Crypto Fundraising weekly
Dates: 11 – 17, Aug 2024

This week's biggest funding round

Chaos Labs raised $55M in a Series A funding round from HAUN Ventures*, Lightspeed, F-Prime Capital, Wintermute, Galaxy Digital, PayPal Ventures, Slow Ventures, The Spartan Group.

Chaos Labs is a highly automated economic security and risk management platform for DeFi protocols. Chaos Labs' tooling allows core teams and community members to better monitor protocol health and risks in real-time to execute mainnet changes before a potential vulnerability is exploited.

Pre-seed and Seed investment rounds

Goldilocks raised $1.5M in a Seed funding round from Hack VC*, Shima Capital*, ATKA, Rana Capital, Public Works.

GoldilocksDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) built on the Berachain network, focused on creating innovative DeFi products. The platform features Goldilocks AMM (GAMM) and Goldilend, enabling users to trade tokens, provide liquidity, and participate in NFT-based loans. By leveraging Berachain’s unique capabilities, GoldilocksDAO aims to offer a secure, community-driven environment for decentralized finance, empowering users with tools to manage and grow their crypto assets effectively.

Crunch Lab raised $3.5M in a Seed funding round from Multicoin Capital*, Fabric Ventures, Factor Capital, Elixir Capital.

CrunchDAO is a platform where data scientists and machine learning experts can monetize their models by participating in various quantitative research challenges. It leverages collective intelligence to solve complex problems in finance and other fields. Members retain ownership of their models while earning revenue based on their contributions to solving these challenges. CrunchDAO offers a seamless integration environment, enabling participants to focus on science while the platform handles the MLOps.

Rhinestone raised $5M in a Seed funding round from 1kx*, CoinFund, Lattice Fund, Heartcore Capital, Circle Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, CyberConnect.

Rhinestone is a next-generation smart account ecosystem, emphasizing modularity, interoperability, and security. Developers can easily build and deploy custom functionalities through Rhinestone's standardized protocol, creating a more personalized and secure experience for wallet users. The platform supports interoperability with popular smart account solutions, fostering a collaborative and open-source approach.

Satflow raised $7.6M in a Seed funding round from Variant Fund*, Nascent, UTXO Management, Coinbase Ventures, Hash3, Asymmetric fund, CMS Holdings, Robot Ventures, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Sora Ventures, Memeland.

Bitcoin trading infrastructure

Reddio raised undisclosed amount in a Seed funding round from Paradigm*, Arena Holdings*.

Reddio is a Layer 2 solution designed to scale decentralized applications (dApps) and games on Ethereum using StarkWare’s zkRollup technology. The platform provides robust tools, including APIs and SDKs, to facilitate the easy deployment of smart contracts and the creation of scalable dApps without requiring extensive blockchain experience. Reddio focuses on offering a low-cost, high-performance environment with support for up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), making it ideal for developers looking to build efficient and secure Web3 applications.

Other investment rounds

MyShell raised undisclosed amount in a  funding round from Binance Labs Fund.

MyShell is a Web3-enabled AI platform that allows users to create personalized chatbots, known as "Shells." Creators can generate AI content bots, while consumers can find and use these bots. The platform offers token rewards for both creators and consumers. MyShell is currently offering some features on Polygon but is set to migrate its platform to opBNB — a Layer 2 network on BNB Chain that utilizes Optimism's OP Stack or Optimistic rollups technology.

Orderly Network raised $5M in a Strategic  funding round from OKX Ventures (ex OKEx Blockdream Ventures), Manifold, Presto Labs, LTP (LiquidityTech Protocol), Nomad Capital, Origin Protocol.

Orderly Network is a permissionless, decentralized exchange protocol and modular ecosystem built on top of NEAR.

Sahara Labs raised $43M in a Series A  funding round from Pantera Capital*, Binance Labs Fund*, Polychain Capital*, Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, dao5 (daofive), GeekCartel, Sequoia Capital, Nomad Capital, SCB 10X, Canonical Crypto, Mirana Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Aegis Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Tangent Ventures, Alumni Ventures (AVG).

