as always, thanks for reading and follow me and terv to reach out!
tl;dr: macro correlation increases, Goblin Town population is rapidly increasing, Yuga domination continues through their launch of APE and Otherside, infrastructure and wallet protocols are trending, beanz anticipation is growing, and devs keep shipping.
Funding & News:
while this is not an exhaustive list of every raise, the total funding of the below sectors are common themes across the crypto ecosystem in Aprile & totals ~$7.9B
General Funding Highlights:
Pantera raises $1.3B for new Blockchain Fund, looking to raise again in 2023
Dragonfly Capital announces new $650M crypto fund
Joe McCann targeting a $1B raise for new crypto investment firm Asymmetric
Venture Arm of crypto exchange Gate.io raising $200M for its second fund
Framework Ventures raises $400M for new crypto fund, with $200M dedicated to the blockchain gaming sector
Illumina Capital looks to raise $50-$70M for direct token investments
Circle, USDC creator, raises $400M, partnering with Blackrock as a strategic advisor, and will apply for U.S. bank charter
Fabric Ventures completing $245M raise for two separate crypto funds investing separately into early and late stage
White Star Capital looks to raise up to $120M for second crypto fund focusing on DeFi and blockchain gaming
Coin News:
Fireblocks adds support for Terra, institutions have since allocated ~$500M
Polygon announces “Supernet” chains along with $100M for their development to attract application specific customizable networks similar to AVAX subnets
The Sandbox ($SAND) reportedly raising $400M @ $4B valuation
Bastion, lending/stableswap on NEAR w/ $450M TVL, raises $9M series A
Justin Sun confirms Tron will launch USDD algo stablecoin with 30% APY backed by $10B in crypto collateral
Stillmark targets $500M raise for credit fund dedicated to lending capital for companies building within the Bitcoin Lightning space
Ava Labs, AVAX builder, raising $350M @ $5.25B valuation to continue scaling and building subnet ecosystem
LUNA partners with AVAX to add $100M of AVAX to the $UST reserve, protocols to collaborate on a new gaming subnet announced soon
Ignite, formerly Tendermint and core developer of Cosmos, launches $150M accelerator program for multi-chain crypto projects
Terraform Labs “gifts” $880M worth of LUNA to Luna Foundation Guard, to be partially burnt along with used to purchase more backing for UST
NEAR Protocol raises $350M in new funding for continued development; Trisolaris, DEX on NEAR ($TRI), also raises $4.5M
Lightning Labs raises $70M and unveils Taro, a protocol to bring stablecoins to the Lightning Network
Parallel Finance, lending/staking on DOT, raises $5M valuation @ $500M
HBAR Foundation launches $250M ecosystem fund to boost brand
Toncoin, TON L1 PoS blockchain endorsed by Telegram, raises $250M ecosystem fund from Huobi, Kucoin, others
Wallets & Infrastructure
Argent, L2 supported wallet, raises $40M to expand NFT & gamefi support
Cogni, US neobank, raises $23M and confirms plans to launch multichain wallet and DeFi enabled savings account
Venly, wallet/NFT integration provider, raises $23M series A
Spruce, web3 log-in & portable identity/data control, raises $34M series A
Privy, web3 data protection & messaging service, raises $8.3M seed round
EPNS (ETH push notification service), cross-chain communication and on-chain identifiers replacing usernames, raises $10M @ $131M valuation
Context, wallet tracking social platform, raises $19.5M seed round
Dfns, wallet password protection platform, raises $13.5M seed round
Leap, non-custodial wallet for Terra eco, raises $3.2M in token round
CertiK, blockchain security firm, raises $88M valuation @ $2B
Coin Metrics, crypto data and research provider, raises $35M
Chorus One, staking company, raises $30M to establish Chorus Ventures fund
Boba Network, ETH L2 scaling platform, raises $45M @ $1.5B valuation
BloXroute, DeFi trading infrastructure, raises $70M led by Softbank
Flipside Crypto, blockchain analytics, raises $50M @ $350M valuation
Scroll, ETH ZKR scaling solution, raises $30M series A
NFTs & GameFi
Polemos, gameFi/play-to-earn guild, raises $14M seed valuation @ $100M
Kucoin launches $100M fund to support early-stage NFT projects
Community Gaming, hosts blockchain gaming/esports, raises $16M series A
GOALS, multi-platform blockchain soccer game, raises $15M seed round
ESPN signs partnership with Tom Brady’s Autograph NFT platform
OpenSea officially launches support for Solana NFTs and acquires NFT aggregator Gem as NFT marketplace battle heats up
Coinbase NFT marketplace goes live in beta for select customers
Rario, cricket NFT platform a la TopShot, raises $120M series A
MGM testing NFT tickets, Amazon explores selling NFTs in the future, Emirates and Dubai continue embracing NFTs and crypto economy, Warner Music partners with POAP for NFT mementos of events
Limewire, yes that Limewire, raises $10M in token sale to scale music NFT platform; plans public LMWR token sale later this year
Limitless, Next Earth creator, launches $60M fund to invest in their ecosystem
OneFootball raises $300M to enable soccer clubs, players, and leagues to bring digital assets and fan experiences to blockchain
General Notes & Adoption:
Fidelity to allow 20% BTC allocation to 401(k)s, hope to launch in summer
Goldman Sachs offers first BTC backed loan
Stripe announces crypto payouts for select Twitter monetization products through USDC on Polygon; “we plan to add support for additional rails and payout currencies over time”
MicroStrategy buys $190M worth of BTC; Luna Foundation buys $231M of BTC
21Shares to launch physically settled BTC & ETH ETFs in Australia
CoinDCX, Indian crypto exchange, raises $135M, valuation @ $2.15B
Aptos, L1 blockchain from former Diem network devs, announces partnership with Google Cloud for node infrastructure; Aptos raised $200M seed in March
Crusoe Energy Systems, flare gas BTC miner, raises $505M to continue expanding operations after announcing pilot program with Exxon previously
Tesla, Block (formerly Square), and Blockstream partner to mine BTC through solar power in Texas
Moneybox, wealth manager, raises $46M to push/expand crypto offerings
Nasdaq survey indicates tradfi inflows are awaiting crypto ETF approval
Blockchain.com closes sponsorship deal with the Dallas Cowboys
Robinhood adds support for SOL, MATIC, COMP, and SHIB
GrayScale’s Digital Large Cap Fund, $480M AUM, adds exposure to AVAX and DOT while removing SUSHI and SNX
Binance.US raises $200M+ @ $4.5B pre-money valuation to expand new products and services through M&A
Thoughts & Tokens:
Wallets & Infrastructure
Infrastructure investment is an attractive vertical no matter the industry, and it’s been one of the hottest funding sectors within the crypto industry over the past 6+ months. Roughly $278M was deployed to scaling, staking, data, and analytics this month. What’s new this month is the number of infrastructure adjacent investments into the wallet sector. Everyone knows MetaMask, but there’s a broad belief between investors and buildooorrss that wallets can be infinitely more (something I wrote about in depth here) than what we have now.
