AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #55

🗓️ Week of: Jan 14-20, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

$274M+ was raised across 23 funding rounds in Web3. Another healthy week of dealflow primarily centered around a number of prominent financial services (i.e., CeFi) companies including Hashkey Group’s $100M Series A covered in this edition. Series A rounds and beyond also witnessed an uptick, which is always a healthy sign that companies are showing traction and the Web3 venture market is starting to thaw.

Outside of this week’s fundraising, the broader crypto market welcomed the first full week of trading for the Bitcoin spot ETF’s. While optimistic these vehicles can introduce billions in new capital into the crypto markets, much of the recent capital flow has been investors rotating between different products. Also, Electric Capital is out with their annual developer report. TL;DR while newcomers into Web3 are down there has been a growing cohort of experienced developers who are also working multi-chain.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Hashkey Group announced $100M in Series A financing, securing a reported pre-money valuation above $1.2B. The company did not disclose specific investors but noted the round included existing investors, as well as new ones, including prominent institutional investors, leading Web3 institutions, and strategic partners. In May 2023, Bloomberg reported that the company was in the process of raising $100-200M at a valuation north of $1B.

Hashkey is an end-to-end digital asset financial services group, providing an ecosystem of products and services o institutions, family offices, funds, professional and accredited investors across Asia. This includes a regulated exchange, custody solutions, brokerage, venture capital, asset management, and node validation services. In 2023 HashKey Exchange launched the first licensed virtual asset exchange App in Hong Kong. The firm’s venture capital arm, Hashkey Capital, boasts over $1B in AUM and is also one of the most active venture investors in Web3.

Why this matters?👉 Another crypto unicorn is born to start 2024. With its latest funding round, Hashkey has solidified its status as one of the top crypto firms in Asia. Moreover, the firm looks to expand the product diversification of its licensed business in Hong Kong. This expansion is particularly significant as Hong Kong continues to emerge as a major hub for crypto globally.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Kiln is an enterprise-grade staking platform, enabling institutional customers to stake digital assets, as well as to white-label staking functionality into their platforms. The platform offers a suite of smart contracts, enabling end-users to stake to Kiln’s validator nodes and participate in staking pools across multiple proof-of-stake blockchain networks. Both Kiln and its clients earn a commission from the staking rewards. The platform not only operates its own validator nodes but also provides dedicated validator nodes for specific clients or applications. All staking activities are conducted non-custodially.

Currently, Kiln is among the largest operators of validator nodes on the Ethereum blockchain, managing over 1.16M ETH in staked assets. Leading crypto companies such as Ledger, Crypto.com, and Coinbase utilize Kiln's white-label staking products to facilitate staking in their non-custodial wallets as well as multiple institutional custody platforms including BitGo and Fireblocks.

Recently, the company closed $17M in an extended Series A round led by 1kx, with participation from Crypto.com, IOSG, Wintermute Ventures, KXVC, LBank, and existing investors. Headquartered in Paris, France, Kiln has also announced plans to expand into Singapore

Why this matters?👉 With the increasing prominence of PoS blockchain networks and the hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization tied to their native tokens, services centered around staking have gained traction as a significant second order business in the digital assets market. The revenue potential for Staking as a Service (SaaS) providers like Kiln continues to expand alongside the market value of these networks. Although liquid staking derivatives are gaining popularity, services that abstract the complexities associated with staking are still in demand, particularly as more CeFi services providers integrate this functionality into their offerings, such as in custody solutions.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete dataset or propose an update? Contact: [email protected] … I may not respond right away and still working on a way to easily share the data. However, drop me a line and I’ll make sure you get first access as soon as its available to share.

All Rounds

Hypetoon - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Developer of decentralized governed webtoon content series: https://www.hypetoon.xyz/

Beoble - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Communication infrastructure and ecosystem that allows users to chat between wallets: https://www.beoble.io/

InTax - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cryptocurrency tax platform: https://cryptointax.com/

Renzo Protocol - Seed ($3.2M) | Developer of Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) ezETH and protocol automated restaking strategy management based on EigenLayer: https://www.renzoprotocol.com/

Rome Protocol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Shared sequencer network leveraging Solana: https://www.romeprotocol.com/

Wield - Seed ($1M) | Protocol and operating system for an abstract namespace designed for wallet communication, reputation, gamification, and other generic uses: https://wield.co/

Hashkey Group - Series A ($100M) | End-to-end digital asset financial services group providing an ecosystem of products and services including a regulated exchange, custody solutions, brokerage, venture capital, asset management and node validation services: https://group.hashkey.com/en/

0xScope - Seed+ ($5M) | Data layer for Web3 and AI applications including a product suite of data analytics tools and AI chat assistants: https://www.0xscope.com/

DIMO - Series A ($11.5M) | User-owned Internet of Things (IoT) platform that allows drivers to collect and share their vehicle data: https://dimo.zone/

Canza Finance - Seed+ ($2.3M) | Developer of a non-institutional-based financial system serving the Africa market via payments, decentralized finance, agent-based banking, among many other financial services: https://canza.io/

MAP Protocol - Private Sale ($50M) | Layer 2 protocol for Bitcoin enabling peer-to-peer cross-chain interoperability: https://www.mapprotocol.io/

TRAX - Private Sale ($2.9M) | Web3 social marketplace and content aggregator for music, built on the Internet Computer blockchain network: https://trax.so/

Four Pillars - Seed ($500K) | Web3 research institute focused on assisting enterprises in the effective implementation of blockchain technology: https://4pillars.io/en

Fetcch - Seed ($1.5M) | Middleware pull payments layer that enables wallets and applications to send chain-agnostic transaction requests directly to the user's end-point: https://fetcch.xyz/

Linkko - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 advertising platform leveraging on-chain analytics to offer ultra-precise targeting: https://www.linkko.io/

WOO - Series A+ ($9M) | Centralized crypto trading platform connecting traders, exchanges, institutions, and DeFi platforms to offer best-in-class liquidity and price execution on spot and futures: https://woo.org/

zbyte - Seed ($5M) | Decentralized low-code/no-code DApp development platform: https://zbyte.io/

Kiln - Series A+ ($17M) | Enterprise-grade staking platform, enabling institutional customers to stake assets, and to whitelabel staking functionality into their offering: https://www.kiln.fi/

Flowdesk - Series B ($50M) | Market making as a service infrastructure provider and OTC broker for token issuers, exchanges & institutions: https://www.flowdesk.co/

Safary - Seed ($2.4M) | Cookie-free web analytics and tracking platform designed for Web3: https://www.safary.club/

AOFverse - Private Sale ($3M) | Web3 game studio and developer of Army of Tactics and Fortune game titles and metaverse: https://aofverse.com/

DeBox - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized identity (DID) based Web3 Social Platform: https://debox.pro/

Root Protocol (fka. NFT3) - Seed ($10M) | Operating system of intent-centric aggregator of decentralized identity, virtual accounts, and social graphs across Web3: https://root.xyz/

New Funds

Split Capital - Fund I (Not Disclosed)

🙌 Cool Resources

Its that time of year again. Electric Capital is out with their 2023 Crypto Developer Report. Some of the key theme’s from last year include:

• While developers overall are down 24% y-o-y, the most valuable segment of developers (2+ year tenure who contribute the most code) continues to grow steadily.

• Crypto is now clearly Multi-chain with 30% of developers supporting more than one chain.

• Crypto is global with 72% of developers based outside of North America.

🐕 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 the 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.