AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #6

🗓️ Week of: February 5-11, 2023

Web3 Funding Snapshot

The Highlights

🚀This week in Web3 saw over $349M+ in funding across 41 announced rounds. We've observed a greater distribution away from Seed rounds, with a handful of Series A & B rounds being announced in the past two weeks. This can be viewed as a positive sign as those companies are likely demonstrating product-market fit or showing growth despite the events of 2022. Also for the first time in 2023, financial services (category used to bucket CeFi) surpassed infrastructure as the top Web3 segment leading funding this week.

Lastly, we've reached a notable milestone, with >$1B in total funding so far in 2023. Although this amount was the equivalent of a week of funding in early 2022, it's good to see capital still flowing despite the pessimistic outlook for 2023.

🏆Largest Funding Round ➡️ SALT Lending, SALT Lending, a cryptocurrency-backed lending platform, announced $64.4M in Series A funding. The funding represented a recapitalization of the company, with investors comprised of existing borrowers and lenders who received preferred shares in exchange for converting and cancelling SALT's outstanding debt. This comes after online investing platform Bnk To The Future terminated its planned acquisition of SALT Lending after the platform had paused operations in November 2022 due to its exposure to FTX.

SALT Lending, founded in 2016, is a veteran in the cryptocurrency lending industry. While its peers, such as Genesis Lending, BlockFi, Voyager Digital, and Celsius Network, have all declared bankruptcy, SALT seems to be the first to make a comeback, subject to regulatory approvals. However, the verdict is still out on the overall viability and future of centralized lending platforms.

😎 Noteworthy Company ➡️ Coincover, a digital asset protection and insurance platform, has announced $30 million in Series B funding, led by Foundation Capital, with participation from CMT Digital. The company offers digital asset disaster recovery, theft protection, and validator key recovery services. Over 300 businesses, including exchanges, funds, family offices, and banks, work with Coincover. They also partner with leading custodians and self-custody solutions like Bitgo, Cooper, and Fireblocks, enabling customers to purchase key recovery and insurance through Coincover.

Coincover is a sleeping giant in the industry alongside other niche digital asset protection and insurance providers like Evertas. With increasing billions of dollars of digital assets being held both by custodians and companies’ using self-custody, using services like Coincover are becoming virtually mandatory to protect against potential losses… I’m sure this wouldn’t be the last we hear from them as business is positioned to grow significantly despite the current crypto winter.

👀Observations & Trends ➡️ Tough Times for New Funds... It comes as no surprise that many new crypto venture capital and hedge funds launches are being postponed or canceled entirely. This is highlighted in a recent exclusive report by Blockworks, which notes the difficulties faced by new funds and emerging managers in the industry. Due to the market fallout in 2022 and overall macroeconomic conditions, many institutional LP's are reducing their check sizes, limiting the number of managers they invest in, and in some cases, delaying or cancelling capital commitments. Additionally, due diligence measures have increased, causing further delays for new funds. While these trends are not unique to crypto and are being faced across the venture capital industry as well, it seems that crypto-focused funds are being affected the most (... I can also confirm this based on my own personal experience). This is unfortunate, as many believe that 2023 vintage crypto funds could be the best-performing funds in the coming years, as valuations for Web3 startups and digital have reset over the past six months.

Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Note: The Block first reported EigenLayer's $50M Series A on Feb 3. After follow-up with the EigenLayer's team, the round has closed, but not officially reported yet.

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All Rounds

My NFT Wars - Presale ($2M) | Play-Create-Own-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that uses tokens and NFT based characters to reward players: https://mynftwars.com/

EigenLayer - Series A ($50M) | Developer of restaking protocol built on Ethereum that extends security of the blockchain to additional application on the network such as rollups, bridges, and oracles: https://www.eigenlayer.xyz/

MoodMiner - Seed ($400K) | Cryptocurrency exchange and staking platform: https://moodminer.com/

Gopax - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Cryptocurrency exchange licensed in South Korea: https://www.gopax.com/

Inery - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized database management solution powered by blockchain technology: https://inery.io/

Trident - Presale ($3M) | Developer of a Web3 2D massive multiplayer online (MMO) game that uses cryptocurrencies for its in-game economy: https://trident.game/

Elementus - Series A+ ($10M) | Blockchain data and intelligence platform that helps organization investigate on-chain activities, identify risk, or discover valuable market intelligence: https://www.elementus.io/

Mercurity Fintech Holding - Private Placement ($9M) | Digital asset holding focused on Bitcoin mining and trading: https://mercurityfintech.com/

Overworld - Strategic ($2.5M) | Game development studio that specializes in cross-platform free-to-play games and features player ownership and digital collectibles: https://www.overworld.games/

Cenoa - Seed ($7M) | Non-custodial super wallet that improves access to USD based savings solution built on blockchain technology: https://www.cenoa.com/

Gamma Swap - Seed ($1.7M) | Decentralized exchange and automated market maker (AMM) to enable the trading of volatility through perpetual derivative instruments: https://app.gammaswap.com/

