GM and welcome to Dove Dispatch #26!
We recently published our Q3 2021 Crypto Fundraising Report. Go check it out!
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In October, deBridge announced a $5.5M fundraising round with participation from ParaFi Capital, Animoca Brands, Lemniscap, Crypto.com Capital, Huobi Capital, IOSG Ventures, Mgnr, and many others. Earlier this year, deBridge won the Chainlink Virtual Hackathon. Indeed, winning this type of event gives projects exposure to top funds and hackathons have progressively become a significant deal source for investors.
To the above question, some prominent investors like Linda Xie from Scalar Capital replied that ETHGlobal was undoubtedly among the top hackathons in the space.
ETHGlobal was launched in 2018, with the first event being ETHWaterloo - a real success since it gave birth to the global phenomenon Cryptokitties, as well as a MetaMask integration in the Brave Browser. Since its inception, ETHGlobal has been linked to the funding ecosystem since it was established as a not-for-profit organization managed as a partnership between L4 and SV Angel, a seed fund that bet early on some promising projects such as Element Finance, Anchorage, Helium, Spruce, Valora, and others.
But how impactful participating in an ETHGlobal hackathon is for a project looking to onboard external investors?
Out of the 25 hackathons (if we exclude UniCode which is about to come to an end) organized by ETHGlobal, we decided to take a closer look at 2020 and 2021.
Surprisingly, very few projects actually announced funding rounds: 9 in 2020, against 6 in 2021 to date. That represents around 5% of the total number of participants in 2020 in 2021. This can be explained by the fact that many projects are infrastructure-focused and built on top of other projects, and thus are less likely to attract investors. Some of them are even features that aim at getting integrated into specific protocols.
Both 2020 Hack Money and ETHOnline were pretty fruitful with more than $13.3M raised by former participants.
No more than 4 projects that announced fundraise in 2021 came out of Market Make.
Interestingly, teams that raised funds are building across diverse verticals, despite the vast majority of the hackathons being focused on DeFi.
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Former ETHGlobal projects raised $1.9M on average, compared to $6.2M for DeFi projects in 2021, $8.9M for Web3 startups, and $20.8M for crypto-related companies.
The average time between the Demo Day of an ETHGlobal hackathon and the fundraising announcement date is 8.3 months, but this gap tends to shrink, with companies from last month’s ETHOnline about to close funding rounds.
All in all, hackathons matter and will keep gaining momentum over the next few years. Then, let us keep an eye on this list of ETHLisbon projects by Calvin Chu.
Last week 22 projects announced fundraising rounds:
Seeded Network ($1.25M) | A project incubator that offers a unique borrowing and lending solution allowing investors to participate in the incubated project selected by the team — with participation from Dust Ventures, Solar Eco Fund, X21 Digital, Athena Ventures, HG Ventures, Kangaroo Capital, ZBS Capital, Rainbow Three, GoldenShovel, Sunshine Dragon, Bitcoin Addict Thailand, Top 7 ICO, and Mandy ICO Research.
Crabada ($600k) | A PlayandEarn idle game on Avalanche — with participation from Avalanche Foundation, Avalaunch, SkyVision Capital, Not3Lau Capital, Zee Prime Capital, Devmons, and Wangarian.
Core Loop ($12M) | Building the next-generation of player-driven MMOs — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Galaxy Digital, Initial Capital, Dune Ventures, 1Up Ventures, and Sisu Game Ventures.
Tempus ($4M) | An open-source protocol that allows users to optimize their existing exposure to variable yield to better match their risk profile — with participation from Distributed Global, Jump Capital, Koji Capital, Lemniscap, GSR, Wintermute, Tomahawk VC, and LAUNCHub Ventures.
Solidus Labs ($15M) | A surveillance firm focused on monitoring market manipulation in crypto — with participation from Liberty City Ventures, GSR, and Exor Seeds.
Penumbra ($4.75M) | A fully private proof-of-stake network and decentralized exchange for the Cosmos ecosystem — with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Figment Capital, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures, Interchain Foundation, Volt Capital, Strangelove Ventures, Informal Systems, and ZKValidator.
Mythical Games ($150M) | Endorsed by many top-tier teams in the blockchain development community, our design philosophy is focused on commercial, mass-market use cases supporting a diverse development group of market leaders and innovators — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Binance Labs, FTX, D1 Capital Partners, Redbird Capital Partners, The Raine Group, 32 Equity, Mantis VC, Ryan Tedder, OneTeam Partners, WestCap, The Kraft Group, Struck Capital, Signum Growth Capital, Michael Jordan, Michael Gordon, Curtis Polk, Galaxy Interactive, 01 Advisors, Javelin Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Fenbushi Capital, and Evolution VC Partners.
Faraway ($21M) | Player-driven universes — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Jump Capital, Solana Ecosystem Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, FTX, and Pantera Capital.
