Crypto Venture Weekly: July 14-18, 2025

Introduction

If you missed it, Messari published its State of Crypto Fundraising report for Q2 2025. This pro report covers Q2's fundraising deals, accelerators, M&As, newly launched funds, top investors, and more. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

19 projects raised $202 million this week, led by KUN ($50M) and Spiko ($22M), while Talos, dYdX, and Ondo Finance made notable acquisitions to expand their infrastructure and product offerings. Sonnet BioTherapeutics merged with Rorschach I LLC to launch a publicly traded crypto treasury vehicle holding HYPE tokens, and Hiroki Kotabe, Pranav Garimidi, and Tom Dunleavy offered perspectives on Ethereum’s future, MEV, and price trajectories. Here’s the breakdown of this week’s top deals and insights.

Key Highlights

• Notable Deals: KUN ($50M), Spiko ($22M), XMTP ($20M), Blockskye ($15.8M), Dakota ($12.5M), AI Cross Matrix ($12M), Function ƒBTC ($10M), W3 ($7M), Football.Fun ($2M), and MoneyBadger ($400K).
• M&A Activity: Ondo Finance acquired Strangelove, Sonnet BioTherapeutics merged with Rorschach I LLC, Talos acquired Coin Metrics, and dYdX acquired Pocket Protector.
• VC CT: Hiroki Kotabe projected a bifurcation of rollups into high-throughput and Ethereum-aligned models by 2030; Pranav Garimidi argued encrypted mempools fall short as a standalone MEV solution; and Tom Dunleavy bet Kyle Samani that ETH will hit $10,000 by the end of 2026.

Notable Deals

19 projects collectively raised $202 million last week. Here are the ten that stood out:

KUN

• The Pitch: An Asia-based stablecoin payment and embedded finance platform
• Round: $50 million Series A
• Investors: GSR Ventures, BAI Capital, Eternium Global, and more

Spiko

• The Pitch: Tokenized money market fund platform with over $400 million in AUM
• Round: $22 million Series A
• Investors: Led by Index Ventures with participation from White Star Capital, Blockwall, Bpifrance, Frst, and more

XMTP

• The Pitch: A cross-chain messaging protocol enabling secure direct messages, alerts, and announcements
• Round: $20 million Series A
• Investors: Led by a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Faction VC, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Sound Ventures, and more

Blockskye

• The Pitch: Developing blockchain infrastructure for corporate travel
• Round: $15.8 million Series C
• Investors: Led by Blockchange Ventures with participation from Lightspeed, United Airlines Ventures, KSV Global, and more

Dakota

• The Pitch: A crypto-native banking platform for businesses
• Round: $12.5 million Series A
• Investors: Led by CoinFund with participation from DCG, 6th Man Ventures, Triton Capital, and more

AI Cross Matrix

• The Pitch: A privacy protocol for untraceable, cross-chain asset transfers
• Round: $12 million Seed
• Investors: Avalon Wealth Club, Asva Capital, Genesis Capital, BuzzBridge Capital, and M2M Capital

Function ƒBTC

• The Pitch: A DeFi platform that facilitates Bitcoin staking, lending, and liquidity provisioning
• Round: $10 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Galaxy Ventures with participation from Mantle Network and Antalpha

W3

• The Pitch: A decentralized compute protocol powering AI-driven automation through offchain workflows and verifiable execution
• Round: $7 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Blockchange Ventures with participation from Framework Ventures, Arrington Capital, and more

Football.Fun

• The Pitch: An onchain football speculation market
• Round: $2 million funding
• Investors: Led by 6th Man Ventures with participation from Sfermion, Zee Prime Capital, Devmons, and more

MoneyBadger

• The Pitch: A South African company that provides a QR‑based crypto payment system for in‑store and online merchants
• Round: $400,000 Pre-Seed
• Investors: Participation from P1 Ventures

M&A Activity

Ondo Finance acquired Strangelove

Ondo Finance acquired Strangelove, a blockchain infrastructure firm known for its work on interoperability protocols, SDK frameworks, and custom chain deployments. The deal enhances Ondo’s technical depth as it builds a full-stack platform for tokenized RWAs, combining asset issuance, protocol design, and blockchain development. Strangelove CEO Jack Zampolin will join Ondo as VP of Product, bringing expertise across Layer-1 ecosystems to accelerate the launch of Ondo’s forthcoming blockchain.

Sonnet BioTherapeutics merged with Rorschach I LLC

Nasdaq-listed Sonnet BioTherapeutics announced a merger with Rorschach I LLC, a newly formed entity backed by affiliates of Atlas Merchant Capital and Paradigm, to form Hyperliquid Strategies, Inc., a public crypto treasury company focused on acquiring and holding HYPE tokens. The combined entity is expected to launch with $305 million in cash and 12.6 million HYPE tokens, totaling an estimated $888 million in value. Upon closing, Hyperliquid Strategies will trade on Nasdaq under a new ticker and maintain one of the largest strategic reserves of HYPE. In addition to Paradigm, the deal includes backing from Galaxy Digital, Pantera Capital, D1 Capital, Republic Digital, and 683 Capital, positioning the new company as a key institutional access point to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Talos acquired Coin Metrics

Talos acquired Coin Metrics, a provider of blockchain data and index solutions, in a $100 million deal backed by Citi, marking one of the largest M&A transactions in the sector this year. The acquisition brings together Talos’s institutional trading infrastructure with Coin Metrics’s data analytics capabilities to create a unified platform for price discovery, risk management, and compliance. Coin Metrics will continue operating independently, while its founder, Nic Carter, will remain as chairman.

dYdX Acquires Pocket Protector

dYdX acquired Pocket Protector, a Telegram-native trading app known for its social-first interface and rapid user growth, to strengthen its core perpetuals product and accelerate its go-to-market strategy. The acquisition brings Pocket Protector’s six-person team, led by Eddie Zhang and Kaiser Kinbote, into dYdX, with Zhang joining as President and Kinbote as Head of Growth. Pocket Protector reached over $1 billion in annualized volume and 50,000 users within its first year, and its underlying technology will be integrated into the dYdX product suite to support a broader expansion in user experience and trading functionality.

VC CT: What the VCs are saying on Crypto Twitter

Hiroki Kotabe (Lemniscap)

• Outlined Ethereum’s evolving base-layer roadmap and predicted that by 2030, rollups will consolidate toward two dominant archetypes: high-throughput performance rollups and deeply aligned rollups tightly integrated with Ethereum’s consensus and settlement layers.

Pranav Garimidi (a16z crypto)

• Analyzed the limitations of encrypted mempools as a solution to MEV, concluding that while promising in theory, practical, economic, and metadata-based challenges make them insufficient as a standalone fix.

Tom Dunleavy (Varys Capital)

• Publicly wagered that ETH will reach $10,000 by the end of 2026, entering a 3:1 odds bet with Multicoin’s Kyle Samani.

Quick Recap

• Total Deals: 19
• Total Raised: $202M
• Acquisitions: 5
• Newly Launched Funds: 0

That’s a wrap for this week’s Crypto Venture Weekly. Thanks for tuning in, and see you next week!

Powered by Messari, our comprehensive fundraising dashboard allows you to navigate 18,400 crypto venture rounds, over 1,100 M&A deals, and access profiles for 16,800 investors.