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CoinFund on Hunt for Raising $250 Million

by Blockchain NewsNovember 2, 2022

New-York based web3 investment firm CoinFund is on the hunt for raising $250 million just three months after its previous fund.

CoinFund announced that it plans to use the investment to fund seed-stage startups.

Three separate filings have shown that CoinFund’s Cayman Islands-domiciled funds aim to raise $130 million and $20 million. Meanwhile, the company’s Delaware-associated branch is looking for $100 million.

The reports suggest that the funding round is still in its infant stage, and sales have not yet occurred.

In August, CoinFund announced a $300 million fund to back early-stage blockchain projects.

The fund was backed by institutional investors, including the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, Adams Street Partners and StepStone Group.

The venture fund, which is called ‘The CoinFund Ventures I fund,’ was opened to invest in web3 firms showing commercial traction.

David Pakman, CoinFund managing partner and venture investing head, said the new would invest in crypto projects and firms that focus on layer-1 blockchains, web3 infrastructure, DeFi, NFTs and gaming, payments, assets management, exchanges, marketplaces, and decentralized applications.

Established in 2015, CoinFund has invested in over 100 portfolio firms since then. The company is one of the longest-running web3 venture capitalists and has invested an estimated $1 billion in seed-stage startups.

CoinFund’s portfolio also extends to backing Layer 1 blockchain Solana, web3 indexing protocol The Graph and blockchain infrastructure company Blockdaemon, among other startups.

Additionally, CoinFund was also a participant in developer platform Hyperlane’s $18.5 million round and crypto investment app Solvo’s $3.5 million round.

In the past, CoinFund focused on Bitcoin and seed-stage investments in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. CoinFund previously invested in firms that include NBA Top Shot creator Dapper Labs, blockchain infrastructure platform Blockdaemon, and data indexing protocol The Graph, among others.

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DEC Pulls $9M in Seed Funding to Create Decentralized Uber

by Blockchain NewsOctober 30, 2022

The Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC) has raised a seed investment of $9 million to create a decentralized Uber rival on Solana.

According to a news report, DEC said that it has raised $9 million in initial money to develop The Rideshare Protocol, or TRIP, which is intended to fuel ridesharing apps from a variety of potential businesses and Teleport will be used as the first application to test this setup.

The CEO of DEC and Founder of Teleport, Paul Bohm highlighted that while Uber is built on a centralized platform that connects drivers to passengers, TRIP is intended to be a decentralized protocol that multiple app developers can use as a marketplace to connect drivers and passengers.

Bohm believes this will foster collaboration and competition, luring consumers away from the titanic business models of Uber and Lyft while driving companies to develop to create the best software imaginable around a shared marketplace.

Foundation Capital and Road Capital jointly led the seed round, which also included Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal.

DEC will use the seed cash to fuel its deployment in the coming months with Teleport and TRIP performing demonstrations at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Lisbon in November and Art Basel Miami in December.

Bohm estimated that the project will be fully ready for implementation within 6 to 9 months as DEC seeks to test the model.

Partnership with Solana Network

Solana was established in 2017 as a fully open-source public blockchain with the goal of offering scalable decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions.

In 2021, the Solana Foundation collaborated with ROK Capital, a significant South Korean blockchain accelerator, to jointly launch a $20 million fund to develop the Solana blockchain ecosystem in South Korea.

Phantom, Solana’s bitcoin wallet, also received a $109 million Series B investment early in 2022. The seed fund was led by Paradigm, a cryptocurrency firm.

In recent news, over 81% of the Helium Foundation has approved the migration of its decentralized network to the Solana blockchain after a successful community vote.

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Tagged : Blockchain / DECENTRALIZED ENGINEERING CORPORATION / Finance / Solana / TELEPORT / Uber

Citi Ventures Makes First Crypto Investment in Hong Kong-Based Digital Asset Manager

by Blockchain NewsOctober 21, 2022

Xalts, a Hong Kong-based digital-asset management firm, has raised US$6 million in a capital financing round co-led by Citi Ventures and a California-based venture-capital firm Accel.

While this is the first digital asset seed investment made by CITIGROUP’S venture capital investing group, Accel previously funded technology firms that include Facebook and Spotify.

Luis Valdich, a Managing Director at Citi Ventures, talked about the development: “The world has changed a lot, you know, with the macro environments, and obviously, markets have been suffering as a result of that. Obviously, we are very prudent in terms of where to and how to deploy capital, but we’re absolutely active with lots of opportunities not only outside of digital assets but also within the digital asset space, which we believe is here to stay.”

Other investors who also participated in the funding round include Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and other hedge fund managers.

