Capital has been scarce throughout the industry since the cryptocurrency market crashed. Big funds are not investing as much, and everyone appears to be playing it safe.

Contrary to popular belief, now is an excellent time to begin building in We3. Building in a down market demonstrates conviction, authenticity, and passion. Plenty of real projects and teams are still developing products and preparing to launch, raising eyebrows and causing concern.

Pinata Raises 21.5M

Pinata, a Web3 media company, has been valued at $21.5 million following a recent funding round. Greylock, Pantera, OpenSea, and Alchemy were among the seed and series A investors.

Pinata began by focusing on helping Web3 creators distribute content and create experiences, after initially gaining customers for their popular IPFS network. Pinata provides its users with the three S’s: security, speed, and scalability. Pinata was previously used as a file-sharing network, but it now has an engaged community of creators and unique options for gated content.

Over a quarter million users around the globe utilize Pinata to build projects across all different blockchains including marketplaces, metaverses, dApps and more. Integrations with some of the biggest names in the blockchain industry allow a variety of options for creators, including Tezos, Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Solana, Near, Flow and Algorand almond others.

Those big names include DraftKings, Yuga Labs, OpenSea, Polygon and Autograph among others building things on blockchains, powered by Pinata. Having experience and a reputation as a solid Web2 company puts Pinata in an ideal position to drive innovation in Web3.

Injective Raises 40M

Decentralized Exchange, Injective Labs, raised 40 million dollars in the closing of last months funding round. Injective aims to solve liquidity and scalability issues presented to DEXs. The funding was led by BH Digital and Jump Crypto, enabling the protocol to reinvest in its growing exosystem, build utility for the token and provide additional liquidity.

Eric Chen, CEO of the company, had this to say: 

“With Jump as a major force in the crypto ecosystem, the partnership will be focused on expanding Injective’s network and further providing shared liquidity across the Injective ecosystem,”

Injectives has reached over 90 million on-chain transactions and dApps on the protocol have created $7 billion in volume. They are also building out infrastructure for the blockchain industry and becoming the go-to for developers, vital to the growth of the entire industry. Liquidity in DeFi can be a major problem but Injective is releasing great solutions. 

Ultimate Raises 12.5M (Euro)

Unstoppable Finance, which recently closed a 12.5 million euro investment round, is bridging the gap between decentralized finance and mainstream adoption. The transaction follows a previous 4.5 million euro seed round led by Speedinvest, Discovery Ventures and Rockaway Blockchain Fund, among others, in October of 2021.

The company intends to make DeFi more widely available by developing a self-custody wallet. The iOS app provides access to several DeFi applications for easier integration and trading, and it will soon be available on Android.

Ultimate is the first product released by Unstoppable Finance, a Berlin-based company. This multi-chain, entirely non-custodial wallet introduces the general public to the world of decentralized financial services. The limited private beta phase will begin soon, and the iOS version will be released to the public in a few months.

Airswift Raises 2M

A recent funding round led by CE Innovation Capital, accumulated two million dollars for the startup, Airswift. The fintech startup revolutionizing cryptocurrency payment solutions aims to become the first full-stack digital asset payment solution around the globe. 

 “The raise from CEiC shows that investors are confident in our unique strengths in blockchain R&D, payment gateway operations regulatory compliance, among other factors.” said Dr. Yan Zhang, CEO of Airswfit.

The company hopes to launch the service in Q2 of 2022, with the recent funding round being a seed round. A simple and convenient service with a frictionless interface is desperately needed by the DeFi space right now to help mass adoption of the technology. Small companies are still able to raise capital, despite the bear market.

Fortress Blockchain Technologies Raises 22.5M

In a seed funding round led by Ayon Capital, Soaring Investment Management and even Frotress Blockchains own founder, Scott Purcell, the fintech/blockchain company raised $22.5 million. 

Fortress Blockchain Technologies has been heavily investing in regulatory initiatives, with several big hires recently. After the seed round, the company is starting to focus more on the sales aspect, hiring the previous head of sales from MX technologies.

The funding will allow Fortress to continue developing software, expand its regulatory services globally, and build sales and operational teams to support a diverse range of B2B customers across multiple industries.

Soaring Investment Management director, Frank Zhang, had high praise for the blockchain-based startup. 

“Technological and societal paradigm shifts are ushering in Web3. Fortress is one of the critical building blocks for this next wave of the web… Fortress is positioning itself as the infrastructure partner of choice for celebrities, corporate brands, crypto exchanges, NFT marketplaces, real estate professionals, neo-banks, FinTechs, healthcare firms and others entering the space with their Web3 initiatives.”

Although the market has slowed since its recent all-time high, acceptance and adoption of the technology have not followed the same trajectory. Web3 and blockchain are still two of the most hotly debated and discussed topics in the world, as companies and governments compete to see who can capitalize on this innovative technology. 

If you liked this article, check out how Web3 is revolutionizing fundraising and Samsung Electronics Web3 ventures!

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