According to Odaily’s incomplete statistics, a total of 23 blockchain financing incidents at home and abroad were announced in the week from August 23rd to August 29th, a decrease from the previous week; the total disclosed financing amounted to about 336 million US dollars (disclosure part) , showing a downward trend from last week.
Last week, the blockchain project with the largest single investment amount was the Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream, which completed a B round of financing of US$210 million. Some of the funds will be used to develop a solar-powered mining facility in partnership with Square, and the remainder will be used to build out financial infrastructure through bitcoin-focused financial products and Liquid.
The following are the specific financing events (sorted according to the announced amount, * is a "traditional" company whose business involves blockchain):
The following are the specific financing events (sorted according to the announced amount, * is a "traditional" company whose business involves blockchain):
African mobile payment platform OPay completes US$400 million financing, led by Softbank*
Nigeria’s leading payment company OPay announced that it has received US$400 million in financing, and the platform’s valuation has reached US$2 billion. The financing was led by Softbank Vision Fund No. 2, and Source Code Capital, DragonBall Capital, 3W Capital and other institutions participated in the investment. Founded in 2018, OPay mainly provides payment services centered on small agency outlets for a large number of unbanked people in Africa. Currently, OPay has more than 3,000 agent outlets, with a monthly transaction volume of more than 3 billion US dollars. (Weiyang.com)
Blockstream completes USD 210 million in Series B financing led by Baillie Gifford and iFinex
Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream announced the completion of a $210 million Series B round of financing led by investment management company Baillie Gifford and crypto exchange Bitfinex operator iFinex. The financing values the company at $3.2 billion. Part of the funds will be used to advance Blockstream’s bitcoin mining products and services, such as Blockstream Energy. The new mining infrastructure they are building is planned for many partnerships, for example they are working with Square on a solar powered mining facility. The rest of the funds will be used to build financial infrastructure through Bitcoin-focused financial products and Liquid. Liquid is a sidechain-based settlement network that enables faster, more secure Bitcoin transactions.
Blockstream also acquired the intellectual property of mining hardware manufacturer Spondoolies, and announced that its core team will join Blockstream to build Blockstream's ASIC division. (Bitcoin Magazine)
Khatabook, an Indian digital ledger financial services company, completed a $100 million Series C round of financing, with a post-money valuation of nearly $600 million. The round of financing was led by American venture capital firms Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV), with participation from Alkeon Capital, BCapital Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, RTP Ventures, Unilever Ventures and Better Capital. Additionally, Balaji Srinivasan and Sriram Krishnan participated in Khatabook’s Series C funding round as independent investors. (TechCrunch)
Bazaar Technologies, a blockchain-driven B2B marketplace in Pakistan, completed a $30 million Series A round led by Silicon Valley's Defy Partners and Singapore's Wavemaker Partners, Endeavor, LinkedIn, Japan's Saison Capital, and existing investors Indus Valley Capital and Alter Global participated in the vote. Bazaar is a B2B marketplace platform for small merchants in Pakistan serving 750,000 merchants in 400 towns and villages. (Cointelegraph)
XREX, a cross-border payment service provider in Taiwan, completed a pre-A round of financing of US$17 million, led by CDIB Capital Group (CCG), SBI Investment, Global Founders Capital, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital Systex Corporation, Metaplanet Holdings, AppWorks, Black Marble, New Economy Ventures and Seraph Group participated in the round. The funds will be used to expand its fiat currency pool, obtain additional licenses, and further expand cooperation with financial institutions and digital wallet providers.
Founded in August 2018 and headquartered in Taipei, XREX solves the problem of dollar liquidity shortage for cross-border merchants and global enterprises, and provides efficient cross-border payment solutions based on blockchain. The BitCheck platform under XREX provides encrypted asset custody services, and the encrypted exchange MyXchange provides commercial custody services, trade financing, digital wallets, and fiat currency exchange channels for the B-end market. In 2019, XREX completed a $7 million seed round led by AppWorks, with participation from Metaplanet Holdings, Black Marble, CCG and the late Skype co-founder Toivo Annus. CCG, formerly known as China Development Group Corporation, is Taiwan's first private development-oriented financial institution with assets of US$2.3 billion. (CoinDesk)
Music tokenization platform Royal completes $16 million seed round led by Paradigm and Founders Fund
Royal, a music investment platform launched by well-known American DJ and producer Justin "3LAU" Blau, completed a $16 million seed round of financing. Paradigm and Founders Fund each injected $7 million. General partners Fred Ehrsam and Keith Rabois joined Royal Board of Directors. Royal co-founder JD Ross invested $1 million through his own venture capital arm, Atomic, and several angel investors contributed the remaining $1 million. It is reported that by tokenizing songs, Royal divides copyrights into encrypted tokens, which can be purchased and traded by anyone, and may eventually allow fans to claim a small portion of song royalties, aiming to subvert traditional record transactions. Note: Blau sold $11.7 million in NFT albums in February.
