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- AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #38
🗓️ Week of: Sept 17-23, 2023
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(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)
$221M+ was raised across 22 funding rounds in Web3. Funding has picked up with a number of solid announced funding rounds with the largest and notable rounds led by some impressive founders and backed by a16z. The majority of deal flow remains at the Seed stage, with only a few Series A rounds for yet another week. Infrastructure and CeFi continue to dominate as the sectors receiving the lion's share of funding.
Also noteworthy were the recent new funds announced by Electric Capital and Blockchain Capital. Both are considered Tier 1 firms in the Web3 venture landscape, so it's unsurprising to see these firms raising new, larger funds. This activity suggests that some Limited Partners (LPs) remain keen on gaining exposure to the crypto/Web3 space, but with a preference for firms that have an established and successful track record. With over $800M of newly available capital on the table, hopefully this help stir the next wave of startup funding as we enter Q4. However, we’ll have to see what impact the FED’s “hawkish hold” will have the crypto markets and venture as a whole.
🏆 Largest Funding Round
Note - Deal highlighted as the largest venture style raise this week
➡️ Proof of Play announced $33M in Seed funding in a round co-led by a16z and Greenoaks Capital. The round included other notable angel investors such as Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan, Justin Kan, and more.
Proof of Play is a game studio and technology company dedicated to creating enjoyable and accessible on-chain games. Its premier on-chain game, Pirate Nation, is a social role-playing game (RPG) where players assemble pirate crews, engage in battles, and compete with others to top the leaderboards.
While Pirate Nation may resemble other RPGs at first glance, its unique on-chain game contracts serve as foundational tools for developers, allowing them to either craft new games or expand upon the existing Pirate Nation universe and its NFTs.
The studio was co-founded by CEO Amitt Mahajan, who was previously a co-creator of the wildly popular casual game, FarmVille, at Zynga.
Why this matters?👉FarmVille was once among the most popular RPGs, boasting 300M players globally and accumulating billions of hours spent on building digital farms. Sadly, in 2020, the game was discontinued, erasing those countless hours of player investment. Proof of Play seeks to carry the torch from where FarmVille left off, but with a twist: granting players genuine ownership of their in-game assets. Additionally, the company aspires to lay down foundational tools and infrastructure for developers to enhance the platform, reminiscent of the strategy that boosted Zynga’s and FarmVille’s initial popularity. While I remain wary of Web3 gaming, the founder's impressive track record coupled with the early success of Pirate Nation indicates that this on-chain gaming studio shows potential.
😎 Noteworthy Company
➡️ Bastion is an enterprise-focused Web3 orchestrator layer that empowers businesses to seamlessly build Web3 solutions. It seeks to address the key challenges often associated with on-chain transactions, such as difficult wallet operations, unpredictable gas fees, and slow blockchain finality times. The company is developing a comprehensive platform to simplify the complexities of creating Web3 products.
Key offerings of the Bastion platform include:
Custodial Wallet API, which abstracts away the intricacies of multiple on-chain transactions,
Smart Transaction Routing, which determines whether a transaction should be processed on-chain or off-chain for efficiency, and
User Analytics & Insights, which collects and analyzes on-chain and off-chain user activities
Bastion's founding team, consisting of Nassim Eddequiouaq and Riyaz Faizullabhoy, boasts deep expertise in security and digital assets. The duo has collaborated for seven years and has contributed to building of platforms such as Docker, Anchorage Digital, and Meta's Novi wallet. Most recently, Nass and Riyaz held the roles of CTO and CISO, respectively, at a16z crypto.
Additionally, the company recently announced $25M in Seed funding. The round was led by a16z crypto, with participation from Laser Digital Ventures Not Boring Capital, Robot Ventures, Sancus Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, Isos7 Venture Fund, Autograph, Aptos Foundation, and other individual investors.
Why this matters?👉Setting the product aside, the founders behind Bastion boast an impressive resume and track record. Truly, for early-stage companies, especially in the crypto sector, much hinges on the founders' experience and their ability to execute. Given that these individuals were among the pioneering engineers behind Anchorage and the Novi wallet, they undoubtedly possess the deep technical expertise to develop any crypto custody solution, which is core to the Bastion offering. Moreover, there's a growing demand for crypto-as-a-service solutions as traditional companies venture into crypto or Web3 services. Armed with $25M in Seed funding, I'm confident this won't be the last time we hear from them.
