Institutional Bulletin: Blockchain.com raises $120m, Polkadot ecosystem $20m

The crypto industry is attracting an increasing number of institutional players. This is evident in both new investments in infrastructure and the growing attention companies are giving to Bitcoin as an asset class. The most important events of the past weeks are in ForkLog’s round-up.

Blockchain.com raises $120m in round with Google Ventures

The wallet provider Blockchain.com raised $120m.

The funds came from Moore Strategic Ventures, Google Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and other well-known market players.

CEO Peter Smith noted “enormous optimism” about cryptocurrencies from institutional investors, an unprecedented level of distrust of traditional financial institutions and an acceleration of online trading.

A $50m fund launched in Singapore to invest in DeFi projects

The Singaporean firm Spartan Group created a venture fund to support DeFi projects.

In the first closing Spartan DeFi Venture Fund raised $30m. It is expected that another $20m will be raised in March/April.

Spartan will invest in DeFi projects over two years through its hedge fund Global Blockchain Opportunities Fund. The company has participated in financing MakerDao, Kyber Network, yEarn.Finance, Synthetix and other projects.

Oxygen project raises $40m in funding round led by Alameda Research

The DeFi startup Oxygen, which provides primary broker-dealer services in the DeFi sector, closed a $40m financing round.

The funding round was led by Alameda Research, with Multicoin, Genesis Capital and CMS joining.

The Oxygen protocol will operate in the Serum decentralized ecosystem built on the Solana blockchain.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of the FTX exchange and an adviser to Serum and Oxygen, noted that high speed and low transaction costs on the Solana network enable more sophisticated solutions than borrowing and lending tools.

Digital Finance Group to allocate $20m to the Polkadot ecosystem

The venture firm Digital Finance Group (DFG) announced the creation of a $20m fund to support projects on Polkadot.

“The scalability and interoperability of Polkadot will spur broad blockchain adoption. The experience and qualifications of the founders and developers set this network apart from other projects,” — said DFG founder James Wo.

Digital Finance Group has invested a total of $550m, including in the development of Bitcoin, Cosmos, Ethereum Classic, Ethereum, Near, Solana and Avalanche. Its portfolio includes stakes in such companies as Ledger X, Bloq, Circle, ChainSafe, RSK and Brave.

Celo raises $20m from a16z, Greenfield One and Electric Capital

The Celo startup closed a $20m funding round with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Greenfield One and Electric Capital.

The project also launched a peer-to-peer payments and mobile transfers app on its own platform. According to company representatives, Valora enables world-wide transactions in seconds with a fee of $0.01.

Synthetix raises $12m in round with Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures

The synthetic assets platform Synthetix raised $12m through a direct sale of native SNX tokens.

SNX from the SynthetixDAO reserves was bought by venture firms Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures and IOSG. The firms will support the project by providing liquidity in SNX where available, and will participate in protocol governance.

Paradigm will assist the protocol in staffing and planning the development of v3, Coinbase Ventures will help expand platform functionality, and IOSG will assist in promoting Synthetix in China.

Centrifuge raises $4.3m with Galaxy Digital on board

The blockchain platform Centrifuge raised $4.3m in a financing round under the SAFT model.

The round was led by investment firm Galaxy Digital and IOSG Ventures. It also included Rockaway, Fintech Collective, Moonwhale, Fenbushi, TRGC and HashCIB.

The Centrifuge team will direct the raised funds to research, business development, and uniting the Binance and Polkadot communities.

Nexus Mutual raises $2.7m

The DeFi mutual insurance project Nexus Mutual raised $2.7m through the sale of native tokens NXM.

The main contribution came from Collider Ventures. Other participants included Blockchain Capital, Version One, Dialectic and other major investors.

Funds will go toward further protocol development. Nexus Mutual also plans to reach users of existing crypto exchanges and custodians, including Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and Gemini.

Binance Labs leads Plasm Network funding round of $2.4m

The blockchain incubator Binance Labs led the funding for the Plasm Network on the Polkadot blockchain with Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility and Layer 2 solutions.

Plasm Network has scalable interoperable infrastructure based on Parity’s Substrate framework and supports solutions such as Optimism Virtual Machine and ZK-Rollups.

Investors also included HashKey, PAKA Ventures, Digital Finance Group and LongHash.

The team will deploy the funds toward research, business development, and community integration of Binance and Polkadot.

NFT marketplace Async Art raises over $2m in funding

Async Art, a platform for creating and trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) raised over $2m.

The seed round was led by investment firm Lemniscap. Others included Galaxy Interactive, Signum Growth Capital, Semantic and Placeholder.

The funds will be used to scale the platform and expand the team.

Kraken launches venture fund

The Kraken exchange launched a venture fund to invest in early-stage startups in crypto, DeFi, blockchain and fintech.

Kraken Ventures’ general partner Brandon Gat noted that the fund will focus on North America and Europe. He said one startup will receive, on average, between $250,000 and $3 million.

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