Venture Capital Is Noticing African CeFi
Key Takeaways
- The biggest news in venture capital this week was the $1 billion private token sale with Terra, which we wrote about in more detail in our Crypto Weekly report. Other than the Terra private sale, Centralized Finance projects took home the bacon, raising $475 million across just three projects. Infrastructure investments raised $103 million mostly in early-stage, low price tag funding rounds. Three gaming / NFT projects received $13 million. Something we are noticing is an emerging trend of venture capital investments into African-based projects, accounting for 3 of this week’s rounds.
- Active investors this week include Tiger Global, Coinbase Ventures, and Three Arrows Capital.
- Deal of the Week: Amber Group raised $200 million in a Series B that tripled its valuation to $3 billion as it targets two specific verticals for growth: retail investors and institutional asset management.
Venture Capital Deals
Flutterwave is a Nigerian fintech startup specializing in remittance payments into and out of Africa. The company raised $250 million in a Series D round that valued Flutterwave at $3 billion. The funding round was led by B Capital Group with participation from Glynn Capital, Alta Park Capital, Whale Rock Capital, and Lux Capital. The capital is mostly intended to grow the company’s user base through M&A, as well as funding development and growing new and existing products. (Flutterwave Raises $250 Million in Series D Funding Round, Startup Now Valued at Over $3 Billion)
Zebec is a crypto settlement startup on Solana that allows users to settle financial transactions in real-time, as well as payment streaming in place of one-time wallet transfers. Zebec raised a $15 million Series A round led by Solana Ventures and Distributed Global with participation from Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, and Circle, among others. The project is aiming to change the way payments are made, especially around payroll that can allow workers access to their earnings at any desired interval. (Solana-based programmable cash stream protocol Zebec raises $15 million)
Symbiosis Finance is a cross-chain liquidity protocol for swapping tokens across exchanges, currently supporting Binance, Avalanche, Ethereum, and Polygon. The project raised an undisclosed amount from Binance Labs in a strategic investment round. The funds will be used to hire more engineers and developers that will add support for more chains, as well as create an infrastructure to integrate with wallets and decentralized applications (dApps) as well. By providing dApps easy and instantaneous access to liquidity across multiple chains, Symbiosis can simplify the usability of a complex, multi-chain Web3. (Binance bets big on cross-chain liquidity with a strategic investment in Symbiosis Finance)
Worldspark Studios is a blockchain-based gaming startup founded by developers from game developer giants Riot Games, Blizzard, and Bungie. The company raised $3 million in a seed funding round led by Animoca Brands and Shima Capital. Participating investors included Alameda Ventures, Jump Capital, and AAG Ventures. Worldspark is using the funds to launch and grow its first game, Edenbrawl, which is a MOBA game similar to League of Legends and Dota 2 and will sell in-game NFTs for cosmetic enhancements such as character skins and emotes. (Worldspark Studios Raises $3M for NFT Games From Riot, Bungie Veterans)
Fast Break Labs is a basketball Play-to-Earn (P2E) game that is creating an online fantasy sports league, the Virtual Basketball Association. The company raised a $6 million seed funding round led by Pantera Capital and Patron with participation from a variety of sports and gaming individual investors. Fast Break, which is expected to launch in late March, allows players to build rosters through purchasing and trading NFTs, and then compete against others for in-game rewards. (Fast Break Labs Raises $$6M in Seed Funding Round)
Squads is a DAO infrastructure platform on Solana that provides a wide variety of products to help Web3 development teams manage project finances and workstreams. The project raised $5 million in a strategic funding round led by Multicoin Capital, with Jump Capital, Delphi Digital, and SeedClub Ventures participating, among others. The most-used function is a multi-signature wallet that requires multiple people to approve transactions. The development team remains active, launching a vault service for managing and disbursing treasury funds and a tokenless, on-chain voting system to enable distributed project governance. (Squads Raises $5 Million to Supercharge DAOs on Solana)
Jambo is a Congo-based Web3 developer building a Web3 onboarding portal to boost Africans’ adoption of crypto and metaverse-related applications. The company closed a $7.5 million seed round with participants including Coinbase Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, Alameda Research, and Tiger Global, among many others. Venture capital firms have recently been upping their funding of African startups, seeing many parallels to Southeast Asia that could lead to a similarly-rapid adoption of crypto in the region. Jambo is hoping to capitalize on this potential by being the primary Web3 interface to lead adoption. (Congo Based Startup Jambo Raises $7.5 Million in Seed Funding Round)
Foxbit is a Brazilian crypto exchange that has grown to nearly 1 million users transacting over $1.8 billion in 2021. The platform raised $25 million in a Series A led by OK Group. The fresh capital will help improve technological infrastructure including adding support for more tokens and trading products. Other goals for the funding are hiring and potential startup acquisition for user growth and product additions and improvements. (OK Group leads $21 million Series A for Brazilian exchange Foxbit)