With the fresh funding, Xalts wants to take advantage of what it stated is increased institutional participation in the crypto ecosystem despite this year’s plunge in the prices of digital assets. The firm said it will use the capital to launch multiple fund products tied to digital assets, including mutual funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds) listed on global exchanges.

Ashutosh Goel, the Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Xalts, said his company is expanding its footprints to multiple locations, including Dubai, Singapore, and New Delhi. The other co-founder is the former Meta Asia executive Supreet Kaur.

Citi’s investment in the digital asset firm signals a continued push by banks to grab a piece of the booming $2 trillion crypto market. In June, UK-based Barclays invested an undisclosed sum somewhere in the “millions of dollars” into crypto custody firm Copper’s latest funding raise.

Banks (such as London-based Standard Chartered, BNY Mellon, Citibank, UBS, BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Nomura) are the ones leading in terms of size of funding rounds as a proxy of investment into the crypto space.

Given increased client demand, banks are seeking to increase their exposure to blockchain and crypto services. This has led them to make investments in crypto trading, custody, and asset management.

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Tagged : ACCEL / CITI VENTURES / Digital Asset / Finance / Funding / Investment / XALTS

P2E Arcade2Earn Raises $3.2M in Seed Funding Led by Crypto.com Capital

by Blockchain NewsOctober 20, 2022

Arcade2Earn has earned $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Crypto.com Capital.

The play-to-earn (P2E) gaming platform – built on the Solana blockchain – also announced that other investors included Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, KuCoin Labs and GSR.

According to Arcade co-founder Jaleel Menifee, the funding was realised via a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). The company’s utility token is also known by the same name, arcade.

According to research, funding for web3 investments has fallen this year, however, gaming projects have remained valuable or popular as most venture funding has gone to NFTs and gaming in the third quarter.

Arcade claims a unique selling point, it says that it has a unique concept called “mission pools” which allows gamers to make money without owning NFTs.

According to the company, users who have gained approval from the company can be a mission pool operator and gain access to games using NFTs owned by Arcade’s treasury or lent to Arcade. Later, they can be used to generate rewards.

Furthermore, mission pool contributors can become arcade token holders who get to decide which operators and in-game activities they wish to support by depositing their xarcade tokens in a mission pool.

“Not everyone is good at playing or has time to play games and earn,” Xinlu Yu, head of KuCoin Labs, said in a statement. “This is where Arcade fills the gap by enabling those groups of people to enjoy earning yields through their specific products without directly playing the games themselves.”

Currently, Arcade has 20 people working for the company, including its six co-founders. Menifee has also said that the Arcade platform is currently under development and its demo has been scheduled to launch before the end of this year.

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Tagged : ARCADE2EARN / Blockchain / Crypto / Finance / NFT / P2E / Web3

India’s Shardeum Closes $18.2M Seed Funding Round, Valuation at $199M

by Blockchain NewsOctober 19, 2022

India-based Shardeum ended its $18.2 million seed funding, raising a valuation of $199 million.

According to Sharedeum, co-founded by Indian exchange WazirX’s founder and blockchain architect Omar Syed, the seed round had over 50 investors who participated, including Spartan Group, Big Brain Holdings, Jane Street and Foresight Ventures.

The funding round was conducted through a private token sale, and the company is expected to launch in the first quarter of next year and will later stage a public token sale.

Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of Coinbase, said, “I invested in Shardeum as I think they are trying an interesting approach to scaling, which increases TPS as more validation nodes are added.”

In comparison, Shardeum’s $18 million raise is an adequate size for a seed round in the third quarter of the year as the amount is closer to the average Series A check size, which comes in at $22.8 million.

According to the company, the new funds will be used for increased marketing efforts and upgrading the development team.

In order to provide incentives to developers to build on the ecosystem, Shardeum plans to host hackathons in India and the US.

Previously, the startup announced that it aimed to raise $18 million at a $200 valuation in August.

The company is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform. It uses dynamic state-sharding technology in pursuit of efficiency gains and to scale the network.

Sharding also further helps split blockchain infrastructure into smaller pieces. It helps increase block space for more transactions and reduces gas fees.

According to the company’s announcement, the system has been designed to eliminate user experience issues faced by users and developers of existing and shared blockchains.

Shetty said in a statement, “the blockchain trilemma has been a difficult problem to solve, and scalability is the most significant factor, preventing wider crypto adoption, especially in emerging markets like India.”

He added, “the web3 ecosystem has been on a massive growth spree. For web3 to onboard 1 billion users in the next few years, we need a scalable L1 blockchain which ensures 1 cent fees forever while maintaining decentralization. Shardeum aims to make that happen.”

