This Issue's Highlights
Last week, activity in the crypto primary market decreased slightly, while on-chain transactions and Web3 AI continued to attract increased capital investment. According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were nine investment and financing events in the global blockchain space last week (June 29 – July 5), with a total funding volume exceeding $506 million, as summarized below:
- The DeFi sector announced three investment and financing events, including Extended, a chain-based perpetual futures exchange, which secured a $12.5 million strategic investment led by eToro.
- Three investment and financing events were announced in the Web3+AI space, including privacy-first AI platform Venice AI completing a $65 million Series A round at a $1 billion post-money valuation;
- In the prediction markets sector, one funding event was announced: prediction market index provider Adjacent completed a $2.5 million Pre-Seed round, with participation from VanEck and others.
- In the centralized finance sector, one investment and financing event was announced: Lion Group plans to invest up to $12 million in PT Nusantara Bumi Sangkara, an Indonesian stablecoin developer.
- One other investment event was announced: Ionic Digital completed a private financing round of approximately $400 million, led by Attestor.
DeFi
On-chain perpetual futures exchange Extended completes a $12.5 million strategic funding round led by eToro.
Digital brokerage eToro has announced it is leading a $12.5 million strategic investment round in the on-chain perpetuals exchange Extended, with participation from Jump Crypto and Alber Blanc. eToro plans to directly integrate Extended’s perpetuals engine into Zengo, its self-custody wallet acquired for $70 million, enabling users to trade on-chain derivatives while retaining custody of their assets. In the future, the platform will expand to include a broader range of DeFi products. Extended is led by Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, former head of crypto at Revolut, and has processed over $245 billion in trading volume as of June, supporting more than 100 perpetual markets, with plans to expand into spot trading, tokenized RWA, and multi-asset collateralization.
Blockchain-based private credit platform Techdollar completes $3 million Pre-Seed funding round.
Blockchain-based private credit platform Techdollar has announced the completion of a $3 million Pre-Seed funding round, with investors including NoLimit Holdings, Reforge VC, and individual investors such as Newmichwill, RoyLearner, and Ansem. Techdollar is a blockchain-based private credit platform that enables founders, employees, venture investors, and family offices to secure loans backed by equity in private technology companies without selling shares. The platform utilizes a stablecoin-style issuance mechanism and integrates with on-chain liquidity infrastructure to facilitate rapid capital access, while maintaining private, off-chain custody and compliant underwriting processes.
The DEX Arcus, developed by the dYdX team, has launched on Robinhood Chain and received investment from Robinhood Crypto.
Arcus, a decentralized exchange developed by the dYdX team, has officially launched on Robinhood Chain, offering 24/7 trading of 95 tokenized stocks and perpetual contracts with zero fees. Arcus supports tokenized trading of stocks, commodities, indices, and crypto assets—all tokenized stocks are issued and redeemable on Robinhood Chain, enabling self-custody and integration with the DeFi ecosystem. Robinhood Crypto has invested in Arcus. Future plans for Arcus include supporting tokenized stocks and crypto assets as collateral for perpetual contracts, as well as offering Pre-IPO trading for popular private companies like OpenAI.
Web3 + AI
Venice AI raises $650 million in Series A funding, reaching a $1 billion valuation
Privacy-first AI platform Venice AI has announced the completion of a $65 million Series A round, valuing the company at $1 billion post-money, led by crypto-focused venture firm Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others. Founded two years ago, Venice AI offers access to over 200 open-source and proprietary models, claims to be “uncensored,” and emphasizes end-user encryption and zero data retention. The platform currently boasts over 3 million monthly active users and approximately 1.7 million daily API calls, generating annualized revenue exceeding $70 million and achieving profitability. The company plans to use the new funding to purchase GPUs and build its own data centers, reducing reliance on leased GPU resources and improving gross margins.
Predictive behavior AI network THEA completes $8 million funding round led by Maven 11 Capital and others.
The AI network THEA, focused on predictive behavior in risk markets, has raised $8 million to build its Solana-based coordination layer and expand its AI infrastructure. This round was led by Maven11 Capital, Spartan Group, ManifoldTrading, HackVC, and Fisher8 Capital.
THEA, founded in 2024 and headquartered in the Cayman Islands, trains its AI models on over 35 billion real-world decision datasets. Its core product is predictive behavior AI designed for risk markets. The company plans to launch THEA Network—a coordination layer that routes inference requests and settles transactions on Solana, while keeping large-scale data processing off-chain. THEA also intends to introduce a utility token to tokenize access to its autonomous systems.
Kled AI, an AI data marketplace in the Solana ecosystem, has received a $3 million investment from The Data Foundation.
Solana ecosystem AI data marketplace Kled AI has secured a $3 million investment from The Data Foundation, bringing its total funding to $14 million. Kled AI aims to build a human data marketplace where users contribute data by uploading files through its consumer app. The platform has already collected over 12,000 structured datasets, including egocentric, medical, and urban mobility data, available for purchase by AI labs and enterprises to train models.
Prediction markets
Predictive market index provider Adjacent has raised $2.5 million in a Pre-Seed round, with participation from VanEck and others.
Predictive market index provider Adjacent has announced the completion of a $2.5 million Pre-Seed round, with investors including Night Capital, VanEck, UFO Holdings, Maven11, and DCG. Adjacent, an independent third-party provider of event contracts and predictive market indices, launched its U.S. election index series, RED and BLUE, this week. Adjacent is rapidly expanding its index offerings to cover global elections, finance, economics, and other areas.
Others
Bitcoin mining company Ionic Digital completes $400 million private funding round
Ionic Digital completed a private placement of approximately $400 million prior to its planned direct listing on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol IOND, led by Attestor, Oaktree Capital Management, and Sachem Head Capital Management. The company sold approximately 7.55 million shares of Series A convertible preferred stock at $53 per share, along with three tranches of warrants, each entitling the holder to purchase approximately 1.01 million shares of Class A common stock at exercise prices of $63.60, $74.20, and $87.45, respectively. The preferred shares will automatically convert into Class A common stock upon listing on Nasdaq or upon completion of another qualified public offering. Investors agreed not to transfer the preferred shares, the converted common shares, or the related warrants and warrant shares at a price below $70 per share for six months following the listing, subject to limited exceptions.
Centralized Finance
Lion Group plans to invest up to $12 million in PT Nusantara Bumi Sangkara, an Indonesian stablecoin developer.
Nasdaq-listed Lion Group Holding Ltd. plans to invest up to $12 million in Indonesian fintech company PT Nusantara Bumi Sangkara through Meili Capital Management Ltd., acquiring a 10% indirect economic interest in exchange for common shares or equity-linked securities, with no cash payment involved. Nusantara Bumi Sangkara is developing the Indonesian rupiah-backed stablecoin NIDR, pegged 1:1 to the Indonesian rupiah and supported by reserve assets, aiming to reduce cross-border payment costs and enable blockchain-based financial services. The company has received regulatory approval or confirmation from Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority and is poised to become one of the country’s first compliant stablecoin issuers.
Acquisition
Sunscreen has been acquired by Fhenix, and the team will continue advancing FHE technology.
The privacy computing project Sunscreen has announced it will be acquired by Fhenix. Sunscreen stated that over the past four years, it has focused on research and development in applied cryptography, and has strong confidence in Fhenix’s team ability to execute on full homomorphic encryption (FHE) infrastructure, believing Fhenix is better suited to bring production-grade FHE to market. Following the acquisition, the Sunscreen team will join Fhenix, and the related code will continue to be made available under the AGPL open-source license.