Top 10 crypto projects that raised venture capital in June

Crypto fundraising has recently seen a slight stagnation, attributed to the seasonal summer slowdown, which is traditionally slower. Despite this temporary dip, the overall interest in crypto remains robust as the market adjusts to typical seasonal patterns. This seasonal effect has slightly cooled the previously strong momentum in crypto investments.

In June 2024, crypto startups raised $892 million across 116 unique rounds. These projects span various sectors such as Modular Blockchain, SocialFi and AI and have secured funding ranging from $1.5 million to $20 million.

Let's look at the ten most exciting projects that raised capital in June 2024 without further ado.

MegaETH

MegaETH is a blockchain project that aims to change the way transactions are processed by achieving unprecedented speed and efficiency. As the first real-time blockchain, MegaETH claims to handle up to 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) with millisecond-level responsiveness. This is a significant leap from existing blockchains like Ethereum, where transaction processing can take up to 13 seconds. The vision of MegaETH is to turn cutting-edge ideas into everyday reality by enabling fully on-chain, interactive, and sophisticated applications. The project is designed to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the Ethereum ecosystem while addressing critical scalability issues.

Recently, MegaETH successfully raised $20 million in a seed funding round. This round was led by Dragonfly Capital and included participation from several notable institutional investors such as Figment Capital, Robot Ventures, Folius Ventures, Tangent, Big Brain VC, and Credibly Neutral. Additionally, the project attracted a number of high-profile angel investors, including Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, and crypto personality Cobie.

MegaETH's technical stack is built to optimize performance and memory efficiency. It includes a hyper-optimized Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) execution engine, an EVM bytecode-to-native code compiler, efficient concurrency control protocols for parallel EVM, low-latency transaction streaming, and a novel state trie design that is both memory- and IO-efficient. These innovations are intended to solve the "Straggler problem" and other scalability challenges that have long plagued blockchain technology.

Enso Finance

Enso Finance is an innovative project in the DeFi space that aims to change how users interact with various blockchain protocols and applications. At its core, Enso is building an "intent engine" that abstracts smart contract interactions across multiple chains, including rollups, appchains, and blockchains. The vision of Enso Finance is to create a unified gateway to the entire DeFi ecosystem, making it easier for both users and developers to access and utilize the vast array of decentralized financial services available. By providing a single API and platform interface, Enso allows users to perform a wide range of actions - from trading and swapping to lending, borrowing, and yield farming - all in one place.

One of Enso's key innovations is its ability to bundle and execute multiple transactions across different DeFi protocols in a single action. This is achieved through a complex infrastructure that includes an Enso pathfinder and transaction bundling system, which can combine numerous nested DeFi actions into one transaction. This approach not only simplifies the user experience but also potentially reduces gas fees and improves overall efficiency.Enso Finance places a strong emphasis on transparency and user safety. The platform incorporates transaction simulations at various stages of the process, both for internal testing and user-facing transactions. These simulations help ensure that users can interact with DeFi protocols confidently, minimizing the risk of unexpected outcomes or financial losses.Recently, Enso Finance has made significant strides in its development and funding.

In June, the project successfully closed a $4.2 million funding round. This latest investment will be used to further product development, including the launch of their L1 Cosmos-based blockchain later in the year.The funding round saw participation from notable investors in the blockchain space. Polychain Capital and Definity led the round, with additional support coming from over 60 angel investors representing various prominent projects in the crypto ecosystem. This substantial backing from industry insiders underscores the potential impact of Enso Finance's vision. By creating a platform that simplifies and unifies DeFi interactions.

Zeek Network

Zeek Network is a pioneering project in the decentralized collaboration economy, designed to incentivize reputation through innovative social bounty mechanics known as "Wishes." Launched in 2024, Zeek aims to create a robust ecosystem where individual behaviors and engagements contribute to a reputation layer called "Rizz." This reputation layer can be monetized and used to gauge credibility, reliability, and influence within the network.The vision of Zeek Network is to unlock the full potential of social interactions by transforming them into valuable assets. By leveraging blockchain technology, Zeek seeks to build a decentralized platform where users can earn rewards for their contributions and interactions, thereby fostering a more engaged and trustworthy community.

The platform is built on an Ethereum-based Layer 2 solution, ensuring scalability and efficiency. Zeek Network operates through its unique "Wishes" system, which allows users to set tasks or goals that others can fulfill in exchange for rewards. These tasks can range from simple social media engagements to more complex collaborative projects. As users complete these tasks, they earn "Rizz," which enhances their reputation and can be converted into tangible rewards. This system not only incentivizes participation but also ensures that contributions are recognized and valued.

