Highlights of this episode
In terms of financing scale and investor structure, institutional-grade financial infrastructure is gaining favor with capital. According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 7 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (June 8-14), with a total funding scale exceeding $582 million . An overview is as follows:
- The DeFi sector announced three investment and financing events, including Morpho's $175 million funding round led by a16z Crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital.
- In the infrastructure & tools sector, three investment and financing events were announced, including SignalPlus completing a $50 million Series B1 financing round at a valuation of $500 million, led by HashKey Capital;
- One investment and financing event was announced in the Web3+AI sector: TradingRazor, an AI-native trading decision platform, completed a $1.5 million seed round of financing, led by OneBit Ventures and others.
- Four equity acquisitions were announced, including Metaplanet's acquisition of Siiibo Securities, a licensed Japanese securities firm, for approximately US$13.12 million.
DeFi
DeFi lending protocol Morpho announced the completion of a $175 million funding round, co-led by a16z crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital, with strategic investors including Apollo Global, VanEck, Circle Ventures, Ledger, and Cathay Innovation. Other participants included Variant, Wintermute Ventures, Prelude, IOSG Ventures, HashKey Capital, Bpifrance, and Mirana Ventures. The investment was priced based on Morpho's token price over the past month, valuing the company at up to approximately $2 billion. Morpho allows institutions to customize lending markets and risk parameters on-chain and has already attracted users from Coinbase, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, and Galaxy Digital. With a total value locked of approximately $6.6 billion, the protocol is accelerating its competition with traditional DeFi lending protocols like Aave and plans to further expand into high-yield DeFi asset allocation sought by traditional financial institutions.
Decentralized futures exchange MNX has completed a $6.4 million pre-seed funding round, valuing the company at $40 million. The round was led by Village Global, with participation from Cambrian, North Island Ventures, and others. Built on the Ethereum Layer 2 network MegaETH, MNX plans to launch its mainnet this summer. It offers valuation futures, equity perpetual contracts, computing power perpetual contracts, and prediction markets related to the AI economy, covering assets such as AI lab valuations, computing power and electricity prices, copper prices, and related public and private equity. The platform employs a 200-millisecond batch auction mechanism to reduce MEV and latency, and will introduce liquidity through a team-managed Hyperliquidity Provider-style liquidity vault. Its target users include technology professionals and crypto traders seeking AI exposure.
TVL Capital raises $5 million to launch on-chain structured products
Former traditional financial structured derivatives trader Lars announced the co-founding of TVL Capital and the completion of a $5 million funding round to launch on-chain structured products, Chain-Traded Products (CTPs), positioned as on-chain equivalents of ETPs. Lars, who previously priced alternative derivatives at BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse, stated that DeFi has yet to reconstruct tools comparable to traditional structured products. TVL aims to bring compliant, composable structured derivatives (institutional-grade yields and complex yield structures) on-chain, initially relying on traditional financial infrastructure, with long-term plans to create fully digital-native products.
Infrastructure & Tools
Canton developer Digital Asset has raised $355 million in funding, led by a16z crypto.
Digital Asset, the developer of the Canton network, has completed a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, with investors including a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, S&P Global, SBI Group, SoFi, and Tradeweb. CEO Yuval Rooz stated that this was an equity funding round, with most of the institutions being potential Canton users. The funds will be used to accelerate collaborations with institutional partners, mergers and acquisitions, and participation in related projects. Canton is a public, permissionless Layer 1 blockchain for institutional finance, supporting privacy-configurable and asset tokenization workflows. The network has already supported the issuance of approximately $6 trillion in assets, and JPMorgan, DTCC, Visa, and others have deployed applications or participated in validation on it.
EDGE Markets announced the completion of a $29.2 million Series A funding round, led by CoinFund, with participation from Indicator Ventures, Mantis VC, Stepstone Group, Bullpen Capital, and others. The company will launch EDGE Pro, a high-throughput banking platform for prediction market makers, supporting real-time deposits to all CFTC-regulated exchanges through a single account. It also plans to apply for Introducing Broker and FCM licenses to enable post-settlement of multiple liquidity pools and access to third-party margin. Simultaneously, EDGE will launch EDGE Connect, a payment network designed specifically for compliant gaming and prediction markets, charging fees only on net new deposits within 24-48 hours, claiming to reduce payment processing costs by over 70%, and supporting 24/7 real-time deposits for users and operators via RTP. Its VISA debit card product, EDGE Boost, has processed over $2 billion in transactions in its first year.
