Institutional roundup: Aptos raises $150 million, Unstoppable Domains valued at $1 billion

The cryptocurrency industry is attracting more institutional players. This is reflected in the growing investments in infrastructure and the increasing attention companies are paying to Bitcoin as an asset class. The most significant developments of the past weeks are in ForkLog’s overview.

FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto back Aptos in $150 million round

Aptos, the team behind ‘a scalable blockchain for billions of people’ closed a $150 million Series A round.

It was led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto with participation from Apollo, Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, Superscrypt from Temasek, Andreessen Horowitz and Multicoin.

“Aptos could become a reliable foundation for Web3. It will allow users around the world to experience the benefits of decentralization,” said Mo Shaikh, CEO of the project.

With a seed round in March 2022, the startup has raised $350 million.

Unstoppable Domains closes $65 million round at a $1 billion valuation

Unstoppable Domains, a decentralized domain name registrar, closed a $65 million Series A round. Investors valued the startup at $1 billion.

The round was led by venture firm Pantera Capital. Participants included Alchemy Ventures, Spartan Group, OKG Investments, Polygon, CoinDCX, CoinGecko and others.

The funds will be used to spur product innovation and expand partnerships in Web3.

Unstoppable Domains is a provider of NFT domains. Each name is an NFT issued on the Polygon network. According to a press release, the service has registered 2.5 million names, including in the ‘.bitcoin’, ‘.nft’ and ‘.dao’ zones.

DST Global Partners and SoftBank back AI startup MarqVision in $20 million round

MarqVision, an IP-protection-focused startup, closed a $20 million Series A round.

Participants included DST Global Partners, Atinum Investments, Softbank Ventures, Bass Investment and Y-Combinator.

MarqVision is positioned as a SaaS-powered AI platform. The system tracks e-commerce and NFT markets, identifying counterfeit goods.

Topl, a blockchain company focused on social initiatives, raised $15 million

Topl, a provider of blockchain solutions to track and monetize social impact initiatives, raised $15 million in a Series A round.

It was co-led by Mercury, Republic Asia and Cryptology Asset Group. Founder Chris Jorgen said that in 2020, during the seed round, $5 million was raised.

The project helps enterprises that aim to track products that meet sustainable development principles and account for social impact.

The funds will be used to hire new staff and execute three key elements of the roadmap: handing governance of the blockchain community to the community, and launching ‘traceability as a service’ and ‘registry-as-a-service’ for carbon credits.

KuCoin raises $10 million from SIG strategic investments

The cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin raised $10 million in strategic investments from the American trading firm Susquehanna International Group.

The funds will be used to upgrade the platform’s infrastructure, expand the product line and hire staff.

KuCoin plans to roll out new services in Asia, Europe and other regions.

Root Protocol built on Beanstalk hack raises $9 million

Root Protocol, a marketplace project for financial markets, forecasting and trading, raised $9 million in a seed round.

Investors included Road Capital, Nima Capital, Soma Capital, Manifest Crypto and others.

Root is built on top of the Beanstalk stablecoin protocol, which in April lost around $181 million in a governance-system exploit.

Beanstalk issues the ‘stablecoin’ Bean backed by collateral. Investors buy the protocol’s debt instruments, which accrue interest.

The Root team aims to broaden the token’s use with new markets such as yield swaps on returns or a betting platform.

The funds will be used for direct investments in Beanstalk and auditing its own protocol.

Beanstalk’s issuer plans a restart on August 6. Root developers plan to launch their product in October.

OneOf NFT marketplace raises more than $8 million

OneOf, a music NFT platform, raised more than $8 million in strategic investments.

Participants included Amex Ventures, Snow Hill Ventures, Sangha Capital, Chain Link Crypto Fund and others. With the new round, OneOf’s total funding raised exceeded $72 million.

The company positions itself as an ‘eco-friendly NFT platform’ built on the Tezos blockchain, designed for the music community.

Blockchain startup by former Coinbase employee raises $4.5 million

Coherent, a blockchain-data startup founded by former Coinbase engineer Karl Kortrait, raised $4.5 million in a seed round.

Investors included Kindred Ventures, Matchstick Ventures and Foundry Group. Other participants included Coinbase Ventures, Alchemy, Chapter One and Dan Romero, one of the early employees of the American Bitcoin exchange.

Kortrait founded Coherent in April 2022 after four years at Coinbase. In the company, he served as a senior software engineer and was a member of the venture arm.

According to him, Coherent is building an API that will allow developers to create applications and offer new features using their data.

He says the platform will bring the next billion crypto users. The five-person team plans to launch the tool in September.

Dragonfly Capital leads seed round for DeFi project Debt DAO

Dragonfly Capital led the $3.5 million seed round for Debt DAO.

The funding also came from GSR, Numeus and Fasanara Capital. They were joined by six angel investors, including Balaji Srinivasan, a former Coinbase CTO, and David Post from Chainlink Labs.

Debt DAO positions itself as a decentralized marketplace bringing together all elements of the debt-financing ecosystem for the DeFi sector.

Also on ForkLog:

• Venture investments in the industry in the first half of the year exceeded $30 billion.
• Media reports Ledger plans to raise at least $100 million.
• Crypto-venture firm Variant raised $450 million for two new funds.
• Media: Barclayswill acquire a stake in crypto custodian Copper.

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