Recently, Zeek Network successfully raised $3 million in a seed funding round. This funding round was led by KX Ventures as part of its strategic investment in Everest Venture Group's consumer-oriented products, which include Zeek. This financial backing underscores the confidence that investors have in Zeek Network's vision and potential impact. With this new influx of capital, Zeek is well-positioned to accelerate its development and expand its offerings, further enhancing its decentralized collaboration platform.

Ava Protocol

Ava Protocol, formerly known as OAK Network, is a blockchain project that aims to change the way transactions are executed in the Web3 ecosystem. At its core, Ava Protocol is designed to enable users to schedule and automate actions based on specific conditions, creating what they call "super transactions".The project's vision is to develop an intent-centric, event-driven Eigenlayer AVS (Automated Validation System) that supports private autonomous transactions on Ethereum and beyond. Ava Protocol's technology stack allows for cross-chain smart contract automation, enabling contracts to be triggered when predefined conditions are met. These conditions can be based on various factors such as time, price changes, or computational results. Ava Protocol's functionality is built around two key components: triggers and actions. Triggers are conditional logic statements that must be true for a task to execute, while actions are the functions to be executed when the trigger conditions are met.

This system supports a wide range of trigger types, including time-based, XCMP events, on-chain events, token price changes, and numerical data feeds.The project's innovative approach aims to enhance decentralized applications (dApps) with features like scheduled and recurring payments, stop-loss orders, and streaming rewards. By providing this infrastructure, Ava Protocol allows developers to focus on their core competencies while accessing one-click transaction simplicity comparable to traditional payment processing systems.

Recently, Ava Protocol secured a significant financial boost, raising $10 million in a seed+ funding round. This round was led by notable investors in the venture capital and cryptocurrency spaces, including Electric Capital, Taisu Ventures, Bloccelerate VC, BingX Exchange, and Shima Capital. The fresh capital will be used to expand Ava Protocol's operations and technology stack. The team's immediate goals include launching their protocols as an EigenLayer AVS and a Polkadot parachain, as well as introducing the AP token. Additionally, the funding will support the development of core Web3 infrastructure for intent-based private autonomous transactions.Ava Protocol's testnet has already shown promising results, with over ten thousand unique wallets conducting more than one thousand automated transactions daily.

Squads Labs

Squads Labs is a forward-thinking project dedicated to advancing the on-chain economy by developing smart account technology and products that simplify the management of on-chain assets for businesses, teams, and individuals. The core offering of Squads Labs is built on the Squads Protocol, which provides a secure and programmable on-chain workflow solution. This technology leverages the security and flexibility of smart accounts, enabling users to manage their digital assets and execute complex transactions with ease. The vision of Squads Labs is to foster the growth of the on-chain economy, believing that an increasing amount of productive economic activity will and should happen on-chain. By accelerating this future, Squads Labs aims to make on-chain economic activities more accessible and efficient, thereby contributing to the broader adoption of blockchain technology.

Squads Labs' platform allows users to create and manage smart accounts, which are essentially programmable wallets that can hold and manage assets, execute transactions, and interact with decentralized applications (dApps). These smart accounts provide enhanced security features and automation capabilities, making them ideal for managing complex workflows and collaborative projects on the blockchain.

Recently, Squads Labs announced a significant milestone in its journey by raising $10 million in a Series A funding round. This round was led by prominent investors, including Multicoin Capital, Electric Capital, Placeholder, Collab+Currency, and 6MV. The funding will be used to further develop Squads Labs' technology and expand its product offerings, including the launch of the Fuse smart wallet, which aims to provide users with even more robust tools for managing their on-chain assets.

ZyFi

Zyfi is an innovative Paymaster-as-a-Service platform designed to accelerate the adoption of paymasters in the zkSync ecosystem. The project focuses on providing flexibility and ease of integration for decentralized applications (dApps) on zkSync. Zyfi's core functionality allows dApps to offer their users the ability to pay transaction gas fees with any of the more than 80 ERC-20 tokens traded on zkSync, or even sponsor part or all of the transaction gas costs based on custom logic.The platform works by leveraging zkSync's native account abstraction, which enables externally owned accounts (EOAs) to send transactions gaslessly through any wallet. Zyfi's API interacts directly with dApp front-ends, adding paymaster parameters and handling the fee calculations for the chosen ERC-20 token.

