Financing highlights | a16z led the investment in DePIN project Daylight; Ribbit Capital led the investment in lending platform Morpho

According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 14, which is less than before, with a total amount of about US$112.5 million and an average financing amount of US$8.0357 million. Among them, the DeFi field occupies the majority, the infrastructure field is relatively large, the digital asset management/payment field has increased, the Web3.0+AI field and the NFT/digital fashion field are relatively small, and the Metaverse/GameFi field, the social/creator economy field and other fields have not yet received financing. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:

NFT/Digital Fashion

In the NFT/digital fashion field, there was a total of 1 financing, with a total amount of more than US$3.4 million, accounting for 3.02% of the total financing last week.

Mintify

On July 30, according to The Block, NFT startup Mintify completed a new round of $3.4 million in financing, with ARCA, Cumberland, Psalion, Master Ventures, Zeneca, GM Capital, Spencer VC and more than 50 angel investors participating in the financing.

Mintify is a fast execution engine designed for NFT transactions. It provides access to on-chain and off-chain historical data, traditional financial analysis based on NFTs, and deep liquidity. Mintify is currently available on the ETH, Blast, and Base platforms. Data (including listing information) is obtained in real time from multiple markets such as OpenSea, Blur, Magic Eden, X2Y2, and other private exchanges.

Currently, NFT trading markets from OpenSea to SudoSwap are limited in functionality, real-time data, and scope for professional crypto investors to develop and execute NFT trading strategies. Mintify's vision is to build a Bloomberg-like trading terminal designed specifically for NFTs, called ProDash. Evan Varsamis, founder and CEO of Mintify, believes that their trading terminal can provide software and data access services comparable to Bloomberg's role in the stock market.

Mintify founder and CEO Evan Varsamis said that Mintify's current total financing amount is US$5 million and the company's board of directors will not change immediately.

DeFi

A total of 2 financings in the DeFi field, with a total amount of more than US$51.2 million, accounting for 45.51% of the total financing last week.

Morpho

On August 1, DeFi lending platform Morpho completed a $50 million financing round led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Hack VC, IOSG, Rockaway, L1D, Mirana, Cherry, Semantic, Fenbushi, Leadblock Bitpanda and Robot Ventures. Valuation has not been disclosed.

The funds were raised through a private token sale. Other heavyweights participating in the private token sale include a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Variant, Pantera, Brevan Howard, BlockTower and Kraken Ventures. Ribbit Capital is an early investor in fintech companies such as Robinhood, Revolut and Coinbase. Morpho, which previously raised $18 million in 2022, aims to merge the relatively scarce world of decentralized finance (DeFi) with the base protocol layer of the internet.

Morpho combines the liquidity pool model used by Compound or AAVE with the capital efficiency of the peer-to-peer matching engine used in order books. Morpho-Compound improves on Compound by offering the same user experience, liquidity, and liquidation parameters, but with increased APY due to peer-to-peer matching.

Other DeFi financing includes:

On July 30, Liquorice, a DeFi liquidity and trading engine service provider, announced the completion of a $1.2 million Pre-Seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Greenfield Capital, and Polymorphic Capital, L2 Iterative Ventures (L2IV), 1inch, HASH CIB, Efficient Frontier, Follow the Seed, and Horadrim.Capital participated in the investment. The specific valuation information has not been disclosed yet.

It is reported that Liquorice provides a one-sided lending pool integrated with a MEV-free trading engine, aiming to promote liquidity in intent-based trading systems. It has been integrated with aggregators such as 1inch, Uniswap X and CoW Swap.

Original link

Infrastructure

A total of 7 financings were raised in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of more than US$33.7 million, accounting for 29.96% of the total financing last week.

DuelNow

On August 2, the Arbitrum-based prediction market DuelNow completed $11 million in financing, led by GEM Digital Limited, with participation from Litecoin founder Charlie Lee and Dogecoin founder Billy Markus.

DuelNow is a decentralized peer-to-peer entertainment prediction platform that aims to achieve lower fees and higher returns by "eliminating bets." The company said the platform currently serves "NFL, MLB, NBA and MMA fans" and plans to add more entertainment products in the future.

According to Zion Market Research, the global online sports betting market is worth nearly $60 billion and is expected to grow at a rate of more than 10% per year. According to the business research firm, blockchain is becoming an integral part of sports betting platforms, which rely on the technology to reduce transaction costs and increase transparency.

Daylight

On August 2, according to The Block, the DePIN project Daylight completed a new round of US$9 million in Series A financing, led by A16z Crypto, with participation from Framework Ventures, Lattice Fund, Escape Velocity and Lerer Hippeau. The project has raised a total of US$13 million. As a DePIN modular ecosystem that actively deploys the DePIN new energy track, IoTeX participated in the project's seed round of financing in 2022.

Daylight is a distributed energy protocol that allows users to connect their energy devices to its dAPP and earn rewards. Users can also join the Daylight marketplace to get energy upgrades for their homes or buildings, such as solar panels, new energy vehicle chargers, heat pumps, and water heaters.

