DeFi Funding Makes a Comeback

After a surprisingly large amount of funding last week, total deals dropped from 32 last week to 28 this week, and total funding decreased from $1,506M to $519M. Most sectors have declined since last week, with CeFi having the sharpest decrease of $956M to $47M. NFTs decreased from $155M to $5M, and Metaverse/Gaming fell from $103M to $12M. Despite these sector declines, DeFi had its highest funded week in months at $212M, an increase of over 5x since last week. There were four DeFi deals this week, with the majority of funding coming from a $200M round for Unizen. This "CeDeFi" exchange ecosystem combines the elements of centralized and decentralized exchanges to enable a hybrid platform with deep liquidity and minimal slippage.

Most deals were in the early stages. This week, 16.7% were Pre-Seed, 55.6% were Seed, and 16.7% were Series A. Just two deals occurred at stages later than Series A – one Series B deal and one Series C deal.

Deal of The Week:

WeatherXM, a weather data economy that uses crypto incentives to improve the accuracy of forecasts, has raised $5M in a seed funding round led by Placeholder VC. Other investors in the round included Metaplanet, ConsenSys Mesh, Protocol Labs, and Border Capital, among others. WeatherXM users can purchase a person...