Financing Weekly: 16 projects raised $3 billion, with Deribit taking the lead

Collation: Golden Finance

The biggest round of financing this week

Deribit raised $2.9 billion from Coinbase in a round of M&A financing.

Deribit is a centralized cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that offers futures, options, and perpetual contracts for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major assets. It is known for its deep liquidity, high leverage (up to 100x), and advanced trading tools tailored for institutions and retail investors. Deribit dominates the crypto options market, handling more than 85% of global trading volume.

Pre-seed and seed rounds

Xpfinance raised $200,000 from the Xenoverge Angel Fund in a seed round of financing.

Xp.Finance is a fully decentralized, non-custodial lending protocol built natively on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). It allows XRP holders to earn yield through overcollateralized lending while maintaining full custody of their assets. Leveraging XRPL's fast settlement speeds and low transaction fees, Xp.Finance provides a transparent and secure decentralized finance (DeFi) platform. The protocol is governed by the $XPF token, which gives token holders governance rights, reduced borrowing costs, and staking rewards.

GoQuant raised $4 million in a seed round of funding from GSR Markets LTD, Copper co, Lombard Odier, Capital Union Bank, TYR Capital, FRNT Financial.

GoQuant is a Miami-based digital asset trading infrastructure provider that offers ultra-low latency execution services, dedicated trading infrastructure, and a fixed fee model for institutional clients. Its platform includes an order execution and management system (OEMS), comprehensive market data services, and portfolio and risk management tools. GoQuant integrates centralized exchanges, decentralized platforms, OTC desks, and market makers to provide seamless access to diverse liquidity.

T-Rex raised $17 million in a pre-seed round from Portal Ventures, North Island Ventures (NIV), Framework Ventures, Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, ArkStream Capital, Mindfulness Capital, Hypersphere, SNZ Holding, Arche Fund (Coin98 Ventures).

T-Rex is a Web3 consumer entertainment platform and Layer 1 blockchain that rewards users for engaging with content on platforms such as X, TikTok, and YouTube. It uses zkTLS technology to verify user activity through a "Proof of Engagement" (PoE) mechanism while protecting privacy. Users can earn points and redeem cryptocurrencies by clicking on the on-screen prompts ("popcorn") while watching content. The system learns preferences based on user interactions and recommends personalized dApps and content. T-Rex is built on Arbitrum Orbit, providing developers with low-latency, high-throughput infrastructure to build consumer-facing applications.

Xweave raised $3 million in a seed round from Jungle Ventures, Lightshift, Menyala, White Star Capital, Fabric Ventures, Digital Currency Group (DCG), The Venture Dept.

Xweave is a Singapore-based fintech platform that provides blockchain-based non-custodial infrastructure for real-time, compliant cross-border payments. It enables instant fiat-to-fiat transactions through the use of regulated stablecoins, without the need for pre-funding and reducing foreign exchange risk. The platform integrates the traditional fiat system with the stablecoin network to achieve seamless connection of capital flows between markets.

Other Financing

Fleek raised $7 million in a Public Sale round of financing.

Fleek is an Agentic Cloud platform for AI agents and virtual influencers, providing developers, creators and brands with all the tools needed to build, manage and monetize AI agents. As the next evolution after websites and apps, Fleek provides high-end cloud services customized for AI-native interactions, digital twins, social agents and marketing campaigns, driving the transformation of future online interactions.

Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom) raised $10 million from Galaxy Digital in a Strategic round of financing.

Sonic Labs is a high-performance, EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that was reimagined from the ground up on the Fantom Network. It uses a DAG-based consensus mechanism and Proof of Stake (PoS) to process up to 400,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality. Features include a Developer Fee Monetization (FeeM) program that allows developers to earn up to 90% of transaction fees. The native $S token is used to pay transaction fees, staking, and governance. Sonic Gateway provides a decentralized cross-chain bridge with Ethereum to ensure secure and efficient asset transfers.

Securitize has raised an undisclosed amount from Jump Crypto in a Strategic round.

Securitize is a compliance platform and protocol for issuing and managing digital securities on blockchains.

MYX Finance raised $180,000 in a Public Sale round.

MYX.Finance is a decentralized derivatives exchange (DEX) that reinvents the trading experience with its innovative P2Pool2P model and smart funding rate mechanism. The platform uses a single trading pair liquidity pool system to simplify liquidity management and let traders focus on strategy execution. Products cover diversified derivatives such as perpetual contracts and options.

DogeOS raised $6.9 million from Polychain Capital in a round of financing.

DogeOS is an open source application development and cloud infrastructure layer built for the Dogecoin ecosystem, supporting a variety of decentralized applications (dApps) including games and AI. The platform is centered around SmartOS and Project FiFo, with advanced components such as ZFS storage, DTrace, lightweight Zones, and KVM virtualization. DogeOS enables efficient, secure, and scalable deployment of applications through built-in virtual machine orchestration capabilities, and is a platform that unifies user-level dApps and infrastructure under a community-driven framework.

Sentora raised $25 million in a Series A round from New Form Capital, Joint Effects, Tribe Capital, Ripple, UDHC, Curved Ventures, and Bankai Ventures.

Sentora is an institutional-grade DeFi asset management platform that integrates IntoTheBlock's data analytics and Trident's structured liquidity solutions to provide a unified interface for managing multi-chain protocol interactions. The platform provides advanced DeFi strategies, strong risk management, and enterprise-level security to help institutional clients develop and scale digital asset strategies.

Litheum raised $750,000 from Alphemy Capital, Amber Group in a Strategic round.

Litheum is a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain platform designed to support DeFi, microfinance, and AI applications. The platform innovatively introduces the "Proof of Performance" (PoP) consensus mechanism to reward every key RPC operation to achieve true decentralization and scalability. Litheum is capable of processing microtransactions at scale and is suitable for scenarios such as micro-loans, automatic fixed investment, and user-agent AI smart contracts, aiming to break through the limitations of traditional blockchains.

AppLayer (formerly SparqNet) raised an undisclosed amount from Arcanum Ventures in a round of financing.

AppLayer is a modular, EVM-compatible, high-performance blockchain platform built for cross-chain dApps. It uses a C++-based execution engine and stateful precompilation, which is up to 65 times faster than traditional EVM networks. The platform enables efficient interoperability of data and assets between multiple chains through the Chain Abstraction Network (CAN), supports multiple blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, and provides a Blockchain Development Kit (BDK) for developers to build and manage scalable applications, supporting Solidity and native C++ smart contracts.

BVNK raised an undisclosed amount from Visa in a round of financing.

BVNK is a fintech company that provides stablecoin payment infrastructure, connecting traditional banking systems with blockchain technology to accelerate the efficiency and convenience of global capital flows.

Alt DRX has raised $2.7 million in a Series A round from Qatar Development Bank, Brand Capital, Hindustan Media Ventures (HMVL), Zee Group, WeFounderCircle, nX Capital.

Alt DRX is a blockchain-based digital real estate exchange that allows users to invest in and trade residential asset tokens starting from 1 square foot. The platform democratizes real estate investment and provides high liquidity and asset transparency through distributed ownership and real-time pricing mechanisms. Alt DRX is active in the digital asset regulatory sandbox of IFSCA and Qatar Financial Center and is committed to disrupting the traditional real estate investment model.

Tea-Fi has raised an undisclosed amount from Castrum Capital in a round of funding.

Tea-Fi is a comprehensive DeFi platform that is committed to simplifying digital asset management by integrating multiple financial services. The platform functions include revenue aggregation, pledge, lending and cross-chain transactions, emphasizing user privacy and control, and providing users with a unified and convenient asset management experience.