Financing Weekly | 24 public financing incidents; Walrus Foundation announced the raising of US$140 million, with Standard Crypto and a16z participating in the investment
Reprinted from panewslab
03/24/2025·2MWhat's the highlight of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 24 investment and financing events in global blockchain last week (3.17-3.23), with a total funding scale exceeding US$336 million, a significant increase compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 8 investment and financing events, of which Slingshot DAO successfully completed a US$16 million financing, and investors include Dragonfly Capital, etc.;
- Web3 Game Track announced three investment and financing events, among which Web3 game platform Game Beast was renamed Ephyra and completed a US$10.5 million Series A financing, led by BECKER Ventures;
- The Web3+AI field has announced two investment and financing events, among which Pluralis Research has raised $7.6 million in seed funds, led by CoinFund and Union Square Ventures;
- Infrastructure & Tools , eight investment and financing events have been announced, among which Via Science, a decentralized data and identity protection platform, completed a US$28 million Series B financing;
- Other categories have announced three investment and financing events, among which the decentralized forecasting market developer Opinion Labs announced a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Yzi Labs
DeFi
Slingshot DAO completes $16 million in financing, SLING tokens are about to go online
Slingshot DAO officially stated that the project has successfully completed a $16 million financing, and investors include Dragonfly Capital, Animoca Brands, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Sfermion, Standard Crypto, Sanctor Capital, Collab+Currency, Alphabit and other well-known Web3 institutions. In addition, Slingshot DAO revealed that the SLING token will be launched soon and hinted that trading will be opened soon.
Uranium Digital raises $6.1 million in crypto-backed uranium spot market, led by Framework Ventures
Alex Dolesky, founder of Uranium Digital, announced that the company has raised $6.1 million in seed rounds to accelerate the creation of a uranium spot trading platform using crypto infrastructure. The financing was led by Framework Ventures. Uranium Digital plans to become the world's first institutional market to provide uranium, an important clean energy commodity, although the uranium market has failed to mature due to strict regulation and low demand. As nuclear energy demand recovers, Dolesky believes that creating an efficient and fast spot market for uranium will welcome more institutional investors.
Decentralized trading agreement Hibachi completes seed round of $5 million
Decentralized trading agreement Hibachi announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, with Dragonfly, Electric Capital and echo participating. According to reports, Hibachi is a decentralized trading protocol designed for professional traders, emphasizing the realization of proven security through zero-knowledge (zk) mathematics.
Stable Coin Company Stable Sea completes $3.5 million in financing, led by Kindred Ventures
Stable Coin-fiat currency solutions provider Stable Sea announced a $3.5 million financing led by Kindred Ventures, with Ludlow Ventures, DFS Lab, The Venture Dept. and The Fintech Fund participating. The funding will be used to further promote Stable Sea’s mission to provide efficient, economical and compliant stablecoin withdrawal solutions.
Peregrine Exploration, the development company behind the stablecoin agreement Level, recently completed a new round of financing of US$2.6 million, led by Dragonfly Capital and participated by Polychain, with the total financing amount increasing to US$6 million. New investors include Flowdesk, Echo Syndicates, Native Crypto, Feisty Collective, as well as Frax founder Sam Kazemian and Injective co-founder Albert Chon. Level's revenue stablecoin lvlUSD has exceeded $80 million in supply since the beta launch, and plans to include Morpho as its source of income while expanding the utility of lvlUSD. Currently, users can mint lvlUSD by depositing USDC or USDT and pledging to earn income in DeFi protocols such as Aave, with an annualized rate of return of 8.3%, higher than some money market funds.
Manifest Finance, a tokenized real estate investment platform, completed a $2.5 million financing, led by VanEck, and participated by Lattice Fund, Compound and SALT funds. According to reports, Manifest is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that allows users to invest in tokenized U.S. real estate assets. By leveraging blockchain technology, Manifest provides partial ownership opportunities, enabling investors to obtain real-world assets (RWA) with lower capital requirements and higher liquidity.
Exactly Protocol completes a new round of financing of US$2 million
ExactlyProtocol, a decentralized lending protocol based on the Ethereum main network, announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$2 million, bringing its total financing to US$5 million. The latest round of financing was invested by Bodhi Ventures, Newtopia, NXTP Ventures and Kaszek Ventures, as well as Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and Decentraland co-founder Esteban Ordano. According to reports, the Exactly Protocol team has developed an open source, non-custodial DeFi protocol that provides floating and fixed interest rates to lenders, and it plans to go online on the Ethereum layer two network Optimism in the next few months.
