Hello world, and welcome to Dove Mountain Weekly #2!
Today, we are outlining the fundraising landscape for some of the most active Layer-1s.
As Ethereum transaction fees have skyrocketed, other Layer-1s have gained traction with promises of better performance and lower costs. However, all these platforms are still far behind Ethereum regarding the number of applications built on top, tradable tokens, and developer activity.
Let’s look and see if fundraising activity matches the hype of the tight race against Ethereum
The number of projects building on top of alternative Layer-1s has grown tremendously. Unsurprisingly, more of these projects have closed fundraising rounds. 46 of them are building on top of the Binance Smart Chain, whereas 39 have decided to use Polkadot. Picking up the rear are NEAR, xDai, and Tezos.
Interestingly, Alameda Research seems to be a key driver of the $269M+ raised by projects building on top of Solana since May 2020. Still, respectively $120M+ and $100M+ have flowed in the Binance Smart Chain and Polkadot ecosystems. Some of the noteworthy fundraising rounds:
Oxygen Protocol ($40M) — Solana — with participation from Multicoin Capital, CMS Holdings, Genesis Capital, and Alameda Research.
Moonbeam Network ($6M) — Polkadot — with participation from CoinFund, Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, and others.
BENQI ($6M) — Avalanche — with participation from Ascensive Assets, Arrington XRP Capital, Mechanism Capital, Woodstock Fund, AVA Labs, Morningstar Ventures, Genblock Capital, Rarestone Capital, The Spartan Group, and Skynet Trading.
DODO Exchange ($5M) — Binance Smart Chain — with participation from Puzzle Ventures, CMS Holdings, Shata Capital, Longhash Ventures, Framework Ventures, Maple Leaf Capital, D1 Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, SevenX Ventures, Primitive Ventures, Robert Leshner, Spencer Noon, Alexander Pack, Jason Choi, and others.
With 61 rounds related to DeFi (and $405M+ totally raised), there is no doubt that it has been the hottest vertical for alternative Layer-1s as well, followed by projects focusing on the infrastructure category.
Given that TVL on BSC exceeded $50B in May — it should be no surprise that BSC is dominating DeFi fundraising.
Don’t forget to have a look at Dove Mountain Data, the richest dataset ever publicly released on crypto fundraising rounds.
We have included last week’s 15 fundraising rounds:
Certora ($7.2M) — with participation from Electric Capital, A.capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Elad Gil, Eli Ben-Sasson, Framework Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Lemniscap, Scott Shenker, Semantic Ventures, Stani Kulechov, Uri Kolodny, and VMware.
Blocto ($8M) — with participation from Alameda Research, Quantstamp, Richard Ma, and others.
MCDEX ($7M) — with participation from Delphi Ventures, Alameda Research, Multicoin Capital, Fenbushi Capital, DeFiance Capital, Incuba Alpha Labs, DeFi Alliance, D1 Ventures, IOSG Ventures, NGC Ventures, OKEx BlockDream Fund, Horizon Capital, Zeuth Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Digital Renaissance, Mask Network, Plutus VC, Magic Ventures, Shata Capital, Finlink, ZBS Capital, and Meltem Demirors.
Skyrim Finance ($2.1M) — with participation from AU21 Capital, Spark Digital Capital, ExNetwork Capital, Blocksync Ventures, MANTRA DAO, X21 Digital, ZBS Capital, Kyros Ventures, VBC Ventures, Illusionist Group, Wings Ventures, GFS Ventures, Tenzor Capital, Titans Ventures, and Poolz Ventures.
BSClaunch ($800k) — with participation from NGC Ventures, AU21 Capital, X21 Digital, ExNetwork Capital, Magnus Capital, Blocksync Ventures, CSP DAO, Titans Ventures, GD10 Ventures, Sky Ventures, Dutch Crypto Investors, Petrock Capital, DoraHacks, Coinsight Ventures, BTA Ventures, Avstar Capital, Infinity Gainz, SL2 Capital, ICO Pantera, Gains, R8 Capital, Minted Labs, and Panda Capital.
Flux ($10.3M) — with participation from Distributed Global, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Uncorrelated Ventures, Figment Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, Greenfield One, Maven11 Capital, IOSG Ventures, Hart Lambur, Illia Polosukhin, Jabre Capital Partners, G1 Ventures, Blockwall, Bollinger, Zee Prime Capital, Hack VC, Flow Ventures, Tenzor Capital, and 040 Capital.
Forte ($185M) — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Battery Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, and others.
Cryptocurrencies.AI ($8M) — with participation from Alameda Research, Alphabit Digital Currency Fund, Digital Finance Group, AU21 Capital, Master Ventures, FOMOCraft Ventures, Protocol Ventures, A195 Capital, GBIC (Global Blockchain Innovative Capital), and Rarestone Capital.
Structure Finance — with participation from Kraken, Bancor, NGC Ventures, 1010 Capital, Kyros Ventures, Asymm Ventures, D64 Ventures, Coin98 Ventures, AscendEX, ExNetwork Capital, and X21 Digital.
Scaleswap ($2.5M) — with participation from Ascensive Assets, Spark Digital Capital, Pluto Digital Assets, A195 Capital, Magnus Capital, Rarestone Capital, AU21 Capital, Momentum 6, X21 Digital, and INBlockchain.
SubDAO — with participation from Hypersphere Ventures, Huobi Capital, OKEx BlockDream Fund, CMS Holdings, Signum Capital, NGC Ventures, Digital Finance Group, Spark Digital Capital, SevenX Ventures, LD Capital, Digital Renaissance, Dealean Capital, Kernel Ventures, Divergence Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Kenetic, AU21 Capital, Illusionist Group, and Ryan Selkis.
Common Protocol ($3.2M) — with participation from Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi Capital, Framework Ventures, Hashed, IDEO Colab Ventures, Nascent, Balaji Srinivasan, CMS Holdings, Stani Kulechov, Divergence Ventures, Calvin Liu, George Lambeth, Ryan Selkis, Regan Bozman, LongHash Ventures, Daniel Cheung, Ryan Watkins, Alex Masmejean, Zee Prime Capital, Zubin Koticha, Felix Feng, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Molly, Eric Chen, Mirza Uddin, LedgerPrime, and Sunny Aggarwal.
Copper ($50M) — with participation from Dawn Capital, Tiger Global Management, and others.
DeversiFi ($5M) — with participation from ParaFi Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, DeFiance Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Genblock Capital, LongHash Ventures, Delphi Ventures, The Spartan Group, Blockchain.com, OKEx BlockDream Fund, Kain Warwick, Stani Kulechov, Robbie Ferguson, Mona El Isa, Jordan Fish, Richy Qiao, Sid Powell, Joe Flanagan, David Garai, and Henrik Andersson.
Zapper ($15M) — with participation from Framework Ventures, Sound Ventures, and Mark Cuban.
We have also added the following investors: Coinsight Ventures, Infinity Gainz, SL2 Capital, Zeuth Ventures, R8 Capital, Panda Capital, Asymm Ventures, Augment Ventures, Komorebi Collective, and many angels.
See you next week for another issue,
The Dove Mountain Team