Financing Highlights | Pantera Capital leads investment in GameFi developer NPC Labs; Founders Fund leads investment in infrastructure platform Calde

According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 18, which was the same as before, with a total amount of approximately US$118.3 million and an average financing amount of US$6.5722 million. Among them, the infrastructure field occupies the majority, the DeFi field is relatively large, the Metaverse/GameFi field and Web3.0+AI field have increased, the social/creator economy field is relatively small, and there is no financing in the NFT/digital fashion field, digital asset management/payment field and other fields. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:

Metaverse/GameFi

In the Metaverse/GameFi field, there was a total of 1 financing, with a total amount of US$18 million, accounting for 15.22% of the total financing last week.

NPC Labs

On July 22, CoinDesk reported that NPC Labs, a developer of Base ecosystem GameFi, completed a $18 million financing round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Collab+Currency, Sfermion, Mirana Ventures, Bitscale Capital and Mantle EcoFund. After this round of financing, NPC Labs' total financing amount reached $21 million.

It is reported that NPC Labs is a Web3 game infrastructure startup co-founded by three former Coinbase employees. NPC Labs plans to use the proceeds to become a core contributor to B3.fun, an ecosystem designed to build Web3 games based on Base.

B3.fun is similar to a microservice architecture that can support high-frequency transaction processing per second and is close to achieving a transaction environment without Gas fees. More importantly, with the help of ChainSafe's chain abstraction technology, B3.fun allows users to enjoy a smoother and unimpeded gaming experience without having to worry about cross-chain or network switching.

Related reading: "NPC Labs raises $21 million, what are the highlights of its core product B3.fun? "

DeFi

A total of 5 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount of over 21.3 million US dollars, accounting for 18.01% of the total financing last week.

aPriori

On July 25, according to TheBlock, aPriori, a liquidity staking platform based on the Monad blockchain, announced the completion of an $8 million seed round of financing, led by Pantera Capital, and participated by Consensys, OKX Ventures, CMS Holdings, ABCDE, Gumi Cryptos Capital, Flow Traders, Laser Digital, Chorus One, Everstake Capital and Staking Facilities. So far, its total financing amount has reached 10 million US dollars.

aPriori's mission is to decentralize the Monad network and enhance user experience by reducing gas fees, improving network traffic, and driving sustainable incentives for validators. Given Monad's unique consensus design (MonadBFT) and short block time, the aPriori team is committed to building a new architecture for MEV and LST from scratch.

aPriori co-founder and CEO Ray S revealed that this round of financing brings aPriori's fully diluted token valuation to "9 figures", which means at least $100 million, but he declined to comment on the structure of this round of financing.

Roxom

On July 28, Roxom, a Bitcoin-based trading service platform, announced the completion of a $4.3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Tim Draper's Draper Associate, with participation from Borderless, Cadenza Ventures, Kingsway Capital, NewtopiaVC and a group of angel investors. The specific valuation information has not yet been disclosed.

Roxom claims to be the first stock, commodity and futures trading platform priced and denominated in Bitcoin. Users can view global markets with Bitcoin and support transactions using Bitcoin. The market created by Roxom intends to make Bitcoin effectively a global pricing system, unleashing the potential of Bitcoin as a true global currency and value storage.

Roxom's first product, Roxom Terminal, is an asset management tool for heavy Bitcoin users. The terminal will help users understand financial markets in terms of Bitcoin rather than fiat currency, and the alpha version of the product has been launched. In a few months, Roxom will launch Roxom Spot Exchange, which can use Bitcoin for direct asset trading.

The rest of DeFi financing includes:

On July 23, RWA issuance platform Etherfuse completed a $3 million seed round of financing, led by White Star Capital and North Island Ventures. The Department of XYZ, The Stellar Development Foundation, Funfair and angel investors Alice Ann Schwartz and Anna Yuan participated in the investment. The funds will support Etherfuse in its mission to make global capital markets more efficient and convenient through blockchain technology.