Solana Eco-Gold Tokenization Project ORO completes US$1.5 million in Pre-Seed Series Financing
ORO, the Solana ecological gold tokenization project, announced the completion of a US$1.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by 468 Capital, and investors such as Fasset, Dead King Ventures and many angel investors participated. According to reports, ORO aims to expand real-world assets that generate returns on Solana through gold tokenization.
Web3 Games
Gamebeast brand updated to Ephyra and completes US$10.5 million Series A financing
Web3 gaming platform Game Beast announced its brand upgrade, officially renamed Ephyra, and will focus on the construction of the game ecosystem empowered by AI Agent. At the same time, Ephyra completed a US$10.5 million Series A financing, led by BECKER Ventures, and participated in the investment in the UAE and Hong Kong many Family Offices. The Ephyra ecosystem will launch a number of AI-powered gaming products and plans to launch token TGE, and more details will be announced one after another.
Mini-gaming platform PlaysOut completed a $7 million seed round of financing at a $70 million valuation. OKX Ventures, KBW Ventures and Pacific Century Group participated in the investment. The financing allows the company to focus on three key missions: expanding its mini-game ecosystem, securing strategic partnerships, and penetrating high-growth markets in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa, and Asia. According to reports, PlaysOut is a mini game platform that embeds infrastructure such as blockchain functions to help developers release mini games on superAPP platforms such as Telegram, Discord and YouTube.
Kamigotchi completes a seed round of $1.3 million
Kamigotchi, an on-chain game built on Initia's Interwoven Stack, announced a $1.3 million seed round, with investors including angel investors such as Seed Club VC, TempleDAO and DCF God.
AI
Peer Global Inc. completed a new round of financing of $10.5 million, increasing its total investment to $65.5 million. The financing, led by the Tommy Mai family office, will be used to expand Peer's development team, enhance its artificial intelligence capabilities, and refine its meta-universe platform. According to reports, Peer is a technology platform that integrates artificial intelligence to create interactive digital environments. The company launched a 3D personal planet, allowing users to create and customize digital spaces for social interaction. Peer's Metauniverse Engine provides developers with tools to build digital environments generated by AI. Peer's monetization strategy includes virtual property sales, i.e. users can purchase and personalize digital spaces.
Pluralis Research completes $7.6 million seed round, led by CoinFund and Union Square Ventures
Pluralis Research has raised $7.6 million in seed funding, led by CoinFund and Union Square Ventures, with other investors including Topology, Variant, Eden Block, Bodhi Ventures and well-known crypto investor Balaji Srinivasan. Pluralis aims to provide computing power through a decentralized blockchain network, challenging the dominance of large enterprises in the AI field. The company plans to use this fund to conduct research to see if AI models can be trained through distributed networks to avoid centralized computing resources. Founder Alexander Long, who worked as an AI engineer at Amazon, and he and his team are working to make small companies compete in AI.
Infrastructure & Tools
The Walrus Foundation announced the successful raising of $140 million, with the main investors being Standard Crypto, and other investors include a16z crypto, Electric Capital, Creditcoin, Lvna Capital, Protagonist, Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, Karatage, RW3 Ventures, Comma3 Ventures and The Raptor Group. The fundraising was completed through the sale of the Walrus protocol's cryptocurrency $WAL, which is expected to be valued at $2 billion.
The Walrus protocol was developed by Mysten Labs, a company founded by former Meta employees and is well-known for its high-speed blockchain Sui. Walrus aims to address the lack of scalability, security and flexibility of existing storage protocols by providing faster and cheaper decentralized storage. Although Walrus is still in beta, Mysten Labs has built a website hosting service based on the protocol and is scheduled to go live on March 27.
Via Science, Inc. (VIA) has completed a $28 million Series B financing to accelerate its data and identity protection platform for government and businesses. Investors in this round include Bosch Ventures (led investment), BMW i Ventures, MassMutual Ventures and Sentinel Global. New investors, together with Westly Group and some existing investors, completed the minority equity investment. According to reports, VIA's decentralized identity management combined with end-to-end anti-quantum encryption technology can ensure access and privacy of authorized parties, while achieving enterprise-level auditability and control. VIA said its decentralized, zero-trust architecture "has been rigorously tested by the US Department of Defense."
