Funding Weekly Report | 19 publicly disclosed funding events; cross-chain protocol LI.FI completes $29 million funding round, led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund.

Highlights of this episode

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 19 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (December 8-14), with a total funding scale exceeding US$178 million. An overview is as follows:

• In the DeFi sector, eight investment and financing events were announced, including RWA tokenization network Real Finance announcing that it had secured $29 million in private funding.
• Two investment and financing events were announced in the Web3+AI sector, including a $15 million funding round for the encrypted AI platform Surf, led by Pantera Capital.
• Four investment and financing events were announced in the infrastructure & tools sector, including crypto infrastructure startup LI.FI announcing the completion of a $29 million funding round led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund;
• Five investment and financing events were announced in the centralized finance sector, including MetaComp, a Singapore-licensed stablecoin cross-border payment and fund management service provider, which announced the completion of a $22 million Pre-A round of financing.
• In addition, one publicly traded company completed a funding round for its crypto treasury strategy: TenX Protocols raised approximately $24 million and listed on the Canadian TSX Venture Exchange.

DeFi

RWA tokenization network Real Finance announced it has raised $29 million in private funding.

Real Finance, a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization network, announced it has secured $29 million in private funding to build its RWA infrastructure layer. The round included a $25 million capital commitment from digital asset investment firm Nimbus Capital, with participation from Magnus Capital and Frekaz Group. The funds will be used to expand its compliance and operational infrastructure to develop a full-stack RWA platform. The company's short-term goal is to tokenize $500 million worth of RWA, representing approximately 2% of the current tokenized asset market. The current RWA market is primarily dominated by US Treasury products, private credit, and institutional alternative funds, with tokenized money market funds and other asset types also experiencing rapid growth. Industry experts predict that the market may see even stronger growth in the coming year as the regulatory environment becomes clearer.

ETHZilla acquires a 15% stake in digital mortgage platform Zippy for approximately $21 million.

According to an announcement on ETHZilla's official website, the company acquired a 15% stake in digital mortgage platform Zippy for approximately $21 million and reached an agreement to tokenize manufacturing housing loans as on-chain Real-Wait Investing (RWA). Zippy focuses on the US manufacturing housing market and raises $14 billion annually. This move will expand ETHZilla's RWA strategic footprint. For the next 36 months, Zippy's on-chain operations will exclusively utilize ETHZilla's platforms, including Liquidity.io, which is expected to provide institutional investors with on-chain access to bonds.

Magma Finance has completed a $6 million strategic funding round to develop an adaptive liquidity engine for the Sui network.

DeFi protocol Magma Finance announced it has secured $6 million in strategic funding to build an adaptive liquidity engine on the Sui Network. The round was led by HashKey Capital, SNZ, SevenX Ventures, Puzzle Ventures, Topspin Ventures, and received support from the Navi Protocol ecosystem. Magma stated it will address capital inefficiencies and liquidity fragmentation on Sui, providing traders with better execution and generating real returns for limited partners (LPs). The project has already passed security audits by Zellic and ThreeSigma.

Pye Finance has raised $5 million in seed funding, led by Variant and Coinbase Ventures.

Pye Finance announced the completion of a $5 million seed funding round led by Variant and Coinbase Ventures, with participation from Solana Labs, Nascent, and Gemini. Pye is developing an on-chain marketplace based on Solana to make time-locked staked assets tradable. The plan is to split staked SOL into independently transferable principal and reward tokens to enhance liquidity and yield management capabilities. Private testing is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2026.

DeFi structured position tool Asgard raises $2.2 million in seed funding, led by Robot Ventures.

Asgard Finance has raised $2.2 million in seed funding, led by Robot Ventures, with participation from Solana Ventures, Colosseum, Primal, Presto, mtnDAO, and Dead King Society. Asgard's flagship product is Credit Backed Positions (CBP), a novel DeFi structured position tool. Early beta users have already created over $35 million in CBP positions. The project is built on the Solana blockchain and aims to enable efficient, composable structured trading on-chain.

Goblin Finance, an Aptos ecosystem revenue optimization protocol, has completed a $1 million strategic funding round led by OKX Ventures and others.

