Financing Weekly | 15 Public Financing Events, Paxos Labs Completes $12 Million Financing Led by Blockchain Capital

marsbitPublished on 2026-04-20Last updated on 2026-04-20

Abstract

Last week (April 13-19) saw 15 blockchain funding rounds totaling over $165 million. Key deals include Paxos Labs raising $12 million led by Blockchain Capital to build DeFi infrastructure for stablecoin issuance and lending. In AI+Web3, OpenGradient secured $9.5 million for its verifiable AI compute network. DeFi highlights include Brix's $5.5 million raise for emerging market asset tokenization and Votre's $3.75 million seed round for its on-chain crypto lending platform. In centralized finance, digital banking platform Slash closed a $100 million Series C. Prediction market platform Pumpcade raised $5 million, backed by Jump Crypto. Additionally, DePIN project SHARE completed a seed round led by Greenfield Capital.

Highlights of This Issue

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 15 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (4.13-4.19), with a total funding scale exceeding $165 million. The overview is as follows:

The DeFi track announced 4 investment and financing events, among which Brix completed a $5.5 million financing, with investors including FRWRD, a subsidiary of Turkish bank Yapı Kredi, etc.;
The AI+Web3 sector announced 4 investment and financing events, among which OpenGradient announced it has raised a total of $9.5 million, with investors including a16z crypto;
The Infrastructure & Tools track announced 2 investment and financing events, among which Paxos Labs completed a $12 million financing led by Blockchain Capital;
The Centralized Finance field announced 2 investment and financing events, among which the digital banking platform Slash completed a $100 million Series C financing led by Ribbit Capital;
The Prediction Market track announced 2 investment and financing events, among which Pumpcade, a live-streaming prediction market supported by Pump.fun, completed a $5 million seed round with participation from Jump Crypto;
The Other Web3 Applications field announced 1 investment and financing event, the DePIN project SHARE completed a seed round led by Greenfield Capital.

DeFi

Brix Completes $5.5 Million Financing, to Launch Turkish Lira Yield Token iTRY on MegaETH

Brix, focused on tokenizing assets in emerging markets, completed a $5.5 million financing. Investors include FRWRD, a subsidiary of Turkish bank Yapı Kredi, İş Asset Management, as well as Circle Ventures, Consensys, Borderless Capital, etc. Brix plans to launch its first product, iTRY, on the "World Markets" platform of the Ethereum scaling network MegaETH on April 20th. This asset is backed by a Turkish Lira money market fund and can be used for trading, collateral, and accessing DeFi. Brix will subsequently launch tokenized products related to stocks, funds, and bonds in markets such as the UAE, Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, and South Korea.

Crypto Lending Platform Votre Completes $3.75 Million Seed Round Led by a16z CSX

New York-based fully on-chain investment bank Votre completed a $3.75 million seed round led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Votre stated that the funds will be used to expand technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, optimize liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems. Votre was founded in 2025 and operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase's Base Layer 2 network. Its core product allows borrowers to obtain same-day USD loans collateralized by Bitcoin while maintaining on-chain transparency and asset ownership. Platform loans range from approximately $25,000 to $5 million, with automated margin control and real-time monitoring through smart contracts.

Crypto Futures Exchange KieDex Completes $3.5 Million Seed Round

Crypto futures exchange KieDex announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round led by Marqel Capital, with participation from Hidden Street Capital, Caviar, Kinetic Kollective (formerly CSP DAO), Solulu Club, Rocket, TPC, Devmons, TATATU, etc. It is reported that KieDex is a crypto futures trading platform focused on the leveraged perpetual contracts market, where users can earn KDX rewards through trading activities.

Fintech Company Superstate Completes Series B Follow-on Financing, Invesco Private Capital Joins as New Investor

Fintech company Superstate announced the completion of a Series B follow-on financing, with asset management giant Invesco's Invesco Private Capital joining as a new investor. The amount was not disclosed. Meanwhile, Invesco will serve as the investment manager for Superstate's flagship tokenized fund USTB (Short-Term U.S. Treasury Fund) starting Q2 2026. The fund size is approximately $900 million, making it one of the largest tokenized treasury products globally. After the transition, the fund will be renamed, with Superstate retaining the digital transfer agent function. This move marks Invesco's full entry into the blockchain fund sector.

