Mike Chan’s Post

Hello from Asia! Here are the 5 most interesting crypto fundraises (according to me) for the week ending 11/15/24: 1) 0G Labs Modular AI chain 0G Labs raised a $40M Seed round and a $250M token purchase commitment from Hack VC, Delphi Digital, OKX Ventures, and many others. 🤯 The funds will be used to accelerate the development of dAIOS, which will decentralize AI processing, enhance data privacy and security, and facilitate real-time AI computations without bottlenecks. 0G Labs will have a massive warchest to decentralize AI processing. Love to see it! 2) TAC (TON Access Control) EVM network extension for TON TAC (TON Access Control) raised $6.50M in a Seed round led by Hack VC (they’ve been busy!), Symbolic Capital, TON Ventures, and others. TAC aims to connect Ethereum dApps with Telegram's base of over 900 million users. This will allow Ethereum developers to create applications that can be accessed directly within Telegram. Cue Ethereum tap tap games?!?! 3) BetHog Inc Crypto-based casino and sportsbook BetHog raised $6M in a Seed round led by 6th Man Ventures (6MV), with participation from Will Ventures, Bullpen Capital, and others. BetHog was founded by the founders of FanDuel, who is a US leader in sports betting. So these guys are gonna crush! 4) Brevis Verifiable computation layer Brevis has successfully raised $7.5 million in a Seed round led by Polychain Capital and Binance Labs. Brevis allows blockchain applications to offload complex computations to an off-chain network and generate ZK proofs that can be verified on-chain. This allows devs to perform data-intensive tasks at lower cost while maintaining security and verifiability. 5) Notabene Crypto travel rule compliance platform Notabene raised $14.50M in a Series B funding round led by DRW Venture Capital, with participation from ParaFi Capital, Wintermute, and others. Notabene provides compliance solutions for crypto transactions for financial institutions globally. They'll play a super important role as crypto gains institutional adoption! Congrat to all the teams! If you enjoyed this content, please Like and Repost this! And give me a follow for more content like this!

Happy Friday! Here are the 5 most interesting crypto fundraises in the past week (according to me): 1) Bitcoin-backed stablecoin developer Yala raised $8M in a Seed round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Anagram, and others Yala is unlocking Bitcoin liquidity through a protocol that combines stablecoin issuance across multiple chains such as Ethereum, other EVM-compatible chains, and non-EVMs like Solana. Unlock the corn! 🌽 2) On-chain venture capital platform Fission Labs raised a $1.6M Pre-seed round led by SALT fund, Kraynos Capital, with participation from Anthony Scaramucci. Crypto makes any asset more liquid, and I love the application of tokenizing private company shares to expand access to this typically illiquid asset. 3) Data curation and human feedback service Kiva AI raised $7M in a Pre-seed round led by CoinFund, with participation from Hashkey Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Protagonist, and others. Accurate data labeling is crucial for AI models, and using crypto as the incentive layer for humans to label data makes so much sense! 4) Decentralized AI model hosting platform OpenGradient raised an $8.5M Seed round from a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), Coinbase Ventures, SV Angel, and many more. OpenGradient claims to be the first end-to-end decentralized platform for AI model hosting, secure inference execution, and AI application deployment 5) Bitcoin Layer2 Bitlayer raised $9M in a Series A round led by Polychain Capital, Franklin Templeton, with participation from SCB Limited, Selini Capital, G20 Group. I know the Bitlayer team and they've gained steam in building out their ecosystem! Congrats to all the teams on their successful fundraises! If you enjoyed this post, please Like, Repost, and give me a follow! Have a great weekend

