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- AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #23
🗓️ Week of: June 4-10, 2023
Also be sure to follow me on Twitter @aweb3vc 🚀
💡 Web3 Funding Snapshot
(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)
$177M+ was raised across 21 funding rounds in Web3. For a second week in a row, funding has slumped < $200M. However, this was overshadowed by the SEC's announced lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. While the actions by the SEC didn't come as a surprise, they could place the industry (at least in the U.S.) into a period of uncertainty until some sense of resolution is reached (or possible legislation). At the core of both lawsuits is the question of whether tokens the exchanges listed are unregistered securities, which has long been a well-known gray area for the industry. Regardless of the outcome, this will likely prompt more crypto/Web3 founders to build their companies outside of the U.S. Moreover, venture investors are likely to exercise even greater caution, which could curtail capital into Web3 companies for the remainder of the year.
Despite these headwinds and a lackluster week for funding, there were a few diamonds in the rough, including a series of notable fundraising from Informal System (Cosmos ecosystem core contributor), Meanwhile (Bitcoin denominated life insurance), and Lens Protocol as well as the completion of a16z’s Crypto Startups School 2023, which we cover in this week’s edition.
🏆 Largest Funding Round
➡️ WOW Earn raised $30M in Series A funding. Investors in the round included Pinnacle Innovations Capital, Blue Horizon Ventures, Ascendant Growth Partners, Nexus Pioneers Capital, and Quantum Leap Ventures.
The project provides a decentralized mining and staking platform. Users can earn staking rewards through a variety of stated staking strategies. The platform is underpinned by their own native token, which is used to pay user-based rewards. They also claim to have amassed over 300K users.
Why this matters?👉TBH there isn't too much information available on this project to determine what makes WOW Earn stand out. It's somewhat surprising, considering they've raised $30M… Nonetheless, decentralized staking and the emerging field of liquid staking token finance (LSTFi) represent rapidly evolving areas in DeFi. This development not only provides liquid alternatives for staked ETH, but the creation of more liquid staking pools and instruments could also contribute to the further decentralization of Ethereum.
😎 Noteworthy Company(s)
➡️ Lens Protocol is a Web3 social graph built on the Polygon blockchain network. It's designed to empower creators to own the connections between themselves and their communities, forming a fully composable, user-owned social graph. Unlike traditional Web2 social media platforms, Lens is open-source and fully portable, allowing developers to build applications atop the protocol and users to take ownership of their content and audience. Each social profile within the protocol is represented as an NFT that contains all the related content and followers.
The protocol was originally developed by the prominent DeFi platform, Aave, and its founder Stani Kulechov. Recently, Aave announced a $15M funding round specifically for Lens Protocol, which was led by IDEO CoLab Ventures with participation from General Catalyst, Variant, and Blockchain Capital, as well as DAOs such as Flamingo DAO, DAOJones, Punk DAO, DAO5, and Global Coin Research.
Why this matters?👉Web3 decentralized social networks are still in their infancy. However, Lens is working to further this adoption by providing a base protocol that sets core standards for Web3 social profiles, upon which developers can build (akin to TCP/IP for email). Moreover, its modular nature allows it to be adaptable to specific application use-cases while also being portable. Currently, most of Lens's usage and activity centers around creating profiles and handles, which has seen a decline in activity since the start of 2023. However, as the ecosystem of apps utilizing Lens expands, offering profile and social graph interoperability, a flywheel effect could emerge, potentially establishing Lens as the standard for Web3 social networking.
👀 Observations, Trends & Themes
➡️ a16z Crypto Startup School (CSS)
ICYMI, a16z's early-stage accelerator, Crypto Startup School (CSS), has just completed their 2023 cohort. Surprisingly, there was minimal coverage of Demo Day, which occurred a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, 25 companies successfully completed the program, building in some of the most promising areas of Web3.
For a complete list of the companies, checkout CSS 2023 Recap & Resources. Around 15 of the 25 companies are focusing on infrastructure development across emerging areas like account abstraction (ERC-4337), micro-rollups, MEV, as well as more traditional areas such as security, data, and analytics. The remaining 10 companies are building interesting use-cases at the application layer, spanning gaming, social networking, and bridging Web3 experiences. A couple of companies that caught my attention include:
Bello: Turns complex blockchain data into no-code actionable insights for creators to drive growth, engage collectors, and succeed in the crypto economy.
