Crypto Fundraising weekly
Dates: 13 – 19, Feb 2023

This week's biggest funding round

Taurus raised $65M in a Series B funding round from Credit Suisse*, Deutsche Bank*, Pictet Group, Arab Bank (Switzerland), Investis, Cedar Mundi Ventures.

Taurus is a digital asset infrastructure provider for financial institutions (include the world’s largest banks) that provides enterprise-grade infrastructure to issue, custody and trade any digital assets: cryptocurrencies including staking, tokenized assets and digital currencies. Taurus also operates a regulated marketplace for private assets and tokenized securities.

Pre-seed and Seed investment rounds

Ultimate Champions raised $5M in a Seed funding round from Sisu Game Ventures*, Sfermion, United Overseas Bank (UOB), Signum Capital, 2B Ventures, Machame.

Ultimate Champions is a Web3 entirely free-to-play and cross-league fantasy sports platform with officially licensed digital cards hosted as NFTs. Players can leverage their sports knowledge to earn rewards that hold long-term value: Cards (NFTs) and Tokens ($MGC/$CHAMP). Developed by Web3 gaming company Unagi.

Cysic raised $6M in a Seed funding round from Polychain Capital*, Hashkey Capital, ABCDE Capital, SNZ Holding, Web3.com Ventures.

Cysic is zero-knowledge (ZK) hardware startup aims to provide hardware acceleration solutions for ZK proof protocols. Cysic team developed a FPGA prototype of multi-scalar multiplication (MSM), which is an important component within ZK protocols.

Phi raised $2M in a Seed funding round from Chapter One*, Delphi Digital*, Polygon Ventures, Mask Network, Genesis Block Ventures Capital (GBV), Next Web Capital, 0xmons, Nick Chong, Stani Kulechov, Santiago Santos.

Phi is a social gaming metaverse focused on "on-chain identities" created using ENS and verified wallet activity to easily visualize on-chain identities. The protocol allows users to generate personalized spaces using their ENS and then claim in-game objects based on their wallet activity. Using these objects, users can build their own Web3 worlds to showcase their on-chain identities.

Sending Network raised $12.5M in a Seed funding round from Insignia Venture Partners*, Mindworks VC*, Signum Capital*, K3 Ventures, LingFeng Innovation Fund, UpHonest Capital, Aipollo Investment.

Sending.Network (SDN) is an open, secure web3 communication infrastructure enabling users to chat, trade and socialize seamlessly within and across applications. It provides customized and easy-to-install chatting solutions for Web3 Gaming, Wallets and general Dapp developers.

Salsa (ex Pearl) raised $2M in a Pre-seed funding round from IDEO CoLab Ventures*, Inflection*, Superscrypt, Balaji Srinivasan.

Salsa is a web3 messaging platform that personalizes email and in-app messages using on-chain data to help users discover and connect with relevant people and brands.

Nefta raised $5M in a Seed funding round from Play Ventures*, Polygon Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Sfermion, Picus Capital.

Nefta is a Web3 infrastructure startup focused on gaming and entertainment sectors provides tools to businesses looking to enter and grow in the web3 space. These tools include bespoke APIs, software development kits and white-label services to help businesses integrate digital assets, multi-chain wallets and custom marketplaces.

Stelo raised $6M in a Seed funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto)*, First Round Capital, Pear VC, Box Group, Chainforest, OpenSea, Homebrew, Xoogler Ventures.

Stelo is an open-source extension that helps users understand crypto transactions before they sign them and keeps users safe from phishing. The Stelo extension secures every transaction and acts like a firewall for users' wallet. It translates complex transactions and signatures into plain English so users can transact with confidence.

NFEX raised $3M in a Seed funding round from Amber Group, ABCDE Capital.

NFEX is a decentralized derivatives exchange that offers perpetual swaps trading across blue chip NFTs and other popular assets. Unlike the NFT marketplaces, NFEX offers leverages and long/short trading capabilities so that users can take positions in blue chip NFTs in either direction with low entry cost. Users can short NFTs directly even if they do not have any holdings. This opens up a variety of trading strategies for NFT traders including hedging, speculation and arbitrage.

Ironblocks raised $7M in a Seed funding round from Collider Ventures*, Disruptive AI*, ParaFi Capital, Quantstamp, Samsung Next, Balaji Srinivasan.

Ironblocks is the first-ever blockchain-native cybersecurity platform that provides end-to-end security solutions to Web3 platforms, DeFi protocols, bridges, market makers, and other digital asset projects. By using a smart contract-based solution and a series of intuitive dashboards that provide easy access to critical information from within a single interface, Ironblocks automates threat detection and protection in Web3, enabling preventative measures to be taken in milliseconds.

Alongside raised $11M in a Seed funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto)*, The Cultural Leadership Fund (CLF), Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Village Global, Not Boring Capital, FJ Labs, Soma Capital, Broadhaven Capital Partners, Vol. 1 Ventures.

Alongside is an index token protocol. The AMKT Token represents a basket of digital assets designed to track the market capitalization of the cryptoasset market.

Modular Cloud raised $1.7M in a Pre-seed funding round from Maven 11 Capital*, Blockchain Capital*, NFX, Celestia Foundation, Eclipse.

Modular Cloud is a blockchain tooling provider developed blockchain explorer that is designed to integrate with a large of number of protocols. The explorer makes little assumptions about how the protocols work and can display the data in any way through a simple integration process.

