Crypto Funding Frenzy: $169M Poured into 16 Blockchain Projects Last Week | Key Takeaways
The $169 Million Signal
Another week, another parade of crypto startups flashing freshly minted funding rounds like NFT PFP flexes at a Miami conference. As someone who’s analyzed capital flows from Goldman’s trading floor to DeFi dashboards, let me decode what really matters in these 16 deals totaling $169M.
Infrastructure Eats the World (Again)
Seven of these rounds went to blockchain plumbing projects, proving my thesis that investors prefer picks-and-shovels plays during bear markets:
- Eigen Labs scoring a casual $70M from a16z for their restaking protocol (because apparently one nine-figure round wasn’t enough)
- TON’s EVM-compatible layer TAC raising $11.5M - Telegram’s 800M users might finally get usable DeFi
- That mysterious Units.Network grabbing $10M for “AI liquidity management” (when the whitepaper drops, ping me)
AI’s Crypto Crossover Moment
Three AI-related rounds caught my quant-driven eye:
- SparkChain AI’s $10.8M for decentralized compute - because nothing says “Web3” like monetizing your neighbor’s idle GPU
- PublicAI merging neural interfaces with blockchain (seriously) via brainwave data collectors
- PrismaX’s robotics play getting a16z’s blessing with $11M
Pro Tip: When Marc Andreessen invests in both your AI startup and your crypto project, it’s time to update your LinkedIn headline.
The Wild Cards
The outliers tell equally fascinating stories:
- Project Eleven’s $6M quantum-resistant Bitcoin solution (finally, someone preparing for the Qpocalypse)
- Former Coinbase engineers building what might be the first usable crypto savings app (Nook, $2.5M)
- That delightful moment when Worldcoin acquires a wallet company (Dawn Wallet) because biometric orbs weren’t dystopian enough
(Full disclosure: My fund has no positions in these projects. Yet.)
Why This Matters Now
With BTC hovering at $64K, this flurry of early-stage bets suggests VCs anticipate the next bull run will be driven by:
- Institutional-grade infrastructure
- AI-crypto hybrids
- Actual consumer applications (gasp!)
The average deal size ($10.6M) shows disciplined check-writing compared to 2021’s madness - perhaps the only thing more surprising than EigenLayer’s continued funding is seeing serious money flow into… checks notes… brainwave blockchain?