AI

OpenGradient Raises $9.5 Million to Advance Verifiable AI Network

Decentralized AI infrastructure company OpenGradient announced it has raised a total of $9.5 million. Investors include a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures, SV Angel, Foresight Ventures, etc. OpenGradient positions itself as the compute layer for "verifiable AI," serving as a network of dedicated AI coprocessors that provide model inference based on GPU and TEE nodes for applications, blockchains, and agents. Each inference is accompanied by a cryptographically verifiable proof, supporting external independent verification of the model, input, and output. Its network currently serves over 2 million users, has handled more than 2 million verifiable inferences, generated over 500,000 cryptographic proofs, integrated 2000+ models from 100+ developers on its Model Hub, and has formed 6 revenue streams.

AI Financial Agent Risk Control Company Nava Completes $8.3 Million Financing Led by Polychain and Archetype

Startup Nava, focused on AI financial agent risk control, completed an $8.3 million seed round led by Polychain and Archetype, with participation from EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, among others. Nava uses custodied accounts for funds and a verification framework to compare user intent with transaction results before an AI agent initiates a transaction, releasing funds only upon verification success, otherwise continuing to hold them. Its reasons for rejecting or approving transactions will be publicly recorded on-chain for other AIs to reference. Nava currently operates as a Layer 3 chain deployed on Arbitrum and plans a parallel deployment on Tempo. It will also issue a stablecoin later to provide insurance and risk underwriting for agent actions.

Web3 Intelligence Layer Project Claw Intelligence Completes $3 Million Seed Round

Web3 intelligence layer project Claw Intelligence announced the completion of a $3 million seed round with participation from Castrum Istanbul, Titans Ventures, Super Labs, and Genesis Capital. It is reported that Claw Intelligence is building a unified intelligence layer to lower the barrier for users to interact with the Web3 ecosystem and computational resources through crypto-native MCP services and by transforming fragmented data endpoints into conversational workflows. The platform's main features include: a secure isolated LLM code execution sandbox, supporting large language models to execute code without endangering the host system security; and LLM-based cross-device multi-computer control, allowing users to centrally manage multiple computers, servers, and devices using natural language through a single web interface.

Decentralized AI Economy Protocol Mindra AI Announces Completion of Strategic Financing with Participation from LandScape Capital, etc.

Decentralized AI economy protocol Mindra AI announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing with participation from LandScape Capital, Harbor Digital Ventures, and Candaq Fintech Group. It is reported that Mindra AI is a full-stack decentralized AI economy protocol that aims to break intelligent hegemony and reshape AI production relations through dynamic inference routing, Agent cross-chain collaboration, and compute power financialization (AI-Fi).

Mindra AI stated that this round of funding will mainly be used to accelerate the development of its full-stack four-layer protocol, advance the construction of the dynamic inference routing layer, Agent collaboration ecosystem, compute power financialization (AI-Fi), and economic value flywheel, aiming to build a decentralized "Intelligence Grid" to fundamentally solve issues like centralized monopoly in AI inference, algorithmic black boxes, and ecosystem fragility.

Infrastructure & Tools

Paxos Labs Completes $12 Million Financing Led by Blockchain Capital

Paxos Labs, a startup spun off from stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure company Paxos, completed a $12 million financing led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Robot Ventures, Maelstrom, and Uniswap Labs. Paxos has long-term partnerships with institutions like PayPal and Nubank. Paxos Labs is responsible for DeFi-focused infrastructure, helping enterprises provide retail users with access to stablecoins and crypto lending. Paxos Labs provides a suite of software tools supporting institutions to issue branded stablecoins and allowing users to use stablecoins for on-chain lending and collateral. Co-founder Bhaumik Kotecha said the company expects to achieve breakeven by the end of this year and currently serves neobank Hyperbeat and the privacy blockchain Aleo team.

Bond Tokenization Platform BlockInvest Completes €4 Million Strategic Round with Participation from UniCredit

Bond tokenization platform BlockInvest announced the completion of a €4 million strategic round with participation from Italian bank UniCredit, which acquired a 16% stake in the company. It is reported that BlockInvest will assist UniCredit in issuing Italy's first native digital mini-bond, the first public chain-based tokenized structured note for wealth management clients, and build a technical infrastructure that combines the programmability of digital ledgers with financial regulatory requirements.

