Farcaster Marks Eighth Unicorn of 2024
Weekly Recap
Despite 24% fewer deals this week, total funding rose 38% from $157 million to $217 million, largely due to Farcaster’s $150 million Series A round (DotW). There was only one other Web3 deal besides Farcaster, which was the leading category from a funding perspective. Similarly, Series A rounds were the leader in funding this week, totaling $158 million across just two deals: Farcaster and an $8 million fundraise completed by WeatherXM, a dePIN project focused on a new weather network. Infrastructure had $44 million in funding across nine deals, DeFi had $18 million across seven deals, and there were no CeFi deals this week. A deal stage other than Seed rounds tallied the most deals for the first time in a few weeks. Strategic rounds were the most popular, totaling eight deals, including deals completed by Fantom and Monad.
Funding by Category
Funding by Stage
Deal of The Week
Farcaster, a web3 social media platform, raised 150 million in a series A round led by Paradigm with participation from a16z, Haun Ventures, Variant Fund, Union Square Ventures, and Standard Crypto. The funding round values Farcaster at $1 billion, and the fresh capital will be used to add new product features, increase the number of daily active users, and hire additional engineers. We are beginning to see a rise in valuations across private markets. Farcaster is the second company to earn a $1 billion valuation in May and is the eighth so far in 2024, surpassing 2023’s total less than halfway through the year.
Why is This Deal of the Week?
Farcaster’s mobile app Warpcast is a new social media platform that gives users more data control, letting them easily monetize content and enhance customizability via its open-graph styling tool. Creators can design unique views called “frames,” where people can interact with polls, galleries, or mini-apps within the app. Farcaster’s adoption trends have been impressive since launching in October. Farcaster has seen over 350k paid signups and a 50x increase in network activity. It has accumulated over 40,000 daily active users, with an average of 1.2 million posts per day. For comparison, friend.tech, one of its largest competitors, has averaged slightly under 7,000 daily users over the past 30 days. Farcaster recently announced support for Arbitrum, bringing its functionality to the L2 in addition to Ethereum and Solana. Crypto is still waiting for its killer consumer app that brings a mass audience on-chain, and Farcaster is on the right track working towards that goal.
Selected Deals
Weather XM, a decentralized weather network, raised $7.7 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Faction. Other investors include Protocol Labs, Borderless Capital, Arca, Alumni Ventures, Placeholder VC, and others. WeatherXM produces various weather station hardware devices that collect local environmental data and creates cryptographic proofs that are stored on Filecoin. The data can be queried and processed to create hyperlocal weather forecasts and create on-chain weather prediction markets, and parametric weather insurance products. The funding will be used to advance the network and further develop on-chain weather derivatives.
IVX, a 0-days-til-expiration (0DTE) options protocol for crypto assets, raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Animoca Brands and Avid. Other investors include Big Brain holdings, Cogitent Ventures, Forbole, Web3Sport and others. IVX is being built on Berachain, an EVM chain powered by proof-of-liquidity that is expected to launch on mainnet this year. 0DTE options are extremely popular in traditional markets and bringing them to crypto has the potential to steal market share from perpetual future traders. The funding will be used to continue building a user-friendly, accessible, and liquid 0DTE options market.
Blockless, a decentralized compute network, raised $5 million in a seed round led by M31 Capital and Frachtis with participation from Chorus One, Interop Ventures, and No Limit Holdings. Blockless is aiming to provide cross-chain computing power to empower all blockchain applications. Blockless Network is the orchestration layer between daps, networks, and users. Similar to how Uber connects riders to drivers, Blockless will connect dapps to computing power. Blockless was founded by former Akash Network and Binance employees and its mainnet and token launch (BLESS) are expected to go live in Q3 of this year. The funding will be used to add additional hires to its team of ten and accelerate its product development ahead of its testnet launch in the next few weeks.
Reports you may have missed
WEEKLY RECAP In the final week of Q2, crypto funding bounced back, rising 64% from $78 million to $128 million, while deal count rose modestly from 18 to 20. The funding total was dominated by Infrastructure, which comprised 88% of the total and also made up 55% of the total deal count. CeFi broke its streak of two weeks with no deal flow with a singular Series A round completed...
WEEKLY RECAP Private funding was suppressed as we enter the summer season, with total funding dropping 43% week-over-week to $66 million and deal count decreasing 52% to 15 deals. Infrastructure still took the top spot from a funding perspective, totaling $31 million across three deals, including Sonic, our Deal of the Week. DeFi tallied the most deals (6) and had the second most funding across categories ($24m). CeFi had its...
WEEKLY RECAP This week’s $113 million in funding was less than half of last week’s $242 million, although the deal count showed a more modest 17% drop to 30 deals. Infrastructure continues to be the most popular investment category. Infrastructure’s $66 million in funding was stapled by Nexus Labs and Nuffle Labs’ $25 million and $13 million respective investment rounds. After tallying a few deals in the previous two weeks,...
WEEKLY RECAP Weekly funding fell by almost 50% to $182 million, while the deal count fell by about a third to 23. The Infrastructure category led both funding and deal count, bolstered by Avail’s $47 million Series A round. CeFi saw $26 million in funding, including XREX’s $18.75 million strategic round with Tether. XREX will use the funding to help facilitate regulatory-compliant cross-border payments using USDT. Gaming had the second...