From April 13 to April 19, there were 33 investment and financing events in the crypto market, including 7 DeFi, 6 infrastructure, 6 RWA, 2 games, 1 Depin, 1 NFT-related, 1 SocialFi, 1 AI, and 4 others.
There are 2 financings of more than 10 million US dollars this week:
Puffer Finance, a liquidity staking protocol based on EigenLayer, has completed an $18 million Series A financing round with investors including Electric Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, etc.
Centrifuge, an on-chain ecosystem for structured credit, has completed a $15 million Series A financing round with investors including ParaFi Capital, Greenfield, and others.
This week, the enthusiasm for investment and financing in the crypto market has rebounded compared to last week. There were 7 financing events in the decentralized finance field, followed by the infrastructure field. RWA and other narratives attracted investors attention. This weeks financing fields are rich and diverse, and are concentrated in the current hottest tracks. Puffer Finance, a liquidity pledge protocol based on EigenLayer, received the largest amount of financing this week.
This weeks investment and financing projects are sorted by financing amount as shown below:
DeFi
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 13, Black Panther completed a round of financing of unknown amount, with investors including Taureon, CSP DAO, etc. Black Panther is an asset management protocol based on Injective and Terra. Its treasury strategy helps users earn income through digital assets, and profits are automatically compounded.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 16, Crypto Valley Exchange completed a round of financing of US$7 million, with investors including Fabric Ventures, FunFair Ventures, etc. Crypto Valley Exchange is a decentralized futures and options trading platform for cryptocurrencies and commodities, offering a variety of advantages, including high leverage (up to 1,000 times), VaR-based margin calculation, and a unique collateral system.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 17, Aark Digital has completed a $6 million seed round of financing, with investors including HashKey Capital, Arrington Capital, etc. Aark Digital is a permanent DEX on Arbitrum for professional traders/limited partners. It aims to bring all on-chain assets into a single liquidity pool to provide a smooth leverage experience.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, MerlinStarter completed a seed round of financing with an unknown amount, with investors including Amber Group, Waterdrip Capital, etc. Merlin Starter is the native launchpad platform and Bitcoin Layer 2 accelerator on Merlin Chain. Relying on strong technology and ecological compatibility, it focuses on the issuance of Merlin Chain native assets.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, Runes DEX completed a $2 million seed round of financing, with investors including Kenetic Capital, Mechanism Capital, etc. Runes DEX is the Runes AMM platform on the Bitcoin network.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, Thruster has completed a $7.5 million seed round of financing, with investors including Pantera Capital, OKX Ventures, etc. Thruster is a Blast native DEX that benefits traders, LPs, and developers by leveraging Blasts native yield, customized liquidity solutions, and a simpler user interface/user experience.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, Lambda Finance completed a round of financing of $1.8 million, with investors including DLC.Link and AladdinDAO. Lambda Finance is a Bitcoin-based USD stablecoin protocol that enables Bitcoin holders to take advantage of DEFIs money-making opportunities. Users can mint BTCUSD with their Bitcoin while maintaining long-term exposure, and redeem BTCUSD as underlying collateral at any time at a 1:1 ratio.
