Funding wrap: Venture funding remains hot in the crypto market

Continued high volatility in cryptocurrency markets has not dampened the enthusiasm of institutional investors backing promising digital asset-focused startups.

Variant, an early-stage crypto venture firm, raised $450 million across two new funds. Of the total, $300 million is earmarked for an opportunistic fund and the remaining $150 million for investments in early-stage Web3 projects – specifically focusing on DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, Web3 consumer applications and proprietary companies.

The venture firm has previously invested in prominent projects including Uniswap, Polygon and Phantom.

Meanwhile, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) partnered with Gary Vaynerchuk to lead a $50 million seed round for his latest NFT collection, VeeFriends.

“From the launch of Wine Library to his success with VaynerX and Vayner Sports, Gary was one of the first entrepreneurs to bring everyone on the journey through compelling motivational and business-oriented content,” said Chris Lyons, 16z general partner in a statement.

VeeFriends plans to use the capital to fund the growth of its creative, technical and experiential operations and will continue to expand its talent pool in the Web3 space.

Cosmo’s blockchain-based project Quasar Finance closed $6 million in funding from a number of firms, including Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, Figment Capital, Lightshift Capital and Galileo.

The DeFi startup allows strategists and liquidity providers to launch vaults, investors can then store their assets in the vaults and receive returns on their investments. Currently, Quasar Finance has nine employees and said the latest increase will be sufficient to support operations for the next two and a half years.

“We are focusing on blockchain building and introducing the vault standard to Cosmos,” Valentin Pletnev, CEO and co-founder of Quasar Finance told Blockworks. “The first years of product development are going to be funded by this [raise].”

Other notable venture rounds this week include:

• Sweatcoin, a popular Web2 app, raised $13 million from investors including NEAR Foundation and Jump Capital to expand to Web3.
• DeFi protocol Aurigami raised a $12 million round from private token sales and initial exchange offerings via KuCoin, Bybit and Impossible Finance.
• Center — an open-source technology project launched by the founders of Circle and Coinbase — raised $11 million in a seed round led by Thrive Capital and Founders Fund to build a search index.
• Space and Time, a decentralized computing platform, raised a $10 million seed round led by Framework Ventures.
• UK-based enterprise client verified credentials provider Gatenox closed a $2.5 million Seed round led by C3 VC Fund.