Highlights of This Issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 15 financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (February 17 - February 23); the total funding exceeded $148 million, slightly increasing compared to the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 5 financing events, including a $10 million seed round financing completed by stablecoin liquidity provider Mansa, led by Tether;
- Web3 Gaming announced 1 financing event, with Boyaa Interactive announcing an additional investment of approximately $4.18 million in the Web3 project MTT ESports;
- AI+Web3 announced 2 financing events, with ClustroAI completing a $12 million Series A financing led by Forum Ventures;
- Infrastructure & Tools announced 6 financing events, including a $20 million Pre-Seed round financing completed by modular yield layer Cygnus, with participation from Manifold, OKX Ventures, and others;
- Other categories announced 1 financing event, with the tokenized social network ResearchHub, founded by the CEO of Coinbase, completing a new round of financing of $2 million, with participation from BoostVC.
DeFi
Stablecoin liquidity provider Mansa completes $10 million seed round financing, led by Tether
Stablecoin liquidity provider Mansa announced the completion of a $10 million seed round financing, led by Tether. This round of financing includes both equity and debt financing, with Tether contributing $3 million in equity financing. The new funds will support the company's expansion into Latin America and Southeast Asia, where liquidity challenges also limit cross-border transactions.
Asset wrapping startup Universal completes $9 million financing, led by a16z
Universal completed a $9 million financing round led by a16z. Universal aims to enhance asset access for developers and end-users by enabling all types of crypto assets to be traded on crypto trading networks through deep liquidity. Since the launch of Universal Protocol, over $800 million in uAssets have been traded.
Curve founder's new project Yield Basis raises $5 million at a $50 million token valuation
Michael Egorov, the founder of decentralized exchange Curve Finance, is launching a new project called Yield Basis and has already raised funds for it. Yield Basis aims to help tokenized Bitcoin and Ethereum holders earn yields through market-making by mitigating impermanent loss. It is reported that Yield Basis is raising $5 million at a fully diluted valuation of $50 million in a token round, selling 10% of its "YB" token supply, which amounts to 100 million tokens out of a total of 1 billion tokens. The token unlock schedule for investors includes a six-month lock-up period, followed by linear unlocking over two years.
Bitcoin staking platform Acre raises $4 million at a $90 million valuation
Bitcoin staking platform Acre allows users to earn rewards in Bitcoin. The platform raised $4 million in a strategic financing round, with a token valuation of $90 million. Investors in this round include Draper Dragon, Big Brain Holdings, and Orange DAO. The round also attracted undisclosed angel investors, including individuals from companies such as Lido, EigenLayer, Wormhole, Thesis, and Quantstamp.
Bitcoin DeFi project Maestro completes $3 million seed round financing
Bitcoin DeFi project Maestro announced the completion of a $3 million seed round financing, co-led by Wave Digital Assets and Draper Associates, with participation from UTXO Management, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Draper Dragon, and Necto Labs. Maestro is described as an enterprise-grade infrastructure provider tailored for Bitcoin DeFi, having launched UTXO-based infrastructure services to simplify the complex process of building Bitcoin-native financial applications. Maestro provides APIs, developer tools, and innovative solutions, such as a mempool meta-protocol index, enabling real-time on-chain insights.
Web3 Gaming
Hong Kong-listed company Boyaa Interactive announced that it has signed a subscription token warrant with MTT ESports Limited, investing 4,180,749 USDT as consideration for further investment (the second investment) in MTT ESports. After the second investment is completed, Boyaa Interactive will acquire 10% of the total issuance of MTT tokens, which amounts to 210 million MTT tokens. The MTT tokens are expected to begin linear unlocking from January 2026, completing the unlocking process within approximately 48 months. After the second investment is completed, the total value of Boyaa Interactive's investment in MTT ESports will be approximately $10 million.
AI
NVIDIA-backed AI startup ClustroAI completes $12 million Series A financing, led by Forum Ventures
San Francisco-based edge AI startup ClustroAI has completed a $12 million Series A financing led by Forum Ventures, with participation from MetaBlast and Metaverse Group, bringing the company's total financing to $15 million, which includes a previous seed round led by NVIDIA. ClustroAI focuses on edge AI technology, allowing AI models to run on local devices without relying on cloud computing. Its core technology employs a containerized architecture that supports large language models (LLMs), AI-generated content (AIGC), voice translation, and optimizes GPU resource allocation to accelerate inference and training processes while enhancing data privacy.
As a strategic partner, NVIDIA is driving the migration of AI computing from data centers to local devices. ClustroAI plans to use the new funds to expand hardware compatibility, supporting chips such as FPGA, TPU, and NPU, while developing automation tools to facilitate easier updates of AI models. Additionally, ClustroAI is building a distributed AI computing network that connects multiple device computing resources through container orchestration technology, improving local AI processing efficiency. The platform provides a unified API to simplify developer integration, reduce enterprise cloud computing costs, and enhance security and flexibility.
