VC roundup: blockchain storage, rollups, and Bitcoin rewards draw investors – Cointelegraph

The crypto fundraising space keeps showing consistent and gradual recovery, with millions injected into startups rounds of all sizes in December. Among the months highlights, venture capital firm Foresight Ventures disclosed a third $10 million accelerator dedicated to companies exploring artificial intelligence, Bitcoin Ordinals and direct-to-consumer protocols, while Hong Kong-based GBA Capital also pledged $10 billion to establish a Web3 fund.

In Asia's biggest blockchain series funding round, South Korean nonfungible token (NFT) developer Line Next raised $140 million from a consortium spearheaded by Crescendo Equity Partners, a private equity firm backed by Peter Thiel.

According to data from Messari, there was an impressive 81% surge in the total deal volume in the last quarter of 2023, reaching $3.83 billion. Among the key investment rounds over the past three months were Blockaid securing $33 million, Ritual raising $25 million, Drift with a $23.5 million round, Blast at $20 million, and Privy closing a deal at $18 million.

Cointelegraphs venture capital (VC) roundup outlines some of December's most successful ventures.

Bitcoin startup Lolli has raised $8 million in a series B round led by BITKRAFT Ventures, according to an announcement on Dec. 14. Participants in the round included previous backers such as Serena Williams' Serena Ventures, as well as new investors like Sfermion, Ulta Beautys Prisma Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Rahul Pagidipati, 2 Punks Capital, and MZ Web3 Fund. Lolli provides shoppers with Bitcoin and cash back rewards at a number of retailers, including Ulta Beauty, Groupon, and Booking.com. The company claims to support over 25,000 stores and has allegedly given out more than $10 million in Bitcoin rewards since its creation in 2018. With the funds raised in the round, Lolli intends to expand its rewards services to other enterprises, including payment service providers.

NodeKit has raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed round to develop its shared sequencer on Avalanche Subnet for decentralized rollups. The round was led by Borderless Capital with participation from Avalanches Blizzard Fund, Polygon Ventures, Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund, and angel investors such as Avails Anurag Arjun. NodeKit's SEQ focuses on optimizing performance, robustness, and interoperability for rollups, thus allowing a decentralized network of validators. "Further, rollups integrating with SEQ will gain new cross-chain interoperability. This interoperability is possible because SEQ orders blocks for multiple rollups, allowing for atomic inclusion using atomic bundles within the same block," the startup said in a statement. SEQ is one of the first initiatives to leverage Avalanches HyperSDK toolkit. On testnet, HyperSDK has hit 140,000 transactions per second.

The venture capital arm of crypto exchange HTX (formerly Huobi) invested in at least two new companies in December. According to announcements, HTX Ventures portfolio now includes Academic Labs, a platform that uses AI and Web3 technology for digital assets education, and Cumulus Encrypted Storage System (CESS), a blockchain-powered decentralized storage and content delivery network (CDN) infrastructure for Web3. HTX Ventures has not disclosed how much it invested in the companies. However, CESS revealed that the funding round attracted a total of $8 million from various investors, including HTX Ventures. Academic Labs offers education in software development, trading strategies, business English, and startup foundations using adaptive artificial intelligence and NFTs to gamify practical learning. CESS, on the other hand, offers a platform for on-chain data sharing and value transactions, allowing developers to build and deploy DApps. In both rounds, funding will support projects expansions and product developments.

The Interchain Foundation (ICF) announced a $26.4 million budget for its funding program in 2024. According to an announcement, the capital will be used to maintain and develop the Interchain Stack, an open-source and decentralized blockchain ecosystem or blockchain-based apps and services. Projects underwritten by the program include Binary Builders, Confio, Cosmology, Informal Systems, Strangelove Ventures, and Zondax. The Interchain Foundation supports the Cosmos network and its ecosystem. Its roadmap for the coming months includes expanding composability of the Cosmos SDK, as well as investments on the CometBFT platform, on the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol, along with funding for the smart contract framework CosmWasm, for the CosmJS library, and security audits for the Interchain Stack.

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