Highlights of this episode
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 15 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (January 12-18), with a total funding scale exceeding US$414 million. An overview is as follows:
- In the DeFi sector, three investment and financing events were announced, including YZi Labs investing tens of millions of dollars in Genius Trading, with CZ joining as an advisor;
- Two investment and financing events were announced in the Web3+AI sector, including the completion of a $5 million seed round for Web3 intelligent agent platform Neuramint.
- The infrastructure & tools sector announced three investment and financing events, including Project Eleven completing a $20 million funding round, valuing the company at approximately $120 million post-money.
- Five investment and financing events were announced in the centralized finance sector, including Ripple's $150 million investment in LMAX, which will promote the application of the RLUSD stablecoin in institutional market settlements.
- In the area of other Web3 applications , two investment and financing events were announced. Among them, the "attention marketplace" platform Noise completed a $7.1 million seed round of financing, led by Paradigm.
DeFi
YZi Labs invests tens of millions of dollars in Genius Trading; CZ joins as an advisor.
YZi Labs, founded by Binance co-founders Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and He Yi, has invested "tens of millions of dollars" in Genius Trading, with CZ also joining the project as an advisor. Genius aims to build a privacy-first on-chain trading platform offering spot, perpetual contracts, and copy trading, with the goal of becoming a decentralized version of "Binance." The platform has already processed over $60 million in trading volume during its testing phase and plans to launch a public privacy protocol test in Q2 2026.
BeatCoin announced the completion of a $5 million strategic funding round, led by Cogitent Ventures and Go2Mars Labs, with participation from Castrum Istanbul, Alpha Capital VC, and several Asia-Pacific family offices. The funds will be used to develop the AI-driven incentive system Beat Points (BP) and the upcoming DEX protocol BeatSwap, aiming to standardize on-chain behavior as credit assets and drive the transformation of Web3 from "airdrop-driven" to "value-driven."
Saturn, the developer of the stablecoin protocol USDat, announced the completion of an $800,000 funding round. This round was led by YZi Labs and Sora Ventures, along with several angel investors in the crypto space. The USDat protocol's yield primarily combines Strategy's perpetual preferred stock (STRC) with US Treasury bonds. The project team stated that the protocol aims to bring institutional-grade credit to DeFi, enabling Strategy's credit to be used on-chain and providing a new model for corporate treasury in decentralized finance.
AI
Konnex completes $15 million strategic funding round to advance "on-chain physical economy"
Konnex has announced a $15 million strategic investment to bring the approximately $25 trillion real-world labor economy from closed systems to an on-chain collaborative ecosystem. Reportedly, participants in this round include strong backers such as Cogitent Ventures, Liquid Capital, Leland Ventures, Covey Network, Ventures M77, and Block Maven LLC. The project's vision is to create infrastructure that allows autonomous robots to be contractually scheduled, verified, and paid for like applications, promoting the operation of robotic labor and services under on-chain contracts, settlement, and incentive mechanisms.
Web3 intelligent agent platform Neuramint raises $5 million in seed funding.
Web3 smart agent platform Neuramint has raised $5 million in seed funding, with investors including Maelstrom, Borderless Capital, and Symbolic Capital. Neuramint uses a visual drag-and-drop interface to support automated cross-chain DeFi, NFT, and DAO operations, lowering the barrier to entry for smart contract integration. The funds will be used for platform development, SDK expansion, and the launch of the Neuramint Beta public beta.
Infrastructure & Tools
Project Eleven has raised $20 million in funding, valuing the company at approximately $120 million post-money. The company focuses on protecting cryptocurrencies from future quantum computing attacks. It is developing cryptographic solutions resistant to quantum computing, aiming to provide an upgrade path for existing public blockchains and crypto assets to address the risk that quantum computing could compromise the security of existing cryptographic algorithms.
PhotonPay, a stablecoin payment infrastructure provider, announced the completion of a tens of millions of US dollars Series B funding round. The round was led by IDG Capital, with participation from Hillhouse Investment, Enlight Capital, Lightspeed Faction, and Shoplazza. Blacksheep Technology served as the exclusive financial advisor. The company did not disclose its valuation. The new funds will be used to accelerate the expansion of its stablecoin financial payment channels, recruit key talent, and expand its global regulatory compliance footprint, with a focus on the United States and several emerging markets.
Founded in 2015, PhotonPay currently operates 11 centers globally and employs over 300 people. The company claims its annualized payment processing volume, based on its "stablecoin-native" clearing and settlement infrastructure, exceeds $30 billion. It has partnered with financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Circle, Standard Chartered Bank, DBS Bank, and Mastercard, and plans to strengthen its account issuance, acquiring, and foreign exchange services capabilities. Starting in 2026, PhotonPay also plans to launch value-added services for businesses, including yield-generating treasury products for idle funds and flexible credit instruments.
KOLECT raises $1.2 million in pre-seed funding, led by amber.ac
KOLECT, a sentiment-driven quantitative trading infrastructure platform, has completed a $1.2 million Pre-Seed funding round led by amber.ac, with participation from Wonder Capital Group, GC Capital, and others. The funds will be used to expand its sentiment data, zero-code strategy builder, backtesting capabilities, and CEX/DEX execution system, aiming to transform the crypto market sentiment of over 3,000 KOLs into investable strategies.