Monad raised $19M in a Seed funding round from Dragonfly Capital*, Shima Capital, Placeholder, Lemniscap, Finality Capital.

Monad is a new proof-of-stake (PoS) Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed to improve the overall Ethereum ecosystem; and decentralized computation platform. Monad offers throughput that is orders of magnitude higher than any existing smart contract blockchain, supporting 10,000 smart contract transactions per second (tps) through algorithmic improvements to virtual machine design and Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanisms.

Orb raised $4.5M in a Seed funding round from Bain Capital Ventures (BCV)*, Shima Capital, 6th Man Ventures (6MV), Modular Capital, SevenX Ventures, Aves Lair, Newman Capital.

Orb Labs is blockchain interoperability startup, which develops tooling and protocols that enable blockchains to communicate with one and other. It has built two products Earlybird, a cross-chain messaging protocol, and MagicLane, an omnichain token and messaging platform built on top of Earlybird.

Dentity raised undisclosed amount in a Seed funding round from Blockchange Ventures*, AARP*.

Dentity is a leading identity verification platform where consumers can safely store the most important parts of both their private lives and public personas — from government IDs and memberships to professional accomplishments and brand loyalties — securely in one digital wallet.

Kolibrio raised $2M in a Seed funding round from Jump Crypto*, Delta Blockchain Fund, Everstake.

Kolibrio is a Web3 infrastructure startup aims to solve the Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) problem by offering an on-chain order flow auction system (OFA), which can be used by order flow originators like wallets, node providers, and dApps to benefit the end user.

Other investment rounds

Yield Guild Games raised $13.8M in a  funding round from DWF Labs*, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto), Galaxy Interactive, Sangha Capital, Sanctor Capital.

Yield Guild Games is a decentralized gaming guild that invests in NFTs found in blockchain-based games and virtual world economies.

Million on Mars raised $3.5M in a  funding round from Great South Gate (GSG)*, Widus Partners*, Solana Ventures.

Million on Mars is a blockchain-based space simulation 2D play & own game centered around land development on the Red Planet. In the hardcore crafting game, players start with 40-acre plots of land and craft their way to economic independence on Mars. Players will use blueprint NFT's to construct buildings on Land and unlock crafting actions that can be done by them or other players.

Rocket Pool raised undisclosed amount in a  funding round from Coinbase Ventures*.

Rocket Pool is a decentralised Ethereum 2.0 staking protocol. Designed to support stakers of all shapes and sizes, Rocket Pool was built with the intent to allow anyone to trustlessly stake as little as 0.01 ETH to a network of decentralised node operators with full autonomy underpinned by RPL collateral (a type of bonding or insurance that ensures good behavior).

Botto raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from Variant Fund*.

Botto is a generative artist governed by the community. Botto creates 350 art pieces a week and presents them to the community. These art pieces are considered a 'round', whereby individual art pieces are denoted as 'fragments'.

DanceFight raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from Animoca Brands*.

DanceFight is a mobile dance battle app for the street dance community built on Virtual Arts’ patented platform.

Infinity Exchange raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from Laser Digital*.

Infinity Exchange is a decentralized finance protocol that provides institutional grade capital efficiency for traders, yield farmers and global fixed income investors.

Aura Network raised $4M in a Series A  funding round from Hashed*, Coin98 Ventures*, GuildFi, Republic Crypto, Istari Vision, K300 Ventures.

Aura Network is a Layer-1 NFT-centric blockchain, built to accelerate global NFTs adoption by the Internet of Blockchain.

Superplastic raised $20M in a Series A  funding round from Amazon Alexa Fund*, Google Ventures (GV), Galaxy Digital, Animoca Brands, Scribble Ventures, Sony Financial Ventures (SFV), Kering, Craft Ventures, Kakao, Day One Ventures, Betaworks Ventures.

Superplastic is a global entertainment brand that creates and manages a roster of world famous synthetic artists and influencers. Superplastic is the leader in luxury art toys, music, fashion, and Web3.

Zion raised $6M in a  funding round from XBTO Humla Ventures*.

Zion is a decentralized social platform designed to allow creators to own their communities while users have control over their online identity, and is based on Jack Dorsey’s Block’s Web5 standards and the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Scroll raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from Gate.io Ventures*.

Scroll is an Ethereum Layer 2 network that uses zk-rollup technology to process transactions off Ethereum on its own network, reducing costs and increasing transaction speed. The network's zkEVM batches transactions and generates proof that they are legitimate, which is then broadcast to Ethereum for approval.

Caldera raised $9M in a  funding round from Sequoia Capital*, Dragonfly Capital*, 1kx, Ethereal Ventures, Neo, Alliance DAO (ex DeFi Alliance).

Caldera is a no-code web3 infrastructure platform, specializes in building high-performance, customizable, and application-specific layer-two blockchains (Caldera Chains).

Paradise Tycoon raised $1M in a  funding round from Shima Capital, Zee Prime Capital, Fomocraft Ventures, FireX Capital.

Paradise Tycoon is a social building and crafting multiplayer game built on blockchain technology by game studio Empires Not Vampires. Paradise Tycoon’s game assets (NFTs) will be fully based on the blockchain, including the assets’ entire visual presence and a creative commons license to allow digital ownership beyond the game and the control of its developers.

* fund, that lead investment round