Aligned is a Web3 infrastructure startup created by the former chief strategy officer at the crypto giant, ConsenSys. The startup closed a massive $34 million seed funding round with investors including GSR, Altium Capital, Cavalry Fund, and Ninja4, along with many notable individual investors. The primary product that Aligned offers is cloud-based hardware services for mining but is using the funding to expand operations to include creating systems specifically designed to meet the infrastructure needs of Web3 projects, more than triple its headcount, and building a staking infrastructure service for clients. (ConsenSys alum raises $34 million for his web3 infrastructure startup Aligned)
Ren Labs (REN) is the development team for Ren, one of the first cross-chain bridges that powered over $8 billion in bridging transactions in 2021. The team raised $7.5 million from Amber Group, Multicoin Capital, and BlockTower Capital, among many others. The funding will help Ren Labs build and launch a new automated market maker (AMM) that will allow users to perform single-sided liquidity staking, interact directly with users’ bank accounts, and enact smart contracts between chains that don’t necessarily have smart contract functionality themselves. (Ren Labs Raises $7.5M for ‘Catalog’ Cross-Chain Exchange)
BitsCrunch is a crypto analytics firm with a large line of business-focused in the NFT ecosystem, namely authenticating NFTs, determining fair prices, and identifying potential wash trading. The firm raised $3.6 million in a funding round with participation from Animoca Brands, Coinbase Ventures, and Crypto.com Capital, among others. BitsCrunch currently operates within Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche ecosystems, but is looking to use the fresh capital to expand to the Solana, Polkadot, and Algorand chains as well. (BitsCrunch raises $3.6M in funding for NFT analytics tools)
InfStones is a blockchain infrastructure provider that helps clients set up and manage API nodes across a variety of blockchains to help them set up on-chain data infrastructures. The company closed a $33 million Series B that saw participation from Susquehanna International Group, Dragonfly Capital, and Qiming Venture Partners, among others. The goal with the latest round is to triple the workforce in 2022 and expand support to over 100 blockchains and protocols, along with shoring up platform infrastructure and funding R&D. (Blockchain infrastructure provider InfStones closes $33 million in Series B)
Slope Finance is a Solana-based digital wallet that operates across blockchains in the Solana ecosystem, with over 850,000 active monthly users. The startup raised $8 million in a Series A led by Solana Ventures and Jump Crypto, with Sequoia China, Genesis Trading, and CMS Global participating as well, among others. Slope’s wallet is much more interactive than most other digital wallets, allowing users to access Solana Pay for e-commerce transactions, set up DeFi farming strategies, and visualize, manage, and interact with NFTs that users own. The funding will be used to develop and launch a series of products that Slope declined to provide further details on. (Solana Wallet Slope Finance Raises $8M)
Crypto Capital Markets
Bitpanda (BEST -2.87% ) is an Austrian crypto exchange that recently reached a $4 billion valuation in a funding round in August 2021. The company is acquiring Trustology, a crypto custody platform, which will make Bitpanda one of the largest crypto custodians globally. The acquisition is intended to help provide Bitpanda with new services that can boost the adoption of its prime brokerage service, Bitpanda Pro. (Bitpanda to provide crypto custody with the acquisition of FCA-approved Trustology)
Token Sales
Terra (LUNA 0.33% ) is one of the largest crypto ecosystems whose layer 1 token is currently the 9th largest by market cap and governs TerraUSD (UST) the 4th largest stablecoin by market cap. The LUNA Foundation Guard, a nonprofit that works to fund development of the platform, raised $1 billion in a private token sale that will be used as a Bitcoin-denominated Forex Reserve for UST. The sale was led by Three Arrows Capital and Jump Crypto. Because UST’s value is mostly pegged to the dollar through arbitrage incentives, the stablecoin can drift significantly from its peg during high-stress times. A recent example would be from a few weeks ago when UST reached as low as $0.9901. The reserve should help provide a decentralized reserve asset for maintaining a UST price at $1. (Terra Claims LUNA Token Sale Raised $1 Billion For BTC Reserve)
Amber Group is a Singapore-based crypto centralized finance (CeFi) platform that services institutional clients across the globe with over $5 billion in AUM as of reporting. The company reached a $3 billion valuation after raising $200 million in a Series B+ led by Temasek Holdings, with Sequoia China, Pantera Capital, and Tiger Global participating, among others.
Why is this a Big Deal
Amber Group has been an evolving company, starting out with asset management, but has created more vertical integration with a relatively new trading platform, liquidity provider services, and support for miners and validators. The company first reached unicorn status in its previous fundraise back in June 2021, getting valued at $1 billion flat. In a little under 8 months, the company tripled its valuation as it increased its AUM from $1.5 billion to over $5 billion. The capital will fund hiring for its expanding institutional services line of business in the US and Europe. Amber is also looking to grow into the retail investor space with its new retail investor app, WhaleFin, which offers high yields on users’ crypto holdings. The company has identified those two areas as the biggest areas of potential growth in their business model and is actively addressing them through fundraising and aggressive asset allocation, even considering an IPO in the US next year. (Crypto platform Amber Group hits $3 billion valuation in latest raise)
