What are the backgrounds of these 27 projects that received investments from top crypto VCs in April?
Top crypto VCs are still making significant investments.Written by: Heimi, Baize Research Institute
Even though the current market environment is still quite poor, investment and financing events occur every day, and top crypto VCs continue to make significant investments in sectors such as NFTs, Web3 games, CeFi, DeFi, L1 & L2, Web3 services, and infrastructure.
Which sectors and projects are VCs optimistic about recently? This article will review 27 projects that received investment from top crypto VCs in April, helping readers to quickly understand.
1. DeFi
April 4, 2023
$8.5 million seed round (valuation: $100 million)
Investors: Tribe Capital, Jump Crypto, Republic Capital, NGC Ventures, Original Capital
Nibiru Chain is a blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK, dedicated to DeFi, with functionalities ranging from spot AMM, leveraged futures trading to its own NUSD stablecoin.
However, Injective Protocol has long been operating DeFi functions in the Cosmos ecosystem, and the arrival of the dYdX application chain is imminent. Given these market conditions, how Nibiru Chain, currently in the testnet phase, will develop remains to be seen.
April 5, 2023
$22.5 million
Investors: Pantera Capital, Road Capital, Standard Crypto, AirTree, SALT, ParaFi Capital, Distributed Capital, Kraynos, Earlybird, Mouro Capital
M^ZERO is a decentralized currency protocol that allows users to issue decentralized currency through governance, thereby establishing connections between developers and consumers.
April 19, 2023
$4.5 million seed round
Investors: Signature Ventures, New Form Capital, C² Ventures, Klima Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Entrepreneur First, etc.
Swaap Finance is a DEX based on Polygon. Swaap proposes a novel concept called Matrix Market Maker (MMM), which minimizes the impermanent loss risk for liquidity providers by using oracles and dynamic spreads.
However, given the previous security vulnerabilities of GMX, it is clear that using oracles for asset valuation can introduce several potential vulnerabilities, which may lead to issues if there are significant discrepancies between the liquidity pool balance and the actual market price. It remains unclear whether Swaap Finance will establish appropriate safeguards to prevent such situations.
[Thetanuts Finance](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Thetanuts Finance?k=Mjg1OA==)
April 24, 2023
$17 million
Investors: Polychain Capital, Hyperchain Capital, Magnus Capital
Thetanuts Finance is a decentralized options vault (DOV) protocol designed to provide funding management for DAOs, allowing users to easily operate various structured product vaults.
April 26, 2023
$5 million
Investors: Framework Ventures, Cumberland, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, ZeePrime Capital, Spartan, Wintermute
DFlow is a decentralized order flow market that builds the application chain DFlow Chain using the Cosmos SDK, aiming to create a fair payment for order flow (PFOF) market. Order flow is sold to market makers through decentralized and permissionless order flow auctions (OFA). This allows retail investors to achieve secure trading and optimal execution while market makers can create more business opportunities.
2. CeFi
April 4, 2023
$10 million
Investors: Dragonfly Capital
Bitget is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that supports spot, margin, and futures trading. This funding will be used for global expansion and launching other services such as Launchpad and Earn products.
April 17, 2023
$6 million
Investors: 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 more transparent clearing and settlement processes. Users can monitor counterparties in real-time using Fractal to reduce counterparty risk. The bankruptcies of institutions such as 3AC, Genesis, and FTX are attributed to a lack of transparency in fund usage, which can be avoided by using Fractal.
April 19, 2023
$1.45 million pre-seed funding
Investors: Jump Crypto, Reciprocal Ventures, CMT Digital, DCG, Gumi Crypto, etc.
Coinflow is a payment stack built specifically for Web3 companies, supporting traditional payment systems like credit cards as well as cryptocurrency payments, maximizing user experience by streamlining the payment process. If cryptocurrency payments become mainstream in the future, the platform is expected to be widely adopted by Web3 companies.
April 25, 2023
$3.8 million seed round
Investors: Sino Global Capital, Polymorphic Capital, Draper Associates, W Ventures, P2P, Paradigm Shift Capital, Hashkey Capital, etc.
Rise is a platform designed to facilitate easy salary payments using cryptocurrency, allowing companies to pay employees in both fiat and cryptocurrency.
April 25, 2023
$6 million
Investors: Coinbase Ventures, S&P Global, Hashkey Capital, Spartan, CMT Digital, GSR, Kucoin Ventures, Amber, etc.
Credora is a platform that assesses the credit of institutional players in the cryptocurrency market. Utilizing zero-knowledge proofs, the platform evaluates the creditworthiness of institutions in real-time while concealing sensitive information such as positions. Although blockchain has fundamental properties of decentralization and transparency, the transparency of centralized entities in the blockchain market is not guaranteed, leading to many bankruptcies last year. Credora is expected to play an important role in this regard.
[Zodia Custody](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Zodia Custody?k=NzczNg==)
April 27, 2023
$36 million
Investors: SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's VC), SBI Holdings, etc.
Zodia Custody is a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank focused on cryptocurrency, primarily providing custody services for institutions. This round of financing will enable the company to support more tokens and expand globally.
3. Web3 Games, NFTs
April 7, 2023
$4 million
Investors: Multicoin Capital, Seed Club Ventures, North Island Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Zeneca, Mischief Ventures, Sfermion, CMT Digital, Patricio Worthalter, Spice Capital, Sublime Venture, etc.
Lore is a platform that allows organizations such as Web3 communities and gaming guilds to collectively own and manage NFTs. Community members can pool funds to purchase NFTs and manage them collectively.
April 10, 2023
$5 million seed round
Investors: 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 variety of games. Users can earn token rewards while playing these games. One of the platform's key attractions is its offering of many simple mobile games, which has the potential to attract a large number of active players.