AIPayWithCrypto raises $10 million, led by Animoca Brands.
AIPayWithCrypto announced the completion of its first round of strategic financing, raising $10 million. The round was led by Animoca Brands, with participation from Titans Ventures, Castrum Capital, Adaverse, and M2M Capital. In addition to the capital injection, the parties reached a deep strategic consensus to jointly build a future integrating AI and payments, and to improve infrastructure to serve global users and AI economic entities. The APC platform will present a brand-new AI+payment system to the market, solidifying its core competitiveness in the payment sector.
Web3+AI
TradingRazor, an AI-native trading decision platform, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, led by OneBit Ventures and others.
TradingRazor, an AI-native trading decision platform, announced the completion of a $1.5 million seed funding round led by OneBit Ventures, Gaea Ventures, and Blockin VC, with participation from a group of Web3 angel investors. The new funds will be used for product development and ecosystem growth to support on-chain fund flow tracking, market data aggregation, AI-driven trade modeling, and embedded risk management.
Acquisition
Figure will acquire AI-powered mortgage lending platform Kiavi for $717 million.
Blockchain financial platform Figure Technology Solutions has signed an agreement to acquire Kiavi, an AI-powered residential real estate lending platform, for a total transaction price of $717 million. A joint venture between Sixth Street and Figure will acquire Kiavi's balance sheet assets. Figure expects Kiavi to add over $7 billion in transaction volume annually. Following the transaction, Kiavi CEO Arvind Mohan will join Figure as Chief Commercial Officer.
Kiavi is reportedly an AI-driven residential real estate investment lending platform with annual loan disbursements exceeding $30 billion. Following the transaction, its residential transition and rental lending businesses will be integrated into Figure's on-chain capital markets system.
Metaplanet, a Japanese-listed Bitcoin treasury company, announced it will acquire all issued shares of Siiibo Securities, a licensed Tier 1 securities firm in Japan, for 2.1 billion yen (approximately US$13.12 million), making it a wholly-owned subsidiary. Following the acquisition, Metaplanet plans to rename Siiibo Securities as Metaplanet Securities Inc.
This acquisition marks the first major M&A transaction in Metaplanet's medium- to long-term strategy, "Project Nova," which aims to build a Bitcoin-centric financial platform and ecosystem. Siiibo Securities holds a Type I financial instruments business license, operates an online corporate bond platform, and has a client base of individual and institutional investors. Following the acquisition, the group will be able to develop and offer yield-generating products such as Bitcoin-linked bonds.
Blockworks acquires encrypted data platform Messari for over $10 million.
Crypto data service provider Blockworks acquired rival Messari for over $10 million. The company was valued at approximately $300 million in 2022, representing a significant discount in the deal. Reports indicate that the transaction reflects the survival pressure faced by once-highly valued startups amid a deepening crypto bear market. Founded in 2018, Blockworks initially focused on media and events, later expanding into news, research, and data services. Last October, it closed its news division, shifting its focus to data, investor relations, and compliance services. The company recently completed an extension of its funding round, valuing the company at approximately $192 million.
Solana infrastructure company Helius acquires Light Protocol to expand on-chain privacy.
Solana infrastructure company Helius announced the acquisition of Light Protocol to expand its on-chain privacy solutions. Founded in 2021, Light Protocol initially focused on zero-knowledge proof privacy tools before collaborating with Helius to develop the ZK Compression data solution, which launched in 2024. ZK Compression is an infrastructure framework that leverages zero-knowledge proofs to reduce the cost of data storage in Solana.
Helius stated that following the acquisition, Light Protocol will refocus on its original zero-knowledge privacy direction. Leveraging Helius' distribution and infrastructure capabilities, it plans to build a zero-knowledge proof-based privacy protocol for private payments and private DeFi on Solana. This protocol is fully programmable and configurable, supporting both retail and institutional use cases. Helius plans to open the new privacy infrastructure to developers in the coming months.
