Financing Weekly Report | 18 public financing events; Gensyn, a blockchain-based AI computing protocol, completes $43 million in Series A financing, led by a16z.

Financing Report | Gensyn, a blockchain-based AI computing protocol, secures $43m in Series A financing led by a16z, among other 17 public financing events.

Highlights of the week:

According to BlockingNews’ incomplete statistics, there were 18 blockchain investment and financing events worldwide last week (6.12-6.18), with a total funding of about $123 million, a decrease compared to the previous week. The overview is as follows:

• DeFi: There were 2 investment and financing events announced, including the LayerZero-based full-chain currency market protocol TapiocaDAO announcing the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing, with Fisher8 Capital among the investors;
• Chain games: There were 2 investment and financing events announced, including zkSync ecology game ValTower receiving $1 million in seed round financing, with Giant Network and Electronic Soul participating;
• NFT and Metaverse: There were 2 financing events announced, including digital comic book publisher Lightning Works completing a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with its founder Geoff McCabe as the investor;
• Infrastructure and tools: There were 7 financing events announced, including blockchain-based artificial intelligence (AI) computing protocol Gensyn completing a $43 million Series A financing round, with a16z as the lead investor;
• Other Web3/crypto-related projects: There were 4 financing events announced, including Web3 short video platform Cheelee completing a $10 million financing round, with VC SILA participating;
• Centralized finance: There was 1 financing event announced, with Spanish cryptocurrency exchange Bit2Me completing a $15 million new round of financing, led by Investcorp.

DeFi:

TapiocaDAO completes $6 million seed round of financing

• Blockchain Capital: Looking Ahead to the “Consumer Era” of Cryptocurrencies
• AI in the Web3 Era: Exploring the Infinite Potential of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence
• Analysis of Lybra Finance, the LSDfi leader: How stable is it? What are the risks of “layer 2 nesting”?

The LayerZero-based full-chain currency market protocol TapiocaDAO announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing, with Fisher8 Capital, LayerZero Labs, BlockingRC Capital, Jones DAO, Dewhales Capital, Magnus Capital, Capybara Capital, and individual investors Zoomer Oracle among the participants. In addition, TapiocaDAO launched the LayerZero-based full-chain over-collateralized stablecoin USDO.

DeFi lending protocol Concordia completes $4 million seed round of financing

Concordia, the digital asset risk and collateral management protocol, completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Tribe Capital and Kraken Ventures, with participation from Cypher Capital and Saison Capital. Earlier this month, Concordia launched its public testnet on Aptos. The mainnet is expected to go live in the coming months.

Blockchain Games

zkSync-based game ValTower completes $1 million seed round of financing, with participation from Giant Network and Electronic Soul

ValTower, a zkSync-based game, has raised $1 million in seed funding, with participation from Giant Network and Electronic Soul. ValTower adopts the Roguelike combined with card strategy mode, emphasizing gameplay full of variables and surprises. Players can obtain hero and weapon class NFTs and game tokens through cultivation, strategy, and gaming, which can not only improve the strength of their own heroes, but also trade them for what they need on the Marketplace. The game includes daily, challenge, endless, and team/group PVE modes, and will also open up PVP modes for players to compete against each other.

NFT social game SBlockingrkle completes Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Folius Ventures

Fortune-telling themed NFT social game SBlockingrkle announced the completion of its Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Folius Ventures, with the amount of financing not disclosed. SBlockingrkle is a gamified astrological social application with multiple Web3 and AIGC features, which was selected for the Binance Labs Season 6 MVB accelerator program. Thanks to the function of Web3, users’ sunk resources can now be displayed in NFT/FT format and have instant tradable currency value. Folius Ventures believes that having true ownership and monetary value will greatly improve SBlockingrkle’s user retention.

NFT & Metaverse

Web3 collectibles platform Collectibles.com completes $5 million seed round of financing, led by Blockchange Ventures

Web3 collectibles marketplace platform Collectibles.com announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Blockchange Ventures. Other investors include GFR Fund, Peter Thiel, Blockwall Capital, some private investors, and industry advisors. The platform is building the first Web3 collector community and marketplace. Collectibles.com, set to launch in the fall of 2023, will expand into several new verticals, including comics, tokens, stamps, and memorabilia, among others.