Goblin Finance, a yield optimization protocol within the Aptos ecosystem, announced the completion of a $1 million strategic funding round. The round was led by OKX Ventures, Gate Ventures, and BlockBooster, with participation from Aptos, Hyperion, and Avery Ching, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs. Goblin Finance is described as a yield optimization protocol built specifically for Aptos DeFi. It automates liquidity provider strategies for V3 DEXs and perpetual contracts, providing dynamic rebalancing or centralized liquidity pools.

Incentive has completed a seed round of financing, with Singularity Venture Hub as the investor.

Incentive is a blockchain-based DeFi claims marketplace designed to turn setbacks such as failed investments or protocol losses into opportunities for recovery and growth.

This platform allows users to trade, liquidate, or claim the value of DeFi positions that might otherwise be locked or underutilized, essentially creating a secondary market for DeFi claims and rights. Incentive, as a new infrastructure layer in the decentralized finance ecosystem, fills liquidity gaps and unlocks the potential value of damaged or legacy DeFi assets.

Jupiter Exchange acquires lending marketplace Rain.fi

According to SolanaFloor, Jupiter Exchange has acquired the lending marketplace Rain.fi, aiming to accelerate the development of the Solana on-chain credit market. Rain.fi took a snapshot of its Droplets on December 10, 2025. Post-snapshot Droplets holdings will be converted into JUP token rewards, expected to be distributed in early 2026.

AI

Crypto AI platform Surf raises $15 million, led by Pantera Capital.

Surf, a crypto AI platform, has raised $15 million in funding, led by Pantera Capital with participation from Coinbase Ventures and DCG. Co-founded by Ryan Li, a former AI researcher at UC Berkeley, Surf focuses on providing more accurate and "illusion-free" crypto market analysis. Currently, the platform has over 300,000 users and annual revenue in the millions of dollars, with a target of reaching $10 million by the end of 2026. Surf plans to launch its upgraded model, Surf 2.0, in February 2026, further solidifying its leading position in crypto AI.

Pheasant Network raises $2 million to advance AI-driven DeFAI interoperability

Pheasant Network, a subsidiary of PG Labs, has completed a $2 million seed funding round and ecosystem support to advance AI x Intent-driven decentralized finance interoperability. The round was led by mint, with participation from the Ethereum Foundation, Polygon Labs, Optimism, and others. The project has already processed over $200 million in cross-chain transactions and plans to expand the use of the PNT token, launch AI-assisted routing, and enable one-click cross-chain operations.

Infrastructure & Tools

Cross-chain protocol LI.FI completes $29 million funding round, led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund.

Crypto infrastructure startup LI.FI announced the completion of a $29 million funding round, led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund. The funds will be used to build its cross-blockchain price discovery and transaction path optimization tools. This round will also be used to expand into areas such as perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and yield strategies, and to increase team size. The company is currently profitable. LI.FI provides aggregated routing services for fintech, wallets, and trading platforms, with current partners including Robinhood, Binance, and Kraken, and a monthly transaction volume of $8 billion. Its platform, dubbed "crypto Google Maps," helps businesses complete multi-chain transactions at minimal cost.

YO Labs, the development team behind YO Protocol, has completed a $10 million Series A funding round, led by Foundation Capital.

YO Labs, the development team behind the YO Protocol, announced the completion of a $10 million Series A funding round, led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Launchpad Capital. This brings their total funding to $24 million. The company plans to use the funds to expand its yield-optimizing protocol to more blockchains and improve its infrastructure.

Stripe acquires Valora wallet team to expand its stablecoin services.

Payments giant Stripe has expanded its cryptocurrency business by acquiring the team of crypto startup Valora through an acquisition-style hiring deal. On Wednesday, Valora founder Jackie Bona announced that the team would join Stripe to pursue its mission of expanding access to the global financial system. Specific terms of the deal, including the number of Valora employees joining Stripe, were not disclosed. According to Bona, the acquisition does not appear to include the intellectual property behind Valora's technology. She wrote that the app will "return to its birthplace, cLabs, to continue operating, with cLabs leading its future development."

Launched in 2021, Valora is a mobile-first, user-controlled cryptocurrency wallet application, specifically for stablecoins on the CELO blockchain. Valora aims to make sending cryptocurrency as simple as sending a text message. It has previously partnered with peer-to-peer applications like M-Pesa to expand into the African market and with stablecoin issuer Tether to promote the global adoption of stablecoins.

Indian blockchain-based cross-border remittance startup Frex has raised approximately $1.05 million in Pre-Seed funding, led by Zeropearl VC and others.