ChainPatrol: A real-time security platform, providing the fastest way to block phishing attacks in web3.
Eth.id: Facebook for web3, providing a wallet, universal domain that works on web3 and web2, personal website, and the ability to mint NFTs with just an email.
Fuul: An affiliate marketing protocol that enables trustless partnerships between crypto projects and creators.
Shield: Helps web3 platforms adopt higher security standards to build trust and drive growth.
Web3 Analytic: Building user acquisition tools for DeFi.
Already, a number of these companies have announced funding, notably Capsule, Shield, and Hourglass. It's likely we'll see more funding announcements from the rest of the cohort in the coming months.
Despite everything that's been happening in the industry, as well as the slump in Web3 ventures, now is the time to build. Thus, it's great to see programs like CSS emerge. Hopefully, programs and resources like these can help fuel the new wave of innovation for our industry.
💸 Funding Rounds
Top 15 Rounds
Note: Taiko announced it had closed 2 funding rounds this week, one of which closed during Q3-2022, but was not reported yet
Want access to our complete dataset or propose an update? Contact: [email protected]
All Rounds
Spinamp - Seed ($1.3M) | Web3 music player: https://www.spinamp.xyz/
Marathon Digital Holdings - Private Placement ($14.3M) | Bitcoin miner and one of the largest and most sustainably powered Bitcoin mining operations in North America: https://www.mara.com/
Klide - Seed ($1.1M) | Private debt investing platform and developer of SafeBay, a capital markets protocol for Web 3 treasuries and fiduciaries of on-chain capital: https://www.kilde.sg/
Oamo - Seed ($1.3M) | Decentralized data broker that allows individuals to own and monetize the value of their data: https://www.oamo.io/
Wave BL - Series B ($26M) | Blockchain-based system for transmitting electronic unique documents safely along the supply chain: https://wavebl.com/
Volcano Energy - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | El Salvador based Bitcoin mining farm using renewable energy sources: https://twitter.com/Volcano_Energy
Nori - Series A+ ($6.3M) | End-to-end carbon removal marketplace enabled by blockchain: https://nori.com/
Meanwhile - Seed ($19M) | Bitcoin denominate life insurance policies and products: https://meanwhile.bm/
Oxalus - Seed ($1.1M) | NFT social commerce platform: https://oxalus.io/
Argus - Seed ($10M) | Web3 gaming studio and developer of World Engine, a blockchain-gaming software developer kit (SDK) that allows builders to create Web3 gaming ecosystems: https://argus.gg/
Dew Drop - Seed ($1.5M) | Platform to sell digital collectables via text messages: https://www.dewdrops.co/
Informal Systems - Seed ($5.3M) | Core contributor of the Cosmos Network software and protocols, focusing on development of the Tendermint consensus engine, the IBC interoperability standard, and the Cosmos Hub: https://informal.systems/
WOW EARN - Series A ($30M) | Decentralized mining pool and staking platform: https://wowearn.com/
Alive - Seed ($5M) | Decentralized platform and community advancing the development of generative artificial intelligence: https://www.alive-ai.com/
Ouinex - Public Sale ($2M) | Digital assets exchange and trading platform: https://ouinex.com/
TradingLeagues - Seed+ ($3.5M) | Fantasy gaming app for stock picking and crypto markets: https://www.tradingleagues.in/
Taiko Labs - Seed ($10M) | Decentralized Layer 2 protocol that uses a Zero Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (ZK-EVM) designed to be the most Ethereum-equivalent Zero Knowledge Rollup (ZK-Rollup): https://taiko.xyz/
Taiko Labs - Seed+ ($12M) | Decentralized Layer 2 protocol that uses a Zero Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (ZK-EVM) designed to be the most Ethereum-equivalent Zero Knowledge Rollup (ZK-Rollup): https://taiko.xyz/
Lens Protocol - Seed ($15M) | Open-source social graph protocol that allows developers to launch Web3-ready social media platforms and profiles: https://www.lens.xyz/
HyperPlay - Series A ($12M) | Web3 game launcher that enables players to carry their wallet, NFTs, tokens, and achievements into every game: https://www.hyperplay.xyz/
Blockspan - Seed ($1.4 M) | NFT data and aggregation platform provided through an API layer: https://blockspan.com/
New Funds
🙌 Cool Resources
Unable to get into a16z’s Crypto Startup School 2023? No worries, you can access all of lectures and guest speakers on YouTube via this playlist.
🐕 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.in