Venture 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 others. zkLend is working to launch its retail lending product, Artemis, in Q3 of this year, as well as launching an institutional product, Apollo, in early 2023 that will perform KYC and AML practices for regulatory purposes. (Ethereum Layer-2 DeFi Money Market zkLend Lands $5M Raise)
Cross the Ages (CTA) is a mobile card game where players compete for NFTs that can be converted into physical trading cards. The startup raised a $12 million seed round backed by Animoca Brands, Ubiisoft, Polygon, and Sandbox founder Sebastian Borget. The funding will help the development team launch the CTAT beta in late May and roll out the digital and physical cards in June. Further on the roadmap include an in-house NFT marketplace, DeFi platform, and metaverse integration. (Animoca Brands, Ubisoft Invest in $12M Round for Blockchain Game ‘Cross the Ages’)
LayerZero Labs is the developer of the LayerZero interoperability protocol that aims to enable Web3 applications to operate in parallel across multiple distinct layer 1 blockchains. The team raised $135 million in a funding round led by a16z, FTX Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, with further participation coming from Coinbase Ventures, PayPal Ventures, and Tiger Global, among others. Because so many separate layer 1 chains exist without effective bridging in the background, Solana users, for example, have very limited access to applications on Ethereum or Avalanche. This leaves a lot of data and liquidity siloed within crypto, but a successful interoperability layer – referred to as a “layer 0” – would allow an application on Ethereum to use a Solana marketplace, with Avalanche DeFi protocols supplying liquidity. (LayerZero Raises $135M From Andreessen, FTX, Sequoia to Build Out ‘Omnichain’ Protocol)
Helium Inc. ($HNT) is the creator of the Helium network protocol, a decentralized wireless network where validators share their home internet service in exchange for HNT tokens. The company raised $200 million in a Series D that valued Helium Inc. at $1.2 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global and a16z with participation from Seven Seven Six, Deutsche Telekon, and GV, among others. Helium was one of the first successful implementations of blockchain and Web3 technology as a means for disrupting traditional, real-world industries to decentralize the control that wireless data providers have held since the beginning. (Helium Crypto Wireless Network Founders Raise $200M, Rebrand to Nova Labs)
Burrow is a NEAR-based money market platform that uses non-custodial liquidity pools to create a decentralized money market. The project announced a $5 million raise ahead of their NEAR mainnet launch. The round drew participation from Dragonfly Capital, Jump Crypto, ParaFi Capital, and QCP Capital, among many others. Burrow will use the capital as an initial liquidity source when it launches, hoping to achieve enough adoption to become a major component of the borrow/lend infrastructure for NEAR’s DeFi ecosystem. (Money Market Platform Burrow Raises $5M to Launch on NEAR)
Blur is an NFT marketplace that is focused on providing a trading platform for institutional traders as opposed to retail. The company closed an $11 million seed round led by Paradigm with participation from eGirl Capital and a few individual investors. The funding will help expand their development team as they continue to build the platform privately with investors. The funding announcement did come, however, with a hint that they will have a release for public early access in the near term, likely with a beta launch. (NFT marketplace Blur raises $11 million in seed round led by Paradigm)
Composable Finance is a new DeFi platform that just recently received one of Polkadot’s parachains after introducing cross-chain compatibility to DeFi. The company raised $32 million in a Series A that included Jump Capital, Tendermint Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Blockchain Capital, among many others. The Composable platform will allow protocols to create smart contracts that take inputs or produce outputs across multiple layer 1 blockchains, vastly increasing the ability for DeFi to become interoperable without the need for manually executing processes one step at a time. (Composable Finance Raises $32 Million in Series A)
CertiK is a blockchain security company that operates the Skynet active monitoring platform to detect and protect protocols from cyberattacks for over 1,800 clients. The company raised $88 million in an equity sale from fifteen undisclosed investors. Valuation of the company was not disclosed in the announcement either, but CertiK was valued at $1 billion after their Series B2 in December. The funding came at an opportune time following the $625 million hack against the Ronin chain this week. (Blockchain Security Firm CertiK Just Raised $88M, SEC Docs Show)
Token Sales