AscendEX ($50M) | A global digital asset trading platform — with participation from Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Uncorrelated Ventures, Eterna Capital, Acheron Trading, Nothing Research, Palm Drive Capital, Jump Capital, and Alameda Research.
WeMeta ($1.1M) | The premier platform for NFT real estate — with participation from Delphi Digital, DeFi Alliance, Digital Currency Group, Galaxy Interactive, Hashed, SkyVision Capital, Tribe Capital, Andy Chorlian, Darren Lau, John Fiorelli, Navi Singh, David Post, and Keenan Olsen.
Faze ($17.4M) | A cricket NFT platform — with participation from Tiger Global Management, Dapper Labs, Coatue Management, Sequoia Capital, SamsungNext, Courtside Ventures, and Bow Capital.
xToken ($2M) | Complicated staking and liquidity strategies made simple — with participation from Cygni Capital, Zeal Capital, Origin Capital, Kyber Network, Kain Warwick, and Lattice Capital.
Nyan Heroes ($2.5M) | A third-person shooter battle royale built on Solana — with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Mechanism Capital, DeFiance Capital, SinoGlobal Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, SkyVision Capital, Yield Guild Games, Merit Circle, Kevin Lin, Thomas Vu, Jihan Wu, Darren Lau, Solana Ecosystem Fund, and Mr. Block.
Syndica ($8M) | Scalable infrastructure for Web 3.0 and Solana blockchain — with participation from Social Capital, Jump Capital, Kindred Ventures, Alameda Research, Solana Ecosystem Fund, CoinShares, 0x Labs, DeFiance Capital, Spartan Group, Mgnr, Resolute Ventures, Untamed Ventures, Ryan Selkis, and Joe McCann.
Mintverse ($1.5M) | A service platform, where users can create, discover and collect an array of digital items and NFTs while also being able to crowdfund NFT art, crypto & NFT projects — with participation from A&T Capital, Mirana Ventures, Longling Capital, GBV Capital, FBG Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Cipholio Ventures, Nebulas, Ceras Ventures, and Neal Digital.
BEMIL ($1.65M) | Play to Earn game with a galaxy theme. Players engage in battles, build clans, mini-games, and mining BECOIN — with participation from Faraland, DAO Maker, IceTea Labs, Spark Digital Capital, X21 Digital, FOMOCraft Ventures, 590 Ventures, Basics Capital, Avstar Capital, FaraStarter, PolkaFoundry, Titans Ventures, and Vendetta Capital.
The Sandbox ($93M) | A virtual Metaverse where players can play, build, own, and monetize their virtual experiences — with participation from SoftBank, Liberty City Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Kingsway Capital, Blue Pool Capital, True Global Ventures, Animoca Brands, SamsungNext, Sterling.VC, SCB 10X, Polygon Studios, LG Technology Ventures, Alpaca VC, Com2uS, Sound Ventures, Stakefish, Graticule Asset Management Asia, Nokota Management, Sun Hung Kai & Co. Limited, Wedbush Capital, Red Beard Ventures, Double Down Partners, and HodlCo.
Spruce ($7.5M) | Decentralized identity and data — with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Electric Capital, BITKRAFT Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, A.capital, SVAngel, Protocol Labs, Future Positive Capital, 3K VC, Gemini, Jutta Steiner, Lily Liu, Yun-Fang Juan, Jaynti Kanani, Maya Zehavi, Joseph Eagan, Benedict Chan, and Ken Ng.
Phantasia ($1.85M) | The first of its kind Fantasy Sports Platform built on Solana — with participation from SinoGlobal Capital, GSR, SkyVision Capital, Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, 0x Ventures, Chain Flow Capital, PrimeBlock Ventures, Darkpool Liquidity, Petrock Capital, and Solanium Ventures.
Polygen ($2.3M) | Next generation decentralized launchpad — with participation from SL2 Capital, Twin Apex Capital, AU21 Capital, Polygon, Axiom, ZBS Capital, Pluto Digital Assets, Iconomy Partners, Insignius Capital, NetZero Capital, Maven Capital, Woodstock Fund, Skyman Ventures, Lumos Labs, MoonBoots Capital, Storna Finance, Extra Watts, LD Capital, Keys Investment, LucidBlue Ventures, Biconomy, GSR, Amplio Capital, and 18Ventures.
Upland ($18M) | A blockchain-based metaverse that sits on top of the real world — with participation from One Team Partners, Animoca Brands, Alumni Ventures Group, Block.One, FinLab, Global Founders Capital, Michael Ronen, Mike Vorhaus, and Michael Terpin.
Lightnet ($48M) | The next-generation financial network that is built on the true interoperability concept by bridging between existing banking rail and non-bank agent networks to provide efficient and instantaneous transactions — with participation from Tridbodi Arunanondchai, and Chatchaval Jiaravanon.
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