(6.8-6.14) Investment and Financing Weekly Report | A total of 27 public investment and financing events, with infrastructure and DeFi leading, and other financing becoming diversified

From June 8 to June 14, the crypto market saw a total of 27 financing events, including 8 in infrastructure, 6 in DeFi, 5 in gaming, 3 in artificial intelligence, 2 in restaking, and 3 in others.

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

The large-scale parallel proof mining network Nexus completed a $25 million Series A financing round, with investors including Pantera Capital, Lightspeed Venture, and others.

The full-chain identity and distribution protocol Layer3 completed a $15 million Series A financing round, with investors including ParaFi Capital, Greenfield, and others.

The independent entity Nuffle Labs of the NEAR Foundation completed a $13 million strategic financing round, with investors including Electric Capital, NEAR Foundation, and others.

The SVM-supported smart account standard Squads completed a $10 million Series A financing round, with investors including Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and others.

The Web3 automation platform Ava Protocol completed a $10 million expansion seed round financing, with investors including Electric Capital, Shima Capital, and others.

This week, the investment and financing activity in the crypto market showed a relative recovery compared to last week, with 8 in infrastructure and other financings remaining in single digits. The financing fields this week are rich and diverse, concentrated in currently high-interest tracks. The large-scale parallel proof mining network Nexus secured the largest financing amount this week.

The investment and financing projects this week are sorted by financing amount as shown in the figure below:

Infrastructure

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 13, Nuffle Labs completed a $13 million strategic financing round, with investors including Electric Capital, NEAR Foundation, and others. Nuffle Labs is an independent entity launched by the NEAR Foundation to build NEAR's data availability layer (NEAR DA), NEAR fast finality layer (NFFL), and other products in the NEAR modular product suite.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Irys completed an $8.9 million strategic financing round, with investors including Lemniscap, Primitive Ventures, and others. Irys is an origin layer that enables users to expand permanent data and accurately attribute its source. By tracking and verifying the source of data, Irys paves the way for accountability in all information. The origin layer acts as a distributed ledger for digital information, tracking the origin and modification of data.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 11, Ava Protocol completed a $10 million expansion seed round financing, with investors including Electric Capital, Shima Capital, and others. Ava Protocol is an intent-based Eigenlayer AVS that seamlessly supports privacy-preserving autonomous transactions across various use cases, including DeFi, NFTs, and gaming. Ava Protocol is enhancing decentralized applications through features like scheduled and recurring payments, stop-loss orders, and streaming rewards. Its event-driven execution model triggers cross-chain transactions based on signals such as time, price changes, and smart contract updates. Developers can easily schedule and automate functions across different blockchains (including Ethereum), ensuring efficient and reliable execution without compromising privacy.

4. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 11, Unite completed a $3 million expansion seed round financing, with investors including SuperLayer, Chris Dixon. Unite is a Layer 3 blockchain solution built for the mass market mobile gaming. Unite focuses on enhancing player experience through in-game monetization features, providing a comprehensive L3 solution that covers chain, client, ecosystem, and establishing decentralized physical infrastructure (DePin) based on billions of daily active mobile devices globally.

5. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 11, Zircuit completed a financing round of unknown amount, with investors including Binance Labs. Zircuit is an EVM-compatible zero-knowledge rollup that uniquely combines optimistic infrastructure with zero-knowledge proofs, providing developers with the best of both worlds. With cutting-edge performance and security at the sequencer level, users can explore new realms with faster transactions, lower fees, and complete peace of mind. Zircuit will protect sequencer-level users by monitoring malicious transactions in the memory pool and preventing them from being packed into blocks.

6. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 10, Zyfi completed a $2 million private placement financing round, with investors including Tenzor Capital, ZBS Capital. ZyFi is a payment-as-a-service solution focused on flexibility and ease of integration. It was created to accelerate the adoption of payers in the zkSync ecosystem. DApps can suggest their users use any ERC-20 traded on zkSync for payments or decide to sponsor part or all of the transaction gas costs using their custom logic.

7. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 10, Nexus completed a $25 million Series A financing round, with investors including Pantera Capital, Lightspeed Venture, and others. Nexus Network is a large-scale parallel proof mining network. It is a world-class instantiation of Nexus zkVM, designed to run at a speed of one trillion CPU cycles per second, provided it connects enough computational power. Nexus zkVM (zero-knowledge virtual machine) is a modular, scalable, open-source, highly parallelized, verification-optimized, contributor-friendly zkVM written in Rust, focusing on performance and security.

8. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 10, Squads completed a $10 million Series A financing round, with investors including Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and others. Squad is a multi-signature management tool based on Solana, designed to handle complex governance and fund management, with a mission to unleash the full potential of self-custody, co-ownership, and coordination for teams emerging in Web3.

DeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 14, Elys Network completed a $2.5 million seed round financing, with investors including Cogitent Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, and others. Elys Network is a decentralized perpetual trading and leveraged lending platform based on oracles, featuring ETF-style multi-asset index pools. It is characterized by high scalability, interoperability, and security, with high TPS and low transaction fees. Elys Network aims to become the PerpDex and integrated DeFi consumption chain of the Cosmos Hub.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 13, Qiro Finance completed a $1.2 million pre-seed round financing, with investors including Alliance DAO, CMT Digital, and others. Qiro Finance is a decentralized credit protocol that enhances the capabilities of credit applications supported by tokenized RWAs. Qiro Finance aims to address the significant credit gap prevalent in regions like Southeast Asia by leveraging blockchain technology and stablecoin frameworks.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 13, Particle completed a strategic financing round of unknown amount, with investors including Spirit DAO, dingaling, and others. Particle is a decentralized leveraged trading protocol that supports any permissionless asset, from tokens to NFTs. There are no price oracles, no counterparty risk, and no forced liquidations.

4. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Kima Network completed a $5 million pre-seed round financing, with investors including Blockchange, Outlier Ventures, and others. The Kima protocol is an open protocol that provides cross-chain and off-chain access to liquidity, data, financial primitives, and functionalities for all decentralized applications. Its universal liquidity protocol combines decentralized blockchains and assets to create a new financial reality.

5. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Holdstation completed a financing round of unknown amount, with investors including SNZ Holding, EVG, and others. Holdstation is an account abstraction solution based on zkSync, providing traders with opportunities for multiple assets with up to 500x leverage on its trading platform. Additionally, Holdstation is committed to advancing the development of smart AI wallets, combining AI with blockchain interactions to provide users with ways to manage their investment portfolios.

6. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 10, Honeypot Finance completed a $1.3 million strategic financing round, with investors including CSP DAO, TKX Capital, and others. Honeypot Finance is building a community-operated DeFi Hub that has designed a flywheel model to generate dual incentives.

Gaming

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Yuliverse completed a $4 million pre-A round financing, with investors including Lingfeng Innovation Fund (LIF), DWF Labs, and others. Yuliverse is an alternative reality metaverse parallel to the real world, offering players a new way of life. At the same time, it is also a game-based social application. Yuliverse currently features thousands of fantasy storylines. By participating in role-playing, players can earn $ARG and $ART by completing tasks.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Pixelverse completed a $5.5 million financing round, with investors including Delphi Digital, Bitscale Capital, and others. Pixelverse is a mission-based combat game set in a cyberpunk pixelated universe. Players enter the game as freelancers, participating in missions, PvE battles, crafting and upgrading robots, and fighting against other players in arenas. Third-party game developers can easily integrate into Pixelverse through the Pixelverse SDK and Pixelchain.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Skytopia completed a $2.4 million seed round financing, with investors including Vertex Labs, Superchain Capital, and others. Skytopia is a web3 entertainment brand that connects games and communities. It combines different forms of entertainment, such as games, anime, and novels, to create an immersive virtual world for users.

4. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 10, Crypto: The Game completed a merger financing round, with investors including Uniswap. Crypto: The Game is an interactive on-chain survival game where participants buy in, join tribes, participate in daily challenges, and vote against each other over ten days until one person wins the entire prize.

5. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 9, Bitball completed a $2 million strategic financing round, with investors including Bitfun Capital. Bitball is a sports metaverse platform that integrates GameFi and SocialFi elements, leveraging Web3 technology to closely connect sports stars, clubs, organizations, and fans, providing a new digital experience and virtual space.

Artificial Intelligence

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 13, REVOX completed a strategic financing round of unknown amount, with investors including SevenX Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and others. REVOX supports developers, organizations, and individuals by providing a suite of component APIs and diverse data sources. The solution includes scalable on-chain AI reasoning in smart contracts, Web3 integration in the form of AI agents, customized workflows connecting complex use cases, and incentive mechanisms for agent developers and computing providers.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Optopia completed a seed round financing of unknown amount, with investors including Kucoin Ventures, JRR Crypto, and others. Optopia is an L2 blockchain designed specifically for AI applications, dedicated to establishing standards for AI applications and exploring various AI use cases. Built on the Op Stack, Optopia ensures 100% EVM compatibility while providing outstanding performance, minimal costs, and robust security for AI applications.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, codatta completed a $2.5 million seed round financing, with investors including OKX Ventures, Mask Network, and others. codatta is a decentralized data protocol aimed at building foundational data infrastructure with scientific confidence, designed to serve developers and protocols. The protocol focuses on building a permissionless network of data contributors, prioritizing data quality to support applications and protocols built using machine learning or AI.

Restaking

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Rio Network completed a merger, with investors including EigenLayer. Rio is a network for issuing Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT), with its first product being restaked Ethereum (reETH).

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 11, Symbiotic completed a $5.8 million seed round financing, with investors including Paradigm, cyber Fund, and others. Symbiotic is a universal restaking system that enables decentralized networks to guide powerful, fully sovereign ecosystems. It will provide decentralized applications with a method called Active Validation Service (AVS) to mutually protect each other. Users will be able to restake their assets deposited in other crypto protocols to help secure these AVS (whether aggregated, interoperability infrastructure, or oracles) in exchange for rewards.

Others

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, GenomesDAO completed a financing round of unknown amount, with investors including Pantera Capital, Modular Capital, and others. GenomesDAO is a biotechnology DAO focused on securely, privately, and audibly monetizing genomic data using DeFi. The GENE token is used for payments for whole genome sequencing and serves as an incentive mechanism for querying their encrypted DNA data vault.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 12, Layer3 completed a $15 million Series A financing round, with investors including ParaFi Capital, Greenfield, and others. Layer3 is a full-chain identity and distribution protocol that helps cryptocurrency consumers discover new projects, rewarding them for their on-chain activities. By aggregating user activities across multiple chains and dApps, Layer3 generates a unified view of users' on-chain identities and enables highly targeted and efficient token distribution. Projects built on Layer3 can programmatically route tokens to the right users at the right time based on various criteria, such as time triggers, asset ownership, on-chain activities, credentials, social graphs, and task engagement.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on June 14, Stage completed a $2.4 million financing round, with investors including Cogitent Ventures, Moonrock Capital, and others. Stage is a place where artists and fans actively participate in shaping the future of music. On Stage, artists upload their video performances and compete in exciting rounds to become stars. Fans play a crucial role by voting for their favorite artists, potentially earning exclusive rewards and unique real-world asset (RWA) badges. The innovative business model ensures that artists receive 60% of voting revenue and 10% of RWA badge royalties. On the other hand, fans receive Stage badge rewards for their support, making every interaction on the platform mutually beneficial.