Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 20 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (June 2-8); the total scale of funds exceeded US$568 million, and the inflow of funds increased significantly compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 9 investment and financing events, among which IOST completed a strategic financing of US$21 million, with DWF Labs and others participating in the investment;
- The Web3 game track announced one investment and financing event. Launcher Capital completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by a16z CSX.
- Web3+AI announced three investment and financing events, among which the decentralized artificial intelligence company RabitiAI completed a $5 million financing, led by Nortiyus;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced four investment and financing events, among which Dedge Security, a Web3 security solution provider, completed a 4 million euro seed round of financing, led by Tritemius;
- In other applications, one investment and financing event was announced. SharpLink Gaming completed a private equity financing of US$425 million, led by Consensys.
- The centralized financial sector announced two investment and financing events, among which Sygnum, a digital asset banking group, completed a strategic growth round of financing of US$58 million, with a post-investment valuation of over US$1 billion.
DeFi
IOST Completes $21 Million Strategic Financing, DWF Labs and Others Participate
IOST, a multi-chain ecosystem focused on RWA infrastructure, announced the completion of a $21 million strategic financing round from investors including DWF Labs, Presto, and Rollman Management Groups. This round of financing uses a customized allocation mechanism to promote the decentralized development of the validator network. This strategic capital will drive the launch of upcoming products, deepen ecosystem integration, and consolidate IOST's position in the RWA 3.0 innovation field.
Crypto exchange Rails completes $14 million in financing, with Kraken and others participating
Rails, a crypto exchange startup invested by Kraken, announced the completion of a $14 million financing, with participation from Kraken, CMCC Global, Slow Ventures, Round13 Capital and Quantstamp, bringing its total financing to $20 million. The company's hybrid trading platform combines the execution speed of centralized exchanges with the asset control of on-chain custody. Rails was founded by the crypto wallet BlockEQ team, which was acquired by Canadian exchange Coinsquare in 2018. The platform will be exclusively deployed on the Ink Layer2 blockchain developed by Kraken.
Avantis, a decentralized leveraged trading protocol based on the Base chain, announced the completion of an $8 million Series A financing, led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Pantera Capital, with participation from Symbolic Capital, SALT Fund and Flowdesk. Harsehaj Singh, CEO of the core development team Lumena Labs, said that this round of financing will be completed in mid-2024, using an "equity + token warrant" structure, but the post-investment valuation was not disclosed. So far, Avantis has raised a total of $12 million.
Avantis was launched in 2023 and has become the largest derivatives protocol on the Base chain, with a cumulative trading volume of over US$7.5 billion and over 60,000 users. The platform supports real-world asset (RWA) trading such as cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange and commodities, and plans to expand to stocks, sports and prediction markets. To achieve this goal, Avantis will carry out technical upgrades, including transforming the AMM system to support multiple price sources and developing a customized EVM-compatible blockchain to achieve zero-gas fee transactions. The V2 version of the platform is expected to be launched in a few months, claiming to achieve a 10-fold capital efficiency improvement and support cross-margin trading.
Limited, a new generation fintech company that provides self-custodial stablecoin banking services, announced the completion of a $7 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by North Island Ventures, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Third Prime, Arche Capital, and Collab+Currency. Limited has built a comprehensive payment platform that combines the security of self-custodial stablecoins with the convenience of high-end banking services. It currently covers 176 countries through iOS, Android and web terminals. Limited has structurally restructured global banking, allowing businesses and individuals to fully control their funds through self-custodial wallets while using global payment channels, and enjoy the high-end card benefits exclusive to traditional bank customers.
Crypto credit startup 3Jane raises $5.2 million in seed funding, led by Paradigm
Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm led a $5.2 million seed round for crypto credit startup 3Jane, which also exited stealth operations. 3Jane plans to build the first credit-based money market protocol, focusing on bringing unsecured credit to the digital asset space. The 3Jane protocol is described as a "peer-to-pool credit money market" that provides unsecured USDC credit services in real time through algorithms for yield liquidity providers, traders, enterprises, and AI agents. On the technical level, 3Jane uses zkTLS technology to privately extract off-chain credit data. The project plans to launch the mainnet in the third quarter of 2025, focusing on the US market in the early stages.