Indian blockchain remittance startup Frex announced the completion of a 95,000,000 Indian rupee (approximately US$1.05 million) Pre-Seed funding round, co-led by Zeropearl VC and White Venture Capital, with participation from a group of angel investors. The company leverages blockchain technology and local banking partnerships to build a real-time remittance solution, primarily providing cross-border remittance services to immigrants and overseas workers.

Centralized Finance

Stablecoin cross-border payment company MetaComp has completed a $22 million Pre-A round of financing, with participation from Sky9 Capital and others.

Singapore-based licensed stablecoin cross-border payments and funds management service provider MetaComp announced the completion of a $22 million Pre-A round of financing. Investors in this round included Eastern Bell Capital, Noah, Sky9 Capital, Freshwave Fund, and Beingboom Capital, with 100Summit Partners serving as the exclusive financial advisor. The new funds will be used to accelerate the expansion of its StableX Network, which integrates SWIFT and multiple stablecoin networks to provide businesses with a real-time cross-border settlement layer. MetaComp holds a Major Payments Institution license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and its stablecoin payment business has a monthly transaction volume exceeding $1 billion, covering more than 30 markets. The company plans to deepen its business presence in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.

Cascade raises $15 million, with Polychain Capital and others participating.

New York-based startup Cascade has raised $15 million to date from investors including Polychain Capital, Variant, Coinbase Ventures, and Archetype. Cascade announced the launch of a new 24/7 brokerage service. This service is built on a unified margin account linked to perpetual markets covering cryptocurrencies, major U.S. stocks, and private companies such as OpenAI, SpaceX, and Stripe. Currently, the platform is accessible to a select group of invited depositors and is expected to open to the public in early 2026. Initially, the platform will offer more than 10 perpetual markets, with plans to gradually expand the product lineup.

Paradigm invests $13.5 million in the Brazilian stablecoin project Crown.

Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm announced a $13.5 million investment in Brazilian stablecoin company Crown, valuing the company at approximately $90 million. This marks Paradigm's first investment in Brazil. Crown stated that its stablecoin BRLV, pegged to the Brazilian real (BRL), has become "the world's largest emerging market stablecoin" and is fully backed by Brazilian government bonds, currently valued at approximately 360 million reais (about $66 million). BRLV primarily targets institutional clients, allowing investors to earn high Brazilian interest rates (approximately 15%) by holding the stablecoin. Paradigm claims that Crown has established strong economies of scale and is poised for rapid expansion in Brazil.

AllScale has raised $5 million in seed funding, led by YZi Labs.

AllScale has completed a seed funding round of approximately $5 million, led by YZi Labs (EASY Residency S2), with participation from GSR Ventures and Generative Ventures. The platform has also established an ecosystem partnership with BNB Chain. AllScale positions itself as a self-custodied stablecoin "neobank," targeting micro-enterprises and freelancers globally. It provides stablecoin payment, invoicing, and settlement tools, supports account abstraction and LLM financial assistance, and features a passkey wallet with no mnemonic phrase required and the multi-chain "paymaster" payment service, offering zero gas and low latency. The platform is already integrated with BNB Chain and a high-efficiency Layer 2 architecture, and plans to expand to Latin America next quarter. It also stated that it has established a partnership with the African freelancer community.

African stablecoin payment startup Ezeebit raises $2.05 million in seed funding.

Ezeebit, a crypto payments startup regulated by South Africa's FSCA, announced the completion of a $2.05 million seed funding round. The funds will be used to accelerate product development and merchant expansion in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. The company supports instant settlement in stablecoins and next-day local fiat currency payments, and has already processed over 30,000 transactions. Investors include Raba Partnerships, Founder Collective, and industry executives from VISA, Revolut, and Talos.

DAT

(These types of transactions are not included in this week's financing report statistics)

TenX Protocols has raised approximately $24 million and recently listed on the Canadian TSX Venture Exchange.

Blockchain infrastructure company TenX Protocols has officially listed on the Canadian TSX Venture exchange under the ticker symbol "TNX". The company raised over CAD 33 million (approximately USD 24 million) in 2025, part of which will be used to purchase tokens on chains such as Solana, Sui, and Sei and participate in staking, while also expanding its own infrastructure services. Investors include Borderless Capital, BONK contributors, and DeFi Technologies.