Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 17 blockchain investment and financing events around the world last week (3.3-3.9); the total amount of funds exceeded US$257 million, an increase compared to the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced three investment and financing events, among which Berachain liquid pledge protocol Infrared completed a $14 million Series A financing, led by Framework Ventures;
- The Web3 gaming track announced two investment and financing events, among which the AI-driven gaming solution iAgent Protocol completed a $3 million financing;
- Three investment and financing events were announced in the Web3+AI field, among which Validation Cloud completed a $15 million Series A financing, led by True Global Ventures;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced 6 investment and financing events, among which DoubleZero Foundation completed a $28 million financing with a valuation of $400 million, led by Dragonfly and Multicoin Capital;
- Other categories announced one investment and financing event. Web3Labs, an accelerator focusing on the Web3 field, completed a new round of strategic financing;
- In the field of centralized finance, two investment and financing events were announced, among which the French crypto trading company Flowdesk completed a financing of US$102 million, led by HV Capital.
DeFi
Berachain’s liquid staking protocol Infrared has completed a $14 million Series A funding round, led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Citizen X, Halo Capital, No Limit Holdings, NGC Ventures, and Selini Capital. This round of financing was conducted using the SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) model. After a $2.25 million strategic round led by Binance Labs and a $2.5 million seed round , Infrared’s total funding has reached $18.75 million. Infrared was incubated by the Berachain Foundation and launched two liquid staking tokens, iBGT and iBERA, corresponding to Berachain’s governance token BGT and gas token BERA, respectively. Currently, the protocol has a TVL of over $1.7 billion, making it the largest protocol in the Berachain ecosystem. The Berachain mainnet was officially launched in February, but due to controversy over the proportion of investors and internal holdings, the BERA token has fallen 57% since its launch on February 6.
Derivatives trading protocol MYX Finance announced the completion of a strategic round of financing, with participation from leading institutions such as FL Foundation, Woyong, D11 Labs, HashKey Capital, and Metalpha. Among them, D11 Labs, HashKey Capital and other institutions previously participated in MYX Finance's seed round of financing.
According to official news from Coral Finance, the project has completed a $3 million angel round of financing, with investors including Taisu Ventures, Gate Ventures, KuCoin Ventures, Web3Port Fund, Mask Network, Formless Capital, etc. In addition, strategic investors GoPlus Security, UFLY Labs and ecosystem supporter Movement Foundation are also involved. Currently, Coral plans to build a DeFi portfolio solution on the Movement mainnet. Coral Finance mainly builds a pre-market asset trading mechanism to help users trade before the project TGE (token generation event). In the future, Coral will also introduce AI-enabled AlphaVault products to increase revenue and trading opportunities.
Web3 Games
iAgent Protocol, an AI-driven gaming solution, raises $3 million
iAgent Protocol, an AI-driven gaming solution, announced the completion of a $3 million financing round, with participation from Alpha Liquid Terminal, Lydian Labs, double jump.tokyo Inc., Cointribune, Alliance, Frekaz Group, Expert Dojo, IBC Group Official, PG, and Q42. According to reports, iAgent enables gamers to create, own, and monetize game AI agents, enabling gamers to train their own AI agents through game screens, powered by DePIN, and by leveraging decentralized GPU computing, thereby creating a new digital asset class on the blockchain.
Mysten Labs acquires game development platform Parasol
Sui development company Mysten Labs has acquired game development platform Parasol for an undisclosed amount. Parasol is an end-to-end platform formed by Japanese and American game experts, and its platform allows game developers to seamlessly integrate blockchain infrastructure into their games.
AI
Validation Cloud, a crypto infrastructure company using artificial intelligence, announced the completion of a $15 million Series A financing round, led by True Global Ventures, with participation from Cadenza, Blockchain Founders Fund, Side Door Ventures and AP Capital. The valuation of this round of financing was not disclosed. According to reports, this is the third round of financing for Validation Cloud, and its total financing has reached $30.8 million since its establishment in 2017. Validation Cloud offers three main products to support blockchains based on the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Validation Cloud's products include token staking capabilities, software for connecting computers to proof-of-stake networks, and access to data analyzed by artificial intelligence. The company offers its products on multiple popular blockchains, including Solana, Ethereum, Base, Aptos, and Binance Chain. Validation Cloud's revenue comes from commissions on rewards for customers using its services to stake tokens, as well as subscription fees for using its software.