👀 Observations, Trends & Themes
➡️ Telegram Adds Self-Custodial Crypto Wallet
Why this matters?👉With an active user base of 800M monthly active users, Telegram's addition of a crypto wallet could trigger a surge in adoption for crypto amongst the general public. TON Space will be available to Telegram’s global users without any wallet registration required. Beyond merely holding crypto, the wallet also facilitates user interaction with decentralized applications directly within Telegram. Furthermore, this move could spur further development atop The Open Network (TON), as the wallet's integration offers access to hundreds of millions of potential users and a big serviceable addressable market.
💸 Funding Rounds
Top 15 Rounds
Note1: GRVT was included in last week’s reporting. However, full details of the round were announced this week.
Want access to our complete dataset or propose an update? Contact: [email protected]
All Rounds
Bubblemaps - Seed ($3.2M) | On-chain analytical tool designed for tokens & NFTs featuring a playful and engaging visual interface: https://bubblemaps.io/
Bastion - Seed ($25M) | Helps companies seamlessly integrate Web3 infrastructure into enterprise technologies through a compliant, white-label platform: https://www.bastion.com/
Swisstronik - Seed ($5M) | Identity based hybrid blockchain and Layer 1 network: https://www.swisstronik.com/
GRVT - Seed ($7.1M) | Hybrid exchange (HEX) for cryptocurrency derivatives enabled by zero-knowledge (zk) proof technology built on zkSync: https://grvt.io/
Jiritsu - Series A ($10.2M) | Decentralized protocol that utilizes zero knowledge (zk) multi-party computation to perform verifiable computations: https://www.jiritsu.network/
Briya - Series A ($11.5M) | Blockchain-secured data exchange platform that enables healthcare organizations to share anonymized patient data: https://briya.com/
Geeiq - Series A ($8.5M) | Enterprise platform that leverages data from across the metaverse to help brands navigate and engage in virtual environments: https://geeiq.com/
Redcurry (aka. Currynomics Labs) - Seed ($400K) | Digital currency backed by commercial real estate: https://redcurry.co/
Afterparty - Seed+ ($5M) | Web3 platform delivering creator tools that scale one-to-one fan interactions: https://afterparty.com/
Onramp - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Fiat-to-crypto payment gateway: https://onramp.money/
Fuze - Seed ($14M) | Full-stack, digital assets infrastructure platform, enabling businesses to integrate embedded digital asset services for their customers: https://fuzefinance.com/
Freatic - Seed ($3.6M) | Developer of decentralized solutions for information markets: https://freatic.team/
Essential - Seed ($5.2M) | Intent-based infrastructure and tooling used to minimize the impact of value extraction: https://essential.builders/
CoinScan (aka. CryptoHub) - Seed+ ($300K) | Developer of CoinScan.com, a platform for displaying trading information in real time and providing resources for traders to perform analysis and research: https://www.coinscan.com/
Orb - Seed ($2.3M) | Community-focused social app for people to connect, interact, and transact in their daily lives on web3 built with Lens Protocol: https://www.orb.ac/
Proof of Play - Seed ($33M) | Web3 game studio and developers of Pirate Nation, an on-chain social role-playing game (RPG): https://www.proofofplay.com/
BeWater - Seed ($1M) | Event management platform enabling permissionless hackathons: https://bewater.xyz/
Mesh (fka. Front Finance) - Series A ($22M) | Pass-through instruction layer that enables digital asset transfers, crypto payments, account aggregation, and stock trading for fintech applications: https://www.meshconnect.com/
Virtualness - Seed+ (Not Disclosed) | Mobile-first platform, for users to create, mint, gift, share, and sell digital goods all in one place: https://virtualness.io/
DCS Card Centre (fka. Diners Club Singapore) - Strategic ($10M) | Credit card issuer and developer of payment solutions that provide a seamless connection between Web2 and Web3: https://dcscc.com/
Core Scientific - Private Placement ($53.9M) | One of the largest blockchain computing data center providers and miners of digital assets in North America: https://corescientific.com/
Northern Data - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Provider of high performance computing (HPC) solutions used for AI and digital asset operations: https://northerndata.de/
New Funds
🙌 Cool Resources
Bubblemaps, a sleeker way to visualize on-chain data.
🐕 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.