Financing Weekly | 18 projects received investment, Ithaca raised $20 million

Compiled by: Golden Finance

The largest financing round this week

Ithaca

Ithaca raised $20 million in a financing round led by Paradigm.

Ithaca is a forward-looking project focused on accelerating the development of decentralized technology by co-designing a powerful open source developer tool stack. It uses blockchain technology to create innovative solutions for building decentralized applications (dApps), Layer 2 networks, and developer frameworks. One of its key initiatives includes Odyssey, a futuristic testnet designed to make development and experimentation in decentralized finance (DeFi) and other fields seamless. Ithaca's mission is to simplify and expand cutting-edge applications in the decentralized encryption field for developers and users.

Seed and Pre-Seed Investment Rounds

Yala

Yala raised $8M in a seed round with participation from Polychain Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Anagram, ABCDE Capital, Amber Group, Hashkey Capital, SatoshiLab, UTXO Management, and Galaxy Vision Hill.

Yala is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol focused on developing Bitcoin-backed stablecoins. Its core product, $YU, is a Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar, providing stability for trading and yield generation in DeFi. Yala integrates Bitcoin liquidity into DeFi platforms across L1 and L2 ecosystems, enabling Bitcoin holders to leverage their assets without selling them.

PiP World

PiP World raises $10 million in a seed round with participation from Exinity.

PiP World is a gamified platform designed to facilitate financial learning and trading. It offers a variety of experiences including PiP Academy (personalized financial education), PiP Trader (manage a virtual trading empire), and PiP StockRise (stock and crypto trading through Roblox). Users can also earn real money through games like PiP Gold Rush and participate in $PiPS token airdrops by demonstrating their market skills.

Trendies

Trendies raises $1.8 million in a pre-seed round with participation from Archetype*, Base Ecosystem Fund, Henri Stern, Marc Boiron, and Zhuoxun Yin.

Trendies is a social platform where users can earn rewards for posting content on social media platforms like Twitter and Farcaster. It is the first launchpad designed for holders to be rewarded for their participation in the community by creating memes, liking content, and staking tokens. 75% of the token supply is allocated to the rewards treasury, ensuring that active holders have access to the majority of the supply over time.

Apex Fusion

Apex Fusion raises $6M in seed funding round with participation from TRGC*.

Apex Fusion is a decentralized platform that connects the EVM and UTXO ecosystems, enabling seamless asset transfers and development across blockchain protocols. It includes Prime (Layer 1), Vector (UTXO-based Layer 2), and Nexus (EVM-compatible Layer 2), providing high-speed transactions and low fees. Prime provides security through Ouroboros PoS, while Reactor bridges assets between layers. The platform supports DeFi, gaming, and financial applications through scalable infrastructure.

Fission Labs 

Fission Labs raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed round of funding with participation from SALT fund, Kraynos Capital, and Anthony Scaramucci.

Fission is a DeFi platform that aims to bring venture capital on-chain. It enables cryptocurrency users and traditional financial players to invest in and trade tokens backed by private equity. The platform's first product is the VC secondary market token TECH. Fission aims to bridge the gap between venture capital and decentralized finance by tokenizing private equity investments on the Ethereum blockchain.

OpenGradient

OpenGradient raised $8.5M in a seed round led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), Coinbase Ventures, SV Angel, Balaji Srinivasan, Sandeep Nailwal, Illia Polosukhin, Canonical Crypto, Symbolic Capital (formerly Hyperedge Capital), SALT fund, Foresight Ventures, Near Foundation, Celestia Foundation, BlackDragon VC, Thanefield Capital, Pragma Ventures, Anand Iyer, Ryan Watkins, Ajit Tripathi, Paul Taylor, and Mo Dong.

OpenGradient is a decentralized platform for hosting, executing, and deploying AI models. It offers NeuroML, a Solidity framework that integrates AI reasoning with smart contracts, and a Python SDK for accessing its model repository and decentralized AI infrastructure. Its Model Hub serves as a repository for both open and closed-source models, enabling secure AI model inference across the network.

Semantic Layer 

Semantic Layer raised $3 million in a seed round with participation from Figment Capital*, Hack VC, Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Anagram, Fenbushi Capital, and Perridon Ventures.

Semantic Layer enhances incentive alignment and scalability for decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum by making meta-transactions programmable. It supports custom maximum extractable value (MEV) allocations and native scaling solutions, enabling developers to optimize interactions within their protocols.

