Author | Black rice, Shirasawa Research Institute
Even if the current market environment is still relatively bad, there will still be investment and financing events every day, and top crypto VCs are still making big investments in NFTs, Web3 games, CeFi, DeFi, L1 & L2, Web3 services, infrastructure and other tracks.
Which projects are VCs bullish on which tracks lately? This article will take stock of 27 projects that received top crypto VC investment in April to help readers quickly understand.
DeFi
Nibiru Chain
- April 4, 2023
- $8.5 million seed round (valued at $100 million)
- 投资者：Tribe Capital、Jump Crypto、Republic Capital、NGC Ventures、Original Capital
Nibiru Chain is a DeFi-specific blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK, with features ranging from spot AMMs, leveraged futures trading, and self-built NUSD stablecoins.
However, the Injective Protocol is already running DeFi capabilities in the Cosmos ecosystem, and the arrival of the dYdX application chain is imminent. Given these market conditions, it remains to be seen how Nibiru Chain, which is currently in the testnet phase, will evolve next.
M^ZERO
- April 5, 2023
- $22.5 million
- 投资者：Pantera Capital、Road Capital、Standard Crypto、AirTree、SALT、ParaFi Capital、Distributed Capital、Kraynos、Earlybird、Mouro Capital
M^ZERO is a decentralized currency protocol in which users will be able to issue decentralized currencies through governance, thereby establishing a connection between developers and consumers.
Swaap Finance
- April 19, 2023
- $4.5 million seed round
- 投资者：Signature Ventures、New Form Capital、C² Ventures、Klima Ventures、Pareto Holdings、Entrepreneur First 等
Swaap Finance is a Polygon-based DEX. Swaap came up with a novel concept called the Matrix Market Maker (MMM) to minimize the risk of impermanent losses for liquidity providers through the use of oracles and dynamic spreads.
However, given GMX's previous security breaches, it's clear that using oracles for asset valuation poses several potential vulnerabilities that could cause problems if there is a significant discrepancy between the liquidity pool balance and the actual market price. Whether Swaap Finance will put in place appropriate safeguards to prevent this is unclear.
Thetanuts Finance
- April 24, 2023
- $17 million
- Investors: Polychain Capital, Hyperchain Capital, Magnus Capital
Thetanuts Finance is a decentralized option vault (DOV) protocol designed to provide fund management for DAOs, where users can easily operate a variety of structured product vaults.
DFlow
- April 26, 2023
- $5 million
- 投资者：Framework Ventures、Cumberland、Coinbase Ventures、Circle Ventures、ZeePrime Capital、Spartan、Wintermute
Decentralized order flow marketplace is a decentralized order flow marketplace built by DFlow Chain through the Cosmos SDK, aiming to create a fair order flow payment (PFOF) marketplace. Order Flow sells Order Flow to market makers through decentralized and permissionless Order Flow Auctions (OFA). This allows retail investors to secure trading and optimal execution, while market makers can also create more business opportunities.
CeFi
Bitget
- April 4, 2023
- $10 million
- Investor: Dragonfly Capital
Bitget is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that supports spot, margin, and futures trading. The funds will be used for global expansion and the launch of other services, such as Launchpad and Earn products.
Fractal
- April 17, 2023
- $6 million
- 投资者：QCP、6th Man Ventures、Archetype、Avalanche Blizzard Fund、CMT Digital、Golden Tree Asset Management、CoinShares、Spartan Group、Circle Ventures、Hack VC
Fractal is a platform for cryptocurrency traders that enables a more transparent clearing and settlement process. Users can use Fractal to monitor counterparties in real-time to reduce counterparty risk. The bankruptcy of institutions such as 3AC, Genesis, and FTX is attributed to a lack of transparency in the use of funds, which can be avoided with Fractal.
Coinflow
- April 19, 2023
- $1.45 million in pre-seed financing
- Investors: Jump Crypto, Reciprocal Ventures, CMT Digital, DCG, Gumi Crypto, etc
Coinflow is a payments stack built specifically for Web3 companies that supports traditional payment systems such as credit cards as well as cryptocurrency payments to maximize the user experience by streamlining the payment process. If cryptocurrency payments become common in the future, the platform is expected to be widely adopted by Web3 companies.
Rise
- April 25, 2023
- $3.8 million seed round
- 投资者： Sino Global Capital、Polymorphic Capital、Draper Associates、W Ventures、P2P、Paradigm Shift Capital、Hashkey Capital 等
Rise is a platform designed to facilitate easy payroll payments using cryptocurrencies, allowing companies to pay their employees in both fiat and cryptocurrency.
