MEXC Research: Total Amount of Financing Exceeds $4 billion with the Metaverse, NFT and GameFi Financing Amount Takes 27.8%
MEXC Research is not producing a complete statistic. As of December 13 to December 19, there was a total of 31 financing cases within the cryptocurrency market. The total financing amount of DeFi Block, Metaverse, NFT, GameFi Block, and infrastructure sectors exceeded $4 billion.
1. DeFi Sector
Financing project: Hubble Protocol
Solana-based DeFi and a stablecointS project, namely Hubble Protocol, have completed a seed round funding of $3.6 million. The investment participation has involved Three Arrows Capital, Jump Capital, CMS, Spartan, Delphi Digital, Mechanism Capital, DeFi Alliance, DeFiance Capital, and etc. Hubble Protocol is estimated to be launched on Solana in the next month. One of the core functions is to allow users to mint a decentralized stablecoin known as USDH with users’ savings as the collateral.
2. Metaverse, NFT, and GameFi Sectors
Financing project: BandLab
Singapore music composer digital platform, BandLab announced the completion of a $53 million financing at a valuation of $303 million with the investment led by Vulcan Capital and participated by K3 Ventures. The new financing will assist in expanding the company team and attracting more aspiring artists around the world. BandLab was founded in 2016 and had the mission to provide a music composition platform with priority in mobility.
Financing project: SIDUS HEROES
AAA+ Metaverse blockchain gaming project, SIDUS HEROES announced the support of 50 top VC funds in the blockchain game field, another 200 funds comes from the related field, and business partners resulted in the total financing amount has reached $20 million. The collaboration partners have included Animoca Brands, Polygon, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Arkstream Capital, Spark Digital Capital, AU 21 Capital, HashKey and more.
Financing project: HEIR
The legendary character from NBA, Michael Jordan and his son, Jeffrey Jordan, will produce a basketball fan interaction platform, namely HEIR on Solana blockchain. This platform will connect professional athletes and their most enthusiastic supporters. The project’s speciality is its native token, HEIR, which will be minted on the Solana blockchain. It can also perform NFT assets and community-building functions. HEIR has gathered $10 million seed capital so far. This funding investment was led by Thrive Capital, while the participants were included the co-founders of Reddit (Seven Seven Six and Alexis Ohanian), Chicago Bull team player (Lonzo Ball), and New York Knicks’ executive vice president (William Wesley). The project will be released in 2022.
Financing project: Ex Populus
Ex Populus announced the completion of financing worth $8.5 million that was based on Ethereum and Solana’s gaming studio. The estimated value of this financing was $80 million. Participants in the investment included Akatsuki Inc, Gerstenbrot Capital, Blockwall Digital Assets, Citizen X, Fisher 8 Capital, Perpetual Protocol, Yolo Ventures, Libra Capital Ventures, 8186 Capital, Sneaky Ventures, and others. Prior to October, Chain Games publisher Ex Populus announced to obtain a $3 million seed-round financing by oversubscription.
Financing project: Jadu
Jadu, the publisher of NFT virtual accessories, announced the completion of financing worth $7 million. The investment was led by General Catalyst and participated by Coinbase Ventures, VR Fund, Sound Ventures, Guy Oseary and other institutions. The company start-up’s products included pixelated NFT Jetpacks, Hoverboards, etc., which these virtual accessories can be used with other 3D avatars.
Financing project: Sound.xyz
Sound.xyz, an NFT music start-up company, announced the completion of a seed round of financing worth $5 million. The financing investment is led by a16z and participated by Variant Fund, Palm Tree Crew, Weekend Fund, Atelier Ventures, Scalar Capital, other institutions and Angel investors. Sound. xyz is an NFT music start-up company that provides platform generated NFT publicity for artists who distribute music through Sound.xyz.
Financing project: HOFA Gallery
HOFA Gallery, a Britain NFT art gallery, announced the completion of different financing with the total amount of $4.75 million (seed round of $0.7 million, private round of $3.75 million and marketing round of $0.3 million). Participants in this round of financing included Animoca Brands, LD Capital, Spark Digital Capital, Morningstar Ventures, Genblock Capital, Shima Capital, Skyvision, ZBS Capital, and Double Peak.
It is reported that HOFA Gallery will release its governance Token Artem Coin (ARTM) at 3 p.m. (UTC time) on December 28 and launch IDO at the same time. ARTM has a total circulation supply of 1 billion tokens, with a price of $0.045 per token, while the public offering valuation is $45 million. ARTM, with a value of $0.9 million, will be sold to the public on platforms such as Cardstarter, Animoca Brands, Infinity Pad and Kaizen Finance. In addition, ARTM plans to launch the centralized trading platform in January 2022.
Financing project: The Parallel
P2E game, The Parallel announced the completion of financing worth $4.3 million, which was led invested by Kyber Ventures and Signum Capital. The participants of investment included OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Moonrock Capital, GD10 Ventures, HUB Global, UG Ventures, Astro Ventures, Coincu, RADA, other intuitions and Angel investors.
It is reported that The Parallel is a decentralized virtual game that is similar to The Sandbox. It is a platform that players can play, create, collect, trade and earn platform native tokens PRL and NFT.
