Funding Wrap: Centrifuge raises $15M as investors bet on RWAs

It was something of an eye of the storm week for crypto funding, as the dust settled on two layer-1 megadeals last week and all of crypto braced for the fourth Bitcoin halving.

The week was nevertheless a standout one for deals in real-world assets, which refers to projects tokenizing off-chain goods like real estate or US Treasurys.

Centrifuge raised $15 million for a generalist real-world asset platform. The round was co-led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield, and follows on $7 million in strategic capital Centrifuge raised throughout 2022.

Centrifuge facilitates pools of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), including assets like loans, credit and real estate. These pools are designed specifically to manage RWA liquidity pools, which are assets locked in a smart contract that help facilitate a liquid market. These pools consist of assets locked in a smart contract to support a liquid market for these RWAs.

Centrifuge tokenizes assets by creating NFTs that embed links to detailed off-chain data. This method leverages blockchain technology to ensure transparency and accessibility while securing sensitive data off-chain, as outlined in the project’s documentation.

Centrifuge has also explored launching RWA liquidity pools on a variety of other chains, including Arbitrum and Base.

Centrifuge says $285 million worth in assets are held in its liquidity pools, a figure that increased quickly after sitting around $80 million at the end of 2022.

With the funding, “[w]e’ll continue to grow the team, invest in product development and support the broader tokenization ecosystem education and growth,” Centrifuge co-founder Lucas Vogelsang told Blockworks.

Also this week, tokenized real estate platform Homium raised a $10 million Series A to put home equity loans on the Avalanche blockchain. The round was led by University of Utah-linked Sorenson Impact Group and Avalanche’s “Blizzard” ecosystem fund.

Homium offers homeowners “shared appreciation” loans that are pooled with other loans and converted to a tokenized security. The product aims to provide tokenized access to home appreciation at scale. Homium’s loans are currently only available in Colorado.

RWA Inc, which focuses on fractional assets, announced a $1.175 million private funding round this week.

Puffer the latest restaking protocol to close a round

As EigenLayer went to a phased mainnet, liquid restaking protocol Puffer announced $18 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital.

Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Franklin Templeton and Fidelity Investments-linked Avon Ventures were among other participants in the round.

Puffer is rolling out a pufETH liquid restaking token that aims to offer holders exposure to yield from Ethereum staking and EigenLayer restaking. The protocol is not yet in mainnet.

Puffer is the third-largest liquid restaking protocol by total value locked (TVL) behind ether.fi and Renzo, according to DeFiLlama.

Elsewhere in liquid restaking, Aark closed a $6 million seed round for a perpetual futures DEX aiming to leverage liquid restaking tokens.

Other notable funding news

Massively multiplayer online game AVALON closed a $10 million round led by BITKRAFT Ventures and HASHED.
P2 Ventures committed $50 million via the Hadron Founders Club to support Polygon ecosystem startups.
Thruster, the second-largest protocol on Blast, raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Pantera Capital.
Andreessen Horowitz raised a $7.2 billion fund, but not for its crypto arm.
DeFi for content creators startup Matera raised $3.6 million.
Runes DEX raised a $2 million seed round for an exchange for the new fungible tokens slated to launch on Bitcoin at the halving.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.