AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #67

🗓️ Week of: Apr 7-13, 2024

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

$649M+ was raised across 37 funding rounds in Web3. Despite an unfavorable inflation print in the US, rising geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East, and an unexpected pullback in the crypto markets, the Web3 venture market appears to have shrugged off these developments, with this week marking one of the highest total capital raises in 2024. Excluding public company-related deals (such as Galaxy's bought deal financing), this week was highlighted by Monad’s $225M second raise and Berachain's $100M Series B, both of which had been reported on earlier.

Outside of these major Layer 1 networks, this week also saw a continued flow of more announced Layer 2 deals, specifically building on top of Bitcoin, which has been the growing trend as the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem continues to expand. Notably, there is an increasing number of companies closing rounds following an earlier round within less than 12-18 months, featuring close to a dozen this week, including Auradine’s $80M Series B. This has been one of the most promising signals for the growing resurgence of Web3 venture so far in 2024, demonstrating the resilience projects and investors have shown despite the 2022-23’s crypto winter.

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Monad announced $225M in a funding round led by Paradigm. The round included over 40 investors including notable VC’s Electric Capital, Greenoaks Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Egirl Capital, along with several angel investors.

Monad is a Layer 1 blockchain network designed for high performance and is also EVM-compatible. It innovates through a "Deferred Execution" mechanism, which separates the execution of transactions from consensus, aiming to enhance network speed and efficiency. Monad also utilizes a pipelined architecture similar to Solana, enabling parallel transaction processing, allowing the network to reach up to 10,000 transactions per second. The network's consensus protocol, MonadBFT, leverages a mechanism optimized with pipelining and simplified through the use of threshold signatures for validating transactions, further reducing latency and improving throughput.

Additionally, Monad introduces concepts like shared mempools for transaction hashes and parallel execution to mitigate the bottlenecks typical in traditional blockchain systems. This architecture aims to provide rapid state finality while maintaining robust security and decentralization.

Why this matters?👉 Monad’s latest round represents the largest funding round so far in 2024 (excluding public company-related deals) and one of the largest since Q4 2023. The total capital raised is unsurprising, considering other blockchains with parallel transaction architectures, such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos, have been able to raise similar sums of capital, with their tokens reaching multi-billion market capitalizations. Monad also highlights the growing trend of projects in 2024 continuing to favor token launches over traditional equity raises, likely driven by investors' desires for near-term liquidity, especially while the broader crypto markets have experienced a bull run over the past six months.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Note: Berachain’s latest round was previously reported in Funding Roundup #63. However, formal announcement of its Series B was made this week and had been included again.

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All Rounds

Ritual - Series A+ (Not Disclosed) | AI coprocessor and execution layer built for smart contracts: https://ritual.net/

Lumoz (fka. Opside) - Private Sale ($6.0M) | Zero knowledge (ZK) as a service platform that offers 3-layer blockchain architecture: https://opside.network/

Yield Guild Games - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Play-to-Earn gaming guild and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), bringing players together to earn via blockchain-based economies: https://yieldguild.io/

NuLink - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) provable data privacy platform and data availability layer for DApps: https://www.nulink.org/

Mezo - Series A ($21.0M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 network providing an economic layer that leverages a neutral smart contract infrastructure: https://mezo.org/

Monad Labs - Private Sale ($225.0M) | Proof-of-stake (PoS) Layer 1 blockchain and decentralized computation platform that combines the best of performance and portability: https://www.monad.xyz/

Cove Finance (aka. Storm Labs) - Seed ($3.0M) | DeFi portfolio management platform offering a suite of products to boost users earnings: https://www.cove.finance/

OpenTrade - Seed+ ($3.2M) | Provides Web3 treasurers and institutional investors access to on-chain structured financial products backed by investment grade financial assets: https://www.open-trade.io/

KIKI World - Series A ($7.0M) | Customer-owned beauty platform that provides physical beauty products and on-chain products: https://www.kiki.world/

