This week, venture capital apparently didn’t read any of the crypto news, nearly doubling last week’s fundraising total when the market dropped 25% over the previous seven days. There was a solid distribution across sectors in a week that saw $1.1 billion raised across 43 projects, though Infrastructure took the top spot at $390 million. CeFi raised $249 million, with …
Less Mining, More NFTs
April 29, 2022 in Crypto Funding FridayThis week, twenty-six crypto companies raised money through venture capital firms, totaling $622 million. NFT projects received over half of the pool at $319 million. In a relatively slow week for Infrastructure startups, they raised $125 million, followed by DeFi ($113 million), CeFi ($34 million), and lastly, Web3 ($33 million). Additionally, three new funds launched this week with a combined …
Into the Metaverse (But Not Adidas’)
in Crypto Funding FridayVenture Capital Deals Swoops is an NFT-based fantasy basketball game where each basketball player is minted as an NFT that can be purchased, traded, staked, etc. The startup raised $3.5 million in a Series A led by Courtside Ventures and Alpaca VC. Other participants in the round included Slow Ventures, Red Beard Ventures, and a few individual investors like Jason …
VCs Target Infrastructure with a Hint of DeFi
April 1, 2022 in Crypto Funding FridayVenture Capital Deals zkLend is an Ethereum-based crypto money market similar to Aave and Compound, but will use zero-knowledge rollups to allow users to borrow and lend liquidity without broadcasting identifying information to the Ethereum chain. The project raised $5 million in a seed round led by Delphi Digital with participation from Starkware, Three Arrows Capital, and Alameda Research, among …
One for the Record Books
March 25, 2022 in Crypto Funding FridayVenture Capital Deals Yuga Labs is an NFT/metaverse developer most widely known for creating the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, the largest NFT collection by market cap at over 1 million ETH (~$3 billion at the time of writing). Yuga raised $450 million in a funding round that valued the company at $4 billion. The round was led by …
All-In On Infrastructure
March 18, 2022 in Crypto Funding FridayVenture Capital Deals Hexa Wallet is a self-custody Bitcoin wallet that gives users the ability to control their own private keys without being a simple non-custodial wallet that isn’t as private as a custodial one. The fintech startup raised $1 million in pre-seed investments from Fulgur Ventures and Brad Mills with Bank To The Future and Plan B Ventures as …
NFT/Metaverse Resurgence and Funding Funds
March 11, 2022 in Crypto Funding FridayVenture Capital Deals Espresso Systems is a new layer 1 blockchain protocol that uses Proof-of-Stake consensus with zero-knowledge rollups in order to maintain user privacy while also improving transaction speed and costs. The project raised $32 million in a seed round led by Greylock Partners and Electric Capital, with Sequoia Capital, Blockchain Capital, and Slow Ventures also participating in the …
Government-Run Venture Capital
in Crypto Funding FridayKey Takeaways Venture capital investors took a breather heading into March after investing around $4 billion in the previous three weeks. CeFi projects continue to get a substantial portion of investments, raising $123 million this week. A DeFi project received $70 million in funding, and NFT/Metaverse investments totaled $52 million. Infrastructure was an unusual laggard in the venture space, raising …