GM and welcome to Dove Dispatch #35!
Today, we are digging into the fundraising ecosystem for projects building bridges.
Two pieces of house keeping before we get into it:
We just published our 2021 Crypto Fundraising Report. Go check it out!
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As more and more blockchains add support for Ethereum with an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, an ecosystem of blockchain bridges is growing quickly. These bridges aim to enable interoperability and mutual integration of blockchain applications. Hop Protocol has recently crossed $1B in transfer volume only 6 months after launching, $25B is locked into Ethereum bridges, and more than 75,300 unique addresses interacted with a bridge in the last 30 days. Even if prominent thinkers like Vitalik are sounding the alarm on the security of cross-chain bridges, they have been experimenting tremendous growth and are quickly becoming a crucial piece of the industry. “Bridge Szn” has even been coined.
Dmitriy Berenzon from 1kx published “Blockchain Bridges: Building Networks of Cryptonetworks” back in September, the best research paper on bridges to date.
He also built a great categorization of bridges (Asset-Specific, Chain-Specific, Application-Specific, and Generalized), that we decided to use for our funding overview.
With 24 deals and more than $185M raised since January 2021, interoperability is still a nascent vertical in the funding landscape.
Still, more than $130M was raised in H2, against $46M in H1 — a 183% increase.
With Router and Multichain leading the charge, more than $65M was raised in December alone.
92% of the rounds were earlier than Series A and on average, $7.7M was raised by projects building in the bridge space, compared to $25.3M for the industry overall over the last 12 months.
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Two main categories stand out and account for 91% of the total amount raised:
Application-Specific bridges: “an application that provides access to two or more blockchains, but solely for use within that application”.
Generalized bridges: “a protocol specifically designed for transferring information across multiple blockchains”.
Blockchain bridging companies are less concentrated than the overall crypto industry, even though 75% of the teams which raised funds in 2021 are based in North America. Europe has a burgeoning ecosystem with more than 40.6M raised, and 3 projects are based in Singapore.
Bridges funding represents only 0.56% of the total fresh capital injected into the industry over the last 12 months while being a critical infrastructure piece for the future of the ecosystem and seeing incredibly explosive usage.
This can be explained by two major factors:
Many bridges are built by Layer-1s themselves (Tezos Wrap Protocol Bridge, Binance Bridge, Avalanche Bridge, NEAR Rainbow Bridge, etc.) and don’t require external funding as they are not standalone projects.
Cross-chain bridges are often seen as public goods. By definition, public goods are often funded without a central authority coordinating.
Last week 31 projects announced fundraising rounds:
Burnt Finance ($8M) | Trade unlimited NFTs with lightning fast speeds and the lowest fees on the first decentralized NFT auction protocol built on Solana — with participation from Animoca Brands, Multicoin Capital, Alameda Research, DeFiance Capital, Valor Capital Group, Figment Capital, Spartan Group, Tribe Capital, Play Ventures, Hashkey Capital, Mechanism Capital, DeFi Alliance, Terra, Polygon, and Huobi Capital.
Chingari ($15M) | Short-video sharing platform — with participation from Republic, OnMobile, JPIN Venture Catalysts, Hill Harbour, Angellist, Venture Collective, Makan Family, Cowa Ventures, MVC Friends, and Protocol Labs.
Fantom Maker ($1.8M) | Designed to be the strongest yield product on Fantom blockchain — with participation from DAO Maker, Halvings Capital, Maven Capital, Octopus Crypto Capital, ZBS Capital, and IceTea Labs.
Alliance DAO ($50M) | The leading Web3 accelerator and founder community — with participation from Aleksander Larsen, Sam Bankman-Fried, Alan Curtis, Alex Wearn, Amit Mukherjee, Amman Bhasin, Ana Andrianova, Andre Cronje, Andy Bromberg, Anthony Pompliano, 0xMaki, 0x Labs, Amir Bandeali, Abhijeet Dwivedi, Anil Dharni, Akash Garg, Kenshi Arasaki, Artia Moghbel, Ashwin Ramachandran, Alex Svanevik, Avalanche Foundation, Aya Kantorovich, Ayesha Kiani, BOR4, Baek Kim, Balaji Srinivasan, Brian Barnes, Benedict Chan, Siqi Chen, and others.