Protecc Labs
April 14, 2023
$1.5 million seed round
Investors: 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 novel compared to most market makers that focus on cryptocurrencies. As more NFT-Fi protocols emerge, including trading markets, lending protocols, AMMs, etc., the demand for market making in the NFT ecosystem will be essential.
[Karate Combat](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Karate Combat?k=NzY2OQ==)
April 19, 2023
$18 million seed round
Investors: Bitkraft Ventures, Alpha Wave, Hashkey Capital, Delphi Ventures, Contango, The Operating Group, Lattice, M13, etc.
Karate Combat is a real karate organization based in the United States that recently launched a blockchain-based betting platform. Through this platform, users can bet on who will win real-world matches and earn governance tokens $KARATE. Given the real-life use case of the platform, whether it can achieve mass adoption and whether the token is sustainable is worth long-term attention.
April 26, 2023
$2.1 million
Investors: Spartan Capital, Newman Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Modular Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Blockbuilders, Founderheads, Lapin Digital, Blockhype, etc.
Tribe3 is a decentralized NFT futures exchange that draws on the vAMM of Perpetual Protocol. vAMM does not require liquidity but allows users to trade using collateral.
Currently, Tribe3 supports trading of NFT series such as BAYC, MAYC, AZUKI, CryptoPunks, etc.
4. L1 & L2
[Sei](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Sei Network?k=Mjc5MA==)
April 11, 2023
$30 million (valuation: $800 million)
Investors: Jump Crypto, Distributed Global, Multicoin Capital, Asymmetric Capital Partners, Flow Traders, Hypersphere Ventures, Bixin Ventures
Sei is an L1 blockchain based on Cosmos, focused on DeFi. It is highly optimized through modifications to the Tendermint core for high scalability. Additionally, Sei provides its own oracles and order matching system to offer an optimized trading environment.
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 numerous rollup networks in 2022-2023, a new issue arises: the decentralization of sorters. Sorters are entities that receive and sort user transactions on rollup networks, and most rollup networks currently have only one sorter. The centralization of sorters is not critical since the validity of transactions is verified by the Ethereum network, not the sorters. However, if the sorter is centralized and maliciously offline without recourse, there is significant risk. Therefore, various projects focusing on sorting layers have recently emerged.
April 13, 2023
$5 million seed round
Investors: 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, etc.
Intmax is a ZK Rollup network built on Ethereum, which differs from other ZK Rollups by adopting a stateless structure. The advantage of this approach is that it allows validators to build a highly scalable environment without storing historical data.
April 20, 2023
$42 million
Investors: Polychain Capital, Hack VC, dao5, Tribe Capital, CitizenX, Shima Capital, Robot Ventures, etc.
We previously introduced Berachain in the article "New Public Chain Berachain Raises $42 Million at Launch," which is an L1 network built using the Cosmos SDK, focused on DeFi liquidity, utilizing a novel liquidity proof mechanism (validators and users can stake over a dozen tokens such as BTC, ETH, USDC on this chain to earn staking rewards). The network employs a three-token model, where $BERA is used for staking rewards and gas fees, $BGT serves as the governance token, and $HONEY is the native stablecoin. The name comes from an NFT project called Bong Bears.
It is worth mentioning that since Berachain originates from the well-known NFT project Bong Bears, it already has a community even before the mainnet launch.
5. Web3 Services
April 11, 2023
Strategic investment, amount undisclosed
Investors: Coin98
Ramper is a Web3 login service that allows users to log in and easily use Web3 services without a cryptocurrency wallet through accounts like Google and Twitter, while also providing exchange services between fiat and cryptocurrency.
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, enabling various other functions such as creating links for cryptocurrency payments, recurring payments, and creating invoices.
April 20, 2023
$3.5 million seed round
Investors: Electric Capital, Collab+Currency, Coinbase Ventures, Dapper Labs, Form Capital, North Island, Mike Krieger, Naval Ravikant, etc.
Yoz is a Web3 notification service. For example, we can set DAO reminders, and when a DAO proposes to implement governance suggestions, Yoz will send you a reminder.
According to the project's demonstration, current supported projects for notifications include CryptoPunks, Fractional.art, Aave, and Nouns.
April 25, 2023
$8.5 million (valuation: $100 million)
Investors: Sequoia China, Polygon, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital, etc.
TinyTap was acquired by Animoca Brands in June 2022 for a valuation of $39 million and is a Web3 education platform offering a wide variety of educational games. Animoca Brands aims to revolutionize education and the creator economy through the TinyTap platform.
6. Infrastructure
April 4, 2023
$15 million Series A
Investors: Polychain Capital, ABCDE, Sparkle Ventures, HashKey Capital, Foresight Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, NGC Ventures, Arcane Group
Polyhedra Network is a technology company based in California, USA, providing interoperability, scalability, and privacy solutions using zero-knowledge proof technology. Its products include zkBridge, ZK-DID, and ZK-NFT. zkBridge is the most well-known product, allowing two chains to verify each other's consensus through zk-SNARKs technology (the product is currently live and available for many L1 and L2 users).
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 many current protocols are using. The most prominent example is Stargate Finance, a cross-chain bridge that can transfer tokens between multiple EVM networks. Although LayerZero's token has not yet been launched, the name ZRO token can be seen in the code. LayerZero has received investments from many top VCs, and given its current widespread use, it is definitely a protocol worth paying attention to in the cross-chain space.
April 4, 2023
$5 million seed round
Investors: Initialized Capital, Archetype, OpenSea, Y Combinator, Homebrew, South Park Commons
Satsuma is a SaaS platform based on The Graph 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.
