Institutional Roundup: Chain Reaction raises $70 million, and Kratos raises $20 million

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

Chain Reaction raises $70 million in Series C round led by Morgan Creek

A hardware- and privacy-focused chipmaker Chain Reaction raised $70 million in a Series C funding round led by Morgan Creek Digital.

Participants included Hanaco Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, KCK Capital, Exor, Atreides Management, and BlueRun Ventures. The round brought the total capital raised by the company to $115 million.

The startup will use the funds to expand its team of engineers and developers. The current headcount stands at 100, including former Nvidia, Mellanox, Israel Intelligence and TSMC engineers.

The funding will allow Chain Reaction to accelerate the deployment of enterprise-grade blockchain products — custom-designed integrated circuits and equipment based on them.

The team also plans to scale privacy-focused solutions related to cloud computing.

Chain Reaction expects the first chips and hardware systems to be publicly available in Q1 2023.

Indian Web3 startup Kratos raises $20 million at a $150 million valuation

raised $20 million in seed funding. The round was led by Accel with participation from Prosus Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners and Nazara Technologies.

Investors valued the startup at $150 million.

“We are building on-chain profiles of gamers within groups and giving game developers the ability to create quests. Developers pay us to host their quests, and players pay for their verification,” said Ishank Gupta, co-founder of the project.

Kratos was founded in September 2022 and helps participants convert on-chain assets into fiat money.

Web3 game Worldwide Webb raises $10 million from Pantera Capital

invested $10 million in multiplayer online role-playing game Worldwide Webb during a Series A funding round.

Players can participate in quests and interact with the virtual economy of the browser-based MMORPG, buying \”land\” and \”property\”.

In the coming weeks, the project will release a new game — Blockbusterz — where holders of NFT from popular collections such as CryptoPunks, BAYC and Doodles will be able to battle each other.

The funds raised will be used to expand the team and add support for additional networks beyond Ethereum.

ZenGo crypto wallet raises $10 million at a $100 million valuation

raised $10 million in convertible notes as part of an extended Series A round for ZenGo.

The company was valued at $100 million. The startup aims to attract larger investments in the next Series B round, planned for late 2023.

“We are constantly speaking with investors who have shown interest in our company, but we cannot comment on any rumours about transactions,” said ZenGo CEO Uriel Ohayon.

ZenGo supports 50 cryptocurrencies and is expanding the list. The wallet has over 800,000 registered users. The startup aims to reach 2 million by the end of 2023.

Polyhedra Network raises $10 million from Binance Labs and other investors

The infrastructure Web3-startup Polyhedra Network raised $10 million in a funding round led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital with participation from Animoca Brands and Dao5.

The developers of Polyhedra Network have built several products based on zero-knowledge proofs, including:

• zkBridge — a solution for transferring assets from Web 2.0 to Web3 systems;
• zkDID — a system for decentralized identification;
• ParaPlonk — a scaling solution using ZK-Rollups.

The startup plans to expand integration with various blockchains, make the products more accessible to developers, and also improve the ParaPlonk protocol. The funds will also be used by Polyhedra Network to hire staff.

Conflux developers raise $10 million from DWF Labs

The Conflux blockchain startup team raised $10 million from the investment company DWF Labs via sale of CFX tokens from a reserve.

The funds will be used to build the technology stack and expand the user base.

According to Conflux co-founder Fan Long, CFX tokens will be unlocked linearly over a set period. He called the strategic investment “extremely important” for building the ecosystem.

Impossible Cloud raises $7 million seed funding

The decentralized cloud platform Impossible Cloud has closed a seed round of $7 million.

The round was led by HV Capital and 1kx with participation from Protocol Labs, TS Ventures and Very Early Ventures. Together with the new capital, the startup’s total funding reached about $11 million.

Impossible Cloud co-founders are Kai Vavrzinek, founder of Goodgame Studios; former Airbnb director Christian Kaul; and former D2iQ employee Daniel Beyer.

The startup aims to address the problems of centralized cloud platforms such as Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, which suffer from complex pricing models, capacity constraints and single points of failure.

Ether.Fi liquid staking protocol raises $5.3 million

The Ether.Fi raised $5.3 million in a funding round led by North Island Ventures and Chapter One. A total of 35 investors participated. Among them: Node Capital, Arrington Capital, Maelstrom and Version One Ventures.

Ether.Fi positions itself as a decentralized solution where keys are under user control. By depositing funds, market participants receive NFTs with metadata. The latter, according to the project representatives, will be used to further build staking infrastructure.

ZK dark pool Renegade raises $3.4 million seed funding

The on-chain dark pool Renegade raised $3.4 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly Capital and former AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant.

Other participants included Balaji Srinivasan, Tarun Chitra of Robot Ventures, Mark Bhargava of Tagomi and Lev Livnev of Symbolic Capital Partners.

Renegade is an on-chain variant of a dark pool — a private off-exchange platform for trading financial instruments aimed at large players.

Key features include the use of confidential computing protocols, as well as zero-knowledge proofs.

Renegade’s main purpose: to help traders execute trades at the best prices without signaling their intentions to the broader market.

The public test network launch is planned for Q2 2023.

Redeem platform for transferring NFT via SMS raises $2.5 million

The startup Redeem, developing technology for buying and sending NFTs using a phone number, raised $2.5 million in a seed round.

It was led by venture firm Kenetic Capital with participation from Monochrome Capital, VC3 DAO, The Fund, Flyover Capital, CMT Digital, KCRise Fund and the KESTREL0x1 fund of former Palantir employees.

The startup will use the raised funds to launch the product in Q2 2023 and further its development.

The Redeem platform allows linking a crypto wallet in any network to a phone number. This enables buying via scanning QR codes of utility NFTs representing tickets, loyalty points, in-game items, and more. Users can then send and receive assets via Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, or SMS.

According to the founder Toby Rausch, the absence of a need to use a crypto interface and pay on-chain fees will significantly simplify users’ interaction with Web3 infrastructure. He believes the solution could accelerate broad crypto adoption.

Also on ForkLog:

• Investors valued the multi-chain wallet Blocto at $80 million.
• BitDAO participants will vote to create a $200 million investment fund.