Last week, there were a total of 20 public financing events in the cryptocurrency market, raising approximately $1.395 billion | Investment and Financing Weekly Report
Social communication protocol Towns completes $10 million Series B financing, led by a16z crypto; crypto dining app Blackbird completes $50 million Series B financing, led by Spark Capital; yield-bearing stablecoin protocol Cap completes $11 million financing, with participation from Triton Capital and others.Organizer: Luan Peng, RootData
According to incomplete statistics from RootData, during the period from April 7 to April 13, 2025, there were a total of 20 public financing events in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, with a total financing of approximately $1.395 billion.
From the perspective of track distribution, the projects that received financing are mainly distributed in the infrastructure and AI tracks. Popular projects include the AI platform Plastic Labs, the yield-generating stablecoin protocol Cap, the cryptocurrency insurance company Meanwhile, and the decentralized publishing and reading platform Libraro.
In addition, Ripple acquired the cryptocurrency-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its services for institutional investors.
*(List of projects with financing greater than $5 million last week, data source: * Rootdata）
1. Infrastructure
AI platform Plastic Labs completes $5.35 million Pre-Seed financing, led by Variant and others
AI platform Plastic Labs announced the completion of $5.35 million in Pre-Seed financing, led by Variant, White Star Capital, and Betaworks, with participation from Mozilla Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Greycroft, and Differential Ventures. Angel investors include Scott Moore, NiMA Asghari, and Thomas Howell.
At the same time, its personalized AI identity platform "Honcho" is now open for early access.
According to official news, Layer2 solution OpenZK Network announced the completion of $6 million in early financing, with investors including Animoca Brands, Coinstore, and Sovereign Trust. This round of financing will be used to support its technology research and development and ecosystem construction.
It is reported that OpenZK was founded by former Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific Executive President Dave Sandor and is currently actively negotiating cooperation with multiple institutions to advance subsequent strategic layouts.
According to Web3 asset data platform RootData, OpenZK Network is a second-layer solution based on zk-rollup technology, which can significantly reduce transaction costs and increase throughput, while also introducing a sustainable reward mechanism through native ETH staking, re-staking, and stablecoin staking.
According to Towns Protocol's official news, the decentralized communication protocol Towns announced the completion of $10 million in Series B financing, led by a16z crypto, with new investment from Coinbase Ventures and continued participation from Benchmark. Towns is committed to building on-chain communication infrastructure to promote the development of Web3 social and collaboration tools. The project team stated, "The future of communication will move on-chain."
Web3 AI project DecentralGPT announced that it recently completed $3 million equivalent asset angel round and Series A strategic financing. This round of financing was led by AGICrypto Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, BTR Capital, DePINX, Aethir, and others.
As a fully decentralized large language model (LLM) infrastructure, DecentralGPT has revolutionized the decentralized deployment of several top open-source large models, including DeepSeek R1 and Llama4.0, through an innovative distributed AI inference network. The project's core architecture breaks the traditional AI monopoly pattern, truly implementing the next-generation AGI development concept of "secure and verifiable, data privacy, democratic governance, and fully open-source code," creating a trustless risk-free intelligent interaction ecosystem for global developers and users.
2. AI
Magic Eden acquires decentralized trading platform Slingshot
NFT platform Magic Eden has completed the acquisition of decentralized trading platform Slingshot.
Magic Eden stated that this move will promote its vision of building a cross-chain asset trading platform, achieving a trading experience that supports 8M+ tokens, covers all chains (including the upcoming Bitcoin), and does not require cross-bridging or centralized exchanges.
According to CoinDesk, yield-generating stablecoin protocol Cap has completed $11 million in financing, with participation from Franklin Templeton and Triton Capital.
Cap enables the public to access previously untapped yields through a group of operators with yield-generating expertise.
3. Gaming
Blockchain game developer Gunzilla Games receives strategic investment from 1kx
According to official news, crypto venture capital 1kx announced a strategic investment in Gunzilla Games, the developer of the dystopian cyberpunk shooter "Off The Grid," with the specific amount not disclosed.