Aizel Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | On-chain verifiable AI inference network that empowers blockchains with trustless AI abilities: https://aizelnetwork.com/

Galaxy Digital - Private Placement ($125.0M) | Full suite digital assets financial services firm providing, trading, asset management, investment banking, mining, and venture capital: https://www.galaxy.com/

Zoth - Seed ($2.5M) | Institutional grade marketplace for on-chain tokenized real-world assets (RWA): https://zoth.io/

Sapien - Seed ($5.0M) | Gamify human-in-the-loop data labeling platform: https://www.sapien.io/

Stream - Seed ($1.5M) | Vault structured protocols for effective liquidity provisions allowing users to take advantage of various yield strategies: https://streamprotocol.money/

Auradine - Series B ($80.0M) | Developer of hardware and software solutions catered to use-cases in blockchain, zero knowledge (ZK) proofs, and AI: https://auradine.com/

Alpen Labs - Seed ($10.6M) | Bitcoin Layer 2 enabled by zero-knowledge (ZK) proof rollups: https://www.alpenlabs.io/

Tomo - Seed ($3.5M) | All-in-one Web3 social wallet: https://tomo.inc/

Jigsaw - Seed (Not Disclosed) | DeFi platform for real-world assets: https://www.jigsaw.finance/

GPU.Net - Series A ($5.3M) | Decentralized network of graphics processing units (GPUs): https://gpu.net/

ILLIUS - Seed ($2.2M) | Gamified sports training platform leveraging AI and Web3 based rewards: https://www.lillius.net/

Sortium - Seed+ ($4.0M) | Entertainment tech company combining AI and Web3 to generate game content that is tokenized: https://www.sortium.com/

Playtron - Seed ($10.0M) | Linux based lightweight gaming OS optimized for handheld gaming and compatible with every game store: https://www.playtron.one/

Spin City - Strategic ($10.0M) | Developer of Bored Slot, a Web3 slots game: https://www.boredslot.com/

Sharpe AI - Seed (Not Disclosed) | All-in-one, self-custodial DeFi automation platform to manages positions across top DeFi protocols using AI-powered tools: https://www.sharpe.ai/

GameCene - Seed ($1.4M) | Web3 gaming development and distribution platform: https://www.gamecene.com/

1self.world - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 advertising and marketing platform providing direct targeting via Soul Bound Tokens (SBT): https://1self.world/

Veremak - Series B ($3.0M) | Pre-employment screening and background check service enabled by blockchain technology: https://www.veremark.com/

BounceBit - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Layer 1 blockchain secured by BTC and providing restaking infrastructure for Bitcoin: https://bouncebit.io/

Uplink - Seed ($10.0M) | Decentralized telecommunications and connectivity network: https://www.uplink.xyz/

Azuro - Private Sale ($3.5M) | On-chain predictions infrastructure and liquidity layer: https://azuro.org/

Mayan - Seed ($3.0M) | Intent-based cross-chain swap auction protocol: https://mayan.finance/

NavyAI - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Blockchain layer for AI model training and self-learning: https://navyai.xyz/

BorpaToken - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Memecoin and community centered around Borpa memes: https://borpatoken.com/

Berachain - Series B ($100.0M) | EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, built using the Cosmos SDK, and secured by the Proof-of-Liquidity Consensus Protocol: https://berachain.com/

Gull Network - Private Sale ($1.6M) | Layer 3 solution for customizable token launches powered by Manta Network: https://www.gullnetwork.com/

Multisynq - Seed ($2.2M) | Decentralized low-latency Synchronization Network for surplus internet connections and bandwidth: https://multisynq.io/

Black Panther - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | DeFi asset management protocol enabled by automated trading strategies: https://blackpanther.fi/

New Funds

No new funds this week.

🙌 Cool Resources

10X Research, Digital Asset Research for Traders and Institutions. Also be sure to check out their daily markets newsletter.

🐕 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.