Centralized Finance

Digital Banking Platform Slash Completes $100 Million Series C Financing Led by Ribbit Capital

Digital banking platform for businesses, Slash, announced the completion of a $100 million Series C financing, with a post-money valuation of approximately $1.4 billion and total funding raised reaching $160 million. The new round was led by Ribbit Capital, with co-leadership from Goodwater Capital and Khosla Ventures, and continued follow-on investment from NEA and YC. Slash claims to serve over 5,000 enterprise customers, providing business accounts, virtual accounts, stablecoin payments, expense management, bookkeeping automation, real-time payments, and other functions. The company stated that it will use the new funds to accelerate product iteration and advance its strategy of "bank account as the command center for corporate finance."

AI Quant Platform AlphaNet Completes $10 Million Seed Round Led by Joffre Capital

Institutional-grade quantitative AI trading platform AlphaNet announced the completion of a $10 million seed round led by private equity firm Joffre Capital, with participation from Huashan Capital and an Asian quantitative trading consortium. This round of funding will support its transition from an invite-only whitelist model to a public platform launch. It is reported that AlphaNet was incubated by Asian proprietary trading firm Tensor Investment and is positioned as an institutional-grade "systematic alpha" trading platform, aiming to provide retail users with trading capabilities previously only available to institutions.

Prediction Markets

Pumpcade, a Live Prediction Market Supported by Pump.fun, Completes $5 Million Seed Round with Participation from Jump Crypto

Live prediction market and Meme coin issuance platform Pumpcade announced the completion of a $5 million seed round with investors including Jump Crypto and Foundation Capital. Pumpcade is a platform for instant creation and trading of Meme coins based on Solana. Integrated into Pump.fun's chat system, Pumpcade supports one-click creation of prediction markets in live streams. Previously, on April 2nd, it was reported that Pump.fun led a $1 million pre-seed round for Pumpcade.

Totalis Completes $500,000 Seed Round, Becomes First Company to Receive YC Investment Entirely in USDC

Prediction market derivatives layer Totalis announced that its $500,000 seed round financing from Y Combinator was completed in USDC, making it the first company in Y Combinator's history to receive the full investment amount in stablecoin form. The funds were transferred via the Solana network in three on-chain transactions: a $1 test transfer, followed by $124,999 and $375,000; all funds went directly into the company's treasury.

Totalis stated that current prediction markets suffer from issues like single-position exposure, fragmented liquidity, and low capital efficiency. The company is building a prediction market derivatives layer that can be composable across categories, markets, and venues, enabling users to construct composite bets across assets such as geopolitics, crypto, and sports.

Others

DePIN Project SHARE Completes Seed Round Led by Greenfield Capital

Decentralized physical infrastructure network SHARE completed a seed round led by Greenfield Capital, with participation from Kosmos Ventures, Generative Ventures, Zee Prime Capital, and other strategic funds and angel investors. The specific financing amount was not disclosed.

It Took Me a Year to See the Bitter Truth About Agent Payments

After a year building infrastructure for the Agent economy, engaging with major players like Stripe, Visa, and Coinbase, the author shares a sobering analysis of the current state of Agent payments. The core finding is a stark lack of genuine, immediate demand across most envisioned use cases. The article breaks down four key market segments: 1. **Agent-to-Merchant (Consumer Shopping):** For most product categories (e.g., clothing, electronics), conversational AI shopping is a step backwards from visual e-commerce interfaces. While agents excel at understanding needs, they can't replace side-by-side product comparison. Real merchant interest is defensive "Agent Engine Optimization," not driven by current customer demand. Potential exists for high-frequency, low-decision purchases (like food delivery) or navigating complex store UIs, but these require massive B2C distribution channels dominated by giants like Amazon. 2. **Agent-to-API (Developer Services):** Developers already have subscriptions and billing relationships for APIs (compute, data). Prepaid balances solve micro-payment issues for low transaction volumes. A deeper structural problem is that major SaaS vendors' business models rely on enterprise contracts, resisting granular pay-per-call pricing. While protocols like MPP and x402 serve the long tail of niche services, this market is small and developers are historically low-willingness-to-pay. 3. **Agent-to-Agent:** This remains largely theoretical with minimal transaction volume. While it represents a long-term bet on a fundamentally new transaction infrastructure (sub-second, micro-penny to million-dollar, multi-party settlements), it does not constitute a present market. 4. **Agent-to-Finance:** This is the only category with existing, paying demand. Integrating AI into financial workflows (trading, portfolio management) is a natural evolution and enables new capabilities like autonomous rebalancing. However, competition favors established, regulated institutions. The "real problem" is not moving money between agents, but the broader challenge of **coordination**—orchestrating work between agents and humans, verifying outcomes, and settling results. Payment is just one component of settlement, which is itself part of coordination. Companies that solve the coordination layer will subsume payment, not the other way around. While well-funded incumbents build defensively for a long-term future, startups must find where the market is today—which, for the author's team, lies outside these four categories in an area of real, growing, and underserved activity.