HashPower, an on-chain staking and yield agreement, announced the completion of a $4 million strategic financing, with HashKey Capital, FBG Capital, Hailstone Labs and DePIN X Capital participating. The funds will be used to expand global decentralized mining capabilities and build digital assets and AI infrastructure through permissionless on-chain access. HashPower has previously signed a $60 million memorandum of cooperation with eight institutions including Aethir and Automata Network to jointly promote the development of decentralized mining and AI infrastructure. The platform uses the DePIN+AI token economic model to enable users to obtain staking and mining income without holding hardware, and currently relies on the global node network to provide on-chain computing power reward distribution.
On-chain hedge fund platform Neutral Trade completes $2 million in financing
Neutral Trade, a hedge fund platform on the Solana ecosystem chain, recently announced the completion of a $2 million financing round, with participation from Skyland Ventures, Enzyme, BlackPine and several angel investors focused on DeFi. The financing will be used to support the expansion of Ethereum, Layer2 networks and centralized exchanges. According to reports, the platform offers delta-neutral and multi-strategy vaults designed for accessibility, with a minimum deposit of only $100, and all positions have on-chain transparency. Its vaults cover everything from fixed-income stablecoin strategies to thematic indexes.
Crypto derivatives trading protocol Variational completes $1.5 million strategic financing
Crypto derivatives trading protocol Variational announced the completion of a $1.5 million strategic financing, with Mirana Ventures, Caladan, and Zoku Ventures participating in the investment. According to reports, Variational is a peer-to-peer trading protocol designed for perpetual contracts and generalized derivatives. Earlier in October last year , Variational completed a $10.3 million seed round of financing, with Coinbase Ventures and others participating.
Sui Ecosystem DEX Momentum Completes Strategic Round of Financing, Led by OKX Ventures
Sui Ecosystem DEX Momentum announced the completion of a strategic round of financing with a valuation of US$100 million. This round was led by OKX Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Gate Ventures, MEXC Ventures, KuCoin Ventures, and strategic partners Protagonist and DNA Fund. The funds will be used to expand Sui Ecosystem DeFi business. Momentum adopts the innovative ve(3,3) model, achieving US$3 billion in trading volume within two months of its launch, with a TVL of US$69 million and more than 420,000 users. Its co-founder ChefWEN participated in the development of the Meta Libra project, and the platform ensures security through smart contract audits and real-time monitoring. Previously, Momentum received US$10 million in financing led by Varys Capital in March 2025.
Web3 Games
Launcher Capital Completes $4 Million Seed Round, Led by a16z CSX
AI game startup Launcher has completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX). The project aims to reconstruct the game industry ecosystem through AI and on-chain IP, lower the threshold for story creators and developers, support the rapid construction of AI-driven multi-player immersive game experiences, empower users to become creators, and promote global creative expansion.
AI
Decentralized artificial intelligence company RabitiAI completes $5 million financing, led by Nortiyus
Decentralized artificial intelligence company RabitiAI announced that it has completed a $5 million financing round, led by Nortiyus. The new funds will be used to support its construction of tools and infrastructure, enabling users to deploy and manage artificial intelligence models on a cross-blockchain-based architecture. Its solutions are currently mainly used in fields such as medical care, finance, and logistics. It is expected to release an enterprise-level commercial version of decentralized AI tools in Q3 this year.
DeFAI project HeyElsaAI completes $3 million financing
DeFAI project HeyElsaAI announced the completion of $3 million in financing, led by M31 Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures' Base Ecosystem Fund, MH_Ventures, AbsolutaDigital, 2sharesfund, levitate_labs, etc. According to reports, the core of HeyElsa is a proprietary natural language interface, which is built on open source LLMs such as DeepSeek, LLaMA and Mistral. These models will be continuously improved using real-time blockchain, market and sentiment data, as well as user feedback from the application itself.
Decentralized AI computing network AINX completes $2 million seed round of financing
Decentralized AI computing network AINX announced the completion of a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Alpha Gamma.
AINX is developed by Helioq Labs, an R&D-driven protocol team dedicated to building censorship-resistant, user-sovereign infrastructure for Web3. AINX's upcoming roadmap includes the launch of NodeX 100, the launch of a multi-chain computing rental market, and the release of customizable AI agents and multimodal content generation tools. In the future, the team also plans to achieve cross-chain compatibility, release SDKs for integration, and build a decentralized AI model market.
