A New War Begins And What’s Next for Crypto?

A New War Begins And What’s Next for Crypto?

Alen

Despite global tensions and the war between Iran-Israel, the crypto market remains robust. Bitcoin has stabilized above $106K, with SOL and HYPE gaining up to 7%. 

In crypto fundraising, this week saw $210M raised across 15 funding rounds. Notably, Yupp secured a $33M seed round, backed by only a16z, this is not the 1st time a16z is solo-investing in a crypto project, highlighting the growing section of AI and blockchain.

1. Turnkey raised $30M to power innovation in crypto

Crypto private key infrastructure - Turnkey has raised $30M in a Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Faction, Galaxy Digital, Variant Fund and Wintermute Ventures.

Turnkey provides verifiable key management infrastructure designed to power the next wave of crypto apps. With over 50M embedded wallets and millions of transactions signed weekly, Turnkey enables developers to build secure, scalable, and user-friendly applications, from DeFi to on-chain AI Agents.

The platform is described as:

  • Accessible: No wallets, extensions, or seed phrases needed.
  • Secure & Verifiable: Built on TEEs with remote attestation.
  • Programmable: Fully customizable APIs for auth, access, and signing.
  • Scalable: Low-latency performance at global scale.

Turnkey makes it easy to build the future of crypto securely, at scale, and without compromise. This new $30M in funding will accelerate the development of its foundational crypto infrastructure. The company plans to expand its team across engineering, product, and operations while investing in open-source projects, deeper integrations, and modular infrastructure for payments, AI agents, DeFi, and more.

2. Yupp AI raises $33M from a16z Crypto

AI model discovery and evaluation platform - Yupp has raised $33M in a Seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto).

Yupp is revolutionizing AI model evaluation by leveraging blockchain technology to bring  transparency and ownership to the process. In an industry where companies often keep their data and training methods secret, Yupp crowdsources human feedback to improve AI models with over 500 models including well-known ones like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok and Llama. 

Users evaluate AI-generated responses side-by-side, providing valuable preference data that aids post-training techniques like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Direct Preference Optimisation (DPO). In return, users are rewarded for their contributions, creating a transparent, incentivized system for improving AI models.

3. Silhouette raised $3M to build a shield exchange on Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid-native DEX - Silhouette has raised $3M in a Pre-seed funding round led by RockawayX, with participation from Amber Group, Hivemind, No Limit Holdings (NLH), Protagonist, NGC Ventures and Echo.

Remember when James Wynn, the Hyperliquid whale who lost 9 figures trading perps, and CZ said it would be great if we had a dark-pool styled perp DEX? Silhouette is building one right now.

Silhouette is a privacy-focused DEX integrated with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), it enables confidential execution of various order types like swaps, RFQs, and auctions, protecting users from frontrunning and MEV. 

A key benefit of building Hyperliquid’s system is its seamless integration with HyperCore and HyperEVM. Using Silhouette, apps, users, and builders can easily interact with the order book. This simplifies swaps, liquidations, RFQ mechanisms, TWAPs, and VWAPs. 

4. SOON SVM raised an additional $5m from a strategic round

Advanced SVM with ZK security - SOON (Solana Optimistic Network) has raised $5M in a funding round from Jump Crypto, Amber Group and some angel investors.

SOON is a layer 2 blockchain built on the Ethereum network. Unlike some layer 2s that use the EVM (a virtual machine operated by Ethereum nodes), Soon adopts the SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) to enhance transaction speed and the scalability of the network, which essentially replicates Solana’s high-performance features but in a multi-chain environment. SOON is building the highest throughput stack that allows for any SVM L2 to be deployed on any L1.

With the backing of these two leading firms at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets, SOON is here to redefine on-chain trading experience with its performant SVM infrastructure, copy-trading primitives simpfor.fun and Livestream trading plugins. 

5. OneBalance raised $20M, launching Toolkit

Framework for creating and managing credible accounts - OneBalance has raised $20M in a Series A funding round led by Cyber Fund, Blockchain Capital, with participation from Mirana Ventures and L2 Iterative Ventures.

OneBalance is a framework for creating and managing Credible Accounts. A Credible Account is an extension to existing account formats (externally owned accounts, smart accounts, stateful accounts) which allows them to make credible commitments without the need for global consensus. 

In addition to the funding round, OneBalance also introduces the Toolkit, the simplest way to bring users on-chain. Powered by Resource Locks (also a feature of One Balance), it offers an all-in-one API platform for building one-click interactions across any chain, action, or token.

Developers get three key benefits by using Toolkit :

  • Abstract users: One-click UX with no chain selection, bridges, or gas management
  • Build faster: Single API endpoint for all blockchain execution
  • Monetization: Built-in transaction fee capture

The Toolkit is ideal for apps that need fast, highly reliable on-chain execution: swaps, yield, transfers, and arbitrary calldata are all supported out of the box.

  • Onchain SuperApps: Wallets, exchanges, and launchpads offering a one-click user experience
  • Fintech Apps: Stablecoin-powered apps accessing 14M+ tokens and monetizing tx fees
  • AI Agents: Services that need to execute reliably on any chain with a single API call

Conclusion

This week saw a total of 15 funding rounds, with the total amount of $210M, not too bad compared to the current state of the market. Most of the capital flows to the crypto infrastructure category, preparing to lay the foundation for the crypto industry.

See you guys next week!