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- AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #2
AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #2
AWeb3 VC
January 15, 2023
🗓️ Week of: January 8-14, 2023
Funding Snapshot
The Highlights
🚀 This week saw a total of 14 announced rounds capturing $60M+ in total funding. Almost all of the announced funding rounds were at the seed stage. We will likely see venture funding concentrated at the earlier stages until digital assets markets and the broader macro environment start to rebound. Fortunately, digital asset markets showed promise this week, with most cryptocurrencies seeing double-digit gains, resulting in a "sea of green" across CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. Historically, we have observed a correlation between market recovery and an uptick in user activity, which often results in venture capital firms deploying capital at later stages... Fingers crossed 🤞
🏆 The largest funding round this week goes to CyberX, a digital asset prime broker, market maker, and DeFi liquidity provider based in Asia. The company received $15M in Series A funding, led by Foresight Ventures. CyberX's core market-making and liquidity solutions include spot and derivatives markets, as well as liquidity for DeFi protocols. Its daily trading volume is reported to be $400M across 30+ connected liquidity venues and 5,000 different tokens. The survival and health of market makers is vital for maintaining stability in digital markets, especially following the fall of FTX and its sister company, Alameda Research.
😎 While not the largest round this week, The Easy Company announced $14.2M in seed funding, led by Lobby Capital. Other investors in the round included Relay Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Tapestry VC, Upside Partnership, and Scribble Ventures, along with other prominent angel investors. The company's flagship application, Easy, is one of the first social-oriented Web3 wallets. In addition to offering a multi-chain self-custodial wallet, Easy also combines user-curated profiles with social discovery features, including community affiliations. Additionally, the wallet features a community-sourced rating system, Signal, to protect users from scams and risks pervasive in Web3... Given the hundreds of wallets now available, I'm actually pretty interested in testing out Easy. Also, be sure to visit their website for a fully animated overview of the Easy Wallet!
👀 Beacon, a Web3-focused accelerator program, hosted its inaugural demo day. Created by Polygon's co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and a team of Web3 and venture capital contributors, the program's first cohort, known as Cohort 0, graduated 13 companies. Some of the crypto sub-sectors represented included gaming, infrastructure, decentralized lending and borrowing, and developer tooling.
Of the 13 graduating companies, here are a few companies that piqued my interest:
Between Alliance DAO, a16z's Crypto Startup School and now Beacon, it is becoming increasingly easier for Web3 startups to launch and accelerate their businesses.
Funding Rounds
Want access to our complete dataset or propose an update? Contact: [email protected]
C14 - Seed ($2.5M) | Fiat-to-crypto payment solution for Web3 businesses: https://www.c14.money
TerraCVita - Private Sale ($2M) | Community and developer of application on the Terra Classic network including the Terraport a DeFi platform: https://terracvita.com/
DeBox - Seed ($2M) | Decentralized identity (DID) based Web3 Social Platform: https://debox.pro/
Cryptiony - Seed ($530K) | Crypto tax automation platform for individuals, institutions, and tax professionals: https://cryptiony.com/
Open Forest Protocol - Seed ($4.1M) | Open platform allowing forest projects to measure, report and verify forestation data on-chain: https://www.openforestprotocol.org/
The Easy Company - Seed ($14.2M) | Wallet embedded with social discovery features that focus on making Web3 more accessible and safer: https://easy.me/
Hedge - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Collaborative trading platform allowing users to pool money and invest together: https://www.hedge.io/
Quasar Labs - Seed ($5.4M) | Decentralized asset management protocol that leverages the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem, Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) technology: https://www.quasar.fi/
SFTX - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | DeFi and social protocol for short-term asset management: https://www.stfx.io/
Quantum Temple - Seed ($2M) | Web3 platform dedicated to preserving cultural heritage: https://quantumtemple.xyz/
CyberX - Series A ($15M) | Digital asset prime broker, market maker, and liquidity provider: https://www.cyberx.com/
Digital Village - Seed ($4M) | Metaverse platform enabling the creation of 3D immersive virtual worlds: https://www.digitalvillage.io/
Alkimiya - Seed ($7.2M) | A permissionless protocol that makes blockspace more accessible to the broader DeFi universe: https://alkimiya.io/
Exactly Protocol - Seed ($2M) | DeFi protocol that offers both variable and fixed interest rates for lenders and borrowers: https://exact.ly/
Cool Resources
🤔 Thinking of building or investing in the next Web3 unicorn? Check out Alliance DAO's crypto/Web3 startup ideas and themes for 2023:
About
AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.