Users can then sign gasless transactions, and the Zyfi Paymaster executes the transaction while covering the ETH gas fees on behalf of the end user.Zyfi's vision is to bridge the gap between traditional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) by simplifying the user experience and removing the complexities associated with gas management. By offering a gasless portal to the zkSync ecosystem, Zyfi aims to empower users to interact seamlessly with various protocols without the need for native gas tokens, thereby fostering greater adoption and accessibility in the blockchain space.

Recently, Zyfi successfully closed a $2 million private funding round, attracting support from several prominent investors in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. The funding round saw participation from Tenzor Capital, Everstake Capital, and ZBS Capital, along with other investors and angel backers. This financial backing underscores the market's confidence in Zyfi's innovative approach to solving gas-related challenges in the DeFi ecosystem. The funds raised will likely be used to further develop Zyfi's platform, expand its team, and accelerate its integration with various dApps in the zkSync ecosystem.

Halo Social

Halo Social is an innovative Web3 social application designed to revolutionize the way users monetize their social data through the integration of AI and blockchain technology. Positioned within the SocialFi (Social Finance) field, Halo Social aims to create a new paradigm of Universal Basic Income (UBI) by giving ownership and monetization capabilities to its users.

Halo Social operates by allowing users to track their DeFi portfolios, manage digital assets, and engage in a "Social to Earn" model. This model incentivizes users to participate in the platform by rewarding them for their social interactions and data contributions. The platform utilizes AI to analyze and monetize social data, providing users with a share of the revenue generated from their data. This approach not only empowers users to take control of their digital footprint but also creates a sustainable income stream through their social activities.

Halo Social's vision is to democratize the monetization of social data, ensuring that everyone can benefit from the value they create online. By building a monetization layer within the SocialFi field, Halo Social aims to establish a more equitable digital economy where users are fairly compensated for their contributions. The mission is to provide a new form of UBI, leveraging blockchain and AI technologies to give ownership and financial rewards to users, thereby fostering a more inclusive and fair digital ecosystem.

Halo Social recently secured $3 million in a seed funding round to support the realization of its social monetization goals. The funding round saw participation from prominent investors, including IDG Capital, KuCoin Ventures, and Hashkey Capital. This financial backing will be instrumental in further developing the platform, expanding its user base, and enhancing its technological capabilities. The successful fundraising underscores the confidence of the investment community in Halo Social's innovative approach to social data monetization and its potential to transform the SocialFi landscape.

M^0

M^0 (pronounced "M Zero") is an innovative project that aims to change the digital money infrastructure by creating a decentralized "money middleware" for the internet age. The project's core focus is on developing a protocol that allows permissioned actors to generate a cryptodollar called M, which is designed to combine the convenience of digital money with the risk profile of physical cash. M^0's vision is to democratize access to money issuance infrastructure and become a superior building block for value representation in the digital age. The project seeks to bridge the gap between traditional finance and DeFi by providing a flexible, multi-issuer, and multi-jurisdiction approach to digital currency. This approach allows institutions to issue a fungible cryptodollar while adhering to specific jurisdictional requirements.The M^0 protocol operates on a decentralized architecture with a best-in-class collateral design.

It utilizes exogenous collateral based on short-term US treasuries, with over-collateralization required at the protocol layer. This design ensures a robust and secure foundation for the M token. The protocol also incorporates independent, daily, on-chain validation of proofs-of-reserve, enhancing transparency and trust in the system.One of the key features of M^0 is its ability to enable the participation of collateral-providing entities interested in increasing the liquidity of eligible assets. These entities can partner with minters on the issuance of a fungible cryptodollar into demanding markets, creating new opportunities for asset liquidity.

M^0 has recently completed significant fundraising rounds to support its ambitious goals. In April 2023, the project, under the name M^ZERO Labs, raised $22.5 million in a seed funding round led by Pantera Capital. Other notable investors in this round included Road Capital, AirTree, Standard Crypto, The SALT Fund, ParaFi Capital, Distributed Capital, Kraynos Capital, Mouro Capital, and Earlybird.Following this, M^0 secured an additional $35 million in a Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto. This round marked the completion of the system launch and the project's entry into a limited availability phase.