marsbit10m ago

It Took Me a Year to See the Bitter Truth About Agent Payments

marsbit10m ago

It Took Me a Year to See the Hard Truth About Agent Payments

**Title: It Took Me a Year to See the Hard Truth About Agent Payments** Over the past year, I've worked on infrastructure for the Agent economy, engaging with major players like Stripe, Visa, Coinbase, and numerous startups. The findings reveal a stark reality: genuine, widespread demand for Agent-based payments does not yet exist. **Key Observations:** * **Agent-to-Merchant (Shopping):** The user experience for AI shopping often falls short, especially for visual product discovery. While AI excels at understanding needs, conversational interfaces can't yet replace browsing and comparing multiple products visually. Current merchant interest is largely defensive ("Agent Engine Optimization") for a future that hasn't arrived. High-frequency, low-friction purchases (like food delivery) are potential fits, but lack open APIs and face high AI inference costs. Simpler, more affordable, or cross-language interactions for complex UIs are a niche opportunity but require massive consumer distribution to scale. * **Agent-to-API (Developer Tools):** Developer payment needs for APIs (computing, data, models) are already met through subscriptions and prepaid credits. The core challenge is not payment friction but supplier economics: most large SaaS providers prefer enterprise contracts over micropayments for API calls. Protocols like MPP and x402 suit the long-tail of smaller services but cater to a developer market historically reluctant to pay for these tools. Major infrastructure needs at the top of the stack are already being addressed. * **Agent-to-Agent (Machine Commerce):** This is a long-term vision with almost no current transaction volume. While a future with high-speed, high-frequency, multi-party machine-to-machine transactions would require novel infrastructure, it remains theoretical. The market is not here yet. * **Agent-to-Finance:** This is the only category with clear, present demand. Financial professionals and DeFi users already pay for tools, and AI augmentation is a natural evolution. Autonomous AI agents can enable entirely new financial strategies. However, competition is fierce from established, regulated incumbents who can more easily layer AI onto their existing products. **The Core Insight:** Companies, especially giants with long time horizons, are building defensively for a potential future of mass machine commerce. For them, early investment is a low-cost hedge. For startups, the current market reality is different. The primary challenge isn't just moving money between agents (payments). The larger, unsolved problem is **orchestration** – coordinating work between agents and humans, verifying outcomes, and then settling. Payment is just a part of settlement, which is just a part of orchestration. Companies that solve the orchestration problem will subsume payments, not the other way around. After a year of building, we see the real, growing, and underserved market opportunity lies in this broader domain of orchestration.

