TLDR:
- Humanity Protocol reaches unicorn status with a $30 million seed round led by Kingsway Capital.
- Other notable companies receiving funding include Arch Labs, Uxuy, Arcium, Gnosis, Zeal, and Zest Protocol.
More crypto startups are raising seed rounds and pre-A funding. Below are some key highlights from recent venture capital (VC) activities:
Humanity Protocol, a decentralized identity solution, has achieved unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation after securing $30 million in a seed round led by Kingsway Capital. Investors included Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com, Hashed, Shima Capital, and others. The funds will be used to expand the team and develop products ahead of the public testnet launch in the second half of 2024.
Arch Labs, a New York-based company, raised $7 million in seed funding to enhance its Bitcoin-native application platform. Multicoin Capital led the round, with participation from other firms. Arch Labs is developing a “bridgeless” trading experience directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Uxuy, based in Singapore, secured $7 million in pre-A funding to promote efficient, low-cost transactions of various assets. Binance Labs, among others, participated in the funding round. Uxuy aims to provide a seamless trading experience across different blockchain networks.
Arcium, an on-chain confidential computing project from Bern, Switzerland, received $5.5 million in funding. The round was led by Greenfield Capital and saw participation from Coinbase, Heartcore Capital, and others. Arcium is building a parallelized confidential computing network using multiparty computation execution environments for secure computation on encrypted data.
Gnosis partnered with Zeal and invested $2 million in the digital wallet creator. This strategic partnership aims to enhance the Ethereum sidechain ecosystem. Gnosis also invested $2 million in Zeal, bringing the total funding raised to $9 million.
Zest Protocol, a Bitcoin lending protocol, raised $3.5 million to enable BTC holders to generate yields on-chain. The seed round, led by Tim Draper, also saw contributions from Binance Labs, Flow Traders, and others. Zest Protocol leverages the Nakamoto upgrade by Bitcoin layer-2 Stacks and sBTC to provide a fully native Bitcoin lending experience.
