Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 17 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (June 16-June 22); the total scale of funds exceeded US$183 million. In addition, the total amount of financing for listed companies' crypto asset reserves reached US$1.29 billion. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced three investment and financing events, among which the blockchain project TAC raised a total of US$11.5 million in two rounds of financing, with investors including Hack VC;
- The Web3 game track announced two investment and financing events, among which Thousands and The Wildcard Alliance have jointly raised $6.5 million, led by Paradigm and others;
- Web3+AI announced three investment and financing events, among which the decentralized AI infrastructure project Gradient Network completed a $10 million seed round of financing, led by Pantera Capital and others;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced 6 investment and financing events, among which the stablecoin startup Ubyx completed a $10 million seed round of financing, led by Galaxy Ventures;
- Centralized finance announced two investment and financing events, among which XFX, an institutional-level cross-border settlement platform, announced the completion of a $9.1 million round of financing, led by HAUN Ventures.
DeFi
The blockchain project TAC announced that it has raised a total of $11.5 million in seed and strategic rounds of financing, with the latest $5 million strategic round led by Hack VC. The project aims to provide EVM-compatible DeFi infrastructure for the TON and Telegram ecosystems, and plans to gradually open up functions through phased mainnet launches. TAC has specially developed a Telegram mini-application interface that allows traditional users to use DeFi services directly within the communication software.
Nook, a crypto savings app founded by three former Coinbase engineers, has raised $2.5 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures, defy.vc and UDHC. Nook aims to make it easier for non-crypto native users to increase their cryptocurrency holdings through services such as Aave, and aims to simplify the crypto lending process. Users only need to register with an email address to lend cryptocurrencies through the partner platform Moonwell to earn income.
DeFi protocol BitVault announced the completion of a $2 million pre-seed round of financing, with strategic investors including GSR, Gemini, Auros and Keyrock. The financing will support the launch of the Bitcoin derivatives overcollateralized stablecoin bvUSD and the yield-based variant sbvUSD. BitVault will be deployed as a core protocol on the Katana chain incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, using the Liquity V2 licensed fork technology to support institutional-level lending and automated liquidation. GSR will provide a delta-neutral arbitrage strategy for its yield-based stablecoin. The protocol plans to launch the mainnet at the end of June and will expand to more BTC collateral assets in the future.
Web3 Games
Thousands and The Wildcard Alliance have jointly raised $6.5 million, led by Paradigm and others
Web3 protocol Thousands announced that it and its sister company, Web3 game development company The Wildcard Alliance, are jointly raising $9 million. Arbitrum Gaming Ventures and Paradigm jointly led this round of investment, and have raised $6.5 million so far, with the remaining financing expected to be completed within 60 days. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of an integrated ecosystem and realize innovative models of creator incentives and user acquisition through blockchain technology.
Base game startup Uptopia completes $4 million financing, led by Pantera Capital
Uptopia, the Basechain ecosystem game startup platform, announced the completion of a $4 million financing round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Spartan and Coinbase Ventures. In addition, the official announcement was made that The Factory will be officially upgraded and launched on June 18.
DePIN
DePIN project SparkChain AI completes $10.8 million financing, led by OakStone Ventures
SparkChain AI, a DePIN project, announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$10.8 million, led by OakStone Ventures. The new funds will be used to support its expansion of the decentralized AI computing network and accelerate its launch on the Solana blockchain to develop a decentralized contributor network. SparkChain AI's decentralized artificial intelligence infrastructure supports the conversion of idle bandwidth and computing resources into AI computing power, and reconstructs and monetizes global unstructured data through a network composed of nodes, routers, and intelligent data processors.
AI
Robot intelligence platform PrismaX has completed a $11 million seed round led by a16z crypto CSX, with participation from Volt Capital, Stanford Blockchain Accelerator, Symbolic Capital and Virtuals Protocol. PrismaX aims to solve the main challenges of the physical AI and robotics industries: data, models and expansion. It focuses on building a decentralized data incentive mechanism, promoting the standardization of robot vision data and the development of remote control infrastructure, with the goal of achieving efficient training and large-scale deployment of physical AI models.
The decentralized AI infrastructure project Gradient Network announced the completion of a $10 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Pantera Capital and Multicoin Capital, with participation from HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and several well-known angel investors and consultants from AI, encryption and other fields. This financing will accelerate the development and implementation of its core infrastructure protocols. It is reported that Gradient aims to create a decentralized AI that is jointly participated and driven by a large number of users. It will launch two of its core protocols this week, namely the decentralized data communication protocol Lattica and the decentralized reasoning engine Parallax.
