Highlights of This Issue: 14 Blockchain Investment and Financing Events Around the World Last Week, with a Total Funding of Over US$167 Million

**Highlights of this issue**

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 14 blockchain investment and financing events around the world last week (June 6-December 12), with a total funding of over US$167 million, a significant increase compared to the previous week. An overview is as follows:

**DeFi**

* Ooga Booga Completes $1.5 Million Strategic Round of Financing, Lead by Primal

Ooga Booga, the liquidity aggregator of Berachain ecosystem, announced the completion of a strategic round of financing of US$1.5 million, which will be used to accelerate the next stage of its development in the Berachain ecosystem. This round of financing was led by Primal, and participating institutions included CitizenX, Quantstamp, Rubik, ViaBTC Capital, TempleDAO, etc. In addition, many angel investors participated, including individual investors from Infinex, GMX, Saison Capital, Movement Labs, etc.

* Ocean Protocol invests $735,000 to support Yiedl.ai in developing AI-driven DeFi

OceanDAO, co-founders Trent McConaghy and Bruce Pon, and members of the Ocean Predictor team have jointly invested $735,000 in Yiedl.ai, an AI-focused DeFi marketplace platform dedicated to driving DeFi innovation through data-intensive AI.

* SUI Ecosystem Project Wave Completes Seed Round Financing, KuCoin Labs Leads Investment

SUI ecological project Wave officially announced that its seed round of financing completed in November 2024 was led by KuCoin Labs, and other investors included SUI Foundation, Web3Port Foundation and Comma3 Ventures. The amount of financing was not disclosed. The Wave team said that it currently has more than 4 million on-chain users and more than 600,000 monthly active users. Its products include Telegram-based trading tool Wave Trading, Wave Pad, an incubation platform that supports high-quality early projects in the SUI ecosystem, and DeFi and GameFi related products such as Wave Staking and Lucky Wheel, providing users with a one-stop experience in trading, airdrops, investments and games.

**Web3 Games**

* ZKcandy, a gaming-specific L2 blockchain powered by ZKsync, completes $4 million in private financing

ZKcandy, a ZKsync-powered gaming-specific Layer 2 blockchain, has successfully completed a $4 million private placement. Investors in this round include Wemix Network, Animoca Ventures, Spartan Group, Perlone Capital, Presto Labs, Flowdesk, Lecca Ventures, Efficient Frontier, and Prometheuz. ZKcandy is developed and operated by iCandy, whose subsidiary Lemon Sky Studios has participated in the development of several AAA games such as Nioh: The Rise of Ronin, The Last of Us 2: Remastered, Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3, and Final Fantasy 16. ZKcandy currently has more than 2.4 million testnet wallets and is preparing 25 games including first-tier Hollywood IPs, with plans to launch the mainnet in the first half of 2025. The project aims to promote the development of Web3 games through Layer 2 technology and build a decentralized gaming ecosystem for the future.

**AI**

* AI payment infrastructure Nevermined completes $4 million seed round

AI payment infrastructure Nevermined announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Polymorphic Capital, Halo Capital and Arca. According to reports, Nevermined is building a decentralized financial infrastructure for business between artificial intelligences. The protocol it builds turns artificial intelligence interactions into permissionless economic transactions, just like PayPal turns every web page into a storefront. It aims to make every AI agent a sovereign economic participant that can set prices for its services.

* Verifiable AI company Rena Labs completes $3.3 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Paper Ventures

Rena Labs, a verifiable AI technology company, has completed a $3.3 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Paper Ventures, with participation from multiple investment institutions including Lightspeed Faction, Eterna Capital, Lyrik Ventures, Mapleblock Capital, Selini Capital and Keyrock. Rena Labs plans to use this financing to expand its team, attract developers and industry experts, and strengthen the research and development of its abstract middleware Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This technology aims to build an infrastructure for trusted AI applications on the chain, making intelligent systems trustworthy and verifiable by default, while protecting user digital sovereignty.

* AI-driven RWA L2 network Novastro completes $1.2 million seed round

AI-driven real-world asset (RWA) Layer2 network Novastro announced the completion of a $1.2 million seed round of financing, led by Woodstock, with participation from Faculty group,