– Blockdaemon closed a Series B funding round of USD $155m with a valuation of $1.255b, making it the world’s largest blockchain infrastructure company for node management and staking.
– The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Matrix Capital Management, Sapphire Ventures, and Morgan Creek Digital.
– This follows the company’s Series A Round in June 2021 of $28m, as well as previous strategic investments, bringing the total to just under $190m.
– Over the last 90 days, Blockdaemon has significantly accelerated its growth and increased its managed node count from 8,000 to 18,000, more than doubling its operational footprint.

– Portal is a self-hosted Layer 2 wallet and true cross-chain DEX on Bitcoin that makes atomic swaps between Bitcoin and other digital assets fast, secure, and private.
– Company announced the closing of an $8.5 million funding round to build a self-sovereign and uncensorable DeFi on Bitcoin.
– Portal offers the speed and liquidity of centralized platforms with the trust minimization guarantees of Bitcoin. From spot markets to options, p2p lending and borrowing, all using on-chain, peer to peer contracts and without third party custody or control, Portal unlocks Bitcoin’s potential to actually decentralize finance.
– Portal is built on top of its Layer 2 and Layer 3 technology, called Fabric, which is an open-source toolbox for deploying censorship-resistant layers on top of the Bitcoin base layer. Fabric enables the completely private, off-chain execution of “smart contracts” for asset issuance, P2P swaps, staking, liquidity, derivatives, and more.

– StormX, a cryptocurrency startup, raised $9m funding.
– The round was led by Optimista Capital.
– Total funding to date for the 23-person company is $47.7 million.

– Zerion is a San Francisco CA-based focused developer of an investing interface for decentralized finance (DeFi).
– The company raised $8.2m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Mosaic Ventures with participation from Placeholder, DCG, Lightspeed, Blockchain.com Ventures, DeFi Alliance Fund, Continue Capital, SevenX Ventures, G1 Ventures, Bitscale Capital, Wintermute, The LAO and a group of angel investors from the crypto community.

– Rarible is a Moscow, Russia-based NFT marketplace startup.
– The company closed a $14.2m Series A funding round.
– Backers included Venrock Capital, CoinFund and 01 Advisors.
– The new investment will be used to expand the company’s operations and its audience reach, launch Rarible NFT protocol, L2 solution for scalability and sustainability, credit card payments, adoption of Flow blockchain, multiple partnerships and drops, and more.

– Blockdaemon closed a $28m Series A funding round.
– The round was led by Greenspring Associates with participation from Goldman Sachs, BlockFi, Warburg Serres, Uphold, Voyager Digital Ltd., Illuminate Financial, and Hard Yaka.
– Existing seed round investors Boldstart Ventures, Coinfund, Kenetic, CoinShares, Borderless Capital, Blockchain.com Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Heavybit increased their investments.
– Blockdaemon is the foundational layer to the blockchain industry, enabling participants to stake and deploy nodes with institutional-grade security, scalability and reliability.
– Blockdaemon offers access to new financial infrastructure for a variety of market participants, from large financial institutions, exchanges and custodians to small, agile crypto native firms and developers.

– imToken, a world-class blockchain technology company best known for its secure decentralized digital wallet, today announced the completion of a US$30 million Series B financing led by Qiming Venture Partners, with participation from its lead Series A investor IDG Capital and new investors including Breyer Capital, HashKey, Signum Capital, Longling Capital, SNZ and co-founder of Fosun International, Mr. LIANG Xinjun.
– imToken was founded in 2016 to address a lack of user-friendly entry points to the cryptocurrency space. In line with its belief that digital asset wallets are the most secure and cost-effective way of banking, the company set out to make the world of decentralized digital wallets more easily and securely accessible by creating a wallet platform with unprecedented ease-of-use and industry leading platform security.

– BlockFi completed its series D fundraising round, which was led by new investors including Bain Capital Ventures, partners of DST Global, Pomp Investments, and Tiger Global.
– The $350m round follows three prior rounds totaling $100m within the last two years.
– The company’s series D round values the company at $3b and will enable further innovation in the product suite, accelerate expansion into new markets, and provide capital for select acquisition opportunities.
– BlockFi has added multiple senior executives and announced a number of retail and institutional investor-focused products and initiatives, including: a Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card; the BlockFi Bitcoin Trust; an OTC trading desk; and Private Client Services in Asia.

– 1Kosmos secured funding of $2.6m.
– The funding will be used to accelerate the company’s growth and product roadmap.
– 1Kosmos has assembled an advisory board that brings together top professionals in the cybersecurity industry.
– The company’s indisputable ID-proofing process leverages user-uploaded identity credentials.
– This eliminates the need for usernames and passwords or complex multi-factor authentication.
– 1Kosmos integrates with any application, website or operating system and doesn’t require additional software or technology.