Financing Weekly Report | 13 Public Financing Events; NFT Startup FirstMate Completes $3.75 Million Financing, Led by Dragonfly Capital

Financing Weekly Report 13 public financing events, including NFT startup FirstMate raising $3.75 million led by Dragonfly Capital.

Highlights of this Issue

According to incomplete statistics from LianGuaiNews, there were 13 blockchain investment and financing events worldwide last week (8.28-9.3), with a total funding scale of over $47 million. The financing situation was basically flat compared to the previous week. The overview is as follows:

• In the DeFi field, there were3 investment and financing events, including the Bitcoin Lightning Network liquidity collateral project Stroom Network completing a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by Greenfield;
• In the NFT and Metaverse field, there were4 investment and financing events, including the education technology startup Kinjo, which is based on the Metaverse platform Roblox, completing a $6.5 million seed round of financing, led by LiveOak Venture Partners;
• In the Infrastructure and Tools track, there were2 financing events, including the Web3 infrastructure startup IronMill announcing the completion of a $2.6 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Gumi Cryptos Capital;
• In the Other Web3/Crypto-related Projects field, there were5 financing events, including the Web3 marketing company DeForm completing a $4.6 million seed round of financing, led by Kindred Ventures;

DeFi

Bitcoin Lightning Network liquidity collateral project Stroom Network completes a $3.5 million seed round of financing

• Web3 gypsies walk onto Marques’s land, decentralized souls wander in the magical real world.
• Why is identity proof in Web3 so important?
• Exploring the Path of MEV Redistribution

The Bitcoin Lightning Network liquidity collateral project Stroom Network has completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by Greenfield. Ankr’s venture capital division, Mission Street, provides strategic support, and Lemniscap, No Limit Holdings, Cogitent Ventures, and several other venture capital companies and angel investors also participated. It is reported that Stroom Network adopts a liquidity collateral mechanism to provide users with the service of using Bitcoin on both the Lightning Network and Ethereum at the same time. Stroom Network will use the funds from this round of financing to expand its team and launch liquidity collateral tokens on the Ethereum mainnet.

Satoshi Network completes a $2 million angel round of financing

Satoshi Network announced the completion of a $2 million angel round of financing, which will mainly support the early redemption plan for Satoshi Network Bonds sUSD. The redemption took place on September 1, 2023, and the redemption record hash is: 0x7f520487d65ac08db1c272394f1ec281347b91371d31c93c650eb2ee4ca31f79. It is reported that Satoshi Network was launched and governed by BitDAO, and is committed to building a global distributed business consumption system based on the smallest unit of Bitcoin, “satoshi”.

On-chain derivatives protocol ProsperEx completes a new round of strategic financing, with participation from EMURGO Ventures

The on-chain derivatives protocol ProsperEx has completed a new round of strategic financing, with participation from EMURGO Ventures, the venture capital arm of Cardano (ADA) developer Emurgo. The specific amount was not disclosed. It is reported that ProsperEx is an innovative on-chain derivatives protocol that supports spot, on-chain perpetual contracts, on-chain options, and other major derivative plays. In addition, the protocol will further explore and layout in the field of RWA (real-world asset tokenization) to promote the deep integration of the Web2 and Web3 worlds.

NFT & Metaverse

Allseated, a virtual event planning platform, completes a $20 million equity financing

Allseated, a virtual venue showcase and event planning platform, has completed a $20 million equity financing. Allseated also stated that it is spinning off its metaverse division into a separate entity. After this round of financing, Allseated’s total cash financing exceeds $43 million, including investments from Magma Ventures, Level Structured Capital, Vestech LianGuairtners, NYFF, and WGG, to further expand its spatial visualization and collaboration platform. Founded in 2011, Allseated provides a collaborative spatial visualization platform that allows venues and planners to create virtual walkthroughs for potential clients, including tools for building 360-degree views of buildings and design floor plans.

Kinjo, an educational technology platform on Roblox, completes a $6.5 million seed round financing

Kinjo, an educational technology startup based on the metaverse platform Roblox, has completed a $6.5 million seed round financing. LiveOak Venture LianGuairtners led the investment, with participation from Silverton LianGuairtners, Breyer Capital, and Roble Capital, among others. The startup plans to use this funding to offer its products on YouTube, Minecraft, and other popular online platforms.

Kinjo was founded by education technology veterans Charles Thornburgh and Laura Malcolm and is an application aimed at making screen time learning fun and beneficial. Kinjo allows children to earn virtual currency called Robux by playing, learning, and gaming through Roblox, and they are scored based on their learning outcomes. The company plans to expand its educational value scoring system to Fortnite and Minecraft in the future.

FirstMate, an NFT startup, raises $3.75 million in funding with Dragonfly Capital as the lead investor

FirstMate, a startup that aims to provide digital storefronts for NFT creators, has raised $3.75 million in a funding round led by Dragonfly Capital. Coinbase Ventures and NextView also participated in the announced funding round. FirstMate has also launched a beta version of its marketplace website, for which it collaborated with another startup in the NFT space, Manifold. Founded in 2022 by former Instagram and Walmart employees, FirstMate has so far represented market launches for Bankless, Gmoney’s 9dcc, FELT Zine, Sound.xyz, and others. Its marketplace currently supports over a thousand collections, covering various fields from generative art to luxury fashion.

