Financing Weekly | 13 public financing incidents; Privacy blockchain Miden completed a seed round of $25 million, led by a16z Crypto and others
Reprinted from panewslab
05/05/2025·1MWhat's the highlight of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 13 investment and financing events in global blockchain last week (4.28-5.4); the total fund size exceeded US$137 million, and the inflow of funds decreased compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced three investment and financing events, among which blockchain financial company Dinari completed a US$12.7 million Series A financing, led by Hack VC and others;
- Two investment and financing events were announced in the Web3+AI field, including Camp Network's US$25 million Series A financing, led by 1kx and Blockchain Capital;
- 6 investment and financing events have been announced in the field of infrastructure and tools , among which the privacy blockchain Miden completed a $25 million seed round of financing, led by a16z Crypto, Hack VC and 1kx;
- Other applications have announced an investment and financing event, and Web3 Entertainment Company YOAKE entertainment completed a financing of approximately US$1.25 million;
- Centralized finance announced an investment and financing event, and blockchain-driven payment startup Next Generation announced a $5 million seed round
DeFi
Blockchain finance company Dinari announced that it has completed a US$12.7 million Series A financing, led by Hack VC and Blockchange Ventures, with VanEck Ventures, F-Prime and Avalanche Fund. The company's total financing amount has reached US$22.65 million and is valued at US$40.15 million in 2024. According to Pitchbook data, Dinari is valued at $40.15 million in 2024. The current valuation is not clear, but the company said it has achieved profitability, but refused to disclose the specific amount.
Dinari focuses on providing US stock investment services to overseas investors, issuing tokens representing US stock ownership through blockchain technology. Its API services have been connected to multiple financial technology platforms, and users can purchase tokens corresponding to stocks of Apple and other companies. Dinari will directly purchase and hold corresponding stocks in the US stock market to ensure 100% asset endorsement.
Education Finance (EduFi) RWA Agreement Pencil Finance announced the completion of a $10 million liquidity pool financing supported by Animoca Brands and Open Campus, aiming to support Pencil Finance’s first on-chain education loans and debt financing for education companies. Funds have been deployed in Pencil Finance in the liquidity pool on Open Campus EDU Chain. Pencil Finance will work with traditional education loan companies to bring education loans in Southeast Asia and the United States to the chain, opening up a new asset class for on-chain investors. Meanwhile, Pencil Finance helps education loans reduce interest rates by providing on-chain interest-generating opportunities for traditional education loan companies.
Stablecoin startup Zar raises $7 million, led by Dragonfly, a16z and VanEck
The stablecoin project Zar announced the completion of a $7 million financing, with investors including Dragonfly Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, VanEck Ventures, and co-founders of Coinbase Ventures and Solana. Zar was founded in 2024 by Brandon Timinsky and Sebastian Scholl, aiming to enable global "corner shops" to support cash-for-stable currency transactions. The platform has not yet been opened, but about 100,000 users have lined up to register, and 7,000 stores have expressed their willingness to cooperate, covering 20 countries including Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc. Zar plans to be officially launched this summer.
AI
Camp Network completes US$25 million Series A financing, led by 1kx and Blockchain Capital
Camp Network, a blockchain project focused on AI copyright splitting, announced that it has completed a US$25 million Series A financing, led by 1kx and Blockchain Capital, with participation from OKX, Lattice and Paper Ventures, with a valuation of up to US$400 million. Camp Network is committed to building an on-chain storage and licensing platform for content creators, and plans to launch cryptocurrencies this year. Co-founder Murthy said that as AI companies gradually standardize the use of data, blockchain can become an important tool for verifying copyright compliance.
Gata, a decentralized AI project, announced that it has completed a $4 million seed round. This round is participated by YZi Labs, IDG Blockchain, Maelstrom Fund, Manifold Trading, Gate Ventures, Formless Capital, Anti Capital, MH Ventures, V3V Ventures, 071 Labs and Echo. According to reports, Gata focuses on developing decentralized large-scale model inference, training and data technologies to achieve decentralized infrastructure participation and support the global AI economy. Gata launched the DataAgent platform, which uses computing resources contributed by global users to automatically generate the data required for AI training through AI, aiming to replace the traditional manual data annotation method.
Infrastructure & Tools
Miden, a privacy blockchain project co-founded by former Meta engineers, announced the completion of a $25 million seed round of financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto division, together with Hack VC and 1kx, with Finality Capital Partners, Symbolic Capital and several angel investors in the crypto field participating. Instead of investing directly, Polygon Labs incubated Miden and reached an agreement to allocate about 10% of Miden's future tokens to Polygon token holders. Miden focuses on achieving transaction privacy through zero-knowledge proof, while taking into account the performance and decentralization of blockchain.
Parallel MPC Network Ika announced that it has received strategic investment from the Sui Foundation. Since then, Ika has received more than $21 million in financing, and its highest valuation in the private equity stage reached $600 million in FDV, and has received support from dozens of institutions in the Web3 field, including the Sui Foundation, DCG, Big Brain Holdings, Blockchange, Node Capital, Amplify Partners, Liquid2 Ventures, FalconX, etc. According to reports, Ika is a parallel MPC (multi-party computing) network that will be launched on the Sui blockchain soon.