Edge Protocol ($1.75M) | Community-based lending pool creation platform on Terra — with participation from Hashed, Alliance DAO, Folius Ventures, Qi Capital, Do Kwon, Jason Choi, Santiago R. Santos, Darryl Wang, Ashwin Ramachandran, Matt Cantieri, Sawit Trisirisatayawong, Woojin Lim, Stanford Liu, and Nipun Pitimanaaree.
I WORLD ($6.8M) | An NFT live action RPG. Create, play and learn with others around — with participation from Master Ventures, ExNetwork Capital, Polygon, BullPerks, X21 Digital, Roseon Finance, Poolz Ventures, Wemade Tree, Sun Hung Kai & Co. Limited, Animoca Brands, Part 1 Capital, and Red Kite.
Friktion ($5.5M) | Build a portfolio to perform across market cycles — with participation from Jump Crypto, DeFiance Capital, Pillar VC, Libertus Capital, Delphi Digital, SinoGlobal Capital, Tribe Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Dialectic Capital, Petrock Capital, Solana Capital, Alameda Research, QCP Capital, CMS Holdings, LedgerPrime, GSR, Orthogonal Trading, and Genesis.
Nine Chronicles | A fully decentralized RPG powered by the players — with participation from Binance Labs.
Lukka ($110M) | Custom software and data for managing crypto assets on infrastructure made for the complexities of blockchain data — with participation from Marshall Wace, Miami International Holdings, Summer Capital, SiriusPoint, Soros Fund Management, Liberty City Ventures, S&P Global, and CPA.com.
GCR ($1.2M) | A tokenized, decentralized community of learners and investors in Web3— with participation from IDEO Colab Ventures, 1kx, Valhalla Capital, HanDAO, GBIC (Global Blockchain Innovative Capital), Jeff Zirlin, Gabby Dizon, Beryl Li, Jaynti Kanani, Adam Kornfield, Jenil Thakker, Bobby Ong, Miss Bitcoin, Alex Mesmaj, and Syndicate Protocol.
NEAR Protocol ($150M) | A blockchain designed to provide the performance and UX to get to mainstream adoption of decentralized applications — with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Alameda Research, Zee Prime Capital, Folius Ventures, Amber Group, 6th Man Ventures, Circle, MetaWeb Ventures , Alan Howard, Santiago R. Santos, and Stani Kulechov.
Seashell ($6M) | The simple, smart, and secure home for your money — with participation from Mark Cuban, Coinbase Ventures, Vlad Tenev, Khosla Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Elad Gil, Do Kwon, Sandeep Nailwal, and Chris Giancarlo.
Conduit ($17M) | We enable fintechs, neobanks, and exchanges to connect their customers with high earning crypto-backed products using one API for DeFi — with participation from Portage Ventures, FinVC, Gemini , Gradient Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, Inovia Capital, Gaingels, Discovery Ventures, Jump Crypto, Mark Britto, Gary Marino, Asiff Hirji, Simon Taylor, Nik Milanovic, Rex Salisbury, and Diagram Ventures.
Proof of Learn ($15M) | A Web3 education platform with a mission to unlock accessible, high quality education across the world — with participation from NEA, Animoca Brands, GoldenTree Asset Management, gumi Cryptos, and Infinity Ventures Crypto.
Allbridge ($2M) | Fast, affordable and secure way of moving liquidity between EVM, non-EVM, and L2 blockchains — with participation from Race Capital.
Lootex ($9M) | Discover, share, and trade digital items — with participation from Spartan Group, Infinity Ventures Crypto, LD Capital, Akatsuki, Polygon Studios, Morningstar Ventures, SweeperDAO, YGG SEA, HTC, Huobi Capital, OKEX, Avocado Guild, Cherubic Ventures, Palm Drive Capital, Evernew Capital, NGC Ventures, Petrock Capital, PANONY, Yolo Investments, Kosmos Ventures, Daedalus Angel Syndicate, PKO Investments, Kevin Lin, Holly Liu, Patrick Lee, and Kun Gao.
