DeFi Takes the Reins
Funding saw a sharp decrease this week as we progress through the final month of the year. This week's fundraising total was $57 million compared to $198 million last week. DeFi was the bright spot in the lackluster week, representing 37% of all fundraising. A trend is emerging around decentralized trading platforms. Perennial, a cash-settled derivatives protocol, and Panoptic, a perpetual options protocol, represented two of the three DeFi deals this week.
Nearly half of the deals this week were Seed round investments, with Pre-Seed and Strategic rounds being tied for the next most popular deal type. There was one acquisition this week, with Aave Companies acquiring NFT avatar company Sonar. They plan to integrate Sonar’s NFT avatars with Lens Protocol’s decentralized profile system to create a seamless digital identity. Additionally, Sonar’s executive team will join Aave’s to help continue building Web3 experiences powered by Lens.
Deal of The Week
Perennial, a cash-settled derivatives protocol that allows developers to launch any synthetic market, raised $12M in a Seed Round led by Polychain Capital and Variant, with participation from Archetype, Coinbase Ventures, and Robot Ventures, among others. Perennial offers a promising solution to de...Reports you may have missed
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