Unto Labs completes $14.4 million in financing to develop a new blockchain based on RISC-V
Unto Labs announced the completion of a $14.4 million financing led by Framework Ventures and Electric Capital, with a valuation of $140 million. Unto is developing independent blockchain and self-developed virtual machine ThruVM, based on the RISC-V architecture, aiming to improve compatibility with traditional hardware and reduce the entry threshold for non-encrypted developers. Funds will be used to scale the team and accelerate product development.
Hong Kong Web3 startup Terminal 3 completed a $8 million seed round of financing, led by Illuminate Financial and CMCC Titan Fund, with Animoca Brands, Progression Fund, IDG Blockchain, Cherubic Ventures, 500 Global, Consensys Mesh, Hard Yaka and BlackPine. The company has developed a decentralized identity and data privacy protocol that has served more than 8 million users, and the new funding will be used to launch enterprise-level solutions by the end of the year. Gary Liu, co-founder and CEO of Terminal 3, said that its platform combines blockchain and zero-knowledge proof technology to provide secure data storage solutions for banking, government credentials and AI agents. Illuminate Financial, an investor, pointed out that verifiable digital identity is the critical infrastructure that drives institutions to adopt crypto assets.
Decentralized high-precision map protocol ROVR Network completes a seed round of $2.6 million
The decentralized high-precision map protocol ROVR Network completed a seed round of US$2.6 million, with Borderless Capital and GEODNET jointly led the investment, and IoTeX and other institutions participated in the investment. The project combines LiDAR lidar with real-time dynamic positioning technology (RTK) to provide the autonomous driving industry with centimeter-level accuracy open source map data solutions. ROVR founder Guang Ling said that this round of funds will be used for global hardware deployment and community-based data acquisition. The project has simultaneously launched the issuance of native token ROVR. The token is based on the Solana chain and adopts a deflation model - data sales revenue will automatically trigger the token destruction mechanism. ROVR and GEODNET will set up a joint office in Silicon Valley to integrate the technical resources of both parties in the fields of spatial positioning and 3D modeling.
Web3 infrastructure project aZen completes a $1.2 million seed round, led by Waterdrip Capital
Web3 infrastructure project aZen announced the completion of a US$1.2 million seed round financing, led by Waterdrip Capital, with DWF Ventures, Rootz Labs, Mindfulness Capital, Attention Ventures, Quantum Leap Lab and others participating. In addition, aZen Holdings also received a US$40 million equity investment from Royal Front LLC of the UAE to promote long-term expansion and ecosystem development. The new funds will support it in building a decentralized AI-native computing infrastructure.
other
Web3 Entertainment Company YOAKE Entertainment completed approximately US$1.25 million in financing
Web3 entertainment company YOAKE entertainment announced that it has completed 180 million yen (about 1.25 million US dollars) financing through private token sales and convertible corporate bonds. Next Web Capital is the lead underwriter for this round of financing, and the participating investors include Bitbank Ventures, Credit Scend, Hakuhodo KEY3, Taisu Ventures, X2Y2, etc. Financing funds will be used for next-generation entertainment platform development, global IP content production, etc.
According to reports, YOAKE was established in February 2024 and was jointly funded by many companies such as Twin Planet, Asobi System, W TOKYO, Y&N Brothers. The board members include well-known producer Yasuhiro Akimoto and Astar Network founder Tsuta Watanabe. YOAKE focuses on the blockchainization of entertainment IP and recently announced that it will launch the official NFT series of the popular Japanese anime "Seven Sins" and adopt the blockchain "Soneium" jointly developed by Sony Group and Startale Group.
Centralized Finance
Blockchain-driven payment company Next Generation completes $5 million seed round
Blockchain-driven payment startup Next Generation announced a $5 million seed round of financing, with two Cypriot companies, an Austrian company and an international investor consortium participating. The specific investor information has not been disclosed yet. This round of financing will accelerate the launch of the company's B2B payment ecosystem, which aims to connect traditional finance and digital finance through its proprietary MiCA-compliant, euro-pegged stablecoins.
Venture Capital Funds
Crypto venture capital firm dao5 completes fundraising for US$222 million
Crypto venture capital firm dao5 announced that it had completed the second phase of fundraising of US$222 million, with the main investors being family offices and high net worth individuals. The institution was founded in 2022 by Tekin Salimi, former Polychain investment partner and corporate lawyer. Its first US$125 million fund has been invested in Berachain, Bittensor and other projects. Currently, DPI (paid-in return on capital) has reached 1 times. The new fund will focus on the application direction of institutions such as stablecoins and asset tokenization, and plans to invest in 15-20 early-stage projects. Salimi has participated in investment in major crypto projects such as Avalanche, and its first fund LP and angel investor George Lambeth will be promoted to general partner.
jinse