Key Takeaways

• Social platforms raise $12.9 million and energy efficient projects raise $3.9 million this week
• Token sales raised $36.4 million; Bit2Me raised $23.9 million while Immutable X raised $12.5 million
• Our Deal of the Week, Cardano’s commercial and venture arm, EMURGO Ventures will invests $100 million in NFT, DeFi, and Blockchain education.
• Most featured investors include AU21, Huobi Ventures, Alameda Research, and GBV

Venture Capital Deals

Green Beli’s mission is to promote an eco-friendly lifestyle by engaging in campaign awareness through media. The company raised $1.1 million to support the growth of its eco-friendly NFT gaming product. Green Beli has committed 30% of revenues from the sale of NFT items and 10% of the total Green Beli Ecosystem Fund to community and environmental initiatives. Investors include BSCStation, Basics Capital, Onebit, FIM Ventures, AU21, X21, and Momentum. (Green Beli Raises $1.1 million for Eco-Frienndly NFT Gaming)

Roll, a social token infrastructure company, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by IOSG Ventures with participation from Animoca Brands, Alchemy, Huobi Ventures, Weekend Fund, Mischief Fund, Audacity, among others. Existing backers in Roll include Galaxy Interactive, Hustle Fund, Gary Vaynerchuk, Trevor McFederies, Ryan Selkis, and Balaji Srinivasan. This round brings the company’s total funds raised to $12.7 million since its inception in 2019. (Roll raises $10 million to become the Stripe for Social Tokens)

Solcial, a Solana-based social platform that plans to build a hub for sharing content in a censorship-free environment, raised $2.9 million to support its expansion efforts. The round was led by Alameda Research and joined by Solana Foundation, Rarestone Capital, GBV, Shift Capital, and Noia Capital. Approximately 5% of Solcial’s planned SLC tokens are earmarked for seed funders, according to pseudonymous founder “Idris,” at a valuation of about $58 million. (Solcial raises $2.9 million to build censorhip-free social media on Solana).

Angle Labs, a startup focused on developing stablecoins pegged to currencies outside the US Dollar, has raised $5 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Also included in the seed round announced Tuesday, were Fabric VC, Wintermute, Divergence Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Alven, Julien Bouteloup, and Frédéric Montagnon. Angle’s euro stablecoin, which is underpinned by crypto-generating perpetual swaps, satisfies a pressing need across the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) universe. (a16z Leads $5 million Bet on Euro Stablecoin Startup Angle)

Yellow Card, a Pan-African bitcoin exchange that operates in 12 countries across the continent raised $15 million in a Series A round from Valar Ventures, Third Prime, Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Blockchain.com Ventures. Launched in 2018, Yellow Card facilitates the purchase of crypto using cash, mobile money, card, or bank transfer. The company now has a presence in 12 African countries and has witnessed a 30x increase in users across Africa since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Yellow Card raises $15 million Series A funding)

Project IOEN is a project that applies Holochain technology to cut back on total energy expenditures and help further the adoption of renewable energy in communities worldwide. IOEN announced a $2.8 million raise led by SL2 Capital with participation from Skumna Ventures, Maven Capital, Holo, AU21 Capital, and Insignius Capital, among others. (Project IOEN successfully closes $2.8 million fundraise)

Layer3’s goal is to increase access to DAOs. It provides a marketplace of bounties through which users can earn governance tokens by performing various tasks. The company raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by ParaFi Capital with Electric Capital, Lattice Capital, 6th Man Ventures, Red Beard Ventures, and Mirana Ventures also participating. Angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, Kain Warick, and Jai Bhavnani of Rari Capital, were also involved in the round. (Layer3 raises $2.5 million in seed funding)

Coinshift, crypto treasury management platform MultiSafe rebranded to Coinshift and announced a $2.5 million seed round from Sequoia Capital India, Weekend Fund, ConsenSys Mesh, DeFi Alliance, Ethereal Ventures, Fintech Collective, and Gnosis, among others. (Coinshift raises $2.5 million in seed funding)

Token Sales

Ticker: B2B | Price: Multiple | Market Cap: NA

Bit2Me, a Spanish crypto exchange, raised $23.9 million from three public rounds for its newly launched token B2M. The first public sale raised $5.9 million in 59 seconds, followed by a second raise of $8.8 million in just 47 seconds. The final round sold out in 38 seconds to over 7,000 participants. In addition to this staggering retail demand, Bit2Me also drew on its existing network of partners and investors, securing a further $3.3 million in private funds. (Bit2Me Raises $23.9 million in Token Sales)

Ticker: IMX | Price: $15 | Market Cap: NA

Immutable X, an NFT-focused Layer 2 scaling protocol raised $12.5 million in less than an hour in a public sale on CoinList. Immutable X had raised a $60 million Series B round in early September from BITKRAFT Ventures, King River Capital, Prosus Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Fabric Ventures, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Reinventure, Apex Capital, and VaynerFund. (Immutable X raises $12.5 million under an hour through CoinList token sale)

Deal of the Week

Cardano is a proof-of-stake smart contract platform founded on peer-reviewed research and developed through “evidence-based methods.” The platform aims to provide security and sustainability to decentralized applications, systems, and communities. Cardano’s commercial and venture arm announced that it will be investing $100 million to improve NFT and DeFi capabilities on the network and will also allocate a portion towards general blockchain education.

Why is this a Big Deal?

The investment vehicle is broken into two separate parts. EMURGO Ventures is the traditional commercial venture arm that will cater to “developed markets to facilitate the building of solutions and services on Cardano with a capital allocation for seed investments into a variety of Cardano-focused startups and middleware solutions companies, including those building decentralized financial services (DeFi), non-fungible token (NFT) projects, blockchain developer education tools, and other decentralized applications.”

The second arm will be called EMURGO Africa. This arm intends to educate users in Africa on Cardano and facilitate the creation of over 300 new businesses. The ultimate goal of this endeavor is to increase the adoption of Cardano across the continent and establish the platform as Africa’s preeminent smart contract solution.

This deal is important as it comes on the heels of a major software upgrade for Cardano – one that finally enabled smart contract functionality. This capital allocation is symbolic of Cardano’s entrance into the collective battle among Layer 1 protocols to gain market share from Ethereum (Cardano Receives $100 million investment from EMURGO).