Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_62d0ffa6b3199" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The startup&#8217;s Series A follows a seed funding round in October where it was valued at the time for $110 million</li>
 <li>5ire&#8217;s CEO said the journey to unicorn status took around 11 months in total, making it the fastest of its kind to do so in the country</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Blockchain startup 5ire has become India&#8217;s latest blockchain unicorn in record time following a $100 million Series A funding round with a valuation of $1.5 billion.



UK-based international conglomerate SRAM &amp; MRAM was the sole investor for the self-styled 5th generation &#8220;sustainable&#8221; blockchain ecosystem, according to a statement on Friday.



5ire joins crypto exchanges CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX in assuming unicorn status, whose valuations need to exceed $1 billion in order to qualify.



India is fast becoming a fintech hub for newly established businesses. As of June 29, the country is home to 104 unicorns with a total valuation exceeding $ 336 billion, according to research firm <a href="https://www.investindia.gov.in/indian-unicorn-landscape#:~:text=Unicorns%20Of%20India,unicorns%20coming%20each%20year%2C%20respectively." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Invest India</a>.



Funding will go towards business expansion while extending its footprint across three continents including Asia, North America and Europe, the startup said. India is to remain its main hub of operations and core focus.



The round extends upon its $21 million seed valuing it at $110 million in October of last year. Its fresh injection of capital will also go towards bolstering its blockchain dubbed 5ireChain as well as hiring efforts, the startup said. 



Valuations and raises like these in crypto are fast becoming rare given the economic outlook paired with <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-industry-layoffs-may-have-unintended-consequences/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">industry-wide layoffs</a>. Still, some see a vision for continued growth during the crypto market downturn.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;The 5ire team has worked round-the-clock to develop a platform that combines both technology and processes for the benefit of humankind,&#8221; 5ire&#8217;s CEO Pratik Gauri said. &#8220;Becoming the world’s first and only sustainable unicorn born out of India, in just 11 months, is testimony that we are on the right path.&#8221;</blockquote>



Up until now, little has been known about the startup. Its ecosystem includes a blockchain and venture capital arm as well as its research and development hub, 5ire Labs, according to its <a href="https://www.5ire.org/about-5ire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">webpage</a>.



Founded by blockchain proponents Gauri, Prateek Dwivedi and Vilma Mattila in August of last year, 5ire said it aims to align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Those lofty goals include a collection of 17 interlinked global aims designed to reduce poverty, affect climate change and improve gender equality, among others.



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blockchain

India’s Latest Blockchain Unicorn 5ire Valued at $1.5B

<div id="highlights-block_62698ff4f7f0c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Belgium-based Venly will use the funds to grow its team, develop Web3 products and establish an accelerator track</li>
 <li>Venly develops blockchain-based products including a digital wallet, NFT tools and marketplace services for companies such as The Sandbox and Shopify</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Belgium-based blockchain technology provider Venly has scooped up 23 million euros ($22.1 million) in a Series A funding round led by Courtside Ventures with the capital intended for the development of its Web3 products.



The latest round raises Venly&#8217;s post-money valuation to over $100 million, a company spokesperson told Blockworks.



Transcend Fund, Coinbase Ventures, Tioga Capital, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Fortino Capital, Plug and Play, LeadBlock Partners, Imec.istart and Alpaca VC also participated, according to a Wednesday press release.



Venly said it will use its fresh capital to research and develop products that would benefits users engaging with Web3 infrastructure, with a focus on gaming and e-commerce.



Previously known as the Arkane Network, Venly develops blockchain-based products including a digital wallet, NFT tools, and marketplace services for companies such as The Sandbox, Aavegotchi, Bondly and Shopify.



The budding company clocks around two and a half million wallet downloads annually and employs around 39 people, the spokesperson said.



Venly said it intends to provide game studios and publishers with a &#8220;no-code&#8221; solution for Web3 users, further its e-commerce NFT (non-fungible token) integrations with Shopify.



&#8220;The problem today is that most developers and end-users have difficulty interacting with Web3 technology,&#8221; Venly CEO Tim Dierckxsens said. &#8220;It needs to be more aligned with Web2 usability, which is exactly what the Venly platform provides.&#8221;



An accelerator track for game studios and Web3 startups will also be established, offering support and investment from the firm&#8217;s team and ecosystem of partners, per the release.



&#8220;The Venly platform provides game developers the ability to easily launch Web3 experiences,&#8221; Kai Bond, partner at Courtside Ventures, said. &#8220;We&#8230;believe that the next huge area of growth in the NFT ecosystem will come from mainstream users interacting with their favorite IP.&#8221;



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Capital Raise

Blockchain Provider Venly Nabs $22M in Series A to Build Web3 Products

<div id="highlights-block_6221a6c2b57a2" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Rarify wants to reduce technical complexities for new entrants to the NFT space</li>
 <li>Those barriers include blockchains lacking interoperability while having platform-specific economies as well as companies lacking familiarity with compliance standards</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



NFT infrastructure startup Rarify has secured $10 million via a Series A led by Pantera Capital.



The fresh injection of capital will be put toward the startup&#8217;s hiring efforts as well as product launches with enterprise partners, according to a press release on Thursday.



The raise, which saw participation from Slow Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Greycroft and Hyper, has boosted the company&#8217;s valuation to $100 million. 



