Crypto funding: Web3 marketing, liquid staking lead a $14M week
The last week in August was a sleepy one for crypto fundraising, as four startups raised about $14 million.
On-chain marketing firm DeForm led the pack, securing $4.6 million of seed funding. Steve Jang’s Kindred Ventures led the round, with support from investor Elad Gil, Scalar Capital, Alchemy Ventures, Next Web Capital and others.
DeForm, based in San Francisco, has been building out a “crypto-native” client management software (CRM) so businesses and creators can make more meaningful insights about their customers.
The $4.6 million raised will be allocated to further developing DeForm’s CRM.
Non-fungible tokens also got some attention this week, with startup FirstMate raising $3.75 million to debut what it calls a “creator-owned NFT storefront builder.”
Dragonfly Capital was the main backer, with Coinbase Ventures and Next View Ventures also counting themselves as investors.
FirstMate’s new product is launching in partnership with Manifold.xyz, and it allows NFT creators to enforce their own royalty payout structure and customize their own site, according to a thread on X, formerly Twitter.
Liquid staking on Lightning?
European crypto investment firm Greenfield Capital led Stroom Network’s $3.5 million seed round, announcing the fresh funding early Thursday morning.
Stroom is aiming to roll out a liquid staking solution on Bitcoin’s Lightning network through its ERC-20 token, InBTC.
On its website, Stroom describes InBTC as a “liquid derivative” of bitcoin staked on Lightning that can be redeemed 1:1 for bitcoin.
Liquid staking has become popular on Ethereum, and now Stroom wants to bring a similar framework to Bitcoin.
Other notable fundraises
- Web3 talent network BuidlerDAO raised $2 million from Sequoia Capital and SevenX Ventures.
- Aerodrome, a new DeFi protocol on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base, has gotten over $175 million in deposits since around August 30, according to DeFiLlama.
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