infrastructure
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 15, Aligned Layer has completed a $2.6 million seed round of financing, with investors including Lemniscap, Bankless Ventures, etc. Aligned Layer is a ZK verification layer developed on top of EigenLayer. This will make the verification of any SNARK proof cost-effective, leveraging the security of Ethereum validators without being limited by Ethereum. As Eigen Layer AVS, it promises to provide affordable verification and versatile proof systems for L2 and bridges, meeting key needs in the blockchain ecosystem. The project was developed by Yet Another Company.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 16, Saakuru completed a round of financing of US$2.4 million, with investors including BasedVC, Kyber Ventures, etc. Saakuru is a consumer-centric L2 protocol developed using OP Stack, with zero transaction fees, and uses a delegation model to eliminate users gas fees, creating a frictionless experience for any application built on Saakuru, and enhanced by the Saakuru development kit, supporting embedded complex content digital products to be upgraded to Web3 within 1 day. The powerful and developer-friendly product suite centered on the Saakuru blockchain enables cost-effective and seamless connection from Web2 to Web3.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 17, NEBRA has completed a $4.5 million seed round of financing, with investors including Nascent, Bankless Ventures, etc. NEBRA is building a proof aggregation service on Ethereum that uses a general ZK-ZK proof aggregation structure to aggregate ZKPs for various applications, including but not limited to privacy-preserving identity, storage proof, ZKML, and zkEVM proof.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 17, Merlin Chain completed a round of financing of unknown amount, with investors including Spartan Group, Hailstone Labs, etc. Merlin Chain is a Bitcoin layer 2 supported by Bitmap, based on the native assets, protocols and products of Bitcoin layer 1, making Bitcoin interesting again. Merlin Chains goal is to amplify the asset potential of the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole by enabling the assets, protocols and user ecology of the first layer on the second layer, such as building a metaverse that users can easily enter based on Bitmap, and building a DeFi protocol based on BRC-420 to maximize the duality of graph and currency.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, Minke completed an MA financing, with ZenGo as the investor. Minke is a non-custodial DeFi wallet that provides users with a way to save, borrow, and invest in DeFi using a mobile interface.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 19, Klaytn completed a round of financing, with DWF Labs as the investor. Klaytn is a highly optimized, BFT-based public blockchain designed to meet enterprise-level reliability and was founded by the famous Korean company Kakao. Since 2021, Klaytn has been focusing on the Metaverse, Gamefi, and the Creator Economy, with the goal of becoming a one-stop platform for Metaverse builders.
RWA
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 15, RWA Inc. has completed a financing of US$1.17 million, with investors including Maven Capital and Duckdao. RWA is a tokenized ecosystem that enables anyone to easily convert real-world items into blockchain assets. The platform combines an intuitive interface with smart contract automation to lower the entry barrier and reduce technical barriers.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 16, Puffer Finance has completed a $18 million Series A financing round, with investors including Electric Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, etc. Puffer is a native liquidity re-staking platform built on Eigenlayer. It introduces the native liquidity re-staking token (nLRT), which can accumulate PoS and re-staking rewards. Nodes in the protocol use Puffers anti-slashing technology to reduce risks and improve capital efficiency, while increasing their returns through native re-staking. Puffers core mission is to maintain Ethereums trusted neutrality and enhance and maintain Ethereums decentralization.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 17, Homium has completed a $10 million Series A financing round, with investors including Blizzard Fund, Sorenson Impact Group, etc. Homium is a home equity line of credit (HELOC) tokenization protocol based on Avalanche. By using Homium, homeowners can use part of the future appreciation of their homes as collateral for maintenance and repairs, debt consolidation, or inherited loan equity. At the same time, investors receive a tokenized asset that tracks the price appreciation of the shared housing pool on the protocol.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 17, Centrifuge has completed a $15 million Series A financing round, with investors including ParaFi Capital, Greenfield, etc. Centrifuge is a decentralized asset financing protocol that unlocks the liquidity of real-world assets, allowing borrowers to finance their real-world assets without banks or other intermediaries. Centrifuge connects real-world assets to DeFi (decentralized finance) to reduce the capital costs of small and medium-sized enterprises and provide DeFi investors with a stable source of income that is unrelated to volatile crypto assets.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 17, Usual has completed a round of financing of US$7 million, with investors including IOSG Ventures, Kraken Ventures, etc. Usual is a stablecoin protocol that launched USD, a permissionless and fully compliant stablecoin backed 1:1 by real-world assets (RWA). USUAL is a governance token that allows the community to guide the future development of the network. Usual solves the current stablecoin market problems by redistributing profits to the community and rewarding token holders with actual earnings generated by RWA.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 19, CSpro completed a round of strategic financing, with Taisu Ventures as the investor. CSpro is one of the core business units of Gower Street Group. It aims to establish a multinational RWA tokenization, issuance, distribution, investment and private financing platform covering major global financial markets and focusing on STO.
