Crypto Research

While liquid markets continued to chop this week, venture funding remained relatively robust with over 45 deals completed for a total of $574 million – a slight downtick from last week’s $600 million. Web3 projects raised $227 million, the most of any other category, with CeFi coming in second having raised $190 million. Metaverse/gaming projects were overlooked this week; however, Japanese game developer Akatsuki raised a $20 million fund that...

In a week very similar to last, venture capital money was heavily focused on backing new funds as opposed to investing in projects. Projects raised a total of $600 million, with CeFi projects getting the biggest share of the pie at $197 million. Infrastructure and DeFi followed up at $122 million and $111 million, respectively. Web3 and Metaverse/Gaming both raised $73 million, and NFT projects came in last with just...

Venture Capital slowed down the money printer by 58% compared to last week, raising $462 million for this week. The number of projects funded (32) was still relatively elevated, but there weren’t any big-ticket deals that broke $100 million – there were four deals above $100 million last week. Similar to the week prior, Infrastructure startups led the raises with $165 million. Next in line was Web3 at $124 million....

This week, venture capital apparently didn’t read any of the crypto news, nearly doubling last week’s fundraising total when the market dropped 25% over the previous seven days. There was a solid distribution across sectors in a week that saw $1.1 billion raised across 43 projects, though Infrastructure took the top spot at $390 million. CeFi raised $249 million, with Web3 projects following closely behind at $227 million. Rounding out...

In another busy week of capital raising, the switch flipped from NFTs to Metaverse and Gaming projects, though most of the funding came from Yuga Lab’s public virtual land sale. Metaverse/Gaming projects raised $403 million, over two thirds of the total pot this week. The rest of the funds were pretty evenly spread between Infrastructure ($62 million), NFTs ($61 million), CeFi ($34 million), Web3 ($27 million), and lastly, in a...

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...

This week twenty-seven crypto companies raised capital totaling $1.46 billion, more than half of which went to two miners, Crusoe Energy Systems and Bit Digital. Web3 came in second, bringing in over $226 million, followed by CeFi ($137 million), NFTs ($129 million), Infrastructure ($92 million), and DeFi ($20 million). Additionally, four funds launched this week after raising a combined $610 million. Framework Ventures’ newest fund was the standout, raising $400...

VENTURE CAPITAL DEALS Swoops is an NFT-based fantasy basketball game where each basketball player is minted as an NFT that can be purchased, traded, staked, etc. The startup raised $3.5 million in a Series A led by Courtside Ventures and Alpaca VC. Other participants in the round included Slow Ventures, Red Beard Ventures, and a few individual investors like Jason Robins, the CEO of DraftKings. An important note, this game...

Venture capital is in its second straight week of infrastructure and NFT/metaverse funding in a week that saw $932 million in capital being invested in startups. As is typical, infrastructure projects continued to draw the most attention, with eight funding rounds raising $530 million. NFT/metaverse continued its revival trajectory to raise $180 million across three projects, DeFi only had one seed round to raise $5 million, and CeFi also had...

VENTURE CAPITAL DEALS zkLend is an Ethereum-based crypto money market similar to Aave and Compound, but will use zero-knowledge rollups to allow users to borrow and lend liquidity without broadcasting identifying information to the Ethereum chain. The project raised $5 million in a seed round led by Delphi Digital with participation from Starkware, Three Arrows Capital, and Alameda Research, among others. zkLend is working to launch its retail lending product,...

VENTURE CAPITAL DEALS Yuga Labs is an NFT/metaverse developer most widely known for creating the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, the largest NFT collection by market cap at over 1 million ETH (~$3 billion at the time of writing). Yuga raised $450 million in a funding round that valued the company at $4 billion. The round was led by a16z, with Sandbox, FTX Ventures, and MoonPay participating as well,...