Rarify&#8217;s Series A is the latest round following in $2 million seed funding that saw participation from the likes of Pareto, Eniac Ventures, Greycroft, Scott Belsky and Protocol Labs, among others.



Rarify offers commerce API infrastructure for marketplaces and applications to build &#8220;end-to-end experiences&#8221; with NFTs (non-fungible tokens), the startup said in its release. 



Rarify also said its mission was to reduce barriers to entry for NFT technology and to enable businesses to &#8220;participate&#8221; in a sector experiencing significant growth.



Problems for new business entrants in the sector arise when they first attempt to build NFTs that require particular technical resources and skills, the startup said. 



Blockchains lacking interoperability while having platform-specific economies as well as companies lacking familiarity with compliance standards were some of the largest hurdles for new entrants.



“Rarify removes the biggest hurdles companies face when introducing NFTs to their existing products,” said Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit. &#8220;We’re excited to partner with the Rarify team to accelerate their growth trajectory and make NFTs accessible to companies and, by extension, consumers at large.”



Rarify also offers real-time API access to historical data on NFT assets across &#8220;multiple blockchains&#8221; that can be leveraged by Web2 and Web3 companies building decentralized finance (DeFi), marketplace products.



&#8220;With NFT Embeds, content creators can simplify the entire discovery and checkout process for the end users,&#8221;the startup said.



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Funding

Rarify Gets $10M in Series A Led by Pantera Capital To Further Hiring Efforts

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_60e60df45eb7b" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The DeFi community has grown substantially in the past year as a range from curious investors to new companies continue to break into the space</li>
 <li>The DeFi total market cap surged about 556% earlier this year from $21.903 billion on January 1 to an all-time high of about $143.682 billion on May 11, according to data from CoinGecko</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Decentralized finance company Zerion has raised $8.2 million in a Series A funding round and plans to make the DeFi space more mainstream, the company announced Wednesday.&nbsp;



Zerion helps users invest their DeFi portfolios on its platform, which contains content that customers can use to search, filter and evaluate the DeFi assets on the market, it said.&nbsp;



The funding round was led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from Placeholder, DCG, Lightspeed, Blockchain.com Ventures.&nbsp;



Other investors who participated in this round include DeFi Alliance Fund, Continue Capital, SevenX Ventures, G1 Ventures, Bitscale Capital, Wintermute, The LAO and a <a href="https://blog.zerion.io/zerion-raises-8-2m-from-mosaic-ventures-to-take-defi-mainstream-db85b1b19c2c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">group of angel investors</a> from the crypto community.



With the new funds in place, Zerion said it’s focusing on scaling its infrastructure to meet demand, making multi-chain support easy to use and creating an investing experience fit for non-crypto natives.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/podcast-how-to-get-started-in-defi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DeFi community</a> has grown substantially in the past year as curious investors and new companies continue to break into the space. As new products, coins and systems enter the marketplace, the market capitalization has skyrocketed from previous years.&nbsp;



In general, the DeFi total market capitalization spiked about 556% higher earlier this year from $21.903 billion on January 1 to an all-time high of about $143.682 billion on May 11, according to <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/defi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a> from CoinGecko. More recently, the total market cap value for DeFi has fallen from the May peak to $78.886 billion but is still up 981.7% from the year-ago date.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/QHoT4dkBxvenVcM9a_NmSBXJBp6A9Xae3CjDz_q0COo1OVL0bUUHZGdeZcNDGIz7Id75uAto3VJtdIXqVgPBpc88gTybNV9Wo4TG5VwGqq4_p3FCgjIDZyZtqvvlxtf36HrEAakV" alt=""/><figcaption>DeFi Market Capitalization graph from January 2020 to present, provided by CoinGecko data</figcaption></figure>



With that said, DeFi’s potential still remains largely untapped by mainstream audiences because the world has never seen financial interoperability at this scale and most of DeFi remains too complex to access, said Zerion CEO Evgeny Yurtaev in a blog <a href="https://blog.zerion.io/zerion-raises-8-2m-from-mosaic-ventures-to-take-defi-mainstream-db85b1b19c2c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">post</a>.&nbsp;



The company, founded in 2016, operates under the belief that anyone with a smartphone should have access to financial services. Zerion is hoping to make DeFi more accessible to all investors, regardless of their crypto knowledge or experience, Yurtaev said.&nbsp;



Zerion’s interface has over 200,000 monthly users from more than 150 countries. It has processed over $600 million transaction volumes year to date, he said.&nbsp;



“We saw early on that an internet-scale financial revolution cannot happen without internet-scale infrastructure that is permissionless, borderless, programmable and composable. DeFi is all of these things, and more,” Yurtaev said.&nbsp;



Without bankers as gatekeepers, DeFi users globally can access open lending platforms and “earn passive income on their digital assets through lending, staking and accruing yields that are virtually unheard of in a traditional savings account,” Yurtaev said.&nbsp;



In the future, the company hopes that it becomes the all-inclusive portal to the world of DeFi, the way Google provides information or Amazon provides consumers access to a plethora of goods, Yurtaev said.&nbsp;



“&#8230;DeFi is creating an entirely new alternative financial ecosystem and Zerion enables millions of users to easily and transparently interact with it,” said Toby Coppel, co-founder and partner at Mosaic Ventures.



The DeFi space is volatile and rapidly growing, but “only those who provide real value will see the upside of the market in all its forms — bear or bull. We’re in this for the long haul and token prices don’t change that,” Yurtaev said.