Crypto companies that fundraised over the past week: Payments Coinflow Labs is a financial platform that facilitates the seamless flow of cryptocurrency and fiat transactions. Coinflow raised a $2.25 million Seed on May 28th led by CMT Digital and followed by Reciprocal Ventures, Jump Crypto, DCG, Draper Dragon, Blocktech Ventures, and several individuals. Liquid Staking BabylonChain Inc. is a Bitcoin staking protocol designed to enable Bitcoin holders to participate in Proof-of-Stake networks while earning yields securely without needing to bridge or wrap their BTC. The project raised on May 30th a Private $70 million round led by Paradigm and followed by Polychain Capital, Bullish, HashKey Capital, Mantle Ecosystem, Galaxy, Hack VC, ViaBTC Capital, Amber, and others. L2 Mint is a Layer 2 blockchain tailored for the NFT industry, facilitating the creation, trading, and management of NFTs with a focus on improving scalability and interoperability within the ecosystem. Mint raised a $5 million Seed round on May 30th from Jsquare, SNZ Capital, Antalpha, Mask Network , Predator Capital, GoPlus Security, Whitelist Ventures, and others. Perpetuals DuelNow is a competitive platform that allows users to place bets on a variety of sports and events. It offers a user-friendly interface for making wagers, managing bets, and viewing live odds. DuelNow raised on June 1st a Seed round from Charlie Lee, Richard Ma, Billy Markus, Crypto Rand, Mooncat, RR2 Capital, Marc Van Der Chijs, David Wong, and Jonathan Lee. Stablecoin Anzen Finance is a platform that offers USDz, a stablecoin backed by a diversified portfolio of real-world assets. Anzen raised on May 28th a $4 million Seed round from Mechanism Capital, Circle Ventures, Frax, Arca, Infinity Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Palm Drive Capital , M31 Capital, and Kraynos Capital. More companies (Infrastructure, RWA, Gaming...) inside the latest issue of our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ehW7Bw9T

Welcome to Chain Venturer, a series of intriguing conversations with crypto investors. This week, we have Patrick S. from Coinseeker.co Coinseeker is a crypto deal intelligence platform akin to the Crunchbase for web3. It helps investors identify and catalog startups in the crypto space before they hit the market. Coinseeker also has a venture arm, investing directly in the startups it identified through its database. Prior to Coinseeker, Patrick was a management consultant at an MBB firm before joining Bybit to help with growth strategy. Here's my conversation with Patrick. -- If you only have 30 seconds, here are the takeaways: • Finding data on startups that have not yet launched their tokens or are operating under the radar remains a formidable challenge. On-chain analytics are becoming increasingly common, the real value often lies in off-chain data. • Restaking and GameFi are two sectors that have seen a significant uptick in funding trends. • There’s an ongoing liquidity war between the numerous blockchain layers — how this will be resolved remains to be seen. • Restaking enables developers to focus on innovation rather than the resource-consuming infrastructure, underscoring restaking's contribution to the efficiency and sustainability of protocol development. • For crypto founders, structuring the right cap table is more critical than one might initially think, as it will tie a lot to ecosystem support. #staking #venturecapital #web3 https://lnkd.in/gg4v_h4q

Here are the crypto projects that fundraised over the past week, by sector: L2 Zircuit is a modular zk rollup platform with AI-enabled security designed to enhance L2 solutions. It is EVM-compatible and built on Optimism Bedrock. Zircuit raised on July 22nd a Private round from Binance Labs, Mirana Ventures, Amber Group, Nomad Capital, and others. Gaming NPC Labs is a platform that helps creators and brands monetize and scale real-world products connected to digital assets. NPC Labs raised on July 22nd an $18 million Seed round led by Pantera Capital and followed by Makers Fund, Hashed, Collab+Currency, Sfermion, Mirana Ventures, and others. Web3 Truvius offers quant-driven active and passive crypto investments, designed for individuals, family offices, and institutions. Truvius raised a Pre-Seed $3.2 million round on July 18th led by Galaxy Ventures and followed by New Form Capital and Chainview Capital. Real-World Assets SkyTrade is a platform that enables users to monetize, trade, and manage their airspace rights. On July 16th, SkyTrade raised a Pre-Seed round led by Portal Ventures and Modular Capital, and followed by Solana Foundation, and several individuals. etherfuse develops infrastructure, tools, systems, products, and software to allow global participation in Web3. Etherfuse raised on July 20th a $3 million Seed led by White Star Capital and North Island Ventures, and followed by Stellar Development Foundation, FunFair Ventures, Department of XYZ, ether.fi, and others. The rest of the companies are inside the latest issue of our Genesis newsletter: https://lnkd.in/d4TEKYCV