Abstracting away the complexity of integrating with blockchains while simultaneously providing users to a multi-chain world is one of the most exciting, necessary innovations needed within the space. Companies raising in April approaching this problem totaled 9 and spanned wallet security, messaging, consistent log-in, data security/portability, and social platform wallet integration.
Token Developments
As noted extensively throughout previous Round Trippings, APE and GMT continue to outperform while the rest of the market was down only throughout the month of April. Down, ranging markets don’t stop the devs though as there’s been the usual flurry of coin developments.
LOOKS — announced listing rewards for collections that are in the top 25 of 24 hour rolling volume and are priced within 1.5x the global floor price. LOOKS continues innovating and eating into OpenSea’s monopoly.
FXS — Frax had a busy month with the release of their CPI adjusted stablecoin $FPI and its governance token $FPIS which you can read more about here. Additionally, Frax founder Sam Kazemian alluded to the protocol buying large amounts of crypto to back the stablecoin. FXS also entered the stablecoin wars this month through their alliance with LUNA & BTRFLY
BAL — launched veBAL, tokenomics revamp, and potential Aura Finance collab
Optimism Token — announces the Optimism Collective and their token plans
Bastion token is now live along with a thread of what they offer to NEAR
Synapse (SYN) releases xAssets, turns native tokens into multi-chain enabled
Maker to integrate StarkNet ZK L2 scaling solution cutting DAI transaction cost
Connext announces $NEXT token as the bridge wars continue accelerating
Evmos, EVM on ATOM, is finally live after several hiccups
ROOK introduces xROOK and outlines revamped tech and tokenomics
JPEG’d NFT lending platform launches
GenesysGo, decentralized storage/RPC on SOL, releases Shadowpaper
Cosmos Theta upgrade goes live, read more here
Celestial — Delphi removes paywall and breaks down everything
JEWEL — down astronomically; DFK team member lied and selling millions
Arbitrum airdrop token rumors and ways to ensure you receive it here
HOP — speculation around a Hop Protocol airdrop is building
NFT Review:
This is by no means a comprehensive list of the ongoings in NFT land and these projects are covered in more depth throughout past Page One posts, so find more info on all of this in those posts from April.
Familiar Faces:
10KTF is ready for their next chapter after Wagmi-san’s shop burned down
BEANZ haven’t revealed, although we’ve confirmed they are beans
Bored Apes and their Mutant siblings hit all-time high floors during April
Cool Cats launched Cooltopia but are now in search of a new CEO
DeadFellaz drop the DeadFrenz roadmap and sign with United Talent Agency
Ethereum Name Service domains containing 3 or 4 numbers minted out
MNLTH opened to reveal the first CRYPTOKICK and the MNLTH 2
NFT Worlds announced their Avatars collection which will mint this week
Pudgy Penguins are under new management and sporting a new logo
VeeFriends Series 2 makes its debut with 55,000 friends new and old
New Entrants:
Arcade Land will bring your avatars into a new meta-game
Akutars faced adversity during their mint, losing most of the proceeds
Anata held their MetaDrop auction, introducing the first Vtuber NFT collection
EightBit Me leveraged their history of pixel avatars to jump into the NFT space
Everai Heroes: Duo carves out its place in the anime avatar sector
Gh0stly Gh0sts introduced omichain NFTs to the world with LayerZero
Impostors will bring Among Us style social deduction games to the blockchain
Moonbirds, the profile picture collection from Kevin Rose and the PROOF Collective, became an overnight success (but not without some drama)
Murakami Flowers is the first stand-alone project from Takashi Murakami
PREMINT Pass has helped the whitelist raffle service become ubiquitous
Ragnarok minted at the end of the month and has performed well pre-reveal
Otherdeeds for The Otherside took 2 full hours and $130M of gas to mint and have done over 100,000Ξ in volume since
Market News and Announcements:
Coinbase launched their NFT marketplace (to little avail or volume)
Flip.xyz launches public beta
LooksRare introduces listing rewards and saw more organic volume, often seeing over 10% of total market share
OpenSea acquired marketplace aggregator Gem
Total NFT volume rebounds from $6.54B in March to $8.57B in April
Thanks guys ! It is amazing !
(Make it pay, i would pay for that)