PublicAI, a Web3-driven artificial intelligence company, announced that it has completed $10 million in financing (including $2 million in seed round financing and $8 million in Series A financing). The latest financing was participated by Saudi Telecom Group, Blockchain Builders Fund, Tykhe Blocks Ventures, NEAR Foundation, Taisu Ventures, MH Ventures, Yield Guild Games (YGG), CSP DAO, IBC Group, G20, Whitewater Labs and UXLink. The company builds an "AI artificial verification layer" through blockchain technology, has established a global network of millions of data contributors, and has generated more than $14 million in customer revenue.
PublicAI will launch the first decentralized brainwave acquisition device HeadCap for brain-computer interface research and development. Founder Kenji Narushima said that the platform is committed to obtaining real human data through a reasonable compensation mechanism to solve the performance degradation problem caused by AI models relying on synthetic data. The company is an incubation project of the Stanford Blockchain Accelerator, focusing on innovation in the intersection of blockchain and AI.
Infrastructure & Tools
Eigen Labs launches EigenCloud platform and receives $70 million investment from a16z crypto
Eigen Labs announced the launch of the EigenCloud platform, which aims to provide blockchain-level trust for Web2 and Web3 applications. The platform is based on the EigenLayer re-staking protocol and integrates data availability, general computing, and dispute resolution. In addition, a16z crypto purchased EIGEN tokens for $70 million, continuing its investment layout after the $100 million Series B financing in February 2024.
The alpha version of the platform has been launched, and test network data shows that its data availability layer throughput reaches 50MB/s. EigenCloud plans to expand blockchain technology to traditional fields such as medical records and machine learning through the "verifiability as a service" model. The platform is currently being gradually opened to developers and is expected to be fully launched by the end of 2025. Founder Sreeram Kannan said that the platform will narrow the gap between developer needs and blockchain capabilities.
Stablecoin startup Ubyx completes $10 million seed round led by Galaxy Ventures
Ubyx, a stablecoin startup founded by former Citigroup executive Tony McLaughlin, has completed a $10 million seed round of financing, led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, Paxos and VanEck. The company is committed to building a clearing system that connects stablecoin issuers with banks and fintech companies to solve interoperability issues in payment scenarios. Ubyx plans to establish a global stablecoin acceptance network similar to Visa and Mastercard, enabling stablecoins issued by various institutions to circulate across platforms. Its system will support blockchains such as Solana, Base, Canton and XRP Ledger, and has reached cooperation with stablecoin issuers such as Paxos and Ripple. The network is expected to be launched at the end of the year, and will also be compatible with other digital asset forms such as central bank digital currencies in the future.
Blockchain startup Units.Network completes $10 million financing, led by Nimbus Capital
Blockchain startup Units.Network has completed a $10 million financing round, led by Nimbus Capital, with other investors not disclosed. The project is based on the Waves protocol, and the funds will be used for infrastructure upgrades and AI product development. Newly developed products include AI Launchpad and AI Liquidity Manager, which are planned to be launched this year. The former aims to lower the threshold for developers, while the latter focuses on optimizing on-chain market liquidity. The project recently launched a performance funding plan through the community DAO to incentivize application development. Part of the funds will also be used to expand the capacity of verification nodes and improve cross-chain liquidity.
Project Eleven raises $6 million to develop tools to protect Bitcoin from quantum attacks
Project Eleven, a development company focused on post-quantum cryptography, has raised $6 million in funding, led by Variant Fund and quantum technology investment firm Quantonation. The funds will be used to develop tools to resist quantum computing attacks and protect the security of digital assets such as Bitcoin. The company's first product, the Yellowpages encrypted registry, has completed the Cure 53 audit, allowing users to bind existing Bitcoin addresses to new quantum-resistant addresses without relying on on-chain activity.
The crypto platform Stackup, founded by former SpaceX mission manager John Rising, has completed a $4.2 million seed round of financing, led by 1kx, with participation from three other companies including Y Combinator and Digital Currency Group. The platform provides enterprises with a "centralized control of decentralized assets" solution through account abstraction technology, supporting functions such as spending limits and batch transaction audits. Rising emphasized the importance of system security design with his experience in aerospace engineering, pointing out that the current crypto field is overly focused on security protection and ignores operational safety. The Stackup team currently consists of 4 people, and its technology has previously been used in wallet development for Coinbase and Trust Wallet.
Defx, a privacy-focused L1 blockchain project, has completed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with participation from Pantera Capital, CMT Digital, gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), Baboon VC, CoinShares Ventures, Robot Ventures, Cadenza, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Liminal founder Mahin Gupta and others. According to reports, Defx is a decentralized exchange based on a Layer 1 blockchain optimized for high-performance perpetual contract trading. In the private "dark pool" execution environment, order information is encrypted using zero-knowledge proof technology, while ensuring on-chain verifiability.
Centralized Finance
XFX, an institutional-level cross-border settlement platform, announced the completion of a $9.1 million round of financing, led by HAUN Ventures, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Oak HC/FT, MAYA Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Paxos and Bitso. According to reports, XFX is an institutional-level cross-border settlement platform that supports real-time and transparent flows of fiat currencies and stablecoins.