💰💰💰 👇 💰 a16z crypto purchased $90 Million Worth of Optimism Tokens Optimism’s OP Stack product offers developers of Layer 2 blockchains the opportunity to utilize its open-source technology for deploying their mainnets. https://lnkd.in/dAah5xHD   💰 Haun Ventures leads $5 million seed round in cross-chain governance platform Agora With support from Seed Club, Coinbase Ventures, Sina Habibian, Balaji Srinivasan and others. https://lnkd.in/e8ih3APp 💰 Novogratz Raises $250 Million for Fresh Crypto Investment Endeavor ..to engage in robust trading and proficient management of cryptocurrency assets, alongside providing invaluable consultancy services to burgeoning blockchain enterprises. https://lnkd.in/dCJD7Ndi 💰 MilkyWay secures $5M in a Seed funding round co-led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital ..with participation from Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital, LongHash Ventures, and angel investors. https://lnkd.in/dMXwYyaz   💰 Centrifuge raises $15 million in oversubscribed funding round ..a platform dedicated to turning real world assets (RWAs) into loans, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield. https://lnkd.in/eKhUkfft   💰 Peter Thiel's Founders Fund takes a stake in crypto accelerator Alliance "We're investing in and partnering with Alliance DAO because we believe there is a need for crypto-specific accelerators." https://lnkd.in/d-yv4wXb   💰 EigenLayer-Powered Aligned Layer Raises $20M to Make ZK Proofs Faster, Cheaper on Ethereum led by Hack VC and included contributions from dao5, L2Iterative, NomadCapital_io, FinalityCap, Symbolic VC and Theta Capital Aligned Layer aims to help engineers avoid bottlenecks when proving their code. https://lnkd.in/dStrsu2i   💰 Movement Labs Raises $38M for Rollup Based on Facebook's Move Language Movement's 21 and co-founders say they are on a mission to "make blockchain security sexy" with the launch of their L2. Its a blockchain company that aims to bring Facebook's Move Virtual Machine to Ethereum, has secured $38 million in a Series A financing round led by Polychain Capital. https://lnkd.in/d4gqzFUR 💰 Pantera Capital seeks $1B for a new crypto fund: Report Fund V will invest in a range of blockchain-based assets and is slated for launch in April 2025. Startup equity, early-stage tokens, and liquid tokens are among the asset types that are targets https://lnkd.in/dRWEcAMB 💰 Animoca Brands and Saakuru Labs forge strategic partnership to propel gasless Web3 gaming in Southeast Asia The collaboration will provide opportunities to integrate certain games within the Animoca Brands ecosystem into the Saakuru Protocol, allowing these games to leverage Saakuru Labs' gasless technology. https://lnkd.in/gxcdP_Pd 💰 Australian VC King River Capital dives back into Web3 King River Capital (cofounder Zeb Rice) led a US$12 million round in Illuvium, a Sydney-based blockchain games studio https://lnkd.in/dxjnxSzE  

Happy first Friday of November! Here are the 5 most interesting crypto fundraises (according to me) for the week ending 11/1/24: 1) Gelato Network Rollup-as-a-service platform Gelato raised $11M in a Series A+ round led by Hack VC, with participation from Animoca Brands, IOSG Ventures, and Bloccelerate. Gelato streamlines the creation and integration of rollups and aims to be the go-to platform for anyone to launch their own chain. They helped Kraken create their Optimism-based L2, Ink. 2) BitSmiley Bitcoin-based stablecoin solution bitSmiley raised $10M in a funding round from NxGen, MH Ventures, Side Door Ventures, and others. BitSmiley will use the funds to expand the reach of their BTC-backed stablecoin bitUSD across multiple chains. And saying “BitSmiley” always makes me smile 😁 3) Nillion Privacy-focused blockchain Nillion Network raised a $25M round led by Hack VC, with participation from Arbitrum Foundation, Worldcoin, and Sei. Nillion aims to extend its “blind computing” concept to the intersection of crypto and AI, where huge amounts of data need to be shared and stored securely. 4) Citrea Bitcoin zero-knowledge rollup Chainway Labs (Citrea) raised $14M in a Series A round led by Founders fund, with participation from Maven 11 Capital, Mirana Ventures, and a bunch of angels. Citrea is a Bitcoin L2 that leverages ZK technology to allow builders to build dapps on Bitcoin. Citrea has also launched its exclusive developer program called Citrea Origins to incentivize devs to build on the L2. 5) Glow Labs Ethereum-based solar energy platform Glow Labs raised $30M in a funding round led by Framework Ventures and Union Square Ventures (USV). Glow Labs rewards solar farms on their network with GLW tokens in exchange for their electricity output and USDC for their carbon credits. They’ll use a big chunk of this funding to expand their solar farms to India. Congrats to all the teams for their fundraises! If you enjoyed this content, please give post a Like and Repost! Thanks for reading!

