Observing the latest investments of crypto VCs can help you see the market trend and discover new trends as early as possible. Which projects in which tracks are VCs optimistic about recently? This article will sort out 25 projects that received top crypto VC investments in May to help readers quickly understand.
1. DeFi
1. Cetus
May 2, 2023
Seed round: Amount not disclosed
Lead investors: OKX Ventures, KuCoin Ventures
Investors: Comma3 Ventures, NGC Ventures, Animoca Ventures, IDG Capital, Leland Ventures, AC Capital, Adaverse, Coin98 Ventures, etc.
Cetus is a DEX based on Sui and Aptos (Move L1), characterized by its ability to provide liquidity within a specific range and achieve higher capital efficiency.
2. It covers
May 3, 2023
Series A: $17 million
Lead investor: Ego Death Capital
Investors: TBD (a subsidiary of Block focused on Bitcoin Lightning Network), Kingsway, Trammell Venture Partners, Timechain
Fedi is a platform that uses Bitcoin and the Lightning Network (reducing the risk of single point failure) to help the community collaborate in managing assets and data. Fedi has developed a wallet and plans to add chat, web browsing, and running dApps in the future.
3. Open trade
May 4, 2023
$1.5 million
投资者：Circle Ventures、Kronos Research、Kyber Ventures、Polygon Ventures、Outlier Ventures
Opentrade is an RWA protocol that allows Web3 institutions to invest in a wide range of assets, including U.S. Treasuries and commercial paper, by depositing stablecoins on the protocol.
4. Dolomite
May 13, 2023
$2.5 million
Lead investors: Draper Goren Holm, NGC
Investors: Coinbase Ventures, WWVentures, 6th Man Ventures, etc.
Dolomite is an Arbitrum-based DEX that provides lending, margin trading, spot trading and other functions.
5. Hourglass
May 17, 2023
Seed round: $4.2 million
Lead investor: Electric Capital
Investors: Circle Ventures, Tribe Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Hack VC
Hourglass is a DeFi protocol that introduces a new concept called "Time-Bound Tokens" to help other DeFi protocols (DEX, lending, LSDFi) guide liquidity.
In the DeFi world, liquidity is very important. However, there are many unpredictable factors, including the fact that users can withdraw liquidity at any time. If users keep withdrawing and the protocol cannot dispose of assets in time, the protocol will have liquidity problems and may even go bankrupt.
To solve this problem, Hourglass offers users an additional reward: if Alice has 10 Frax Ethereum (10 frxETH) and commits to staking it on the Frax protocol for about a month, Hourglass will issue TBT in exchange for 10 frxETH and one month's expected return value. In this way, the Frax protocol guarantees at least a month's worth of liquidity for the 10 frxETH, while Alice gets an additional reward for doing so because she clearly defines the "time frame".
At the same time, Hourglass has also developed a trading market for TBT. For example, if Alice wants to sell her 10 ETH worth of TBT before the expiration date, she needs to match a buyer. Of course, the buyer may not want to pay 10 ETH because they cannot transfer the asset within a month, so they can submit the discounted amount they want based on the opportunity cost. Alice can select the submitted order in the background.
6. Azteco
May 18, 2023
Seed: $6 million
Lead investor: Jack Dorsey (CEO of Block)
投资者：Lightning Ventures、Hivemind Ventures、Ride Wave Ventures、Aleka Capital、Visary Capital、Gaingels 等
Azteco is a platform that allows people without bank accounts to easily buy Bitcoin (skipping the steps of downloading centralized exchanges to make purchases and today), where users can buy Azteco vouchers on the platform and redeem them for BTC.
2. CeFi
7. River Financial
May 16, 2023
Series B: $35 million
Lead investor: Kingsway Capital
Investors: Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal), Cygni, Goldcrest, Valor Equity Partners
River Financial is a centralized exchange focused on Bitcoin, providing services such as Bitcoin mining machine trading, hosting, and mining. In addition, it also provides an API for enterprises to easily use the Lightning Network.