UAE-based SaturnX announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing, led by White Star Capital. The company provides a stablecoin-based API cross-border payment platform, supporting major remittance channels from the Middle East to South Asia, and has processed transactions exceeding $250 million in 5 months and achieved profitability. This round of funds will be used to expand the Southeast Asian and African markets, strengthen compliance and technology platform construction.
other
Crypto asset reserves ( this type of financing is not included in this issue's financing weekly report statistics) :
LGHL receives $600 million in financing from ATW Partners to launch HYPE Treasury
Lion Group Holding (NASDAQ: LGHL) announced that it has received $600 million in financing from ATW Partners, which will be used to launch its on-chain treasury plan based on Hyperliquid (HYPE) and restart its crypto business. LGHL plans to use HYPE, Solana and Sui as core reserve assets and seek secondary listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Singapore Exchange in the future. The assets will be managed and pledged by BitGo.
DDC Enterprise (NYSE: DDC, also known as DayDayCook), a cross-border consumer goods e-commerce group, announced that it has signed three securities purchase agreements to raise a total of no more than US$528 million, which will be mainly used to expand its Bitcoin reserves. The financing includes three parts: US$26 million equity PIPE investment (investors include Animoca Brands, Kenetic Capital, etc.), US$300 million convertible secured notes (invested by Anson Funds) and US$200 million equity credit line.
Kindly MD, Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA), which had previously announced plans to merge with Bitcoin native holding company Nakamoto Holdings Inc., announced that it has completed an additional $51.5 million in private equity public offering financing ("PIPE financing") to support its plans to build a Bitcoin reserve. To date, KindlyMD has raised approximately $563 million through PIPE financing, and a total of approximately $763 million including convertible bonds. David Bailey, founder and CEO of Nakamoto, said the company will continue to execute its strategy to raise as much money as possible to buy as much Bitcoin as possible. The net proceeds from the PIPE financing will be used by KindlyMD to purchase Bitcoin, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes.
Eyenovia invests $50 million to establish HYPE Reserve, the company will be renamed "Hyperion DeFi"
Eyenovia, a Nasdaq-listed company focused on the development of digital ophthalmic medical technology, announced the completion of a $50 million PIPE financing, which will be used to purchase Hyperliquid's native token HYPE, and plans to become one of its major global verification nodes. The transaction is expected to raise a total of $150 million, and the company will also be renamed "Hyperion DeFi" and its stock code will be changed to "HYPD". The new chief investment officer, Hyunsu Jung, will be responsible for executing the crypto treasury strategy. Eyenovia will also continue to advance its FDA registration plan for ophthalmic devices, with the goal of completing it in September 2025.
London-listed The Smarter Web Company (AQUIS: SWC) has raised £29.3 million (approximately $37.1 million) in an oversubscribed equity financing. The proceeds will be used to support the continued accumulation of Bitcoin treasury reserves.
K33 announced the successful completion of a private placement, raising a total of approximately 125 million Swedish kronor (approximately 11.5 million US dollars), all of which will be used to purchase Bitcoin as company assets. This is part of its Bitcoin reserve strategy, which aims to improve operating leverage, profit margins and institutional cooperation capabilities. The dilution ratio of this additional issuance is approximately 9%. The company plans to quickly accumulate 1,000 BTC.
The Blockchain Group raises €7.2 million to advance Bitcoin Vault strategy
The Blockchain Group (ALTBG), a European listed company, announced that it has completed approximately 7.2 million euros in financing through an ATM-style capital increase agreement with TOBAM, issuing 1.6 million new shares at an average price of 4.49 euros per share. The funds raised will be used to continue to advance its "Bitcoin Treasury Company" strategy, aiming to increase the number of bitcoins held per share in the long term. Three funds under TOBAM subscribed to the shares, including TOBAM Bitcoin CO2 Offset Fund, Bitcoin Treasury Opportunities Fund and Blockchain Equity Fund.
Vinanz, a UK-listed bitcoin mining company, has raised £3.58 million from investors, of which £3.03 million was raised through retail investment platform WRAP and the remaining £550,000 came from direct institutional subscriptions, to expand its bitcoin holdings and mining operations.
Fintech company BD Multimedia raises €1 million to launch “Bitcoin Vault” strategy
BD Multimedia ($ALBDM), a fintech company headquartered in Paris, France, successfully raised 1 million euros through the issuance of convertible bonds (OCA), officially launching the "Bitcoin Treasury Company" strategy. The funds raised will be invested 100% in Bitcoin, with a conversion price of 12 euros (48.1% premium over the current price), and the dilution rate will be controlled within 1%. The strategy has been approved by the French ACPR and PSAN regulators.