According to reports, limited digital assets (LDA) are the backbone of the system. It's up to the artist to decide how much of his or her royalty share is set aside for fans holding LDA, and how many "official releases" are minted for a song. Royal will then facilitate the sale of these LDA tokens, generating revenue for the artist and possibly future revenue from song owners. For example, if there are 100 "official versions" of a song, each holder can get 0.5% of the song's royalties. (CoinDesk)
Alethea AI, the metaverse AI infrastructure service provider that created the first smart NFT, received $16 million in private token placements to build a metaverse inhabited by its robots. Leading investors in the token sale include NFT fund Metapurse, Crypto.com Capital, billionaire investor Mark Cuban, Dapper Labs, BITKRAFT, Galaxy Interactive, Sfermion, Multicoin Capital, LD Capital, Alameda Research , CMS Holdings, Gemini Frontier Fund, etc.
It is reported that the first intelligent NFT (iNFT) of Alethea AI and Robert Alice was successfully auctioned at the auction house Sotheby's for $478,800. (Decrypt)
According to official news, on August 24, Tianhe Guoyun announced that it has received nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financing. This round of financing was led by Hunan Caixin Industrial Fund Management Co., Ltd. ("Caixin Industrial Fund"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hunan Caixin Financial Holding Group Co., Ltd., a provincial financial holding platform, followed by a number of venture capital funds . The financing will be mainly used for blockchain core technology research, talent echelon construction and application scenario development, fully tap the empowering value of blockchain, and explore the effective integration of blockchain and other digital technologies.
It is reported that Tianhe Guoyun was established in 2015. The company is headquartered in Hunan. It has branches and offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Hefei, Shijiazhuang and other places. It has been focusing on blockchain technology research and development for many years. Innovation, with a number of independent and controllable core technologies.
According to official news, InfStones, a blockchain infrastructure provider, announced the completion of a $10 million round of financing. This round of financing was led by Qiming Venture Partners, followed by DHVC, HashKey Capital, Plug and Play, SNZ Holdings, Hash Global, and the family office of Fosun International co-founder Liang Xinjun. This round of financing will be used to expand other products beyond staking services, including public and private API services and node management services, to meet the growing infrastructure needs of the blockchain community. In addition, funds will also be used to develop a user-friendly front-end interface that InfStones hopes will be the industry's first self-service portal that will allow customers to conveniently access its infrastructure platform.
It is reported that InfStones was established in 2018 and has branches in two continents and three countries. The company is committed to lowering the access and use threshold of the blockchain, making it easier for customers to build their own on various blockchain networks. infrastructure. InfStones provides services to various types of institutional clients around the world, including digital asset trading platforms, digital wallets, custodians, asset managers, data analysts, etc. Dozens of leading companies in the industry, including Binance, Circle, KuCoin, Chainlink, imToken, BitGo, Poloniex, and Dune Analytics, are currently relying on the InfStones platform to run validator nodes, access on-chain data, or build Decentralized applications (DApps). As a platform as a service (PaaS) provider, InfStones supports tens of thousands of nodes on more than 50 chains such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Cardano, Polkadot, Solana, and Polygon.
Blockchain analysis company AnChain.AI announced the completion of a $10 million Series A round led by SIG Asia Investments LLP. AnChain.AI is a San Jose-based artificial intelligence and machine learning blockchain startup focused on on-chain data tracking. In May, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) signed an agreement with AnChain.AI to help monitor and regulate the DeFi industry. The contract is for five years at $125,000 per year for a total value of $625,000. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler warned in August that DeFi operations are not immune to regulation. (Forbes)
DeFi lending market Euler completes $8 million in Series A financing, led by Paradigm
Euler, a DeFi lending market, announced that it has received US$8 million in Series A financing, led by Paradigm, Lemniscap (leader of seed round financing), Anthony Sassano (The Daily Gwei), Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman (Bankless), Kain Warwick (Synthetix ), Hasu (Uncommon Core) and others participated in the investment.