Crypto development platform Crossmint completes $23.6 million in financing, led by Ribbit Capital
Crypto development platform Crossmint announced that it has completed a US$23.6 million financing, covering seed rounds, A rounds and strategic financing, led by Ribbit Capital, with Franklin Templeton, Nyca, First Round, Lightspeed Faction and others participating. Crossmint provides API tools to help developers easily integrate encryption without having to understand blockchain technology. Currently, its customers include 40,000 companies and developers including Adidas, Red Bull, Coinbase, etc. Its stablecoin API and AI robot payment capabilities are highly favored, with subscriptions increasing by 1,100% in 2024. Crossmint plans to further expand the traditional financial and technology enterprise market and form a differentiated layout with competitors such as Alchemy.
Web3 workflow protocol Halliday completed US$20 million Series A financing, led by a16z crypto
Halliday, a developer of Web3 workflow agreement, announced the completion of a US$20 million Series A financing, led by a16z crypto. Other participants include Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Creditbly Neutral, Alt Layer and several angel investors, bringing its total financing to US$26 million. Halliday is committed to simplifying the smart contract creation process, and its infrastructure allows developers to delegate workflows to automated systems to reduce development time. The company plans to use the new fund to expand its engineering team (currently 17 people) and further develop workflow protocols and payment applications Halliday Payments. Halliday CEO Griffin Dunaif said the company's goal is to bring blockchain into the software era, enabling developers to build applications in hours rather than years, and to promote the application of secure AI systems in decentralized networks. Halliday was founded in April 2022 and is headquartered in San Francisco.
Digital asset platform Utila raised $18 million in a Series A financing round to expand its multi-party computing (MPC) wallet service to address growing institutional digital asset management needs. Nyca Partners led the round of funding, with other participants including Wing VC, NFX, Haymaker Ventures, Gaingels and Cerca Partners. Since its debut last year, the latest round of financing has brought the startup's total venture capital to about $30 million.
Crypto wallet infrastructure company Privy raises $15 million, led by Ribbit Capital
Blockchain infrastructure company Privy has raised $15 million in a new round of funding, led by Ribbit Capital, with Sequoia Capital, Paradigm and Coinbase also involved. The financing brought Privy's total financing amount to more than $40 million. Privy provides businesses with tools to connect crypto wallets to applications or websites, aiming to simplify the use of crypto wallets so that mainstream users can access the blockchain world more easily. Privy plans to use the funds to double its team size in the next 18 months, currently serving about 50 million accounts and working with more than 1,000 companies.
Multi-party computing platform Stoffel MPC completes a US$1.6 million Pre-seed round of financing
Stoffel MPC, a multi-party computing platform focusing on privacy protection, completed a US$1.6 million Pre-seed round of financing. China-raising led by Eterna Capital and Robot Ventures, and several angel investors participated in the investment. According to reports, Stoffel is a platform designed to help developers use multi-party computing (MPC) technology to build applications with privacy as the core.
Austrian bank Raiffeisen Bank invests millions of euros in crypto tax company Blockpit
Austrian bank Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) invested millions of euros in Austrian startup Blockpit, which focuses on taxation of crypto assets, through its venture capital arm Elevator Ventures. Based in Linz and led by CEO Florian Wimmer, Blockpit recently announced it was profitable in 2024, making it an attractive target for investors seeking to profit from the growing demand for compliant crypto services. The amount of RBI's investment and Blockpit's valuation have not been disclosed. Blockpit was founded in 2017 and currently has 30 employees. In 2021, the company raised $10 million in a Series A financing led by MiddleGame Ventures. In November 2023, after its merger with German rival CryptoTax in 2020, Blockpit also acquired Swiss rival Accointing in a multi-million euro deal.
other
Prediction platform:
Crypto forecasting platform Yeet completes $7.75 million in financing, Dragonfly leads investment
Crypto forecasting platform Yeet completed a $7.75 million financing, led by Dragonfly, and angel investors such as Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino participated in the investment. According to reports, Yeet was co-founded by Michael Anderson (pseudonym Mando), anonymous trader Keyboard Monkey and professional poker player Ben Lamb. It focuses on the "predictive market for crypto users", and the target users are crypto native groups with high risk preferences.
Decentralized forecasting market developer Opinion Labs announced that it had completed a $5 million seed round earlier, led by Yzi Labs, and other investors include the angel investment community Echo, Animoca Ventures, Manifold Trading, Amber Group, etc.
E-commerce:
The decentralized business network Domin Network announced that it has received strategic investments from Animoca Brands, KuCoin Labs, Web3Labs.club, IBC Group Official, DWF Ventures, Presto, Outlier Ventures, KnightFury, ThreeDAO, Awakening Ventures and AB DAO. According to reports, Domin Network is a decentralized business network that uses NFT and DePIN Rollup technology to connect software, hardware and consumer behavior data to the chain, which enables users to receive encrypted rewards by sharing their consumption data.
chaincatcher
