Financing Weekly Report | 13 public financing events; Perpl received a $9.25 million funding round led by Dragonfly to build a perpetual DEX based on Monad

Highlights of this issue

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 13 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (5.12-5.18), with a total fund size of more than 92.5 million US dollars, and the inflow of funds decreased compared with the previous week, as follows:

• DeFi announced 3 investment and financing events, including the decentralised perpetual contract exchange Perpl completed a $9.25 million financing led by Dragonfly;
• In the field of Web3+AI, two investment and financing events were announced, among which Antix, a platform focusing on hyper-realistic AI digital humans, announced the completion of a private placement of $8.2 million;
• In the infrastructure & tools sector, 4 investment and financing events were announced, among which Openverse Network, a Layer0 blockchain infrastructure platform, completed a $11 million strategic financing from investors including Castrum Capital;
• Other applications announced four investment and financing events, with venture capital firm a16z Crypto leading a $7 million seed round of blockchain ticketing platform KYD Labs

DeFi

Perpl received a $9.25 million funding round led by Dragonfly to build a perpetual DEX based on Monad

Perpl, a decentralised perpetual contract exchange, closed a $9.25 million funding round led by Dragonfly, with participation from Ergonia, Brevan Howard, Breed, L1D and CMS. Perpl plans to develop an on-chain central limit order book based on the Monad architecture, and the testnet is expected to be launched by the end of the year, and the mainnet will depend on the progress of the Monad mainnet. The project was founded by an American co-founder and relocated to London due to regulatory issues.

TrendX received a $5.2 million strategic investment from Animoca Brands and Cream Labs

TrendX, an on-chain smart trading platform, announced that it has closed a new round of strategic financing of $5.2 million, with investors including Animoca Brands and Cream Labs. After this round of financing, TrendX has raised a total of US$11.2 million, backed by 14 institutions in cutting-edge fields such as AI, DePIN, and DeFi. The funds will be used to drive product innovation and global expansion, and deepen cooperation with investors in on-chain data analysis and intelligent model construction.

DeFi strategy platform XSY.fi closed a $5 million Pre-A round of financing

DeFi strategy platform XSY.fi launched a beta version of Unity, a synthetic USD stablecoin (UTY) on the Avalanche blockchain, and announced the closing of a $5 million Pre-A round led by Protagonist Ventures and Borderless Capital, Paper Ventures, Chainview Capital, and Blizzard the Avalanche Fund and Sonic Boom Ventures. Users can stake AVAX to mint UTY and obtain passive income while maintaining their exposure to the original assets. UTY uses automated strategies to manage market risk without the need for active user action. The chief commercial officer of Ava Labs said that the product will enrich the DeFi tool portfolio of the Avalanche ecosystem. XSY simultaneously launched a limited-time points program, and users can accumulate points through minting, providing liquidity, etc., which can be exchanged for governance rights and interests in the future.

AI

Antix has closed an $8.2 million private placement to bring AI digital humans on-chain

Antix, a platform focused on hyper-realistic AI digital humans, announced the completion of an $8.2 million private placement funding, backed by more than 10,000 community investors, with plans to bring hyper-reality AI digital humans to the blockchain. It is reported that Antix has launched a tokenised digital human and identity economy to protect and monetise digital content IP. Its AIGE engine creates emotionally rich digital humans from images and mints them into NFTs. The core functionality of the platform is powered by the $ANTIX token, with a beta version scheduled for summer 2025.

Giza, an AI platform based on Web3 protocols, announced that it has closed a total of $5.2 million in funding

Giza, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform based on smart contracts and web3 protocols, announced that it has closed a total of $5.2 million in funding for Xenocognitive Finance, with investors including Base Ecosystem Fund, Echo, CoinFund, Re7 Capital, Stake Capital, ID Theory, CONTANGO, and others. According to reports, Giza is developing a trustless protocol that aims to realise the decentralisation of machine learning inference computing and provide a guarantee for the open economy of open source AI. It enables AI developers to generate zero-knowledge proofs, ensuring transparency and trustworthiness in the deployment of verifiable machine learning models.

Infrastructure & Tools

Openverse Network, a Layer0 blockchain infrastructure platform, has closed an $11 million strategic funding round

Openverse Network, a Layer0 blockchain infrastructure platform, recently announced the closing of an $11 million strategic funding round from investors including Castrum Capital, TB Ventures, DuckDAO, and Asva Capital. This round of financing will accelerate the development of its core protocol and mainnet upgrade, supporting cross-chain communication, unified identity, timestamping and naming services, and other functions. The Openverse mainnet has more than 300,000 TPS, supports VRC10/11/12 and other token standards, and is committed to building a programmable, efficient, and secure global value Internet.

