Funding the Futureverse
Funding has risen from $116m last week to $207m this week. Most funds raised came from the Infrastructure and Web3 & NFTs verticals, both of which saw larger deals being closed compared to last week. The largest raise of the year so far among Web3 &NFTs closed this week, with Futureverse raising $54m in a Series A to build a platform to enable the creation of interoperable content and applications. This week’s second-largest deal was Risc Zero, a general-purpose ZK Virtual Machine (zkVM) aiming to create developer tools for on and off-chain computing. Five token sales closed this week, including the new Layer-2 Manta Network, which raised $25m in a Series A at a valuation of $500m. Ripple’s recent partial victory that XRP does not constitute security may have emboldened investors, and this week could be the beginning of a shift towards more token-related deals.
Funding by Category
Funding by Deal Stage
Deal of The Week
This week’s Deal of the Week is Radiant ($RDNT) which raised $10 million from Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of crypto exchange Binance. Radiant is a decentralized cross-chain lending and borrowing protocol built on top of LayerZero. Radiant will allow users to borrow and lend between different blockchains – for example, a user will be able take a loan out on Ethereum from Optimism within minutes.
Why is this the Deal of the Week?
Traditionally, getting a loan requires visiting a bank or another well-funded financial institution and going through an entire process. This requires lots of time and energy and may not be easily accessible in certain countries. Radiant and other crypto borrowing and lending platforms allow you to take out loans or lend your capital without dealing with financial intermediaries. While useful, crypto borrowing and lending is still in its very early stages and has not caught mainstream adoption yet. One of the issues today with crypto borrowing and lending markets is that they are inefficient because of liquidity fragmentation across different blockchains. While most of crypto’s liquidity is concentrated on Ethereum Layer 1 (at $33.76B), over $20 billion of liquidity is spread across other chains (according to DeFiLlama). Radiant aims to solve this with the first omnichain money market, seamlessly allowing users to deposit and borrow across multiple chains. This should lead to more capital efficiency and a better user experience. Radiant is currently deployed on Ethereum Layer 2, Arbitrum, and Binance Smart Chain but plans to deploy on 4-6 chains by Q4’23, as well as on Ethereum Mainnet in Q3’23. Radiant is also looking to add additional cross-chain features, such as chain-agnostic loan repayments and cross-chain liquidations.
Selected Deals
Sound is a Web3 & NFT-based platform aiming to provide an alternative to Web2 music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify. Also, the platform gives artists the ability for their songs to be minted as NFTs that fans are able to purchase. The company has secured $20M in funding through its Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. In addition, the funding round also included investor participation from Sound Ventures, Collab+Currency, Palm Tree Crypto, and others. Sounds intends to allocate the capital raised toward expansion of its marketing and engineering teams.
Ethena is an infrastructure-based platform aiming to create a scalable stablecoin solution that is not dependent on the traditional banking system. The platform plans to accomplish this through the launch of $USDe in Q3 2023. The company has secured $6.5M in funding through its seed round led by Dragonfly Capital. In addition, the funding round included investor participation from Delphi Digital, Blocktower Capital, Wintermute, and others.
Futureverse is a Web3 & NFT-based platform aiming to provide developers and users with the ability to create and interact with interoperable content and applications. The company has secured $54M in funding through its Series A round led by 10T Holdings. In addition, the funding round also included investor participation from Ripple. Futureverse intends to allocate the capital raised towards tech development.
Manta Network is an infrastructure-based platform aiming to build a modular ecosystem for ZK-related applications. The company has secured $25M in funding at a $500M valuation through its Series A round. The funding round was co-led by Polychain Capital and Qiming Venture Partners while also including investor participation from CoinFund, Alliance DAO, and SevenX Ventures.
Cosmic Wire is a Web3 & NFT-based platform focused on developing proprietary technology and decentralized applications (dApps) that assist in supporting the Web3 ecosystem. The platform plans to accomplish this while placing a strong emphasis on user empowerment and privacy. The company has secured $30M in funding through its seed round, co-led by Solana Foundation and Polygon Fund. In addition, this fundraise signifies the first cross-chain funded Web3-based platform. Cosmic Wire intends to allocate the capital raised towards advancing the platform’s dApps.