Decentralized AI protocol Prime Intellect completes $15 million financing, led by Founders Fund
The decentralized AI protocol Prime Intellect announced that it has completed $15 million in financing, led by Founders Fund, with participation from Menlo Ventures, Andrej Karpathy (EurekaAI, Tesla, OpenAI), Clem Delangue (Hugging Face), Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis), Tri Dao (Together.AI), Balaji Srinivasan (Network School), Emad Mostaque (Stability AI, Intelligent Internet), Jake Medwell (8VC co-founder), Brendan McCord (Cosmos Institute), Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon), etc. This brings its total financing to more than $20 million. According to reports, Prime Intellect is building a peer-to-peer protocol for computing and intelligence that will enable collective creation, ownership, and access to sovereign open source AI. The Prime Intellect protocol is already running on the testnet, building a trustless, community-driven ecosystem in which contributors benefit from the models they help create.
Decentralized AI network Fortytwo completes $2.3 million Pre-Seed round of financing
Decentralized AI network Fortytwo announced the completion of a $2.3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Big Brain Holdings, with participation from CMT Digital, Escape Velocity, Chorus One and mentatgroup. According to reports, Fortytwo is a decentralized AI network that leverages group intelligence by connecting consumer devices running small AI models. This approach enables scalable and cost-effective AI reasoning without relying on centralized data centers. By installing nodes on personal computers, users can contribute to the global AI infrastructure, and each additional node enhances the intelligence of the network.
Infrastructure & Tools
Cross-chain protocol Across completes $41 million financing, led by Paradigm
Across Protocol, which focuses on cross-chain interoperability, has completed a $41 million token financing, led by Paradigm, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital and angel investor Sina Habinian. This round of financing was carried out in two phases, completed in Q2 and Q4 of 2024, with a total financing amount of $51 million. Across focuses on intent-driven cross-chain transactions, supporting users to transfer cross-chain assets through a single request, with an average transaction time of less than 5 seconds. Its technology is based on the ERC-7683 standard, which has been adopted by more than 50 protocols such as Base, Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism, and is used for Uniswap's cross-chain bridging function. As of now, Across has processed a total of $19 billion in transactions, of which the monthly transaction volume in January 2025 exceeded $1 billion.
Startup DoubleZero Foundation has completed a $28 million financing at a valuation of $400 million, led by Dragonfly and Multicoin Capital, with participation from Foundation Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, DBA, Borderless Capital, Superscrypt and Frictionless. People familiar with the matter said that DoubleZero Foundation is currently looking for "strategic partners" to seek more strategic financing at a valuation of $600 million, and the strategic financing has not yet ended.
According to reports, DoubleZero is building a "new type of Internet" to improve blockchain performance. Its vision is to build a global private fiber optic cable network, and then use these cables to enable blockchains to transmit data more efficiently than on the public Internet. The project is seen as a key technology for Solana's plan to process 1 million transactions per second. DoubleZero is opening its licensed testnet to Solana validators and RPC, and plans to gradually expand to other chains. Its fiber optic cable network is connected to dedicated lines operated by Jump Crypto, RockawayX, Distributed Global, Latitude, and Terraswitch, and is accepting more contributors. DoubleZero also announced today the launch of its licensed testnet, making the DoubleZero network available to Solana validators and RPC.
Privacy blockchain project Seismic completes $7 million seed round of financing, led by a16z crypto
Seismic announced the completion of a $7 million seed round of financing, led by a16z crypto, with participation from Polychain, NGC Ventures, dao5 and 1kx. The funds will be used to develop encrypted blockchains. Seismic aims to solve the current transaction transparency problem faced by L1 blockchains. Through end-to-end encryption, all transaction data on the chain is made private to avoid user data exposure. Team members come from well-known companies such as Wintermute and have deep experience in cryptography, compilers and distributed systems. Seismic said that this financing will accelerate the construction of the Seismic ecosystem and make it an important infrastructure for future privacy blockchains.
Acki Nacki Completes Over $6 Million in Financing, with Hack VC and Others Participating
According to the official announcement of Acki Nacki, the pre-sale of its network nodes has been successfully completed, with a financing amount of over 6 million US dollars. Investors include Kingsway Capital, K5 Global, Blockchain.com, Original Capital and Hack VC. Acki Nacki adopts the "Bitcoin for Proof of Stake" design, without pre-mining, airdrops, and token distribution. $NACKL tokens will be mined and released within 60 years. Its Gossip Ignite decentralized startup protocol was launched on January 29, 2025, and the main network will be officially launched after 75% of validators join. At present, the network test network has more than 5 million users, and its goal is to promote the vision of a truly decentralized "world computer".