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On July 25, Kintsu, a liquidity pledge protocol based on the Monad blockchain, completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, Spartan Group, Animoca Ventures, etc. It is reported that the financing structure of this round is a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) plus token warrants, but Kintsu founder Stephen Novenstern declined to comment on the valuation.

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On July 25, Kuru, a Monad-based on-chain order book DEX, announced the completion of a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Electric Capital, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, CMS Holdings, Pivot Global, Breed and Velocity Capital, as well as angel investors such as Keone Hon, Jarry Xiao and Eugene Chen.

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Social/Creator Economy

A total of 2 financings were raised in the social/creator economy field, with a total amount of more than US$6 million, accounting for 5.07% of the total financing last week.

OpenSocial Protocol

On July 25, TheBlock reported that the Web3 community platform OpenSocial Protocol raised $6 million, led by Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures, and participated by Hivemind Capital Partners, Stratos, Moonrock Capital and other companies. This round of financing brings OpenSocial's total financing to $26 million.

It is reported that the OpenSocial protocol builds elements such as intellectual property, community relations, monetization and financial incentives for web3 applications. The platform develops infrastructure for multi-chain community economies, prioritizing user retention and user growth while reducing robot activities.

The rest of the financing for the social/creator economy includes:

On July 25, Web3 social aggregator Yup completed a new round of financing, with participation from Nascent, IDEO CoLab Ventures and Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. The vision is that open social platforms will play a powerful role in the future of connecting, creating, learning and making profits.

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Infrastructure

A total of 7 financings in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of more than US$56.5 million, accounting for 47.76% of the total financing last week.

Caldera

On July 24, Web3 infrastructure platform Caldera completed a $15 million Series A financing round, led by Founders Fund, with participation from Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, Arkstream Capital, Lattice, etc. The Series A financing brings Caldera's total financing to $25 million. The company raised $10 million last year.

Caldera focuses on building high-performance, customizable, and application-specific second-layer blockchains. These customized blockchains (Caldera chains) provide high throughput, low latency, and customizable features to optimize the performance and user experience of decentralized applications, capable of processing hundreds of transactions per second and sub-second confirmation times. Caldera said it has helped more than 50 projects launch their Rollups, including Manta Pacific, Injective, ApeChain, etc.

Bitlayer Labs

On July 23, Bitcoin Layer 2 infrastructure Bitlayer Labs announced the completion of a $11 million Series A financing round led by Franklin Templeton, ABCDE and Framework Ventures, with participation from Stake Capital Group, WAGMI Ventures, Flow Traders, GSR Ventures, FalconX, etc.

Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin infrastructure project to receive institutional investment from an ETF license. The latest round of funding brings Bitlayer's total funding to $16 million. The funds will be used to support a large number of protocols built within the ecosystem, and the company's development team continues to work on building its Mainnet-V2, a Bitcoin-native Rollup.

Bitlayer is committed to becoming Bitcoin's computing layer and is the first Bitcoin security-equivalent Layer 2 based on the BitVM paradigm. Bitlayer has led the BitVM-based Bitcoin second-layer solution, using layered virtual machine technology (Layered Virtual Machine) to support various types of calculations using zero-knowledge proofs (zkp) and optimistic verification (op) mechanisms. In addition, Bitlayer has built a dual-channel two-way locked asset bridge through OP-DLC and BitVM bridges to achieve security equal to Bitcoin's first layer.

Igloo, Inc.

On July 23, Igloo, Inc., the parent company of the NFT project Pudgy Penguins, announced the completion of over $11 million in financing. This round of financing was led by the well-known venture capital firm Founders Fund, and Fenbushi Capital, 1kx, Everest Ventures Group and Selini Capital participated in the investment.

Igloo plans to invest this strategic financing in the development of its new business Cube Labs. Cube Labs will oversee and participate in the development of Abstract, a new consumer-focused blockchain aimed at promoting the mainstreaming of encryption. Incubated by the non-profit Abstract Foundation, Abstract will lead the encryption revolution in the consumer field by allowing billions of people to go online for the first time, and its test network will be launched soon.