Infrastructure & Tools
Web3 security solution provider Dedge Security completes €4 million seed round of financing, led by Tritemius
Web3 security solutions provider Dedge Security announced the completion of a 4 million euro seed round of financing, led by venture capital firm Tritemius. The new funds will be used to build an ASPM (Application Security Posture Management) platform designed specifically for Web3 environments, aiming to provide protection from code to nodes and provide real-time risk visibility throughout the dApp life cycle.
DA layer interoperability protocol Sunrise completes $3 million seed round financing, Decima and others participate
DA layer interoperability protocol Sunrise completed a US$3 million seed round of financing, with participation from Decima, Animoca Brands Japan, Hyperithm, Cogitent Ventures, MZ Web3 Fund, V3V Ventures, Connectico Capital, MH Ventures, etc. The new funds intend to support its integration of data availability layer and liquidity center functions into a single platform supported by Proof-of-Liquidity to achieve liquidity sharing.
Web3 identity protocol Shards Protocol has completed a $2 million financing round, with participation from Animoca Brands, Kyber Ventures, and Yield Guild Games. The funds will be mainly used to develop its flagship product Aura, a system that converts user on-chain activities into verifiable reputation and rewards. As a Web3 reputation layer, Aura allows users to display reputation scores and badges earned through their on-chain activities through the X platform. The system plans to launch tokens and expand functions within the year, and users can unlock rewards by minting more badges. This financing will accelerate the integration of the protocol in the Web3 ecosystem.
YZi Labs announces investment in hardware wallet company OneKey
YZi Labs announced that it has invested in OneKey, an open source hardware wallet company, to strengthen the security of global crypto assets and inclusive self-custody. Founded in 2019, OneKey has grown rapidly in China, Japan, South Korea, Europe and other places, with an average annual growth of 300% in hardware wallet sales. The new funds will be used to develop a new generation of hardware, enhance on-chain threat detection, expand compliance business in the United States, Europe and emerging markets, and strengthen its "Anzen Lab" security testing capabilities. OneKey's recently launched USDC income module attracted over $62 million in subscriptions.
other
Crypto Reserves:
SharpLink Gaming Completes $425 Million Private Funding, Led by Consensys
SharpLink Gaming has completed a $425 million private placement financing led by Consensys. It is reported that SharpLink plans to use this fund to purchase Ethereum’s native asset ETH and use it as its main reserve asset.
Centralized Finance
German digital wealth management platform Scalable Capital has completed a €155 million Series E financing round, led by Sofina and Noteus Partners, with participation from existing investors Balderton Capital, Tencent and HV Capital, bringing Scalable Capital's total investment to more than €470 million. This round of financing will be used to upgrade technology and launch family investment features, including children's portfolio services. Scalable Capital will enhance its AI-driven portfolio management tools and expand API integration to create a more personalized experience for retail and B2B customers. Customers can invest in 8,000 stocks, 2,500 ETFs, 3,500 funds, and cryptocurrencies, with ETFs accounting for more than two-thirds of investment capital.
(This financing is not included in the statistics of this issue's weekly financing report)
Digital asset banking group Sygnum announced the completion of a $58 million strategic growth round of financing, with a post-investment valuation of over $1 billion. This round of financing was led by Fulgur Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on Bitcoin technology, with participation from new and old investors and company employees, and the founding team still maintains a controlling position. The funds will be mainly used for market expansion in the EU/EEA and compliance business layout in Hong Kong in 2025. Sygnum plans to strengthen the development of products related to Bitcoin technology and seek strategic acquisition opportunities. The company will also increase investment in compliance and risk management to cope with the trend of stricter industry supervision. Performance data show that Sygnum's 2024 trading product revenue has exceeded the full-year level of 2023 in the third quarter, and the full-year trading volume has increased by more than 1,000% year-on-year. Its B2B platform provides encryption services to more than 20 institutions such as Swiss Post Bank, covering more than one-third of the Swiss population.
Tether announces investment in digital asset exchange Orionx
Tether announced its investment in Chilean digital asset exchange Orionx. Orionx’s business covers Chile, Peru and other countries, and is committed to integrating cryptocurrencies into B2B and retail systems to provide low-cost financial tools. This investment will help Orionx complete its Series A financing, consolidate its regional business, enhance its technical capabilities, and expand stablecoin-driven remittance and other infrastructure.
A joint study by Chainplay and Strorible showed that among the 1,181 crypto projects that received venture capital between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2024, nearly 45% have ceased operations and 77% have monthly revenue of less than $1,000.
