Hotcoin Investment and Financing Weekly Report (7.20-7.26)｜A Total of 29 Public Investment and Financing Events, Financing Data Rebounds

From July 20 to July 26, there were 29 investment and financing events in the crypto market, including 9 in infrastructure, 8 in DeFi, 4 in gaming, 3 in AI, 2 in social, 1 in DePIN, 1 in tools, and 1 in mining.

This week, there were five financing events exceeding ten million USD:

• Block Mining, focused on Bitcoin mining infrastructure and custody services, completed a $92.5 million acquisition financing round, with Riot Blockchain as the investor.

• Base game ecosystem B3 completed a $21 million seed round financing, with Pantera Capital and Hashed among the investors.

• Customizable and application-specific Layer 2 blockchain Caldera completed a $15 million Series A financing, with Founders Fund and Dragonfly as the investors.

• Consumer-focused blockchain Abstract completed an $11 million financing round, with Founders Fund and Fenbushi Capital among the investors.

• Bitlayer, a Bitcoin security equivalent Layer 2 based on BitVM, completed an $11 million Series A financing, with ABCDE Capital and Framework Ventures among the investors.

This week, the investment and financing activity in the crypto market has warmed up compared to last week, with infrastructure (9 deals) and DeFi (8 deals) seeing the fastest growth. Block Mining, focused on Bitcoin mining infrastructure and custody services, secured the largest financing this week, with an amount of $92.5 million.

The investment and financing projects for this week are ranked by financing amount as shown in the chart below:

Infrastructure

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 26th, Mezo completed a $7.5 million funding round, with investors including Ledger Cathay Capital and Flowdesk. Mezo is a Bitcoin Layer 2 network that allows users to access applications that promote the use of Bitcoin tokens, driving a circular Bitcoin economy, beyond just a “savings technology.” Mezo utilizes idle Bitcoin from holders through a "Proof of HODL" rewards program, where the longer the Bitcoin is held, the higher the holder's "HODL score multiplier."

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 25th, OpenSocial completed a $6 million strategic financing round, with investors including Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures. OpenSocial is a multi-chain SocialFi infrastructure providing truly scalable and composable protocols for web3 users, creators, and developers, powering the future multi-chain SocialFi ecosystem.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 24th, RiskLayer completed an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round, with investors including Momentum 6 and Antler. RiskLayer, developed by Chainrisk Labs, is a DeFi economic security middleware based on EigenLayer. It broadcasts risk data across markets and helps build risk-intelligent DeFi. The RiskLayer team aims to bridge the gap between economic security and practical DeFi applications by introducing Risk Oracle AVS and Risk Rollup AVS. Risk Oracle AVS uses a "Proof of Risk" consensus to provide accessible and actionable risk data, enabling investors to deploy capital more effectively. Meanwhile, Risk Rollup AVS focuses on economically securing application-specific rollups, promoting the development of risk-intelligent financial products.

4. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 24th, Caldera completed a $15 million Series A funding round, with investors including Founders Fund and Dragonfly. Caldera focuses on building high-performance, customizable, and application-specific second-layer blockchains. These customized blockchains (Caldera Chains) offer high throughput, low latency, and customizable features to optimize the performance and user experience of decentralized applications, capable of processing hundreds of transactions per second and sub-second confirmation times. Caldera enables anyone to launch and operate dedicated, high-performance second-layer blockchain "Rollups."

5. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 23rd, Abstract completed an $11 million funding round, with investors including Founders Fund and Fenbushi Capital. Abstract is a consumer-centric blockchain powered by cutting-edge ZK encryption technology, used for consumer cryptography, pioneering culture, community, and on-chain creativity. Its mission is to build the world’s largest on-chain community driven by the cultural economy, leveraging the ZK Stack and EigenDA to provide cheap, fast, and secure transactions. Abstract was founded by individuals who launched and scaled Pudgy Penguins, Ethereum, and Kubernetes.

6. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 23rd, Bitlayer completed an $11 million Series A funding round, with investors including ABCDE Capital and Framework Ventures. Bitlayer is a Layer 2 solution that offers Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing completeness. It is also the first to be built on BitVM. Bitlayer aims to bring secure scalability to the Bitcoin ecosystem, promoting asset diversity and stimulating innovation to provide a faster, more secure, and more flexible user experience.

7. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 22nd, Zircuit completed an undisclosed amount in a funding round, with investors including Binance Labs and Mirana Ventures. Zircuit is an EVM-compatible zero-knowledge rollup whose unique hybrid architecture combines optimistic infrastructure with zero-knowledge proofs, providing developers with the best of both worlds. With cutting-edge performance and security at the sequencer level, users can explore new realms through faster transactions, lower fees, and complete peace of mind. Zircuit will protect sequencer-level users by monitoring mempools for malicious transactions and preventing them from being included in blocks.

8. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 20th, Solak completed an undisclosed amount in a private round of funding, with investors including NxGen and Kangaroo Capital. SolakGPT is an ecosystem that combines artificial intelligence (AI) technology with decentralized finance (DeFi) functionality. This ecosystem includes an AI browser and a DeFi platform where users can engage in various financial activities such as trading NFTs, staking assets, swapping tokens, borrowing, and more.

9. According to ROOTDATA financing data on July 20th, Nirvana Labs completed a $4 million seed funding round, with investors including Castle Island Ventures and RW3 Ventures. Nirvana Labs is developing a Web3 infrastructure solution for building, managing, and supporting any blockchain application. Developers can create their own API gateways and connect to its low-latency global network nodes located in over 30 data center regions.

DeFi

1. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-26, LayerPixel completed a $2 million seed round of financing, with investors including Kenetic Capital and Foresight Ventures. LayerPixel aims to provide developers of Telegram Mini Apps with a one-stop DeFi service. The platform's core products include PixelSwap, the first weighted-pool decentralized trading platform on the TON chain, PixelWallet, an account abstraction wallet, and Pixacle, a lightweight oracle.

2. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-25, BitFi completed an undisclosed amount of seed round financing, with investors including Fundamental Labs and IBC Group. BitFi combines the advantages of centralized and decentralized financial solutions to maximize returns for users on various assets such as BTC. By leveraging multi-chain adaptability and complex off-chain trading strategies, BitFi offers guaranteed staking yields and multi-layer yield generation.

3. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-25, Roxom completed a $4.3 million pre-seed round of financing, with investors including Tim Draper and Borderless Capital. Roxom is a stock, commodity, and futures exchange priced and denominated in Bitcoin, allowing users to view and trade global markets with Bitcoin.

4. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-25, Kintsu completed a $4 million round of financing, with investors including Castle Island Ventures and CMT Digital. Kintsu is a liquidity staking protocol built on Monad. Kintsu’s first product was a liquidity staking protocol based on the Aleph Zero blockchain, but it has since shifted its focus to building on Monad.

5. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-25, Kuru completed a $2 million seed round of financing, with investors including Electric Capital and CMS Holdings. Kuru is a fully on-chain order book DEX on Monad, providing users with a single platform to find, research, and trade on-chain spot assets.

6. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-25, aPriori completed an $8 million seed round of financing, with investors including Pantera Capital and ConsenSys. aPriori is an MEV infrastructure and liquidity staking protocol designed for the era of parallel execution, and it is natively built on Monad.

7. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-23, Multipool completed an undisclosed amount of financing, with investors including Kronos Research. Multipool is a fair and equal limit order DEX suitable for RWA and cryptocurrencies built on existing AMMs.

8. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-22, Etherfuse completed a $3 million seed round of financing, with investors including White Star Capital and North Island Ventures. Etherfuse is a blockchain infrastructure platform dedicated to providing simplified access to securitized financial assets for global enterprises and investors. Based on Solana, Etherfuse launched Stablebond, a tokenized bond issuance product. By combining traditional bond markets with blockchain technology innovation, Etherfuse is creating a secure and transparent tool for investors, further enhancing the stability of DeFi and blockchain products.

