March crypto VC roundup: Third-highest monthly inflows in crypto’s history 

This article is part of a monthly series from The Block that takes a closer look at where the most recent venture capital investments have been flowing.

Crypto VC funding shows no signs of slowdown despite a sideways trading market. In fact, March saw the third-highest monthly investment in the history of crypto, after January and February both set records.

Over 225 crypto startups received more than $3.5 billion worth of VC cash last month, bringing the first quarter's total to nearly $12.5 billion. This is once again the highest quarterly investment in the history of crypto — breaking the previous record of $10.4 billion set in the fourth quarter of 2021.

One particular category that stood out for the second month in a row was blockchain infrastructure. There were several mega-deals worth over $100 million in this category, including from ConsenSys, Aptos and Optimism.

Another category that saw drew huge amounts of capital in March was NFT and blockchain gaming. Nearly 45% of all deals were in this category during the month, attracting over $1.2 billion in total investment.

Below is the March roundup, organized by category, of all the VC fundraises worth more than $10 million announced last month.

Exchanges, custodians and lenders 

There were eight raises larger than $10 million by firms specifically focused on crypto trading, lending and custody.

Hex Trust, a Hong Kong-based institutional crypto custodian, raised $88 million in a Series B funding round. Animoca Brands and Liberty City Ventures co-led the round, with Ripple, Terra, BlockFi, CoinList, Wintermute, Sino Global Capital and others participating.

Blofin, a China-based crypto financial services provider, raised $50 million in a Series B funding round. KuCoin led the round, with Fenbushi Capital, Draper Dragon and others participating.

VALR, a South African crypto exchange, raised $50 million in a Series B funding round. Pantera Capital led the round, with Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, GSR, and Avon Ventures (a fund affiliated with the parent company of Fidelity Investments) also participating. 

Crypto copy trading platform Zignaly announced up to a $50 million funding commitment from GEM Global Yield LLC SCS. The funding commitment was in exchange for Zignaly's native ZIG tokens.

Milo, a fintech startup that provides mortgage loans against crypto as collateral, raised $17 million in a Series A funding round. M13 Ventures, the investment firm co-founded by Paris Hilton's husband Carter Reum, led Milo's round. Other investors included QED Investors and MetaProp.

Crypto trading platform CoinRoutes raised $16 million in a Series B funding round led by Ayon Capital. Other investors included Susquehanna International Group, Cboe Global Markets, Celsius, CMT Digital, Genesis Global Trading, Galaxy Digital and GSR.

Prometheum, a crypto startup that provides a blockchain-based platform for issuance, trading and settlement of digital asset securities, raised $15 million in new funding. It did not disclose investors. 

Haruko, a London-based startup that helps institutional investors gain access to crypto, raised $10 million in seed funding. Portage Ventures and White Star Capital co-led the round. Haruko provides access to both centralized exchanges and DeFi protocols.

NFTs, and gaming and the metaverse

March saw 21 raises larger than $10 million for firms specifically focused on NFTs or blockchain gaming.

Yuga Labs, the company behind the popular NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club, raised $450 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other investors included Animoca Brands and its subsidiary The Sandbox, FTX Ventures and MoonPay. The round brought Yuga Labs' valuation to $4 billion.

Immutable, the developer of NFT-focused Ethereum scaling network Immutable X, raised $200 million in a Series C funding round and is now valued at $2.5 billion. Temasek led the round, with Animoca Brands, Tencent, ParaFi Capital, Mirae Asset, Alameda Research and others participating.

FanCraze, an India-based NFT marketplace focused on cricket collectibles, raised $100 million. Insight Partners led the funding, with participation from Tiger Global, Coatue Management, Sequoia Capital India, Cristiano Ronaldo's CR7 and others. 

Loco, an India-based esports and gaming streaming platform, raised $42 million in a Series A financing round. Investors included Hashed, Krafton, Makers Fund, Korea Investment Partners and Hiro Capital. Loco plans to scale its gaming platform around blockchain technology.

Magic Eden, the largest NFT marketplace on the Solana blockchain, raised $27 million in a Series A funding round. Paradigm led the round, with Sequoia Capital, Solana Ventures, Electric Capital and others participating.

Crypto Unicorns, an NFT collection and a play-to-earn game by the Laguna Games studio, raised $26 million in a token sale. Investors included Backed VC, Bitkraft Ventures, Delphi Digital, Polygon Studios and CoinFund. 

MetaMagnet, the operator of Terra-based blockchain gaming platform C2X, raised $25 million in a private token sale. FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto and Animoca Brands co-led the funding. Other investors included Hashed, Terra, Galaxy Interactive, DeFiance Capital, Crypto.com, and Huobi Ventures. 

