round, with investors including Shima Capital, Spartan Group, and others. Uncharted is a GameFi ecosystem, with its first game Gangster Arena being a risk-filled idle strategy game where players can develop gangs, engage in gang wars, and compete for ETH.

DeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 26, OpenDelta completed a $2.5 million Pre-seed financing round, with investors including 6th Man Ventures. OpenDelta is a delta-neutral, yield-bearing synthetic dollar protocol, with its flagship token USDO maintaining its dollar value by hedging the Bitcoin (BTC) collateral deposited by users.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, Ultimate Wallet completed acquisition financing, with investors including Jupiter. Ultimate (developed by Unstoppable Finance) is building an access layer for DeFi, aiming to become the hub for all tokenized assets, Web3, and digital identities.

3. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, TOKERO completed a $1.4 million private placement financing round, with unknown investors. TOKERO is a crypto trading aggregator aimed at bringing CEX, DEX, and CryptoATM services into a single, simple, and accessible platform for users to access the digital economy.

4. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, Scallop completed a strategic financing round, with investors including DWF Labs. Scallop is the money market of the Sui ecosystem. By emphasizing institutional-grade quality, enhanced composability, and robust security, Scallop aims to build a dynamic money market that offers high-interest lending, low-fee borrowing, AMM, and asset management tools on a unified platform, providing SDKs for professional traders.

5. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, YieldNest completed a $5.2 million financing round, with investors including Contango Digital Assets, Faculty Group, and others. YieldNest is a liquidity re-staking protocol supported by EigenLayer, providing simplified, risk-adjusted liquidity re-staking strategies, offering users controlled investment exposure to AVS categories.

6. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 20, Fjord Foundry completed a $15.35 million IDO, with unknown investors. Fjord (formerly Copper Launch) is a liquidity guidance platform (LBP) that enables projects to generate liquidity for new tokens in a transparent and permissionless manner. Fjord has supported teams such as Merit Circle, Avocado DAO, Crypto Unicorns, Breeder DAO, and others.

AI

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, Adot completed a $3 million Pre-A financing round, with investors including Hash Global, gumi Cryptos Capital, and others. Adot is a decentralized AI internet search network. It not only provides users with a more convenient and intelligent Web3 content search experience but also helps developers quickly build their own personalized search functionalities. Adot's mission is to create a decentralized search network that comprehensively surpasses traditional search engines, making all quality data accessible to every user and developer.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, Prime Intellect completed a $5.5 million seed round financing, with investors including CoinFund, Distributed Global, and others. Prime Intellect is a decentralized artificial intelligence platform that commodifies computation and intelligence, providing developers with more affordable distributed computing and sustainable business models for open-source models.

3. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, Y8U completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Morningstar Ventures, Banter Capital, and others. Y8U.AI is a native decentralized protocol built on the Humans blockchain that combines content-addressable storage with smart contract-based consent management, allowing users to control how their features are encoded as protected data NFTs (including voice recordings, facial recognition, etc.) processed by AI miners.

Depin

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 25, Natix Network completed a $4.6 million strategic financing round, with investors including Borderless Capital, Tioga Capital, and others. Natix Network is a blockchain-based crowdsourced camera network that creates real-time world maps. This decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) uses Natix's AI technology to map the world while ensuring no privacy data is collected. Its Drive& app is a mobile application that allows users to earn while driving. It collects geospatial data through a camera installed on the dashboard while also equipped with AI software to gather data on road traffic, traffic signs, and infrastructure damage, including potholes and faded road markings.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, Roam completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Samsung Next. Roam is a decentralized global WiFi network that provides enterprise-level WiFi roaming to the global public, ensuring uninterrupted, low-cost access to Web3 and the Metaverse, along with enhanced network security and an excellent overall experience.

NFT-related

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 26, Creator.Bid completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Mechanism Capital, Zee Prime Capital, and others. Creator.Bid is a digital content monetization and ownership platform that supports content creators in building AI-driven digital assets for monetization and writing management. Additionally, Creator.bid provides tools to enhance creators' autonomy over their work and income management.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 21, Only1 completed a $1.3 million strategic financing round, with investors including Newman Capital, Folius Ventures, and others. Only1 is a Web 3.0 social platform where users earn by participating and can launch Memberpass NFTs to publish exclusive content for members.

SocialFi

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, PairedWorld completed a $1.5 million financing round, with unknown investors. PairedWorld is a social ecosystem that incentivizes human connections and interactions through a Web3 framework and Ethereum-based tokens, aiming to effectively change the concept of "social tokens."

Others

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 24, Moso completed a $2 million seed round financing, with investors including dao5, P2 Ventures, and others. Moso is a cryptocurrency rewards website and browser extension that allows users to earn their chosen cryptocurrency while shopping from partner merchants. Moso has partnered with over 2,000 merchants to facilitate closer connections between consumers and the emerging digital currency space.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 23, Cloudwall completed acquisition financing, with investors including Talos. Cloudwall aims to provide a powerful platform for institutional investors to manage digital asset portfolios, meeting their investment and risk objectives.

3. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 22, Shiba Inu completed a $12 million financing round, with investors including Cypher Capital, P2 Ventures, and others. Shiba Inu (Shiba Coin) is a decentralized meme token.

4. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on April 20, TradeTogether completed a strategic financing round, with investors including XVC Tech. TradeTogether is a Web3 digital asset investment and risk management solution that enables investors to make informed decisions based on their portfolio requirements and enjoy returns. Additionally, the company has a wealth management platform that transitions from Web 2 to Web 3, allowing diversified investments in token baskets, digital bonds, and other tokenized solutions and Web 3 structured products.