Crypto Fundraising weekly
Dates: 11 – 17, Jul 2022

This week's biggest funding round

Safe (ex Gnosis Safe) raised $100M in a funding round from 1kx, Tiger Global, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Blockchain Capital, Coinbase Ventures.

Safe is the most trusted platform to manage digital assets on Ethereum.

Pre-seed and Seed investment rounds

ZKX raised $4.5M in a Seed funding round from Starkware, Alameda Research, Amber Group, Huobi Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, Hashkey Capital, Orange DAO, AngelDAO, DWeb3 Capital, Caballeros Capital, Cluster Capital, Gate.io Labs.

ZKX is the first permissionless derivatives trading protocol built on StarkNet, StarkWare’s L2 network that leverages ZK rollups.

Contango raised $4M in a Seed funding round from ParaFi Capital, dlab, Advanced Blockchain AG, Coinbase Ventures, The Spartan Group, AngelDAO, Cumberland (DRW), GSR Markets LTD, Amber Group, Coin Merge Strategy (CMS).

Contango is a decentralized exchange bringing expirable futures to DeFi. The protocol hedges the positions taken by the traders to ensure the solvency of the protocol. Futures positions are synthesized by borrowing and lending at a fixed rate through YieldSpace smart contracts.

Hologram raised $6.5M in a Seed funding round from Polychain Capital, Nascent, Inflection, Quantstamp, Neon DAO, Foothill Ventures, South Park Commons, The Operating Group.

Hologram is a self-expression primitive for the open metaverse, allowing anyone to use their NFT-based characters and wearables on any video or gaming platform with one click. It also enables artists to scalably create the next generation of digital identity NFTs for entire communities.

CLUB raised $3.1M in a Seed funding round from Zee Prime Capital, ATKA, Merit Circle, CitizenX Crypto Ventures, Moonlanding Ventures, Petrock Capital.

CLUB Game is the free-to-play (F2P), play-and-earn soccer game that allows users to create and sell their own real-player soccer club.

DRAUP raised $1.5M in a Seed funding round from Variant Fund, The Chernin Group (TCG Crypto), Flamingo, Neon DAO.

Draup is a marketplace for digital fashion, plans to streamline the process of owning virtual styles by allowing them to be bought.

Empiric Network raised $7M in a Seed funding round from Variant Fund*, Alameda Research, CMT Digital, Flow Traders, Gemini Frontier Fund, Jane Street, Starkware, FTX Ventures, Sandeep Nailwal, Robert Leshner.

Empiric Network is a new decentralized blockchain oracle on StarkNet. It is the first zk-native oracle, bringing the principles of DeFi to data infrastructure: decentralization, transparency and composability.

zeroDAO raised $1.3M in a Seed funding round from Magnus Capital, LedgerPrime.

zeroDAO (ZERO) is a gasless bitcoin bridge that allows for quick and gasless bitcoin bridging across chains. It is a decentralized network that enables cross-chain messaging with built-in concepts of value, asset transfer, and distributed custody. The network utilizes a multiparty computation protocol known as FROST to create threshold signatures, and different actors within the runtime include signers, validators, keepers, and voters.

Farcaster raised $30M in a Seed funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto)*, Standard Crypto, 1confirmation, A Capital, Ribbit Capital, Scalar Capital, Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Elad Gil, First Round Capital, Volt Capital, Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund, Mischief Fund, Ansa Capital, Haystack, Chapter One, Offline Ventures, Archetype, Floodgate, 6529 Capital, Canonical Crypto, Balaji Srinivasan.

Farcaster is a sufficiently decentralized social network. It is an open protocol that can support many clients, just like email.

Lava Network raised undisclosed amount in a Seed funding round from Jump Crypto, PayPal Ventures, Tribe Capital, North Island Ventures, MH Ventures.

Lava Network is a trustless market for blockchain Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) that incentivizes node providers and users to contribute and access accurate blockchain data. Lava enables node operators to utilize their bandwidth while ensuring data quality through its protocol.

BR1: Infinite Royale raised $3M in a Seed funding round from Solana Ventures, 6th Man Ventures (6MV), Shima Capital.

BR1: Infinite Royale is a game created by Bravo Ready studio which allows gamers to pay $1 to spawn and earn SOL for every win. The survival-style game places new characters far away from other players with little access to items.

Morpho raised $18M in a Seed funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto)*, Variant Fund*, Nascent, semantic ventures, Mechanism Capital, Spark Capital, Standard Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Daedalus, AngelDAO, Faculty Capital, GSR Markets LTD, Global Coin Research (GCR), ATKA, Nima Capital, Stake Capital, Fasanara Capital, Alven, XAnge VC.

Morpho is a DeFi lending protocol built on top of existing protocols that moves loans from liquidity pools into a peer-to-peer mechanism to offer higher yields for investors.

Quadrata raised $7.5M in a Seed funding round from Dragonfly Capital, Franklin Templeton, Abra, GSR Markets LTD, Orange DAO, Fellows Fund, GreatPoint Ventures, August Capital.

Quadrata is a Passport Network that brings the identity and compliance layer to DeFi across existing public blockchains.

Other investment rounds

MonkeyLeague raised $24M in a Series A  funding round from Griffin Gaming Partners, Maverick Ventures Israel, DraftKings, Vgames, 6th Man Ventures (6MV).

MonkeyLeague is the next-gen esports Solana-based metaverse that empowers players to create, play, compete, and earn.

Polysynth raised $3M in a Strategic  funding round from LedgerPrime, QCP Capital, Lux Capital.

Polysynth is a cross-chain, open and decentralized protocol for trading advanced crypto financial products in an innovative and user-friendly way.

Thalex raised $7.6M in a Series A  funding round from Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Flow Traders, IMC, QCP Capital, Wintermute.

Thalex is a crypto-native derivatives exchange founded by a multi-faceted team of experts in traditional brokerage, crypto and market making.

LI.FI raised $5.5M in a Strategic  funding round from 1kx*, Dragonfly Capital, Lattice Fund, Scalar Capital, 6th Man Ventures (6MV), Coinbase Ventures, BairesDAO, AngelDAO.

LI-FI is a bridge and DEX aggregation protocol that allows for cross-chain swapping, bridging, and messaging across multiple blockchains. It offers an API that grants access to all DEXs, DEX aggregators, and relevant bridges, enabling users to conduct these transactions in a secure and efficient manner.

* fund, that lead investment round