Blockchain storage, packages and Bitcoin rewards attract investors

The crypto fundraising space continues its consistent and gradual recovery, injecting millions in startup rounds of all sizes in December.

Among the month's highlights, venture capital firm Forsyth Ventures announced its third $10 million accelerator, dedicated to companies interested in artificial intelligence, bitcoin ordinals and direct-to-consumer protocols. Hong Kong-based GBA Capital has pledged $10 billion to set up a Web3 fund.

In Asia's largest blockchain series funding round, South Korea's Invincible Token (NFT) developer Next Line has raised $140 million from a consortium led by Peter Thiel-backed Crescendo Equity Partners.

According to data from Masari, in the last quarter of 2023, the total increased by 81% to $3.83 billion. Among the key investment rounds in the past three months, Blockaid raised $33 million, Ritial raised $25 million, Drift closed a $23.5 million round, Blast closed a $20 million deal, and Privy closed a $18 million deal.

Cointelegraph's venture capital (VC) roundup lists December's most successful ventures.

Lolly Closes $8 Million in Bitcoin Rewards

Bitcoin startup Lolly has raised $8 million in Series B led by BITKRAFT Ventures, as announced on December 14. Participants in the round include early backers such as Serena Williams, Serena Ventures, as well as new investors such as Sfermion, Ulta. Beauty Prisma Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Rahul Pagidipathy, 2 Punk Capital and MZ Web3 Fund.

Lolly offers rewards in Bitcoin and cash back to shoppers at several retailers, including Ulta Beauty, Groupon and Booking.com. The company claims to support more than 25,000 stores and has given out more than $10 million in Bitcoin rewards since its creation in 2018. With the funds raised in the round, Lolly plans to expand its rewards service to other enterprises, including payment service providers.

We are thrilled to announce our $8M Series B funding round with an amazing group of investors.

This round is directed by @bitkraftvc and includes @Sfermion_, @ultabeauty, @sevensevensix, @michellephan, @serenaventures, MrBeast's @nightventures_ and more!

— lolli (@trylolli) December 14, 2023

NodeKit maintains a pre-seed for common threads.

NodeKit has raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed round to develop decentralized coils on the Avalanche subnet. Borderless Capital led the round with participation from Avalanches Blizzard Fund, Polygon Ventures, Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund and angel investors such as Avail's Anurag Arjun.

NodeKit's SEQ focuses on increasing performance, robustness and interoperability for large operations, thus allowing a decentralized network of validators. “Additionally, scrolls with SEQ gain new cross-chain interactions. This interaction is possible because SEQ orders blocks for multiple scrolls, allowing atomic inclusion within the same block using atomic stacks,” the startup said in a statement. SEQ is one of the first initiatives to use Avalanche's HyperSDK toolkit. On the testnet, HyperSDK hit 140,000 transactions per second.

HTX Ventures has targeted Web3 Learning, a decentralized storage platform, in recent funding rounds.

The venture capital arm of crypto exchange HTX (formerly Huobi) invested in at least two new companies in December. As announced, HTX Ventures' portfolio now includes Academic Labs, a platform that uses AI and Web3 technology for digital asset learning, and Cumulus Encrypted Storage System (CESS), a blockchain-powered decentralized storage and content delivery network (CDN) infrastructure for Web3. .

HTX Ventures did not disclose how much it invested in the companies. However, CESS disclosed that the funding round totaled $8 million from various investors, including HTX Ventures. Academic labs provide instruction in software development, business strategies, business English and startup foundations using Adaptive Artificial Intelligence and NFTs to facilitate hands-on learning. On the other hand, CESS provides an on-chain data sharing and value transactions platform that allows developers to build and deploy DApps. Funding in both rounds will support project expansion and product development.

Interchain Foundation announced a budget of 26 million dollars for the support program

The Interchain Foundation (ICF) has announced a budget of $26.4 million for its support program through 2024. According to the announcement, the capital will be used to maintain and develop the Interchain Stack, an open source and decentralized blockchain ecosystem or blockchain-based applications and services. Projects documented in the program include Binary Builders, Confio, Cosmology, Informal Systems, Strangelove Ventures, and Zondax.

The Interchain Foundation supports the Cosmos Network and its ecosystem. The roadmap for the coming months includes the integration of the Cosmos SDK, as well as investments in the CometBFT platform, an inter-blockchain communication protocol, support for the smart contract framework CosmWasm, the CosmJS library, and security audits. For the Interchain stack.

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