Funding Weekly Report | 17 publicly disclosed funding events; crypto derivatives trading platform Liquid completes $18 million Series A funding.
Abstract: VC funding in the crypto industry plummeted 74% month-over-month to $659 million in April, the lowest level in nearly two years.
Highlights of this episode
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 17 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (April 27 - May 3), with a total funding scale exceeding US$165 million. An overview is as follows:
The DeFi sector announced four investment and financing events, including the completion of an $18 million Series A funding round for crypto derivatives trading platform Liquid, led by Neo and Left Lane Capital ;
In the AI+Web3 sector, two investment and financing events were announced . Among them , Kaisar Network, a decentralized AI computing Layer 1 network, announced that it has completed a $4 million financing round to date .
Five investment and financing events were announced in the Infrastructure & Tools sector , among which Squads, a multi-signature agreement ecosystem of Solana, completed an $18 million equity financing round led by Solana Ventures.
Two investment and financing events were announced in the centralized finance sector . Among them, crypto exchange service company Fun completed a $72 million Series A financing round, led by Multicoin Capital and SignalFire.
The prediction market sector announced one investment and financing event: prediction market platform XO Market completed a $6 million seed round of financing .
Three other investment and financing events were announced in the Web3 application sector , including a $3.2 million funding round for Chance Studios, a collectible trading card game platform.
DeFi
Crypto derivatives trading platform Liquid has completed an $18 million Series A funding round, led by Neo and Left Lane Capital, with participation from Haun Ventures, K5 Global, SV Angel, AntiFund, and Sunflower Capital. Founded by former Two Sigma quantitative researcher Franklyn Wang, Liquid initially positioned itself as a platform aggregating crypto perpetual contracts and has since expanded to secondary markets for stocks, cryptocurrencies, forex, Polymarket positions, and pre-IPO company equity, offering leverage up to 200x in some jurisdictions. The report notes that while platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood are simultaneously expanding into non-crypto assets, Liquid aims to create a unified interface for universal leveraged exchanges to cover the retail trading needs of various risk assets.
RWA yield platform Nuva Digital has raised $5.2 million in seed funding, led by Morgan Creek Digital with participation from Ulu Ventures and others. The funds will be used to build its RWA yield platform, Nuva Finance. Incubated by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs, Nuva positions itself as a self-custodied RWA marketplace connecting asset issuers and users. Users deposit USDC to receive nvAsset tokens representing their share, with yields reflected in the token price. The initial offerings will include nuYLDS and nuHELOCs products based on Figure Technologies' on-chain assets, corresponding to the SEC-registered yield-generating stablecoin YLDS and over $16 billion in home equity loan assets, respectively. Nuva also plans to issue a NUVA utility token in the future; specific launch dates for the platform and tokens have not yet been disclosed.