Turtle Club Closes $6.2 Million Funding Round to Advance On-Chain Liquidity Distribution Protocol

Zurich, Switzerland-based Turtle Club announced on May 12, 2025 that it has closed a $6.2 million seed round to advance its on-chain liquidity distribution protocol. The financing was led by THEIA, with participation from SIG, Consensys, Laser Digital, etc., and angel investors such as Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum. Since its launch in March 2024, Turtle Club has integrated 51 protocols, activated more than $2.3 billion in liquidity, and registered 315,000 wallets.

Nirvana Labs, a blockchain cloud computing company, closed a $6 million seed expansion round led by Jump Crypto and others

Nirvana Labs, a blockchain cloud computing company, has closed a $6 million seed expansion round co-led by Jump Crypto and Crucible Capital, with participation from RW3 Ventures, Castle Island, and Hash3 VC, bringing its total funding to $11.8 million. The company offers computing services tailored specifically for the crypto space, and unlike traditional cloud service providers that concentrate computing resources, Nirvana uses a bare metal infrastructure that serves only one client per server. Nirvana already serves infrastructure providers such as BitGo and Fireblocks, as well as protocol foundations such as Avalanche and Berachain, and plans to serve as a front-end service to help organisations deploy on Internet filtering startup DoubleZero.

SpaceComputer closed a Pre-Seed round led by Primitive Ventures to build a space encryption system

SpaceComputer announced the closing of a Pre-Seed round led by Primitive Ventures, with participation from Nascent, Tangent, Symbolic Capital, Public Works, Merkle Ventures, and Star-Shield, and angel investors including Loi Luu, Sandeep Nailwal, and Meltem Demirors。 SpaceComputer is using satellites to build cryptographic systems that are resistant to physical sabotage and cyberattacks, and has launched its first product, ctRNG, which uses space entropy to generate true random numbers.

other

Bitcoin Strategy:

The Blockchain Group has closed over €22 million in funding to accelerate its Bitcoin funding strategy

The Blockchain Group (ALTBG), a European listed company, completed two rounds of financing totalling more than 22 million euros in a week, of which it raised 9.9 million euros through equity financing on May 9, a 61.7% premium to the 20-day average price, with investors including Tobam, Generali Ambition Solidaire, Jean-Marie Formigé, Quadrille Capital, and EFG Bank, VP Bank, etc. On May 12, another €12.1 million of Bitcoin-denominated convertible bonds were issued through a Luxembourg subsidiary, which was fully subscribed by Blockstream CEO Adam Back, representing a 30% premium to the first tranche of conversion prices. The funds will be used to strengthen bitcoin holdings and develop subsidiary businesses such as data intelligence and AI. As a core member of "Bitcoin For Corporates", the company explores Bitcoin-centric capital structure innovations, including Bitcoin-denominated bonds and hard asset reserve strategies.

Blockchain investment firm Coinsilium raised £1.25 million to launch a Bitcoin financial strategy

Blockchain investment firm Coinsilium Group has announced the closing of a £1.25 million institutional funding round and the simultaneous launch of a £250,000 retail fundraising plan to advance the Bitcoin Reserve strategy. The private placement was priced at 3p per share, and the oversubscribed funds will be injected into its wholly-owned subsidiary, Forza (Gibraltar) Limited, as the operating entity. Malcolm Palle, the company's executive chairman, said the funding would accelerate the implementation of the Bitcoin Reserve Program. At the same time, Oak Securities was appointed as an associate broker to strengthen the ability to operate the capital market. The new issue is expected to be listed on the Aquis Growth Market on 22 May, with a total share capital of 274.7 million shares upon completion. Board member James Van Straten highlighted that the company is fully focused on its Bitcoin reserve strategy, and the fundraising includes an arrangement to offset £196,800 of service fees with 6.56 million ordinary shares.

Consume:

a16z Crypto led a $7 million seed round from KYD Labs to revolutionise blockchain ticketing

Venture capital firm a16z Crypto led a $7 million seed round of blockchain ticketing platform KYD Labs. Built on Solana, KYD aims to empower artists and venues to control ticket sales, fan data and revenue, and solve the problem of revenue leakage caused by secondary market circulation. It is said that after using the KYD system, the ticketing revenue of the LPR of well-known New York venues has increased by up to 30%. KYD plans to expand to more than 100 U.S. venues by 2026 and launch two tokens, $KYD and $TIX, to strengthen the community and financial foundation.

XP, Solana's eco-ticketing platform, has closed a $6.2 million seed funding round

XP, a Solana-based ticketing platform, has closed a $6.2 million seed round led by Blockchange with participation from L1D and Reflexive. According to reports, the platform encodes tickets into NFTs and supports users to pay with USDC by connecting crypto wallets. Founder Mike Saunders revealed that the platform will soon launch a user-owned listing and resale function, and plans to provide fans with exclusive rewards and experiences through blockchain technology. Despite the platform's underlying Solana technology, there is little mention of crypto on the official website, and the founders have not made it clear whether to issue tokens.