Even though the current market environment is still relatively bad, there are still investment and financing events happening every day. Top crypto VCs are still investing heavily in NFT, Web3 games, CeFi, DeFi, L1&L2, Web3 services, infrastructure and other tracks.
Written by: Black Rice
Even though the current market environment is still relatively bad, there are still investment and financing events happening every day. Top crypto VCs are still investing heavily in NFT, Web3 games, CeFi, DeFi, L1&L2, Web3 services, infrastructure and other tracks.
Which tracks and projects are VCs looking up to recently? This article will take stock of 27 projects that received investment from top crypto VCs in April to help readers quickly understand.
1. DeFi
Nibiru Chain
- April 4, 2023
- $8.5M Seed Round ($100M Valuation)
- Investors: Tribe Capital, Jump Crypto, Republic Capital, NGC Ventures, Original Capital
Nibiru Chain is a DeFi-specific blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK. Its functions range from spot AMM, leveraged futures trading to its own NUSD stablecoin.
However, the Injective Protocol has already been running DeFi functions in the Cosmos ecosystem, and the arrival of the dYdX application chain is imminent. Given these market conditions, it remains to be seen how the Nibiru Chain, which is currently in the testnet stage, will develop in the future.
M^ZERO
- April 5, 2023
- $22.5 million
- Investors: Panther Capital, Road Capital, Standard Crypto, AirTree, SALT, ParaFi Capital, Distributed Capital, Kranos, Earlybird, Mouro Capital
M^ZERO is a decentralized currency protocol in which users will be able to issue decentralized currencies through governance to connect developers and consumers.
Swaap Finance
- April 19, 2023
- $4.5 million seed round
- Investors: Signature Ventures, New Form Capital, C² Ventures, Klima Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Entrepreneur First, etc.
Swaap Finance is a Polygon-based DEX. Swaap proposes a novel concept called Matrix Market Maker (MMM) that minimizes the risk of impermanent losses for liquidity providers by using oracles and dynamic spreads.
However, given GMX's previous security breaches, it is clear that using oracles for asset valuation introduces several potential vulnerabilities, which could cause problems if there is a significant discrepancy between liquidity pool balances and actual market prices. Whether Swaap Finance would have put in place safeguards to prevent this is unclear.
Thetanuts Finance
- April 24, 2023
- $17 million
- Investors: Polychain Capital, Hyperchain Capital, Magnus Capital
Thetanuts Finance is a decentralized option vault (DOV) protocol designed to provide fund management for DAOs, where users can easily operate various structured product vaults.
DFlow
- April 26, 2023
- $5 million
- 投资者：Framework Ventures、Cumberland、Coinbase Ventures、Circle Ventures、ZeePrime Capital、Spartan、Wintermute
DFlow is a decentralized order flow market. The application chain DFlow Chain is built through the Cosmos SDK, aiming to create a fair payment for order flow (PFOF) market. Order Flow Past centralized and permissionless Order Flow Auctions (OFAs) sold order flow to market makers. This enables retail investors to obtain safe transactions and best execution, while market makers can also create more business opportunities.
Two, CeFi
Bitget
- April 4, 2023
- USD 10 million
- Investor: Dragonfly Capital
Bitget is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that supports spot, margin and futures trading. The funds will be used for global expansion and the launch of other services such as Launchpad and Earn products.
Fractal
- April 17, 2023
- $6 million
- 投资者：QCP、6th Man Ventures、Archetype、Avalanche Blizzard Fund、CMT Digital、Golden Tree Asset Management、CoinShares、Spartan Group、Circle Ventures、Hack VC
Fractal is a platform for cryptocurrency traders that enables a more transparent clearing and settlement process. Users can use Fractal to monitor counterparties in real time to reduce counterparty risk. Institutions like 3AC, Genesis, and FTX went bankrupt due to a lack of transparency in how funds were used, which can be avoided with Fractal.
Coinflow
- April 19, 2023
- $1.45 million pre-seed financing
- Investors: Jump Crypto, Reciprocal Ventures, CMT Digital, DCG, Gumi Crypto, etc.
Coinflow is a payment stack specially built for Web3 companies. It supports traditional payment systems such as credit cards and cryptocurrency payments, and maximizes user experience by simplifying the payment process. If cryptocurrency payments become commonplace in the future, the platform is expected to be widely adopted by Web3 companies.
Rise
- April 25, 2023
- $3.8 million seed round
- Investors: Sino Global Capital, Polymorphic Capital, Draper Associates, W Ventures, P2P, Paradigm Shift Capital, Hashkey Capital, etc.
Rise is a platform designed to facilitate easy salary payments using cryptocurrencies, allowing companies to pay employees in fiat and cryptocurrencies.
