Fundraisings of the Week
Crypto Infrastructure Firm Blockstream Raises $125M for Bitcoin Mining
QuickNode Raises $60M Series B Round To Further Fuel Blockchain Adoption
Tech Veteran-Backed Web3 Social Platform Plai Labs Raises $32M in Seed Round
The =nil; Foundation Raises $22M to Build Marketplace for Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Parfin, The Leading Latin American Web3 Infrastructure Provider, Raises $15M Seed Round Led By Framework Ventures
Obol Labs Raises $12.5M Series A Funding to Make Proof-of-Stake Blockchains More Secure
Intella X, Neowiz’s Web3 gaming platform reveals its ecosystem partners
Spatial Labs, a web3 infrastructure and hardware company, closes $10M seed round
WEB3 FASHION PLATFORM, SYKY, CLOSES $9.5M SERIES A FUNDING ROUND, LED BY ALEXIS OHANIAN’S SEVEN SEVEN SIX
Calimero Network Raises $8.5M in Seed Funding
DeFi
[Weekly TVL] Gross: ⬆️$47.76B
Top 3 Apps: Lido ⬆️($8.11B), MakerDAO ⬆️($7.18B), Curve ⬆️($4.78B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬆️($28.47B), TRON ⬆️($5.18B), BSC ⬆️($4.88B)
Top 7D Change 📈: Creating and maintaining the world’s best crypto index products — Index Coop (+62.49%, $107.43m)
DeFi News
[Aave Ethereum V3] Aave community passed the AIP to launch Aave V3 on Ethereum. V3 went live on Ethereum on Jan 27th.
[Gemzy Vaults Live] NFT ownership sharing protocol Gemzy is live with a few vaults available. Gemzy vaults allow a group of participants to pool ETH and purchase NFTs through the Opensea platform, or directly OTC, and split ownership of the purchased NFT among participants based on the % of ETH they contributed to the purchase.
[Polygon PoS Hardfork Live] Polygon has upgraded its PoS chain. The upgrade helps reduce the frequency and depth of reorgs, and improve transaction finality.
NFT
Top 10 Collections by Weekly Volume
NFT News of the Week
Jan. 26, Online shopping giant Amazon to launch NFT initiative. “Amazon is launching a digital assets enterprise, according to four sources familiar with the matter, who said that an NFT initiative is expected in the spring.” [Source: Blockworks]
Jan. 26, China’s Instagram to integrate with Conflux Network. “With more than 200M monthly active users, Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu), China’s answer to “Instagram” has integrated Conflux Network as a permissionless blockchain.” [Source: Conflux Network Twitter]
Jan. 25, Moonbird NFT creator Kevin Rose’s wallet hacked. “Kevin Rose, founder of the NFT collection Moonbirds, had his wallet hacked. The cause of the hack has not been confirmed. Rose’s estimated losses may exceed $1 million.” [Source: The Block]
Jan. 25, Porsche NFT minting requires consumer to opt out of right of withdrawal. “In the UK, EU, and other countries, laws exist to provide consumers with a 14 day cancellation period when buying goods or services online; known as distance selling regulations.” [Source: Paul Twitter]
Jan. 25, Founders of Gemini-owned NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway step down. “Some news — after almost 4 years, Griffin and I are departing Gemini and are passing the baton at Nifty Gateway. This journey has been an incredible ride, but Griffin and I are founders at heart and we want to start another company.” [Source: Duncan Twitter]
Jan. 25, NFT project Doodles unveils details for Doodles 2. “With the easy user experience, scalable technology, and no gas fees on Flow, Doodles 2 will open up their universe to everyone. The next wave of Web3 adoption is all about utility and fun — and it’s exciting to see Doodles leading the way.” [Source: nftnow]
Jan. 25, Mychital Games acquires NFT marketplace DMarket. “Mythical acquires and integrates the technology of NFT marketplace DMarket in the hopes that improving the buying and selling of digital assets will boost user growth.” [Source: The Block]
Jan. 23, NFT price tracker Floor acquires NFT analytics firm WGMI.io. “Over the coming months, some of WGMI deep-analytics features will be integrated into the Floor platform, enriching the portfolio experience, while expanding the reach of WGMI to Floor’s 10,000+ active users.” [Source: Floor Mirror]
Jan. 17, Fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent files for NFT trademark applications. “The applications claim plans for: NFT-backed media, stores featuring virtual goods, virtual makeup, cosmetics, and skincare preparations, and more!” [Source: Mike Kondoudis Twitter]
GameFi & Metaverse
[Neopets Metaverse raises $4M to bring Neopets to Web3] Neopets Metaverse looks to bring the virtual pet game, Neopets, into the decentralized world. Neopets Metaverse has announced closing an investment round, raising $4 million in funding. The round saw multiple investment institutions, including Polygon Ventures, Blizzard Avalanche Ecosystem Fund, Hashkey Capital, IDG Capital, and NetDragon Websoft.
[Neowiz’s Intella X raises $12M for Web3 gaming platform] Intella X, a Web3 gaming platform developed by South Korea’s gaming giant Neowiz, has raised $12 million in funding. The funding round included over 20 investors from various sectors and includes partners such as Polygon, Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, Planetarium, Big Brain Holdings, Crit Ventures, JoyCity, Pearl Abyss, XL Games, WEMIX, and Global Coin Research.
