VC Nov. Report: Financing Amount Reaches New High Since Sep. 2022

Author: WuBlockchain

According to RootData statistics, there were a total of 92 publicly disclosed investment projects in the crypto VC space in November, a 21% increase compared to October 2023 (76 projects). However, it represents a 17% decrease compared to November 2022 (111 projects). Note: Not all financing deals are disclosed in the same month, so the above figures may increase in the future. The industry-level classification is as follows.

In November, among various tracks in the crypto market, infrastructure projects accounted for approximately 30% of the financing amount, DeFi about 13%, CeFi about 8%, and NFT/GameFi about 7%.

The total financing amount in November surged to $1.2 billion, a 179% increase compared to October 2023 ($430 million) and a 90% increase compared to November 2022 ($630 million). November’s financing amount exceeded the monthly average by 76% for the year (average financing amount for the first 10 months was $680 million), marking the first year-on-year increase. The top 10 rounds by amount are as follows.

Abu Dhabi-based Bitcoin mining and custody service provider Phoenix Group announced raising $370 million through an IPO. Phoenix started its public offering on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) on November 16 and concluded on November 18.

Cross-chain protocol Wormhole raised $225 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion, with participation from Jump Trading, Coinbase Ventures, and others. The team behind Wormhole also announced the establishment of a new company, Wormhole Labs, to assist in the development of the Wormhole protocol.

Blockchain.com, the exchange, announced a $110 million strategic Series E funding round led by Kingsway Capital, with participation from Baillie Gifford, Lakestar, LSVP, GV, and others. Insiders revealed that the company was valued at $14 billion in March 2022, and the Series E funding round lowered its valuation to below $7 billion. Additionally, Kingsway’s CEO Manny Stotz and Lakestar partner Nicolas Brand joined the Blockchain.com board.

Blockchain payment company Fnality raised $95 million (£77.7 million) in a Series B funding round led by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas. DTCC, Euroclear, Nomura Securities, and WisdomTree participated in this funding round.

Canadian Bitcoin mining company Bitfarms announced raising $44 million through a private placement, including warrants to purchase up to an additional 22 million shares at an exercise price of $1.17 per share, with a three-year term. Bitfarms had previously raised $68 million in equity financing in the first three quarters of 2023. In November, Bitfarms mined 392 Bitcoins, sold 350, and earned a total revenue of $12.8 million, with a 2% increase in hash rate to 6.4 EH/s for the month.

Ritual, a decentralized AI computing platform founded by former Polychain Capital founders Niraj Pant and Akilesh Potti, completed a $25 million funding round, with Archetype leading and participation from Accomplice and Robot Ventures. The valuation was not disclosed.

On November 21, Pacman, founder of Blur, launched the Optimistic Rollup-based Layer 2 network Blast, securing $20 million in funding. Paradigm, Standard Crypto, and others participated in this round. Pacman tweeted that an additional $40 million was raised to contribute to the Blur ecosystem. Additionally, Blast developer airdrops will go live when the Blast testnet launches in January. On November 27, Japanese crypto investment firm CGV announced a $5 million special investment in the Blast ecosystem to jointly promote the development of the Blast network. The provided $5 million will specifically support the incubation and investment of innovative projects in the Blast network ecosystem, covering emerging crypto asset protocols, DeFi, NFT, RWA, GameFi, and more.

ZKP acceleration chip company Ingonyama announced the completion of a $20 million seed funding round, led by AI21 Lab’s main investor Walden Catalyst, with participation from Geometry, BlueYard Capital, Samsung Next, Sentinel Global, and others. Many companies participating in this funding round heavily rely on zero-knowledge proof technology. Additionally, Ingonyama’s first chip is a programmable parallel computing processor similar to a GPU, designed to accelerate advanced encryption for zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption.

Data privacy solution Privy completed an $18 million Series A funding round, led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia Capital and others. Privy supports companies like restaurant service Blackbird and sports card website Courtyard. Privy aims to address the contradiction between poor user experience for multi-wallet users and the privacy risks associated with integrated logins through its Web3 solution. Previously, Privy announced completing an $8.3 million seed funding round in April 2022, led by Sequoia Capital and Blue Yard Capital.

Asset management company Superstate completed a $14 million Series A funding round, with Distributed Global and CoinFund co-leading. Superstate plans to use these funds to develop its team, issue private funds to institutional investors, and establish frameworks for the compliance and tokenization of public funds.

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