Aligned Layer has successfully raised $2.6 million in a funding round led by Lemniscap, a VC firm specializing in emerging crypto assets and early-stage blockchain startups. The round also won investment from Paper Ventures, Bankless Ventures and industry angels. The raise marks a significant milestone in Aligned Layer’s mission to accelerate Ethereum’s roadmap by making Ethereum a better settlement layer for validity and ZK proofs. Aligned Layer is at the forefront of developing a verification layer on top of Eigen Layer, the decentralized protocol that lets users restake ETH for potentially higher rewards. The project aims to transform Ethereum into a better, faster and cheaper settlement layer by offering a cost-effective validity proof and ZK proof verification platform, leveraging the security of Ethereum validators without the EVM limitations. “We are thrilled to have the support of Lemniscap, Bankless Ventures and Paper Ventures as we work to make Ethereum the best settlement layer for proof verification,” said RJ, one of the Founders of Aligned Layer. “Our technology is not just an incremental improvement, it’s a major leap forward in making Zero Knowledge proofs and Validity proofs more accessible and practical for the entire blockchain ecosystem." Aligned Layer’s approach is unique in its ability to enable cost-effective and fast verification of any ZK proof. This will allow developers to build new trustless and scalable applications such as Bridges, Rollups, ZKML and on-chain gaming. It aims to become a pivotal player in supporting ZK technology development and research. The team, comprising experienced cryptographers and distributed services experts, is backed by several influential advisors from relevant industry projects.

Modular L2 building the future for onchain consumers Camp Network raised $4M Seed funding round led by Maven 11, with participation from OKX Ventures (ex OKEx Blockdream Ventures), Protagonist, Inception Capital (ex OP Crypto), Paper Ventures, Merit Circle, Hypersphere, Eterna Capital, IVC, HTX Ventures (ex Huobi Ventures) and others, and select angel investors including Eigen Layer, Sei Network, Celestia, Selini Capital, Ethena, and top-level music executives. The new capital will be used to support the network as it approaches mainnet launch and accelerate the growth of over 25 teams already building in the Camp Network ecosystem. James Chi, Cofounder of Camp Network, said “Blockchain infrastructure has developed tremendously over the past few years, and the future of blockchain will be defined by how that technology is delivered to and used by consumers worldwide. This investment will propel Camp Network’s mission to redefine the future of onchain consumers and further develop our ecosystem for any consumer use case.” User engagement data is one of the most valuable data sets, yet applications today struggle to track it. Through its “digital backpack”, Camp Network leverages offchain engagement data from social and streaming apps – where most of users’ digital identities exist today – to help consumer applications better understand and incentivize valuable behavior. The team has made incredible progress in the last three months since its initial launch. There are 20+ teams already building in Camp Network’s ecosystem, with a combination of native teams as well as teams migrating over from larger ecosystems. Balder Bomans, Managing Partner of Maven 11, commented “We believe that for blockchain technology to achieve true mainstream adoption, a greater focus should be placed on onboarding the next wave of consumers. In our conversations with the Camp Network team, we were immediately struck by their strong backgrounds and their clear vision for the applications needed in the consumer domain to track user engagement. Over the past few months, their capability to attract leading teams in the space has proven that they are developing something that projects have long awaited.” With the completion of its successful seed round, Camp is looking to double down on its ecosystem efforts to redefine consumer crypto. The Company is launching its public testnet in April ahead of a mainnet launch in June.

Mysterious blockchain Sophon has successfully raised $10 million led by Paper Ventures and Maven11. The funding round attracted contributions from prominent firms such as Spartan, SevenX, OKX Ventures and Huobi Ventures. With nothing more than a handful of tweets thus far, the details of exactly what Sophon entails remain largely unknown. The project’s enigmatic X bio merely states that it is a “modular blockchain powered by [BLANK] and [BLANK] on [BLANK], leading us all to a brighter future.” “Our investment in Sophon aligns with our vision to support projects which are not just technologically advanced but also have the potential to make a profound impact on their communities,” said Danish Chaudhry, General Partner of Paper Ventures. “Sophon’s unique and innovative approach to blockchain building presents a new frontier in the industry. We are thrilled to be part of this journey and entirely confident in Sophon’s ability to make a huge impact on not just web3 but beyond.” Leading figures from multiple industries have been liaising with Sophon for additional strategic collaborations, with details to be revealed by the team in due course and several projects rumored to be building on Sophon in the gaming and AI space. With its robust network, strategic collaborations and fierce commitment to innovation, Sophon has already made a considerable impact on the VCs and angel investors that have decided to support its secretive vision. The pioneers behind the project are excited to share more details very soon.

