Funding Roundup: Wary Investors Still Cutting Checks for Crypto

After centralized exchange FTX plunged into bankruptcy in November, investors have been cautiously evaluating their ventures into the cryptocurrency space.

Nevertheless, some large funding deals are still closing.

The largest is digital assets market maker Keyrock, which received a $72 million injection from investors including Ripple, SIX Fintech Ventures and Middlegame Ventures. 

Ripple’s director of institutional markets Maxime Fages says that this investment was made after observing Keyrock’s “global success” over the past three years.

“Under the leadership of Kevin, Jeremy and Juan, Keyrock has established themselves as a key player in the space by building scalable, enterprise grade solutions and taking a regulatory first approach,” Fages said.

This latest Series B round will be used to invest in infrastructure development for scalability and also work on licensing across Europe, US and Singapore, Keyrock said.

Another company which received a significant amount of money this past week is Web3 developer platform Fleek.

Fleek closed a $25 million Series A led by Polychain Capital with additional investments from Protocol Labs, Arweave, Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group, just to name a few.

The latest funding will help launch Fleek Network, its latest Web3 content application, in 2023. 

“With Fleek Network, we will be empowering developers and organizations with an easy and seamless mechanism for Web3 hosting and content delivery that will help deliver on the promise of creating a truly decentralized internet,” Harrison Hines, co-founder and CEO of Fleek, said.

Cross-chain bridge protocol Across also raised a significant amount of money this week. The project, which focuses on bridging between rollup chains and Ethereum mainnet and is powered by UMA, secured $10 million from Hack VC, Placeholder and Blockchain Capital.

The latest funding will bring the protocol’s valuation up to an estimated $200 million.

Other notable funding rounds this week include:

• Enterprise-grade staking technology provider Kiln secured 17 million euros in a financing round led by Illuminate Financial.
• Software solution designer Daylight received a $3 million seed investment co-led by Framework Ventures and Chapter One.
• Jupiter Exchange, an alternative asset exchange using fractional NFT technology, closed $5 million in seed funding led by White Hilt Capital.

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