** Creditor **
- April 25, 2023
- $6 million
- Investors: Coinbase Ventures, S&P Global, Hashkey Capital, Spartan, CMT Ditial, GSR, Kucoin Ventures, Amber, etc.
Credora is a platform for assessing the creditworthiness of institutions in the cryptocurrency market. Using zero-knowledge proof, the platform evaluates the creditworthiness of institutions in real time through data, while hiding sensitive parts such as positions. Although the blockchain has the basic attributes of decentralization and transparency, the transparency of centralized entities dominated by the blockchain market cannot be guaranteed, which led to many bankruptcies last year. Credora is expected to play a major role in this.
Zodiac Custody
- April 27, 2023
- $36 million
- Investors: SC Ventures (VC of Standard Chartered Bank), SBI Holdings, etc.
Zodia Custody, the cryptocurrency-focused subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, provides cryptocurrency custody services to institutions. The round will allow the company to support more tokens and expand globally.
3. Web3 games, NFT
Lore
- April 7, 2023
- $4 million
- 投资者：Multicoin Capital、Seed Club Ventures、North Island Ventures、Balaji Srinivasan、Zeneca、Mischief Ventures、Sfermion、CMT Digital、Patricio Worthalter、Spice Capital、Sublime Venture 等
Lore is a platform that enables organizations such as Web3 communities and gaming guilds to co-own and manage NFTs. Community members can collectively raise funds to purchase NFTs and collectively manage NFTs.
Gamete
- April 10, 2023
- $5 million seed round
- 投资者：Binance Labs、Huobi Ventures、Arcane Capital、Ceras Ventures、StartVC、Gate.io Labs、W3Coins、Redline Dao、DefinanceX、Rana Capital、Infinity Labs
Gameta is a Web3 mobile gaming platform that offers a wide variety of games. Users can earn token rewards while playing these games. A key attraction of the platform is that it offers many simple mobile games that have the opportunity to attract a large number of active players.
Protecc Labs
- April 14, 2023
- $1.5 million seed round
- Investors：Dialectic、UOB Venture Management、Signum Capital、Interlinked Capital、Side Door Ventures、0xVentures、Kronos Ventures、3.0 Capital、Concave Ventures、Cogitent Ventures
Protecc Labs is a NFT-focused market maker, which is novel compared to most market makers that focus on cryptocurrencies. With the emergence of more and more NFT-Fi protocols, including trading markets, lending protocols, AMMs, etc., the NFT ecosystem will be indispensable for market-making needs.
Karate Combat
- April 19, 2023
- $18 million seed round
- Investors: Bitkraft Ventures, Alpha Wave, Hashkey Capital, Delphi Ventures, Contango, The Operating Group, Lattice, M13, etc.
Karate Combat, a US-based real karate organization, recently launched a blockchain-based betting platform. Through the platform, users can place bets on who will win real-world games, earning the governance token $KARATE. Since the platform has real-life use cases, it is worth watching in the long-term whether the platform can achieve mass adoption, and whether the token is sustainable.
Tribe3
- April 26, 2023
- $2.1 million
- 投资者：Spartan Capital、Newman Capital、Infinity Ventures Crypto、Modular Capital、Cogitent Ventures、Blockbuilders、Founderheads、Lapin Digital、Blockhype 等
Tribe3 is a decentralized NFT futures exchange that borrows from Perpetual Protocol's vAMM. vAMMs require no liquidity and instead allow users to trade against collateral.
Currently, Tribe3 supports transactions of NFT series such as BAYC, MAYC, AZUKI, and CryptoPunks.
Four, L1&L2
May be
- April 11, 2023
- $30 million (valuation: $800 million)
- 投资者：Jump Crypto、Distributed Global、Multicoin Capital、Asymmetric Capital Partners、Flow Traders、Hypersphere Ventures、Bixin Ventures
Sei is a DeFi-focused L1 blockchain based on Cosmos. Highly optimized by modifying the Tendermint core for high scalability. In addition, Sei provides its own oracle and order matching system to provide an optimized trading environment.
Astria
- April 5, 2023
- $5.5 million seed round
- Investors: Maven 11, 1kx, Delphi Ventures, Figment Capital
Astria is a modular blockchain focused on the ordering layer. With the emergence of a large number of rollup networks in 2022-2023, a new problem is faced: the decentralization of the sorter. An orderer is an entity on a rollup network that receives and orders user transactions, and most rollup networks currently have only one orderer. It doesn't matter if the orderer is centralized or not, because the validity of transactions is verified by the Ethereum network, not the orderer. However, if the sorter is centralized, there will be a great risk of malicious offline without countermeasures. As a result, various projects focusing on sorting layers have emerged recently.
