Crypto funding: Decentralization, privacy at forefront of a $17M week

A handful of crypto startups announced fundraises of $17.4 million this week, with some venture capital and grant program activity sprinkled in the mix.

Nomura was key in the $6 million raise by on-chain fund platform Solv Protocol. The Japanese banking giant’s crypto arm Laser Digital — a firm that scored a Dubai crypto license this week — participated in Solv’s round along with UOB Venture Management, Mirana Ventures, Emirates Consortium, Matrix Partners and others.

Solv v3 is a decentralized liquidity infrastructure that enables organizations to raise money through the creation of financial instruments. People are incentivized to kick in money with the opportunity to profit on higher yields. 

Solv v3 has over $160 million in assets under management across 66 fund pools, according to the Solv website. 

Payment ramps, zero-knowledge tech

Fiat and crypto payments platform Orbital secured 5 million Australian dollars (roughly $6.35 million) in its first institutional capital raise. The venture round was led by Golden Record Ventures with participation from New Form Capital, GSRV, Psalion and Luminous Futures.

Orbital chiefly serves businesses and operates as a fiat off-ramp for crypto payments from its customers. Its products also “integrate stablecoins, as well as other major cryptocurrencies and traditional currencies, into existing payment flows,” according to a press release.

Orbital intends to use the fresh capital to grow its business and develop products. The company says it has over 80 clients that process $250 million of value every month.

Separately, zkPass raised $2.5 million in a seed round. The project was incubated by Binance Labs, who was also an investor in the round. Other backers include Sequoia China, OKX Ventures, dao5 and Cypher Capital, among others. 

zkPass’s development efforts focus on zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation and three-party transport layer security, according to its website. The fresh funding will go toward building the zkPass pre-alpha test net, which has 190,000 people on the waiting list, according to The Block.

Other notable fundraises

• DeFi protocol Conic Finance raised $1 million from Curve founder Michael Egorov and secured a valuation of $17 million.
• D8X, an institutional decentralized exchange for derivatives on Polygon’s zkEVM, closed a $1.5 million pre-seed round. Polygon Ventures was among the investors. 
• The co-founders of Futureverse, a company focused on metaverse apps, just launched a new $50 million venture fund and studio. Futureverse raised $54 million last month.
• After completing a $19 million seed round in February, Monad Labs is launching a grant program for developers.

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