Venture capital funding volume for crypto projects rose by 53% in a month

What’s new? In March, 180 crypto projects received venture funding, up 24% and 71,4% respectively compared to February and the same reporting period last year. According to analyst Colin Wu, these projects come from the categories of Web 3.0 (90 pieces), NFT gaming (24), decentralized (18), and centralized finance (5), as well as Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks (16), wallets and other tools (12), AI solutions (8) and real asset tokenization platforms (7). In total, they raised $1,16 billion, up 52,6% and 27,5% year-on-year between February this year and March last year.

Colin Wu’s report

What else is known? The largest round was Optimism Foundation, an NGO, raising $89 million by selling 19,51 million governance tokens of the Optimism (OP) blockchain to six private investors. The blocking period for these coins is two years, with holders being able to transfer them to unaffiliated third parties for management during that period.

Next is Zama, a crypto company specializing in blockchain and AI encryption technologies, which raised $73 million in a Series A round led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, Vsquared Ventures, and Stake Capital. That said, its valuation remains unknown. Zama was also backed at launch by Juan Benet (founder of Filecoin), Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana), and Gavin Wood (Ethereum, Polkadot).

In February, the team of the Shiba Inu meme token implemented fully homomorphic encryption technology with the help of Zama.

Web 3.0 startup Polyhedra Network’s valuation hits $1 billion in new funding round

The funds raised in the round will be used for the global expansion of the business

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Decentralized Finance (DeFi)-focused blockchain Layer 1 (L1) Berachain has completed a funding round of more than $69 million led by Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures. The project raised funds through token sales, reaching a valuation of $1,5 billion. In April 2023, Berachain raised $42 million from Polychain Capital, OKX Ventures, and others.

Figure Markets, launched by Figure Technologies as an independent platform, raised $60 million in a Series A round led by Jump Crypto, Pantera Capital, and Lightspeed Faction. Figure Markets is developing decentralized cryptocurrency and securities markets based on the Provenance blockchain and creating a regulated alternative to stablecoins.

Former members of the MakerDAO and Circle teams will launch the M ^ 0 protocol for issuing stablecoins

The project raised $22,5 million led by Pantera Capital

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Web 3.0 infrastructure company Succinct has raised $55 million in funding led by Paradigm and with participation from Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Geometry, ZK Validator, Polygon co-founders Sandeep Nailwal and Daniel Lubarov, and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan. Succinct develops solutions based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology.

Eclipse Labs raised $50 million in a Series A round from Placeholder and Hack VC, as well as Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Maven 11, DBA, Fenbushi Capital, Flow Traders, GSR, Global Management, and OKX Ventures. The company will use these funds to develop a Layer 2 (L2) network based on the Ethereum blockchain with support for the Solana Blockchain Virtual Machine (SVM). This will integrate the high performance of SVM with the high liquidity of Ethereum. The Eclipse team plans to launch the mainnet in Q2 2024.

Memeland team launches the Memenet blockchain to issue meme tokens

The MEME token will be used to pay for transactions on the network

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Infrastructure Web 3.0 company 0G Labs has raised $35 million from Hack VC, Alliance, Animoca Brands, Delphi Digital, Stanford Builders Fund, Symbolic Capital, and OKX Ventures. NFT card game Parallel has received a similar amount from Solana Ventures, Distributed Global, OSS Capital, VanEck, and Focus Labs. Game developer Gunzilla Games closed a $30 million round co-led by CoinFund and Blizzard Fund, owned by blockchain team Avalanche, and backed by Republic Capital and Morningstar Ventures.

Threshold Network launches the thUSD stablecoin backed by BTC and ETH

The one-time fee for issuing the asset will be 0,5%

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The March protocol closes the top ten leaders io.net Based on Solana. It raised $30 million in a Series A round from Hack VC, M13, Delphi Digital, Solana Labs, Aptos Labs, Foresight Ventures, Longhash, SevenX, Animoca Brands, MH Ventures, and OKX. As well as Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Aptos founders Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching. As a result, the project acquired the status of a unicorn with an estimated value of $1 billion. The funds raised will be used to create a decentralized network of graphics processors and implement AI solutions in the computing process.