Zone ($2.35M) | Play-to-earn, cross-chain, gamefi Discord bot, yield farming, AFK Elephants NFTs, on-chain fantasy sports, and more — with participation from DAO Maker, GSR, Altonomy, Enjinstarter, SuperLauncher DAO, MH Ventures, ZBS Capital, TAG Ventures, K300 Ventures, and Borderless Capital.
Web3Auth ($13M) | Makes cryptographic key management easy for users and applications — with participation from Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures, Multicoin Capital, FTX, Bitcoin.com, DARMA Capital, Chainstry, Kosmos Ventures, Kyros Ventures, LD Capital, Minted Lab, P2P Capital, Phoenix VC, Staking Facilities, YBB Foundation, Moonwhale Ventures, HashCIB, Decentralab, and Terabyte.
SEBA ($119M) | A cryptocurrency company that provides a seamless, secure, and easy-to-use bridge between digital and traditional assets — with participation from Altive, Ordway Selections, Summer Capital, DeFi Technologies, Alameda Research, FTX, and Julius Baer.
Zero Hash ($105M) | Zero Hash's mission is to empower innovators by delivering access to the financial system 2.0. Zero Hash enables developers and businesses to focus on building experiences and products — with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Nyca Partners, and Point72 Ventures.
Entropy ($1.95M) | Building the first ever truly trustless decentralized asset custody protocol — with participation from Dragonfly Capital, The LAO, P2P Capital, MacLane Wilkison, Naval Ravikant, Jutta Steiner, Lucas Vogelsang, Cassidy Daly, Henry de Valence, Dean Eigenmann, Viktor Bunin, Robert Miller, Grug Capital, Rene Lubov, Maya Zehavi, Ashleigh Schap, Gavin Birch, and VelvetMilkman.
Bribe Protocol ($4M) | Creating DAO infrastructure tooling to incentivize protocol participation — with participation from Spartan Group, Dragonfly Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, Fundamental Labs, IOSG Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Rarestone Capital, GravityX Capital, Shima Capital, and Figment Capital.
Fan Controlled Football ($40M) | — with participation from Animoca Brands, Delphi Digital, Gemini , 6th Man Ventures, Jump Crypto, Red Beard Ventures, Spartan Group, NGC Ventures, Sebastien Borget, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Talis Capital, Verizon Ventures, Correlation Ventures, and Basecamp Fund.
KlayCity | A P2E Game, built on the Klaytn Network, that allows users to own virtual NFT-based property on a dynamic map — with participation from OKEX.
Gavea Marketplace ($4M) | The first digital commodities exchange in Brazil — with participation from Astella, 2TM, and DOMO Invest.
Citadel Securities ($1.15B) | A leading quantitative trading firm and market maker — with participation from Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Global Growth Fund.
Itheum ($1.5M) | World’s 1st decentralized, cross-chain data brokerage technology platform — with participation from Morningstar Ventures.
LEVERADE ($1.145M) | The first sports federation launchpad — with participation from Damo Labs, Shima Capital, Origin Ventures, Ispolink, Stakely VC, and Orion Depp.
Kingdom Karnage ($2M) | A cross-platform virtual Trading Card Game available to play on PC and Android — with participation from DFG , Enjin, ExNetwork Capital, Jsquare, Kriptomat, Hafen Ventures, AZer Capital, TAG Ventures, OIG Investment Group, Bluewheel Capital, Chronos Ventures, Solr DAO, X21 Digital, Dreamboat Capital, Apollo Meta Fund, Dutch Crypto Investors, and Enjinstarter.
Vybe Network ($2.5M) | Data network for Web 3.0 — with participation from Lemniscap, Alameda Research, SinoGlobal Capital, SkyVision Capital, Zokyo, Switchboard, Chris McCann, Solana Capital, Serum, Brandon Potts, Jet Protocol, Atrix, Dermot McGrath, Ryon Nixon, Steve Harvey, and Inscribed Ventures.
IppoPay ($2.1M) | An online marketplace to accept payments, specially made for individuals, freelancers, work from home, newspaper boy, milk vendors and etc — with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Blume, Better Capital, Archana Priyadarshini, Sailesh Ramakrishnan, Prabhu Rangarajan, Kumar Srivatsan, Kuberan Marimuthu, and Madhusudhan Ramakrishnan.
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