The primary quarter of 2025 has been extremely risky for crypto. Investor sentiment has swung from one excessive to the opposite as Bitcoin (BTC) rallied to all-time highs, endured a significant correction, and obtained a significant presidential enhance from Donald Trump.
Amid all of the noise, enterprise capital companies continued to broaden their publicity to blockchain and crypto startups throughout decentralized bodily infrastructure networks (DePINs), Web3 gaming, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and derivatives alternate markets.
The most recent version of VC Roundup options seven funding bulletins from throughout the business.
Alchemy declares $5M Web3 adoption fund
Blockchain developer Alchemy has launched a $5 million “Everybody Onchain Fund” to promote Web3 adoption on Ethereum. The funding will present builders constructing on Alchemy with up to $10,000 in gasoline credit and $20,000 in computing credit. Assist will initially be rolled out to OP Stack and Arbitrum Orbit.
Alchemy presently affords rollups-as-a-service, which permits builders to launch and develop their very own blockchain.
One in every of Alchemy’s most prominent partners is World, the biometric digital id undertaking previously referred to as Worldcoin. Since its launch, World has reached greater than 23 million customers world wide.
Associated: Superchain will reach 80% of Ethereum L2 transactions in 2025 — Optimism exec
Mavryk secures funding for layer-1 RWA
Mavryk Dynamics, the developer of a layer-1 RWA community, closed a $5 million funding spherical led by enterprise capital companies Ghaf Capital, Massive Mind, MetaVest Capital, Cluster Capital, Collective Ventures and Atlas Funds. 5 different VC funds participated within the spherical.
Mavryk is creating an RWA tokenization platform that it says will bridge the hole between conventional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) by providing non-custodial options that embody a protocol treasury, grants and liquidity mining. The corporate says its Mavryk Community has already secured greater than $360 million in RWAs.
The RWA market has grown considerably over the previous yr, reaching $17.9 billion as of early March, in accordance to RWA.xyz.
The worth of real-world property onchain has grown considerably. Supply: RWA.xyz
Rho Labs receives $4M in seed funding
Rho Labs, the developer of the decentralized charges alternate Rho Protocol, closed a $4 million seed spherical led by CoinFund. Further traders included Auros, Circulation Merchants and Speedinvest. Rho operates a decentralized derivatives market that lets customers stake, lend and commerce perpetual futures in a single venue. The corporate says it has processed greater than $7 billion value of notional volumes.
CoinFund co-founder Alex Felix mentioned Rho Labs is filling a niche within the crypto market that’s stopping the normalization of funding and ahead charges between CeFi and DeFi.
Teneo raises $3M to democratize social media information
Teneo Protocol, a DePIN undertaking, closed a $3 million seed spherical led by enterprise funds RockawayX and Borderless, with extra participation from Generative Ventures. The funding will likely be used to additional Teneo’s mission of democratizing entry to social media information.
Teneo is constructed on the layer-1 community Peaq and operates a Web3 browser extension that lets customers contribute to its information community in alternate for Teneo Factors, which will be exchanged for the forthcoming Teneo Tokens. The corporate claims to have greater than 3.5 million customers throughout 191 international locations.
DePIN development reached its peak in December 2024. Supply: DePINscan
Associated: Crypto VCs are ‘especially bullish’ on DePIN, RWAs — HashKey Capital
Polychain Capital backs Fluent Labs’ $8M spherical
Ethereum layer-2 developer Fluent Labs raised $8 million in a funding spherical led by Polychain Capital, with extra participation from six enterprise funds and 7 angel traders. Fluent describes itself as a “blended execution community” as a result of it seeks to take away siloes that constrain onchain digital machines. It presently helps the Ethereum Digital Machine, Solana Digital Machine and WebAssembly functions.
There are presently greater than 60 initiatives constructing on the Fluent ecosystem, with use instances extending to DeFi, shopper functions and gaming.
The Recreation Firm receives backing for blockchain gaming infrastructure
The Recreation Firm, a UAE-based blockchain startup, has obtained $10 million in funding to develop its cloud gaming infrastructure that may let customers play any title throughout PCs and consoles. Investors within the funding spherical embody Telcoin, BullPerks and Singularity DAO.
The Recreation Firm claims to have greater than 500,000 customers on its waitlist. Its newest UAE testing part has seen greater than 43,000 registrations, 41,000 onchain transactions and greater than 10,000 new distinctive wallets.
As soon as the platform turns into operational, customers may have entry to greater than 1,300 titles throughout PlayStation, Microsoft Retailer and Steam. A few of the titles it has entry to embody Name of Obligation, Fortnite and Rocket League.
a16z backs ACID Labs
Web3 gaming studio ACID Labs closed an $8 million funding spherical led by a16z Speedrun to advance its social gaming infrastructure. Further traders included NFX, Fusion VC and numerous gaming executives. ACID is the corporate behind Boinkers, a Telegram sport with 11.5 million month-to-month gamers. It intends to use the funds to continue scaling its Web3 social video games on Telegram.
The funding got here in opposition to a backdrop of surging Web3 gaming exercise. Between January 2024 and January 2025, the variety of day by day energetic Web3 players reached 7.3 million, in accordance to DappRadar. General, blockchain gaming activity surged 386% over that interval.
Associated: AI agents will expedite Web3 gaming adoption