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

Icebreaker

On July 31, according to FortuneCrypto, Icebreaker, a "LinkedIn" company on the chain, announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by CoinFund, with participation from Accomplice, Anagram and Legion Capital, with a post-investment valuation of $21 million.

Icebreaker co-founders Dan Stone and Jack Dillé came from Coinbase and Google respectively. The two founded Icebreaker with the common belief that a person's digital identity and reputation trail should not be owned by one entity, but should be public and accessible to everyone. Using blockchain technology, Icebreaker allows users to transfer all their existing professional profiles and networks into a verified channel.

At the inaugural Farcaster conference, FarCon 2024, Icebreaker created unique NFC badges for attendees that were directly connected to their Icebreaker and Farcaster profiles. This allowed them to verify not only their own identity-based credentials, but also those of other attendees—an ideal solution for face-to-face social interaction. By meeting the critical need for trust and security in digital interactions, Icebreaker can be an important addition to the digital ecosystem.

The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:

On July 29, the Web3 integrated platform Agent Exchange announced the completion of a $1 million financing round, with participation from The Block CEO Larry Cermak, BRC20 founder Domo, Web3 developer Cygaar, Mr. Block, Caladan, and others. Agent enables flexible creation and management of subaccounts through the ERC-6551 standard. Through these tokenized accounts, it enables users to conveniently earn and trade points in the pre-market.

Original link

On July 31, the on-chain competition platform Jokerace completed $3 million in financing, with Maven 11 and about 30 angel investors participating. JokeRace is a no-code project that allows competitions, debates, and hackathons to be launched on the chain to incentivize participation. The new funds are used to expand its marketing and business development efforts. The project was originally a competition initiated by the founders among friends to see who could post the funniest jokes on Twitter.

Original link

On August 1, PointsFi market Pichi Finance announced the completion of US$2.5 million in financing, led by Signum Capital, UOB Venture Management and Mantle, and participated by DWF Labs, GBV Capital, Nothc Ventures and others. It is reported that Pichi Finance provides price discovery services for tokens before and after TGE.

Original link

On August 1, the Solana-based prediction market MetaDAO completed $2.2 million in financing, led by Paradigm. MetaDAO aims to establish a governance structure that relies on market forces rather than voting. This structure is called a "futures market." MetaDAO's rendering of futures is centered on the value of the token META. Any proposal that requires the group to take action will have a "pass" and "fail" market where traders can speculate on META. The outcome of the proposal depends on which market has a higher token price. The proposal will only pass if META's value in the "pass" market is higher than that in the "fail" market.

Original link

Digital Asset Management/Payment

A total of 2 financings were raised in the digital asset management/payment field, with a total amount of over US$15.2 million, accounting for 13.51% of the total financing last week.

Layer2 Financial

On July 31, FortuneCrypto reported that the cross-border payment infrastructure Layer2 Financial completed a $10.7 million Series A financing round, led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Accomplice and Sapphire Ventures.

It is reported that Layer2 Financial seeks to challenge Swift in cross-border payments.

Breakout

On July 31, The Block reported that crypto trading company Breakout completed a $4.5 million seed round of financing, led by RockawayX, with participation from Mechanism Capital, Round13 Capital, C² Ventures and IOBC Capital.

Co-founder and CEO Alex Miningham said the company began its seed round of financing in February, initially seeking $3 million in funding, and eventually closed the round with $4.5 million. Breakout is an evaluation-based cryptocurrency self-trading company where traders can choose one-step or two-step evaluation options, with account sizes ranging from $5,000 to $100,000.

Web3+AI

A total of 2 financings in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of over 9 million US dollars, accounting for 8% of the total financing last week. Including:

On July 31, We.Rich, a user-generated asset (UGA) platform on the Base chain, announced the completion of a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Folius Ventures and Animoca Brands, and participated by Leland Ventures and Radiance Ventures. We.Rich allows anyone to become a founder and provides a zero-cost asset creation experience. It is also equipped with an AI-based personalized asset recommendation engine running on the Base chain.

Original link

On July 30, according to official news, AI cloud service provider Hyperbolic completed a US$7 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction, and Chapter One, LongHash, Bankless Ventures, Republic Digital, Nomad Capital, CoinSummer Labs, Third Earth Capital and well-known angel investors Balaji Srinivasan, Illia Polosukhin, Sandeep Nailwal, Casey Caruso, Tekin Salimi, Santiago Santos and others participated in the investment. The capital will be used to advance the development of Hyperbolic's open access AI cloud platform, including recruiting key engineers and creating an ecosystem to support developers.

It is reported that this round of seed financing is based on the $725,000 pre-seed investment provided by Chapter One, Modular Capital, Samsung Next, Avalanche's Blizzard Fund, IMO Ventures, SNZ Holding and Ausvic Capital in November 2022. In addition, Hyperbolic plans to launch its own Proof of Sampling (PoSP) protocol and build an economic system where everyone can benefit from the platform.