Another week, another slew of fund raises. This week, we saw a slew of different raises that raised significant capital, with a modular blockchain solution and an infrastructure layer leading the pack when it comes to total amounts raised. There were also some notable, yet smaller, raises. Let’s get into it.First and foremost we have Avail, which raised $43 million in its Series A. In total, the modular blockchain solution raised $75 million when combining the pre-seed and seed rounds — which totaled $32 million — and Series A.Dragonfly Capital and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund participated in the round, alongside a series of other VC firms. “With this new capital, we are poised to accelerate our development, expand our global presence, and continue to address the most critical challenges facing Web3 today, such as blockchain fragmentation, insufficient data availability, and limited scaling,” said Anurag Arjun, Avail’s co-founder. “Additionally, it will help foster partnerships and collaborations with other players across the entire Web3 ecosystem, which is mission-critical for Avail’s success.”According to a press release, Avail will focus on its Unification Layer roadmap. The next update to that will be Avail Nexus to solve cross-rollup interoperability. The funding will also go towards developing Fusion Security, which would leverage “native assets of mature ecosystems and new rollup tokens.” “Fusion Security aims to provide robust crypto-economic guarantees, reinforcing Avail’s function as the unification layer for Web3,” Avail continued.Oh, wait, that’s just Mountain Protocol. Mountain Protocol raised $8 million in a round led by Multicoin Capital for USDM, a yield-bearing stablecoin. This brings the project’s total funding to $12 million. Coinbase Ventures and Castle Island Ventures also participated in the round. “When it comes to money, trust and safety are of primary importance. The source of yield should share the same sovereign risk as the underlying currency – no less, no more,” Vishal Kankani, Multicoin Capital’s principal, told Blockworks. “Earning yields without having to do anything is the only user experience that can scale stablecoins to billions of people. Treasury managers, crypto exchanges, and fintechs in emerging markets giving dollar exposure to their customers all must pay attention to USDM,” he continued. According to the press release, there’s $50 million USDM in circulation. It launched back in October 2023. It was granted a Digital Asset Business License by the Bermuda Monetary Authority to redeem, issue and sell USDM, the release said.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.
