The crypto venture capital community has been backing several startups this week, including Story Protocol’s $80 million Series B funding round.
The week between August 18 and 24 was a busy one for crypto venture capitalists. According to the Crypto Finance Tracker Cryptocurrency FundraisingThirty-two blockchain startups have raised over $202 million from various investors during that period.
Below we take a look at a few of the most notable ones.
Story Protocol, $80 Million
Story Protocol has raised $80 million in its Series B round. Cryptocurrency venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which also saw participation from Polychain Capital, Hashed, Samsung Next, SparkLabs Global, and others.
The Series B round brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total funding to $140 million, valuing the company at about $2.25 billion.
The company aims to address what it sees as a growing problem of intellectual property theft, especially in the era of generative AI.
Story’s blockchain network allows intellectual property owners to store their creations on the platform, and embed licensing terms directly into smart contracts.
In this way, the company ensures that intellectual property owners are compensated whenever their content is used, which goes against growing concerns about tech giants using AI models to ingest copyrighted material without proper licensing.
Sorella Laboratories, $7.5 million
Next on the list is Sorella Labs, a San Francisco-based startup. The company has secured $7.5 million to fund its work on developing tools designed to identify and process maximum extractable value activities on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
Research-based technology investment firm Paradigm led the funding round. Other participants included Nascent, Uniswap Ventures, Robot Ventures, and Bankless Ventures.
Sorella Labs plans to use the proceeds to expand its operations and accelerate development of its flagship products, Brontës and Angstrom.
Corn $6.7 million
Atom is another winner in this week’s crypto venture capital fundraising column. The Ethereum layer-2 network, which uses a hybrid Bitcoin (BTC) as gas, has raised $6.7 million in a seed funding round led by Polychain Capital.
Binance Labs, Framework Ventures, and Polygon (MATIC) co-founder Sandeep Nailwal also helped with the round.
Corn is reportedly looking to create a “crop circle” ecosystem that aligns users, applications, and token holders, to address challenges faced by other decentralized networks, including insufficient liquidity and limited token utility.
BSX Exchange, $6.2 million
Meanwhile, BSX Exchange, a decentralized derivatives protocol built on the Ethereum L2 core network, has raised $6.2 million through seed and seed funding rounds.
Blockchain Capital led the $4 million seed round. Other notable investors include Bankless Ventures and Maelstrom, the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes.
With this new capital, BSX plans to expand beyond derivatives trading, launching a spot pool in September as well as several profit and betting products shortly after.
Organized network, $5 million
Orderly Network, a project developing a liquidity layer on top of Web3, was also on the right side of a $5 million funding round. Its backers include OKX Ventures, Manifold Trading, and Origin Protocol.
The team behind the project plans to use the funds to enhance its capabilities in creating a permissionless liquidity layer for Web 3 trading across multiple blockchains.
Orderly currently supports six chains, including the Ethereum mainnet and Polygon. It aims to provide deep liquidity for any asset across those networks.
Other funding rounds
Three notable venture funding rounds this week concluded with Soulbound, Stork Network, and Thalex. Together, these ventures have raised over $12 million, with the web3 social gaming space securing $4 million from Animoca Brands to continue its mission to enable the new creator economy.
Soulbound is building a platform that combines GameFi and SocialFi to deliver a new digital experience. The platform’s developers say they will use the funds to build gaming partnerships, grow social interactions, expand livestream rewards, and social search.
For its part, Stork Network has secured $4.705 million in seed funding to expand its product suite, including the development of an open data marketplace. Lightspeed Faction and Lattice co-led the round, which also saw participation from CMS and Wintermute Ventures.
Finally, Thalex, a crypto derivatives exchange, has raised €3 million ($3.3 million) in a Series A extension. According to AxiosThe Verge, which exclusively reported on the fundraising, reported that backers of the extended round included Bitfinex, Bitstamp, and Flow Traders. IMC and Wintermute also invested in the project.
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