Paradigm Leads Major Investment Round

Farcaster Raises $150M as a leading platform in the decentralized finance space, successfully securing a significant investment in a funding round led by Paradigm. This substantial backing underscores confidence in Farcaster’s mission to revolutionize the financial landscape through innovation and empowerment.

Diverse Backing Reflects Industry Confidence

Joining Paradigm in this landmark funding round are prominent investors such as a16z crypto, Haun Ventures, USV, Variant, Standard Crypto, and others. The diverse lineup of backers underscores the widespread support and belief in Farcaster’s vision to drive transformative change in the DeFi ecosystem.

Fueling Growth and Innovation

With the infusion of $150 million in funding, Farcaster positions itself to accelerate its growth trajectory and broaden its reach within the DeFi space. This capital will be instrumental in furthering the platform’s development efforts, enabling it to introduce new features and enhance the user experience. Additionally, the funding will empower developers to build innovative solutions on Farcaster’s protocol, fostering a vibrant ecosystem of decentralized financial services.

Conclusion

Farcaster’s successful $150 million funding round, led by Paradigm and supported by a diverse group of investors, marks a significant milestone in the platform’s journey. With this substantial capital infusion, Farcaster is well-positioned to propel decentralized finance forward and drive meaningful innovation within the developer community. As the platform continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in DeFi, the future looks bright for Farcaster and the broader crypto industry.

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Exponential raises $14 million seed round led by Paradigm. With participation from Haun Ventures, FTX Ventures, Solana Ventures, Polygon, Circle Ventures, Robot Ventures, A* Capital, Global Founders Capital, Launchpad Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and 80+ angel investors including Henrique Dubugras (Brex), Zach Perret (Plaid/Mischief), Adam Nash (Wealthfront), Othman Laraki (Color), Anthony Pompliano, Gokul Rajaram, Elad Gil and Balaji Srinivasan (former Coinbase CTO).

Exponential has a vision of unlocking financial freedom for everyone by bridging the gap between web2 and web3, and the minds to build it. They have assembled an all-star team of former Uber and Amazon employees with diverse expertise across engineering, crypto, fintech, and consumer products.

Take the mystery out of DeFi with Exponential

The future of finance belongs to people, not institutions. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) enables anyone to become a lender or market maker, and access high-yield opportunities previously reserved for banks. When individuals have the power to grow their wealth exponentially, financial freedom is within reach for everyone.

There’s only one issue. Investing in DeFi is a labyrinthine hellscape in which even the most ardent crypto enthusiast might become lost. Finding credible projects, making deals, transferring cash across chains, tracking performance, and filing taxes are enough to put most investors off. Furthermore, before hazards are addressed, initiatives gain popularity. Over the last four years, investors have lost over $60 billion in money due to vulnerabilities, and we have discovered over $3 billion of assets still engaged in high risk projects today.

This does not have to be the case. DeFi will become more reachable with the proper goods, opening the door to a new wave of investors. That is why they created Exponential, an investing platform that allows users to locate, evaluate, and invest in DeFi yield prospects.

Investors may use Exponential to:

• Take immediate action to strengthen their portfolio

Exponential has designed an institutional-grade risk assessment system for DeFi to assist its users in making the best decisions. Rate My Wallet examines the risk of users’ existing investments in real time. It’s powered by our DeFi graph which allows our team of experts to evaluate thousands of risk vectors and assess each liquidity pool by mapping it to the risk of every protocol, asset, or chain it relies upon.

“I was stunned to discover I had 7-figures invested in a risky pool after using Exponential’s Rate My Wallet feature. Exponential helped me identify another pool I didn’t know existed with higher APY and lower risk.” – Exponential beta user

• Discover new DeFi yield opportunities

Exponential helps investors find the right yield opportunities for them across DeFi, and compare them across major chains and protocols. Investors can easily search for new liquidity pools. Using filters like risk rating, annual percentage yield (APY), and total value locked (TVL).

• Easily invest in DeFi

Exponential users will soon be able to invest in DeFi liquidity pools across major chains directly on our custodial platform. No more interaction with obscure protocols. No risky bridging across chains. And n opaque DeFi high-yield accounts. Exponential users will have DeFi instruments at their fingertips.

About Exponential

Exponential is on a mission to make decentralized finance accessible to all by building the easiest way to invest in DeFi.

Website | Twitter

SOURCE

https://exponential.fi/blog/take-the-mystery-out-of-defi-with-exponential

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Backed by Paradigm, The Wildcard Alliance will onboard “the next billion gamers” to Web3 with ease, accessibility, and fun at the forefront with this $46M raised in a Series A.

Brief Overview of Wildcard

Wildcard is a first-of-its-kind hybrid of the multiplayer online battle arena, real-time strategy, and collectible card games. The game is the brainchild of Paul Bettner, a veteran video game developer renowned for developing games including Age of Empires, early VR hit Lucky’s Tale, and co-creating the wildly popular “Words with Friends.” With a penchant for exploring and harnessing new technology, Bettner is now entering the world of Web3 gaming, intending to create an engaging game franchise with fun at its core.

“Web3 platforms present a tremendous opportunity to build entertainment that can include, empower, and onboard millions of new players,” said Paul Bettner, Co-Founder and CEO of The Wildcard Alliance. “Despite this opportunity, the current focus of Web3 game development tends to be on finance over fun, economy over engagement, currency over the community. With Wildcard, we’re focused on fun first, building a next-generation. ‘spectator sport’ to welcome the entire community of competitors, collectors, sponsors, and fans to play together.”

Paradigm’s investment in The Wildcard Alliance underscores a shared belief that interactive entertainment will be a primary driver of growth in Web3.

