ADDX, a blockchain and smart contract-based digital securities platform from Singapore raised $58 million from mainstream financial institutions to fund its goal of reducing minimum private investment sizes via tokenization and fractionalization. The Monetary Authority of Singapore regulates ADDX as a digital securities exchange that aims to democratize private markets. The Pre-Series B funding round saw participation from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), UOB, Nasdaq-listed Hamilton Lane and Thailand’s Krungsri Bank, which has brought total funds raised by ADDX to around $120 million. As explained in the announcement, ADDX uses blockchain technology and smart contracts to tokenize and fractionalize …

Cardano-based accelerator program Genius X has seen more than $105 million worth of ADA delegated to its initial stake pool offering (ISPO). This comes after the firm’s decentralized automated market maker and liquidity management protocol Genius Yield completed its ISPO on May 10, with over 14,500 delegators staking 270 million Cardano (ADA) across four official stake pools, making it one of the biggest ISPOs within the Cardano ecosystem. Genius Yield is a Cardano-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that features a decentralized exchange with an order book. It integrates a liquidity provision model, which aims to mitigate market risk and eliminate …

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has launched a $600 million fund dedicated to gaming startups with a focus on Web3, saying it believes “Games infrastructure and technologies will be key building blocks of the Metaverse.” Dubbed Games Fund One, the fund will invest in three main areas: game studios, consumer applications — which support player communities, with Discord used as an example — and gaming infrastructure providers. The a16z team said “The coming Metaverse will be built by games companies, using games technologies” and that the industry has already “solved many of the problems that need to be solved …

Tally Labs, a Web3 media company that oversees the business operations and infrastructural software development of Jenkins the Valet — a fictional nonfungible token (NFT) project orientated around the life of a Bored Ape character — has announced a seed funding round to the value of $12 million. The company has pledged to utilize the funds to expand the intellectual property and commercialization of Jenkins the Valet to a broader spectrum of entertainment mediums and hire for six newly-posted United States/remote job roles. The fund compiles a list of 19 investors, both venture capital and individual investors, who were consciously …

Web3 gaming and entertainment company Metatheory founded by Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round on Monday. The round was led by crypto capital venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Pantera Capital, the venture arm of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, FTX Ventures, and other venture firms, according to the announcement. Metatheory was launched in November 2021 around one year after Lin left Twitch, where he wrote in a Medium article at the time that he was creating the gaming company and also a blockchain game called DuskBreakers. Lin was quoted in …

Banking giants Goldman Sachs and the United Kingdom’s Barclays have joined a $70 million Series A funding round for the institutional crypto trading platform Elwood Technologies, founded by billionaire British hedge fund manager Alan Howard. Joining the round was crypto-friendly German bank Commerzbank, crypto investment manager Galaxy Digital and Dawn Capital, as reported by the Financial Times on Sunday. The fundraising round valued the company at around $500 million, according to the report. Despite the recent fall in crypto markets, Elwood said it’s betting that traditional financial institutions such as hedge funds and banks will still be interested in investing …

Terra’s meltdown forced cryptocurrency investors to ask a question they never thought was possible: Will TerraUSD (UST) or Terra (LUNA) reach $1.00 first? The magnitude of this question provides a sobering reminder of just how quickly things can change in crypto. While Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon remains defiant, many people in the industry are beginning to distance themselves from the protocol they thought was delivering real-world utility for stablecoins and Bitcoin (BTC). The threat of contagion from Terra’s apparent collapse could take months or even years to fully quantify, but it looks like the howls of crypto winter are …

Aurora, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) designed to scale decentralized applications (DApps) built on the Near protocol, has launched a token fund worth $90 million. The fund was launched today in partnership with Proximity Labs and will be focused on financing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on the Near protocol. Near Protocol is a DApp platform that focuses on usability among developers and users. As an emerging layer-1 competitor to Ethereum, Near Protocol is also smart-contract capable and runs a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Funding was provided by Aurora Labs, which allocated 25 million AURORA tokens — currently valued at roughly …

Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics provider, has announced its $170 million Series F funding round. The fresh funding succeeded its $100 million raise back in June 2021 and more than doubly exceeded its valuation of $4.2 billion at the same time. The raise was led by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and further participated in by investors Accel — who previously led Chainalysis' $30 million Series B round in 2019, as well as Blackstone, Dragoneer and FundersClub. Bank of New York Mellon and Emergence Capital also participated in the round as first entries. According to the announcement, the funds will be …

London-based asset manager Fasanara Capital has launched a $350 million investment fund to back fintech and cryptocurrency startups that can deliver new use cases for the emerging Web3 economy. The company, which manages $3.5 billion in assets, is targeting early-stage startups in the fintech and crypto spheres. It plans to establish long-term relationships with project founders and other industry veterans. This includes potentially larger equity commitments than traditional venture capital firms. Founded in 2011, Fasanara Capital is a fintech investment firm increasingly specialized in digital assets and lending technologies. The company is regulated by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority …

The Flow ecosystem is set to get a boost in support from a new $725 million fund that will be used to invest in the growth of the nonfungible token network. Flow (FLOW) is a layer-1 blockchain developed by Dapper Labs and purpose-made for nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Dapper Labs also created the popular NBA Top Shot NFT collection. Flow utilizes an eco-friendly proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. The new fund was backed by 17 firms that have experience backing other Web3 companies, including large investment firms a16z, Spartan Group and CoinFund. The funds will be used to attract developers to bring …

The global cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin aims to go beyond centralized trading services and focus on Web3 with new funding backed by firms like Circle Ventures. The KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange officially announced on May 10 a $150 million pre-Series B funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to $10 billion. The latest funding round mainly aims to strengthen the exchange’s partnership with major industry players as well as promote the mass adoption of crypto, KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu told Cointelegraph, noting: “KuCoin is financially healthy. [...] We are still in contact with many VCs, and we are open to have another round …