This week saw a series of major funding announcements across the tech and crypto sectors, as reported by Blockworks. Notably, Andrena, an Internet Service Provider (ISP), unveiled its plans to launch a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) aimed at decentralized broadband services. Additionally, the Decentralized Autonomous Wireless Network (DAWN) secured $18 million in funding, led by Dragonfly, with contributions from CMT Digital, Castle Island Ventures, and Wintermute Ventures. Nic Carter, founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, remarked, “Andrena has been pioneering DePIN even before the term existed. Since our initial investment, they’ve built a significant user base and are ideally positioned to integrate with the DAWN network. We strongly believe that households will increasingly both consume and provide network resources, and Andrena is emerging as a market leader in this area.” The funds will be allocated to finalizing the protocol, expanding Andrena’s subscriber base, and migrating end-users’ transactions onto the DAWN network.
Another significant funding event involved Vessel, a zk-powered exchange, which raised $10 million in a seed round with participation from Sequoia, Scroll, and Folius Ventures. Vessel aims to merge the efficiency and user experience of centralized exchanges (CEX) with the transparency and security of decentralized platforms (DEX). The team expressed their mission to “transform cryptocurrency trading into a secure and seamless journey, enhancing transparency, accessibility, and efficiency for all users,” with plans to innovate in spot trading, perpetual trading, and other derivatives.
Other key funding rounds included Zoth, a DeFi yield infrastructure company, which raised $4 million in a strategic round with investors such as Taisu Ventures, Fat Cat Ventures, and AstraX Capital. Payman AI, focused on developing AI for human payments, announced a $3 million pre-seed round with backing from Visa, CB Ventures, and Untapped Capital. Blockscout, a block explorer for EVM-based chains, secured $3 million in a round led by 1kx, with additional investments from Gnosis and Primitive Ventures. Lastly, Nexio, a parallelized Bitcoin rollup, announced a $2.2 million pre-seed round led by Lattice.
