The crypto venture capital (VC) funding landscape is experiencing a significant surge as the crypto bull market makes a strong comeback. Aquarius, a crypto venture firm, recently announced the launch of a $600 million multistrategy liquidity fund aimed at boosting on-chain liquidity for blockchain foundations and ecosystem projects. The fund is supported by Bitrise Capital, leading miners, family offices, and influencers. Aquarius stated that the fund will not only provide liquidity support but also assist in community building and go-to-market product development for various blockchain infrastructure, decentralized finance, artificial intelligence, Bitcoin ecosystem, modular architecture, and early-stage data layer projects.
Aquarius, founded by venture capitalist Lin Yang in 2018 in Singapore, has been involved in notable projects such as Conflux and has made investments in emerging Web2 sectors like new energy, advanced manufacturing, and finance. The firm recently relocated its headquarters to New York.
As the crypto bull market intensifies, crypto ecosystem projects are also receiving significant funding. In May, it was reported that crypto VC funding has surpassed $1 billion for the second consecutive month, with April witnessing $1.02 billion in funding across 161 investment rounds compared to $1.09 billion in March. This trend had not been observed since late 2022.
In a recent strategic funding round, digital securities platform Securitize raised $47 million, led by BlackRock. Other investors included blockchain developer Aptos Labs, stablecoin issuers Paxos and Circle. Joseph Chalom, BlackRock’s global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships, will join the Securitize board of directors, labeling the investment as a step towards meeting future client needs.
Another project that secured funding is Puffer Finance, a liquid staking project built on Ethereum’s layer-2 solution, EigenLayer. It raised $18 million in a Series A funding round for its mainnet launch, with investors such as Coinbase Ventures and Kraken Ventures. Puffer Finance’s technology allows Ethereum validators to reduce their initial capital requirement to just 1 Ether (ETH), down from the previous requirement of 32 ETH for individual stakers. The protocol has already surpassed a total value locked of $1.4 billion shortly after its launch.
The crypto market has undergone significant changes compared to a year ago. In September 2023, Tony Cheng, a partner at Foresight Ventures, advised projects to focus on survival due to the lack of available capital. However, since then, Bitcoin has experienced a remarkable recovery, gaining over 300% from its lows in November 2022. This recovery has been fueled by the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds globally and the gradual repayment of creditors’ funds from the defunct exchange FTX. Some VCs are predicting that the current bull market will result in another boom in initial coin offerings, surpassing the highs seen in early 2018.