Paytaca - Seed ($45K) | Online payment system that uses blockchain technology & bitcoin cash for secure online payments: https://www.paytaca.com/

Capitual - Strategic ($16M) | Hybrid digital banking and fintech platform that also offers cryptocurrency intermediation services: https://www.capitual.com/

Cedro Finance - Seed ($1.5M) | Omnichain liquidity protocol that lets users lend and borrow across chains seamlessly: https://cedro.finance/

Webacy - Seed ($4M) | Suite of tools that make self-custody wallets more secure and easy without the need for keys, seed phrases or passwords and provides security features to reduce the risk of assets being lost or stolen: https://www.webacy.com/

Space ID - Seed ($10M) | Universal name service network that connects people, information, and assets across all blockchains and applications built on the the BNB Chain: https://space.id/

Peggy - Seed ($8M) | Social marketplace to buy and sell physical and digital contemporary art that connects artist, galleries, and collectors: https://peggy.com/

SALT Lending - Series A ($64.4M) | Crypto-backed lending platform and institutional-grade crypto custody provider: https://saltlending.com/

NFTically - Seed ($1M) | No-code platform that enables brands and influencers to launch their own white-label NFT store or marketplace: https://www.nftically.com/

The Zero Fund - Seed ($430K) | Platform to access and trade high-quality carbon credits that are fully traceable on-chain: https://thezerofund.eu/

VRRB Labs - Seed ($1.4M) | Layer-1 blockchain using Proof of Claim consensus algorithm: https://vrrb.io/

MetaverseX - Private Sale ($2M) | Developer of a decentralized massive multiplayer online (MMO sandbox creation game enabling players to design and create their own digital worlds: https://www.metagpt.ai/

Chingari - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | On-chain social media app for short-video content: https://chingari.io/

Fierce - Seed ( $10M) | Finance super app that offers high yield savings account along with a stocks and regulated crypto trading: https://www.getfierce.com/

Mawari – Seed ($6.5M) | Decentralized 3D & XR content delivery platform that breaks the bottlenecks of infrastructure supply for real-time rendering, and the lack of local compute power on XR Devices: https://www.mawari.io/

Sesame Labs - Seed ($4.5M) | Web3 marketing platform that includes campaign management platform, advertising network, and customer relationship management tools: https://sesamelabs.xyz/

Carbonplace - Strategic ($45M) | Global carbon credit transaction network that leverages blockchain and enables the simple, secure, and transparent transfer of certified carbon credits developed by a group of financial institutions: https://carbonplace.com/

Collector - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Real-world collectibles platform that allows users to digitize, trade, and collateralize their collectibles for loans: https://collectorcrypt.com/

Coincover - Series B ($30M) | Provider of digital assets disaster recovery, theft protection, and validator key recovery services and insurance products: https://www.coincover.com/

Blockfenders - Seed ($1.5M) | No code, zero trust platform for easy and secure cross-border data exchange using blockchain technology: https://www.blockfenders.com/

Dymension - Private Sale ($6.7M) | Modular blockchain platform with built-in roll-ups technology that leverages Cosmos's and Celestia's technologies: https://dymension.xyz/

AcadArena - Series A ( $10.2M) | eSports platform that offers scholarships, tournaments, and play to earn opportunities for student-gamer in Web2 and Web3: https://www.acadarena.com/

Desoul - Seed ($243K) | Development platform for Soulbound Token (SBT) that connects on-chain and off-chain identities: https://www.desoul.io/

Vault - Series A ($4M) | A platform for artist to create and share digital collectibles of their music and box sets as NFTs with their fans: https://vault.fan/

Mino Games - Series B ($15M) | Free-to-play mobile gaming studio and developer of character-driven games in the Web3 gaming space; leading titles include Mino Monsters and Dimensionals: https://www.minogames.com/

TheRollNumber - Seed ($165K) | Blockchain-based background verification system: https://therollnumber.com/

Cub3 - Series A ($6.5M) | Customer loyalty platform that aims to automate Web3 rewards based on participants' real-world activities: https://cub3.com/

ManesLAB - Seed ($1.8M) | Digital studio driven by Web3 culture and developer of tools to help creators launch NFTs: https://www.maneslab.xyz/

Ajuna Network - Seed+ ($5M) | Decentralized gaming platform that connects leading off-chain game development engines to trusted execution environments (TEE) linked to the Polkadot blockchain: https://ajuna.io/

Tower Pop - Seed ($2.1M) | Creator of Omega Royale, a Web3 battle royale and tower defense game that uses play-to-mint model where players with highest takings can mint digital collectibles: https://towerpop.com/

C3 - Seed ($6M) | Self-custodial exchange allowing users to seamlessly trade from a wide range digital assets covering multiple blockchains from either their non-custodial wallets or through preferred custodians: https://c3.io/

New Funds

No new funds this week

Cool Resources

Check out the ultimate Web3 CFO guide from Request. This has to be one of the most comprehensive playbooks for finance and operations organizations at Web3 businesses. It covers important topics like roles and responsibilities for Web3 CFO along with custody, banking, treasury, financial reporting, and compliance.

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.