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Tagged : Crypto / Finance / Funding / SHARDEUM / Wazirx

Chainsafe Raises $18.75m to Advance Adoption & Sustainable Growth in Web 3

by Blockchain NewsOctober 19, 2022

Canadian-based Blockchain research and development firm Chainsafe has raised $18.75 million in oversubscribed Series A funding backed by prominent industry venture firms, including a Canadian venture capital firm, Round13.

According to the announcement, this funding will be used to expand its operation and foster the adoption and sustainable growth of the web3 ecosystem by building long-lasting blockchain development tools. Other investors included in the funding are NGC Ventures, HashKey Capital, Sfermion, Jsquare, ConsenSys, Digital Finance Group and Fenbushi Capital.

Launched in 2017, Chainsafe is a blockchain infrastructure firm co-founded by Aidman Hyman and Hatcher Lipton at an Ethereum meetup in Toronto. The firm started at a time when the blockchain industry was still very much at its beginning and in need of better development tools.

“We have been close to Chainsafe in the early days when decentralized protocols were defining themselves and coming into their own,” said Joe Lubin in the announcement. He added, “This raise enables Chainsafe to continue on its path of thoughtful synergistic protocol and product development.”

Chainsafe has been the developer behind multiple projects across chains. One of its recent projects includes web3.unity, a software development kit (SDK) for connecting Unity games to blockchain technologies and cross-chain bridging solutions.

Despite the extreme market conditions, Chainsafe is not the only firm getting fundraisers. On Monday, Tapio Protocol, a synthetic asset Polkadot-based protocol, acquired a total of $4 million in funding to foster staking and crowd-loan derivatives efficiency on the Polkadot blockchain.

Investors in the seed round funding included Spartan, LongHash, 0xVentures, CMS, D1 Ventures, 11–11 DG Partners, Genblock, Valhalla, PAKA, and Double Peak.

In addition, last week, Blockchain.News reported Uniswap Labs raked in a sum of $165 million in Series B funding to focus on releasing new products. The funding round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from longtime investors a16z crypto, Paradigm, SV Angel, and Variant.

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Tagged : CHAINSAFE / Finance / Funding / Web3

MetaStreet Raises $10M in Seed Funds to Launch New Products

by Blockchain NewsOctober 16, 2022

MetaStreet, a provider of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) debt, has raised $10 million in a recent capital fund round according to a news report.

The company is expected to use the money to develop trust, credit, and ownership products that facilitate debt and strengthen the lending infrastructure of the NFT sector.

The first product that will be launched is called the ‘PowerSweep’, an NFT trading platform to further expand and bring in new users. With the addition of the $14 million in total initial money obtained in February, MetaStreet has now raised a total of $24 million.

DragonFly Capital, Nascent, and Ethereal Ventures, which previously supported MetaStreet, are among the investors in the round while OpenSea Ventures, Fintech Collective, DCG, TheLAO, Focus Labs, Mirana Ventures, Metaversal, Ledgerprime, Meta4, Flying Falcon were among the new investors that took part in the recently fund round.

MetaStreet is an NFT platform that scales up global trust, credit, and separate ownership of digital goods.

“At such an early stage in the Metaverse’s development, we’re lucky to be firmly embedded in NFT finance, since it lets us experiment with new technologies that can provide substantial benefit to users, almost instantly,” says Co-founder and CEO of MetaStreet Conor Moore.

The Commitment of DragonFly and OpenSea in the Digital Space

The recent funding from Dragonfly comes as a fulfillment of their commitment to fund projects in the diverse digital ecosystem during the launch of a new venture capital fund worth $650 million. According to Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner of DragonFly Capital, the funds will be distributed out across the board, from Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to gaming and the metaverse, rather than being concentrated in one particular area of the digital currency ecosystem.

Blockchain gaming platform SludgeFeed has partnered with OpenSea, a well-known online marketplace for crypto collectibles, to promote the use of blockchain gaming by displaying pertinent products on its framework. By working together, OpenSea will provide SludgeFeed with technical assistance as it develops a special non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that seamlessly ties into its platform and content.

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Tagged : DRAGONFLY CAPITAL / Finance / METASTREET / OPENSEA VENTURES

BTC Mining Hardware Startup Fabric Systems Raises $13M

by Blockchain NewsOctober 14, 2022

Fabric Systems, a bitcoin mining hardware startup, has raised $13 million in a seed round fund.

Participants in the funding round were bitcoin miner TeraWulf, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn’s fund Metaplanet, Blockchain.com and 8090 Partners.

The company has said that the funds will be used to fund the development of two core launch products, including a liquid immersion-cooled ASIC machine.

Fabric Systems claims these products will achieve an energy efficiency of 20 watts per terahash (watts/TH).

According to the company, their launch product, an immersion-cooling ASIC, is a type of machine which is submerged in liquid of a certain type instead of being cooled via air with traditional fans.

