Institutional Interest in Crypto Grows as Dapper Labs Raises $305m and Blockchain.com Valued at $5.2bn

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

Dapper Labs raises $305 million from Michael Jordan and other investors

The Dapper Labs project, behind the NBA Top Shot blockchain game, closed a financing round worth $305 million.

The round was led by investment firm Coatue. Joining it were venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, NBA legend Michael Jordan, basketball player Kevin Durant, Sound Ventures by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, Dreamers VC of actor Will Smith, rapper 2Chainz, and a number of other investors.

The investors valued the project at $2.6 billion.

NFT social network Nifty’s attracted investments from Mark Cuban and Joseph Lubin

The social media platform Nifty’s, aimed at collectors and creators of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), completed a pre-seed round of financing.

The round was led by billionaire Mark Cuban, Ethereum cofounder Joseph Lubin, and an anonymous investor under the pseudonym 0xb1. They were joined by investment firms Draper Dragon, Polychain, Tally Capital, Liberty City Ventures and Future Positive.

Nifty’s will bring together publishers, creators and brands with NFT collectors and fans. Users of the platform will be able to create, discover and store NFTs.

Blockchain.com raised $300 million with a valuation of $5.2 billion

The cryptocurrency exchange Blockchain.com raised $300 million in a Series C round, valuing the company at $5.2 billion.

The round was led by partners of DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners and VY Capital. The funds will be used to build new products.

Chainalysis valued over $2 billion after another funding round

The analytics firm Chainalysis raised $100 million in a Series D round, giving it a valuation above $2 billion.

The round was led by Paradigm. Existing investors Addition Capital, Ribbit and Time Ventures participated, increasing their stakes.

The capital will be used to expand the business and develop enterprise solutions for processing blockchain data.

Paradigm led a $75 million round for StarkWare

The Ethereum scaling solution developer StarkWare, raised $75 million.

The Series B round was led by Paradigm. Participants included existing investors Sequoia, Founders Fund of Peter Thiel, Pantera Capital, as well as Three Arrows and Alameda Research.

The firm is working on phased deployment of the StarkNet layer-2 protocol with its own zk-STARKs implementation.

Soros family office invested in crypto data provider Lukka

Lukka closed a round of financing Series D amounting to $53 million.

Its participants include Soros Fund Management, S&P Global and CPA.com. The valuation of the company reached $200 million.

The raised funds will go toward developing existing products. They cover price data and tax accounting tools. Lukka collaborates with 160 crypto funds.

Avanti raises $37 million ahead of launching a crypto bank

The startup Avanti raised $37 million in a Series A round to launch a digital asset bank.

A number of individual investors participated, as well as Binance.US, Coinbase Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and others.

The raised capital will be used to form the regulatory capital needed to launch the bank, as well as to build the infrastructure and cover operating costs.

Total funding raised by the company since its inception has reached $44 million.

NFT marketplace SuperRare raised $9 million from Mark Cuban and Samsung

The NFT platform SuperRare completed a Series A round, attracted $9 million.

The round was led by Velvet Sea Ventures and 1confirmation. They were joined by billionaire Mark Cuban, investors Chamath Palihapitiya and Naval Ravikant, entrepreneur Marc Benioff, Sound Ventures by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, SamsungNext and others.

The platform will deploy the funds to expand the team, develop a mobile app and explore digital-display technology for showcasing NFTs. The marketplace will also feature chat and personalized channels.

TON Labs raised $6 million from Runa Capital and RTP Global

TON Labs raised $6 million from the venture fund Runa Capital with the participation of RTP Global Le0nid Boguslavsky.

Other investors participated in the round, whose names are not disclosed by TON Labs.

TON Labs was one of the first external firms invited by Telegram to develop core components of the Telegram Open Network (TON). Subsequently TON Labs became one of two dozen organizations to launch a project called Free TON based on TON’s code.

Bitcoin cashback platform Lolli raises $5 million

The company Lolli, which provides Bitcoin cashback on online purchases, raised $5 million in a pre-Series A round.

The round was led by venture firm Seven Seven Six, co-founder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian, and Night Media. Among the investors is Serena Ventures, the firm of tennis star Serena Williams.

The funds will be used to develop a mobile app and support international expansion.

Ethereum project Connext raises $2.2 million from Huobi and Polychain Capital

Focused on cross‑chain interoperability, the project raised $2.2 million in seed funding.

The round was led by venture firm Polychain Capital; 1kx and Huobi Capital also participated. The funds will be used to provide initial liquidity reserves for the network and to grow the development team.

Connext is building a “cross‑chain liquidity network” that supports fast, non‑custodial asset swaps using second‑layer solutions such as Optimism.

A full launch of the Connext network is expected in the next 3–6 months.

Draper Associates led a $1.2 million Cryptio round

Cryptio raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Draper Associates.

Other participants included ConsenSys Ventures, Outlier Ventures, Aave founder Stani Kulechov and other angels.

The funds will be spent on crypto-asset accounting solutions. In Q2 2021 Cryptio plans to launch an updated version of its product.

Cryptio links crypto to legacy accounting systems. For example, in 2020 the platform released solutions for Xero and QuickBooks.

Also on ForkLog:

• In Q1, crypto companies attracted more venture capital than in all of 2020.
• Dragonfly Capital launched a $225 million fund to invest in NFT and DeFi.

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