Financing Weekly | 14 public financing events; decentralized AI startup Nous Research completed a US$50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm
Reprinted from panewslab
04/28/2025·17DWhat's the highlight of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 14 investment and financing events in global blockchain last week (4.21-4.27); the total scale of funds exceeded US$220 million, and the inflow of funds decreased compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced a financing event, and the cryptocurrency pledge agreement Symbiotic completed a US$29 million Series A financing, led by Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures;
- Web3 Game Track announced one investment and financing event, MagicBlock completed a seed round of $7.5 million, led by Lightspeed Faction;
- The Web3+AI field announced one investment and financing event, and decentralized AI startup Nous Research completed a US$50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm;
- The Infrastructure & Tools Track announced 6 investment and financing events, and the interoperability project Analog completed a new round of financing of US$15 million;
- Two investment and financing events were announced in other applications, and London-based fintech company WineFi completed a seed round of financing of about US$2 million, led by Coterie Holdings;
- Three investment and financing events have been announced in the field of centralized finance , among which Alpaca, an API platform focusing on stock and cryptocurrency trading, completed a US$52 million Series C financing.
DeFi
Symbiotic completes $29 million Series A funding, led by Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures
The cryptocurrency pledge agreement Symbiotic completed a US$29 million Series A financing, led by Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures, with more than 100 institutions including Aave, Polygon and StarkWare and angel investors participating. Financing will be used to launch a "universal pledge framework" for blockchain security coordination layer. This framework allows any combination of cryptocurrencies (including L1/L2 chain assets) to participate in network verification. It has been adopted by 14 networks including Hyperlane, and is expected to be connected to 20 ecological projects.
Web3 Games
MagicBlock completes $7.5 million seed round, led by Lightspeed Faction
MagicBlock, a game company based in Solana, announced a $7.5 million seed round of financing, aiming to build a real-time, fragmented infrastructure for decentralized games and applications through Solana-native Ephemeral Rollups technology. This round of financing was led by Lightspeed Faction, and the participants include Maven11, Delphi Digital, Robot Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Equilibrium and Pivot Global. The angel investor lineup includes Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko, Mert Mumtaz and Tristan Yver. a16z has participated in early stage investments and the total financing amount is now US$10.5 million. MagicBlock plans to expand the engineering team, promote the development of the Solana application ecosystem, and optimize the real-time execution architecture.
AI
Decentralized AI startup Nous Research completes US$50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm
Decentralized AI startup Nous Research completed a $50 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm (which was almost entirely provided by Paradigm), and this round of financing valued Nous' tokens at $1 billion. The financing funds will be mainly used to increase computing power reserves and expand the scale of the research team. The company has previously raised about US$20 million through seed rounds, with investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, Delphi Digital and other institutions. It is worth noting that this is Paradigm's largest investment in AI since the FTX crash in 2022, marking that crypto capital is accelerating its layout in cutting-edge technology cross-fields.
Founded by a group of AI researchers in 2022, Nous focuses on developing open source large language models. Its innovation is to use Solana blockchain to coordinate global distributed computing resources and encourage users to contribute idle GPU computing power to participate in model training through incentive mechanisms. The Hermes series of open source models developed by the team have been recognized in the community and have published several research papers in collaboration with OpenAI founding member Diederik P. Kingma.
Infrastructure & Tools
Interoperability project Analog completes a new round of financing of US$15 million
Analog, a blockchain project that unifies liquidity across multiple networks, announced that it has raised $15 million through token sales, and digital asset financing company Bolts Capital has completed token purchases, bringing Analog's total support to $36 million. Analog plans to use the funds to develop interoperability tools such as Omnichain Analog Token Standard (OATS), which supports the transfer of replaceable and irreplaceable assets across blockchains. Also in preparation is Firestarter, a real-world asset (RWA) market for tokenizing real estate, collectibles and revenue-generating items.
Arch Labs completes $13 million Series A funding, led by Pantera Capital
Bitcoin infrastructure company Arch Labs completed a $13 million Series A financing with a valuation of $200 million. This round of financing was led by Pantera Capital, and other strategic investors were also involved. This funding will accelerate the development and release of ArchVM, which enables fast, secure and fully verifiable smart contract capabilities on Bitcoin.
According to reports, Arch Labs is a software development company and a core contributor to Arch Network. Arch Network is a bridgeless execution platform that enables smart contract-like functionality on Bitcoin. Previously, Arch Labs raised $7 million, led by Multicoin Capital.
DAO infrastructure provider Tally completed a $8 million Series A funding round to expand its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). This round of financing was led by AppWorks and Blockchain Capital, and BitGo and other companies participated. According to reports, Tally's most famous product is the Tally protocol, which supports infrastructure and helps leading protocols to effectively manage its DAOs, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane. Originally a DAO governance tool, the platform has evolved into the most extensive software stack adopted by organizations on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. Tally previously raised $7.5 million through two rounds of financing in 2021.
Inco completes a US$5 million strategic round of financing, committed to on-chain privacy technology
Inco announced the completion of a US$5 million strategic round of financing led by a16z crypto CSX and Coinbase Ventures, with a total cumulative financing of US$10 million. Inco focuses on solving blockchain privacy issues and is committed to allowing users to do salary payments, Texas Hold'em and other operations on the chain without revealing sensitive information. Currently, its first product, "Inco Lightning", has been launched on the Base Sepolia test website.
