Encryption Industry Investment and Financing Weekly Report: 15 events with a total scale exceeding 148 million US dollars

Last week (2.17-2.23), there were a total of 15 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector, with a total scale exceeding $148 million, a slight increase compared to the previous week. The main investment directions include:

• In the DeFi sector, Mansa, a stablecoin liquidity provider, has secured $10 million in seed funding.
• In the Web3 gaming sector, Boyaa Interactive has invested approximately $4.18 million in MTT ESports.
• In the AI + Web3 field, ClustroAI has completed a $12 million Series A funding.
• In the infrastructure and tools sector, Cygnus, a modular yield layer, secured $20 million in Pre-Seed funding.
• Starting from other categories, the tokenized social network ResearchHub has completed a new round of financing totaling 2 million USD.

DeFi

A stablecoin issuer led a $10 million seed round financing for the stablecoin liquidity provider Mansa. This round includes both equity and debt financing, with $3 million in equity financing. The new funds will support Mansa's expansion into Latin America and Southeast Asia to address liquidity challenges in these regions.

The asset encapsulation startup Universal has completed a $9 million financing round. Universal aims to enable various types of encryption assets to circulate on trading networks through deep liquidity, enhancing the asset access capabilities of developers and users. Since the protocol was launched, over $800 million worth of uAsset has been traded.

A new project called Yield Basis, founded by a well-known decentralized exchange founder, has raised $5 million with a token valuation of $50 million. The project aims to help tokenized BTC and ETH holders earn returns through market making by alleviating impermanent loss. Investors will receive 10% of the total supply of tokens, which is 100 million out of 1 billion, with a unlocking period of two years of linear unlocking after a 6-month lock-up.

The Bitcoin staking platform Acre raised $4 million in a round of strategic financing, with the token valuation at $90 million. Investors include several investment institutions and undisclosed angel investors.

The Bitcoin DeFi project Maestro has completed a $3 million seed round financing. Maestro is an enterprise-grade infrastructure provider tailored for Bitcoin DeFi, having launched UTXO-based services to simplify the complex process of building Bitcoin-native financial applications. The project offers APIs, development tools, and innovative solutions such as the mempool meta-protocol index, enabling real-time on-chain insights.

Web3 Games

A listed company announced an additional investment of approximately $4.18 million in the Web3 project MTT ESports. After the investment is completed, the company will acquire 10% of the total issuance of MTT tokens, which is 210 million MTT tokens. The tokens are expected to start unlocking linearly from January 2026, completing the unlocking process in about 48 months. After this investment, the company's total investment in MTT ESports will be approximately $10 million.

AI+Web3

Edge AI startup ClustroAI has completed a $12 million Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $15 million. ClustroAI focuses on edge AI technology, allowing AI models to run on local devices without relying on cloud computing. Its core technology utilizes a containerized architecture that supports various AI applications and optimizes GPU resource allocation.

ClustroAI plans to use new funding to expand hardware compatibility, supporting more chip types while developing automation tools to simplify AI model updates. Additionally, a distributed AI computing network is being built, connecting multiple device computing resources through container orchestration technology to enhance local AI processing efficiency. The platform offers a unified API to streamline developer integration and reduce enterprise cloud computing costs.

The decentralized AI neural network algorithm protocol Uswap.ai has completed a $1.5 million financing. Uswap is a protocol that integrates AI Agents into decentralized exchanges and on-chain trading, enabling the rapid creation of liquidity pools for various consensus assets.

Infrastructure and Tools

The encryption security platform Blockaid has completed a $50 million Series B financing. In 2024, Blockaid successfully intercepted 71 million potential attacks, preventing a loss of $5.3 billion. The company expects that as user growth and token prices rise, the number of cyber attack incidents will soar to "hundreds of millions" in 2025. Blockaid plans to use these funds to expand operations and increase research and development investment, with the expectation that the number of employees will double this year.

The modular yield layer Cygnus has completed a $20 million Pre-Seed round of financing. Cygnus is a modular real yield layer that enables blockchains to customize their own re-staking networks and achieve shared security. Additionally, Cygnus is building the first Web3 social media application layer that integrates on-chain and off-chain assets to empower the creator economy.

The encryption startup Altius Labs has completed a $11 million Pre-Seed funding round. Altius Labs is committed to developing a modular execution stack that is independent of specific binary implementations and network designs, allowing for seamless integration with any L1, L2, and application chains to enhance performance and improve interoperability.

Blockchain developer Fluent Labs has completed a $8 million financing round to build its Ethereum Layer 2 hybrid execution network. Fluent plans to use these funds to expand its core engineering team and support the infrastructure development of the ecosystem and testnet. The project aims to integrate WebAssembly, EVM, and SVM applications into a unified execution environment to help developers build applications across multiple blockchain ecosystems.

The encryption privacy data layer Primus has completed $6.5 million in Pre-Seed and Seed round financing.

InfinityGround has completed a $2 million seed round financing. InfinityGround is helping individuals rapidly build an open, interoperable, and AI-driven world across various blockchains. The project supports developers in creating Agent applications on multiple blockchains using a customized proxy IDE and IDK based on Initia Stack.

Others

A tokenized social network called ResearchHub, founded by the CEO of a well-known cryptocurrency exchange, has completed a new round of funding of $2 million. ResearchHub aims to incentivize scientists to publicly share academic content using its ResearchCoin(RSC) tokens, and to build decentralized scientific collaboration and publishing tools to promote research collaboration, feedback, and knowledge sharing among researchers. The platform allows users to earn cryptocurrency rewards by contributing new knowledge to the global scientific community, with users earning RSC for posting content, and the amount of RSC earned being proportional to the value the community places on the content.