Hotcoin Investment and Financing Weekly Report (8.17-8.23) | 28 Public Investment and Financing Events, Significant Growth Compared to Last Week

Between August 17th and August 23rd, a total of 28 investment and financing events occurred in the crypto market. These included 7 in infrastructure, 6 in DeFi, 3 in gaming, 2 in CeFi, 2 in privacy, and 8 in other areas (including software development, artificial intelligence, mining, crypto media, tools, creator economy, security solutions, Launchpad, etc.).

This week, there were three financing rounds exceeding ten million USD:

Bitcoin mining company Stronghold completed a $175 million acquisition financing round, with Bitfarms as the investor.

On-chain IP ecosystem Story Protocol completed an $80 million Series B financing round, with a16z and Polychain among the investors.

Fabric Cryptography, which builds hardware for next-generation cryptography, completed a $33 million Series A financing round, with Blockchain Capital and 1kx among the investors.

Compared to last week, investment and financing activity in the crypto market increased by 40%. Infrastructure and DeFi remain the sectors with the most investment deals, and the range of investment areas is becoming more diversified. Bitcoin mining company Stronghold secured the largest financing this week, amounting to $175 million.

The investment and financing projects this week are sorted by financing amount as shown in the following chart:

Infrastructure

1. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-22, Ark completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing, with investors including Draper Dragon and Tim Draper. Ark is a Bitcoin Layer 2 scaling solution aimed at providing a more simplified user experience while retaining self-custody. Unlike the Lightning Network, users can make payments without managing payment channels or inbound/outbound liquidity.

2. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-22, Stork completed a $4 million seed round of financing, with investors including Faction and CMS Holdings. Stork is a Web3 oracle provider aimed at creating simpler, cheaper, and more flexible on-chain data options for decentralized protocols. It connects data publishers with protocols, decentralized applications, and other data consumers through composite oracle services.

3. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-21, TMRW completed a $1.3 million pre-seed round of financing, with investors including Maple VC and Brad Mills. TMRW is a social payment application supported by the Bitcoin Lightning Network, enabling cross-border peer-to-peer payments via Lightspark and ZeroHash. The application uses an open payment standard based on the Lightning Network called Universal Money Addresses to instantly send fiat currency and Bitcoin across borders.

4. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-21, Skyfire completed a $8.5 million seed round of financing, with investors including Arrington Capital and Sfermion. Skyfire is the financial stack for the AI economy, providing an instant, global, and open payment system for AI agents to autonomously transact between AI agents, data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services.

5. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-20, GenLayer completed a $7.5 million seed round of financing, with investors including North Island Ventures and Arrington Capital. GenLayer is a blockchain that breaks the boundaries of smart contracts by making them intelligent and connecting them to the internet. GenLayer's AI-powered smart contracts, known as "Intelligent Contracts," can process natural language and interact with the web, unlocking numerous new use cases.

6. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-20, Corn completed a $6.7 million seed round of financing, with investors including Polychain and Binance Labs. Corn is an Ethereum Layer 2 that uses Bitcoin as a gas token. BTCN is its hybrid tokenized Bitcoin, backed 1:1 by native BTC.

7. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-19, Fabric Cryptography completed a $33 million Series A round of financing, with investors including Blockchain Capital and 1kx. Fabric Cryptography is a startup focused on developing advanced cryptographic algorithm hardware, particularly building specialized computer chips for zero-knowledge proof technology.

DeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-22, Ducat completed a $1.25 million Pre-seed round of financing, with investors including UTXO Management, CMS Holdings, and others. Ducat is a Bitcoin L1 native decentralized stablecoin protocol, and its governance token DUCAT is a Bitcoin native governance token in the form of Bitcoin Runes. Governance will be implemented through zero-knowledge proof circuits recorded on Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions.

2. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-22, SatLayer completed an $8 million Pre-seed round of financing, with investors including Hack VC, Castle Island Ventures, and others. SatLayer is a Bitcoin staking platform built on Babylon. With SatLayer, users can now retrieve their Bitcoin and Bitcoin liquidity staking tokens from platforms such as Solv Protocol, Lombard, Bedrock, pStake, and PumpBTC, which are used to secure BVS (Bitcoin Validated Service).

3. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-22, Credbull completed a $5.2 million round of financing, with investors including Gnosis, LucidBlue Ventures, and others. Credbull is a licensed private credit DeFi platform offering structured high fixed returns. Supported by Polygon, Credbull offers stable, high fixed returns that are unaffected by market fluctuations, serving as part of a balanced investment portfolio.

4. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-21, BIO Protocol completed a $6.2 million public round of financing, with investors unknown. The BIO Protocol is the financial layer of DeSci, aiming to accelerate the flow of capital and talent into on-chain science. bioDAO can use the BIO Protocol's auction contracts to raise funds and directly fund research projects, IP assets, and other biotech organizations.

5. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-21, BSX completed a $4 million seed round of financing, with investors including Blockchain Capital, Maelstrom Capital, and others. BSX is building a decentralized limit order book for users to leverage long and short positions. BSX combines the best CeFi trading experiences (such as cross-collateral, robust cross-margining, enhanced front-end, and limit orders) with the best of DeFi (such as self-custody directly on Base).

6. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on 08-20, Sorella completed a $7.5 million seed round of financing, with investors including Paradigm, Bankless Ventures, and others. Sorella Labs is developing tools to address the Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) issue on Ethereum. To help prevent such MEV losses, Sorella Labs is developing two tools: Brontes and Angstrom. Brontes is an open-source blockchain analysis tool that processes Ethereum blocks, classifies transaction operations, and identifies MEV through pattern matching and analysis.