It is reported that Euler will provide a lending market for any Ethereum-based token. Unlike Aave and Compound, Euler is permissionless. In the long run, Euler plans to implement governance through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Euler co-founder Michael Bentley said the protocol will go live by the end of the year. (Decrypt)
Japanese Consortium Blockchain Trade Waltz Raises $8 Million, Adds 4 Member Organizations
The Japanese consortium Blockchain Trade Waltz raised 900 million yen (about 8 million U.S. dollars) and added 4 new member organizations. Founded by NTT Data, the blockchain currently has 11 member organizations, including the venture capital fund of the University of Tokyo, Mitsui Warehouse, a shipping company, and Nissin Corporation, a transportation and warehousing company, and TW Link.
TW Link is a joint venture investment company registered for the promotion of Trade Waltz. It is formed by 4 logistics companies and is committed to integrating these logistics companies with Trade Waltz through API and providing other functional development advice. In October last year, NTT Data announced that the blockchain platform, with the support of Mitsubishi, Toyota Tsusho and four other companies, received 2.1 billion yen (about 19 million U.S. dollars) in initial funding. Digitizing. (Ledger Insights)
According to official news, Apricot Finance, a decentralized money market platform based on the Solana network, announced the completion of a $4 million financing to advance its goal of becoming the platform of choice for personalized DeFi solutions. It is reported that an updated version of the Apricot Finance testnet will be released next week. Investors in this round of financing include Delphi Ventures, Lemniscap, Solana Capital, Advanced Blockchain AG, Skyvision Capital, CryptoJ, Struck Capital Crypto, Bixin, Ledger Prime, Valhalla Capital, MXC, Gate, a41 Ventures, Komorebi DAO, etc.
According to previous reports in June, Apricot Finance completed a $800,000 seed round of financing, with investors including Chris McCann from Race Capital (one of the early seed investors for Solana and FTX), NGC Ventures, DFG, Genblock Capital, CMS Holdings, CryptoJ , Coinsights Venture, LD Capital, Double Peak Group, Crypto Pavilion, etc.
Slope Finance, a decentralized trading platform, announced the completion of a $2.3 million seed round of financing, with participation from Alameda Research, Solana Capital, GSR, Rarestone Capital, SkyVision Venture, Fundamental Labs, NGC Ventures, Signum Capital, Ausvic Capital, 0xVentures, and Krypital Group. Slope Finance plans to use the funds to expand the team, update the cross-platform Slope wallet, and upgrade the Serum-based mobile decentralized exchange Slope DEX. (Cointelegraph)
According to official information, the decentralized social and content protocol RSS3 development team Natural Selection Labs has completed multi-million dollar financing, Sky9 Capital, Mask Network, ByteDave, Hash Global, Fosun Group co-founder Liang Xinjun, Wen Chen, Variable Capital, SPT Capital, Huofeng Capital and Chen Yuetian participated in the investment. RSS3 under Natural Selection Labs is a new generation of decentralized social and content protocol. Through built-in business, recommendation and storage mechanisms, it returns data including relationships, content and portraits to users, providing users with aggregated, controllable and pervasive App file. RSS3 aims to replace the Web 2.0 application ecosystem with traditional centralized distribution as the core, and create a more prosperous and healthy future for content social networking.
Encrypted transaction visualization platform Hedgehog raises $1.6 million led by Dragonfly Capital
Hedgehog Technologies, an encrypted transaction visualization platform, has completed a $1.6 million seed round of financing to develop encrypted robot advisors. The financing was led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Baroda Ventures and Y Combinator.
It is reported that Hedgehog Technologies is a platform that allows investors to synchronize cryptocurrency wallets and exchange accounts to visualize their investment portfolios. Hedgehog currently charges no fees to its nearly 7,000 users. Instead, the Hedgehog founder said its long-term plan is to charge exchanges a referral fee to drive customers to buy cryptocurrencies through the exchange platform. Hedgehog's robo-advisor feature will go live in the coming months. It will evaluate linked accounts on the platform and advise users on how to balance their holdings and take advantage of falling prices to buy cryptocurrencies at low prices. (CoinDesk)
One-stop DeFi center OpenSwap raises $1.5 million led by NGC Ventures and Coin98 Ventures
One-stop integrated DeFi center OpenSwap announced the completion of $1.5 million in financing, led by NGC Ventures and Coin98 Ventures, BR Capital, Legos Capital, Double Peak Group, Prime Block Capital, Illusionist Group, All In Ventures, and Julien Bouteloup including Curve Finance , Leo Cheng from CREAM Finance, blockchain veteran investors Ravindra Kumar and Mark Borsten participated in the investment. OpenSwap will use the new funding to accelerate the development of its patented liquidity solution, known as liquidity queues. The funding follows OpenSwap’s recent partnership with Impossible Finance, a multi-platform DeFi incubator, IEO Launchpad and exchange. (U. Today)
DeSyn Protocol, a DeFi derivatives platform, completed a financing of US$1.4 million, led by Fenbushi Capital, SNZ Capital, and Everest Ventures Group, followed by Incuba Alpha, Bing Ventures, Lancer Capital, TKX Capital, and some individual investors in the field of encrypted assets. DeSyn is a DeFi derivatives platform based on Ethereum. Users can freely create and trade assets based on liquidity pools such as ETFs/Portfolios and leveraged assets on DeSyn.