Web3 infrastructure startup Catalysis completes $1.25 million in Pre-Seed round
Decentralized service infrastructure startup Catalysis completed a $1.25 million Pre-Seed round of financing. This round was led by Hashed Emergent, which focuses on the Indian Web3 ecosystem, with Presto Labs, Spaceship DAO, Funfair Ventures, Cosmostation and Crypto Times. The funds will be used to develop a "security abstraction layer" for replenishment protocols, aiming to simplify the process by which developers and node operators obtain economic security from replenishment ecosystems such as Eigenlayer.
Co-founder Abhishek said that the current integration of shared security protocols has a high degree of fragmentation, and Catalysis's core products will lower the development threshold for AVS (active verification service) applications through standardized interfaces. The company has cooperated with mainstream re-staking platforms such as Eigenlayer and Symbiotic, and plans to launch a public test network in the second quarter of 2025. The application scenarios cover web2 service fields such as cross-chain bridges, oracles, zero-knowledge proofs and medical data systems.
Payment Gateway Inflow completed a seed round of $1.1 million, and Rockstart and other investments
Payment Gateway Inflow completed a seed round of $1.1 million, with Rockstart, GnosisVC, Alliance, Plug And Play, and Stake Capital participating. Angel investors include Ledger co-founder Nicolas Bacca, Primonial REIM co-founder Stephanie Lacroix, and TEMPUS SHOP founder Tempus.
other
WineFi, a blockchain-backed wine platform, completes a £1.5 million seed round
London-based fintech company WineFi announced a £1.5 million (about US$2 million) seed round, led by British fine wine group Coterie Holdings, with SFC Capital, Founders Capital and an angel investment consortium. New capital will accelerate product development, including enhanced valuation models and real-time market data feeds. According to reports, the company was co-founded by former Fidelity International and JPMorgan asset manager Oliver Thorpe and Callum Woodcock, and is committed to providing high-net-worth clients with structured high-quality wine investment channels. To increase liquidity and transparency, WineFi has taken a strategic move to segment high-quality wine assets on a blockchain platform in partnership with digital asset provider Lympid.
UXLINK receives investment from UFLY Labs and reaches strategic partnership with Solv Protocol
Web3 social platform UXLINK announced a strategic cooperation with Solv Protocol and received investment from UXLINK eco-fund UFLY Labs.
Centralized Finance
Alpaca, an API platform focusing on stocks, options and cryptocurrency trading, announced that it has completed a US$52 million Series C financing. 850 Management, Derayah Financial, National Investments Company, Portage Ventures and Unbound participated in the investment. According to reports, Alpaca is a self-clearing brokerage and brokerage infrastructure company headquartered in the United States, covering stocks, ETFs, options and cryptocurrencies, and has raised more than $170 million in funds. Alpaca's investors include Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund and Y Combinator.
Quantitative trading startup Theo completed a $20 million financing, led by Hack VC and others
Quantitative trading startup Theo completed a $20 million financing, and the platform is committed to providing ordinary investors with strategic returns that were originally high-frequency trading companies. The company was co-founded by former Optiver trader Abhi Pingle and TK Kwon. In March 2024, it received a $4.5 million seed round led by Manifold Trading, and in April 2025, it received another $15.5 million additional investment led by Hack VC and Anthos Capital. Other investors include Flowdesk, Selini Capital and individual investors from companies such as Citadel, JPMorgan Chase, Jane Street and Optiver.
Since its launch in June 2024, Theo platform has absorbed US$50 million in deposits. The average user yield in the past three months is 7%-8%, and the annual income reaches 18%-20%. The platform name comes from the trading term "theoretical price". It is currently mainly connected to DeFi protocols such as Aave, but plans to expand its business to centralized exchanges such as Binance. The founder said that the deposit limit will be cancelled by the end of April and will also be connected to traditional financial markets in the future. Both rounds of financing were in the form of token warrants, and the company's valuation was not disclosed.
BitradeX, an AI-powered digital asset trading platform, completed a £12 million (about US$15.96 million) Series A financing, led by Bain Capital. Financing will be used to establish a global AI strategy lab and upgrade compliance infrastructure. According to reports, BitradeX was established in 2022. The core product ARK trading model ARK trading model is based on a trillion parameter architecture and integrates the methodology of DeepSeek and Qianfan, which can provide high-frequency trading execution with sub-second delays. The platform holds UK FCA and US MSB licenses. Its first AI protection pool mechanism uses 100 BTC as the initial reserve fund.
Venture Capital Funds
RockawayX, an early supporter of Solana, launches new $125 million fund
Prague crypto venture capital firm RockawayX announced the completion of a second early-stage fund raising of US$125 million. The fund was closed in the first quarter of this year and will mainly invest in Solana ecological startup projects. The Solana, which invested in the unlanding market in 2018, currently manages approximately $2 billion in assets, has offices in Prague, Dubai and London, and two-thirds of its 45 employees are engineers. RockawayX CEO Victor Fischer said two-thirds of the new fund will be used for seed investment, and the rest will be allocated to liquid assets.
Although crypto venture capital fell by 22% in the first quarter, RockawayX's fund return in 2021 has exceeded 5 times, mainly benefiting from early-stage investments in Solana, market maker Wintermute and lending agreement Morpho Labs. The agency has invested in more than 15 Solana ecological projects and will jointly launch the accelerator center "Solana City" in Dubai on May 1 with the Solana Foundation and development company Helius Labs.
Astra Fintech sets up $100 million fund to support Solana 's development in Asia
Astra Fintech, a global blockchain payment provider, announced that it has set up a $100 million fund to support the development of the Solana ecosystem in Asia. Through the fund, Astra Fintech plans to invest funds to accelerate the development of related projects and establish partnerships with developers, companies and regulators. The fund's operating base will be located in South Korea. The fund will focus on projects and developers working on PayFi solutions, i.e. a range of systems that leverage blockchain technology to facilitate payments.
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