Story Protocol, Sorella, BSX Exchange

The crypto VC community has been involved in several initiatives this week, including Story Protocol’s $80 million Series B funding round.

The week between August 18 and August 24 was a busy one for the crypto venture capital space. According to crypto funding tracker Crypto Fundraising, 32 blockchain startups raised more than $202 million from various investors during the period.

We’ll take a look at a few of the highlights below.

Story Protocol, $80 million

Story Protocol has raised $80 million in a Series B round, led by crypto VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, Hashed, Samsung Next, and SparkLabs Global, among others.

The Series B round brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total investment to $140 million, while valuing the company at an impressive $2.25 billion.

The company aims to combat the growing problem of intellectual property theft, especially in the age of generative artificial intelligence.

Story’s blockchain network allows intellectual property owners to store their creations on the platform and embed licensing terms directly into smart contracts.

This way, intellectual property owners are compensated when their content is used, alleviating growing concerns about tech giants using AI models to take copyrighted material without proper authorization.

Sorella Labs, $7.5 million

Next on the list is Sorella Labs, another San Francisco-based startup that has raised $7.5 million in funding to further develop tools designed to identify and process maximum extractable value activities on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.

Research-focused technology investment firm Paradigm led this private funding round. Other participants included Nascent, Uniswap Ventures, Robot Ventures, and Bankless Ventures.

Sorella Labs plans to use the proceeds to expand its operations and accelerate the development of its core products, Brontes and Angstrom.

Egypt, $6.7 million

Corn is another winner in this week’s crypto VC fundraising column. The Ethereum layer-2 network, which uses hybrid tokenized Bitcoin (BTC) as gas, raised $6.7 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.

Binance Labs, Framework Ventures, and Polygon (MATIC) co-founder Sandeep Nailwal also contributed to this round.

Corn reportedly aims to create a “crop circle” ecosystem that matches users, applications, and token holders to address challenges faced by other decentralized networks, such as insufficient liquidity and limited token utility.

BSX Exchange, $6.2 million

Meanwhile, BSX Exchange, the decentralized derivatives protocol built on the Ethereum L2 network Base, raised $6.2 million through pre-seed and seed funding rounds.

🚨 Exciting news! 🚨

1/ Team @bsx_laboratuvarları We are excited to announce a total fundraising of $6.2 million led by @blockchaincap and over 50 additional supporters

The financing was completed to further expand the BSX product development, a liquidity layer for on-chain derivatives and capital… picture.twitter.com/QxYtwg1pZZ

— BSX (@bsx_labs) August 21, 2024

The $4 million seed round was led by Blockchain Capital. Other notable investors include Bankless Ventures and Maelstrom, the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes.

With this fresh capital, BSX plans to expand beyond derivatives trading, launching a spot aggregator in September and several earn-out products shortly thereafter.

Regular Network, $5 million

Orderly Network, a project developing a Web3 liquidity layer, was also on the receiving end of a $5 million funding round. OKX Ventures, Manifold Trading, and Origin Protocol are among the backers.

The team behind the project plans to use the funds to strengthen their ability to create a permissionless liquidity layer for web3 trading across multiple blockchains.

Orderly currently supports six chains, including the Ethereum mainnet and Polygon, and aims to provide deep liquidity for all assets across these networks.

Other financing rounds

Three projects rounded out the week’s notable VC funding rounds: Soulbound, Stork Network, and Thalex, which raised more than $12 million between them, and social gaming space web3 received $4 million from Animoca Brands to further its mission of powering the new creator economy.

Soulbound is building a platform that combines GameFi and SocialFi to deliver a new digital experience. The platform’s founders say they’ll use the money to build gaming partnerships, grow social engagement, and expand publisher rewards and social challenges.

Stork Network has raised $4.705 million in seed funding to expand its product suite, including developing an open data marketplace. Lightspeed Faction and Lattice co-led the round, which also included participation from CMS and Wintermute Ventures.

Finally, crypto derivatives exchange Thalex raised €3 million ($3.3 million) in a Series A round. According to Axios, which exclusively reported the fundraising, backers in the extended round included Bitfinex, Bitstamp, and Flow Traders. IMC and Wintermute also invested in the project.