The cross-chain protocol NIFTSY announced the completion of a seed round of 1 million euros (equivalent to 118 US dollars), WaterDrip Capital, Moonrock Capital, YBB Foundation, LucidBlue Ventures, Autonomy Capital, LD Capital, Damo Labs, Lancer Capital, Cypher Ventures and other institutions participated in the investment, and Obtained Rarible Grants. The financing will be used to build NFT infrastructure, continue to advance the NIFTSY development roadmap, and conduct product marketing.
According to reports, NIFTSY is a price discovery cross-chain protocol backed by collateral, dedicated to solving the problems existing in the NFT market, including inefficient price discovery mechanisms and lack of liquidity. NIFTSY provides internal value and liquidity for NFTs, allowing NFTs to be used as storage for cryptocurrencies or other NFTs. Creators can also customize NFTs with unique settings such as royalties, temporary time-locked deposit assets, and more.
Custom Derivatives Protocol Clear Protocol Completes Seed Round Financing, Led by LD Capital
Clear Protocol, a decentralized blockchain protocol for custom derivatives, announced today that it has closed a seed round led by LD Capital a few months ago. Developed by the team at DerivStudio, Clear is a decentralized blockchain protocol for custom derivatives. The platform has completed system design, pricing model research and smart contract development, and is currently in the alpha testing stage. The Clear platform will start public testing in September this year. The first batch of derivative products include barrier options and structured notes, and fixed-income derivatives such as coin default swap (CDS) and token return swap (TRS) are under development. The Clear SDK will be made available to developers to build and launch new platforms powered by the Clear protocol. (PR Newswire)
Hike, an Indian social platform invested by Tencent and Softbank, announced the completion of a new round of financing, the amount of which has not yet been disclosed. Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen led the round, SoftBank Vision Fund CEO Rajeev Misra, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad, Tribe Capital co-founder Arjun Sethi, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Cred founder Kunal Shah, Zeta and Titan co-founders Bhavin Turakhia, Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Kumar Bansal, and Residence Aditya Agarwal's South Park Commons Partner also participated.
The new funds will be used to expand product strategy and recruit talent in the social, gaming and encryption fields. The company has raised more than $260 million, with its last round of funding being $175 million in August 2016 at a $1.4 billion valuation led by Tencent and Foxconn. Hike shut down its native messaging app Hike Sticker Chat in January and began focusing on social products, including virtual party platform Vibe and mobile gaming service Rush. (Economic Times)
Cross-chain decentralized ETF platform MatrixETF completed seed round and private placement round of financing, Spark Digital Capital, CMS Holdings, Morningstar Ventures, Ascensive Assets, Divergence Ventures, GBV Capital, Solana Eco Fund (founded by MXC and OKEX), Moonrock Capital, AU21 Capital and others participated in the investment.
MatrixETF is a next-generation decentralized ETF platform that supports cross-chain. The goal is to establish a decentralized, automated, and diversified ETF portfolio to simplify investors' entry into the encryption market and easily achieve long-term and stable wealth growth. . At present, MatrixETF has completed the test of ETF basic functions, and its version based on Ethereum and Solana will be launched in the near future.
PawnHouse, an NFT pricing platform, announced the completion of its first round of financing, with participation from Huobi Ventures, A&TC Capital, and Spark Digital Capital. The financing amount was undisclosed. PawnHouse said that its NFT mortgage lending platform has been launched in January, with a transaction volume of more than 100 million US dollars. It will soon launch a simultaneous multi-round auction (SMRA) system to help NFT market participants better obtain pricing services and encourage bidders to provide price information. PawnHouse provides NFT mortgage lending and public value discovery through the Synchronous Multi-Round Auction (SMRA) system, and is committed to price discovery and liquidity enhancement in the NFT market. (Cointelegraph)