3. NFT/Games
8. Vibe
May 4, 2023
Seed round: $4 million
Investors: Alchemy, Aglaé Ventures, P Nation (a record company run by Psy in South Korea), etc.
Vibe is an NFT distribution platform. Its advantage is that even if you don’t know how to code, you can use various functions to productize NFTs, including NFT loyalty programs, creating offline events, exchanging physical goods, etc. Through Vibe, creators can interact with fans in various ways.
9. Artifact Labs
May 8, 2023
$3.25 million
Lead investor: Blue Pool Capital
Investors: Animoca Ventures
Last year, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post spun off its NFT business and established Artifact Labs, which aims to preserve real-world historical events on the chain (NFT-ing reports or physical objects). For example, the company NFT-ed the Titanic's artifacts.
It is worth mentioning that Blue Pool Capital, which manages part of Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai’s wealth, has completed 8 investments in the crypto industry, including 5 NFT projects, namely The Sandbox, Metaplex, Animoca Brands, Fast Break Lab and Artifact Labs. In addition, Blue Pool Capital has also invested in CeFi project FTX, L1 project Polygon, and Solana-based decentralized exchange Aver.
10. Aether Games
May 9, 2023
$4.5 million
Investors: Mysten Labs、Polygon、Magic Eden、Polkastarter、Cogitent Ventures、Ultra、GSR Ventures、Emurgo、Master Ventures、Eclipse
Aether Games is a game studio that makes various NFT games, including the collectible card game Aether and the 3D action game Aether’s Gate.
11. Artizen
May 11, 2023
$2.2 million
Investors: Consensys Mesh, Animoca Brands, Protocol Labs, etc.
Artizen is a decentralized crowdfunding platform that allows investors to raise funds for projects related to art, science, technology design, and more.
12. Pudgy Penguins
May 10, 2023
Seed round: $9 million
投资者：1kx、Big Brain Holdings、Kornos、Ethersole、CRIT Ventures、KuCoin、CoinGecko、Puzzle Ventures、Shima Capital、Old Fashion Research、Origin
Pudgy Penguins, which features animated penguin characters, was launched in April 2022 and is currently one of the popular PFP NFT projects on Ethereum. Pudgy Penguins not only issues NFTs, but also sells physical toys based on NFTs.
13. Izumo
May 16, 2023
Angel: $2.2 million
Investors: Hiroaki Kitano (Sony Group CTO), Jaynti Kanani (Polygon founder), Kevin Lin (Twitch co-founder, Metatheory CEO), Richard Ma (Quantstamp CEO), Suji Yan (Mask Network CEO), etc.
Izumo is a platform that helps streamers, artists, musicians, and vloggers monetize their content.
14. Or
May 29, 2023
Angel: $10 million
Investors: Animoca Brands, Draper Dragon, Hashkey Capital, Infinity Crypto Ventures, Youbi Capital, etc.
Tabi (formerly Treasureland) is an NFT market based on the BNB network. Its main functions include NFT trading, Launchpad, creating task activities, etc.
IV. L1/L2
15. Reluctance
May 2, 2023
Seed round: $2.5 million
Investors: Dorahacks, Everstake, Cogitent Ventures, Token Metrics Ventures, Autonomy Capital, etc.
Nolus is an L1 based on the Cosmos SDK, focusing on lending services. Unlike other lending protocols, it is not over-collateralized, allowing users to borrow more funds relative to the collateral with less liquidation risk. As a member of the Cosmos multi-chain ecosystem, Nolus also supports Cosmos' cross-chain protocols IBC and ICA, allowing interoperability with other chains.
16. Anoma Foundation
May 31, 2023
$25 million
Lead investor: EMCC
投资者：Electric Capital、Delphi Digital、Dialectic、KR1、Spartan、NGC、MH Ventures、Bixin Ventures、No Limit、Plassa、Perridon Ventures、Anagram、Factor 等。
The Anoma Foundation is a Switzerland-based nonprofit that is responsible for developing Anoma (a full-stack framework that helps developers build dApps) and Namada (an “intent”-centric L1 that allows private transactions where each party in a transaction can individually choose the assets they want to send or receive).
