Hotcoin Investment and Financing Weekly Report | (5.18–5.24) A total of 30 public investment and financing events, with infrastructure and DeFi leading, and active game financing

From May 18 to May 24, the crypto market saw a total of 30 financing events, including 12 in infrastructure, 6 in DeFi, 3 in gaming, 2 in CeFi, 2 in RWA, 2 in DAO, and 3 in others.

This week, there were 2 financing events over ten million dollars:

1. The decentralized social network Farcaster completed a $150 million Series A financing round, with investors including Paradigm, a16z, and others.

2. The ZK proof generation layer Cysic completed a $12 million Pre-A financing round, with investors including HashKey Capital, OKX Ventures, and others.

This week, the financing activity in the crypto market increased compared to last week, with 12 events in infrastructure, 6 in DeFi, and gaming financing following closely. The financing sectors this week were diverse and concentrated in currently popular tracks. The decentralized social network Farcaster received the largest financing amount this week.

This week's financing projects sorted by amount are shown in the figure below:

Infrastructure

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 19, Sorbet completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Adaverse. Sorbet aims to eliminate traditional technical barriers associated with dApps, using blockchain technology to provide solutions for using stablecoins, DeFi, etc., helping unbanked individuals achieve financial accessibility. Sorbet aims to enhance the freelance experience further by integrating project management tools and simplifying payment processes.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 20, Nexis Network completed a private financing round, with investors including Castrum Capital. Nexis Network is an EVM blockchain and open-source platform suitable for decentralized projects and applications, capable of processing up to 75,000 transactions per second, with instant finality, very low fees, and Solidity support.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 20, RunesTerminal completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Cogitent Ventures, CMS Holdings, and others. RunesTerminal is an infrastructure provider for the Runes protocol, with products including the Runes browser, Runes marketplace, and Runes encyclopedia.

4. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 20, Blockless completed a $5 million seed financing round, with investors including M31 Capital and No Limit Holdings. Blockless is a modular application development platform in Web3. This architecture allows Web3 applications to run on dedicated networks to handle specific workloads, leveraging blockchain primarily for authentication, value transfer, and ensuring system trust and integrity. It offers a balanced combination of blockchain advantages and performance optimization while maintaining decentralization.

5. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 21, Monad completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including OKX Ventures. Monad is building a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain for the next generation of decentralized applications, aiming to accelerate the disruptive power of decentralization by building a blockchain that is 100 to 1000 times faster than its closest competitors, alleviating severe bottlenecks in existing blockchains, and enabling more complex applications and broader adoption.

6. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 21, Bitski completed a merger financing round, with investors including Phantom. Bitski is building a platform that allows brands and creators to establish customized NFT storefronts. The Bitski wallet securely manages token assets in one convenient place. It is easy to set up, hardware secure, and suitable for both Web3 newcomers and veterans.

7. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 22, StripChain completed a $10 million financing round, with investors including Sora Ventures, Shima Capital, and others. Stripchain is a cross-chain interoperability protocol that allows developers to create commands called intents to perform operations such as transferring data between blockchains. Based on a system called stripVM, it will enable applications to communicate and coordinate with different protocols.

8. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Cysic completed a $12 million Pre-A financing round, with investors including HashKey Capital, OKX Ventures, and others. Cysic is a ZK hardware acceleration project dedicated to designing advanced ASIC chips to help reduce ZK proof generation times, already having multiple ecosystem partners, including Scroll, Nil Foundation, and Hyper Oracle.

9. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, MultiVM completed a $6.9 million financing round, with investors including Inception Capital, Lattice Capital, and others. MultiVM is a Layer 2 zk-rollup designed for multi-language smart contract development. It provides fast performance and ensures secure communication through cross-virtual machine calls, essentially allowing each virtual machine to run on a single unified Ethereum rollup. The project evolved from the decentralized trading platform Spin on NEAR.

10. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Fantom completed a $10 million strategic financing round, with investors including Signum Capital, UOB Venture, and others. Fantom is a high-performance, scalable, EVM-compatible, and secure smart contract platform. Developers can quickly port existing Ethereum-based DApps to the Fantom Opera mainnet, significantly enhancing performance and reducing costs.

11. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Plume Network completed a $10 million seed financing round, with investors including Haun Ventures, Superscrypt, and others. Plume Network is a Layer 2 platform focused on bringing real-world assets (RWA) onto the blockchain. It offers fast transactions and low fees for diversified asset investments, such as art and green energy.

12. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Omakase completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Nomura Holdings. Omakase is a Web3 infrastructure provider focused on validator operations, development, maintenance, and technical consulting services, concentrating on blockchain business and aiming to develop the staking business of the future.

DeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 20, ELFi Protocol completed a $5 million financing round, with investors including IDG Capital, Kucoin Ventures, and others. ELFi Protocol is a decentralized derivatives trading platform with isolated and cross-margin modes, zero-risk high returns on USDT/USDC, and super-combination LSD assets.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 21, Aevo completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Binance Labs. Aevo is a high-performance decentralized derivatives trading platform focused on options and perpetual contracts. The exchange operates on a custom EVM Rollup that can aggregate to Ethereum. Aevo operates off-chain orders with on-chain settlement. This means that once an order is matched, the trade is executed and settled via smart contracts.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 22, Zaros completed a $1.8 million financing round, with investors including SNZ Holding, Cogitent Ventures, and others. Zaros is a liquidity hub for on-chain derivatives, dedicated to providing real yields, capital efficiency, and deep liquidity for LST holders.

4. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 22, Kelp DAO completed a $9 million financing round, with investors including Laser Digital, SCB Digital Ventures, and others. Kelp DAO is a triple-yield re-staking protocol based on EigenLayer. rsETH is a liquidity re-staking token (LRT) issued by Kelp DAO, designed to provide liquidity for non-liquid assets deposited into re-staking platforms (such as EigenLayer).

5. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Pencils Protocol completed a $2.1 million seed financing round, with investors including OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, and others. Pencils Protocol is the next-generation decentralized platform providing auction services for blockchain-native assets and RWA, offering users a unified leveraged yield aggregation service to maximize asset utilization.

6. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, UniTap completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including X Ventures. UniTap is an integrated platform for Runes and BRC-20. The platform provides trading, bridging, and wallet functions. It aims to become the central hub for TAP DeFi, making token transfers and bridging more efficient and decentralized.

Gaming

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 22, Dope Wars completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including 1kx. Dope Wars is an open-source metaverse project that adopts a "Play-To-Own" model, providing various games, experiences, and environments within a community-built ecosystem. The development ecosystem revolves around a game SDK, allowing contributors to seamlessly insert different modules. Dope Wars originated as a branch of Loot (For Adventurers) and is inspired by GTA.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, RoboKiden completed a merger financing round, with investors including Elixir. RoboKiden is a free online third-person party shooter game available on Windows, PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Players will find themselves in whimsical battle arenas, with colorful characters surrounded by towering robots, as they team up with friends in this chaotic fun and strategic gameplay, providing a fresh and engaging experience for all types of gamers.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Aria completed a financing round with an unknown amount in the seed stage, with investors including Spartan Group, Folius Ventures, and others. Aria is an RPG game that allows players to roam freely in an open-world environment while experiencing the thrill of epic quests and battles. The game's developer, Inutan Studios, has received investments from Tencent, NetEase, and Riot Games.

CeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Ather Digital completed a merger financing round, with investors including VersiFi. Ather Digital is a digital asset trading platform built for institutions, allowing clients to expertly navigate the entire digital asset trading lifecycle on a single platform with top-notch execution, reporting, and analytics.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 24, Alphaledger completed a $9.5 million Series A financing round, with investors including EJF Capital, KDX, and others. Alphaledger provides a direct and transparent loan and bond market that simplifies debt financing and increases direct contact with investors, focusing on the U.S. municipal market. The platform combines asset digitization with the security of blockchain technology to provide a modern alternative to traditional securities issuance and trading processes.

RWA

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, MANTRAOM completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Laser Digital. MANTRA aims to be the first RWA L1 blockchain capable of complying with and enforcing real-world regulatory requirements. By accelerating the adoption of tokenized RWA, MANTRA has the potential to unlock a $16 trillion RWA economy through a regulatory-ready blockchain. With the compliance framework of MANTRA Chain, TradFi companies can easily switch to and utilize asset tokenization and blockchain solutions, promoting global RWA growth.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 24, Unlockit completed a €1.4 million pre-seed financing round, with investors including Eaglestone Capital Partners, Portugal Ventures, and others. Unlockit is a Web3 real estate trading platform aimed at reducing transaction prices in Portugal and simplifying real estate transactions through its blockchain-based software while minimizing speculation and fraud.

DAO

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, MUA DAO completed a financing round with an unknown amount, with investors including Avalanche, ByteTrade, and others. The mission of the Metaverse Union of Architects is to help millions of professionals worldwide break free from constraints and overcome the high barriers of the crypto world, creating the largest virtual reality architect guild and providing a wealth of excellent metaverse builders. MUA DAO aims to gather an increasing number of real estate-related resources and traffic, serving as the infrastructure for influential metaverse real estate, connecting the real and future worlds.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 23, Dora Factory completed a $10 million financing round, with investors including Nomad Capital, No Limit Holdings, and others. Dora Factory is a multi-chain DAO infrastructure that provides multi-chain authorization, privacy voting, bounty services, and other infrastructure layers for startup teams and DAOs. Dora Factory offers a playground where DAOs can be easily created and equipped with cool features to meet their key needs in governance, fundraising, collaboration, management, and more.

Others

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 21, Farcaster completed a $150 million Series A financing round, with investors including Paradigm, a16z, and others. Farcaster is a decentralized social network that enables developers to build novel social networks. It is an open protocol that can support many clients, just like email. Users will always be able to freely move their social identities between applications, and developers will always be free to build applications with new features on the network.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 21, Coinfirm completed a merger financing round, with investors including Lukka. Coinfirm provides industry-leading blockchain analytics and AML solutions to help blockchain-based financial ecosystems analyze and manage risks.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on May 22, Weather XM completed a $7.7 million Series A financing round, with investors including Faction, Protocol Labs, and others. Weather XM is a Web3 weather network that uses crypto incentives to improve the accuracy of forecasts. Weather XM's personal weather stations allow owners to become weather station operators and earn rewards by collecting and verifying data.