During the week of May 19 to May 25, blockchain startups led the $150 million Series A round of decentralized social protocol Farcaster, raising a total of more than $258 million.
According to Crypto Fundraising, in the last seven days, four startups raised $179.2 million in Series A rounds, while 12 startups raised $24.1 million through undisclosed rounds.
Five startups raised $21.3 million in seed rounds. The two are locked up for a combined $20 million in strategic rounds.
Two other startups raised $9 million in private rounds, and the last one raised $5 million in a public sales round.
Below is a summary of this week’s cryptocurrency VC activity.
Farcaster Achieves Unicorn Status with $150 Million Series A
Ethereum-based decentralized social media protocol Farcaster has secured $150 million in a Series A funding round led by venture firm Paradigm. The round also included significant contributions from a16z crypto, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Standard Crypto, among others. This boosted Farcaster’s valuation to a whopping $1 billion, putting it into unicorn territory.
Co-founder Dan Romero shared that the protocol will use the new capital in two key areas: increasing daily active users and improving developer tools such as channels and direct messaging. Farcaster also plans to hire more engineers to support these initiatives.
Plume Network raises $10 million for its L2 blockchain.
Plume Network, a modular layer 2 (L2) network designed to facilitate on-chain integration of real-world assets (RWA), also announced a successful $10 million seed funding round led by Haun Ventures.
The California-based venture capital firm was joined in the round by Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel and Portal Ventures. Several angel investors also participated, including Anthony Ramirez of Wormhole Labs and Andrew Kang of Mechanism.
Plume CEO Chris Yin said the funding will advance the company’s mission to simplify the process of bringing assets such as real estate and art onto blockchain platforms.
Blockless secures $8 million to expand its decentralized infrastructure.
Blockless, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project, has raised $8 million through two initial funding rounds.
The initial $3 million pre-seed round was led by NGC Ventures, followed by a $5 million seed round co-led by M31 Capital and Frachtis. Additional investors include No Limit Holdings, MH Ventures, Interop Ventures, and Plassa Capital.
Butian Li, co-founder of the project, said the funding would support the launch of a test network in the coming weeks. The main network and native BLESS token are scheduled to launch in Q3 2024.
Pencils Protocol raises IVX security seed funding
Pencils Protocol, Scroll Network’s auction platform and yield aggregator, has raised $2.1 million in a seed round led by OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Galxe.
Meanwhile, another project, IVX, secured $1.2 million in a seed round backed by Animoca Ventures and other investors.
IVX builds a native options protocol on the Berachain Polaris EVM to provide zero-expiration (0DTE) options on crypto assets, allowing users to take high leverage exposure without liquidation risk.
Cysic, RunesFi Announce New Funding Round
Zero-knowledge (ZK) hardware acceleration company Cysic has raised $12 million in a pre-A funding round led by HashKey Capital and OKX Ventures.
According to the project team, this funding will accelerate the creation of ZK proofs, making them faster and more cost-effective.
Lastly, Bitcoin infrastructure hub RunesFi raised $400,000 in a funding round led by Cogitent Ventures.
Using the Runes protocol, RunesFi aims to enhance Bitcoin’s decentralized finance (defi) capabilities through features such as decentralized exchanges (DEX) and infrastructure products that enable efficient trading and reduced costs.
Please find our past ‘VC Roundups’ below.