Interesting Web3 Projects That Recently Raised Funding

Key Points:

• Despite the bear market, which doesn’t seem to stop the flow into the crypto and Web3 industries.
• Recently, there are 7 outstanding Web3 projects that have successfully raised capital.

One way to keep up with crypto industry trends is to track venture capital firms’ moves. Despite the bear market, capital doesn’t seem to be stopping the flow to the crypto industry. Compared to the previous year, it was at a much slower pace, but in any case, a small number of project development teams were able to continue to complete their projects without worrying about market conditions. Let’s take a look at 7 recently funded Web3 projects with Coincu.

Renegade

Renegade, a startup building a new kind of decentralized exchange, is developing an on-chain version of dark pools based on multi-party computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge proofs. In short, Renegade is an anonymous, decentralized exchange offering products related to security, privacy, and MEV protection.

According to the white paper, Renegade promises “complete anonymity for users throughout the lifetime of the exchange.” It comes at just the right time:

1. When CeFi proves itself untrustworthy via FTX.
2. When regulators are hostile to cryptocurrencies, recently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission banned Kraken from providing staking services to US customers.
3. When MEV tries to sabotage your transaction in some way.

Recently, Renegade closed a $3.4 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital and former AngleList CEO Naval Ravikant, with Balaji Srinivasan (former a16z Partner), Lily Liu (Solana Foundation Chairman), Tarun Chitra (Robot Ventures ), Symbolic Capital and other angel investors participated in the investment.

The project is currently in internal testing and is expected to open a public testnet to traders in the coming months, and applications can now be added to the waiting list.

Official website: https://renegade.fi/

Alongside

The name is loud because it sounds like BAYC’s metaverse project Otherside. Although it turns out that there is no relationship between them, they are backed by the same investment institution – a16z.

Alongside is a crypto index platform that allows investors to invest in cryptocurrencies through indexes, just like you invest in TradFi through SP500 or Nasdaq. Instead of buying individual crypto assets, you buy index tokens, like buying ETH that tracks S&P500.

Attempting to give the crypto market an index is nothing new. There have been projects done in the past, but to no avail due to the unpredictability of the market.

Recently, Alongside completed $11 million in the financing, led by a16z, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton Investments, Village Globa, Not Boring Capital, and others. Generally speaking, DeFi project financing usually ranges from $1 million to $4 million, and venture capital usually has a forward-looking vision, so Alongside and the encryption index track cannot be ignored.

Official website: https://alongside.xyz/

OPNX

The fallen former Three Arrows Capital “commander” (Zhu Su, Kyle Davies) returned to the market and established a new exchange. Originally, it was called GTX, and after much protest and ridicule from users (similar to the FTX name), they eventually renamed it OPNX.

OPNX is a crypto claims solution, as crypto companies including FTX, Voyager, Celsius, Genesis, and BlockFi have gone bankrupt (or are filing for bankruptcy) over the past year, plus Mt. The market size has reached about $20 billion, and every claimant is waiting.

OPNX allows claimants to instantly unlock the value of their claims and trade it for cryptocurrency or use it as margin collateral. The platform hopes to simplify the claims process and simultaneously build a public market for claims transactions, thereby releasing billions of dollars of trapped capital and providing users with the opportunity to “rebuild.”

That is, OPNX mints your locked funds into derivatives, which can be used for trading. It works a bit like a liquid collateralized derivative like stETH – but not quite.

Because of Su Zhu’s reputation, one might be dismissive of the notion of claims resolution. Some potential I can see is that the bankruptcy repayment may still take years, which makes it possible for Su Zhu to flex his muscles here. My curiosity is more about the mechanism of OPNX and how they will issue derivatives for locked assets and make them tradable assets.

OPNX hopes to raise $25 million in funding to develop and operate, and they have now launched an official website and opened a waiting list, although the exact amount of funding they received remains a mystery.

Official website: https://www.openx.com/

Superplastic

Now, let’s look at a “weird” project.

Superplastic, a global entertainment and product brand, has partnered with the world’s most recognizable artists, brands, and celebrities to bring 3D NFT characters, NFT products, and virtual events to the community. It looks like the project offers NFTized characters that have the potential to become TV show stars.

Superplastic has previously partnered with BAYC, Gucci, Epic Games, Fortnite, and other brands to launch NFTs on Ethereum.