Upshot, an NFT appraisal platform, raised $22 million in a Series A2 funding round led by Polychain Capital. Other investors included Framework Ventures, CoinFund, Blockchain Capital, Slow Ventures, Mechanism Capital, and Delphi Digital. Upshot helps appraise the value of NFTs. 

Play-to-earn fighting game MetalCore raised $15 million in funding led by Bitkraft Ventures. Other investors included Delphi Digital, Immutable, Sanctor Capital, Animoca Brands, Yield Guild Games and Merit Circle.

Joyride Games, a platform for building and operating blockchain-based games, raised $14 million. Investors included Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, Solana Ventures, Dapper Labs and Bitkraft Ventures. 

IQ Protocol, a crypto project that aims to provide NFT lending and other services, raised $12 million. Crypto.com Capital led the funding, with GSR, One Block Capital, AU21 Capital, NGC Ventures and others participating.

Cross the Ages, a Polygon-based collectible card game, raised $12 million in a seed round. Investors included gaming giant Ubisoft, Animoca Brands and Polygon.

Ampverse, a Singapore-based e-sports startup, raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Falcon Capital. Other investors included Vulpes and Gandel Invest. Ampverse plans to set up a new play-to-earn gaming business unit and acquire play-to-earn gaming guilds.

NFT marketplace Blur raised $11 million in a seed funding round. Paradigm led the round, with eGirl Capital, 0xMaki, LedgerStatus, and others participating.

Inworld AI, a platform to create AI-powered characters for virtual worlds, including games and metaverse applications, raised $10 million in strategic funding led by Bitkraft Ventures. Other investors included the Venture Reality Fund and Kleiner Perkins.

Rarify, an API platform that helps create, manage and verify NFTs, raised $10 million in Series A funding at a $100 million valuation. Pantera Capital led the funding. Other investors included Slow Ventures, Eniac Ventures and Greycroft.

Space Runners, a crypto startup focused on creating NFTs and digital wearables, raised $10 million in a round co-led by Pantera Capital and Polychain Capital. 

Metaverse Game Studios, a blockchain game development studio and the publisher of the Angelic game, raised $10 million. Pantera Capital, Animoca Brands, Solana Ventures, and Everyrealm co-led the round. Other investors included OKX Blockdream Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Morningstar Ventures and Huobi Ventures.  

TravelX, a blockchain-based travel distribution startup that utilizes NFTs, raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Borderless Capital. Other backers included Algorand, Draper Cygnus, Myelin Capital and Monday Capital.

London-based gaming studio Lava Labs raised $10 million in a Series A funding round at a valuation of over $100 million. The round was led by Swiss investment firm Dialectic. Other investors included Merit Circle, Dragonfly, DeFiance Capital, Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs and Maven 11.

Indian fitness technology startup GOQii raised $10 million in an extended Series C round from Animoca Brands. GOQii plans to launch a health metaverse and its own token that will allow users to purchase NFTs and access medical services and insurance products.

Don't forget DeFi and Web3 

There were 10 raises that surpassed $10 million for DeFi projects in March, with Composable Finance and Phi Labs raising the biggest rounds. 

Composable Finance, a DeFi project focused on blockchain interoperability, raised $32 million in a Series A funding round. Investors included GSR, Tendermint Ventures, Fundamental Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Jump Capital, and Spartan Group. 

Phi Labs, a contributor to the Cosmos-based smart contract platform Archway, raised $21 million in a seed funding round. CoinFund and Hashed co-led the round, with Blockchain Capital, Wintermute, Figment, Chorus One, Stake.fish and others participating.

DeFi platform Thetanuts Finance raised $18 million in seed funding. Three Arrows Capital, Deribit, QCP Capital and Jump Crypto participated in the round. Thetanuts offers DeFi structured products that accept tokens from multiple blockchains as collateral, with the aim of offering the most competitive risk-adjusted yield opportunities.

Praxis, which is aiming to build a new city "organized around the value of vitality" to enable people to live healthier, more purposeful lives, raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Paradigm. Other investors included Three Arrows Capital, Alameda Research, Apollo Projects and Robot Ventures.

CoW Protocol, which powers the decentralized exchange CowSwap, raised $23 million. Investors included Blockchain Capital, Cherry Ventures, Ethereal Ventures, and CoW Protocol's community members, known affectionately as "CoWmunity". 

