Last week, there were a total of 15 public financing events in the cryptocurrency market, with a cumulative financing of approximately 229.2 million USD | Investment and Financing Weekly Report
The blockchain project Initia has completed a $14 million Series A financing at a valuation of $350 million, led by Theory Ventures; the decentralized science project AminoChain has completed a $5 million seed round financing, led by a16z; the Web3 reward information aggregation solution Daylight has completed a $6 million seed round financing, led by USV.Organizer: Luan Peng, RootData
According to incomplete statistics from RootData, during the period from September 23 to September 29, 2024, the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry experienced a total of 15 public financing events, with a cumulative financing amount of approximately $229.2 million.
From the perspective of track distribution, the projects that received financing are mainly concentrated in the infrastructure and DeFi tracks. Popular projects include the crypto front-end hosting solution EarthFast, the fully homomorphic encryption network Mind Network, the decentralized 3D mapping project MeshMap, and the game developer Darkbright Studios.
In addition, the Celestia Foundation announced that it has completed a $100 million financing round, led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Syncracy Capital, 1kx, Robot Ventures, Placeholder, and others. This brings the total amount raised by the project to $155 million.
*（List of projects with financing greater than $5 million last week, data source: * Rootdata）
I. Infrastructure
According to The Block, the blockchain project Initia announced the completion of $14 million in Series A financing, led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Hack VC and angel investors including Keone Hon from Monad Labs, Bryan Pellegrino from LayerZero Labs, and Michael Egorov from Curve Finance.
Initia co-founder Ezaan Mangalji stated that the company began its Series A financing earlier this year and completed it in June. The structure of this financing is a simple future equity agreement (SAFE) with token warrants, which brings Initia's FDV to $350 million.
DePIN network Mawari Network completes $10.8 million strategic financing, led by 1kx
The decentralized content delivery platform Mawari announced the completion of $10.8 million in strategic financing for its DePIN network, Mawari Network, led by Anfield LTD, Borderless Capital, and 1kx, with participation from Accord Ventures, Animoca Brands Japan, Blockchange Ventures, Draper Dragon, iAngels, Mulana Ventures, Parami Investors, Samsung Next, and Waldo Holdings, as well as angel investors Ivan Brightly, Joshua Frank, Pete Townsend, and Sean Carey.
This strategic financing brings Mawari's total financing amount to $17.3 million. Mawari plans to launch on the Solana mainnet in Q1 2025 and will conduct a node license sale in Q4 of this year to expand its infrastructure.
It is reported that the project currently serves 40 clients, including global brands such as T-Mobile, Netflix, and BMW, with an average annual revenue of approximately $1.5 million. Mawari focuses on real-time 3D content rendering and streaming, supporting VR, AR, and XR devices, and has obtained 3 patents, with another 11 pending.
Decentralized science project AminoChain completes $5 million seed round financing, led by a16z
AminoChain announced the completion of $5 million in seed round financing, led by a16z, marking it as a16z's first investment in a decentralized science (DeSci) project.
It is reported that AminoChain is building an L2 blockchain protocol that connects enterprise medical institutions and is developing user-owned decentralized healthcare applications on this protocol. The first application built on AminoChain is a biological sample marketplace that allows researchers to query and license samples through a biological sample library network. Patients can track the usage of their samples, learn from new insights generated from the samples, and earn money when these samples are sold.
Crypto front-end hosting solution EarthFast announced the completion of $1.4 million in Pre-Seed round financing, led by TheGP and Nascent, with participation from Bodhi Ventures, Infinex founder Kain Warwick, and Audius co-founder Roneil Rumburg.
According to reports, EarthFast was initially launched in 2022 as a community project called Armada Network. EarthFast's first product is a front-end hosting solution that allows projects to transfer the responsibility of updating and deploying websites to DAOs, governance contracts, or any other on-chain entities.
Celestia Foundation completes $100 million financing, led by Bain Capital Crypto
The Celestia Foundation announced that it has completed $100 million in financing, led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Syncracy Capital, 1kx, Robot Ventures, Placeholder, and others. This brings the total amount raised by the project to $155 million.
The Celestia Mainnet Beta launched in October 2023, providing a dedicated modular consensus and data network. Since its launch, an early ecosystem has formed, with developers deploying the first 20 rollup chains, and Celestia data blobs recently accounted for more than half of the total data released by rollups.
It is reported that the core developer community of Celestia recently announced its technical roadmap, with the core goal of scaling to 1 GB blocks, significantly increasing data throughput for Celestia's rollup ecosystem.
The Bitcoin Layer 2 network project Zulu Network announced the completion of a seed round financing, with participation from Draper Dragon, CGV, Web3.com Ventures, PANONY, D11 Labs, and Splinter Node Capital. It is reported that Zulu aims to unlock new infrastructure for the Bitcoin economy and change the paradigm of Bitcoin Layer 2, having previously secured $3 million in pre-seed financing earlier this year.
