Muted Funding During the Holidays
Weekly Recap
As expected, funding totals during the holidays were comparatively low. Both total funding and deal count fell by approximately 70%. There were 11 deals this week totaling $45 million in funding. All disclosed funding amounts fell into the Infrastructure and DeFi categories, while Web3 tallied two deals for undisclosed amounts. Infrastructure-led deal counts among categories (7), and there were no CeFi or Gaming deals to end the year. Funding was concentrated in Series A rounds with two $10 million investments into Usual and Avalon Labs (both DeFi). Although Q4 funding looked bleak through October and November, there was a rebound in December, totaling about $900 million (nearly double November’s amount), bringing the Q4 total to $1.95 billion across 307 deals.
Funding by Category
Funding by Stage
Deal of the Week
Usual, a decentralized stablecoin protocol, raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures. Other investors included Ethena, Galaxy Digital, M^0, Ondo, GSR, Wintermute, and others. Usual is a decentralized fiat-backed stablecoin issuer that redistributes value and ownership to users through its native token USUAL.