Decentralized AI neural network algorithm protocol Uswap.ai completes $1.5 million financing
Decentralized AI neural network algorithm protocol Uswap.ai announced the completion of $1.5 million financing, led by Waterdrip Capital. Uswap is described as a decentralized AI neural network algorithm protocol that integrates AI agents into decentralized exchanges (DEX) and on-chain trading, enabling the rapid creation of liquidity pools for various consensus assets.
Infrastructure & Tools
Crypto security platform Blockaid completes $50 million Series B financing, led by Ribbit Capital
Crypto security platform Blockaid recently completed a $50 million Series B financing, led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures) and existing investors Variant and Cyberstarts. This financing will help Blockaid address the growing risk of cybercrime in the digital asset space. In 2024, Blockaid successfully intercepted 71 million potential attacks, preventing losses of $5.3 billion. The company expects that as user growth and token prices rise, cyber attack incidents will surge to "hundreds of millions" by 2025. Blockaid plans to use this funding to expand operations and increase R&D investment, expecting to double its workforce this year. The company's CEO, Ido Ben-Natan, stated that due to changes in the regulatory environment in the U.S., demand has surged, and the company is currently facing a staffing shortage.
Modular yield layer Cygnus announced the completion of a $20 million Pre-Seed round financing, with participation from Manifold, OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Optimism Retro Funding, and others. This financing will accelerate Cygnus's growth and expand its product range. Cygnus is described as a modular actual yield layer that enables blockchains to customize their own re-staking networks and achieve shared security. Additionally, Cygnus is building the first Web3 Instagram application layer, integrating on-chain and off-chain assets to empower the creator economy.
Altius Labs completes $11 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Founders Fund and Pantera
Crypto startup Altius Labs has completed an $11 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Founders Fund and Pantera, with participation from Archetype, Reforge, DCG, No Limit Holdings, Amber Group, and others. Additionally, angel investors from projects such as Berachain, Movement, Ethena Labs, Ritual, dao5, Solana Foundation, and Hudson River Trading also participated in this round of financing. Altius Labs was co-founded by Anit Chakraborty, a former software engineer at Hudson River Trading, and Annabelle Huang, a former managing partner at Amber Group. The company is dedicated to developing a modular execution stack that is independent of any virtual machine (VM), allowing seamless integration with any L1, L2, and application chains to enhance performance and interoperability. The project's goal is to help other crypto projects replicate Solana's success.
Fluent Labs completes $8 million financing, led by Polychain Capital
Blockchain developer Fluent Labs announced the completion of an $8 million financing round led by Polychain Capital, aimed at building its Ethereum Layer 2 hybrid execution network. This financing also received support from several institutions, including Primitive, dao5, and Symbolic Capital, with investors including well-known angel investors Balaji Srinivasan and Mustafa Al-Bassam. Fluent plans to use these funds to expand its core engineering team and support the infrastructure development of its ecosystem and testnet. Fluent aims to help developers seamlessly build applications across multiple blockchain ecosystems by integrating WebAssembly (Wasm), Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) into a unified execution environment.
Crypto privacy data layer Primus announced on platform X that it has completed a total of $6.5 million in Pre-Seed and seed round financing, led by Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital, and VanEck, with participation from Samsung Next, Alchemy, Maelstrom, and others.
InfinityGround completes $2 million seed round financing, with participation from Animoca Brands
InfinityGround has successfully raised $2 million in seed funding, with participation from Animoca Brands, MARBLEX, MH Ventures, Frachtis, KuCoin Ventures, KnightFury, Presto, and PAKA. InfinityGround is helping individuals shape an open, interoperable, and AI-driven world on any blockchain at ten times the speed. InfinityGround supports developers in creating Agent applications on Base, BNB Chain, and Kaia using a customized agent IDE (Intelligent Development Environment) and IDK (Intelligent Development Kit) based on Initia Stack.
Others
DeSci:
Startup ResearchHub, founded by Coinbase CEO, completes $2 million new round of financing
The tokenized social network ResearchHub, founded by the CEO of Coinbase, announced the completion of a new round of financing totaling $2 million, with participation from BoostVC. The aim is to further utilize its ResearchCoin (RSC) token to incentivize scientists to openly share academic content and build decentralized scientific collaboration and publishing tools to facilitate research collaboration, feedback, and knowledge sharing among researchers. According to previous reports, ResearchHub is building a platform where anyone can earn cryptocurrency rewards by contributing new knowledge to the global scientific community. Users earn ResearchCoin (RSC) by publishing content on ResearchHub, with the amount of RSC received proportional to the value that other community members assign to the content.
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