II. DeFi
According to official news, the fully homomorphic encryption network Mind Network announced the completion of $10 million in Pre-A round financing, with major investors including Animoca Brands, Arkstream Capital, Cogitent Ventures, G Ventures, MH Ventures, Master Ventures, Moonhill Capital, SwissBorg Ventures, and IBC Group. This round of financing also attracted participation from well-known angel investors, including Mike Silagadze, CEO of Ether.fi, and prominent figures in the crypto space such as Mario Nawfal, Mr. Block, and Kyle Chassé. Following this financing, Mind Network plans to expand its business by integrating more staking protocols and continue to release supporting infrastructure. Users holding staked assets from partner agreements can redeem vFHE on Mind Network and participate in FHE voting.
It is reported that Mind Network is a fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) layer for AI and POS networks. This layer accepts re-staked tokens from ETH, BTC, and AI blue-chip tokens and operates as an FHE verification network, providing consensus, data, and cryptoeconomic security for decentralized AI, DePIN, EigenLayer, Symbiotic, and Babylon AVS POS networks. Mind Network has previously received support from Binance Labs, Hashkey, Big Brain, and Chainlink, and has been funded by the Ethereum Foundation for its FHE research on Ethereum.
According to PR Newswire, the decentralized liquidity market and liquid staking protocol Meridian, built on Movement, announced the completion of $4 million in seed round financing, jointly led by ParaFi Capital and Borderless Capital, with participation from Amber Group, Saison Capital, Interop Ventures, and Oak Grove Ventures.
With this funding, Meridian plans to expand its global team and actively recruit talent in engineering, product, and marketing. The protocol is currently live on the testnet and plans to launch simultaneously on the Movement mainnet on its launch day.
It is worth noting that the Move ecosystem currently accounts for only a small portion of on-chain liquidity and trading volume compared to existing EVM and SVM solutions. Meridian plans to leverage the security and composability of the Move language to bridge this gap.
Re-staking protocol Helix Labs completes $2 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Tribe Capital
Re-staking protocol Helix Labs has completed $2 million in Pre-Seed financing, led by Tribe Capital, EMURGO Ventures, Taureon Capital, LD Capital, and Double Peak Group. This financing will accelerate the increase of L1 asset application scenarios, address the cold start problem of L3, and promote Cardano liquidity into a broader DeFi ecosystem by providing liquidity and users.
Helix Labs aims to enhance the yield opportunities for non-Ethereum L1 asset holders and support future MoveVM Rollups through liquidity abstraction and the OmniVM tech stack. By enhancing token utility, expanding EigenFi capacity, and providing liquidity as a service, it offers greater yields for users and brings more liquidity to DeFi. Helix Labs has joined the Movement Labs' Move Collective accelerator program, allowing Cardano's ADA token holders to stake while obtaining liquid staked ADA, which can then be bridged to Movement, unlocking approximately $12 billion in liquidity for Cardano.
III. DePIN
Ryan Rzepecki, co-founder of the decentralized 3D mapping project MeshMap, announced on X that the project has completed $4 million in financing, with participation from a16z CSX, Colosseum, Lattice, Escape Velocity, GSR, and others. Additionally, individual investors participating in this round of financing include two co-founders of Solana, toly and raj, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.
It is reported that a16z Crypto announced the launch of the crypto startup accelerator (CSX) for the fall 2024 program, with MeshMap and 20 other projects selected.
IV. Gaming
According to Venturebeat, game developer Darkbright Studios announced the completion of $6 million in seed round financing. This round of financing was led by Bitkraft Ventures, with participation from Play Ventures, Anthos Capital, King River Capital, Rockaway X, Zentry, Caballeros Capital, Gam3Girl Ventures, and Offchain Labs.
The company plans to use this funding to develop core games, with its first title being a life simulation game called Smolbound. This RPG and simulation hybrid is a player-driven world that seamlessly integrates Web3 technology.
Darkbright has begun closed testing of the game and plans to launch it next year on the Treasure Layer-2 blockchain.
V. Others
Web3 reward information aggregation solution Daylight announced the completion of $6 million in seed round financing, led by Union Square Ventures (USV), with participation from Framework Ventures, Chapter One, Zerion co-founders Evgeny Yurtaev and Vadim Koleoshkin, Blockaid co-founders Ido Ben-Natan and Raz Niv, and Yup co-founder Nir Kabessa.
Additionally, the Web3 asset data platform RootData shows that Daylight raised $3 million in November 2022, with investments from Framework Ventures, Chapter One, and others.
It is reported that Daylight is an on-chain information aggregation platform that has been integrated into mainstream wallets such as MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Zerion, and OKX Wallet. It provides personalized trading suggestions, including airdrop claims, NFT minting, gaming tasks, and more.