CoW Protocol is a batch trading protocol that aggregates transactions and settles them in batches on DeFi AMM projects and Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) to save on gas fees with MEV protection. The protocol raised $23 million from a token sale, with $8 million coming from a public sale and $15 million from a private sale. The private sale was backed by Blockchain Capital, Cherry Ventures, and Ethereal Ventures. The fundraise will be used to spin out from the Gnosis DAO into its own entity, the CowDAO, for direct community governance of the protocol. Other goals with the funds are to develop a more efficient community voting system, and integration with other EVM-based chains. (CoW Protocol raises $23 million and spins out from Gnosis DAO)
Crypto Capital Markets and M&A
Blockchain.com, featured in this week’s Funding Friday, is acquiring Altonomy, an OTC trading and execution desk based out of Singapore, in a deal worth $250 million. Blockchain.com is looking to use the acquisition to incorporate Altonomy’s user base, developers and management, and trade execution technology into its own operations. This follows an emerging trend of product-based acquisitions like FTX acquiring Blockfolio and Coinbase acquiring Tagomi. (Blockchain.com’s crypto OTC trading desk acquisition closed at $250 million)
Finoa is a European crypto custodian and staking product provider for institutional investors. The company is partnering with Outlier Ventures, a crypto venture capital firm, to support projects with end-to-end solutions for crypto investment management and operations. Finoa will connect with Outlier’s accelerator participants, onboard the projects’ development teams, and help them manage investor proceeds, risk, tokenomics, staking, etc. This partnership is aimed at boosting Finoa adoption while helping Outlier’s investments properly manage their finances to continue growing. (Crypto management platform Finoa aligns with Outlier Ventures to grow web3 startups)
New Venture Capital Funds, Ecosystem Funds, and Alliances
Cypher Capital is a UAE-based venture capital firm with one of its most notable investments was a seed round for Messari, the popular crypto Data-as-a-Service platform. Cypher has created a $100 million venture capital fund for crypto startups while taking an active mentorship role to help them deliver on value propositions necessary for the growth of crypto. The fund will target DeFi, GameFi, and metaverse startups, but is open to other crypto verticals if genuinely innovative projects come across their radar. (UAE Venture Capital Firm Launches $100 Million Seed Fund for Blockchain and Crypto Projects)
Gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) is a crypto-native venture capital firm that is already invested in 36 startups from its $21 million initial fund. The company is launching a second fund, Fund II, with $110 million that will be deployed in DeFi, gaming, and DAO projects. Investments will be focused in early-stage rounds, looking for projects that gCC believes have the potential to become sector leaders in late-stage crypto verticals. (Crypto VC gCC Raises $110M Early-Stage Fund)
Wave Financial is a crypto investment advisor firm with over $1 billion in AUM across options income, venture capital, wealth management, and NFT funds, among many other strategies. Wave is partnering with Cardano ($ADA) to launch a $100 million fund, the ADA Yield Fund, that will help bootstrap liquidity across some of Cardano’s growing DeFi platform initiatives. This will also act as a test that will help Wave to develop a DeFi yield product to offer its consumers. ($100M Wave Financial Fund Offers Liquidity to New Cardano DeFi Platforms)
Deal of the Week
Blockchain.com is one of the most popular crypto OTC desks, handling over $14 billion in trades and loan originations in 2021. The company has reached decacorn status (value > $10 billion) after a $300 million Series D that valued Blockchain.com at $14 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Ventures, and the announcement only named one other participant, Baillie Gifford.
Why is this a big deal?
Blockchain.com is a major component in the crypto trading world. According to the company, the platform has performed over $1 trillion in transactions and claims a 33% market share for global Bitcoin transactions by count. Over the past year, Blockchain.com has nearly tripled its valuation from its last funding round in March 2021, when a $300 million raise valued the company at $5.2 billion. This growth comes as no surprise after the company published that it currently has over 37 million verified users and 82 million wallets. As a comparison, Coinbase has 73 million verified users as the second-largest crypto exchange worth $42 billion. The funding will also help Blockchain.com move operations from the UK to Lithuania, granting it more favorable regulations to continue growing the company and expanding its product and service offerings beyond what was feasible under the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’s heavy scrutiny against crypto projects. (Blockchain.com raises Series D at a $14 billion valuation)