Financing project: Hololoot
Hololot, the first AR NFT generator project, has completed private and seed round financing (the specific amount has not been disclosed yet). Participants of the investment included Enjin, Ferrum Network, Otis Capital, Legion Ventures and others. It is reported that, due to the high entry cost of NFT and Metaverse, Hololot hopes to introduce NFT and Metaverse into nearly 1 billion units of Augmented Reality (AR) supported devices around the world to promote public access to the metauniverse and NFT.
Financing project: Vmates
NFT pet social game platform, Vmates announced the completion of a new round of financing participated by Marshland Capital, Moonrock Capital, Magnus Capital, Vendetta Capital, Pluto Digital Assets, NextBlock Capital and FMFW.io and other institutions. Hence the project has cooperated with Innmind, Odaly, PANONY, the Cryptofomo, AMAIoversclub, other media and KOL.
Financing project: NFT-Horse
US NASDAQ, Future Fintech Group Inc (NASDAQ ticker symbol: FTFT) announced its strategic investment in the BSC based sports competition GameFi project, NFT horse. Future Fintech Group Inc. is a financial service and technology company headquartered in New York City. The company aims to provide high-quality digital financial services to individual customers and enterprises around the world. NFT horse is a BSC based sports competition Metaverse GameFi project, which provides users with an open interactive game Metaverse. Players can experience their first PartyFi playing method in the battle mode or create games through open scripts.
3. Other Sectors
Financing projects: Brinc
Brinc, a venture capital accelerator with its headquarter in Hong Kong, completed a round of financing worth $130 million. The investment was led by Animoca Brands. The company claimed Brinc had completed a round B of $30 million and another $100 million in venture capital. These funds will contribute to Brinc expanding in new locations and Web 3, which will be included projects focusing on blockchains such as Defi, games and others.
Financing project: Nansen
Nansen, an online data analysis tool, announced the completion of Series B funding worth $75 million. This round of funding was led invested by Accel and participated by GIC Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, SCB 10x, other well-known venture capital companies and the Angel investors. The new funds will help Nansen further expand its scale. Institutional customers will be able to programmatically access the latest data on the chain through Nansen Query and the newly launched Nansen API, with the protocol development team, which will be able to access product Analysis on the chain through Nansen Ecosystem. At the same time, Nansen Standard and Nansen Alpha have also made significant improvements and will support more than ten blockchains. According to previous reports, Nansen completed Series A funding that was worth $12 million in June this year. The investment was led by a16z while the participants included other investment institutions such as Skyfall Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, imToken Ventures, Mechanism Capital and QCP Capital. Nansen was founded in 2020. It focuses on analyzing data on the chain, marking wallets and entity tags.
Financing project: Lambda256
Lambda256, a Korean blockchain company, has completed 70 billion won (about $ 60 million) in round B financing. Hanhua group led the investment of 10 billion won. Other investors included private equity funds VTIPartners, WooriTechnologyInvestment, KBInvestment, BokwangStartupInvestment, DSCInvestment, ShinhanVentureInvestment, NHFinancialGroup and SBIInvestment. Lambda256 is a blockchain subsidiary of Dunamu, the Upbit operator of the crypto exchange.
Financing project: Aztec Network
L2 privacy solution, the Aztec Network announced the completion of A round financing that was worth $17 million with investment led by Paradigm. The participants of investment included IOSG Ventures, Variant Fund, Nascent, imToken, Scalar Capital, DeFi Alliance, ZK Validator and the Angel investors that included Anthony Sassano, Stani KulecFhov, Bankless, Defi Dad, Mariano Conti and Vitalik Buterin. Investors in the previous round, which were a_capital, Ethereal Ventures, and Libertus Capital, continued capital injection.
The Aztec network will launch AztecConnect, the first cross-chain private bridge on ETH. This round of financing will be used for the construction of a decentralization network, the improvement of Aztec Connect, and the continuous development of the ZK system.
Financing project: Thirdweb
Thirdweb, a Web3 software development company, announced that it had obtained $5 million in financing from well-known business leaders, entrepreneurs and creators. Participants in the investment included well-known American entrepreneurs Gary Vaynerchuk and Mark Cuban. Thirdweb launched a free Web3 development tool before March that allowed developers to build, start and manage their Web3 projects without writing any code. It is said that developers can add functions with just a few clicks. At present, the total number of projects created with this tool has reached 500 projects.
Financing project: Whalemap
Whalemap, a blockchain analysis platform provider headquartered in London, UK, raised $1.6 million of capital. This round of financing is led invested by Shima Capital and Momentum6, with the participation of Anthony Pompliano, Ghaf Capital, NFT Technologies, RR2 Capital, EIV Ventures and the Angel investors from Coin98, Claystack, Solstarter and Rarestone.
The company intends to use this fund to expand its engineering team, especially in data science and blockchain engineering, and expand its development work with considering mainstream adoption.
Financing project: PleasrDAO
Ali Yahya, the general partner of a16z, announced on social media that a16z is investing in the decentralized autonomous organization, PleasrDAO, and the specific amount has not been disclosed yet. Ali Yahya said that DAO like PleasrDAO, is the foundation of Web3. They are a new form of economic organization native to the Internet, which enables people to cooperate on a large scale and achieve their goals.
Previously, in March, Uniswap V3 officially announced that NFT videos works were sold with 310 ETH and purchased by the decentralized autonomous organization “PleasrDAO”.
Note: the financing events counted in this paper do not include the financing of CEX, centralized finance and fund projects & institutions.
