Humanity Protocol hits unicorn status, nabs $30m

More crypto startups are raising seed rounds and pre-A financing. Below we look at some of the main beneficiaries of last week’s venture capital (VC) activity.

$30 million support for the Humanity Protocol

Humanity Protocol, a decentralized identity solution, reached unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion. This milestone comes after raising $30 million in a seed round led by Kingsway Capital.

Other investors included Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com, Hashed, Shima Capital and 20 other industry leaders.

According to Humanity Protocol’s Medium post, the funds will be used to expand the team and develop products ahead of the public testnet launch in the second half of 2024.

🚀Big news alert! 🚀Our founder Terence became the center of attention at Bloomberg @business, we’re announcing our latest funding round! 🌟

We have become crypto’s new digital identity unicorn! 🦄

Check out the full story of our $30 million raise at a $1 billion valuation: https://t.co/soy6PqZoFB…

— Humanity Protocol 🖐️ (@Humanityprot) May 15, 2024

The latest funding round comes just months after Humanity Protocol received strategic investment to build out the “human layer” for web3.

The money came from various VC funds and individuals, including Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal and Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu.

Arch Labs secures $7 million

New York-based Arch Labs has raised $7 million in seed funding to develop its Bitcoin native app platform. The round was led by Multicoin Capital with participation from OKX Ventures, Portal Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings and Tangent.

The company will reportedly use the funds to support the hiring of core developers, the launch of the Arch Network mainnet in the second half of 2024, and ongoing support for the app ecosystem.

Arch Labs is developing a “bridgeless” trading experience directly on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. It will feature a Rust-based zkVM called ArchVM and a decentralized verification network.

Uxuy guaranteed 7 million dollars

Singapore-based Uxuy also provided $7 million. The pre-A funding round will be used to promote efficient, low-cost transactions of assets such as Lightning Network mainstem assets, BRC-20 sequence numbers, and Runes.

Investors included Binance Labs, UTXO Management (Bitcoin Magazine), JDI Ventures, Bixin Ventures, SWC Global and Matrix Partners.

Uxuy aims to provide a seamless trading experience across various blockchain networks and is developed by Binance Labs.

Arcium reached $5.5 million

Arcium, an on-chain confidential computing project from Bern, Switzerland, also provided $5.5 million in financing.

Greenfield Capital led the round and saw participation from Coinbase, Heartcore Capital, Longhash VC, L2 Iterative Ventures and several angel investors.

Arcium is building a parallelized confidential computing network that leverages multiparty compute execution environments (MXEs) for secure computation over encrypted data.

The funds will help expand development efforts and support the upcoming privately incentivized testnet and public testnet phases.

Gnosis partners with Zeal, invests 2 million dollars

Another winner of the latest VC funding rounds was digital wallet creator Zeal, which entered into a strategic partnership with Gnosis, an Ethereum (ETH) sidechain, with part of the collaboration being a $2 million investment from Gnosis.

In addition to the strategic partnership, Gnosis will also invest 2 million dollars @zealwalletIt brings Zeal’s total raise to $9 million, following an earlier seed funding round of $7 million. 🆙

— GnosisDAO (@GnosisDAO) May 9, 2024

Gnosis’ $2 million commitment brings Zeal’s total funding to $9 million, after the company raised $7 million in its previous seed round.

Zest Protocol locked at $3.5 million

Rounding out the VC action of the week, Bitcoin lending protocol Zest raised $3.5 million to enable BTC holders to earn returns on-chain.

The seed round, led by billionaire investor Tim Draper, also included contributions from Binance Labs, Flow Traders, Trust Machines and others.

Zest Protocol leverages the Nakamoto upgrade by Bitcoin layer-2 Stacks and the bridge asset sBTC pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin to create a fully native Bitcoin lending experience.