Multiverse, a decentralized artificial intelligence ecosystem that funds early-stage tech companies, has secured $15 million in investments from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds. Samsung Next, an investment group focused on AI, blockchain and fintech, was among the investors, along with Arrington XRP Capital, Huobi Ventures and Fenbushi, Multiverse announced Wednesday. With the raise, Multiverse now has an implied valuation of $250 million, making it one of the largest ecosystem developer funds at the intersection of blockchain and AI. The investment will go towards expanding Multiverse's capacity across engineering, research and marketing. The organization is eyeing a bigger presence in …

Popular Bitcoin (BTC) rewards app Lolli has received fresh backing from venture funds and other investors as it plans to scale its services to a wider audience. On Wednesday, the company announced it had closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Acrew Capital, with additional participation from UpNorth Management, Animal Capital, Banana Capital and Formula. Influencers such as Logan Paul and Chantel Jeffries also participated. Several of Lolli’s previous backers including Seven Seven Six, 3K VC, Gabriel Leydon and Forerunner Ventures also recommitted to the company in the latest fundraiser. Lolli said the financing will go towards …

Biconomy, a multichain infrastructure network for decentralized applications, has concluded a $9 million private funding round that was co-led by venture firms DACM and Mechanism Capital. Ahmed Al-Balaghi, CEO of Biconomy, said his protocol has been designed to address some of the biggest challenges with Web 3.0 transactions such as gas fees, Ether-only payments and fragmented layer-two solutions. He explained: “If we are able to solve even a fraction of those challenges, we believe we will be able to onboard the next billion users into the DeFi and broader Web 3.0 ecosystem.” Related: A multichain future will accelerate innovators and …

Blockchain infrastructure provider and crypto custodian Fireblocks has secured another $310 million in strategic investments, bringing its total valuation to $2 billion and marking another major milestone for the company. Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks, told Cointelegraph that the funding would go toward expanding internal capacity, including increasing the research and development and support teams. "In addition, we are aggressively expanding into markets such as EMEA and APAC, and we will use funds to grow our go-to-market team," Shaulov said, adding that Fireblocks will place even more emphasis on strategic partnerships. Since launching in 2019, Fireblocks has raised a cumulative …

FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, has closed a $900 million funding round, highlighting once again that venture capitalists are shrugging off market turmoil in their quest to uncover quality blockchain plays. The Series B investment round had over 60 participants, including Softbank, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin, VanEck and the Paul Tudor Jones family. With the raise, FTX’s valuation has grown to $18 billion, making it one of the largest cryptocurrency companies in the world. Just one year ago, the derivatives exchange had a valuation of $1.2 billion. Related: FTX crypto exchange integrates institutional trading tool …

DeFine, a socially oriented nonfungible token platform, has raised $5 million in strategic investments as part of a wider effort to onboard more companies to the NFT world. The raise was led by Huobi Ventures, eSports entertainment company Abyss and global game developer PearlAbyss, the company announced Tuesday. Several Asian blockchain funds also participated, including Draper Dragon, NGC Ventures and SevenX Ventures. “It is my pleasure to have these major gaming and entertainment companies in Asia as strategic investors,” said Myoung Hoon Kang, DeFine's global operations lead. “Strategic investment and partnership will allow us to jointly develop new market opportunities …

CoinFund, a blockchain investment firm behind several recent venture raises, has closed an $83 million funding round as part of its ongoing initiative to bootstrap promising crypto-focused startups. The oversubscribed fundraise was led by Venrock, a California-based venture capital firm founded in 1969. CoinFund said several other “forward-thinking institutional allocators” contributed to the raise, but did not name them. David Pakman, partner at Venrock, touted CoinFund’s ability to identify and help develop leading crypto startups: “CoinFund’s deep connectivity throughout the entire crypto ecosystem, the firm’s critical technical insights and its ability to incubate projects at the earliest stages differentiates them …

Interlay, a Bitcoin (BTC) interoperability project that first launched on Polkadot, has concluded a $3 million seed round to further develop its flagship decentralized finance product, marking another important capital raise in the blockchain industry. The funding will go towards supporting Interlay’s interBTC platform, which allows users to invest, earn and pay with Bitcoin on any blockchain. Originally commissioned for Polkadot, interBTC will expand to other blockchains including Ethereum (ETH) and Cosmos. As Cointelegraph reported, Interlay began building its Bitcoin bridge in early 2020 after receiving a grant from Web3 Foundation, a technology steward for the decentralized web. Interlay claims …

Cryptocurrency wallet provider Phantom has secured $9 million in Series A financing to launch a new multichain wallet designed to help DeFi users access decentralized applications across multiple blockchains. The raise comes on the heels of a successful beta launch in April of this year that saw 40,000 new Phantom users. The company also secured $500,000 in grants from Serum and Solana during the beta phase. Brandon Millman, Phantom’s co-founder and CEO, said his platform enables users to easily access decentralized exchanges and nonfungible token platforms, explaining: “With the world moving into a multi-chain future, the strong interest from the …

Blockchain security firm CertiK announced Wednesday that it has received $37 million in fresh financing to expand its product and security capabilities for the cryptocurrency and DeFi industries. “We’re proud to advance transparency in the space by providing the tools and resources – including our official audit reports – so the community can make sense of vital security information,” said CertiK co-founder Professor Ronghu Gu. Kai Jiang, a partner at Coatue Management, said blockchain security is becoming increasingly important amid the DeFi revolution: “Decentralized finance has grown enormously over the last 18 months, giving millions of people access to innovative …

Following a $1.25 million seed funding round, a cryptocurrency payments and identity management app is moving deeper into decentralized finance. Numio has partnered with zkSync to provide a trustless layer-two solution for payments that it says are instantaneous and as much as 100 times cheaper than transactions on the clogged and expensive Ethereum blockchain. Numio promises peer-to-peer scalability of 2,000 transactions per second. Led by HashKey Capital, the funding round will allow Numio to push into DeFi, including cryptocurrency trading, swaps, pooling, and staking on Ethereum's layer two. Also on the roadmap is support for e-commerce and point-of-sale capability, letting …

The debut of Nifty’s social NFT platform came with much fanfare on Monday after the company announced a major partnership with Warner Bros. and $10 million in seed investments from some of blockchain’s biggest venture firms. Through its Warner Bros. partnership, Nifty’s will launch a collection of limited-edition NFTs featuring characters from the upcoming movie Space Jam: A New Legacy, the company announced Monday. The movie will be released in theaters and for streaming on Friday, July 16. The Space Jam NFTs were developed with the technology of Palm NFT Studio, which was developed by Ethereum software company ConsenSys. The …