Doubling Down on Metaverse and Infrastructure

Key Takeaways

• Venture capital is in its second straight week of infrastructure and NFT/metaverse funding in a week that saw $932 million in capital being invested in startups. As is typical, infrastructure projects continued to draw the most attention, with eight funding rounds raising $530 million. NFT/metaverse continued its revival trajectory to raise $180 million across three projects, DeFi only had one seed round to raise $5 million, and CeFi also had one investment round with the $200 million raise from Binance.US.
• Active investors this week include Multicoin Capital, SoftBank, and Solana Ventures.
• Deal of the Week: Binance.US raised $200 million in a “seed” round to build out a full legal and compliance team that will ease expansion into other high-regulation countries as well as allow institutional investors to operate in the Binance ecosystem.

Venture Capital Deals

Polemos is a decentralized GameFi platform and Play-to-Earn (P2E) guild that operates an NFT marketplace for leasing out NFTs to gamers looking to enter the P2E world but can’t afford the upfront investments required. The company raised $14 million for a seed round that valued it at $100 million fully diluted. The seed round drew participation from Delphi Digital, Golden Tree, LD Capital, and Sushiswap, among many others. The funding will be used for developing the Polemos tech platforms around lodgement, data analytics, and educational resources to grow its guild. (GameFi Platform Polemos Secures $14M Seed Round)

Hivemapper ($HONEY) is a decentralized mapping network that takes in dashcam footage to create real-time street view maps. The company raised $18 million in a Series A to launch its mainnet this summer. The round was led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Craft Ventures, Solana Ventures, Shine Capital, and Sunny Ventures, among others. At the moment, Google, Apple, and Alibaba have near-complete control over digital mapping, but Hivemapper has the ability to spread out the value of digital mapping with a potentially more up-to-date interface than centralized companies can afford to produce. (Hivemapper raises $18 million to create decentralized mapping network)

Parallel Finance is a DeFi platform on Polkadot that released a “super app” that bundled six DeFi products into one product suite for staking, crowdloans, cross-chain bridges, automated market making, yield farming, and non-custodial wallets. The startup raised $5 million in a strategic funding round to double its previous valuation to $500 million. The round saw participation from Coinbase Ventures, StarkWare, and Section 32. In the announcement, Parallel also stated that it is working to raise another $50 million in a Q2 Series B. The funding will help Parallel expand its super app with more product offerings, increase TVL on the platform for better liquidity for users, and actively expand the Parallel userbase. (Parallel Finance doubles valuation in $5M funding round)

Strata is a Solana-based no-code token launch and management protocol that is creating a platform for non-technical creators to create blockchain protocols. The startup closed a $1.5 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Solana Ventures, Asymmetric Partners, Alameda Research, and Starting Line. Lowering the barrier to entry is often a requirement for many of the most creative ideas to get implemented, because it fully democratizes the creative process. Strata has mostly seen traction from social media tokens, P2E games, and DAOs. (Strata raises $1.5M to build a no-code token launchpad on solana)

Lightning Labs is the primary developer of the Lightning Network, a Bitcoin Layer 2 payment platform that is working to reduce the time and cost of transactions on the Bitcoin network. The company raised $70 million in a Series B led by Valor Equity and Baillie Gifford. The fundraise was announced in concert with the unveiling of the Taro project, a Bitcoin-based stablecoin pegged to the USD in order to increase the usability and adoption of blockchain-based payments. A Bitcoin stablecoin will also help for creating a DeFi ecosystem on Bitcoin by simplifying liquidity pooling and cross-network token swapping. (Lightning Labs unveils new protocol for Lightning Network stablecoins as it raises $70 millionD)

Boba Network ($BOBA) is an Ethereum Layer 2 hybrid computing platform that aims to expand smart contract capabilities by integrating Web2 RPC endpoints into Web3 applications. The company reached unicorn status after raising a $45 million Series A that valued it at $1.5 billion. The round was saw participation from 10X Capital, Sanctor Capital, Kinetic Capital, and Infinite Capital, among many others. The new capital will be used for expanding their R&D teams and internal capacity as well as creating an ecosystem fund to invest in and grow their app ecosystem. (Ethereum L2 Boba Network valued at $1.5B following Series A)

Coin Metrics is a crypto data provider that is currently focusing on developing data solutions for institutional clients around risk management, on-chain data collection and processing, and index and network data. The company raised $35 million in a financing round led by BNY Mellon and Acrew Capital, with participants including Goldman Sachs, Avon Ventures, Highland Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital, among many others. The funds will be used to accelerate Coin Metrics’ business and product roadmaps, especially around building DeFi and Web3 monitoring infrastructure and metrics. (Crypto data firm Coin Metrics raises $35 million funding round)

NEAR Protocol is a Layer 1 smart contract platform attempting to oust Ethereum as the go-to decentralized application ecosystem through “sharding” in order to make a more scalable blockchain than Ethereum. The protocol raised $350 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global with participation from Republic Capital, FTX Ventures, Hashed, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital, among others. NEAR has had some concerns about centralization with most of its major projects on the ecosystem being funded by venture capital as opposed to community-driven growth. NEAR aims to change that trajectory by creating developer tools that will make it easier for developers to create and launch their applications without the need for venture capital to fund development. (Ethereum Rival NEAR Protocol Raises $350 Million in New Funding)

