Building Foundations
Funding saw an uptick this week, with the total amount rising to $280 million from $242 million last week. Infrastructure had a dominant week, comprising nearly 87% of all dollars raised. Most funding came from a $200 million Series C round by Matter Labs (this week’s deal of the week). The next largest deal was a $28 million deal by Arkon Energy. Arkon Energy is a data center infrastructure and Bitcoin mining company focused on renewable and sustainable energy. The $28 million deal will be used to expand its mining capacity during a time when traditional mining companies are struggling to keep the lights on due to increasing energy costs. The focus on renewable and cheap energy is paying off for Arkon and could be a signal for the future of mining companies.
Deal counts were primarily concentrated in Seed and Pre-Seed deals, which totaled 42% and 14% of deals, respectively. Series C and Strategic rounds both tallied one deal this week, while the rest of the deal types were undisclosed. Additionally, this week included a crypto fund and ecosystem raise, a token pre-sale, and an M&A deal.
Deal of The Week:
Matter Labs, the company behind zkSync, an Ethereum scaling solution, has raised $200 million in funding via a Series C fundraise co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Variant, and Andreesen Horowitz. This raise brings Matter Lab’s total funding to $458 million, which the company intends to use to launch projects on zkSync, fund third-party ecosystem projects, develop its core education program, and continue to grow the zkSync team.
Why is this the Deal of The Week?
Ethereum’s base layer is notorious for having high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. These drawbacks make Ethereum layer 2’s essential for the protocol to scale to the masses. zkSync is a zero-knowledge rollup (ZK-rollup) platform that is one of the most promising Ethereum layer 2 scaling solutions. Zero-knowledge rollups increase throughput on Ethereum Mainnet by moving the computation off-chain. This allows ZK-rollups such as zkSync to inherit the security of Ethereum’s base layer, while also providing users with increased speed and lower costs. There are over 150 projects set to launch on zkSync, including Sushi, Maker, and Uniswap, making zkSync’s launch among the most significant layer-2 launches to date. In combination with the funding announcement, zkSync announced that they will be shifting to fully open source upon the achievement of their next roadmap milestone and that in the case of a future network token release, two-thirds of the supply will be reserved for the ecosystem.
Selected Deals
Ultimate Champions is a gaming-based platform with a focus on fantasy sports. The platform has recently established a partnership with the EuroLeague and will be built on the BNB Chain. The company has secured $4M in funding through a strategic round with participation from Binance Labs. Ultimate Champions intends to use the capital raised for game development, community growth, and additional sports partnerships.
Yakoa is an infrastructure-based platform aiming to provide fraud detection for NFTs. The platform is able to accomplish this by providing tools capable of detecting infringements and forgeries of original NFTs. The company has secured $4.8M in funding through a round co-led by Brevan Howard Digital, Collab+Currency, and Volt Capital. In addition, the funding round also included investor participation from Zero Capital, Uniswap Labs Ventures, Sunset Ventures, Data Community Fund, and others. Yakoa intends to use the capital raised to grow its workforce and machine learning capabilities.
Jumbo Exchange ($JUMBO) is a decentralized exchange based aiming to create a seamless and intuitive experience for its users. The company has secured $3.5M in funding through a round co-led by Pantera Capital and Huobi Incubator. In addition, the funding round also included investor participation from Big Brain Holdings, Fundamental Labs, MetaWeb Ventures, Genblock Capital, and others.
Virtualness is a Web3-based platform that provides its users with tools to design and showcase digital collectibles via its mobile platform. The company has secured $8M in funding through its seed round led by Blockchange Ventures. In addition, the funding round also included investor participation from Polygon Ventures, Micron Ventures, Oceans Ventures, F7 Ventures, and others. Virtualness intends to use the capital raised for workforce expansion, additional integration, and platform support.
Arkon Energy is an infrastructure-based platform that focuses on using 100% renewable energy for Bitcoin ($BTC) mining. The company has secured $28M in funding through a combination of equity raise and debt financing. In addition, the funding round was led by Blue Sky Capital with participation from Shima Capital and Kestrel 0x1.