Kiva AI

Kiva AI has raised $7M in a pre-seed round with participation from CoinFund*, ACTAI Ventures, Humbition, Hashkey Capital, NGC Ventures (NEO Global Capital), Foresight Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Protagonist, and Breed VC.

Kiva AI develops professional AI applications by leveraging human experts to annotate large datasets. It offers a comprehensive set of services, including data annotation, collection, and fine-tuning, with a focus on delivering high-quality, scalable solutions. By taking a “humans in the loop” approach, Kiva AI compensates overseas experts with cryptocurrency for their contributions, ensuring that AI models are more accurate.

APRO 

APRO raised $3M in a seed round with participation from Polychain Capital, ABCDE Capital, Franklin Templeton*, CMS Holdings, Comma3 Ventures, UTXO Management, Oak Grove Ventures, and Presto Labs.

APRO offers a powerful oracle solution designed to connect decentralized applications with real-world data. It provides reliable and secure access to off-chain data for a variety of use cases, including finance, gaming, and supply chain management. The platform is scalable and ensures accurate data delivery to smart contracts.

Other Investment Rounds

ZAP

ZAP raised $150K in a public sale round.

ZAP is a reputation-based token distribution protocol built on Blast that aims to ensure fair and merit-based token rewards by validating user contributions. It helps projects sustainably grow their communities through events like “Blast Gigadrops” that reward users for social and on-chain interactions across 20+ Blast ecosystem projects. ZAP is expanding its protocol to other blockchains, starting with Base, and is developing a no-coding token launcher and token launch platform to simplify access to venture-backed projects. ZAP is focused on rethinking the token launch experience and aims to provide a seamless way for cryptocurrency founders to distribute tokens.

delta 

Raised $11M in a round from Variant Fund, DBA, Figment Capital, Maven 11 Capital, Reverie, Castle Island Ventures, Credibly Neutral, Ambush Capital, Delphi Ventures, Robot Ventures, Public Works, Komorebi Collective, Ergodic Capital, Zero Knowledge Ventures.

Delta is a permissionless network that enables secure and efficient interoperability between member networks (domains). Each domain operates independently, while validators manage transactions and verify SNARKs (Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge). Users can transfer assets between domains without intermediaries and get built-in protection against censorship and downtime through forced migration.

Dragonz Land

Raised $9 million in a funding round from Syndicate Capital Group.

Dragonz Land is a play-and-earn trading card game built on the Venom blockchain, where each card is a unique NFT (non-fungible token). Players collect and develop hero cards with unique abilities, engage in battles, complete daily quests, and earn tokens through a variety of game modes. The game features a guild system, arcade leaderboards, and token rewards, providing players with a rich gaming experience that combines strategic gameplay with NFT-based ownership.

Bison Swap

Raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A funding round from Alves Ventures* and Dekrypt Capital.

BisonSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the BNB chain, designed to enable efficient and secure token swaps and liquidity provision. It provides users with the ability to trade multiple tokens while providing liquidity pools to earn rewards.

Bitlayer

Raised $9 million in Series A funding from Polychain Capital, Franklin Templeton, SCB Limited, Selini Capital, and G20 Group.

Bitlayer introduces itself as the first Bitcoin security equivalent Layer 2 solution based on BitVM. The innovative platform hopes to shape the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem through its key pillar solutions, which aim to improve the scalability, efficiency, and security of Bitcoin transactions. Bitlayer aims to empower developers and users within the Bitcoin community by providing advanced infrastructure for decentralized networks.

The Open Network

The Open Network (TON) has raised $10 million from Gate Ventures in a funding round.

TON (The Open Network) is a fully decentralized Layer-1 blockchain developed by Telegram. It offers fast transactions, low fees, user-friendly applications, and environmentally friendly features. TON aims to unite various blockchains and the existing Internet to provide a scalable and secure platform capable of hosting a wide range of applications and services.

TSFC 

TSFC has raised an undisclosed amount from Castrum Capital in a funding round.

TSFC is a decentralized infrastructure service provider for global financial markets, focusing on improving transparency and efficiency in cross-border trade finance. It provides secure and scalable solutions to simplify financial transactions, using technology to improve liquidity and trading processes.

About Humanode

Humanode has raised $10M in a funding round from Republic Crypto and Big Brain Holdings.

Humanode is a crypto-biometric network where “one person = one node” that uses private biometric technology to bring Sybil-resistant and innovative governance models to the crypto industry.