Venture capital firms are looking for new ways to invest in early-stage projects by partnering with blockchain ecosystems, as investors show renewed interest heading into 2025.
In December, the layer-2 ecosystem Morph announced a joint initiative with 14 venture firms, including Pantera Capital, Spartan Group, Foresight Ventures, MEXC Ventures, Social Graph Ventures, Rockaway, Levitate Labs, Every Realm, Bloccelerate, MH Ventures, Laser Digital, Paperclip Partners, Public Works, and Borderless Capital.
The group aims to accelerate projects on the network’s ecosystem, providing startups with access to investors and mentorship from the ideation stage to token launch. “We’re gathering all the resources builders need, not just access to venture capital,” a spokesperson for Morph told Cointelegraph.
The Web3 ecosystem has seen a surge in investor interest in early-stage startups, with venture firms announcing new funds to support blockchain-based companies. Some of the firms that have recently raised capital include Portal Ventures, DragonFly, Pantera Capital, Hack VC, VanEck, and Parafi Capital. Combined, these funds are expected to invest around $2 billion in crypto startups in the coming months.
In December, several startups raised capital, including Brighty, AgriDex, Yei Finance, Superform, Waterfall Network, and Union.
Brighty secured $10 million in funding led by Futurecraft Ventures to expand its crypto-card payments services in Europe and the United Kingdom. The startup offers users European IBAN accounts linked to credit cards, as well as custodial wallet addresses on Ethereum, Tron, Polygon, and Arbitrum networks.
AgriDex, a Solana-based marketplace for real-world assets, raised $9 million in a funding round led by Sycamore Gap. The platform enables on-chain trading of agricultural commodities, including wine, coffee, olive oil, and livestock. It offers instant settlements, low transaction fees, and records on non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Yei Finance raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by Manifold to develop its v2 decentralized lending platform. The platform is designed for borrowing and lending across blockchains and integrates Circle’s CCTP for native USD Coin (USDC) transfers. Its v2 introduces isolated lending pools for specific assets and risk profiles, as well as yield-bearing tokens like yUSDC.
Superform raised $3 million in a seed+ extension round led by VanEck Ventures to launch SuperVaults, its native yield products that automate non-custodial, high-yield savings. The first product, SuperUSDC, is a stablecoin vault for USDC on Ethereum, offering passive returns across leading protocols.
Waterfall Network, a layer-1 decentralized ledger, raised $11.6 million to improve its blockchain infrastructure. The funding will support research and development to enhance node simplification, infrastructure, and blockchain scalability. Waterfall Network is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible platform that uses directed acyclic graph (DAG) architecture for parallel transaction processing and consensus.
Union, a zero-knowledge (ZK) settlement layer, raised $12 million in a Series A round to develop its crosschain ZK layer. The round was led by Gumi Cryptos Capital and Longhash Ventures, with participation from Borderless Capital and other venture firms. Union leverages ZK-proofs for secure message passing, asset transfers, and crosschain transactions, and its Ethereum to IBC bridge facilitates liquidity between different ecosystems.
These funding rounds follow previous investments in these startups, demonstrating the continued growth and interest in the blockchain and crypto industry.