MEV infrastructure FastLane Labs completes $6 million financing, led by Figment Capital and others
MEV infrastructure FastLane Labs announced the completion of US$6 million in financing, led by Figment Capital and DBA, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Robot Ventures, Hashkey Capital, CHORUS ONE and others. The new funds will be used to create a full range of liquidity pledge tokens on Monad. According to reports, FastLane Labs is committed to building a long-term MEV ecosystem on Monad, so that users, dApps and pledgers can benefit from it. Earlier in May 2023 , FastLane Labs completed US$2.3 million in financing, led by Multicoin Capital.
Endless Web3 Genesis Cloud Completes Strategic Round of Financing, with Foresight Ventures and Others Joining
Endless Web3, a distributed intelligent component protocol, announced the completion of a strategic round of financing, with investors mainly from multiple institutions and well-known investors including Foresight Ventures. The financing will be used to accelerate the development of Endless's component development platform, AI Agent tool chain and ecological construction, as well as key aspects of project development such as project product development, ecological development support, long-term development reserves, market and strategic cooperation, and promote Endless to become a super connector from Web2 to Web3, AI and Web3.
Endless is a distributed intelligent component protocol that aims to lower the threshold for Web2 applications to transform to Web3, provide developers with a one-stop Web3 application development platform, and provide users with a Web2-level experience. Endless is equipped with a public chain that supports the Move language, and integrates a variety of AI large model capabilities and plug-ins. It is committed to becoming the best connector for AI and Crypto, allowing developers to build Crypto AI applications more simply and quickly.
other
Web3Labs Completes a New Round of Strategic Financing
Web3Labs, an accelerator focusing on the Web3 field, recently completed a new round of strategic financing, jointly invested by emerging investment groups Avenir Group, Mirana Ventures, OSL Group, and Gaofeng Innovation Venture Capital Fund. This round of financing will focus on strengthening the construction of a global ecosystem, deepening the ecological connection with international mainstream exchanges, and relying on professional financial service capabilities to inject new momentum into the Web3 ecosystem. After completing the financing, Web3Labs will comprehensively upgrade its ecological service system: on the one hand, it will link up with leading exchange partners to create a full-cycle acceleration platform covering project acceleration, primary market investment, etc.; on the other hand, it will actively explore the path of integration with traditional markets. In addition, Web3Labs has initiated cooperation negotiations with a number of international securities firms to explore the 2025 listing plan and strive to open up a two-way empowerment channel between Web3 and the traditional capital market.
Centralized Finance
Flowdesk Completes $102 Million Funding to Expand Trading and Liquidity Business
French crypto trading company Flowdesk has completed a $102 million financing, of which 90% is equity financing and 10% is debt financing. This round of financing was led by HV Capital, with participation from existing investors Eurazeo, Cathay Innovation and ISAI VC, and the debt financing was provided by funds managed by BlackRock. Flowdesk plans to use the funds to expand its over-the-counter derivatives trading business, launch a crypto credit department, and set up a new office in the UAE. The company also plans to double its headcount in the next 12 months, strengthen regulatory compliance, and actively respond to the implementation of the EU MiCA regulations.
Cryptocurrency broker August has completed a $10 million Series A round of financing, led by Dragonfly Ventures, with participation from SCB Limited, 6th Man Ventures and Foresight Ventures. The valuation in this round of financing was not disclosed. August will use the latest funds raised to develop marketing strategies, recruit more employees and continue to develop new technologies.
According to reports, August is a brokerage firm focusing on cryptocurrencies. It works with large financial institutions such as hedge funds and family offices to help them obtain income and returns on cryptocurrency investments through lending and trading. Most of August's revenue comes from trading spreads, and it charges customers transaction fees on each transaction. The company previously raised $6 million in a seed round of financing in 2023.
Investment institutions
Foundation Capital launches $600 million new fund to invest in AI, crypto and other fields
Foundation Capital announced the launch of its 11th flagship fund with a scale of US$600 million, aiming to find the so-called "billion-dollar market" in the fields of artificial intelligence, financial technology and cryptocurrency. It is reported that Foundation Capital is an investor in AI chip company Cerebras and the first institutional investor in blockchain platform Solana. The latest fund is not expected to adopt a multi-stage, multi-regional and multi-strategy approach, but will continue to look for investment opportunities in the early stages.