With these funds, M^0 aims to further develop its protocol, expand its team, and accelerate the adoption of its money middleware solution. The project's ultimate goal is to provide a credibly neutral, transparent, and efficient infrastructure that can power the next wave of global fintech innovation, offering a superior alternative to traditional, centralized banking systems.

Stashh

Stashh is an innovative omnichain, social-first, and gamified hub designed to connect NFT creators and collectors across multiple blockchain ecosystems. The platform aims to solve the challenges faced by digital creators and collectors in the wake of reduced support for NFTs on traditional Web 2.0 social platforms. At its core, Stashh provides a comprehensive suite of features tailored to the needs of the NFT community. The platform includes Stashh Profiles, where users can claim unique IDs and showcase their collectibles, as well as create and share "Instants" - on-chain NFTs in the form of images and short videos. This feature mimics popular social media feeds while adding the element of digital ownership.

The Stashh Marketplace offers a full-featured trading environment for encrypted NFTs, supporting various formats from digital art to in-game items and phygital assets. Additionally, Stashh Studio empowers creators to launch their own collections or issue Stashh Claimables without any coding knowledge.Stashh's vision is to become the premier destination for NFT enthusiasts across multiple blockchains. The platform currently supports creators and collectors from Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polygon, Solana, Tezos, Stargaze, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism, with plans to expand to more ecosystems. Their motto, "if you can create or collect it, you can find it on Stashh," encapsulates their ambition to be a truly inclusive and comprehensive NFT platform.

Recently, Stashh Labs successfully raised over $3.3 million in a funding round to support their mission of building the best home for NFT creators and collectors from any ecosystem. The round saw participation from notable investors in the blockchain and gaming space, including Animoca, 6th Man Ventures, Shima Capital, Hashkey Capital, and SFermion. With the launch of Stashh 2.0, the platform is celebrating by offering various campaigns and rewards to both new and existing users, including retroactive Stashh XP and Gems airdrops, curated artist collaborations, and leaderboard contests.

Nexus Labs

Nexus Labs is a project dedicated to advancing the field of verifiable computation through the application of zero-knowledge cryptography. The project aims to create scalable, secure, and efficient computational systems that can be widely adopted across various applications, particularly in decentralized finance (DeFi) and other blockchain-related fields.

At the heart of Nexus Labs' innovation is the Nexus 1.0, a zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) written in Rust. This machine is designed to prove any computation of any length, making it highly versatile and powerful. The Nexus 1.0 operates by taking a normal Rust program, compiling it, and running it through the zkVM. The execution trace of the program is then partitioned into chunks, which are distributed across the Nexus Network's participating computers. This setup allows for highly efficient, massively parallelized proving.The Nexus zkVM employs several advanced components to optimize performance and security:

• Nexus Prover 1.0: Implements folding-scheme provers like Nova, SuperNova, and HyperNova to enable highly efficient Incrementally Verifiable Computation (IVC).
• Nexus Virtual Machine 1.0: A minimal, general-purpose VM optimized for prover performance, capable of running programs in any high-level language, especially Rust.
• Nexus Precompile System 1.0: Extends the VM's instruction set to accelerate specific computations, such as SHA-256 and matrix multiplication.
• Proof Compression System 1.0: Uses recursive SNARKs to compress proofs, making them smaller and more efficient.
• Nexus Compiler 1.0: A safe and correct compiler infrastructure that optimizes high-level languages and other ISAs for the VM.
• Memory Checking Mechanism 1.0: Ensures global memory consistency through multiple IVC steps using Merkle trees.

Nexus Labs envisions a future where computing is characterized by correctness, transparency, security, and accountability. Their mission is to build a decentralized "money middleware" that can handle verifiable computations at a global scale. By doing so, they aim to provide a robust infrastructure that supports a wide range of applications, from DeFi to enterprise solutions, enabling a new level of verifiability and trust in digital transactions.

Nexus Labs recently closed a $25 million Series A funding round to scale its verifiable computation project. This round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital, with additional participation from Dragonfly, Faction, and the Blockchain Builders Fund. The funding will be used to accelerate the open-source development of Nexus 1.0 and expand the engineering team. This financial backing underscores the confidence of the investment community in Nexus Labs' innovative approach and its potential to revolutionize the future of computing.

It is encouraging to witness an increase in capital flowing into the early stages of the crypto industry. Sectors that are popular among venture investors tend to become popular among the general public around 12-18 months later. Make sure to explore and utilize these early-stage projects, as you may receive handsome rewards through an airdrop!

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