[Createra raises $10M led by A16Z to boost gaming metaverse] Createra is a user-generated content (UGC) metaverse engine enabling creators to create, distribute, and MetaFi games. Createra, a creator-oriented metaverse project, announced $10 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to continue its pursuit of building the largest Gen Z-focused metaverse platform.
[Virtualtech Frontier secures funding led by Blockchain Founders Fund to develop metaverse platform] Virtualtech Frontier, a metaverse development company, has secured seed round funding from Blockchain Founders Fund, joining forces with seed investor 500 Global in support of VTF’s journey to introduce the future of digital engagements by enabling the metaverse for everyone. The funds will be allocated towards growing the team, supporting marketing activities and further developing the platform, Mitoworld.io.
[Courtside Ventures raises $100M fund for sports, collectibles, wellness and gaming] Courtside Ventures has closed a total of $100 million for its third early-stage venture capital fund focused on sports, collectibles, wellness and gaming. Fund III investors include a globally diverse group of industry leaders across professional sports including team owners, athletes and industry executives.
[Web3 social platform Plai Labs raises $32M in seed funding] Plai Labs, a company that builds social platforms for Web3, announced that it raised $32M in a seed funding round led by the investment firm a16z. Plai Labs, headed by former executives from gaming studio Jam City and social platform Myspace, has plans to use the money to grow its team and hire developers to create decentralized social platforms that combine Web3 and AI technology.
[Metahood raises $3M to build a platform for trading metaverse real estate] Crypto venture fund 1confirmation led the seed funding round, with participation from Volt Capital, Flamingo DAO and Neon DAO. Metahood attracted other angel investors, including metaverse company The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget, NFT marketplace SuperRare co-founder John Crain and digital collectible card game company Sorare growth lead Brian O’Hagan.
[Sleepagotchi raises $3.5M to build sleep gamification and digital collectibles APP] Sleepagotchi, a mobile application with gamification and social elements that helps users improve their sleeping habits across the world, raised a $3.5M seed round from investors including 6th Man Ventures, Collab+Currency, Shima Capital, 1kx, DeFi Alliance, Sfermion, Emoote, and LCA Game Guild. Notable angels include Cem Kansu (VP Product at Duolingo), Santiago R Santos, and Justin Melillo (Founder of Mona).
DAO
[TreasureDAO launched a new Game Builders Program on Arbitrum] All participants are welcome to apply to the program, enabling early game developers to land on a solid infrastructure and accelerate their product-building process.
[Fantom Foundation now announced Ecosystem vault to fund early projects] The vault is funded by decreasing the original burn rate of FTM and redirecting 10% of transaction fees to support early projects in the ecosystem. Currently, any approval mandates 55% approval with at least 55% stakes attendance and only 5 projects will be selected at one time, these projects will be payout through LlamaPay with different streaming times.
[SSVDAO is starting a $50M ecosystem Fund to push DVT in staking ecosystem] Following the announcement of a $10M pool in July, SSV DAO is starting a $50M funds to accelerate the level of decentralization in the Ethereum staking.
[Sushi swap’s Kanpai 2.0 has been approved with 99.9% consent] The proposal will set 100% transaction fee payout to the Treasury.
[Dydx announced a lock-up extension for investors and team ] The amendment is targeted to allocations belonging to investors, founders, employees, and advisors, totaled to 50% of the total supply. The updated token unlock schedule indicated that the initial unlock date is December 1st 2023, aimed to free 30% of targeted allocations.
[Aptos GrantDAO Round 2 is now Open] This round will allocate 8,000 $APTOS in total to developers, the associated topics are Defi, Stable Coins, NFT/Gaming, Infrastructure/Tooling, Move Native, Community/DAO, ZkMove, and Social.
[Sui testnet Wave 2 is now live] The main focus for wave 2 is shifted to tokenomics, which includes Epoch Management, Gas mechanism, Storage fund, Stake delegation, and POS mechanism. Significantly, the validator set is doubled to ~40 compared to Wave 1, and the permissionless full node is enabled.
[Iron Fish rolled out their Incentivized testnet Phase 3] having successfully completed 2 phrases for incentivized testnet in 2023, Iron Fish announced the final phrase for users to host nodes, finding bugs and Mint/Burn/Send Asset.
[MakerDAO will deploy $100M USDC on Yearn Finance] The DAO approved with 72% favorable votes, MakerDAO will open an individual vault and the deployment will earn about 2% annual yield.
[ENS DAO new proposal suggests selling ETH to cover operating costs] The proposal is currently in draft and it suggests selling 10,000 $ETH to cover costs for the next two years. The treasury currently holds 40,746 ETH and 2.46M USDC.
Regulation & Adoption
- Jan 23 (🌍) Binance users unable to transfer below 100k USD via SWIFT from February 1st.
- Jan 25 (🇷🇺) Russian Finance Ministry backs tax on crypto mining.
- Jan 25 (🇪🇺) Lawmakers propose crypto tax to fund the EU Budget.
- Jan 25 (🇺🇸) SBF, former CEO of FTX, has 50M USD seized from a tiny rural US bank.
- Jan 29 (🇰🇷) South Korea plans to deploy a cryptocurrency tracking system under AML policy in 2023.
Macro
- Banks in Argentina are running out of space to store peso bills, marking the inflation the country is currently facing.
- Russia´s Weekly oil exports fall by 22%
- Seven (7) US banks plan payment wallets to compete with PayPal and Apple Pay.
- The US Senate introduced Pelosi Acr to bar lawmakers from trading stocks and profiting.
- Brazil and Argentina are in talks about implementing a mutual currency.
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