5. Web3 Services
17. Story Protocol
May 17, 2023
Seed round: $29.3 million
Lead investor: a16z
Investors: Hashed, Mirana Corp, DAO5, Samsung Next Fund, Two Small Fish Ventures, Berggruen, SLVC
Story Protocol is a platform that allows the creation and management of IP on the chain. There is no more public information, but with the investment of top VCs, it is worth paying attention to in the long term.
18. LabDAO
May 24, 2023
$3.6 million
Lead investors: Gumi Cryptos Capital, Maven 11
Credits: North Island Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, ID Theory, Road Capital, Curve Labs, gmjp.lol, Molecule, Gnosis DAO, The LAO, Orange DAO, Beaker DAO, Spaceship DAO, Balaji Srinivasan
LabDAO is a DAO organization centered on life science research, where researchers can propose research ideas to seek investment or find partners.
19. Tools For Humanity
May 25, 2023
Series C: $115 million
Lead investor: Blockchain Capital
Investors: a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, Distributed Global
Tools For Humanity is the company behind Worldcoin, a project that has attracted a lot of investment despite the bear market in the crypto market. Worldcoin rewards people around the world with token airdrops to verify their identity through an iris recognition device called Orb and create a digital identity World ID.
Sam Altman, co-founder of Worldcoin and CEO of OpenAI, believes that artificial intelligence will make most people unemployed in the future, so UBI (universal basic income) will be crucial.
Therefore, Worldcoin aims to: verify and create people's identities in the digital world, as well as provide them with a basic income.
20. Transaction
May 31, 2023
Series A: $20 million
Lead investor: CE Innovation Capital
Investors: SBI Ven Capital, Sygnum, Azimut, Third Kind Venture Capital, UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital, Animoca Brands, Genting Ventures, Istari Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Woodstock Fund, IOSG Ventures, KX, Axelar, Tokentus, The Lao, and more
Transak is one of the largest Web3 payment services currently available, allowing users to perform "fiat<>cryptocurrency" conversions on any platform or dApp that has integrated the service.
21. Magic
May 31, 2023
Strategy: $52 million
Lead investor: PayPal Ventures
Investors: Cherubic, Synchrony, KX, Northzone, Volt Capital, etc.
Magic is a "wallet as a service" company that aims to abstract the complexity of Web3 and provide businesses and users with customizable crypto wallets that are as simple as Web2. To date, Magic has created more than 20 million wallets and is used by more than 130,000 developers.
VI. Infrastructure
22. zkLink
May 4, 2023
Strategy: $10 million
Investors: Coinbase Ventures, Ascensive Assets, SIG DTI, BigBrain Holdings, Efficient Frontier, etc.
zkLink is a zk-SNARKs-based L2 protocol that focuses on multi-chain transactions. Currently supported networks include Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, zkSync, Scroll, etc. In addition, developers can use its API to create a wider range of cross-chain products, including cross-chain DEX and cross-chain NFT markets.
23. Webb
May 8, 2023
Seed round: $7 million
Lead investors: Polychain Capital, Lemniscap
Investors: Zee Prime, CMS Holdings, others
Webb is a privacy-preserving cross-chain protocol based on ZK technology. Its flagship product, Hubble Bridge, allows users to transfer assets, verify identities, and pass messages between multiple networks.
24. Airstack
May 17, 2023
Pre-seed: $7 million
Lead investor: Superscrypt
Investors: Polygon, Hashed Emergent, NGC, Primal Capital, UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, etc.
Airstack is a blockchain data platform that allows developers to easily query data from multiple networks. It also developed an AI assistant for users to query by asking. For example, ask "Help me find the wallet address of holders with more than 10,000 MATIC", and the Ai assistant will automatically provide query results.
25. PYOR
May 19, 2023
Seed round: $4 million
Lead investor: Castle Island Ventures
投资者：Hash3、Antler、Future Perfect Venture、Force Ventures、CoinSwitch Ventures、Coinbase Ventures、Balaji Srinivasan
PYOR is a blockchain data analytics platform for institutions that allows users to access data from various networks and create custom dashboards. The platform is currently in private beta.
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