Magic Eden closed Series B, Binance US raised $50M in funding

The Fundraising Spotlight series is a weekly series by the Coin98 Insight team. This will be an article that summarizes the top 10 most outstanding fundraising deals of the week.

Key insights:

• In this week, the total amount of fundraising was $267M, which is only one-fifth of the number of last week.
• The GameFi & NFT field is the hottest sector this week, with many deals happened (Magic Eden, Chibi Clash, Cryptoys, Astaria, Tatsumeeko, Stella Fantasy).
• In the last few weeks, the amount of deals and the average value of them were gradually decreasing.

Overview of investments & funding activities in week 26

In the TOP 10 most famous investments & sponsorship deals in the past week, we have:

• 5 NFT/Gaming projects: Chibi Clash, Cryptoys, Astaria, Tatsumeeko, Stella Fantasy
• 1 CEX: Binance.US
• 1 NFT exchange: Magic Eden
• 1 Blockchain/L2 project: Linera
• 1 project about infrastructure: Peaq
• 1 project on identity: zCloak

Large enterprises and companies

Binance.US looking to raise $50M

What is Binance.US?

Binance.US is the US branch of the world's largest exchange Binance. Binance.US is built specifically for US citizens. The Binance.US branch will have different elements from the original Binance, affected by law in the US.

Over the past week, Binance.US has been planning a $50M extended round, at a valuation of $4.5B. This will be an additional round of seed funding in April of this year.

Famous Venture Capitals participated in the latest seed round:

• RRE Ventures: Venture capital firm based in New York, USA. Founded by James D. Robinson III in 1994, the company has extensive investment experience in the financial markets. RRE Ventures mainly invests in Series A, B for companies operating in the fields of software, internet, media, aerospace, robotics, 3D printing and financial services.
• Foundation Capital: A venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, USA, established and developed in 1995, managing nearly $3B invested capital. Foundation Capital is also one of the earliest funds to invest in the Solana blockchain.

Goals after the funding round: The capital will help the Binance.US exchange enter the “crypto winter” more firmly.

Projects with Tokens

Projects already having Tokens and still receiving additional investments proves that they have new products, new segments, and need more money to develop. This news will greatly affect the nature and price of the tokens, so please refer to it for more investment perspectives.

Chibi Clash (CLASH) raised $3M in private round

What is Chibi Clash?

Chibi Clash is a free play-to-earn game, run by many veterans in the traditional game industry from Zynga, EA, Funcom or Bandai Namco. This game is inspired by Hearthstone Battlegrounds, where players will collect, upgrade and send their characters to the battlefield, compete and receive attractive rewards.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• Shima Capital: An investment fund founded by Yida Gao, a young trader who made it to the top of Forbes Under 30 in 2020. The fund focuses on investing and supporting projects in the blockchain field with nearly 90 investments.
• Kyros Ventures: The investment arm of Coin68, a large crypto company in Vietnam.
• DAO Alliance: One of the biggest DAOs in the crypto market.

Goals after the funding round: In addition to the money supported by VCs and angel investors to continue building the game and developing the community, Chibi Clash will also have more resources from them in areas such as marketing, customer source, recruitment, …

Projects without tokens

Projects that do not have Tokens and are invested in may be able to develop and build their basic foundations.

For the project itself, the supporters in this phase are very meaningful to them, so the list below may not help you in investing, but it helps in choosing potential projects to learn about. You can look for opportunities such as participating in Testnets, IDOs,...

Magic Eden raised $130M in Series B

What is Magic Eden?

Magic Eden is the dominant NFT exchange on Solana, holding over 90% of the total secondary trading market share. Allowing users to easily mint and buy NFTs with low transaction costs, high liquidity and intuitive user experience, Magic Eden has become the destination to discover, trade and create NFTs for all everyone. This exchange has successfully raised $130M at a valuation of $1.6B.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• Electric Capital: The fund was founded in 2018 by Spencer and Avichal Garg. Specializing in investing in projects in areas such as blockchain, fintech at the early stages.
• Greylock Partners: One of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital under management of more than $3.5B.

Goals after the funding round: The capital will be used to develop and expand the main and secondary NFT exchange of Magic Eden. In addition, Magic Eden also hinted at developing for multichain platforms.

Cryptoys raised $23M in Series A round

What is Cryptoys?

Cryptoys is an NFT and metaverse project developed by OnChain Studios. A special feature here is that this game is built to target users who are children. With the aim of providing minors with a good view of NFT and having access to NFT as early as possible.

Cryptoys is a universe consisting of stuffed animals, with diverse game modes, beautiful graphics, attracting many players. This game will be built on the Flow blockchain from their main partner, Dapper Labs.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• a16z: An investment fund founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. This is an investment fund operating in Silicon Valley, California and focusing on investing in technology startups, the Fund is also a well-known market maker.
• Animoca Brands: The leader in the blockchain gaming market. As a publisher for big, familiar games on blockchain such as REVV Racing, The Sandbox. Animoca Brands also regularly pours large capital into blockchain entertainment startups.

Goals after the funding round: The capital will be used for OnChain Studios to continue to build and implement future plans for the Cryptoys project.

Astaria raised $8M in seed round

What is Astaria?