Although immersion-cooling ASIC machine types of cooling technology have been around for a long time, they have been used more recently in the crypto industry by companies like Argo and Riot at a large scale in Texas.

These cooling machines guarantee to “outperform every existing bitcoin miner in today’s existing marketplace” in terms of energy efficiency. They are also engineered to achieve an energy efficiency of 20 watts/TH.

According to bitcoin mining firm Luxor, these machines are divided into three efficiency tiers: “Old-generation” ASICs are classified as over 68 J/TH, “mid-generation” as 38-to-68 J/TH and “latest generation” as under 38 J/TH. The measure of joules is interchangeable with watts.

Fabric Systems also said their machine will enter production in the latter half of 2023, while the shipments will start in the third quarter.

Co-founder and CEO Michael Gao said the software and hardware products are “a culmination of years of R&D since 2019.”

Previously, Gao founded Luminous Computing, a photonic AI supercomputing startup backed by Bill Gates, which got over $130 million in funding.

At the early age of 15, Gao discovered bitcoin in 2011 and founded a bitcoin mining operation from his dorm room.

The other co-founder of Fabrics Systems, Sagar Reddy, is the chief technology officer. He has 22 years of technical leadership in full-custom chip design and systems architecture.

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Tagged : #BTC / Bitcoin / Blockchain / FABRICSSYSTEMS / Finance / Mining

Uniswap Labs Rakes in $165M in Series B as Valuation Hits $1.66B

by Blockchain NewsOctober 13, 2022

Uniswap Labs has landed the sum of $165 million in Series B funding as it looks to focus on the release of new products.

According to the protocol’s founder, Hayden Adams, the funding round was led by Polychain Capital and with participation from longtime investors a16z crypto, Paradigm, SV Angel, and Variant.

With the funding, Uniswap has now further extended its position as a crypto unicorn, signaling a massive shift from a protocol that was created as an experiment back in 2018 to one that is very critical in the transfer and exchange of value in the digital currency world. With the latest funding round, Uniswap has increased its valuation to $1.66 billion.

According to Hayden, the Uniswap vision is expanding and the funding will be used to accelerate growth across various verticals. He noted that the iconic Decentralized Exchange (DEX) engine is pushing to reach more users globally and to float new products including Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), creating a web app and developer tools, and moving into mobile amongst many other innovations already outlined.

The latest capital injection will help achieve its goals in this regard as Hayden pointed out and per the community prompting, the protocol said it has earmarked the sum of $60 million to help drive the building of new solutions by using it to support developers in its ecosystem.

The Uniswap protocol has been used to process as much as $1.2 trillion in transactions and the Uniswap V3 engine ranks as the 4th largest DEX per transaction volume according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Many protocols have been restrategizing their business models with new funding and management reshuffle. Earlier this week, competing DEX platform, dYdX appointed Charles d’Haussy from ConsenSys to help lead its Foundation as it also seeks new growth potentials across several markets.

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Tagged : Finance / Series B Funding / UNISWAP LABS / Uniswap V3

Blockchain Infrastructure Provider Tatum Secures $41.5M Funding

by Blockchain NewsOctober 12, 2022

Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) provider, Tatum has landed $41.5 million in funding, receiving the needed capital backing to expand its business offerings.

Riding on its current track record in the industry, Tatum’s funding was led by Equity Partners with support from other renowned venture firms including Octopus Ventures, 3VC, Tensor Ventures, Depo Ventures, Leadblock Fund, Circle, and founders of Bitpanda.

The startup’s valuation was undisclosed, however, judging by the current adoption level of its offering, Tatum has undoubtedly carved a niche for itself in the blockchain world. The platform helps developers cut down the time, and complications and to shorten the time with which they develop and launch new blockchain applications.

The simplification solution provided by Tatum is currently being used by 90,000 clients and the firm said it gets an average of 7000 new clients per month.

“Blockchain has proven essential to the explosive growth and broad innovation of digital finance and Web 3.0,” said Jiri Kobelka, co-founder and chief executive officer, Tatum. “Tatum is the first company to squarely address the complexities, necessary technological expertise, and lengthy development times that blockchain applications require. We have revolutionized blockchain application creation by slashing development times from months or years of engineering time down to just days.”

With the new capital injection, Tatum said it will place additional focus on its marketing, educational focus, and the building of its community. The startup will also seek to build new capacities as it was able to complete its platform when it previously secured $8 million in funding from investors.

With more developers making their way into the Web3.0 ecosystem, the role being assumed by Tatum is becoming a major consideration for most innovators. In all, Tatum seeks to use the capital boost to keep being the go-to platform for both Fortune 500 companies and startups looking to make their way into the Web3.0 world.

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Tagged : Baas / EQUITY PARTNERS / Finance / TATUM