Creditor
- April 25, 2023
- $6 million
- 投资者：Coinbase Ventures、S&P Global、Hashkey Capital、Spartan、CMT Ditial、GSR、Kucoin Ventures、Amber 等
Credora is a platform for assessing the credit of institutions in the cryptocurrency market. Using zero-knowledge proofs, the platform assesses an institution's creditworthiness in real-time through data, while hiding sensitive parts such as positions. Although blockchain has the basic properties of decentralization and transparency, the transparency of centralized entities dominated by blockchain markets is not guaranteed, which led to many bankruptcies last year. Credora is expected to play an important role in this regard.
Zodia Custody
- April 27, 2023
- $36 million
- Investors: SC Ventures (VC of Standard Chartered Bank), SBI Holdings, etc
Zodia Custody is a cryptocurrency-focused subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, which primarily provides cryptocurrency custody services to institutions. This round of funding will allow the company to support more tokens and expand globally.
3. Web3 games, NFTs
Lore
- April 7, 2023
- $4 million
- 投资者：Multicoin Capital、Seed Club Ventures、North Island Ventures、Balaji Srinivasan、Zeneca、Mischief Ventures、Sfermion、CMT Digital、Patricio Worthalter、Spice Capital、Sublime Venture 等
Lore is a platform that allows organizations such as the Web3 community and gaming guilds to jointly own and manage NFTs. Community members can collectively raise funds to purchase NFTs, and collectively manage NFTs.
Gamete
- April 10, 2023
- $5 million seed round
- 投资者：Binance Labs、Huobi Ventures、Arcane Capital、Ceras Ventures、StartVC、Gate.io Labs、W3Coins、Redline Dao、DefinanceX、Rana Capital、Infinity Labs
Gameta is a Web3 mobile gaming platform that offers a wide variety of games. Users can be rewarded with tokens while playing these games. An important attraction of the platform is that it offers many simple mobile games, which have the opportunity to attract a large number of active players.
Protecc Labs
- April 14, 2023
- $1.5 million seed round
- 投资者：Dialectic、UOB Venture Management、Signum Capital、Interlinked Capital、Side Door Ventures、0xVentures、Kronos Ventures、3.0 Capital、Concave Ventures、Cogitent Ventures
Protecc Labs is a market maker focused on NFTs, which is new compared to most market makers focusing on cryptocurrencies. As more and more NFT-Fi protocols emerge, including marketplaces, lending protocols, AMMs, and more, the NFT ecosystem will be essential for market-making needs.
Karate Combat
- April 19, 2023
- $18 million seed round
- 投资者：Bitkraft Ventures、Alpha Wave、Hashkey Capital、Delphi Ventures、Contango、The Operating Group、Lattice、M13 等
Karate Combat, a real karate organization based in the United States, recently launched a blockchain-based betting platform. Through the platform, users can bet on who will win real-world matches, earning governance tokens $KARATE. Since the platform has real-life use cases, whether the platform can gain mass adoption, and whether the token is sustainable, deserves long-term attention.
Tribe3
- April 26, 2023
- $2.1 million
- 投资者：Spartan Capital、Newman Capital、Infinity Ventures Crypto、Modular Capital、Cogitent Ventures、Blockbuilders、Founderheads、Lapin Digital、Blockhype 等
Tribe3 is a decentralized NFT futures exchange that borrows from the Perpetual Protocol's vAMM. vAMM does not require liquidity and instead allows users to trade with collateral.
Currently, Tribe3 supports the trading of NFT series such as BAYC, MAYC, AZUKI, CryptoPunks, etc.
L1 & L2
May be
- April 11, 2023
- $30 million (valuation: $800 million)
- 投资者：Jump Crypto、Distributed Global、Multicoin Capital、Asymmetric Capital Partners、Flow Traders、Hypersphere Ventures、Bixin Ventures
Sei is a Cosmos-based L1 blockchain focused on DeFi. Highly optimized by modifying the Tendermint core for high scalability. In addition, Sei offers its own oracle and order matching system to provide an optimized trading environment.
Astria
- April 5, 2023
- $5.5 million seed round
- Investors: Maven 11, 1kx, Delphi Ventures, Figment Capital
Astria is a modular blockchain focused on sorting layers. With the emergence of a large number of rollup networks in 2022-2023, a new problem is faced: the decentralization of the sequencer. A sequencer is an entity that receives and sorts user transactions on the Rollup network, and most Rollup networks currently have only one sequencer. It doesn't matter if the orderer is centralized or not, because the validity of the transaction is verified by the Ethereum network, not the sorter. However, if the sequencer is centralized and maliciously goes offline without countermeasures, there is a great risk. As a result, various projects focused on sorting layers have emerged recently.
