AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #57

🗓️ Week of: Jan 28 - Feb 3, 2024

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

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

$123M+ was raised across 32 funding rounds in Web3. Deal flow remains consistent for another week, with three-quarters of the announced deals attributed to Seed rounds. While I love seeing early-stage companies get funded, having a few more Series A and onward rounds sprinkled in week-over-week signals that companies are gaining better traction and investors are warming up again to Web3. Nevertheless, liquid staking and restaking platforms have captured this week's leading sub-category in funding, with four companies (Infrared, Puffer, NAVI Protocol, Stride) raising over $8.5M. Additionally, decentralized data platforms oriented towards AI applications and employing Web3 mechanisms (e.g., x-to-earn) are slowly becoming another area attracting investors attention with more startups obtaining funding in the past 4 months.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Portal announced $34M in Seed funding. Investors in the round included Coinbase Ventures, Arrington Capital, OKX Ventures, and Gate.io Labs. The round was reported to be oversubscribed, thanks to increased interest in the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem. The company had originally raised $8.5M in an early round in 2021 before making what appeared to be a pivot in their underlying product.

Portal is a Bitcoin-based protocol for cross-chain atomic swaps. Its main products include Portal DEX, a decentralized exchange; Portal Wallet, a non-custodial wallet; and Rafa, an AI-powered investing co-pilot. Portal DEX enables cross-chain atomic swaps, eliminating the need for bridges or asset wrapping to facilitate swaps across chains. Furthermore, Portal is developing a financial operating system that allows users to store, transfer, transact, and enter into contracts with anyone on any chain. Additionally, it is working on an autonomous AI agent protocol.

Why this matters?👉 Bitcoin’s DeFi ecosystem continues to evolve, processing billions of dollars through interoperability and messaging protocols. With Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) representing over $6 billion in market capitalization, Bitcoin-native solutions like Portal offer a potentially more secure alternative for this multi-billion dollar market.

😎 Noteworthy Company

➡️ Cube Exchange is a "hybrid" crypto trading platform that was formed in 2023 and is currently in beta. Its hybrid model leverages off-chain trade order matching with on-chain settlement, enabling users to retain ownership of their assets without the need to transfer them to an exchange's custodial account. It also utilizes multi-party computation (MPC) vaults to provide individual wallets for trade settlements. This setup allows assets to be verified on-chain without traders having to relying on the exchange's proof-of-reserve audits for assurances. Currently, the platform supports native trading and settlement in BTC, ETH, DOGE, and SOL, with plans to include additional Layer 1 blockchain network tokens in the future.

The company was co-founded by Bartosz Lipiński and Larry Wu, who are both former Solana engineers with traditional finance (TradFi) backgrounds. Recently, Cube raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by 6th Man Ventures, with participation from GSR, Foundation Capital, ParaFi, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, Everstake Capital, and others. This funding round follows a $9 million Seed round announced in October 2023.

Why this matters?👉 In the wake of FTX's collapse and the series of misfortunes with Binance, a significant void still remains within the landscape of crypto exchanges. By eliminating the need for assets to be custodied to facilitate settlement, Cube offers minimal counterparty risk and the transparency that DeFi is known for, combined with the optimal trade execution and liquidity that make centralized exchanges more appealing to institutional investors. Additionally, Cube has successfully closed two priced funding rounds in the past four months, signaling that the exchange is likely showing product market fit and traction amongst its early cohort of traders.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: [email protected]

All Rounds

Bmaker - Seed ($1.2M) | Over-collateralized asset-backed stablecoin protocol built for the Bitcoin ecosystem: https://bmaker.ai/

Infrared - Seed ($2.5M) | Liquid staking platform for Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism pioneered by Berachain: https://infrared.finance/

TProtocol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | DeFi native protocol for treasury bills and other real-world assets on-chain: https://www.tprotocol.io/

PublicAI (fka. MarkerDAO) - Seed ($2M) | Distributed data labeling and AI training network: https://publicai.io/

