Dates: 4 March 2024 – 10 March 2024 This week’s most impressive capital infusion:
Optimism secured $89M in funding from an undisclosed source. Optimism serves as a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, accommodating all of Ethereum’s Dapps. Instead of executing all computations and data transactions on the Ethereum network, Optimism shifts transaction data on-chain while conducting computations off-chain. This approach enhances Ethereum’s transactions per second and reduces transaction fees.
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In the pre-seed and seed investment rounds:
Utila raised $11.5M in a seed funding round from NFX*, Wing Venture Capital*, Framework Ventures, Fasanara Capital, North Island Ventures (NIV), Republic Capital (ex Republic Labs), Liquid 2 Ventures, Inspired Capital, Lyrik Ventures, DCG Expeditions, Launchpad VC, Shima Capital, K5 Global, Big Brain Holdings, Impatient Ventures, Cyverse Capital, Starkware, Psalion VC, Balaji Srinivasan, Surojit Chatterjee, and Charlie Songhurst. Utila is an institutional crypto platform providing a secure, multi-chain non-custodial wallet for organizations to manage their digital assets. With a focus on user-friendly design and powered by multi-party computation (MPC) key management, Utila aims to address the complexities of existing institutional crypto wallets, offering accessibility, usability, and enhanced security for enterprises and crypto-native firms alike.
Sahara Labs raised $6M in a seed funding round from Polychain Capital*, Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Samsung Next, dao5 (daofive), GeekCartel, Nomad Capital, Canonical Crypto, Motherson Group, Dispersion Capital, Alumni Ventures (AVG), Tangent Ventures, Coho Deeptech, and Sandeep Nailwal. Sahara is a decentralized AI network offering Sahara Knowledge Agent (KA) and Sahara Data. It enables the creation of customized, autonomous AI agents, compensating contributors directly and utilizing blockchain to track data and rewards in a privacy-preserving manner. Sahara’s suite aims to revolutionize the AI industry, providing individuals and businesses with monetization opportunities and high-value data services for secure AI model training.
Privasea raised $5M in a seed funding round from Binance Labs Fund, Gate Labs, MH Ventures, K300 Ventures, Crypto Times, Bully Ventures, Oxbull, Basics Capital, Dewhales Capital, The DuckDao, TPC Club (The presale club), NxGen, Zephyrus Capital, GuanxiDAO, and 1NVST. Privasea AI Network is a solution addressing data privacy challenges in artificial intelligence. Integrating Fully Homomorphic Encryption with blockchain-based incentives, it revolutionizes machine learning inferencing, enhances privacy, and facilitates collaborative AI computations while ensuring secure and private AI computing experiences for users.
Cosmology raised $5M in a seed funding round from Galileo*, Lemniscap*, Dispersion Capital, Hashkey Capital, Tuesday Capital, Osmosis Foundation, Chorus One, Informal Systems, Zaki Manian, Cogitent Ventures, HF0, vVv Exchange, Reverie, Forbole, Kevin Lin, Xavier Meegan, Aidan Stride, Batuhan Dasgin. Cosmology simplifies Web3 app development in the Interchain Ecosystem, providing advanced tools for seamless interactions across the Internet of Blockchains, particularly with Cosmos and CosmWasm. With products like Chain Registry, Cosmos Kit, and CWScript, Cosmology empowers developers to efficiently build, deploy, and interact with applications in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Agio Ratings raised $4.6M in a seed funding round from Superscrypt*, Portage Ventures, and MS&AD Ventures. Agio Ratings is a risk assessment platform specializing in digital assets, offering intelligent pricing risk analysis for firms with exposure to the digital asset market. Utilizing over 1,000 variables from on-chain and off-chain sources, Agio’s models predict defaults in a manner comparable to leading traditional finance models, providing continuous risk assessment, monitoring, and insights to help firms protect capital, underwrite credit, and ensure long-term success in the evolving digital asset landscape.