Powered by Polygon

Wildcard is powered by Polygon, the world’s leading Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development platform. To deliver a game that is cutting edge in both creative approach and technical implementation. Polygon’s focus is on improving crypto’s carbon footprint. And has been a key factor in the Wildcard Alliance’s decision to leverage the Polygon suite of technologies.

The Wildcard is beginning a new genre of online games designed to be the ultimate spectator sport. Being a fan is as fundamental to the experience as being a competitor.

Wildcard uniquely leverages Web3 technologies. Elevating roles within the community enables competitors to connect, interact, and transact directly with their fans and supporters.

About The Wildcard Alliance

The Wildcard Alliance is a game development studio creating at the cutting edge of Web3 technology.

Website | Twitter

About Paradigm

Paradigm is an investment firm that supports tomorrow’s great crypto/Web3 companies and protocols. Their approach is flexible, long-term, multi-stage, and global.

Website | Twitter

SOURCE

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/words-with-friends-co-founder-raises-46m-to-launch-web3-game-franchise-301567634.html

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As the name suggests, Utopia Labs embodies the pursuit of the ideal. They’re leveraging technology to achieve better collaboration in the Web3 economy, where DAOs hold the potential to break down geographic and digital barriers and usher in a new era of decentralized coordination.

Since they launched Utopia last year, they’ve partnered and built alongside leading crypto-native organizations including OlympusDAO, Lido, Friends with Benefits, Yield Guild Games, Badger DAO, Illuvium DAO, Fingerprints DAO, SushiSwap, Tracer DAO, Pleasr DAO, and more. They’re proud to have helped scale more than one hundred DAOs while facilitating millions in contributor payments and operational expenditure.

They’re thrilled to also have support from DAOs like WOO DAO, Chain Forest, Yield Guild Gaming, Global Coin Research, IndiGG, Paragons DAO as well as founders, core contributors and operators from 1Inch, UMA Protocol, Zora, Opyn, Mirror, City DAO, Badger DAO, Llama, Goldfinch, VitaDAO, FIAT DAO, Mirror, Redacted Cartel, New Order, Nouns DAO, Party DAO, Friends with Benefits DAO, Krause House, Index Coop, Cabin DAO, SushiSwap, and Synthetix, involved in their Series A round.

From their first meeting with the Paradigm team, it was obvious they share the conviction that the future of crypto-enabled coordination requires thoughtful back-of-house infrastructure in order to advance, mature, and power a Web3 world. They’re excited to welcome them and all their other new partners into their Utopia.

This new funding helps them pursue two main goals:

1. Develop and grow their team of the builders and creators who are innovating for DAOs in impactful ways
2. Create new features, primitives, and initiatives that push the space forward and unlock the full potential of DAOs, including
   • Bookkeeping and Accounting
   • Financial Analytics
   • People Management
   • Treasury and Token Management
   • Fiat On & Off Ramps
   • Sub DAO’s
   • Token Vesting
   • Developer APIs
   • AND SO MUCH MORE

About Utopia 

Utopia is a collaborative payroll and expense management for DAOs.

Website | Twitter

About Paradigm

Paradigm backs disruptive crypto/Web3 companies and protocols with as little as $1M and as much as $100M+.

Website | Twitter

SOURCE: 

https://mirror.xyz/utopialabs.eth/H1-KPA2HxHzow0WQt35afJl-uQtTv2alTzFqRpRXeNU

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Friktion is thrilled to announce its collaboration with Paradigm, the leading institutional options liquidity network for traders.

Friktion believes that sustainable yields in the long term come from the inherent risk properties of an asset, and they have come to Paradigm, crypto’s largest institutional liquidity network, to streamline execution, minimize price slippage and encourage competition from liquidity providers.

Using Paradigm will maximize the yields available on Friction’s products for their clients and facilitate market maker participation, given the similar interface to structured product auctions on other chains.

Uddhav Marwaha, CEO Friktion Labs

“Our partnership with Paradigm will further unlock efficient price discovery and execution for Friktion auctions while preserving the non-custodial DeFi guarantees we value. Bringing the largest CeFi options liquidity network to Solana is the first step in our plan to scale liquidity across venues for Friktion. We’re proud to be working with Anand and his team who have been building robust options infrastructure since the earliest days of the crypto options markets.”

Phase 1

In Phase 1 of this strategic partnership, Paradigm will power Friktion Volt#01 and #02: covered call and collateralized put option auctions, combining crypto’s largest institutional liquidity network and automated workflows to streamline and optimize the Volt auction processes.

Phase 2

In Phase 2, Paradigm and Friktion will further improve their collaboration to enhance liquidity and execution of its Volt#04: Basis Yield, which executes delta-neutral strategies to harvest perpetual funding rates. However, they view this as a substantial long-term opportunity as Friktion continues to innovate its product suite. Indeed, Paradigm and its network stand ready to be the single point of access for Friktion Volts to source their more complex liquidity needs.

Anand Gomes, CEO Paradigm

“We are excited to collaborate with the Friktion team as they continue to build out key DeFi primitives in the Solana ecosystem. Friktion has been at the cutting edge of innovation since their launch and we are delighted to help support their incredible pace of product innovation with our best in class liquidity and automated RFQ workflows.”

About Paradigm
Paradigm is an institutional liquidity network for crypto derivatives traders and protocols across CeFi and DeFi ecosystems. The firm’s mission is to create a platform where traders can trade anything with anyone and settle it anywhere.

Website ♦ Twitter

About Friktion
Friktion is Solana’s leading protocol for risk-managed yield strategies. Friktion’s core products, known as Volts, are building blocks of DeFi portfolios that can perform across market cycles.

Website ♦ Twitter

⏩ SOURCE

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