April Recap

all fungible and non-fungible news throughout April

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

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The Block’s tracking of Q1 venture investments

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

• BTRFLY proposals for v2 are live with a good overview here

• 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:

The 10KTF shop ablaze, via Twitter

• 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:

The Otherside via otherside.xyz

• 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

• FewoWorld Paint is the beginning of FEWOCiOUS’ new universe

• 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