One way to keep up with the trend in the cryptocurrency industry is to track the actions of venture capital firms. Despite being in a bear market, capital seems to be flowing into the cryptocurrency industry again. While the pace is much slower compared to the previous year, a few teams managed to complete their projects without worrying too much about the market conditions. Here are a few projects that have already raised large capital recently.

Renegade

Renegade is a startup that is building a new decentralized exchange and developing an on-chain version of a dark pool based on multiparty computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge proofs. In short, Renegade is an anonymous decentralized exchange that offers products related to security, privacy, and MEV protection. 

According to the whitepaper, Renegade promises "complete anonymity for users throughout their entire lifecycle on the exchange." Its arrival is timely:

When CeFi proves itself untrustworthy through FTX.

When regulatory agencies are hostile to cryptocurrencies. Recently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission banned Kraken from providing staking services to US customers.

When MEV tries to disrupt your transactions in some way.

Recently, Renegade completed a $3.4 million seed round of financing led by Dragonfly Capital and former AngleList CEO Naval Ravikant, with participation from angel investors such as Balaji Srinivasan (former a16z partner), Lily Liu (Solana Foundation Chairman), Tarun Chitra (Robot Ventures), Symbolic Capital, and others. 

The project is currently in the internal testing phase and is expected to open its public testnet to traders in the coming months. Applications to join the waitlist are now open.

Website: https://renegade.fi/ 

Alongside

Alongside is an index platform that allows investors to invest in cryptocurrencies through indices, similar to investing in TradFi through the S&P 500 or NASDAQ. Instead of buying individual crypto assets, investors purchase index tokens, similar to buying ETH that tracks the S&P 500. 

Attempting to give the crypto market an index is not a new concept. There have been similar projects in the past, but they have been unsuccessful due to the market's unpredictability. 

Alongside raised $11 million in funding, led by a16z, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton Investments, Village Globa, Not Boring Capital, and others. Generally, DeFi projects typically raise between $1 million to $4 million, and venture capitalists typically have a forward-looking vision, so Alongside and the crypto index track cannot be overlooked.

Website: https://alongside.xyz/ 

Superplastic

Superplastic is a global entertainment and product brand that has partnered with some of the world's most well-known artists, brands, and celebrities to bring the community 3D NFT characters, NFT products, and virtual events. It appears that this project offers NFT-esque characters that could potentially become TV stars. 

Superplastic has previously collaborated with brands like BAYC, Gucci, Epic Games, and Fortnite to release NFTs on Ethereum. 

Recently, Superplastic raised $20 million in A-4 funding, led by the Alexa Fund, Amazon's venture capital arm, with participation from Google Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Sony Japan, Animoca Brands, Craft Ventures, and others, bringing Superplastic's total funding to $58 million to date.

Website: https://superplastic.co/ 

Monad

Monad Labs is a company founded by a former team of TradFi giant Jump Trading, and is developing a new proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain and decentralized computing platform called Monad to achieve the best performance and portability. 

Monad aims to achieve 1-second block times and 10,000 TPS performance while maintaining EVM compatibility of applications and infrastructure, through algorithmic improvements to virtual machine design and Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanisms. 

In short, Monad will adopt a PoS consensus mechanism compatible with EVM. 

Recently, Monad Labs completed a $19 million financing round led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Placeholder Capital, Lemniscap, Shima Capital, Finality Capital, Naval Ravikant, Cobie, Hasu, and others. The funds will be used for development, and Monad will launch a testnet in the coming months and plans to deploy the mainnet later this year.

Website: https://www.monad.xyz/ 

Phi

In the macroeconomic headwinds, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, and the bankruptcy of several crypto companies, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and DeFi suffered heavy losses in 2022. Despite these challenges, blockchain games performed well in 2022. 

Obviously, this momentum is continuing into 2023, as evidenced by VC investors' willingness to invest in them. Phi is a social gaming platform based on ENS that is creating an open and inclusive metaverse land system. By simulating familiar game styles like SimCity and Animal Crossing, it aims to make the visualization of on-chain identities easy. It encourages users to interact with various Web3 protocols, providing a positive feedback loop for the entire crypto ecosystem. 

For newcomers to Web3/DeFi, Phi is a pretty good tool to start with. Phi invites users on "crypto adventures," such as collecting NFTs, swapping tokens, or buying NFTs. There are missions and competitions, as well as corresponding rewards. This is a project that is suitable for cryptocurrency and DeFi beginners. It is interactive and can be performed on multiple chains such as Ethereum and Polygon. 

Recently, Phi completed a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Chapter One and Delphi Digital, with participation from Polygon Ventures, Ryan Sean Adams (Bankless co-founder), David Hoffman (Bankless co-founder), Kartik Talwar (ETH Global co-founder), Scott Moore (Gitcoin co-founder), and others. 

This round of financing will be used to accelerate Phi's improvement of UI/UX and the design and development of new social/game features, as well as to create a community to expand cooperation with more protocols, and to create Phi's derivative products.

Website: https://philand.xyz/ 

Space ID

Space ID completed its seed round financing led by Binance Labs in September 2022, followed by the launch of its .bnb domain registration. Within 6 months, it rapidly gained approximately 370,000 registrations and 175,000 unique domain name holders. At the same time, the .bnb domain name service has been integrated with over 100 leading projects and protocols, including BSCScan and Trust Wallet.

In February 2023, the Space ID team announced the 2.0 upgrade and merged with Arb ID, launching the .arb domain name registration. Space ID is becoming a domain name service network with multi-chain domains and universal domains, allowing users to discover, register, trade, and manage Web3 domains.

Currently, Space ID supports three blockchains, Ethereum, BSC, and Arbitrum, and hopes to support more in the future. "Universal domains" are the most interesting because users  will have an identity that can be used universally throughout the entire crypto ecosystem, regardless of which blockchain it is on.

Recently, Space ID completed a $10 million strategic round of financing led by Polychain Capital and dao 5, with participation from Foresight Ventures, among others.

Website: https://beta.space.id/