Firewall raised $3.7M in a pre-seed funding round from North Island Ventures (NIV), Breyer Capital, Hack VC*, Finality Capital, Kain Warwick, Nathan McCauley, Jordan Momtazi, Yaoqi Jia, Smokey The Bera, Tim Ogilvie, Xinshu Dong, Jack Bounce, and Pranay Mohan. Firewall is a blockchain security infrastructure firm specializing in preventing smart contract exploits. Firewall uses rollups and programmable transaction finalization rules to intercept exploits before recording them on the blockchain. Their solution, incorporating real-time blocking, non-custodial mechanisms, and programmable finality, aims to enhance the security of smart contract applications on rollups, eliminate exploits, and ensure no downtime for vulnerable applications.
Oyl raised $3M in a pre-seed funding round from Foresight Ventures, Flamingo, Udi Wertheimer, UTXO Management, Web3.com Ventures, Maelstrom, Ethos Fund, Public Works, Mask Network, Antalpha Ventures, AVID3, Borderless Capital, Kanosei Ventures, Pulsar, Gmoney, Arthur Hayes, domo, Soby, NickH, Timshel, John Scianna, Munam, HDF humble defi farmer, and Eric Chung. Oyl is constructing Oyl Wallet, a dedicated trading platform for the Bitcoin ecosystem. This platform incorporates in-wallet trading features for Bitcoin, a market aggregation tool for BRC-20 tokens, and integration with the Bitcoin-focused DeFi platform OmniSat. Users can conveniently trade Ordinals, BRC-20s, and Bitcoin native assets directly within their wallet.
Stack raised $3M in a seed funding round from Archetype*, Coinbase Ventures, Scalar Capital, A Capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Henri Stern, Cooper Turley, Colin Armstrong, and Nadav Hollander. Stack is a platform that enables the creation and management of on-chain points systems, revolutionizing loyalty programs by providing affordable and secure solutions that discourage abuse. Through its framework, users can allocate, track, and redeem points for various assets, including ERC-20 tokens and ETH, while maintaining transparency and trustlessness in the process.
Hedgehog Protocol raised $1.5M in a pre-seed funding round from Marshland Capital, Tenzor Capital, 3Commas Capital, Nothing Research, ZBS Capital, Staked VC (ex StakelyVC), Igor Barinov, Vasiliy Shapovalov, Mike Lobanov, Banteg, Brian D Evans, ivangbi, Danish Chaudhry, Gareth, and Amplice. Hedgehog Protocol is a modular synthetic blockspace platform designed to address the issue of volatile cryptocurrency transaction fees. It allows users to hedge, trade, and profit from gas fees through various strategies, including buying or selling BaseFee on automated market makers (AMMs) and participating in staking and liquidity pool activities. The protocol employs a generalized CDP model, inspired by Liquity, providing flexibility to extend its application to various on-chain derivatives beyond BaseFee.
Synnax Technologies raised $1M in a pre-seed funding round from No Limit Holdings (NLH)*, Bitscale Capital, Edessa Capital, Everstake Capital, GameFi Ventures, Ausvic Capital, Hex Trust, Kenetic, Moonvault Capital, Ryze Labs, Typhon Ventures, MH Ventures, and Drops Ventures. Synnax is an innovative platform introducing AI Credit Intelligence for privacy-focused credit analysis, empowering businesses to secure credit ratings while safeguarding data privacy. Utilizing blockchain, encryption, and decentralized AI, Synnax offers manipulation-resistant credit ratings and real-time credit intelligence, providing transparent methodologies and predictive financial metrics for a holistic view of a company’s financial performance.
Bison Labs received an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round from Portal Ventures*, Bitcoin Magazine, UTXO Management, Waterdrip Capital, Bitcoin Startup Lab, SatoshiLab, LBank, YBB Foundation, and domo. Bison Labs innovates Bitcoin by enabling developers to build various applications directly on its blockchain, introducing general programmability, smart contracts, and financial tools while leveraging Bitcoin’s security. With features such as ZK-STARK rollup and Ordinals for data storage, Bison enhances transaction speeds and empowers users through front-end proof verification.