In addition to the lineup of blockchain entrepreneurs Michael Lee, Luca Netz and Lorenzo Melendez as co-founders, Abstract's engineering team includes well-known Web3 developers Cygaar, 0xbeans and stinkypablo.

The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:

On July 25, RiskLayer, a DeFi security middleware on EigenLayer, completed the Builders Round financing, led by Antler and Momentum 6, and participated by angel investors such as Wagmi Ventures, Hypotenuse Ventures and Richard Ma. RiskLayer plans to use this financing to accelerate the development of its Active Verification Service (AVS) infrastructure and prepare for the upcoming pre-staking launch.

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On July 25, DePIN network layer Multiple Network completed a US$2 million seed round of financing, with participation from OKX Ventures, Youbi Capital, Stratified Capital, Puzzle Ventures, CatcherVC and BitriseCapital.

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On July 26, the Bitcoin scaling network Mezo completed a US$7.5 million strategic round of financing, led by Ledger Cathay Fund, with participation from ArkStream Capital, Aquarius Fund, Flowdesk, GSR, Origin Protocol and Mantle EcoFund.

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On July 27, Metabit Network recently announced the successful completion of a new round of strategic financing of US$10 million. The new financing funds will be used to promote Metabit Network's innovation and development in the field of blockchain technology. Metabit is a blockchain platform based on the hybrid consensus mechanism PoAS, which allows different nodes to play different roles and provide physical operation networks, verification, packaging settlement, storage and bandwidth. On top of this architecture, Metabit v2.0 stage transitioned to a multi-dimensional intelligent architecture based on AI.

Web3+AI

A total of 3 financings were raised in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of over US$16.5 million, accounting for 13.95% of the total financing last week. Including:

On July 24, DAOBase, an AI-driven data and infrastructure platform tailored for DAOs, announced the completion of a $6 million financing round, with SevenX Ventures, AntAlpha Ventures, Tanuki Studio, y2z Ventures, Slingshot Labs, LD Capital, Mix Marvel DAO Venture, TI Capital, Bitrise Capital, The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget and DeXe Protocol co-founder Dmytro Kotliarov participating in the investment.

DAOBase is an AI-driven data and infrastructure platform tailored for DAOs. The company helps DAOs and voters build their own on-chain and off-chain data reputation layers by leveraging advanced algorithms, enabling users to intelligently monitor DAO governance, make informed decisions, and explore future working models. The platform seamlessly integrates six blockchains, covers more than 160,000 DAOs and 6 million voters, and is the largest DAO aggregator and analysis platform on the market.

The funds raised this time will be mainly used for product development, marketing and global expansion. DAOBase plans to further enhance the functionality of the platform, expand its business scale, and provide DAOs with smarter and more efficient governance solutions. It is reported that in Q4 2024, DAOBase will enter a stage of rapid development. DAOBase recently launched DAOBadgeX, an on-chain reputation system for Web3 governance users, and plans to launch more platform asset series in the future. These innovations will further enhance the platform's functionality and user experience, and help more DAOs achieve intelligent and efficient governance.

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On July 25, the decentralized AI technology innovation platform Redpill announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Animoca Brands and DFG, with participation from Jsquare, Hypersphere and other institutions. Redpill, formerly known as Cyphermod, has been repositioned as a permissionless LLM router network, aiming to achieve seamless integration of AI and blockchain technology, allowing users to customize AI interactions based on performance and efficiency.

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On July 25, IoTeX ecosystem AI infrastructure project Network3 recently completed a $5.5 million financing round. This round of financing was jointly invested by first-tier institutions such as IoTeX, Borderless, and EV3.

The financing will be used to expand Network3's team, improve its technology stack, and accelerate its TGE process in the IoTeX ecosystem. Network3 aims to help global AI developers efficiently, conveniently, and economically perform large-scale reasoning, training, or verification of models. It currently has more than 200,000 nodes worldwide, covering 181 countries or regions.

Last week, IoTeX announced its 2.0 strategy, upgrading to a modular open platform for AI and DePIN, and providing comprehensive support covering technology, resources and capital to outstanding projects through ecological funds, accelerators, incentive programs, etc., to help projects grow rapidly.

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