Investment and Financing Overview

According to incomplete statistics, there were 27 financing events in the global blockchain market from January 8 to January 14 last week, with a total financing scale of US$166 million. Compared with last week, the number of financing events increased by 15 and the financing scale increased by 1313%.

In terms of the number of financing events, DeFi and infrastructure financing were the most active last week, with 7 events in the DeF track and 5 events in the infrastructure track.

In terms of the financing scale of events with disclosed amounts, mining is the largest, with a total financing scale of US$65 million.

Track Distribution

DeFi

Altitude

Altitude automatically manages user loans and collateral in real-time across established lending pools and yield aggregators. When a user takes out a loan from the Altitude vault, Altitude will optimize everything by continually refinancing the loan at the best available rate, actively managing dormant capital to generate yield, and using the generated yield to reduce debt.

DeFi lending service Altitude announced the completion of a $6.1 million seed round of financing. Previously, the protocol received $2.1 million in pre-seed funds from a group of Web3 builders, and then raised another $4 million from well-known angel investors such as Tioga Capital and New Form Capital.

Altitude has not yet issued any coins. Recently, it has cooperated with the Web3 task platform TaskOn to launch an event, and the reward is the whitelist.

Saros Finance

Saros Finance is a unified DeFi product suite based on Solana with three basic building blocks: SarosSwap (AMM), SarosFarm, and SarosStake, with SarosSwap being the core of the entire ecosystem.

DeFi product Saros has completed a round of private financing of US$3.75 million, with investors including Solana Ventures, Hashed, Spartan, Arche Fund, etc. This round of financing will be used to support the company's expansion plans and the development of the Saros super application.

Case

KASU is a decentralized platform that connects DeFi liquidity providers and real-world yield providers, providing on-chain yields by leveraging real-world commercial borrowers to provide real-world cash flow and security.

RWA lending platform Kasu announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing, led by Woodstock, Morningstar Ventures and Faculty Group. The funds from this round of financing will be used to advance Kasu's innovative platform, optimize the cash flow of enterprises to reduce credit risk, and provide risk management and returns.

Particle

Particle is a decentralized leveraged trading protocol that supports any permissionless asset, from tokens to NFTs. No price oracles, no counterparty risk, no forced liquidation.

Leveraged trading protocol Particle announced the completion of its seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Nascent, Inflection, Neon DAO, Naveen Jain, Arthur Hayes, DCF God, Sam Williams, Kalos, Richard Ma, Palmer, vxCozy and others. The specific amount was not disclosed.

Particle is currently in the Alpha testing phase, which will end on January 19th.

infrastructure

Bitfinity Network

Bitfinity (formerly InfinitySwap) is a next-generation EVM that acts as a second layer for Bitcoin and other assets, utilizing a threshold signature scheme and built on IC.

Bitfinity, the Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on Internet Computer, has completed a $7 million financing round with a valuation of $130 million. This round of financing was participated by Polychain Capital, ParaFi Capital, Warburg Serres, Dokia Capital and Draft Ventures.

Max Chamberlin, co-founder of Bitfinity, said the funding was realized in two parts - a seed round of about $1 million in 2021 and another round completed in June last year. Both rounds were token financing. At the time of the second round of financing, Bitfinity's valuation had reached $130 million. Bitfinity is currently in the testnet stage and plans to launch the mainnet later this month or early February.

PolyHedra

PolyHedra is the infrastructure for Web3 interoperability, using cutting-edge zero-knowledge proof systems to expand Web3 interoperability. Using deVirgo to implement zkBridge in Polyhedra Network, we provide a trustless and efficient infrastructure for cross-chain bridges and data interoperability between various Web2 and Web3 systems. Polyhedra Network opens up the design space for Web3 through highly scalable middleware, including ZK-NFT containers, DAO/DAC systems, and decentralized Web3 identities.

Polyhedra Network has completed two rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of US$25 million. The first round of financing was led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, and other participating investment institutions include Animoca Brands, Daofive, ABCDE Labs, Foresight Ventures, KuCoin Ventures and HashKey Capital. On January 10, 2024, OKX Ventures announced a Series A investment in Polyhedra Network, and the amount of financing was not disclosed.

GameFi

AI Arena

AI Arena is a PVP fighting game developed by ArenaX Labs. Players can learn through AI and continuously evolve their game characters. The battle mode is similar to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. It combines games, NFTs (IPs), and AI algorithms to bring players a new gaming experience while protecting the intellectual property rights of AI practitioners and helping them monetize. The long-term vision is to create a bilateral market for AI to match the needs of buyers and sellers.

ArenaX Labs, the developer of the AI ​​game AI Arena, announced that it has completed a $6 million financing round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from SevenX Ventures, FunPlus/Xterio and Moore Strategic Ventures. The new funds will be used to develop a PvP fighting platform.

SocialFi

Ta-da

Ta-da is a Talk-to-Earn web3 application that connects businesses and individuals. Users earn tokens by recording their voices through an application. Vivoka is an artificial intelligence company from France and is the predecessor of Ta-da.

The round was led by Dubai-based Morningstar Ventures, which has been nurturing Ta-da since its founding in 2021. This new capital injection was led by Layer 1 blockchain protocol MultiversX, in partnership with notable investors such as GBV Capital, XVentures, NxGen, and Spark Digital Capital to turn Ta-da’s vision into reality.

The funds are earmarked for a critical mission: strengthening Ta-da’s infrastructure and taking its operations to new heights. With an eye toward expansion, Ta-da is poised to strengthen its marketing and communications strategy, grow a dynamic team, and commission a rigorous security audit to independently verify the integrity of its groundbreaking protocol.

Tools

TrendX

TrendX is an AI-driven one-stop platform for Web3 trend tracking and smart trading. It uses large language models and AI technology to find market trends and seamlessly integrates them with smart trading. It is committed to becoming a new generation of AI trading platform for the next 1 billion users to enter Web3 to check projects, find hot spots, see trends, make primary investments, and conduct secondary transactions.

TrendX, an AI-driven one-stop platform for Web3 trend tracking and smart trading, announced the completion of a $1 million seed round of financing. This round of financing attracted participation from investment companies such as Foster Labs, Web3Link, Coresky, Tripod Capital, CatcherVC, and MIIX Capital.

Others

Bridge Network

Pontem is the product studio of Aptos and Sui, incubating Pontem Wallet, liquidswap.com, etc. Previously, the project focused on developing a decentralized application (dapp) framework based on Polkadot.

Pontem has completed a $6 million financing round, led by Faction and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Pantera Capital, Aptos Foundation, Wintermute, Altonomy, Shima Capital and Kraken Ventures. Pontem plans to use the funds to build applications that are compatible with both the Ethereum Virtual Machine and Move, thereby expanding the use of the Move programming language beyond the Aptos and Sui blockchains. The latest round of financing brings Pontem's total financing to $10.5 million. In June 2021, Pontem completed a $4.5 million financing round through a private token sale, led by Mechanism capital, Kenetic capital, Delphi Ventures and Animoca Brands.