Mesh (fka. Front Finance) - Strategic ($6.5M) | Pass-through instruction layer that enables digital asset transfers, crypto payments, account aggregation, and stock trading for fintech applications: https://www.meshconnect.com/

Gevulot - Seed ($6M) | Layer 1 blockchain network that leverages zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology and delegate computing tasks to an advanced network of hardware operators: https://www.gevulot.com/

GG - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Augmented reality (AR) racing game built on Solana: https://gg.zip/airdrop

Forgotten Playland - Seed ($7M) | Free-to-play social party game set in an isolated and abandoned attic: https://forgottenplayland.com/

Portal - Seed ($34M) | Bitcoin-based cross-chain decentralized exchange and wallet: https://portaldefi.com/

BBO Exchnage (aka. BBOX) - Seed ($2.7M) | Decentralized exchange for perpetual futures: https://www.bbo.exchange/

Puffer - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Anti-slashing liquid staking protocol built on EigenLayer: https://www.puffer.fi/

Doubler - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Open-source investment strategy protocol aggregating market liquidity: https://testnet.doubler.pro/

Exabits - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized infrastructure for AI and computationally intensive applications: https://www.exabits.ai/

NAVI Protocol - Seed ($2M) | Liquidity protocol on the Sui network enabling lending, borrowing, and liquid staking: https://naviprotocol.io/

Zeeper - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized perpetual protocol that supports the trading of mainstream financial assets with crypto collateral: https://www.zeepr.io/

Ithaca Protocol - Seed ($2.5M) | Non-custodial, composable option protocol: https://www.ithacaprotocol.io/

Yet Another Company - Seed ($1M) | Developers of Yet Another Bridge and Aligned Layer focusing on providing bridging Ethereum Layer 2 networks using zero-knowledge (ZK) based Storage Proofs: https://blog.yetanothercompany.xyz/

Reboot World - Seed ($2.5M) | Omnichain open-nested metaverse based on generative AI (AIGC) and Mixed Reality Generated Content (MRGC): https://reboot.world/

Squid - Seed+ ($4M) | Cross-chain swap and liquidity routing protocol on Axelar Network that enables interoperability between blockchains and applications: https://www.squidrouter.com/

Yooldo - Seed ($1.5M) | Multiverse content and play-to-earn (P2E) game platform: https://www.yooldo.gg/

Hivello - Seed+ ($1.5M) | Platform enabling internet users contribute resources across Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) protocols: https://www.hivello.com/

Cube Exchange - Series A ($12M) | Hybrid trading platform fusing TradFi with blockchain technology: https://www.cube.exchange/

KIP Protocol - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized base layer for artificial intelligence (AI) models, applications, and data owners: https://kip.pro/

Saltwater Games - Seed ($5.5M) | Web3 gaming studio including game developers Maze Theory, Nexus Labs and Quantum Interactive: https://saltwatergames.com/

Velar - Seed ($3.5M) | Bitcoin DeFi platform built on Stacks: https://www.velar.co/

Delegate Labs (aka. Clusters) - Seed ($9M) | Wallet delegation protocol and multi-chain name service: https://delegate.xyz/

Pixelmon (aka. Pixelation Labs) - Seed ($8M) | Decentralized role playing game (RPG) where users train, trade, fight, and evolve digital characters through the Metaverse: https://hub.pixelmon.ai/

SoulLand - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Gamified social feeds-themed platform: https://www.soulland.xyz/

Bitlight Labs - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Developer of infrastructure based on the RGB protocol and the Bitcoin LightningNetwork: https://bitlightlabs.com/

Stride - Strategic ($4M) | Liquid staking platform for any Cosmos chain assets across the Cosmos IBC ecosystem: https://www.stride.zone/

Kodiak - Seed ($2M) | Liquidity hub for the Berachain ecosystem: https://twitter.com/KodiakFi

BRC-137 - Seed ($2.5M) | Ordinals protocol, allowing the creation of composable decentralized identities on Bitcoin: https://www.brc137.io/

New Funds

Uncorrelated Ventures - Fund III ($315M)

🙌 Cool Resources

VeradiVerdict by by Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital

🐕 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.