Several startups have secured significant funding in the past week, including Andrena, Vessel, Cartridge, and Pentagon Games.
Andrina, $18 million
In its largest funding round last week, US internet services company Andrena raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Dragonfly Capital.
Notable venture capital firms participating in the round include Castle Island Ventures, ParaFi, Wintermute Ventures, CMT Digital, and 6th Man Ventures.
Andrina has raised around $33 million in investment, with $15 million coming from a previous investment round, also led by DragonFly Capital.
The company is developing a decentralized autonomous network protocol called DAWN, which aims to help users sell excess internet bandwidth to a network of service providers.
The DAWN project is based on the concept of decentralized physical backbone networks, and will leverage a network of wireless base stations installed on rooftops to provide mesh Internet access without relying on a central provider.
Andrena has not provided a specific launch date for DAWN.
$10 million ship
In a seed funding round on August 8, Zero Knowledge-based decentralized exchange Vessel secured $10 million.
The effort was led by Sequoia Capital. The funding was also backed by Scroll co-founders Sandy Peng and Yi Zhang, the Avalanche Foundation, the Algorand Foundation, IMO Ventures, Folius Ventures, Incuba Alpha, and several angel investors.
The raised capital will be used to combine the efficiency of centralized exchanges with the transparency of decentralized exchanges, enhance liquidity efficiency, and develop zero-knowledge technologies for DeFi.
Vessel Finance describes itself as a ZK-powered decentralized exchange that is evolving into a full-fledged layer 3 network for decentralized finance.
It aims to combine the efficiency and ease of use of CEX platforms with the transparency and security of decentralized platforms.
$7.5 million cartridge
Cartridge, an infrastructure provider specializing in on-chain games and indie worlds, announced the completion of a $7.5 million Series A funding round on August 5.
Bitkraft Ventures led the round, which included contributions from Fabric, Dune, StarkWare, Primitive, and Ergodic.
The company also unveiled Dojo 1.0, an open-source toolkit for developers designed to create provable games. In conjunction with the funding announcement, Cartridge is supporting several games in the series set to launch this summer, including Loot Survivor, Paved, and Dope Wars.
in interview Cartridge CEO Tarence Vee said in an interview with GamesBeat that the new capital will expand the team and strengthen the ecosystem. He noted that Dojo will provide the framework for developing games entirely on the chain and plans to build games entirely on the blockchain.
Two additional products are also being developed: the Cartridge Controller, which manages player identity and reputation, and the Slot, an execution layer.
Pentagon Games, $6 million
Pentagon Games, a web3 game developer backed by Animoca Brands, has raised $6 million in a funding round, backed by Binance Labs, Polygon, Symbolic Capital (formerly Hyperedge Capital), NFX, Republic, The Spartan Group, and Yield Guild Games.
Led by co-founders Emma Liu and Edon Liu, Pentagon Games has a team with extensive experience in the Web 3 space. The Liu duo have a proven track record of managing communities and projects with up to 1.2 million players, managing blockchain operations, validating Polygon nodes, and developing some of the earliest Web 3 games. They are joined by Hugh Behroozie, Chief Publishing Officer, who brings over 15 years of experience in film, games, and visual effects.
CEO Emma Liu recently to talk Sony’s CEO spoke about the company’s vision, saying they are excited to “lead the next generation of gaming.” The company is focused on developing a platform where players can interact with content in new ways and get rewarded for their participation.
Emma noted that as demand for unique virtual experiences and digital entities increases, gamers will increasingly seek out platforms that offer these advanced features.
DeAgentAI, $6M
Web3 AI network DeAgentAI has secured $6 million in a seed funding round led by Web3.com Ventures and Vertex Capital. Other startups that backed the round include Higgs Capital, Kernel Labs, Waterdrip Capital, Tido Capital, PANONY, CatcherVC, Goplus, and UXLINK.
DeAgentAI uses advanced artificial intelligence to provide specialized services across multiple industries. Operating on decentralized platforms such as Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH), it has developed an AI-worker layer that combines AI technology with specialized skills to provide innovative solutions, including financial forecasting and creative writing.
Backed by investor Vertex Capital, the platform has become I promised The company announced to its community that it will continue to launch new products in the coming months.