Less Mining, More NFTs

This week, twenty-six crypto companies raised money through venture capital firms, totaling $622 million. NFT projects received over half of the pool at $319 million. In a relatively slow week for Infrastructure startups, they raised $125 million, followed by DeFi ($113 million), CeFi ($34 million), and lastly, Web3 ($33 million).

Additionally, three new funds launched this week with a combined $1.375 billion, with Dragonfly Capital’s third crypto fund raising $650 million to bring the company’s total AUM to over $3 billion. Mining was still active, though not nearly as much as last week. CleanSpark and Blockmetrix raised $55 million in debt financing to acquire more mining rigs in the renewed mining arms race that has done nothing but pick up speed since the start of the year.

Deal of The Week

0x Labs($ZRX) is the development team for the 0x protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) infrastructure tool that enables exchanging digital assets across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, among others. The team raised $70 million in a Series B led by Greylock Partners with other participants, including OpenSea, Pantera Capital, and Jump Crypto, among many others.

Why Is This a Big Deal?