The cryptocurrency venture capital community flocked to several startups this week, including Story Protocol’s $80 million Series B funding round.
The week between August 18 and 24 has been packed with activity in the cryptocurrency venture capital space. According to cryptocurrency funding tracker Cryptocurrency Fundraising32 blockchain startups raised over $202 million from various investors in that period.
Below we analyze some of the most notable ones.
History Protocol, $80 million
Protocol of history increase $80 million in its Series B round. Cryptocurrency venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which also included participation from Polychain Capital, Hashed, Samsung Next and SparkLabs Global, among others.
The Series B round brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total funding to $140 million and values the company at an impressive $2.25 billion.
The company aims to tackle what it sees as a growing problem of intellectual property theft, particularly in the era of generative artificial intelligence.
Story’s blockchain network allows intellectual property owners to store their creations on the platform, integrating licensing terms directly into smart contracts.
This ensures that intellectual property owners are compensated whenever their content is used, countering growing concerns that tech giants are using AI models to ingest copyrighted material without proper authorization.
Sorella Labs, $7.5 million
Next on the list is Sorella Labs, also a startup based in San Francisco. The company secured $7.5 million in funding to continue its work developing tools designed to identify and process high-value extractable activities on Ethereum (Ethnicity) blockchain.
Research-based technology investment firm Paradigm This particular funding round was led by Nascent, Uniswap Ventures, Robot Ventures and Bankless Ventures.
Sorella Labs plans to use the proceeds to expand its operations and accelerate the development of its key products, Brontes and Angstrom.
Corn, $6.7 million
Corn is another winner in this week’s crypto VC fundraising Column. Ethereum’s layer 2 network, which uses hybrid tokenized Bitcoin (Bitcoin) such as gas, raised $6.7 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.
Binance Labs, Framework Ventures and Polygon (MATIC) Co-founder Sandeep Nailwal also contributed to the round.
Corn is reportedly looking to create a “crop circle” ecosystem that connects users, applications and token holders, to address challenges faced by other decentralized networks, including insufficient liquidity and limited token utility.
BSX Stock, $6.2 million
Meanwhile, BSX Exchange, a decentralized derivatives protocol built on the Ethereum L2 Base network, raised $6.2 million across pre-seed and seed funding rounds.
The seed round, valued at $4 million, was led by Blockchain Capital. Other notable investors include Bankless Ventures and Maelstrom, the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes.
With this new capital, BSX plans to expand beyond derivatives trading, launching a spot aggregator in September, as well as various earnings and staking products shortly after.
Ordered network, 5 million dollars
Orderly Network, a project developing a web3 liquidity layer, also secured a $5 million funding round. OKX Ventures, Manifold Trading, and Origin Protocol are among its backers.
The team behind the project plans to use the funds to bolster its capabilities in creating a permissionless liquidity layer for web3 trading across multiple blockchains.
Orderly currently supports six chains, including the Ethereum mainnet and Polygon. It aims to provide deep liquidity for any asset on those networks.
Other rounds of financing
Rounding out the week’s notable VC funding rounds were three projects: Soulbound, Stork Network, and Thalex. Between them, they managed to raise over $12 million, and social gaming space web3 received $4 million from Animoca Brands to further its mission of empowering its new creator economy.
Soulbound is building a platform that combines GameFi and SocialFi to offer a new digital experience. The platform’s developers say they will use the money to establish gaming partnerships, increase social interactions, and expand rewards for streamers as well as social missions.
Stork Network, meanwhile, raised $4.705 million in seed funding to expand its product range, including the development of its open data marketplace. Lightspeed Faction and Lattice jointly led the round, which also included participation from CMS and Wintermute Ventures.
Finally, Thalex, a crypto derivatives exchange platform, raised €3 million ($3.3 million) in a Series A extension. According to AxiosAs reported exclusively by CryptoBlock, which reported exclusively on the fundraising, the extended round’s backers included Bitfinex, Bitstamp, and Flow Traders. IMC and Wintermute also invested in the project.
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