Crypto Funding on Summer Vacation

Weekly Recap

Crypto funding seems to be on vacation as total funding fell on a weekly basis to $36 million compared to $157 million last week. Deal count followed suit, falling to a measly 7 deals, bringing total funding and deal count to their lowest weekly levels since the first week of 2023. Of the five deals with disclosed funding amounts, all fell within the $0-10 million range. Infrastructure was the only notable category, comprising 81% of total funding and 71% of deal count.   

There was one crypto fund that announced a raise this week. Born Ready, a recently launched venture fund, secured $50 million in funding. Interestingly, Futureverse, a Web3 & NFT-based platform highlighted in a recent Funding Friday (7/21), which currently ranks second in largest deal size ($54 million) for Q3 2023, shares the same co-founders as Born Ready. The venture fund’s primary focus is fast-tracking the adoption and development of projects that can collaborate strategically with The Root Network and Futureverse.   

Funding by Category

Funding by Deal Stage

Deal of the Week

Terminal 3, a decentralized data infrastructure company, completed a pre-seed deal with investor participation from 500 Global, CMCC Global, Consensys Mesh, Bixin Ventures, BlackPine, and others. Terminal 3 is focused on building decentralized data infrastructure solutions to replace legacy centralized data storage that deprives users of proper privacy and bloats companies with compliance and security costs. The deal amount was undisclosed, but the investment will be used to fund Terminal 3’s data solutions further and expand product development.

Why Is This Deal of the Week?

The growth of blockchain technology has enabled the reimagining of digital data ownership and security. Centralized data storage solutions deprive users of proper privacy and weigh down companies with additional costs. Global data security and compliance spending for 2023 is projected to exceed $188 billion. Terminal 3 plans to take a slice of that pie by leveraging decentralized data storage and zero-knowledge proofs to enable complete data privacy and composability. Terminal 3 standardizes and decentralizes user data. By creating verifiable credentials, Terminal 3 creates digital identities for its users and enables that identity to be interoperable across Web3. By decentralizing the data and leveraging zk-proofs, Terminal 3 allows users to control data accessibility and privacy. Terminal 3’s solutions will improve the user experience while improving the utility and intelligence of Web3 data, creating a paradigm shift in global data solutions.

Selected Deals

Orbital is an infrastructure-based platform that facilitates traditional and crypto payment-related services for institutions. The company has secured $6.4M in funding through an oversubscribed undisclosed round. The funding round was led by Golden Record Ventures and included investor participation from New Form Capital, Luminous Ventures, GSR Ventures, and Psalion VC. Orbital intends to allocate the capital raised towards obtaining new jurisdictional licenses, additional product development, and other grow-related initiatives. 

zkPass is an infrastructure-based platform aiming to increase and preserve user privacy. The platform plans to accomplish this through its protocol which utilizes three-party transport layer security, zero-knowledge proofs, and multi-party computation. The company has secured $2.5M in funding through its seed round. The funding round included investor participation from Sequoia China, Binance Labs, SIG DT Investments, and others. 

Solv Protocol (SOLV 2.89% ) is a platform aiming to expand the boundaries of decentralized finance. The company plans to accomplish this by providing its users with intuitive blockchain-related financial tools, allowing investment options into diverse assets. The protocol has secured $6M in funding through an undisclosed round. The funding round included investor participation from UOB Venture Management, Emirates Consortium, Apollo Capital, and others. Solv Protocol intends to allocate the capital raised towards developing and creating new on-chain fund solutions. 

Conic Finance (CNC 0.98% ) is a DeFi-based platform specifically designed to simplify the diversification process of a liquidity provider’s exposure to Curve pools. The company has secured $1M in funding at a $17M valuation through an undisclosed round. The sole participant in the funding round was Curve founder Michael Egorov. Conic Finance intends to allocate the capital raised towards auditing fees and product development. 

Conductive.ai is an infrastructure-based platform aiming to provide a solution that solves stagnant revenue growth for games. By rewarding users with stablecoin rewards throughout gameplay, the platform can increase user retention and loan-to-value (LTV) rates. The company has secured an undisclosed amount of funding through its seed round led by Animoca Brands. Additionally, the funding round included investor participation from Unanimous Capital, Blue Lion Global, Kraken Ventures, and others.