Orange DAO, a crypto collective created by Y Combinator alumni for backing web3 startups, raised $15 million from the Near Foundation. Orange DAO aims to specifically support startups that are building on the NEAR blockchain.

Social Good Foundation, a Japan-based developer of the SocialGood App that gives users crypto rewards for shopping, raised $14.2 million in Series A funding from Miyako Capital. 

IQ Protocol, a DeFi project that provides the ability to create wrapped digital assets (both fungible and non-fungible), raised $12 million in funding led by Crypto.com Capital. Other investors included GSR, One Block Capital, AU21 Capital, NGC Ventures and GBV Capital.

Decentralized workspace provider Skiff raised $10.5 million in fresh funding led by Sequoia Capital. Skiff says it offers an end-to-end encrypted workspace that lets people control their data. "Everything from building a personal knowledge base to writing collaborative meeting notes is done in complete privacy. No one, not even Skiff, can ever see the title, content, or description of a user's document," says Skiff.

Lunar Labs, the team behind the Polkadot-based lending protocol Moonwell Artemis, raised $10 million in a round co-led by Hypersphere Ventures and Arrington Capital. Other investors included Katie Haun's new VC Haun Ventures, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures and Signum Capital. 

Tools of the trade

The remaining 16 fundraises from March above $10 million were from the infrastructure category. They include firms developing blockchain networks as well as tools developers and enterprises.

Ethereum development studio ConsenSys raised $450 million in a Series D funding round at a valuation of over $7 billion. ParaFi Capital led the round, with Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Third Point, Marshall Wace and others participating.

Aptos, a blockchain project founded by former Meta employees, raised $200 million in a round led by a16z. Three Arrows Capital, Tiger Global, FTX Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Multicoin Capital also participated. The Aptos team is building a Layer 1 blockchain network, being inspired by Meta's Diem network.

Ethereum scaling startup Optimism raised $150 million in a Series B funding round at a $1.65 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Paradigm and a16z. 

LayerZero Labs, the team behind the blockchain interoperability protocol LayerZero, raised $135 million at a $1 billion valuation. Sequoia Capital, FTX Ventures and a16z co-led the round, with Coinbase Ventures, PayPal Ventures, Tiger Global, Uniswap Labs, and others participating. 

The Mina Ecosystem, a group representing several teams behind the privacy-focused blockchain protocol Mina, raised $92 million in a token sale. Three Arrows Capital and FTX Ventures co-led the raise, with Alan Howard, Brevan Howard, Amber Group, Circle Ventures, Pantera Capital and others participating.

US-based bitcoin mining startup Blockmetrix raised $43 million in a Series B equity funding round. The firm did not disclose investors but said they are based in the US, Australia, and Asian countries, "many of which focus on crypto, tech, and mining companies."

Tenderly, a blockchain infrastructure startup that helps web3 developers build products easily, raised $40 million in a Series B funding round. Spark Capital led the round, with Accel, Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Labs and others participating.

Subspace Labs, the developer of Layer 1 blockchain Subspace Network, raised $32.9 million in a round led by Pantera Capital. Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Alameda Research, ConsenSys Mesh, KR1, GSR Ventures and others participated.

Espresso Systems, which is developing a privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain network using ZK-rollups technology, raised $32 million in funding led by Greylock Partners and Electric Capita. Sequoia Capital, Blockchain Capital and Slow Ventures also participated. 

Tarun Chitra's Gauntlet raised $23.8 million in new funding at a $1 billion valuation. Ribbit Capital led the round, with Polychain Capital and Paradigm participating. Gauntlet provides services for DeFi protocols and decentralized organizations to help them in areas such as risk management.

Ponto, a startup that provides trading infrastructure to enterprises for offering crypto and DeFi products, raised $20 million in a seed funding round. General Catalyst, Polychain and Nomo VC co-led the round, with 6h Man Ventures, Alchemy, Fintech Fund, Chapter One and others participating.

DeFi analytics startup Treehouse Finance raised $18 million in seed funding. The round was led by an undisclosed "large fintech investor" with participation from several others, including Binance, Lightspeed, Wintermute, GSR and Jump Capital. Treehouse provides a DeFi portfolio analytics platform to help users analyze their risk, profit and loss. 

China-based enterprise blockchain firm Points Technology raised $15.8 million in Series A funding. The firm provides a blockchain-based platform that helps companies secure their data without exposing it. 

DAO infrastructure startup Upstream raised $12.5 million in a Series A funding round. Boldstart Ventures led the round, with Ibex Investors, Tiger Global, Vayner Fund, Fenbushi Capital, Panoramic Ventures, The Medici Group and others participating.