Astaria is a project for NFT investors developed by the former CTO of SushiSwap. Realizing the complicated situation of the current market with investors, Astaria has developed a protocol that allows users to borrow through NFT as collateral they own and receive back the corresponding amount of ETH.

Over the past week, Astaria has successfully raised $8M in the seed round.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• Ethereal Ventures: ConsenSys’s venture capital fund, founded and run by Joseph Lubin.
• Arrington XRP Capital: A venture capital fund established in 2017. The fund is headquartered in Washington, USA. Focusing on investing in the blockchain field with more than 80 capital injections, such as POKT Network or Immutable X.

Goals after the funding round: The raised capital will be used to expand Astaria's staff (currently 8 people). Astaria's Public Launch is expected to be carried out this September.

Tatsumeeko raised $7.5M seed round

What is Tatsumeeko?

Tatsumeeko is an MMORPG with 3D graphics, quite similar to Genshin Impact in traditional gaming. Tatsumeeko's origins come from Tatsu.GG, a community-led project with over 1.44 million Discord members and over 60 million users. Tatsumeeko combined the best of its predecessor and created the first blockchain game directly connected to the Discord platform.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• BITKRAFT Ventures: Venture capital fund, founded in 2015 by Jens Hilgers. This investment fund has headquarters in many parts of the world. Mainly focused on blockchain gaming, Web3 and entertainment media markets.
• Binance Labs: The investment and research arm of the Binance exchange.
• In addition, major gaming guilds have invested such as: Ancient8, Yield Guild Games, Merit Circle and Avocado DAO.

Goals after the funding round: The capital will be fully used to develop Tatsumeeko. It is expected that Tatsumeeko will be built on Ethereum and Solana.

Linera raised $6M seed round

What is Linera?

Linera is a Layer 1 Blockchain developed by Mathieu Baudet, a former employee of Meta (Facebook). The blockchain that Linera builds will aim for low latency and a new feature called linear scalability. In the case of Linera, this consists of shards, or individual threads, of the chain adding additional validators for network efficiency.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• a16z: An investment fund founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. This is an investment fund operating in Silicon Valley, California and focusing on investing in technology startups. The fund is also a well-known market maker.
• Cygni Capital: An investment fund founded in 2020 by Thomas France. The fund was built to target projects in the fields of blockchain, artificial intelligence and privacy. Up to now, Cygni Capital has invested more than 14 times.

Goals after the funding round: The fund will be used to recruit leading engineers in the field, speeding up the completion of work.

Peaq raised $6M in seed round

What is Peaq?

Peaq, a Web3 project that provides decentralized infrastructure and tools to builders and users of decentralized applications (or dapps), for machines. Peaq is built and used primarily on Polkadot. Current applications that can be programmed on Peaq are currently applications for transportation such as parking, car charging, car rental, etc...

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• Fundamental Labs: Investment fund in Shanghai, China. This is a Venture Capital Fund and focuses on investing in projects in the field of advanced technology, especially Blockchain.
• Hashkey Capital: A large investment fund belonging to Hashkey Group in Japan. This is a Fund established to focus on investing in the blockchain market. Hashkey also invested in Coin98's seed round.

Goals after the funding round: The amount of capital raised will be a source of capital to help Peaq operate more stably and be ready for their upcoming plans.

zCloak raised $5.8M in Series A 

What is zCloak?

zCloak is a project that uses zero-knowledge proof and applies to many public blockchains. With products from zCloak, users can prove identity with certain attributes without sharing private data for use in DeFi, identity and biometric.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• Coinbase Ventures: The venture capital arm of the Coinbase exchange. This is also the largest investor of zCloak in this funding round.
• Bixin Ventures: A venture capital fund from China. This fund invests with a long-term vision and insight into the blockchain sector. They have more than 40 investments up to now.

Goals after the funding round: The capital will be used mainly for finding major partners in the same field of security and identity verification.

Stella Fantasy raised $5M

What is Stella Fantasy?

Stella Fantasy is a game from Ring Games, developer of a famous game, King's Raid. Stella Fantasy is developed through Unreal Engine with beautiful 3D anime graphics. This will be a game with the P2E genre and using NFT mechanics. Over the past week, Stella Fantasy has successfully raised $5M from many major funds.

Famous Venture Capitals participating in the funding round:

• Animoca Brands: The leader in the blockchain gaming market. As a publisher for big, familiar games on blockchain such as REVV Racing, The Sandbox. Animoca Brands also regularly pours large capital into blockchain entertainment startups.
• Avocado DAO and GuildFi: 2 major gaming guilds in the current gamefi market. These are also two gaming guilds that regularly participate in seed funding rounds of new blockchain games on the market.

Goals after the funding round: The capital will be used to continue building and developing Stella. The game is expected to be released in August this year.

Conclusion

The fundraising market is still very active despite the sharp fluctuations in the price of cryptocurrencies. Projects in the fields of NFT and Gaming were completely overwhelmed in terms of numbers in this week's fundraising market.

Big VCs like a16z, Animoca Brands or Coinbase Ventures are always taking advantage and looking for potential projects lurking in the market to become one of the earliest investors of those projects.

This is the end of the TOP 10 most outstanding investment deals in the past week.

Read more:  Lightspeed Raised $500M, Multicoin Capital Announced New $430M Fund