Gaming

1. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on 08-21, Fanton completed a $1 million seed round of funding, with investors including Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital. Fanton is a fantasy football game integrated into Telegram. It features collectible cards of top football players, allowing users to earn points based on their real-life performances. These cards are issued as NFTs on the blockchain and can be easily traded among players.

2. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on 08-21, GAMEE completed a round of funding with an undisclosed amount, with Pantera Capital as the investor. GAMEE is a play-to-earn gaming platform where users can complete game tasks, participate in tournaments, and win prizes. The GAMEE entertainment platform includes the Arc8 App, a virtual arcade where people play mobile games and earn rewards; G-Bots Metaverse, featuring game characters and collectibles on the blockchain; and a Prize App, a free gaming application.

3. According to ROOTDATA's financing data on 08-20, Nexus Interactive completed a $2 million seed round of funding, with investors including Animoca Brands and SkyVision Capital. Nexus Interactive is a diversified and scalable ecosystem where numerous users, builders, and creators come together to promote mutual development and create groundbreaking experiences in gaming and digital entertainment. Currently, Nexus Interactive has three projects: the in-house development studio Nexus Play, the Web3 game publishing service Nexus Build, and the content and community growth initiative Nexus Share.

CeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on August 22, Arch completed a $5 million seed round of financing, with investors including Castle Island Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital. Arch is a single lending platform for various cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Users can obtain instant credit on a platform with top-notch security and liquidation prevention without selling their assets. Client assets are always held 1:1 by custodial partner BitGo.

2. According to ROOTDATA's investment and financing data on August 19, ETC Group completed an acquisition financing round, with Bitwise as the investor. ETC Group is a cryptocurrency ETP provider based in Europe, focusing on offering institutional-grade products that meet the stringent requirements of traditional financial markets, allowing customers to confidently invest in digital assets. ETC Group provides investors with a secure, regulated pathway to access the rapidly evolving digital asset and blockchain ecosystem.

Privacy

1. According to ROOTDATA's funding data on August 20th, zkMe completed a $4 million seed funding round, with investors including Multicoin Capital and OKX Ventures. zkMe is a decentralized Web3 credential network that leverages the power of zero-knowledge proofs to enable secure and private credential issuance and verification. zkMe allows users to selectively disclose their credentials to authorized parties without compromising their privacy, thereby granting them full control over their digital identity. Users can create and manage their digital identities without the fear of their personal information being exposed. The protocol has potential use cases across various industries, including anti-sybil protection for fair airdrops, anonymous network data proof integration in GameFi, and private KYC compliance in DeFi.

2. According to ROOTDATA's funding data on August 17th, Holonym completed a $5.5 million seed funding round, with investors including Finality Capital Partners and Paper Ventures. Holonym is a privacy-preserving passport for Web3. It allows users to perform anonymous "KYC" and prevent sybil attacks. It is also building the necessary infrastructure for decentralized wallet recovery.

Others

1. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 22, Starfish Technologies completed a merger and acquisition financing round, with the investor being Humans.ai. Starfish Technologies is a blockchain engineering studio that builds the web3 space by designing, implementing, securing, and deploying Solidity smart contracts on EVM-based blockchains.

2. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 21, Reflection completed a seed round of financing with an undisclosed amount, with investors including CatcherVC and Cryptogram Venture (CGV). Reflection is a Web3 virtual persona platform that breaks away from existing concepts of virtual digital humans and virtual identities. On this platform, users can achieve a perfect AI-simulated identity clone that can independently interact, learn, and grow on the platform. After a period of growth, this AI digital persona clone may become stronger and smarter than the original user but will still fully align with the user’s own personality and characteristics.

3. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 21, Stronghold completed a $175 million merger and acquisition financing round, with the investor being Bitfarms. Stronghold is a vertically integrated Bitcoin mining company focused on environmentally friendly operations. Stronghold places miners in its wholly-owned and operated Scrubgrass and Panther Creek plants, both of which are low-cost, environmentally friendly waste coal power generation facilities located in Pennsylvania.

4. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 20, Chain Debrief completed a merger and acquisition financing round, with the investor being PEXX. Chain Debrief is a blockchain media platform that aims to provide information, education, and connectivity to the global investment community through crypto guides, news, analysis, and opinion articles.

5. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 20, DIN completed a $4 million financing round, with investors including Manta Network and Moonbeam. DIN is a data intelligence network providing a suite of AI-native digital asset tools and real-time data infrastructure. The network enables users to produce various AI-native digital assets, including trading information streams, trading strategies, trading support bots, entertainment, education, and social intelligent assistants. By verifying asset ownership on the blockchain, DIN provides creators with a fair, self-custodial, trustless ecosystem.

6. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 21, Story Protocol completed an $80 million Series B financing round, with investors including a16z and Polychain. Story Protocol is building web3 technology to revolutionize the way narratives are created. Its mission is to unleash a new way of creating, managing, and licensing on-chain IP, ultimately forming an ecosystem of "story LEGO blocks" that can be remixed and recombined. Story Protocol offers a streamlined framework for managing the entire lifecycle of IP development, supporting functions such as provenance tracking, frictionless licensing, and revenue sharing.

7. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 22, Code4rena completed a merger and acquisition financing round, with the investor being Zellic. Code4rena is a web3 security audit alliance. Security audit competitions differ from traditional audits and bug bounties by offering broader protocol coverage and guaranteed payments to participants. Its model involves three main participants: auditors, who protect the DeFi ecosystem from threats by auditing code; sponsors, who create prize pools to attract auditors to review their projects; and judges, who determine the severity, validity, and quality of the findings and score the auditors' performances.

8. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data from August 22, g8keep completed a $1.25 million pre-seed financing round, with investors including Robot Ventures and Base Ecosystem Fund. g8keep is a token launch platform based on the Base network, designed to address issues in token issuance such as malicious deployers, flawed fair launch curves, and bots.