Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 11 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (5.5-5.11); the total amount of funds exceeded US$116 million, which was a decrease compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced two investment and financing events, among which Sentora, a DeFi project formed by the merger of IntoTheBlock and Trident, completed a financing of US$25 million;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced five investment and financing events, among which the digital risk management and protection platform Doppel completed a $35 million Series B financing round, led by Bessemer;
- Centralized finance announced three investment and financing events. Fuze, a digital asset infrastructure company in the Middle East and Turkey, recently completed a $12.2 million Series A financing round led by Galaxy Digital and e& capital.
- In other applications, one investment and financing event was announced. Web3 entertainment platform T-Rex received $17 million in Pre-Seed financing and plans to launch a browser plug-in this summer.
DeFi
DeFi analysis platform IntoTheBlock and liquidity service provider Trident Digital announced a merger to form Sentora and completed a $25 million founding round of financing, led by New Form Capital, with participation from Ripple, Tribe Capital, UDHC and Joint Effects, and further support from strategic ecosystem investors such as Curved Ventures, Flare and Bankai Ventures. The new company will be led by Trident co-founder and former Coinbase risk strategy director Anthony DeMartino, and aims to provide institutional investors with one-stop on-chain financial services covering income strategies and compliance risk control.
Sentora has integrated IntoTheBlock's over $3 billion institutional-level DeFi analysis data with Trident's structured liquidity solution, and will develop a unified interface to solve the fragmentation problem of multi-chain protocol interactions. CTO Jesus Rodriguez said that its goal is to build "core infrastructure that enables DAOs, family offices and other institutions to securely access DeFi."
XWeave, a Singapore-based stablecoin cross-border payment company, announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing, led by Jungle Ventures and Lightshift, with participation from White Star Capital, Fabric Ventures, DCG, The Venture Dept., and venture capital studio Menyala. XWeave aims to combine the traditional legal currency system with the stablecoin network to support instant, compliant, and cost-effective cross-market fund flows. Its non-custodial infrastructure allows institutions to conduct cross-border transactions without the need to custody user funds. The new funds will support its expansion of the network to the Middle East and other parts of Asia.
Infrastructure & Tools
Kevin Tian, co-founder and CEO of digital risk management and protection platform Doppel, announced on the X platform that the company has completed a $35 million Series B financing round, led by Bessemer, with participation from 9Yards Capital, SOZO VENTURES, Strategic Cyber Ventures, a16z, South Park Commons, Script Capital, etc. Doppel is an AI-driven digital risk protection platform designed to protect organizations from social engineering threats such as phishing, impersonation, and deep fake fraud. The new funds will be used to support the construction of a digital protection infrastructure that combines generative AI with expert manual analysis.
Sonic Labs Completes $10 Million Strategic Financing, Led by Galaxy
Sonic Labs announced the completion of a $10 million strategic S token financing led by Galaxy. This cooperation will accelerate Sonic Labs' expansion in the US market and provide key support for the development of its DeFi ecosystem. The cooperation aims to bridge traditional finance with Sonic's high-performance blockchain infrastructure through its resources. Sonic Labs CEO Michael Kong said that Galaxy's joining will bring important market insights and resources to the ecosystem. This cooperation also reflects the confidence of institutions in the transformation of financial infrastructure by blockchain technology.
DogeOS, the application development layer of Dogecoin ecosystem, has completed a $6.9 million financing led by Polychain Capital. The project aims to provide developers with operating system-level tools based on the Dogecoin blockchain to support the development of consumer applications such as games and AI. Jordan Jefferson, CEO of the MyDoge wallet development team, said that the demand from the existing 500,000 wallet users shows that the community has strong expectations for native Dogecoin applications. This financing will accelerate the transformation of Dogecoin from a simple payment token to a multi-functional ecosystem. By simplifying the development process, DogeOS is expected to promote more DeFi and entertainment applications to integrate DOGE payments and enhance its actual usage scenarios.
GoQuant, a digital asset trading infrastructure provider, completes $4 million seed round led by GSR
GoQuant, a digital asset trading infrastructure provider, announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by crypto investment firm GSR. Copper.co, Lombard Odie, Capital Union Bank, TYR Capital and FRNT Financial participated in the investment. The new funds will be used to improve the performance of trading infrastructure and provide institutional clients with faster execution and a more transparent trading environment. It is reported that GoQuant was founded in 2022. Its trading system currently processes millions of orders per day, providing institutional clients with intelligent order routing services across centralized exchanges, decentralized platforms and over-the-counter markets. The platform integrates real-time market data, transaction cost analysis tools and risk management functions to help institutions optimize digital asset trading strategies.
Litheum, a new generation L1 blockchain protocol, announced the completion of a strategic financing of US$750,000, led by Alphemy Capital and Amber Group. This round of funds will be used to advance its testnet launch plan and further realize its vision of "compressing the cost of blockchain use to the physical limit". Litheum plans to launch a testnet next quarter to lay the foundation for its mainnet release.
It is reported that Litheum adopts an innovative PoP (Proof-of-Performance) consensus mechanism, which improves on-chain performance and cost efficiency while ensuring security and decentralization by incentivizing all core functional nodes in the network and dynamically adjusting block size and transaction fees.
Centralized Finance
Fuze, a digital asset infrastructure company in the Middle East and Turkey, recently completed a $12.2 million Series A financing round led by Galaxy Digital and e& capital. Fuze provides "digital asset as a service" infrastructure for financial institutions and enterprises in MENA and Turkey, and has launched stablecoin and payment products FuzePay. The funds will be used to accelerate regional and global expansion, product innovation and compliance. Fuze said that in the next 12 months, almost all financial institutions will adopt crypto or stablecoin services.
Real estate tokenized trading platform Alt DRX completes $2.7 million Pre-A round of financing
Alt DRX, a real estate tokenization trading platform, has completed a $2.7 million Pre-A round of financing, with investors including Qatar Development Bank, Times of India Brand Capital, Brand Capital, Hindustan Media Ventures, Zee Group, WeFounderCircle, nX Capital, etc. The financing will be used to purchase residential assets, technology development, marketing and compliance license applications. Anand Narayanan, co-founder of the company, said that this move is aimed at lowering the threshold for real estate investment and enabling more investors to participate in this asset class.
According to reports, the platform uses blockchain technology to achieve fragmented transactions of residential real estate, supports the purchase and sale of real estate interests in units of 1 square foot, and provides algorithmic pricing and instant settlement services. Alt DRX, headquartered in Bangalore, currently has an annual transaction volume of about 100,000 transactions. Investors can obtain rental income and trade their property shares through its mobile platform.
Visa invested in the stablecoin payment infrastructure platform BVNK through its venture capital arm Visa Ventures. This is Visa's first direct investment in a startup in this field, and is seen as a strong validation of the potential of stablecoins as a global payment infrastructure. BVNK currently processes $12 billion in annual volume, and its clients include Deel, dLocal and other companies.
other
Web3 consumer entertainment platform T-Rex has completed a $17 million Pre-Seed financing round, with investors including Portal Ventures, Framework Ventures and Arbitrum Gaming Ventures. The platform tracks users' content interactions on platforms such as X, TikTok, and YouTube through browser plug-ins, and obtains encrypted rewards in the form of "clicking on popcorn", using zkTLS technology to ensure privacy. T-Rex expects to launch plug-ins this summer and expand content creator and IP cooperation within the year.
