Venture capital (VC) funding rounds are experiencing a significant surge as the cryptocurrency bull market makes a strong comeback. Aquarius, a crypto venture firm, recently announced the launch of a $600 million multistrategy liquidity fund aimed at boosting on-chain liquidity for blockchain foundations and ecosystem projects. The strategy fund is backed by Bitrise Capital, leading miners, family offices, and influencers. Apart from providing liquidity, the fund will also support various projects in the blockchain infrastructure, decentralized finance, artificial intelligence, Bitcoin ecosystem, modular architecture, and early-stage data layer sectors. Aquarius claims to be the first institutionalized fund of its kind, managing on-chain liquidity for blockchain projects and helping them meet their liquidity requirements.
Aquarius, founded by venture capitalist Lin Yang in Singapore in 2018, has previously supported notable projects like Conflux and made investments in emerging sectors such as new energy, advanced manufacturing, and finance. The firm recently relocated its headquarters to New York.
As the bull market in the crypto ecosystem gains momentum, projects are receiving significant funding. Crypto VC funding has exceeded $1 billion for the second consecutive month in 2022. In April, $1.02 billion was raised across 161 investment rounds, following a similar trend in March. This level of funding has not been seen since late 2022.
In another funding round, Securitize, a digital securities platform, raised $47 million in strategic funding led by BlackRock. Investors like Aptos Labs, Paxos, and Circle also participated in the round. BlackRock’s Joseph Chalom will join the Securitize board of directors and considers this investment as a step forward in their digital assets strategy to meet the future needs of their clients.
Puffer Finance, a liquid staking project built on Ethereum’s layer-2 solution EigenLayer, secured $18 million in a Series A funding round. Coinbase Ventures and Kraken Ventures were among the investors. Puffer Finance’s technology allows Ethereum validators to reduce their initial capital requirement to just 1 Ether, significantly lower than the previous requirement of 32 ETH for individual stakers. The protocol has gained popularity and achieved a total value locked of $1.4 billion shortly after its launch in February.
The market has experienced a dramatic shift from a year ago when projects were advised to focus on survival due to a lack of capital. The situation has changed with Bitcoin’s recovery, which has gained over 300% since the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022. The approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds worldwide and the gradual repayment of creditors’ funds stuck on the defunct exchange have fueled this growth. Some VC experts predict that the current bull market will surpass the previous initial coin offering boom seen in early 2018.
In summary, the crypto bull market has led to a surge in VC funding rounds. Aquarius has launched a $600 million liquidity fund, and projects like Securitize and Puffer Finance have secured significant funding. The market has transformed from a year ago, with Bitcoin’s recovery and the potential for another initial coin offering boom.