A surge in funding rounds for crypto startups has been observed, with many companies securing seed rounds and pre-A funding. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key beneficiaries from last week’s venture capital (VC) activities.
Humanity Protocol has received a significant boost of $30 million, propelling it to unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion. This achievement was made possible through a seed round led by Kingsway Capital. Other notable investors included Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com, Hashed, Shima Capital, and 20 other industry leaders. The funds raised will be utilized to expand the team and develop new products in preparation for the public testnet launch scheduled for the second half of 2024.
Following strategic investments earlier this year to establish the “human layer” for web3, Humanity Protocol has continued to attract funding from various VC funds and individuals, such as Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal and Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu.
Arch Labs, based in New York, has secured $7 million in seed funding to enhance its Bitcoin-native application platform. Multicoin Capital led the funding round, with contributions from OKX Ventures, Portal Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings, and Tangent. The company plans to use the funds to hire core developers, launch the Arch Network mainnet in the latter half of 2024, and provide ongoing support for its app ecosystem. Arch Labs is working on developing a “bridgeless” trading experience directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, featuring the Rust-based zkVM called ArchVM and a decentralized verifier network.
Uxuy, based in Singapore, has also secured $7 million in pre-A funding to facilitate efficient, low-cost transactions of assets like Lightning Network taproot assets, ordinals BRC-20, and Runes. Investors in this funding round included Binance Labs, UTXO Management, JDI Ventures, Bixin Ventures, SWC Global, and Matrix Partners. Uxuy aims to offer a seamless trading experience across multiple blockchain networks and is supported by Binance Labs.
Arcium, a project focused on on-chain confidential computing from Bern, Switzerland, has raised $5.5 million in funding. Greenfield Capital led the round, with participation from Coinbase, Heartcore Capital, Longhash VC, L2 Iterative Ventures, and several angel investors. Arcium is working on building a parallelized confidential computing network that utilizes multiparty computation execution environments (MXEs) for secure computation on encrypted data. The funds raised will support development efforts and the upcoming private incentivized testnet and public testnet phases.
Gnosis has entered into a strategic partnership with digital wallet creator Zeal, an Ethereum sidechain, with Gnosis also investing $2 million in Zeal. This investment brings Zeal’s total funding to $9 million, following a previous seed round where the company raised $7 million.
Zest Protocol, a Bitcoin lending protocol, has secured $3.5 million in funding to allow BTC holders to generate yields on-chain. Led by billionaire investor Tim Draper, the seed round also saw contributions from Binance Labs, Flow Traders, Trust Machines, and others. Zest Protocol leverages the Nakamoto upgrade by Bitcoin layer-2 Stacks and the bridging asset sBTC to create a fully native Bitcoin lending experience.
Overall, the crypto space continues to see significant funding activity, with various startups attracting investment to fuel their growth and development efforts.