Recently, Superplastic completed a $20 million A-4 financing led by Alexa Fund, the venture capital arm of Amazon, with participation from Google Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Sony Japan, Animoca Brands, Craft Ventures, etc., bringing the total funds raised by Superplastic to date to $58 million.

Official website: https://superplastic.co/

Monads

Founded by the former team of TradFi giant Jump Trading, Monad Labs is developing Monad, a new proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain and decentralized computing platform that maximizes performance and portability. Monad aims to achieve 1 second block time and 10,000 tps performance while maintaining EVM compatibility for applications and infrastructure through algorithmic improvements to virtual machine design and Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism.

In short, Monad will adopt the PoS consensus mechanism and will be compatible with EVM. Regarding performance, they revolve around “asynchronous, parallel execution,” which reminds me of Fantom.

Recently, Monad Labs completed $19 million in financing, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Placeholder Capital, Lemniscap, Shima Capital, Finality Capital, Naval Ravikant, Cobie, and Hasu.

Funding is being used for development, and Monad will launch a testnet in the coming months, with a mainnet deployment planned for later this year. So far, I’m not impressed with the technology they offer. However, with the backing of well-known VCs in the crypto industry, if there is an airdrop, it can generate madness just as much.

Official website: https://www.monad.xyz/

Phi

Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and DeFi were hit hard in 2022 amid macroeconomic headwinds, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the bankruptcy of several crypto firms. Despite these challenges, blockchain gaming was doing well in 2022.

Clearly, this momentum is continuing into 2023. As evidenced by the willingness of VC investors to invest in them.

Phi is a social gaming platform based on ENS, which is creating an open and inclusive metaverse land system. Through familiar game styles such as Sim City and Animal Crossing, it aims to make it easy to visualize identities on the chain. It encourages users to interact with various Web3 protocols, which provides a positive feedback loop for the entire crypto ecosystem.

After exploring Phi in-depth, I’m sure it’s a good project to introduce newbies to Web3/DeFi. Phi invites users to go on “crypto adventures,” such as claiming NFTs, exchanging tokens, or buying NFTs. There are tasks and competitions, and there will be corresponding rewards.

This is a project for beginners in cryptocurrency and DeFi. It is interactive and can perform tasks on multiple chains such as Ethereum, Polygon, etc. When you complete a mission, you are rewarded with tokens. It’s not so much about earning coins, it’s more about Learn-To-Earn (earn while learning).

Most recently, Phi closed a $2 million seed round led by Chapter One and Delphi Digital, with Polygon Ventures, Ryan Sean Adams (Bankless), David Hoffman (Bankless), Kartik Talwar (ETH Global), Scott Moore (Gitcoin Joint Innovation) and others participated in the investment.

This round of financing will be used to accelerate the design and development of Phi’s improved UI/UX and new social/gaming features and create a community to expand cooperation with more protocols while also creating derivatives of Phi.

Official website: https://philand.xyz/

Space ID

ENS has been online for five years, and its success has inspired major public chains to launch their own domain name services. Nowadays, domain name service is not a rare thing. Space ID is one of them.

Space ID closed a seed round led by Binance Labs in September 2022, subsequently launched its .bnb domain name registration, and quickly gained around 370,000 registrations and 175,000 unique domain name holders within 6 months. Meanwhile, the .bnb domain name service has been integrated with more than 100 leading projects and protocols, including BSCScan, Trust Wallet, etc. In February 2023, the Space ID team announced a 2.0 upgrade and merged with Arb ID, launching the .arb domain registration.

Space ID is becoming a domain name service network with multi-chain domain names and generic domain names, allowing users to discover, register, trade, and manage Web3 domain names.

Currently, Space ID supports three blockchains (Ethereum, BSC, and Arbitrum), with more expected to follow in the future. The “universal domain name” is the most interesting, with it, no matter which blockchain, you will have an identity that can be used universally across the entire crypto ecosystem.

Recently, Space ID completed a $10 million strategic round of financing led by Polychain Capital and dao5, with participation from Foresight Ventures and others.

Official website: https://beta.space.id/

Conclusion

As the bear market deepens, VCs and investors must think twice before investing. I like it this way because they’ll be encouraged to look for an item that’s actually worth the money. On the other hand, the competition among project founders is also getting fiercer, and everyone has to do their best to gain the attention of investors.

While exploring and writing this article, I found the new projects more interesting than the previous ones. The overall quality of new projects is improving and the tendency towards overvaluation is decreasing. Although there will still be many ridiculous projects, the overall quality of the various sub-fields of the crypto industry is improving.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

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Harold

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