链捕手34m ago

Claude Opus 4.8 Finds a $4.5 Billion Bug: The AI Era is Mass-Producing Hackers

A researcher discovered a critical "infinite mint" vulnerability in the Zcash cryptocurrency's Orchard protocol using Claude Opus 4.8, leading to a swift fix but also a 50% market drop, erasing billions in value. This incident highlights a new era where powerful, accessible AI models are dramatically lowering the barrier to finding software vulnerabilities. Previously, the security community feared specialized models like Claude Mythos Preview, capable of finding decades-old zero-day exploits. The Zcash case, however, involved a publicly available, general-purpose model. This shift makes advanced security auditing—and attack capabilities—accessible to far more people, not just experts. The mass democratization of vulnerability discovery brings a dual challenge: a flood of low-quality, AI-generated false reports that overwhelm maintainers, and the real, rapid uncovering of deep, dangerous bugs. Open-source projects, often understaffed and unfunded, are particularly vulnerable to this "attention DDoS." The article cites examples like curl shutting down its bug bounty program due to the unsustainable workload. Our perceived digital safety has often been luck, relying on the high cost and effort required to find deeply hidden flaws in complex systems, as seen with historical vulnerabilities like Heartbleed or Baron Samedit. AI changes this cost structure, effectively "mass-producing flashlights" to illuminate every corner of our codebase. While large companies operate extensive security chains involving external white-hat hackers and massive defensive operations, the global cybersecurity workforce faces a severe shortage, especially of experienced personnel capable of analyzing complex threats and coordinating fixes. The core dilemma emerges: AI makes *finding* bugs cheap and scalable, but *fixing* them remains a slow, expensive, and human-intensive process. The article concludes that AI won't destroy the internet but acts as a bright light, revealing that our digital existence is not inherently secure but is precariously maintained by ongoing human effort. The true cost in the AI era may not be discovery, but whether there will be enough people left willing and able to do the hard work of repair.

marsbit1h ago

Claude Opus 4.8 Finds a $4.5 Billion Bug: The AI Era is Mass-Producing Hackers

marsbit1h ago

Ethereum Price Prediction: ETH Could Double While Cardano (ADA) and This Newcomer Token Near 500% Rally

As the cryptocurrency market anticipates a potential bull cycle, investor focus is shifting toward projects with high return potential. Ethereum (ETH), currently at approximately $2,014, is highlighted for its long-term value, with predictions suggesting a possible 2x increase to over $4,000. Cardano (ADA), trading around $0.2329, remains a choice for its research-driven development and scalability focus, though some seek higher upside elsewhere. Significant attention is drawn to Little Pepe (LILPEPE), a new Layer 2 Ethereum-compatible token priced at $0.0022 in its presale stage, which has raised over $28.19 million. The project aims to build a dedicated blockchain for meme communities, offering lower costs and faster transactions. Backers speculate a potential 500% gain, driven by strong presale demand, planned ecosystem features like staking and a launchpad, and active community engagement through giveaways. While Ethereum and Cardano are viewed as foundational investments, LILPEPE represents a newer, high-growth opportunity for investors targeting the meme coin sector.

TheNewsCrypto1h ago

Ethereum Price Prediction: ETH Could Double While Cardano (ADA) and This Newcomer Token Near 500% Rally

TheNewsCrypto1h ago

Codex Goal Mode Usage Guide: How to Make AI Continuously Pursue a Specific Objective

"Codex Goal Mode: How to Make AI Work Continuously Toward a Specific Goal" OpenAI's Codex "goal mode" (/goal) transforms the AI from a reactive code assistant into a proactive execution agent capable of working autonomously for hours or even days to achieve a defined objective. To maximize its effectiveness, follow these key principles: 1. **Define Clear, Verifiable Exit Criteria:** The goal prompt should be a concise, measurable success condition, not a lengthy specification. Use quantifiable metrics like "reduce build time by 30%" or "achieve 100% test parity." 2. **Provide Initial Guidance and Tools:** Direct Codex toward likely problem areas and specify available tools (e.g., browsers, testing environments) to prevent it from exploring unproductive paths. 3. **Enable Progress Measurement:** Equip Codex with ways to track advancement, such as creating comparison tools for visual tasks or evaluation sets, ensuring it can gauge its own progress. 4. **Use a Realistic Execution Environment:** For tasks like performance optimization, provide access to environments that closely mimic production (e.g., similar configs, databases) to yield valid results. 5. **Be Cautious with Visual Goals:** Avoid vague "pixel-perfect" instructions. Instead, supplement visual references with functional checklists or design system specifications to prevent Codex from obsessing over minor details. 6. **Implement Progress Tracking:** For long-running tasks, have Codex commit code to draft PRs, update progress documents, or send Slack updates to maintain visibility into its work. 7. **Review and Consolidate Results:** Once the goal is met, instruct Codex to review its work, clean up ineffective experimental code, and reflect on what strategies succeeded or failed. Ultimately, using goal mode shifts the developer's role from writing prompts to managing a persistent engineering agent—defining objectives, establishing metrics, configuring environments, and conducting final reviews.

marsbit2h ago

Codex Goal Mode Usage Guide: How to Make AI Continuously Pursue a Specific Objective

marsbit2h ago

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