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Please enjoy the February Deal Flow Digest, a monthly newsletter recapping recent web3 funding rounds.
Let’s dive in!
VC Dry Powder Piles Up
Crypto winter may be here, but its come with some sweet sweet champaign powder:
VCs were sitting on nearly $600b in dry powder at the end of Q3 2022, and given how much funding rounds have dropped, both in frequency and amount, we think it’s fair to say that this powder is almost certainly still out there.
While perhaps this dry powder won’t be growing for the foreseeable future, VCs still need to find avenues to deploy the funds that nontraditional investors poured into the asset class in 2021-22 ,or let investors back out of their capital commitments.
VCs today face a balance between being more selective in a down market and moving forward with enough deals to justify their fees to the institutional investors who decided to shift their allocations toward VC.
We’ve covered the rapid deceleration in announced rounds since last fall, but at some level, there should be a floor for the monthly deployment of these stacked funds as committed capital still reflects bull market optimism.
The data we’re publishing supports this hypothesis. Since fundraising plummeted in late 2022, raise amounts have stabilized and marginally improved while total deals signed has recovered to early fall numbers.
VCs are ramping back up their activity at lower valuations for raises, perhaps out of necessity with so much capital still waiting on the sidelines.
Top Five Crypto Funding Rounds
TOKHIT | $100 Million | 2/12/23
TOKHIT, a gamified social media app developed by a Romanian startup, announced on Thursday, February 9, that it secured USD 100 million in funding from an international investment fund for further development. TOKHIT didn't reveal the name of its new investor or the valuation at which the deal was closed. In early 2022, TOKHIT said it was valued at USD 155 million without providing other details.
Chain Reaction | $70 Million | Series C | 2/22/23
Chain Reaction has closed a round of $70 million, a Series C that brings the total raised by the company, while still in stealth mode, to $115 million. The company is not talking valuation, but people understand that it's approaching $500 million.
Taurus | $65 Million | Series B | 2/13/23
"Taurus SA (""Taurus""), the leading digital asset infrastructure provider for financial institutions in Europe, is pleased to announce a USD 65 million Series B capital raise from strategic investors. Taurus' Series B round is led by Credit Suisse and includes participation from new institutional investors such as Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group, Cedar Mundi Ventures, as well as from Series A investors, Arab Bank Switzerland and Investis, a stock-listed real-estate group."
SALT | $64.4 Million | Series A |2/06/23
SALT Lending has closed a $64.4 million Series A funding round from a share sale to accredited investors less than three months after a planned sale fell through due to the implosion of centralized crypto exchange FTX. SALT will use the capital toward new products and its growth strategy, according to a draft press release provided to CoinDesk.
Sabre56 | $35 Million | 2/22/23
Sabre56 has raised $35 million to build its own hosting sites, aiming to have 150 megawatts (MW) of energy capacity ready by the end of the year. The $35 million investment is coming primarily from private individuals. The first four sites will total 115 MW and be located in Wyoming and Texas, where construction has already begun, according to a press release. The capacity will be built in 7MW-15 MW of monthly increments, with the first batch coming online in mid-March, company CEO Phil Harvey said.
Click to see all of February’s funding rounds here:
Hackathons
Ongoing
NFT LA Hackathon - Mar 17-20
$10k+ first prize, additional prizes, bounties, networking, 100's of hackers, prominent judges and industry-leading supporters to build the future of Web3 together. Ben will be there judging.
We are Millions: Mar 1-21
Virtual. “We are millions building a better web. Let’s not f* up this time.” Events and workshops over three weeks sponsored by Swarm, Nordic Game, KIWIX and Gitcoin
Upcoming
Scaling Ethereum: Mar 10-29
Virtual. ETHGlobal Hackathon. Three weeks of hacking and summits devoted to pushing the envelope and building the future infrastructure of our Ethereum
ETH Dubai Mar 14-16
Largest Hackathon in the Middle East
ETH Porto Mar 16-18
Two day conference and hackathon to demystify and hear about tangible use-cases in the fields of Agriculture and Fishery, Public Goods and Governance, Decentralized Science and many more.
ZK Hack Lisbon Mar 31- Apr 2
Hackathon focused on zero knowledge applications
ETH Global Tokyo Hackathon Apr 14-16
$175,000 in available prizes from prominent Dapps and DAOs
ETH Taipei Apr 21-23
Focus on Defi, Zk, and building within the Ethereum ecosystem
Recently Completed
FVM Space Warp Hackathon: Jan 20-Feb 10
Virtual. The world’s first hackathon on the Ethereum-compatible layer of the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM)
ETHDenver #BUIDL Week: Feb 24-Mar 1
IRL. ETHDenver’s hackathon proceeding Ethereum’s largest event.
Fantom Hackathon: Ended March 8th
Virtual. Create innovative, scalable, and functional apps on Fantom. $50,000 in prizes
Grizzlython: Feb 2 - Mar 14
Virtual. Over $700,000 in prizes for Solana projects across mobile, payments, consumer, infrastructure, defi, and DAOs
Demo Days
Recent Demo Days
The Cross Chain Coalition Web3 Demo Day
Beacon Web3 2022 Graduating Class
That’s a wrap for February Enjoyed this newsletter or the data? Please share it with a friend, and THANK YOU for your time.
Good luck out there!
Ben & Brady
Deal Flow Digest February 2023
Thanks so much for the recap. Especially the entire list of February's funding rounds. It's a really useful resource for raising money!
Amazing, thanks for putting that together!