Intmax
- April 13, 2023
- $5 million seed round
- 投资者：HashKey Capital、Bitscale Capital、B Dash Ventures、SNZ、Antalpha Ventures、Scroll、Mask Network、Dora Hacks、East Ventures、MZ Web3 Fund、Hyperithm、Stacker Ventures、Cryptomeria Capital、WAGMI Ventures、Alchemy Ventures 等
Intmax is a ZK Rollup network built on Ethereum, which is different from other ZK Rollups in that it adopts a stateless structure. This has the benefit of allowing validators to build a highly scalable environment without storing historical data.
Wealth
- April 20, 2023
- $42 million
- Investors: Polychain Capital, Hack VC, dao5, Tribe Capital, CitizenX, Shima Capital, Robot Ventures, etc.
We have specifically introduced Berachain in the article "New Public Chain Berachain Raised $42 Million at the Beginning", which is an L1 network built using the Cosmos SDK and focused on DeFi liquidity. It uses a novel liquidity proof mechanism (validator And users can mortgage more than ten kinds of tokens such as BTC, ETH, USDC on the chain to obtain pledge rewards). The network adopts a three-token model, where $BERA is used for staking rewards and gas fees, $BGT is used as a governance token, and $HONEY is used as a native stablecoin. The name comes from an NFT project called Bong Bears.
It is worth mentioning that since Berachain originated from the well-known NFT project Bong Bears, it already has a community before the mainnet is launched.
Five, Web3 service
Ramps
- April 11, 2023
- Strategic investment, amount undisclosed
- Investor: Coin98
Ramper is a Web3 login service that allows users to log in through Google, Twitter, etc. accounts without a cryptocurrency wallet and easily use Web3 services. It also provides exchange services between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.
Helio
- April 13, 2023
- $3.3 million seed round
- Investors: Peak, Lightspeed Faction, RockawayX, Solana Labs, etc.
Helio is a Web3 payment platform that allows users to connect their cryptocurrency wallets to access Helio's dashboard to use various other features such as creating links to pay with cryptocurrencies, recurring payments, and creating invoices.
Summer
- April 20, 2023
- $3.5 million seed round
- Investors: Electric Capital, Collab+Currency, Coinbase Ventures, Dapper Labs, Form Capital, North Island, Mike Krieger, Naval Ravikant, etc.
Yoz is a Web3 notification service. For example, we can set up DAO reminders, and Yoz will send you reminders when the DAO makes governance recommendations that are implemented.
According to the project party's presentation, the current projects that support notifications include CryptoPunks, Fractional.art, Aave, and Nouns.
TinyTap
- April 25, 2023
- $8.5 million (valued at $100 million)
- Investors: Sequoia China, Polygon, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital, etc.
Acquired by Animoca Brands in June 2022 at a valuation of $39 million, TinyTap is a Web3 educational platform that offers a wide variety of educational games. Animoca Brands aims to revolutionize education and the creator economy through the TinyTap platform.
6. Infrastructure
Polyhedra Network
- April 4, 2023
- USD 15 million A round
- 投资者：Polychain Capital、ABCDE、Sparkle Ventures、HashKey Capital、Foresight Ventures、Kucoin Ventures、NGC Ventures、Arcane Group
Polyhedra Network is a California-based technology company that utilizes zero-knowledge proof technology to provide interoperability, scalability, and privacy solutions. Its products include zkBridge, ZK-DID and ZK-NFT. zkBridge is the most famous product among them, which allows two chains to verify each other's consensus through zk-SNARKs technology (currently the product has been launched and can be used by many L1 and L2 users).
LayerZero
- April 4, 2023
- $120 million Series A (valuation: $3 billion)
- Investors: a16z, Christie's, Sequoia Capital, Samsung Next, Circle Ventures, etc.
LayerZero is a full-chain protocol that is used by many current protocols. The most prominent example is Stargate Finance, a cross-chain bridge that can transfer tokens between multiple EVM networks. Although the LayerZero token has not yet been launched, the name of the ZRO token can be seen in the code. LayerZero has received investment from many top VCs, and given its current widespread use, it is definitely a protocol worthy of attention in the cross-chain field.
Satsuma
- April 4, 2023
- $5 million seed round
- 投资者：Initialized Capital、Archetype、OpenSea、Y Combinator、Homebrew、South Park Commons
Satsuma is a SaaS platform based on The Graph open source protocol, which makes it easier for users to query blockchain data. Currently, platforms such as Decentraland, Syndicate, Superfluid, and Aragon are using Satsuma.
