VC monthly report: In January, the number of financing increased significantly

Author: WuBlockchain

According to the statistics of Messari, there were 74 public investment projects of crypto VC in January, with a month-on-month increase of 48% (50 projects in December 2022) and a year-on-year decrease of 55% (166 projects in January 2022). Industry-level classification is as follows:

Among the sectors of the crypto market in January, infrastructure projects accounted for the largest share of funding, accounting for about 30%. CeFi, DeFi, and NFT/GameFi accounted for about 4%, 14%, and 11%, respectively.

Total financing in January was $570 million, down 13.7% month-over-month ($660 million total in December 2022) and down 90.4% year-over-year ($5.89 billion total in January 2022). The amount of funding declined for four consecutive months to the lowest in nearly two years, with rounds of more than $10 million (excluding CEfis, miners and other centralized institutions) as follows:

Plai Labs, which is developing a decentralized SocialFi platform, was led by a16z. The funding will be used to scale its team and hire developers to combine Web3 and AI.

Nil Foundation, a ZK technology developer currently valued at $220 million, was joined by Starkware and Mina Protocol, among others. The funds will be used to further roll out proof-of-market protocols and build solutions that can improve the speed, security, and reliability of data on the blockchain.

Ulvetanna, a ZKP technology developer currently valued at $55 million, completed the round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Paradigm, with participation from Jump Crypto. Ulvetanna plans to generate ZKP for layer2 ZKEVM networks.

Parfin is an infrastructure developer that is currently developing Parchain, a permissioned EVM-compatible blockchain that will enable regulated entities to participate in DeFi and Tokenization. The seed round was led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Alexia Ventures and others. The company plans to launch the Token for Parchain by the end of the second quarter or the third quarter of this year.

The Easy Company, a social crypto wallet provider designed to combine user profiles with social features, is designed with cross-chain functionality and is currently compatible with Ethereum and Polygon NFTS, with plans to support more blockchains in the future. The round was participated by Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Tapestry, Upside, and Scribble, among others.

Obol Technologies is a decentralized staking protocol that provides trust-free verification nodes on Ethereum, providing users with an extensible layer to configure, monitor, and deploy multi-operator pledge collections without the need to contact other operators or manage complex infrastructure configurations. The round was led by ConsenSys, Acrylic Capital, Coinbase Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Blockdaemon, Delphi Digital, Stakefish, Figment Fund, Chorus One, Staking Facilities and The LAO participated.

Intella X is a game development platform, developed by South Korean gaming company Neowiz in collaboration with Polygon, that aims to remove barriers to entry and improve user experience in web3 with features like simplified wallet creation and transactions. The round saw participation from Polygon, Animoca Brands and Magic Eden, among others.