Sahara is a decentralized AI network offering Sahara Knowledge Agent (KA) and Sahara Data. It enables the creation of customized, autonomous AI agents, compensating contributors directly and utilizing blockchain to track data and rewards in a privacy-preserving manner. Sahara's suite aims to revolutionize the AI industry, providing individuals and businesses with monetization opportunities and high-value data services for secure AI model training.

Rivalz Network raised $9M in a  funding round from Delphi Ventures*, D1 Ventures*, Gate Labs*, Magnus Capital*, Cogitent Ventures*, Zee Prime Capital, Caballeros Capital, Formless Capital, DWeb3 Capital, Mask Network, SL2 Capital, Momentum 6 (M6), Fourth Revolution Capital (4RC), Stakewithus, NewTribe Capital, Autonomy Capital, Optic Capital, Emoote, BlockBuilders, OIG Capital (Oracles Investment Group), IBC Group, DWF Labs, GSR Markets LTD, Basics Capital, Pragma Ventures, x21 Digital, Kyros Ventures, iAngels Capital, Wise3 Ventures.

Rivalz Network is developing an AI Intel infrastructure designed to advance the agentic economy. By utilizing a dual-chain system built on Dymension and Arbitrum, Rivalz offers decentralized data provenance, scalable storage with AI-grade latency, and a real-time data coordination service. This infrastructure ensures high-quality, verified, and private data for AI, enabling the next generation of autonomous systems. Rivalz is set to transform AI development by providing the essential tools for secure and reliable data management.

Parfin raised $10M in a Series A  funding round from ParaFi Capital*, Framework Ventures, L4 Venture Builder.

Parfin is a Web3 infrastructure provider offering digital asset custody, trading, tokenization and management tools to some of Latin America’s largest financial institutions.

Sling Money raised $15M in a Series A  funding round from Union Square Ventures (USV)*, Ribbit Capital*, Slow Ventures*.

Sling is a global money transfer platform that allows users to send money across 50+ countries instantly and with minimal fees. By converting local currencies into US Dollar stablecoins, Sling enables seamless transfers via its secure wallet, leveraging the Solana blockchain for fast and low-cost transactions. Users can send money by simply searching for a recipient’s name, avoiding the hassle of traditional bank details.

Essential raised $11M in a Series A  funding round from Archetype*, IOSG Ventures, The Spartan Group, Mirana Ventures, Amber Group, Maven 11 Capital, Bodhi Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Heartcore Capital, Selini Capital.

Essential is building intent-based infrastructure and tooling to accelerate the transition from value extraction to intent satisfaction. Essential is committed to supporting ecosystem-wide composability to ensure the intent paradigm reaches its full potential to minimize extractive behavior and maximize user satisfaction. Essential is developing core infrastructure components, including an intent standard for Ethereum, a domain-specific language for expressing intents, and a fully intent-centric blockchain protocol.

Kem raised $3M in a  funding round from Tether.

Kem is a digital financial services platform designed to simplify money transfers and payments in Kuwait. The platform allows users to send and receive money instantly, split bills, and manage payments for various personal and business needs. With no minimum balance requirement or hidden fees, Kem provides a seamless experience for both personal and business transactions. The app supports QR code payments and keeps track of all financial activities, ensuring convenience and efficiency in managing everyday financial transactions.

Ion Protocol raised $4.8M in a  funding round from gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC)*, Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures (NEO Global Capital), Finality Capital, SevenX Ventures.

Ion Protocol is a DeFi platform that enables users to lend and borrow against staked and restaked assets without the risk of price-based liquidations. By supporting a wide range of liquid staking tokens (LSTs), liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), and other exotic validator-backed assets, Ion Protocol maximizes the capital efficiency of staked assets. The platform uses a zero-knowledge machine learning framework to underwrite staking risk, providing secure and hyper-efficient loans. Ion Protocol empowers users to multiply their staking rewards and manage their positions seamlessly.

* fund, that lead investment round