GameFi
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 15, Avalon has completed a $10 million financing round, with investors including Hashed and Bitkraft Ventures. Avalon is developing an interoperable digital world that empowers gamers, creators, and anyone to build a world. Ultimately, this world will also include content related to education, training, simulation, health, and mental health.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, Circle of Games has completed a strategic financing of US$1 million, with investors including Nazara Technologies, Nazara Technologies, The Hashgraph Association, etc. Circle of Games is a gaming platform on the blockchain owned and managed by COG-DAO.
Depin
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 16, GEODNET has completed a strategic financing of US$2 million, with investors including Pantera Capital and CoinFund. GEODNETs mission is to collect dense, real-time geospatial data from the earth and its atmosphere using a new type of rooftop space weather station. The use of blockchain will promote a strong and resilient network that provides secure and trusted geospatial data products for key economic sectors such as agriculture, transportation and finance, as well as emerging applications for Autonomy, AR/VR and Metaverse.
NFT related
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 19, Superlogic has completed a strategic financing of US$7.6 million, with investors including Nima Capital and American Express Ventures. Superlogic is an enterprise-level loyalty platform whose technology is tailored for enterprise customers on a SaaS basis and can be seamlessly integrated with existing CRM, CDP and traditional loyalty management systems. The core of Superlogics unique points and badges hybrid system is to use blockchain to tokenize traditional reward points and digitally represent redeemable products and experiences as digital badges.
SocialFi
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 16, SendingNetwork has completed a $7.5 million extended seed round of financing, with investors including Nomad Capital and Symbolic Capital. Sending.Network is a high-performance, open Web3 communication protocol in which every component from message data, user ID to social graph is decentralized. It aims to help developers build social decentralized applications and help communities access encrypted decentralized group chat platforms.
Ai
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 15, Inference Labs completed a $2.3 million Pre-seed round of financing, with investors including Mechanism Capital and DACM. Inference Labs focuses on developing AI infrastructure and products on web3, and focuses on AI reasoning interoperability on blockchain. Zero-knowledge proof ensures privacy and security without compromising speed or efficiency. Users can verify the correctness of off-chain AI output without having to calculate it themselves.
other
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 16, Integral completed a round of financing of unknown amount, with investors including Henri Stern, Raj Gokal, etc. Integral is a real-time Web3 accounting platform that connects to all organizations wallets, vaults, exchanges, and custodians, and provides rich financial data in real time through a collaborative interface.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 18, Multis completed an MA financing, and the investor was Safe. Multis is a Web3 financial management tool that provides a software layer to help Web3 organizations manage their encrypted finances, supporting batch payments, multi-signature wallets, fiat currency channels, etc. Multis also plans to integrate all financial workflows in a typical organization into its products, including more accounting and human resources integration, access to decentralized exchanges, invoicing functions, popular DeFi protocols, etc.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 19, HQLA has completed its C round of financing, with investors including HSBC, Bank of New York Mellon, etc. HQLAᵡ is a platform that provides distributed ledger technology (DLT) for collateral liquidity, focusing mainly on the securities lending field. The platform enables customers to perform frictionless, precise and real-time ownership transfers to meet various collateral obligations. It helps solve the problem of collateral fragmentation by extending its connections with leading third-party agents, custodians and market participants to the securities finance industry.
According to ROOTDATAs investment and financing data on April 19, FilmChain completed a round of financing of 2.8 million euros, with investors including Holt InterXion and Roca X. FilmChain is a film and television payment platform based on the Ethereum blockchain, which uses blockchain to improve transaction transparency and auditability, and uses blockchain to track ownership in payment architecture, injecting trust and responsibility into payment transactions in the film, television and gaming industries.
