Crypto Fundraising weekly
Dates: 29 Oct – 04 Nov 2023

This week's biggest funding round

Ekubo Protocol raised $12M in a funding round from Uniswap DAO*.

Ekubo Protocol is a decentralized exchange designed for the Starknet architecture, focusing on gas efficiency and concentrated liquidity. Its design optimizes token transfers and capital efficiency, providing low fees and enhanced swapper execution. Extensions enable third-party developers to create innovative pools, and a withdrawal fee incentivizes liquidity concentration and low fees, while governance and control are also part of its features.

Pre-seed and Seed investment rounds

Trips raised $2.5M in a Pre-seed funding round from Shima Capital*, Animal Capital*, Blackwood Ventures*, Serafund*, Calligraphy Digital*, Blizzard.

Trips is a platform that empowers content creators by helping them protect and monetize their intellectual property (IP) and copyrights. Through Trips, creators can establish the digital provenance of their IP on the blockchain, allowing them to transform their creative assets into financial assets.

KanaLabs raised $2M in a Seed funding round from MARBLEX Corp., Nexus One, Klaytn, Gate Labs.

Kana Labs is a blockchain infrastructure and tooling company, simplifying the complexities of the DeFi and GameFi markets. They offer an All-In-One Web3 Middleware SDK that includes cross-chain bridging solutions and liquidity aggregators, making it easier for developers and users to access the world of decentralized finance and gaming. Kana Labs addresses the challenges of user-friendly navigation, fragmented liquidity across multiple chains, and cross-chain communication inefficiencies.

Modulus Labs raised $6.3M in a Seed funding round from 1kx*, Variant Fund*, Floodgate, Inflection, Alliance DAO (ex DeFi Alliance), Bankless Ventures, Stanford Blockchain Club, Global Coin Research (GCR).

Modulus Labs is project that combines artificial intelligence (AI) with blockchain technology. It focuses on using zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zkML, to ensure the integrity of AI queries, making it a trusted and tamper-proof solution. This technology has the potential to enhance various aspects of the blockchain ecosystem, such as decentralized applications (dApps), NFT marketplaces, tokenomics, and more, by integrating AI in a secure and transparent manner.

Intract raised $3M in a Seed funding round from Tokentus Investment AG, Alpha Wave Global, BITKRAFT Ventures, gumi Cryptos Capital, Polygon Ventures, DeVC, MoonPay, Web3 Studios.

Intract is a gamified Web3 exploration platform that enables users to discover and engage with Web3 projects while earning rewards. It offers quests, challenges, and events for users to complete and receive tokens, NFTs, and more. Intract collaborates with Web3 partners such as Binance, Polygon, and 1inch to help users learn and earn in Web3, with a mission to make Web3 more accessible and inclusive.

Toposware raised $5M in a Seed funding round from Evolution Equity Partners*, Triatomic Capital, K2 Access Fund, Sandeep Nailwal.

Toposware is an innovative research and engineering company focused on creating disruptive technology for a decentralized and trustless future. They emphasize solving complex problems in cryptography and distributed systems to advance open internet standards, and their work enables a new generation of multi-chain protocols and interoperable blockchain networks.

Vaas raised $2M in a Pre-seed funding round from ABSeed Ventures*, Fuse Capital, Honey Island Capital.

Vaas is a Brazilian startup specializing in developing technologies to combat financial fraud, primarily focusing on cryptocurrency transactions and extending its services to combat Pix-related scams. They employ artificial intelligence to analyze the complete transaction history of cryptocurrency wallets to detect suspicious or atypical activities. Additionally, Vaas collaborates with various institutions, including B3, to cross-reference data and enhance their anti-fraud efforts. This integrated approach helps them provide comprehensive monitoring services to banks and other financial institutions for a fixed monthly fee.

Other investment rounds

Layer N raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from BlackPine*.

Layer N is a high-performance layer-2 blockchain designed to enhance the speed and scalability of financial applications on Ethereum. It focuses on replicating the efficiency of traditional financial markets on the blockchain and aims to enable decentralized, noncustodial offerings for centralized exchanges.

Intmax raised undisclosed amount in a Strategic  funding round from LD Capital, KX, GMO AI & Web3, Kepple Africa Ventures.

Intmax is a novel Layer 2 network on Ethereum developed by Ryodan Systems AG, that uses zkRollup technology to offer low cost, security, and scalability for web services and financial transactions. It enables internet-native ownership with NFTs and community-governed tokens, allowing all online citizens to participate in the economy through payments infrastructure.

Waterfall Protocol (BlueWave) raised $2M in a Series A  funding round from ByteTrade Lab*.

Waterfall Protocol is a Layer 1, highly-scalable, completely decentralized smart contract platform developed by software development firm BlueWave based on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) technology and fast finality Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus. It is designed for the development of decentralized applications (Dapps) and aims to offer scalability, security, and a truly decentralized governance platform while being Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible and having low hardware requirements for validators.

Surf Protocol raised $3M in a  funding round from ABCDE Capital*, OP Crypto, C² Ventures.

Surf Protocol is a derivative exchange that allows trading and listing of assets with spot prices on centralized exchanges or Uniswap, offering Liquidity Providers (LPs) the ability to earn trading fees by assuming positions for traders. The protocol's unique AMM structure empowers LPs to balance securing high fees with prioritizing their position, creating a wide range of liquidity curve shapes for different assets. Surf Protocol aims to enhance the competitiveness of Perp DEXs and expand their market share against centralized exchanges by offering a diverse range of tradable assets with low fees.

Anapaya Systems raised $1.9M in a  funding round from Mysten Labs*.

Anapaya Systems is a provider of SCION (next-generation internet architecture) software, specializing in secure communication within Web3 infrastructure technologies. SCION is designed to offer controlled data exchange, secure networking, reliable performance, optimal connections, data compliance, and cloud connectivity while addressing the root causes of internet security issues. In addition to SCION, Anapaya Systems introduces GATE, a solution that secures access to business-critical services for remote workforces by reducing the attack surface, enhancing cloud connectivity, guaranteeing business continuity, and enabling geofencing for data protection.

* fund, that lead investment round