Crypto Fundraising weekly
Dates: 22 – 28, May 2023

This week's biggest funding round

Worldcoin raised $115M in a Series C funding round from Blockchain Capital*, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto), Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), Distributed Global.

WorldCoin are building what they call a Privacy-Preserving Proof-of-Personhood Protocol (PPPoPP). WorldCoin originally set out with the goal of airdropping a token to a billion people. Along the way, WorldCoin found that team had to develop a lot of foundational infrastructure not only on the hardware side (which became the Orb), but also on the crypto/protocol side.

Pre-seed and Seed investment rounds

GoodGang Labs raised $2M in a Seed funding round from Kakao*.

GoodGang Labs is a Singapore-based avatar communications company that specializes in developing innovative technologies for virtual interactions. Their flagship product, kiki town, is a revolutionary platform that offers lightweight and efficient voice and avatar motion data transmission in a fully immersive 3D environment. Additionally, GoodGang Labs is at the forefront of Web3 development with GangHouse, a pioneering technology that enables real-time conversations using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as a medium, transforming communication within the NFT ecosystem.

FastLane raised $2.3M in a Seed funding round from Multicoin Capital*, Polygon Ventures, Shima Capital, Delphi Digital, Everstake, A41, Symbolic Capital (ex Hyperedge Capital).

FastLane is a protocol that incentivizes validators on the Polygon blockchain to maintain network health. It is a hybrid MEV protocol that reduces transaction spam and rewards validators for addressing propagation bottlenecks with an auction system.

Tanssi Network raised $3M in a Seed funding round from Arrington Capital*, Borderless Capital, Hashkey Capital, D1 Ventures, Hypersphere, C² Ventures, Jsquare.

Tanssi is an appchain infrastructure protocol developed by Moondance Labs, aiming to simplify and accelerate appchain deployment for developers. It provides permissionless and developer-friendly infrastructure tools and services, eliminating the complexities of traditional blockchain implementation. With the added benefits of shared security and interoperability from the Polkadot relay chain, Tanssi bridges the gap between developers and the appchain development ecosystem.

Num Finance raised $1.5M in a Pre-seed funding round from Reserve Protocol, Ripio Ventures, VC3 DAO.

Num Finance is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that offers stablecoin services (such as offering in Brazilian real, Colombian peso, Mexican peso and Bahrain dinar) and financial tools for businesses. It provides fast and secure access to financial services, including on/off ramps, loans, yield opportunities, and cross-border payments.

Openfort raised $3M in a Seed funding round from gumi Cryptos Capital*, Maven 11 Capital*, Game7 (GDC), NGC Ventures, Newman Capital, Pear VC, Arcane Group, Gabby Dizon, Alchemy Ventures, Safe (ex Gnosis Safe).

Openfort is a crypto infrastructure startup that develops a customizable "wallet-as-a-service" software product for game developers and publishers. It offers frictionless wallet technology through multiple APIs compatible with browser games, PC games (Unity and Unreal Engine 5), and mobile games. Openfort's approach to account abstraction simplifies and enhances the gaming experience by automating transactions and allowing smart contracts to initiate certain actions without user approval. The white-label wallet solution supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and can be used across various Ethereum-compatible networks.

BoomLand raised $1M in a Pre-seed funding round from Polygon Ventures, MagicEden, Game7 (GDC), Hyperithm.

BoomLand is a blockchain gaming platform that focuses on publishing great games and aims to remove the barrier to entry for players and developers in the Web3 space. It provides onboarding protocols to simplify the gaming experience and offers features such as playable nonfungible tokens and in-game utility tokens.

Sort raised $3.5M in a Seed funding round from The General Partnership*, Lemniscap*, Alliance DAO (ex DeFi Alliance), Punk DAO, Orange DAO, Blizzard, Parasol, gmjp (good morning japan).

Sort is a development platform for decentralized applications (dApps) that simplifies integrating data from smart contracts into their applications. It provides real-time data, including push notifications for contract events, and offers a developer toolkit for working with contract addresses using Ethereum data.

Other investment rounds

PoPP raised $4M in a  funding round from Foresight Ventures*.

PoPP (Proof of Personal Planet) is a decentralized app (DApp) that integrates AI tools and operates on the Web3 framework. It aims to provide an easily manageable, free-speech, and permanent-storaged DApp for the creator economy. PoPP allows users to create their own personalized planets, where they can interact with the community, share content, and receive rewards through the use of NFTs and SBT (Social, Organizational, and Equity Credentials).

TomoChain raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from Coin98 Ventures*.

TomoChain is a highly scalable and secure public blockchain network that is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It utilizes Proof-of-Stake Voting (PoSV) consensus, offering low transaction fees, fast confirmation times, and strong security guarantees. With a community-driven approach and ongoing developments such as the implementation of PoSV and exploration of Sharding, TomoChain aims to accelerate the adoption of web3 applications while maintaining economic sustainability through a balanced revenue model.

OrionX raised undisclosed amount in a  funding round from Bitfinex*.

OrionX is a Chilean crypto exchange that offers wallet services in Chile and has plans to expand to Peru, Colombia and Mexico and surpass one million users by 2024. OrionX has the lowest commissions on the market in Chile, which are adjusted to the volume users operate in each transaction.

LabDAO raised $3.6M in a  funding round from Inflection*, Village Global*, North Island Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, ID Theory, Road Capital, Curve Labs, gmjp (good morning japan), Molecule, Gnosis DAO, THE LAO, Orange DAO, Beaker Dao, Spaceship DAO, Balaji Srinivasan.

LabDAO is a decentralized organization focused on open-source drug discovery, bringing scientists and engineers together to share tools and resources for life science research. PLEX is a library maintained by LabDAO that allows scientists to run BioML (Biological Machine Learning) tools from the command line, simplifying the process and enabling interaction with the LabDAO exchange. It aims to accelerate progress in the field by making scientific tools more accessible and providing data ownership proof through non-fungible tokens.

Narwhal Finance raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from Animoca Ventures, Hailstone Ventures.

Narwhal Finance is a cross-market decentralized perpetual exchange that enables leveraged trading of all asset classes through synthetic assets. Liquidity providers earn a yield from trading fees and top traders’ performance, making it a profitable opportunity for all parties involved. The protocol ecosystem revolves around USDT, NLP, and NAR tokens.

RedStone raised undisclosed amount in a  funding round from Stani Kulechov, Sandeep Nailwal.

RedStone is a next-generation cross-chain data oracle providing pricing data for financial protocols.

* fund, that lead investment round