Games

1. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-24, PANDA TITAN completed a $3 million financing round with Archer Capital as the investor. Panda Titan is a metaverse blockchain game ecosystem based on the panda IP. Unlike general blockchain game studios, Panda Titan is not only limited to game development but also actively researches and promotes products such as the metaverse, Web3 community building, game engine development, and game streaming platforms.

2. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-24, Catizen completed a strategic financing round of an undisclosed amount with Binance Labs as the investor. Catizen is a cat-themed game that integrates GameFi, AI, and the metaverse, combining the charm of virtual pets with blockchain technology and artificial intelligence innovations to provide a highly immersive interactive experience.

3. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-22, B3 completed a $21 million seed round financing with Pantera Capital, Hashed, and others as investors. B3, created by Base/Coinbase alumni and OG ETH contributors, is a horizontally scalable gaming ecosystem built on Base. Its development company is NPC Labs.

4. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-21, Onchain Heroes completed a financing round of an undisclosed amount with Gm Capital, Seedphrase, and others as investors. Onchain Heroes is an on-chain RPG aimed at degens.

AI

1. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-24, Redpill completed a $5 million seed round financing with Animoca Brands, DFG, and others as investors. RedPill is a decentralized AI platform that aggregates top AI models into a single API, democratizing access to them, thus providing faster, more affordable, and verifiable AI services globally. RedPill introduces a model that tokenizes LLM resources and issues equivalent model tokens to AI node providers based on "proof of cost." These tokens can be traded by nodes or purchased by users through DeFi markets.

2. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-23, Assisterr completed a $1.7 million seed round financing with Outlier Ventures, Web3.com Ventures, and others as investors. Assisterr is an incentive-driven network composed of community-owned AI models, aimed at developers, autonomous AI agents, and enterprises.

3. According to ROOTDATA investment and financing data on 07-23, Network3 completed a $5.5 million seed round financing with SNZ Holding, Waterdrip Capital, and others as investors. Network3 is building a decentralized AI infrastructure where users can earn token rewards by sharing bandwidth, computing power, datasets, and more to provide inference, fine-tuning, and training services for edge AI models.

Social

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on 07-24, STIX completed a $1.8 million private equity round with investors including Selini Capital and Presto. STIX is an emoji competition and promotion platform based on Base, a derivative project of Stickerly. Stickerly is one of the world's largest Web2 user-generated content sticker publishing platforms. Utilizing Stickerly's distribution platform, STIX adds gamification elements by holding regular meme popularity contests. These contests can bring token rewards and are heavily promoted on both STIX and Stickerly, leading non-crypto-native audiences to embrace crypto culture.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on 07-24, Yup completed an undisclosed amount of financing, with investors including NascentI and DEO CoLab Ventures. Yup is a Web3 social network for curators, where users can curate and share content on the network. Users can earn rewards through their taste and gain influence in topics.

Other

1. According to ROOTDATA financing data on 07-25, Multiple Network completed a $2 million seed round with investors including OKX Ventures and Youbi Capital. Multiple Network is a Web3 DePIN project that uses SD-WAN technology to build a network layer for high-performance transmission of digital assets and data.

2. According to ROOTDATA financing data on 07-24, DAOBase completed a $6 million financing round with investors including LD Capital and SevenX Ventures. DAOBase is a DAO aggregator and treasury tracking platform. By aggregating social graphs (on-chain + off-chain) and tracking, analyzing, and evaluating treasury assets including FT and NFT assets, it helps establish a reputation system for DAOs.

3. According to ROOTDATA financing data on 07-24, Block Mining completed a $92.5 million merger and acquisition financing with the investor Riot Blockchain. Block Mining is a diversified Bitcoin mining infrastructure and hosting service provider. Block Mining offers one of the most competitive hardware and hosting facilities, allowing miners to perform hash calculations with the latest generation of mining equipment.