Metaverse construction project STELSI receives strategic investment from NGC Ventures

STELSI, a metaverse construction project, recently announced a strategic investment from NGC Ventures’ Metaverse Fund, with the specific amount undisclosed. This investment will be used to expand project adoption, product launch, and global expansion. STELSI is a Web3 lifestyle platform built on blockchain technology that aims to transform the architecture and real estate industries. The STELSI project implements a decentralized token economic system that provides incentives for creators. Currently, STELSI’s partners include Korbit, Lambda256, Weple, enzyme, and others.

Infrastructure & Tools

Web3 infrastructure startup IronMill raises $2.6 million in pre-seed funding

Web3 infrastructure startup IronMill announced that it has raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Blockchain Builders Fund, Superscrypt, LongHash, Kestrel 0x1, and SevenX.

Founded in 2022, IronMill provides a comprehensive platform that not only offers basic tools for selecting circuits but also helps integrate these circuits into on-chain and off-chain programming environments. IronMill focuses on providing tailored integration solutions for software developers, enabling them to seamlessly integrate zero-knowledge (ZK) technology into new applications.

Decentralized GPU resource network GPU.Net raises $500,000 in funding, plans to launch testnet next month

Decentralized GPU resource network GPU.Net has raised $500,000 in funding, with investment from Momentum 6 and Alphablockz. The company has also received support from Nvidia and Taanga Studios and plans to launch the GPU.Net testnet next month. GPU.Net aims to meet the computational power needs of emerging technologies such as generative AI, Web3 metaverse, cryptocurrency mining, and high-end graphics rendering by providing decentralized GPU infrastructure.

Others

Web3 marketing company DeForm raises $4.6 million in seed funding

Web3 marketing company DeForm has raised $4.6 million in seed funding. The round was led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from Elad Gil, Scalar Capital, A.Capital, Alchemy Ventures, Naval Ravikat, Sota Watanabe, Sep Kamvar, Scott Belsky, and Marc Bhargava. DeForm plans to use the funding to expand its team and develop a solution for cross-chain verification of consumer transaction history. DeForm’s parent company, Contribution Labs, aims to provide blockchain-based tools for marketers and customize marketing plans for Web3 users.

Decentralized social recommendation protocol Tako Protocol raises $2 million in pre-seed funding

Decentralized social recommendation protocol Tako Protocol has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding, with participation from DWF Ventures (a subsidiary of DWF Labs), Mask Network, UOB Venture, Signum Capital, AC Capital, SmrtiLab, RSS3, HashBrown Research, and other angel investors.

Tako Protocol aims to build an open social recommendation underlying protocol for Web3 social networks. Developers can use Tako to build recommendation algorithms, advertising, curation, and sharing economy dApps more easily, allowing users to better create, share, and interact with value in decentralized social networks. Currently, Tako Protocol has established close strategic partnerships with mainstream Web3 social networks such as Lens and Farcaster and will gradually open up product testing deployed on various social networks in September.

Web3 talent and project network BuidlerDAO raises $2 million in funding, led by Sequoia Capital China Seed Fund and SevenX Ventures

Web3 talent and project network BuidlerDAO announced that it has raised $2 million in angel funding, led by Sequoia Capital China Seed Fund and SevenX Ventures. Other participants in the round include Bing Ventures, DRK Lab, M77 Ventures, Gate Labs, Mirror World, Conflux, Nicholas Hu (PlanckerDAO), Xiao Zhang (founder of zCloak Network), LianGuaika, Vitalbridge, Inverse Ventures, and Doc Labs.

According to the introduction, BuidlerDAO was established in June 2022, dedicated to creating the SocialDAO governance paradigm and DAOTools solution. The seed round was invested $500,000 by LianGuainda Capital. It is also a project of the Sequoia China accelerator YUÈ01 phase and has also received invitations to settle in Hong Kong Science and Technology Park and Cyberport. BuidlerDAO gathers Web3 practitioners in investment research, technology, and operations to organize content output and product practice in a DAO manner, and build a global network of Buidler’s connection and collaboration.

Social network and content monetization platform Lyvely completes seed round financing, led by Cypher Capital

The social network and content monetization platform Lyvely, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, announced the completion of seed round financing, led by Cypher Capital, with the investment amount undisclosed. Lyvely will develop a token seamlessly integrated into the platform, allowing anyone to profit from online content or services.

Venture capital institutions

MoonLianGuaiy establishes a venture capital department called MoonLianGuaiy Ventures

Web3 infrastructure company MoonLianGuaiy has established an investment department that will focus on early-stage startups in the web3, gaming, and related fintech fields. The investment institution is called MoonLianGuaiy Ventures and will primarily invest $100,000 to $1 million, targeting seed and Series A financing.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!