SenseiNode is a Latin American infrastructure provider that creates and operates nodes on 11 protocols to provide constant data monitoring and API capabilities for LatAm crypto companies. SenseiNode closed a $3.6 million seed round led by Borderless Capital. Because LatAm has a very fragmented data center industry, Sensei is able to offer its customers a highly decentralized data service as opposed to American node operators, who are working in a market almost entirely dominated by Amazon and Microsoft. LatAm is also a market open for node operators, with Brazil currently hosting only 29 Ethereum nodes, the most in the region, compared to 2,500 in the US. (SenseiNode Raises $3.6M as LatAm’s First Blockchain Infrastructure Firm)

Community Gaming is a competitive gaming platform that lets users create and host esports tournaments and gaming competitions on demand for any game. The platform raised $16 million in a Series A round after reaching over 100,000 registered users. The round was led by SoftBank with participation from Animoca Brands, Binance Labs, Griffin Gaming Partners, and CoinFund, among many others. The funding will be used to launch expansion initiatives into Latin America and Southeast Asia, two regions that have recently become high-growth opportunities for P2E and blockchain-based gaming. (Community Gaming Raises $16M in SoftBank-Led Round to Expand Crypto Esports)

JAN3 is a Bitcoin-focused infrastructure startup that was announced yesterday by Samson Mow, the former chief strategy officer at Blockstream. JAN3 raised $21 million at a $100 million valuation. Investors backing the fund include El Zonte Capital, Alistair Milne, and Chun Wang, among other individual investors. JAN3 will be focused on growing adoption for the Bitcoin ecosystem through partnering with large institutions and governments like El Salvador. The company is starting off by taking over a couple initiatives from Blockstream, including operating the AQUA mobile wallet for the Bitcoin ecosystem as well as a Bitcoin-based NFT marketplace, Raretoshi. (Ex-Blockstream Exec Samson Mow Raises $21M for Bitcoin Startup JAN3)

Improbable is a British virtual and augmented reality infrastructure provider that creates tools for companies and developers to build their own Web3 business and metaverse applications. The company raised $150 million in a funding round led by a16z and SoftBank, along with participation from Mirana, Digital Currency Group, CMT, and Ethereal Ventures, among others. The goal with the new funds is to develop and scale their virtual experience tools to make that line of business their primary mode of growing the company and metaverse adoption. (Improbable raises $150 million to build an interoperable ‘metaverse’ network)

Token Sales

Leap is a non-custodial wallet application on the Terra ecosystem that aims to be the MetaMask equivalent for Terra. The project raised $3.2 million in a private token sale seed round led by CoinFund and Pantera Capital with participation from Arrington Capital, Accel, and Terraform Labs. The sale will help with expanding the development team, with the current focus around developing a mobile app for the wallet. Terra’s ecosystem has been growing rapidly over the past year, reaching the second highest TVL behind Ethereum, and having easy-to-use, multiplatform wallets for users to connect across the ecosystem is vital to the continued growth of Terra. (Terra wallet Leap raises $3.2 million in a private token sale)

Crypto Capital Markets

Bolt is an online checkout payment services provider that is taking steps to add blockchain-based payment services to its toolkit. To achieve this goal, Bolt is acquiring Wyre, a crypto service provider that has a “crypto agnostic” system to process payments through over 40 different tokens and 7 chains. The acquisition is rumored to come with a $1.5 billion price tag in a mix of cash and equity, making it the largest crypto acquisition to-date that wasn’t through a SPAC. Bolt and Wyre are hoping to use this partnership to make real-world integration with cryptocurrencies seamless, currently a major roadblock for bringing mass adoption of crypto. (Bolt Pays $1.5B for Crypto Startup Wyre in Biggest Crypto Acquisition to Date

Deal of the Week

Binance.US ($BNB) is the American subsidiary of the Binance exchange, the largest crypto exchange globally, processing over $240 million in transaction volume per day. Binance.US raised over $200 million in its first funding round that valued the subsidiary at $4.5 billion. The “seed” round led by Circle’s venture capital wing, and drawing participation from VanEck, and RRE Ventures, among others.

Why is this a Big Deal?

The parent company, Binance, has had issues with gaining regulatory approval to operate in many countries including the US, the largest crypto market in the world, because of issues around KYC. Because of this, Binance.US was launched in an attempt to create a well-trusted arm for Binance to operate in all markets. A major part of this current funding round included hiring former tax and law enforcement agents in the US, as well as executives from TradFi and tech companies with experience in implementation of legal and compliance operations. These compliance measures will also open up the Binance platform to institutional investors who need to meet higher regulatory standards but could bring a lot more capital onto the platform. Binance.US’s secondary initiative at the moment is to gain market share in the US, trying to become a direct competitor with Coinbase, already able to process 1.4 million orders per second with 190 trading pairs on the platform to be a leader in the centralized exchange space infrastructurally. The remaining capital from the funding round will be used to ramp up advertising efforts for greater brand recognition among investors with no current exposure to crypto. (Binance.US raises over $200 million at a $4.5 billion pre-money valuation)