Digital comic book publisher Lightning Works raises $2.5 million in financing

Lightning Works, a publisher of digital manga books, has completed a $2.5 million seed round of funding led by its founder, Geoff McCabe. Since its launch in 2020, Lightning Works has been redefining manga through interactive comic NFTs and P2E games. The company has announced that it is ready to move forward with plans to launch the world’s first NFT comic book.

Infrastructure & Tools

Blockchain AI computing protocol Gensyn raises $43 million in Series A funding, led by a16z

Blockchain-based artificial intelligence (AI) computing protocol Gensyn has raised $43 million in Series A funding, led by a16z, with participation from investment firms CoinFund, Canonical Crypto, Protocol Labs, Eden Block, and several AI and crypto angel investors. Gensyn says it will use the new funding to accelerate the protocol’s launch and expand its team by recruiting machine learning engineers. To date, Gensyn has raised over $50 million in funding. In March of last year, Gensyn raised $6.5 million in seed funding, led by Eden Block, with participation from Galaxy Digital, Maven 11, Coinfund, Jsquare, Hypersphere, and Zee Prime, among others.

Interoperability protocol Connext Labs raises $7.5 million at $250 million valuation

Modular interoperability protocol Connext Labs has raised $7.5 million at a $250 million valuation, with participation from Polychain Capital, Polygon Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Ethereal Ventures, 1kx, NGC Ventures, Hashed, and Scalar Capital. The funding round brings Connext’s total funding to $23.2 million. The new funds will be used to establish the Connext Foundation, which will be responsible for disbursing development grants and funding to initiatives established by Connext. Connext says it is “building the HTTP of Web3,” forming a communication layer across different blockchain networks so that applications can interact with funds and data on multiple networks simultaneously.

Web3 data platform Mnemonic raises $6 million, led by Salesforce Ventures

AI-supported Web3 data platform Mnemonic has raised $6 million in seed extension funding, led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Polygon Ventures, Orange DAO, FIN Capital, and FJ Labs. Salesforce will use the technology in its Web3-related customer relationship management (CRM) products. San Francisco-based Mnemonic provides application programming interfaces (APIs) that offer NFT data, analytics, and insights to help developers and businesses create Web3 products and experiences faster and more reliably. The data provided includes real-time advanced sales pricing data, market activity, and detailed NFT feature information for filtering and personalized recommendations. Mnemonic also includes spam detection to eliminate noise and help protect users from the impact of poorly rated NFT collections.

Web3 payment startup Poko completes $4.5 million seed round with Y Combinator as lead investor

Web3 payment startup Poko has completed a $4.5 million seed round with Y Combinator, NAZCA, and Global Founders Capital as lead investors, and GOodwater Capital, Soma Capital, Amasia, Credit Ease, Dentsu Ventures, Orange DAO, and MS&AD Ventures as participants. The company had previously received $500,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator, bringing its total funding to $5 million. Poko is a Web3 payment startup based in Singapore and Vietnam, and its B2B2C model means that most of its primary users are Web3 wallets, marketplaces, and decentralized applications and games. Poko is currently focusing on two products: a payment gateway aggregator and direct checkout. The company says it has over 11 million active wallets using its payment channels in the Latin American, Indian, and Southeast Asian markets.

Decentralized identity startup Intuition raises $4 million in funding

Decentralized identity startup Intuition has announced that it has raised $4 million in seed funding, with Superscrypt as the lead investor, and Shima Capital, Avon Ventures, WW Ventures, Matrixport Ventures, Polygon Ventures, ConsenSys, and others as participants. Intuition plans to publicly release its protocol and first batch of applications later this year. Intuition provides decentralized infrastructure, developer tools, and applications that support the creation of open, flexible knowledge graphs that improve the quality and availability of social knowledge. Intuition allows users to create proofs about any topic and store information in a way that is easy to navigate, query, and use by other applications.

