Crypto Fundraising weekly
Dates: 18 – 24, Oct 2021

This week's biggest funding round

FTX Trading raised $420M in a Series B funding round from Sequoia Capital, Temasek, The Sea Capital, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Lightspeed, HOF Capital.

FTX is a fast-growing cryptocurrency exchange that offers advanced trading options like margin and futures trading.

Pre-seed and Seed investment rounds

Colony raised $1M in a Seed funding round from Genesis Block Ventures Capital (GBV), Foresight Ventures, Avalanche, Avalaunch, Avalanche Asia Star Fund (AVATAR), Yield Yak, NGC Ventures (NEO Global Capital), Spark Digital Capital, MEXC, Synaps, ZBS Capital.

Colony is a Community-driven Avalanche ecosystem accelerator.

Morpho raised $1.4M in a Seed funding round from Nascent*, Semantic Ventures*, AngelDAO, Cherry Ventures, Stake Capital, ATKA, Faculty Capital.

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.

UNKJD (ex MonkeyLeague) raised $3M in a Seed funding round from Republic, NFX, LongHash Ventures, Coin Merge Strategy (CMS), Morningstar Ventures, Solana Ventures, Jump Trading, ZBS Capital, Shalom Meckenzie.

Unkind Games is a video game development studio that creates original and innovative games for PC and consoles. Their games are known for their unique gameplay, challenging mechanics, and thought-provoking stories. Unkind Games is a relatively new studio, but they have quickly gained a reputation for creating some of the most interesting and exciting games in the world. MonkeyLeague is the next-gen esports Solana-based metaverse that empowers players to create, play, compete, and earn.

Polynomial raised $1.1M in a Pre-seed funding round from Archetype*, Genblock Capital, Caballeros Capital, Paul Veradittakit.

Polynomial is a decentralized derivative trading exchange powered by the Synthetix protocol on Optimism, providing users with a faster and more efficient UI, lower fees, and leverage trading up to 25x. With products like Polynomial Trade, Polynomial Earn, and Polynomial Swap, Polynomial aims to make DeFi more accessible and offers innovative features such as on-chain options vaults and simplified swapping of synthetic assets.

Nifty Island raised $20M in a Pre-seed funding round from CMT Digital, Hashed, Yield Guild Games (YGG), Distributed Global, Solana Foundation.

Nifty Island is a community-centric gaming platform where users can craft and explore personalized game islands, compete in diverse challenges for rewards, and engage with NFT-centric user-generated content. It fosters a vibrant ecosystem where creativity is rewarded, aiming to redefine the web3 gaming landscape by emphasizing inclusivity, community, and the intrinsic value of NFTs.

Good Games Guild raised $1.7M in a Seed funding round from Chromia, NGC Ventures (NEO Global Capital), OKX Ventures (ex OKEx Blockdream Ventures), Mapleblock Capital, LD Capital, Basics Capital, Twin Apex Capital, AU21 Capital, Alves Ventures, Kyros Ventures, Fomocraft Ventures, Titans Ventures, Signal Ventures, Master Ventures, Scorpio VC, OIG Capital (Oracles Investment Group).

Good Games Guild is a Gaming Hub that aims to create the largest virtual world economy by optimizing its owned assets to get maximum reward generated.

Obol Labs raised $6.2M in a Seed funding round from Ethereal Ventures*, Coinbase Ventures, Delphi Digital, IOSG Ventures, THE LAO, Figment, Yield Ventures, Chorus One, Archetype, StableNode, Everstake, Alliance DAO (ex DeFi Alliance), Stakefish, Staking Facilities.

Obol Labs is Ethereum Startup responsible for fostering the adoption of distributed validator technology through the development of the Obol Network and its ecosystem. Obol is building out decentralized validator technology (DVT), a kind of tech that it believes solves some of the biggest pain points for Ethereum’s new validator class.

Other investment rounds

ZkLink raised $8.5M in a  funding round from Republic, Arrington Capital, Alliance DAO (ex DeFi Alliance), HTX Ventures (ex Huobi Ventures), Ascensive Assets, Morningstar Ventures, GSR Markets LTD, Marshland Capital, Skynet Trading, ZBS Capital.

zkLink is a decentralized multi-chain trading infrastructure that provides a seamless and secure trading experience across different blockchains. Powered by zk-SNARKS, zkLink offers a unified liquidity pool that allows developers and traders to leverage assets and liquidity from various chains while ensuring the security of funds through zero-knowledge proofs. Additionally, zkLink offers API-driven solutions for creating order book DEXs, NFT marketplaces, and other decentralized applications.

Parallel raised $50M in a  funding round from Paradigm, Focus Labs, Open Source Software Capital (OSSC), Yunt Capital.

Parallel is a Sci-Fi Card Game with NFTs.

Worldcoin raised $25M in a  funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto), Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Hashed, Multicoin Capital, Three Arrows Capital, Variant Fund, 1confirmation, Hypersphere, Kenetic, Apollo Capital, Blockchange Ventures.

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.

Manta Network raised $5.5M in a Series A  funding round from CoinFund, ParaFi Capital, LongHash Ventures, Coin Merge Strategy (CMS), Divergence, The Spartan Group, SkyVision Capital, Zee Prime Capital, SNZ Holding.

Manta Network is a privacy-focused Layer 2 network that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to provide secure and scalable solutions for decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum. With its testnet, Manta Pacific, and Layer 1 network, Manta Atlantic, the network aims to address privacy and scalability challenges while empowering users to maintain control over their identity and transaction history in a compliant and cost-effective environment.

Candy Digital raised $100M in a Series A  funding round from SoftBanks Vision Fund 2*, Connect Ventures, com2us, NEA.

Candy is a next generation digital collectible company offering unique NFTs for fans and collectors, giving them the ability to purchase and sell NFTs. Company will continue to scale and expand its flagship digital products, including ICON trading cards, Tickets, and Highlights.

Superplastic raised $20M in a  funding round from Galaxy Digital, Google Ventures (GV), Index Ventures, Founders fund, Craft Ventures, Kakao, Day One Ventures, Betaworks Ventures, The Chainsmokers, Jared Leto.

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.

Animoca Brands raised $65M in a  funding round from Liberty City Ventures, Ubisoft, Sequoia Capital, Dragonfly Capital, com2us, Kingsway Capital, 10T Holdings, Tokenbay Capital, Tess Ventures, MSA Capital (MSA Novo), Octava Singapore, Adit Ventures, Black Anthem LTD.

Animoca Brands is a global leader in the Web3 space, specializing in the development and investment of blockchain-based games and experiences. With a diverse portfolio, the company empowers developers and creators to shape the future of gaming, contributing to the growth of the Web3 ecosystem. Animoca Brands stands at the forefront of the Web3 revolution, transforming the gaming industry with innovative and immersive blockchain-powered projects.

Element Finance raised $32M in a Series A  funding round from Polychain Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto), Placeholder, A Capital, Scalar Capital, Advanced Blockchain AG, Republic, Rarestone Capital, Yunt Capital, P2P Validator, Ethereal Ventures, Stani Kulechov, Kain Warwick, Alex Svanevik, Santiago R. Santos.

The Element brings the attractive high fixed rate yields that DeFi users crave while maximizing capital efficiency, creating market liquidity, and reducing user costs.

* fund, that lead investment round