Web3 infrastructure startup EthSign raised $12 million in a seed funding round and all three units of the Sequoia VC — Sequoia Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Sequoia Capital China — backed its round in the first such deal. EthSign is like a decentralized version of DocuSign. It allows users to sign and manage agreements electronically.

WalletConnect, a web3 infrastructure startup that allows users to connect crypto wallets with decentralized applications via QR codes, raised $11 million in a Series A funding round. Union Square Ventures and 1kx co-led the round, with Coinbase Ventures, Semantic Ventures, Zerion and others participating. 

New crypto VC funds

Venture capital firms have to raise funds, too. The largest rounds in March came from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Haun Ventures and Electric Capital. Overall, the month saw 17 new fund launches by both existing and new VC firms. 

Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, which is an investor in crypto startups including Paxos, raised more than $5 billion for its two new funds — a $1.9 billion early-stage fund and a $3.4 billion growth-stage vehicle.

Katie Haun, a former general partner at a16z, debuted her crypto VC named Haun Ventures. The firm raised $1.5 billion for its first fund. The amount will be divided into two segments: $500 million for early-stage startups and $1 billion for later-stage projects.

Crypto VC Electric Capital raised $1 billion for two new funds: a $400 million venture fund and a $600 million token fund. The funds will invest in several verticals of the crypto sector, including DeFi, NFTs, DAOs and blockchain infrastructure.

Gaming-focused VC Griffin Gaming Partners raised a new $750 million fund. It plans to invest in web3 startups focused on gaming, infrastructure and social platforms. Its current investments include blockchain gaming platform Forte and messaging app Discord. 

VC giant Bain Capital launched a $560 million crypto-focused fund. The fund, dubbed Bain Capital Crypto, will invest in startups from early to late stage and participate in both equity and token deals.

European VC Hiro Capital launched its second fund, worth €300 million (over $330 million). The fund, dubbed videogames and metaverse technologies venture fund, will invest in startups building games, creator and gamified fitness platforms.

Asian crypto VC Spartan Group launched new funds worth $300 million. First, a $200 million metaverse fund to invest in NFT and blockchain gaming startups. Second, a $100 million web3 venture-building studio that will help founders ideate, launch and scale crypto startups. 

Bessemer Venture Partners launched its first crypto-dedicated fund worth $250 million. The fund will invest in various startups, including DeFi and blockchain infrastructure. 

Crypto exchange Okcoin, the Stacks Foundation and Stacks Accelerator launched a $165 million fund called Bitcoin Odyssey. The fund, backed by Digital Currency Group, GSR and others, will back startups building on the Bitcoin-linked Stacks blockchain. 

Crypto lender Nexo established a venture arm, Nexo Ventures, with a $150 million fund. The fund will invest in a variety of web3 startups, including DeFi, NFT, blockchain gaming, payments and trading infrastructure, and compliance services.

Tekin Salimi, a former general partner of crypto VC Polychain Capital, launched a $125 million crypto fund for seed investments. The fund, called dao5, plans to convert into a DAO in the future. It will first invest its committed capital and then convert the fund into an on-chain treasury of crypto assets. As part of the DAO transition, it will also issue DAO5 governance tokens to its investment team, advisors, and every founder it backs.   

Blockchain-focused VC gumi Cryptos Capital launched its second fund worth $110 million. The fund looks to invest in early-stage crypto startups in areas such as infrastructure, developer tools, gaming, DeFi, metaverse, DAOs, and guilds.

Cake DeFi, a crypto lending and staking services provider based in Singapore, launched a venture unit with a $100 million fund. The unit, Cake DeFi Ventures, plans to invest in fintech and web3 startups, including blockchain gaming.

Qualcomm, one of the world's largest smartphone chipmakers, launched a $100 million metaverse fund. Dubbed the Snapdragon Metaverse Fund, the vehicle will invest in companies building extended reality (XR) experiences as well as augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. 

Dubai-based VC Cypher Capital launched a $100 million crypto fund to invest in seed-stage startups, including DeFi and gaming. It plans to deploy on average $2 million to $5 million each month and focus on investing in the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia regions. 

OP Crypto VC launched a $50 million fund backed by high-profile investors, including billionaires Bill Ackman and Alan Howard, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, Terra founder Do Kwon, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and Asian gaming giant Animoca Brands. OP Ventures Fund I will invest in startups focused on DeFi and the metaverse.

A new NFT fund dubbed Curated was debuted worth $30 million. Founded by collectors Andrew Jiang and Todd Goldberg, Curated plans to invest in NFTs and support creators and help them build communities.