It is reported that 1kx had previously been skeptical about deploying cryptocurrency strategies in AAA games due to early product execution risks, and this investment seems to indicate a shift in their previous investment strategy.
4. Others
According to official information, Web3 decentralized finance education platform BugsCoin (BGSC) announced the completion of $12 million in Series A strategic financing. This round of financing was jointly invested by Becker Ventures, Castrum Capital, BullPerks, DuckDAO, Maxx Capital, and several Asian family offices.
BugsCoin aims to build a practice-driven financial education ecosystem through a risk-free simulation trading system, achieving dual incentives for learning and earning. The official stated that the financing will be used for global market expansion, upgrading the BugsFunded decentralized asset management protocol, developing AI intelligent investment advisors, and building the BGSC ecosystem.
Currently, BugsCoin has been launched on trading platforms such as Gate.io, Bitget, HashKey, MEXC, and BitMart, and recently completed the destruction of 50 billion BGSC tokens.
According to Fortune magazine, cryptocurrency insurance company Meanwhile completed $40 million in Series A financing on Thursday, led by Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures, with participation from Wences Casares, the founder of cryptocurrency bank Xapo.
This round of financing values Meanwhile at $190 million, nearly double the valuation during its most recent financing round in 2022. Meanwhile will use the funds raised in this round for global expansion and to ensure its products comply with regulatory requirements.
It is reported that Meanwhile's life insurance policy is similar to ordinary life insurance. Policyholders must pay a monthly premium calculated by actuaries. However, unlike payments from bank accounts or checks, customers must pay using Bitcoin from their cryptocurrency wallets. When the policyholder passes away, their family will receive the claim amount in Bitcoin.
According to Forbes, AI cybersecurity startup Octane announced the completion of $6.75 million in seed round financing, co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital (the family office of Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss). Other supporters include the crypto exchange Gemini Frontier Fund, Circle, Duke Capital Partners, and a number of strategic angel investors, including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. The funds will be used for product development, expanding the engineering team, and increasing Octane's influence.
It is reported that Octane's core proposition is to supplement passive audit models with always-on AI defenses. Octane is currently focused on smart contract vulnerabilities, but the company's future goal is to detect and prevent more complex attacks.
According to a press release, decentralized publishing and reading platform Libraro announced today that it has received additional investment from Ayre Ventures. Since receiving initial seed funding in October 2024, Ayre Ventures' total investment in Libraro has reached £1 million (approximately $1.28 million).
It is reported that the Libraro platform uses blockchain technology to protect authors' identities, prevent copyright infringement, and enhance the transparency of ownership and distribution rights. The platform deepens the connection between readers, authors, and publishers through a Web3 loyalty program.
Cryptocurrency dining app Blackbird completes $50 million Series B financing, led by Spark Capital
According to Fortune, cryptocurrency dining app Blackbird has completed $50 million in Series B financing, led by Spark Capital, with participation from Coinbase, a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Amex Ventures. The company's founder Ben Leventhal stated that he raised this funding in the fourth quarter of 2024 but only disclosed it recently, while he declined to reveal the implied valuation of this round of financing.
Since 2022, Blackbird has raised a total of $85 million.
Ripple acquires cryptocurrency-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion
Ripple acquired the cryptocurrency-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its services for institutional investors.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated that this acquisition represents Ripple's efforts to integrate broader services to attract large institutions, saying, "Ripple needs to ensure that we have the right infrastructure to attract and scale to a larger group of large institutions."
According to The Block, Bitcoin decentralized aggregation protocol Sats Terminal has completed $1.7 million in Pre-Seed round financing, led by Coinbase Ventures and Draper Associates, with participation from Draper Dragon, BitcoinFi Accelerator, UTXO Management, Core Chain Ventures, Sats Ventures, Delta Blockchain Fund, Tenzor Capital, and 3Commas Capital.
Sats Terminal was founded by Stanislav Havryliuk and Rishabh Java, with the intention of making Bitcoin-native DeFi products more intuitive and interconnected.
