Key Takeaways

• Blockchain infrastructure remains the leading story in the crypto space
• Key themes attracting investment include AI, DePIN, tokenization, payments, and RWAs
• Nearly $150 million was invested in crypto projects in June
• DeFi and AI continue to be the two hottest sectors attracting investor attention

Venture capital funding in the crypto industry has shown signs of stagnation in recent months, with some firms struggling to close new funds. This trend was highlighted by Sarah Austin, co-founder of the real-world asset (RWA) platform Titled, which raised a $1.3 million seed round earlier this year.

Despite this challenging macro environment, “Blockchain infrastructure remains the lead story in the crypto space,” said Kaden Stadelmann, chief technology officer at Komodo Platform. He noted that the key crypto themes still attracting investment include AI, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), tokenization, payments and RWAs.

June saw a flurry of deal activity, with funding rounds supporting decentralized finance, AI-powered platforms, hybrid exchanges, and pre-seed investment vehicles targeting next-gen blockchain applications.

Kraken-backed Rails goes live following $20M funding

Cryptocurrency exchange Rails has revealed $20 million in venture funding across two rounds, with the most recent completed in April. The company is building a trading platform that aims to combine the utility of centralized exchanges with the advantages of decentralized markets.

Backed by major players including Kraken, Slow Ventures, and Quantstamp, Rails is positioning itself as a hybrid perpetual exchange. According to Slow Ventures, the platform is designed to offer professional traders the speed of a centralized exchange without sacrificing self-custody—a combination many see as key to the future of trading.”

Castle Ventures leads $7M Beam fundraise

Stablecoin payment provider Beam closed a $7 million round led by Castle Ventures, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Archetype, Arca, Verda Ventures, and others. The funding will help Beam scale its compliance efforts and improve cross-border infrastructure.

Beam offers stablecoin payment rails for fintechs, banks and consumer platforms, and is already live on Visa Direct, Mastercard Send and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow system.

Beam’s stablecoin payment rails already integrate with major financial networks, including Visa Direct, Mastercard Send, and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow system. With this latest round, the company’s total funding rises to $14 million. Beam plans to expand into key global markets such as Latin America, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and the European Union.

Frachtis debuts $20M crypto-native fund

Xavier Meegan, a former executive at staking provider Chorus One, has launched Frachtis, a $20 million pre-seed fund. It’s backed by big players like Theta Capital and RockawayX, and they’re really keen on companies developing decentralized AI, core infrastructure, and exciting consumer apps.

Frachtis is already off to a flying start, with eight investments in pre-seed and seed-stage companies, mainly in DeFi and AI. Meegan says his extensive experience, including over 40 investments at Chorus One, is a huge asset in helping Frachtis find and support the next big things in blockchain.

Interface Labs gets funding to build a cryptographic trust layer for AI agents

Web3 developer Interface Labs has secured $6.3 million in funding to develop a cryptographic trust layer for AI agents. The firm believes this area is severely underexplored, especially considering the rapid expansion of AI tooling.

With backing from DACM, Delphi Ventures, Arche Capital, and Lvna Capital, Interface Labs is building “Proof of Inference,” a zero-knowledge-based system for verifying AI outputs. The team has already launched a testnet with integrations into EigenLayer and Bittensor, with plans to go live on mainnet in Q3 of this year.

Pantera Capital, Multicoin Capital lead Gradient Network seed round

Gradient Network, a company developing a decentralized AI runtime on Solana, has raised $10 million in seed funding from Pantera, Multicoin Capital and HSG. The funding will go toward scaling the network’s infrastructure, including the launch of Lattica which is a protocol designed to handle distributed AI workloads.

At the same time, the team is developing Parallax, a decentralized inference engine built to scale large language models and other advanced AI systems. Gradient’s decision to build on Solana was reportedly a key factor in attracting support from top-tier investors.

OKX and Story launch $10M innovation fund

Crypto exchange OKX has partnered with Story, a programmable blockchain focused on intellectual property, to create a $10 million ecosystem fund. The fund will support projects exploring decentralized IP frameworks and onchain applications that treat IP as a blockchain-native asset.

Funding will be distributed through the IP token — Story’s native token that represents intellectual property rights onchain — to back use cases involving real-world IP assets, AI and data licensing, and programmable IP applications.

Story’s developer, PIP Labs, raised $80 million in a Series B round last August, co-led by a16z Crypto and Polychain Capital, bringing its total funding to $140 million.

a16z leads $33M seed round in Yupp

Blockchain startup Yupp has raised $33 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Crypto. The company is building an AI evaluation platform that uses blockchain incentives to reward users for assessing outputs from models like ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, and Llama.

The platform integrates payment services from Coinbase, Stripe, and PayPal. The a16z team described Yupp as transforming “human judgment into a renewable economic resource.”

DeFi solutions architect Blueprint Finance raises $9.5M

Multichain DeFi infrastructure developer Blueprint Finance has raised an additional $9.5 million to scale its product suite. The company recently launched Concrete, an Ethereum-based yield platform, and Glow Finance, a trading and staking platform on Solana.

The latest funding round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Yzi Labs, VanEck, Bitpanda Ventures, BitGo, and Gate Ventures. This investment occurs as the DeFi sector shows signs of recovery from the 2022 bear market, despite total value locked (TVL) not yet reaching its former peaks.

Units Network secures $10M from Nimbus Capital

Units Network, a blockchain ecosystem built on the Waves protocol, has secured a $10 million investment led by Nimbus Capital to scale its infrastructure and address key scalability and decentralization challenges in the Web3 space.

The funding will be used to expand validator capacity, enhance crosschain liquidity rails and advance Units Network’s AI roadmap.

Nimbus Capital is an investment firm backed by In On Capital, which manages $1.2 billion in assets.