QED, the world's first zk-Native blockchain protocol, announced today it has raised $3 million in a funding round led by Arrington Capital with participation from several prominent venture capital firms and companies including Starkware, Draper Dragon, Blockchain Builders Fund, Lbk Labs, Paper Ventures, Valhalla Capital, Edessa Capital and Anagram Ltd. QED aims to revolutionize Bitcoin by combining the scalability of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Proofs with the liquidity and security of Bitcoin (BTC). QED’s cutting-edge technology, developed by the pioneering team that implemented modular arithmetic in TapScript, is a unique approach to empowering more applications for BTC. Decentralized applications built on QED can locally prove transactions, providing users with unlimited computation for a fixed gas fee. This innovative method ensures that every user's public key functions as a custom ZK circuit, featuring 'smart signatures' that can be read from state, resembling a smart contract. “Bitcoin has traditionally lagged behind other blockchain protocols due to its lack of support for smart contracts and decentralized applications. But we believe it has the power to be far more than just gold – it can be the foundation of the entire decentralized economy,” said Carter Jack Feldman, Founder of QED. “QED will be the execution layer of Bitcoin, combining the power of ZK proofs to enable functionality like smart contracts and DeFi with the full security of a Bitcoin. We’re pioneering a new frontier for decentralized applications that can take advantage of the liquidity of $1.01 trillion and growing Bitcoin market cap.” QED is designed to address many of the current shortcomings in Web3, including the challenges of building on blockchain, scalability issues, and poor user experience. As the world’s first horizontally scalable blockchain, it benefits from increased throughput due to a greater number of network nodes and allows any Web2 developer to write a QED smart contract using popular programming languages Javascript and Python. With the QED’s Dapen Web IDE (integrated development environment), developers can build in mere seconds before deploying their smart contracts to the QED protocol. A key feature of this protocol is its end-to-end Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) recursive verification, ranging from local transaction proof to final block proof. This makes QED highly secure and versatile, the perfect execution layer for all blockchains and zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs). “We thrive on supporting exceptional teams and QED stands out as one that will accomplish much for the Web3 ecosystem. We believe QED is poised to reinvent what is possible with Bitcoin as it empowers developers, a crucial group in the ongoing expansion of the Bitcoin ecosystem,” said Michael Arrington of Arrington Capital. “With a distinctive approach to securely scaling horizontally with a TPS that increases with usage, QED will ignite a new wave of smart contract usage and applications that we believe people who are native and new to web3 are more than ready for.” QED supports all Layer-1 chains and WebAuthn Wallets, while accommodating current zkVMs and boasting the capability to facilitate millions of User Operations per second (UOPS). Its robust security model ensures high censorship resistance and immunity to front-running. QED has an ambitious roadmap for 2024. This includes the Testnet for the decentralized proving network early in the year, followed swiftly by the QED mainnet and a token event.

According to BlockBeats, GambleFi platform Monkey Tilt has announced the completion of a $21 million financing round. The funding round was led by Polychain Capital and included participation from Hack VC, Poker Go, Accomplice, Paper Ventures, and Folius Ventures. This significant investment will likely be used to further develop and expand the Monkey Tilt platform, which is part of the growing GambleFi ecosystem. The platform aims to provide users with a decentralized and secure gaming experience, leveraging blockchain technology to ensure fairness and transparency. The involvement of prominent investors such as Polychain Capital, Hack VC, and others highlights the growing interest in the GambleFi sector and the potential for platforms like Monkey Tilt to disrupt traditional gaming and gambling industries. As the industry continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how Monkey Tilt and other GambleFi platforms capitalize on this momentum and shape the future of gaming.

With several products in the pipeline, the Forgotten Playland team is confident the ecosystem will grow exponentially in the coming years. Web3 social game Forgotten Playland announced the completion of a $7 million seed round of financing, with participation from Merit Circle, Spartan Group, C2 Ventures, Paper Ventures, and others. Forgotten Playland is scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2024 and will include a series of mini-games, with Bump-A-Ball and Jungle Rumble already confirmed, with more in development. Forgotten Playland is understood to have more than 25 employees. “Forgotten Playland is a project close to our hearts. Co-developing our own game is a dream come true, and we’re thrilled to make it the flagship game of the Merit Circle DAO. Our vision extends beyond the game, as we believe there are numerous opportunities with the IP of Forgotten Playland. We invite you to explore the attic, the homeland of our forgotten toys, and enjoy the upcoming minigames,” says Marco van den Heuvel, CGO at Merit Circle. Similar remarks were made by Danish Chaudhry from Paper Ventures, who added that the Forgotten Playland has a promising future to redefine player engagement. Moreover, the Forgotten Playland core developers have years of experience in building reputable games with a high volume of online presence, thus promising more products are in the pipeline, especially after securing crucial funding.

DeFi protocol Renzo has announced a $3.2M seed round with the support of leading crypto native funds. The funding will be used to help Renzo build out its liquid restaking protocol which recently went live on EigenLayer. Maven11 led the Renzo seed round which also saw follow-on investments from Figment Capital, SevenX, IOSG and Paper Ventures among others. The raise arrives at a time when interest in liquid restaking on EigenLayer is at an all-time high. More than 2,000 users have deposited $20M of ETH (9K ETH) into Renzo since its protocol was deployed in late December. Commenting on the funding round, Renzo Founding Contributor Lucas Kozinski said: “It’s a pleasure to welcome so many distinguished investors who share our vision of making restaking accessible to everyone. With their support we will make Renzo the most reliable on/off ramp for Ethereum restaking, building upon the new capabilities offered by EigenLayer.” Balder Bomans, Founder and Managing Partner at Maven11, added: “Renzo’s focus on security, risk mitigation and open finance is, in our view, the best way to tackle a liquid and decentralized governance procedure for picking Actively Validated Services (AVS) on Eigenlayer. Renzo delivers risk-adjusted strategies and liquid representations while providing security to restakers.” Renzo uses a combination of smart contracts and operator nodes to supply automated liquid restaking strategies on EigenLayer. This makes it easier to manage liquidity and capitalize on the ability to participate in Ethereum staking while exploring additional restaking opportunities. Renzo enables ETH and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) to be restaked and utilized as DeFi collateral to earn compounding rewards. To support decentralization, Renzo will be governed by a DAO that manages operators, AVS restaking strategies, and protocol parameters. Future releases will introduce support for cross-chain restaking, integration with lending markets, liquidity aggregators and vault products with a focus on institutional on/off ramps.