Investors move to cross-chain, Bitcoin Layer-2, = and institutional tools

In the current bull cycle, venture capital firms are moving to capture market share. March developments include the acquisition of quantitative trading firm CFT Capital by Web3's native investment firm Borderless Capital.

The move will add artificial intelligence and digital proprietary products to Borderless' businesses, targeting greater efficiency in deploying capital across its Web 3 verticals, the company, which has $600 million in assets under management, said.

Borderless is an early investor in Algorand, BlockDemon and Securities – the latter of which is BlackRock's new partner in digital funds.

The acquisition makes it borderless in Latin America. “We are currently actively exploring Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Mexico,” Borderless founder and managing partner David Garcia told Cointelegraph.

For 2024, the venture firm expects cross-chain standardization to be the next phase in the evolution of the crypto space. “The advent of modularity in blockchain is a long-term trend, and we expect new L1s, L2s and L3s to emerge. […] “We believe that for mainstream adoption, Web3 needs an integration layer that can collaborate on any chain,” Garcia said.

According to Garcia, another key investment focus at Borderless is decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN). “We strongly believe that DePIN represents a new synergy and innovation across industries including communications, distributed computing, mapping and transportation.”

In this edition of Cointelegraph's VC Roundup, we feature startups that raised capital in the last weeks of March.

Morph receives $20M in angel and seed funding

Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Layer-2 Morph raised $19 million in a seed round led by DragonFly Capital with additional participation from Pantera Capital, Forsyth Ventures, Spartan Group, MEXC Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Public Works, MH Ventures, Everyrealm. The company has raised an additional $1 million secured in an angel round. The company plans to use the capital toward talent acquisition, developer incentives and marketing efforts. The block is built on three pillars: decentralized order, brilliant integration of zkEVM and modular design. “Being one of the first to launch a decentralized blockchain on Ethereum is also an example of our commitment to decentralization from the ground up,” said Azim Khan, co-founder and chief operating officer of Morph.

FLock.io holds $6M seed to decentralize AI training

London-based Web3 decentralized AI startup FLock.io announced a $6 million seed round on March 28, co-led by Lightspeed Faction and Brave Capital. The company aims to deploy a federally funded training platform with the new funds, decentralizing AI agent training, fine-tuning and providing data while stopping the collection of user data. “Now anyone can contribute knowledge and improve AI models. The result? Community-owned models are not just limited to a few, but are fairly rewarded by data contributors and cover a vast array of issues,” the startup said in a statement.

Keyring Network paid $6 million for digital asset compliance.

Keyring Network, founded in 2022 by former Nomura quant analyst and JP Morgan investment bank, has received additional backing from a seed fund co-led by Gimmi Cryptos Capital and Greenfield Capital, along with Motier Ventures, Kima Ventures, UDHC Finance. , Eberg Capital and prominent angel investors. The platform uses zero-knowledge technology to help financial organizations address regulatory compliance and market efficiency, share personal information and identify eligible participants for secondary market token transactions. “Quiring's asset-level solution is the most flexible ZK compliance tool to accommodate the individual DeFi appetite of financial institutions. According to Felix Machart, a partner at Greenfield Capital, users can limit themselves in terms of peer relationships, so they can be as conservative as they want.

Railways to pay $6.2M for self-sustaining perpetual exchange.

Crypto perpetual exchange Railways has raised $6.2 million in a seed round led by Slow Ventures, Round13 Capital, CMCC Global and Quantstamp. The exchange offers trading of self-managed perpetual contracts – a futures contract with no expiration date, allowing traders to better utilize risk management strategies. The funds will be used to support the development of a platform that uses smart contracts backed by zero-knowledge proofs. Railways was born out of the failure of FTX, co-founder Satraj Bramba said in a statement. “The hardest pill to swallow besides being overwhelmed by FTX is the loss of the most efficient and productive trading environment we've ever used. […] This vast market gap led to the creation of railroads.

Build on Bitcoin raises $10M seed round led by Castle Island Ventures.

The hybrid layer-2 solution BOB, or “Build on Bitcoin,” successfully raised $10 in a seed funding round led by Castle Island Ventures, Mechanism Ventures, Bankless Ventures, CMS Ventures, UTXO Management, Asymmetric, Analpha, Web3. com Ventures, BTC Frontier Fund, and Zeeprime, whose funds have been allocated to launch the first Bitcoin Layer-2 with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, designed to incentivize decentralized applications (DApps) onboard the Bitcoin network. BOB has formed a strategic partnership with Enduro, a project developed by Marathon Digital, to collaborate on Alice, a Bitcoin layer-2 solution for institutions.

RACE announced an increase of 5 million dollars during the opening of Testanet

Token platform RACE has announced a $5 million funding round to support its recently released testnet. The platform offers assets such as aircraft, real estate, personal loans, art, jewelry and gold to accredited and institutional investors. RACE plans to build Decentralized Investment Committees (DICs) composed of industry experts who will conduct due diligence on assets, underwriting, legal services, asset custodianship and financial analysis. “The DIC's primary role is to identify all potential opportunities and conduct due diligence before they reach the infrastructure platform,” the company said in a statement. Investors backing the startup's funding have not been disclosed.

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