NFT company Recur has seen its valuation swell to $333 million after concluding a successful investment round endorsed by billionaire Steve Cohen’s family office. The Series A raised $50 million, mainly through contributions from the Cohen-backed investment platform Digital, according to a statement. Some of Recur’s previous investors include Hashed, Gemini, CMT Digital, JST Capital and Delphi Ventures. The investment will be used to bootstrap the company’s go-to-market strategy, which includes hiring over 150 people, developing new brand experiences and launching a new NFT platform called NFTU.com. As Cointelegraph reported, Recur raised $5 million in March to address some of …

Decentralized lending protocol Pledge has secured $3 million in investments for its cross-chain ecosystem focused on long-term financing, highlighting continued innovation in the DeFi sector. The investment round was led by DHVC, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, with additional participation from U.C. Berkeley Professor Gary LaBlanc and Stanford University community members Ray Wong and Torsten Wendl. The raise will support Pledge's mission to become a premier crypto-asset lending platform that eventually paves the way for tokenized real-world financial assets. Pledge was created by a group of blockchain-focused researchers at Stanford University, including Professor David Tse, Nicole Chang, Ray Wong …

Blockchain gamification platform DeFi Land has secured $4.1 million in investments to launch a new decentralized finance game on Solana, further highlighting the growing ecosystem surrounding SOL. The investment round had participation from over 40 investors, including some of the biggest names in blockchain venture capital. Animoca Brands, Alameda Research, Jump Capital, NGC Ventures, Solana Foundation and Gate.io were among the major investors involved. DeFi Land operates as an agriculture simulation game designed to gamify all aspects of decentralized finance. The goal is to create educational solutions for users looking to explore DeFi or other alternative finance solutions. The platform …

Ethereum transaction protocol Eden Network has raised $17.4 million in seed funding from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds, underscoring the need to address ongoing challenges facing the block production economy. The funds will be used to support the adoption of Eden Network among developers, miners and users, the company announced Wednesday. The network claims all users will benefit from its ordering rules thanks to an improved block production system. The investment round was led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Alameda Research, Jump Capital, Wintermute, GSR and DeFiance Capital. Genesis Capital executive Joshua Lim and Andre Cronje of Yearn.finance …

Decentralized data aggregator SubQuery has concluded a $9 million funding round to build Polkadot’s first data aggregation layer, a move that could strengthen data indexing for the emerging interoperability network. The investment funds will be used to continue building SubQuery’s data indexing infrastructure for all Polkadot and Kusama applications, the company announced Wednesday. SubQuery also announced the investment would help it expand its technical abilities and support the open-sourcing of its software. This investment round was co-led by Arrington XRP Capital, Digital Currency Group and Stratos Technologies with additional participation from Hypersphere Ventures, NGC Ventures, Wintermute and Skynet Trading. Previously, …

One of South Korea’s leading blockchain evangelists is embarking on another huge blockchain fundraise following the success of his first. Simon Seojoon Kim is planning to raise $173 million for a second blockchain fund following the success of the initial one, which netted $120 million from investors in December 2020. Specifics regarding the new fund and its potential investors are thin on the ground, however. Kim, dubbed “the Jedi Master of cryptocurrency” by Sean Park, a senior partner at Hong Kong-based Boston Consulting Group, co-founded the blockchain and crypto venture capital firm Hashed in 2018. The firm invests in crypto …

Decentralized talent network Braintrust has officially launched its BTRST token on the Ethereum mainnet, setting in motion a new governance framework as it aims to drive mass enterprise adoption of its services. The project launched publicly in June 2020 and has now generated $31 million in gross services revenue, up from $3.5 million during the time of the unveiling, Braintrust announced Wednesday. Since June of last year, Braintrust’s community has tripled in size, boasting enterprise clients such as Goldman Sachs, American Eagle Outfitters, Atlassian, Porsche, Under Armour and Wayfair. The average monetary value of projects listed on Braintrust has grown …

Financial service platform Evrynet has concluded a $7 million fundraiser for its forthcoming decentralized finance app targeting institutional investors, offering further evidence that DeFi has an institutional-grade audience. The private investment round was led by Signum Capital, a Singapore-based blockchain venture fund, with participation from Petrock Capital, Ellipti Ventures and others. Evrynet’s previous backers include HashKey Capital, Everest Ventures, Hanwha Investments and Securities, and Seven Bank, among others. The funds will aid Evrynet in providing institutional-grade DeFi services to investors through its forthcoming Evry.Finance application, which will serve as an exchange, liquidity pool and staking platform. The company is also …

California-based venture fund Andreessen Horowitz announced Tuesday that it is leading a Series A investment round for Syndicate, a decentralized platform with the lofty vision of democratizing investing by allowing users to create decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs. Ali Yahya, one of Andreessen’s general partners, said that the company was attracted to Syndicate’s vision of DAOs being at the center of economic coordination between people. DAOs, which are internet-native organizations that are collectively owned and managed by community members, have the potential to replace the archaic legacy systems currently in use. The Andreessen executive compared DAOs with corporations, arguing that …

English billionaire and Moneysupermarket.com founder Simon Nixon has plans to increase his crypto investments through his London-based venture capital firm. According to a Bloomberg report on Thursday, Adam Proctor, managing director for Nixon’s investment firm Seek Ventures, said that the company intends to increase the “allocation to crypto as we feel it is an important area for the future.” Furthermore, Proctor said that Seek Ventures is currently on the lookout for an analyst who can lead this crypto-focused effort. Digital currencies are drawing the interest of family offices, according to Goldman Sachs, which stated that half of the family offices …

Nonfungible token protocol Alethea AI has closed a $16 million private token sale to build scalable infrastructure for the NFT market, highlighting once again the growing demand for digital collectibles. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban was among the backers of the Alethea AI token sale, which was co-led by Metapurse and Crypto.com Capital. Some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds participated in the sale, including Alameda Research, Multicoin, Galaxy Interactive, Dapper Labs, LD Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, Borderless Capital and others. Individual investors included CoinShares’ Meltem Demirors and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital. The funding will go towards building “scalable AI infrastructure …

Blockchain fintech company XREX has concluded a $17 million pre-A investment round led by a consortium of global investors, underscoring heightened institutional demand for crypto-focused startups. The consortium was driven by CDIB Capital Group, a publicly traded company in Taiwan, and includes investors from major banks and venture capital firms in North America, Europe and Asia. Several other publicly listed companies also participated in the investment round, including SBI Investment, which is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital and Systex Corporation. Black Marble, New Economy Ventures, Metaplanet Holdings, Seraph Group and the Taiwan government’s National Development …