Centralized Finance
According to an announcement by Ripple and LMAX Group, the two companies have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership agreement. Ripple will provide $150 million in funding to facilitate the widespread adoption of the RLUSD stablecoin as a margin and settlement asset within the LMAX global institutional trading system. RLUSD will support crypto, perpetual contracts, CFDs, and some fiat-to-crypto products, aiming to improve cross-asset margin efficiency and achieve 24/7 on-chain settlement. The partnership also includes RLUSD custody through the LMAX Custody segregated wallet and integration with Ripple Prime to expand institutional liquidity and reduce market fragmentation.
Alpaca completes $150 million Series D funding round, led by Drive Capital.
Alpaca, a brokerage technology company, announced the completion of a $150 million Series D funding round, valuing the company at $1.15 billion. The round was led by Drive Capital, with participation from Citadel Securities, Kraken, and BNP Paribas Ventures, and secured a $40 million credit line. Alpaca focuses on providing enterprises with trading infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, and crypto assets, generating over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and is actively capturing market share in the interactive brokers market.
Latin American stablecoin payment company VelaFi completes $20 million Series B funding round.
Latin American stablecoin payment infrastructure company VelaFi announced the completion of a $20 million Series B funding round, led by XVC and Ikuyo, with participation from Planetree and BAI Capital, bringing its total funding to over $40 million. The funds will be used to expand compliance, banking connectivity, and operations in the US and Asia. VelaFi has processed billions of dollars in transactions for hundreds of enterprise clients, providing stablecoin solutions including cross-border payments, multi-currency accounts, and asset management.
Singapore-based crypto startup Veera raises $10 million to expand its on-chain financial services.
Singapore-based crypto-finance platform Veera announced it has raised $10 million in Pre-Seed and Seed rounds, with investors including Sigma Capital, CMCC Titan Fund, 6th Man Ventures, and Ayon Capital. Veera launched its mobile platform in January 2025 and has already surpassed 2 million downloads with 220,000 monthly active users. The platform supports self-custodied wallets and has launched a candidate list for the "Veera Card," which plans to support global on-chain asset payments.
Stablecoin service provider Meld raises $7 million, led by Lightspeed Faction.
Stablecoin service provider Meld announced the completion of a $7 million funding round, led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from F-Prime, Yolo Investments, and Scytale Digital. This brings the company's total funding to $15 million to date; specific valuation details were not disclosed. Meld aims to be a one-stop platform for businesses and individuals worldwide to access and convert digital assets, with the goal of becoming a "cryptocurrency Visa," supporting the purchase and settlement of stablecoins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other type of digital asset globally.
other
Noise, an attention marketplace platform, has raised $7.1 million in seed funding, led by Paradigm.
Paradigm led a $7.1 million seed funding round for New York-based startup Noise, which aims to create an "attention market" based on social media trends, allowing users to bet on whether a topic will remain popular, similar to a "trend stock market." Noise will launch on the Base mainnet, incubated by Coinbase, in the coming months. Previous pre-seed investors include Figment Capital and Anagram.
P2P esports platform Slips completes $3.5 million seed funding round.
Slips, a social peer-to-peer esports platform, announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed funding round, led by Las Olas Capital and Sunset Bay Capital, with participation from Charlotte Hornets and Leeds United joint venture owner Andrew Schwartzberg, among others. Slips features a non-bookmaker user-to-betting model and has achieved 500% annual growth. The new funds will be used for technology upgrades, team expansion, user growth, and also for developing crypto payments, stablecoin withdrawals, and international market expansion.
Acquisition
(Mergers and acquisitions are not included in the data statistics of this week's report)
Polygon Labs acquires Coinme and Sequence for over $250 million.
Polygon Labs announced the acquisition of two crypto startups, Coinme and Sequence, for over $250 million to strengthen its stablecoin payment network. Coinme holds remittance licenses in multiple U.S. states and focuses on crypto ATM infrastructure; Sequence provides wallet and on-chain infrastructure services. Polygon stated that this move is a "reverse alignment" with Stripe's stablecoin strategy, aiming to build a complete on-chain payment stack.
Bakkt agrees to acquire stablecoin payment infrastructure DTR
Bakkt Holdings (NYSE: BKKT) has entered into an agreement to acquire Distributed Technologies Research Ltd. (DTR), a global stablecoin payments infrastructure company, for approximately 9,128,682 Class A common shares, advancing its integration of stablecoin settlement and digital banking businesses. The transaction is expected to close upon regulatory and shareholder approval, with ICE voting in favor of the deal. The company will change its name to "Bakkt, Inc." on January 22 and will hold an investor day on the NYSE on March 17.
Animoca Brands has completed its acquisition of digital collectibles and gaming company SOMO.
Animoca Brands has completed its acquisition of SOMO, a digital collectibles and gaming company. SOMO owns products such as SOMO Codex, SOMO Duel, and its flagship game SOMO Battleground. Its ecosystem is dedicated to transforming digital collectibles into playable, streamable, and tradable assets across games.
Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, stated that SOMO is building a cultural operating system for collectibles that complements the company's existing portfolio. By integrating SOMO into its ecosystem, Animoca Brands plans to leverage its global network of games, communities, and partners to drive cross-platform promotion and community growth for the SOMO brand.