In addition to scouting early-stage web3 startups each week, we also run a discovery of weekly fundraises and publish the companies by sector in the Crypto Investor Intel newsletter, as well as to the startup database on our website. Last week, these companies raised capital: DeFi - BounceBit – a platform designed for BTC restaking, aimed at providing users the opportunity to earn a yield on their idle Bitcoin. They raised a $6M Seed from Breyer Capital, Blockchain Capital, Bankless Ventures, and others. - EtherFi – an established liquid staking solution for Ethereum, enabling users to stake ETH and receive eETH. They raised a $27M Series A round from CoinFund, Bullish, OKX Ventures, ConsenSys, and others. - Scallop – a money market built on Sui, focusing on institutional-grade quality, enhanced composability, and robust security. Raised a $3M Strategic round from CMS, KuCoin Labs, Side Door Ventures, and others. Infrastructure - Taiko – a decentralized, Ethereum-equivalent ZK-EVM rollup designed for maximum compatibility and a seamless developer experience. They raised a $15M Series A from Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative, OKX, and others. Security - Privasea – the world's first Fully Homomorphic Encryption Machine Learning (FHEML) inference network, providing a revolutionary solution to data privacy issues in AI. Raised a $5M Seed from Binance Labs, MH Ventures, Gate Labs, and others. And more in the sectors of Digital Identity, Data, Rewards, and Wallets. For the full run-down, see our newsletter today: https://lnkd.in/d8KBzX3M

Unveiling the Potential: Bitget Welcomes Wen (WEN) The ever-evolving landscape of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space thrives on continuous innovation and the exploration of groundbreaking concepts. Bitget, a leading global cryptocurrency exchange, recognizes the importance of fostering this growth and is excited to announce the listing of Wen (WEN). Wen embodies a bold vision: to democratize access to venture capital funding by leveraging the power of blockchain technology. Through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure, Wen aims to provide individuals with the opportunity to participate in early-stage investment opportunities traditionally reserved for institutional investors. This innovative approach has the potential to unlock a new era of financial inclusion and empower a wider range of individuals to contribute to and benefit from the growth of promising startups. Bitget, recognizing the transformative potential of Wen, is thrilled to welcome this project onto its platform. By listing WEN, Bitget empowers its users to participate in this exciting journey. This includes the ability to **trade WEN tokens, explore staking opportunities, and contribute to the growth of a more inclusive and accessible venture capital landscape. Furthermore, Bitget fosters a vibrant online community where users can connect with fellow enthusiasts, share insights, and engage in discussions about the future of DeFi and the Wen ecosystem. This collaborative environment allows individuals to stay informed about the latest developments, learn from each other's experiences, and contribute to the collective success of Wen. The listing of Wen on Bitget signifies more than just an expansion of the exchange's offerings; it represents a commitment to supporting innovation and empowering users to reshape the future of venture capital. With Bitget's dedication to fostering a secure and user-centric environment, this listing paves the way for a more inclusive and accessible venture capital landscape for all participants.

The TON Accelerator & STON.fi Merge Grant Programs STON.fi has been working tirelessly to create exciting and rewarding opportunities for Stonfiers-developers, builders and enthusiasts who are ready to bring brilliant ideas to life in the TON Blockchain. Teaming up with TON Accelerator, they've introduced two independent grant programs to support developers on the TON Blockchain. Isn't that great? What this means is that your applications can be reviewed by both teams (TON Accelerator & STON.fi) which increases your chances of getting a grant. Now TON Accelerator, a key force in the success of the TON ecosystem focuses on launching top TON startups with expert mentorship, tailored resources and strategic investment opportunities. The STON.fi grant provides financial support of up to $10,000 for product development, access to necessary documentation, and assistance with technical issues. Curious about how the combined grant program functions? Here's what you should know. The STON.fi grant program analysts will also be reviewing applications for TON Accelerator which means promising ideas will have more chances to be realized and your ideas could be one of those promising ideas. This is an opportunity you don't want to miss out on. Let STON.fi grant programs help bring those ideas to reality. Don’t miss out on important updates, stay tuned as STON.fi will be rollling out more opportunities. DEX: https://app.ston.fi/swap TWITTER: https://lnkd.in/dXHwR6kg LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/ston.fi