Crypto payment company BoomFi completes $3.8 million seed round with White Star Capital as lead investor

Crypto payment solution provider BoomFi has completed a $3.8 million seed round with White Star Capital as the lead investor, and Blockingssion Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund, Kraken Ventures, GSR, Aquanow, and others as participants. BoomFi is an all-in-one solution for multi-chain crypto payments. BoomFi will use the LayerZero full-chain bridge Stargate Protocol to transfer assets across chains, with liquidity provider Aquanow.

Solana ecosystem development platform Ironforge completes $2.6 million pre-seed round

Solana ecosystem development platform Ironforge has announced that it has completed a $2.6 million pre-seed round, with Reciprocal Ventures as the lead investor, and Hash3, 6th Man Ventures, Alchemy, Monoceros Ventures, and Portage Ventures as participants. Ironforge aims to improve developer experience and simplify integration of the Solana blockchain with existing systems, providing Solana developers with a range of features such as low-cost retrieval of indexed account data, RPC smart routing and failover, automated resolution, and developer-defined cache control.

Other

Web3 short video platform Cheelee raises $10 million in funding

Web3 short video platform Cheelee has raised $10 million in funding, with VC SILA participating. Cheelee has raised a total of $32.75 million in funding to date. The new funds will be used to accelerate the development of its vertical video social network applications and marketing efforts. Cheelee offers new users a free “NFT glasses” that can monitor their video watching time and convert it into corresponding points, which can then be redeemed for token rewards.

ResearchHub, a startup founded by Coinbase CEO, raises $5 million in Series A funding

ResearchHub, a startup co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, has raised $5 million in Series A funding, led by Open Source Software Capital, with participation from Boost VC, Bob Young of RedHat, Guillermo Rauch of Vercel, and Amjad Masad of Replit. ResearchHub is building a platform where anyone can earn cryptocurrency rewards by contributing new knowledge to the global scientific community. Users earn ResearchCoin (RSC) by publishing content to ResearchHub, with the amount of RSC received proportional to the value the community assigns to the content.

Web3 fantasy sports platform GameOn raises $1.7 million in funding, with Lightning Capital and Flow participating

Web3 fantasy sports platform GameOn has announced that it has raised $1.7 million in funding, with participation from Lightning Capital and Flow, a blockchain platform launched by Dapper Labs. Lightning Capital invested approximately $1.2 million through convertible notes, while Flow provided the remaining funding through its ecosystem fund, the Flow Ecosystem Fund. GameOn has already partnered with global sports, media, and entertainment IPs, including NBCUniversal, Bravo, Karate Combat, WNBA, DICK’S Sporting Goods, and Gaming Society.

Cryptocurrency tax firm TaxNodes raises $1.6 million in seed funding, with ZebBlockingy CEO among investors

Cryptocurrency tax firm TaxNodes has raised $1.6 million in seed funding, with participation from ZebBlockingy CEO Rahul BlockinggidiBlockingti, Shardeum CEO Nischal Shetty, CoinSwitch and Ajeet co-founder and CEO Ashish Singhal, Reflexical founder Ajeet Khurana, and others. TaxNodes plans to use the new funding to simplify tax calculations and provide end-to-end solutions for individuals to deal with the complexity of cryptocurrency taxation. The company is developing an AI-assisted tax consultancy model for individuals and businesses, using large language models similar to GPT to provide control and compliance.

Decentralized Finance

Spanish cryptocurrency exchange Bit2Me completes $15M financing

Spanish cryptocurrency exchange Bit2Me has completed a $15 million new round of financing, led by Investcorp, with participation from Telefónica Ventures, the investment arm of Spain’s largest telecom company, as well as Stratminds VC, Cardano, and YGG Fund. Bit2Me will use the funds to increase its market share in Spain, where the company was founded, and accelerate its expansion in Latin America. Bit2Me was founded in 2014 and was the first cryptocurrency service provider to be licensed by the Bank of Spain.

Investment Institutions

Decentralized Gaming Ventures completes new round of financing, led by Hashed

Web3 gaming venture capital firm Decentralized Gaming Ventures has completed a seven-figure financing round, led by Hashed. The financing will support Decentralized Gaming Ventures’ vision of supporting successful games by acquiring independent studios and providing specialized guidance, co-development, and intellectual property acquisition, accelerating the careers of emerging game developers in Southeast Asia.

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