Intmax
- April 13, 2023
- $5 million seed round
- 投资者：HashKey Capital、Bitscale Capital、B Dash Ventures、SNZ、Antalpha Ventures、Scroll、Mask Network、Dora Hacks、East Ventures、MZ Web3 Fund、Hyperithm、Stacker Ventures、Cryptomeria Capital、WAGMI Ventures、Alchemy Ventures 等
Intmax is a ZK Rollup network built on top of Ethereum, and unlike other ZK Rollups, it has a stateless structure. The benefit of this is that it allows validators to build a highly scalable environment without storing historical data.
Berachain
- April 20, 2023
- $42 million
- Investors: Polychain Capital, Hack VC, dao5, Tribe Capital, CitizenX, Shima Capital, Robot Ventures, etc
We have specifically introduced Berachain in the article "Berachain, a new public chain that raised $42 million at the beginning", which is an L1 network built using the Cosmos SDK and focusing on DeFi liquidity, using a novel liquidity proof mechanism (validators and users can stake more than ten tokens such as BTC, ETH, USDC and so on on the chain to obtain staking rewards). The network uses a three-token model, where $BERA is used for staking rewards and gas fees, $BGT as governance tokens, and $HONEY as native stablecoins. The name comes from an NFT project called Bong Bears.
It is worth mentioning that because Berachain originated from the well-known NFT project Bong Bears, it already has a community before it was launched on the mainnet.
5. Web3 services
Crawl
- April 11, 2023
- Strategic investment, amount not disclosed
- Investor: Coin98
Ramper is a Web3 login service that allows users to log in and easily use Web3 services through Google, Twitter, etc. accounts without a cryptocurrency wallet, while also providing exchange services between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.
Helio
- April 13, 2023
- $3.3 million seed round
- Investors: Peak, Lightspeed Faction, RockawayX, Solana Labs, etc
Helio is a Web3 payment platform that allows users to connect their cryptocurrency wallets to access Helio's dashboard as a way to use various other features such as creating links to pay with cryptocurrency, recurring payments, and creating invoices.
Degenerate
- April 20, 2023
- $3.5 million seed round
- 投资者：Electric Capital、Collab+Currency、Coinbase Ventures、Dapper Labs、Form Capital、North Island、Mike Krieger、Naval Ravikant 等
Yoz is a Web3 notification service. For example, we can set up DAO alerts, and Yoz will alert you when DAO makes a governance recommendation to be implemented.
According to the project party's presentation, the projects that currently support notifications include CryptoPunks, Fractional.art, Aave, and Nouns.
TinyTap
- April 25, 2023
- $8.5 million (valued at $100 million)
- Investors: Sequoia China, Polygon, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital, etc
Acquired by Animoca Brands in June 2022 at a valuation of $39 million, TinyTap is a Web3 education platform that offers a wide variety of educational games. Animoca Brands aims to revolutionize the education and creator economy through the TinyTap platform.
6. Infrastructure
Polyhedra Network
- April 4, 2023
- $15 million Series A
- 投资者：Polychain Capital、ABCDE、Sparkle Ventures、HashKey Capital、Foresight Ventures、Kucoin Ventures、NGC Ventures、Arcane Group
Polyhedra Network is a California-based technology company that leverages zero-knowledge proof technology to provide interoperability, scalability, and privacy solutions. Its products include zkBridge, ZK-DID, and ZK-NFT. zkBridge is the most famous of these, allowing the two chains to verify their consensus through zk-SNARKs technology (currently live and available to many L1 and L2 users).
LayerZero
- April 4, 2023
- $120 million Series A (valuation: $3 billion)
- Investors: a16z, Christie's, Sequoia Capital, Samsung Next, Circle Ventures, etc
LayerZero is a full-chain protocol that is used by many current protocols. The most prominent example is Stargate Finance, a cross-chain bridge that can transfer tokens between multiple EVM networks. Although the LayerZero token is not yet live, the name of the ZRO token can be seen in the code. LayerZero has received investment from many top VCs, and given its current widespread use, it is definitely a protocol to watch in the cross-chain space.
Satsuma
- April 4, 2023
- $5 million seed round
- 投资者：Initialized Capital、Archetype、OpenSea、Y Combinator、Homebrew、South Park Commons
Satsuma is a SaaS platform based on The Graph's open-source protocol that makes it easier for users to query blockchain data. Currently, platforms such as Decentraland, Syndicate, Superfluid, and Aragon are using Satsuma.
Risk Warning:
According to the Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Speculation Risk of Virtual Currency Trading issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote and endorse any business and investment behavior, and readers are requested to strictly abide by the laws and regulations of the region where they are located and do not participate in any illegal financial behavior.