Institutional Digest: Injective Protocol raises $40 million, and Fractional raises $20 million

The cryptocurrency industry is attracting a growing number of institutional players. This is reflected in both new investments in infrastructure and the increasing attention companies are paying to Bitcoin as an asset class. The most important events of the past weeks are in ForkLog’s review.

DeFi protocol Injective Protocol raised $40 million from Alan Howard and Jump Crypto

DeFi protocol Injective Protocol raised $40 million as part of a funding round to accelerate Web3 adoption and development.

The round included Brevan Howard Digital, billionaire Alan Howard, and Jump Crypto.

“We want to be best positioned during a bear market to build and support new developers and seize these opportunities,” said the project’s founder Eric Chen.

The funds raised will be directed toward developing the project’s ecosystem, the INJ token, and Web3 technologies.

NFT media management platform Pinata raised $21.5 million

The NFT platform Pinata raised $21.5 million from Pantera Capital, Greylock, and other investors.

According to Pinata co-founder and CEO Kai Tut, the sum comprised an $18 million Series A and a $3.5 million seed round.

Leading investors in them were Pantera Capital, Greylock and Offline Ventures with participation from Volt Capital, OpenSea, and Alchemy.

The raised funds will be used to grow the team and improve the infrastructure to make it “faster, more stable and able to support the next generation of NFT.”

The company provides IPFS-based infrastructure for creating and supporting NFT marketplaces, metaverses, Web3 apps and other crypto projects.

The platform enables management of media files and monetization across a broad range of blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and Algorand.

Among the company’s clients are OpenSea, DraftKings, Protocol Labs and Yuga Labs. The total number of platform users reached 240,000.

NFT platform Fractional raised $20 million

The NFT platform Fractional for NFT fractionalization has renamed to Tessera. The company also announced the closing of a Series A round worth $20 million.

It was led by Paradigm. Participants included Focus Labs, Uniswap Labs Ventures, E Girl Capital, Yunt Capital and more than 50 angel investors.

According to Tessera CEO Andi Choralian, the previous name did not stick in users’ minds, despite its obviousness.

He said this is not just a name change but a new approach to collective ownership of digital collectibles. In the new iteration of the protocol the platform intends to offer stakes in the form of NFT.

CreatorDAO raised $20 million from a16z, Initialized Capital and Paris Hilton

The decentralized organisation CreatorDAO raised $20 million in a seed round of financing.

Led by venture funds a16z and Initialized Capital. Other investors included 2 Ventures, M13, Audacious Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Abstract Ventures, SV Angel, as well as Paris Hilton and the duo The Chainsmokers.

CreatorDAO invests in creators in exchange for a share of their future earnings.

Startup .bit raised $13 million to grow the community

Blockchain startup .bit closed a Series A round of $13 million with participation from CMB International, HashKey Capital, QingSong Fund, GSR Ventures, GGV Capital and SNZ.

The raised funds will go toward expanding the team and partnerships, as well as community growth.

One of the project’s main current objectives is to achieve adoption of .bit domains among DAOs.

The team also reported more than 110,000 accounts registered with around 38,000 crypto addresses.

Tiger Global joined the investment round in the gaming startup for $12 million

Blockchain gaming infrastructure developer Lysto raised $12 million in a round ahead of Series A.

It was led by venture firms Square Peg, Beenext and Hashed. Other investors included Tiger Global, Better Capital, former Coinbase CTO Balajis Srinivasan, Pantera Capital partner Paul Veradittakit, Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, and CoinGecko cofounders Bobby Ong and TM Li.

As part of the deal, Square Peg partner Tushar Roy became a member of Lysto’s board of directors.

The startup provides gamers with tools to verify their credentials on the blockchain. The funds will be used to develop the so-called Proof-of-Play protocol, which will help gamers digitize credentials on the network, using them as online certificates to form teams and participate in tournaments.

The Lysto protocol currently runs on Polygon in beta. According to founder and CEO Sadik Ahmed, the project plans to support almost all blockchains in the future. The expansion will begin with Solana, ImmutableX and Flow.

Ahmed added that Lysto serves both Web3 and web gamers, allowing traditional players to verify their credentials through the protocol as well.

DeFi project Unstoppable Finance raised €12.5 million

Venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners led a Series A round of Unstoppable Finance for €12.5 million ($12.8 million).

Other participants included Speedinvest, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Backed VC, Inflection, Discovery Ventures, Fabric Ventures and Anagram.

The project is preparing to launch a non-custodial DeFi wallet Ultimate with direct connectivity to yield protocols and decentralized exchanges.

The investments will enable the startup to expand its presence in the US market. They report more than 300,000 pre-registrations on the waitlist.

Initially launched on Solana as an iOS app in the EU, Unstoppable Finance plans Ethereum compatibility later in 2022 and to launch an Android wallet version.

Binance Labs invested in the Ankr infrastructure project

Web3 infrastructure provider Ankr attracted strategic investments from Binance’s venture arm.

Ankr will use the funds to further improve the RPC service and develop the developer toolchain, including the Liquid Staking SDK, Web3 Gaming SDK, and App Chains As Service.

According to the statement, Binance Labs’ investment amount was undisclosed but followed a significant contribution by the provider to the development and support of the BNB Chain ecosystem.

The Ankr team has built the network’s core infrastructure, including upgrading the Erigon client, updating the archival node for the blockchain, and scaling solution for the BNB Application Sidechain (BAS).

Media reports on Messari plan to raise funding at a $300 million valuation

The Messari team is in the process of raising $35 million. The analytics firm’s valuation after the round could rise to $300 million, according to The Block sources.

Founder Ryan Selkis declined to comment on a potential round. He emphasised that the company does not need cash and “has not spent a cent of investor capital in scaling to 130 people.”

“We continue to build the world’s largest crypto information business on a subscription model and are focused on preparing the launch of a set of new products on Mainnet [the conference organized by Messari] in September this year,” Selkis said.

Also on ForkLog:

• CoinFund launched a $300 million fund for Web3 investments.
• Shima Capital launched a Web3-focused venture fund of $200 million.
• LongHash Ventures created a $100 million Web3-focused fund.

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