The crypto market’s collapse in 2022 sent the entire market tumbling. However, dozens of enterprises are still investing in blockchain projects championing development in the space. In this article, we shall look into the most searched early-stage projects ranked by CryptoRank.
- Plai Labs
Plai Labs is at the top of the list as the most searched early-stage project on CryptoRank. The platform is a next-generation social platform leveraging generative AI technology and web3 to give its users the ultimate online experience.
Plai Labs received financing of $32 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz in late January 2023. The funding was scheduled to expand the Plai Labs team of engineers and designers.
Champions Ascension, the company’s first product, is a blockchain open-world role-playing game. The game combines Web3 aspects to the game and NFTs through trading digital items.
As the investors mentioned, its founders, Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb, have been at the forefront of past technology eras, and now, their sole focus is on future technologies. They also mentioned they believe that the future of social networks will encompass games and social communities revolving around the same. In particular, Web3 games are positioned to create a decentralized metaverse of the future owing to their distributed infrastructure and focus on asset ownership that will empower players.
- FilSwan
FilSwan is a Canada-based cross-chain infrastructure for Web3. The platform raised $3 million in funding last month. The funding round was pioneered by Binance Labs and SNZ holdings featuring participation from other firms such as LD Capital, Cabin VC, Betterverse Dao, Chain Capital, and Protocol Labs. The round was scheduled to support product development and user acquisition.
Multichain.storage, the company’s first product, was recently deployed on the Polygon mainnet. The product allows users to pay for File storage (IPFS) by Polygon stablecoin through its integration with Chainlink’s external adapter and price feed tech. That simplifies the dapp development process in Web3 storage, and the operation bar is lowered.
Charles Cao, the FilSwan founder, is focusing his efforts on cross-chain infrastructure for Web3, integrating data, payment, bandwidth, and data computing under one suite for Web3 projects.
- Createra
Createra is a user-generated content (UGC) metaverse engine. The platform received $10 million from its Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz last month. The funding was directed towards launching more tools on the platform, such as BEATA, for music creation and sound effects.
The platform offers its users crypto-native autonomous worlds with instant accessibility, cross-play, and unlimited player capacity. Its model depicts that everything built on the metaverse land of the platform is tradeable. That includes games, APIs, and models, allowing creators to monetize their creations.
Createra’s community has about 15 million Gen Z, 1.3 million average monthly users in Asia alone, and half a million builders. The platform aims to be the go-to platform for both creators and builders of the metaverse. Createra partnered with the Mfers NFT community to create a metaverse space station for NFT holders, allowing visitors to browse NFTs and even bid on them.
- Quasar
Quasar Finance is a decentralized asset management protocol that uses the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) technology by the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem. The platform received funding worth $5.4 million in a funding round that Shima Capital led at a $70 million valuation. The funds were directed toward product development and scaling the team. Notably, the round also had participants such as Blockchain Capital, CIB, HASH Capital, and Polygon Capital, among others.
Quasar is ready to roll out its public testnet from private testing on Feb. 10. In addition, they plan to develop structured investment products for DeFi, beginning with a rebalancing index for the Cosmos ecosystem that is automatic.
According to the co-founder and CEO, Valentin Pletnev, securing the fund is a show of confidence and reaffirming the partner’s commitment to a common goal. The goal being making custodial and permissionless asset management available to everyone.
- QuickNode
QuickNode is a leading end-to-end development platform specific to Web3 builders. The platform received $60 million in funding in a Series B funding round led by 10T Holdings.
The funding participants were also Seven Seven Six, QED, Tiger Global, and Protocol Labs, among others. This latest funding took QuickNode’s value up to $800 million. The funding is purposed to accelerate the company’s global expansion and empower builders further hence setting the base for a decentralized and globally-connected future.
CEO and co-founder of QuickNode, Alex Nabutovsky, mentioned that he firmly believed in Web3 as the future of the internet. Further, he sees that blockchain adoption will keep increasing year-over-year, and the momentum will keep up.
The funding will streamline movement from Web2 to Web3 at scale by giving developers the education, reliability, performance, and deployability needed for the next wave of blockchain adoption. In addition, the funding will allow them to hire the best minds across the globe and develop Web3 products such as the QuickNode Marketplace.
- SPACE ID
SPACE ID is a CA-based decentralized identity protocol provider. The platform recently raised $10 million in strategic funding led by Polychain Capital and dao5. It will use the funds to accelerate growth and give its vision of a secure, decentralized identity more audience.
The platform is working to build a universal name service network connecting decentralized identities. So far, the platform has created a one-stop Web3 domain and identity platform, allowing anyone to discover, register, manage, and trade web3 domains. In addition, it comes with a Web3 Name SDK and API for developers across blockchains and has a multi-chain name service to build a web3 identity.
In September 2022, SPACE ID introduced its .bnb Domain Public Registration. Since the registration opened, the name service has had over 370,000 registrations and upwards of 170,000 unique domain holders. In February 2023, the platform introduced its incoming 2.0 upgrade, which the latest funding will see to completion.
- Obol Technologies
Obol Technologies is an Ethereum (ETH) startup that recently received about $12.5 million in a Series A financing round. The funding was led by Pantera Capital and Archetype and had participation from Spartan, IEX, Nascent, BlockTower, and Placeholder, among others. The latest funding brought its total financing to $19M. The funding’s main aim is to accelerate the Distributed Validator Technology deployment.
Obol Labs is solving issues associated with staking infrastructure, such as single points of failure. Its DVT technology allows for Ethereum’s proof-of-stake validator to run simultaneously on more than a single machine. Its breakthrough would be the ability to split a single validator private key allowing a group of people to share the validation rights of an Ethereum validator.
The platform is already working with StakeWise and Lido to use DVT more efficiently and securely to distribute user funds across operators. In addition to making outages and mishaps less likely for validators, the company can lessen some centralized control issues. The Obol Labs can run validators with a community of stakers cooperatively through the feature.
- Architect
Architect Financial Technologies Inc (Architect) is a software company with an institutional-grade infrastructure that allows global digital asset markets trading. The company recently received a $5 million pre-product financing round participated in by firms such as Coinbase Ventures, SV Angel, SALT Fund, P2P, and Circle Ventures, among others. The fund will be used to bring in a team of qualified personnel and start product development, which is expected to launch in the second quarter of 2023.
The fund will allow Architect to provide institutions and large traders with a customizable yet secure trading infrastructure. The platform will also feature a core software product with compliance, market data, compliance visualization tools, and standardized risk.
Firms will also access the evolving technological complexity associated with digital assets through cross-venue aggregation, open-source design, and platform extensibility.
- Nil Foundation
The Nil Foundation is a blockchain infrastructure startup that recently received $22 million in funding. The funding round was led by Polychain Capital, aiming to support the development of building out its Proof marketplace.
The Proof is a trustless data access protocol that will enable layer 1 and 2 protocols and blockchains to generate zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs on demand. The platform will then facilitate seamless data sharing without centralized intermediaries’ dependence.
The ZK marketplace, which is still being tested, will democratize ZK-proof production to ease upstart ZK protocols to proceed decentralized. Further, with the Proof Marketplace, protocols needing ZK proofs can trust third parties to see their generation. In addition, it is generally blockchain-agnostic, meaning that projects can buy and sell proofs across ecosystems.
- Intella X
Intella X is a Web3 gaming platform that Neowiz, a South Korean gaming giant, developed. The platform recently raised $12 million in funding from a funding round that was participated in by firms such as Polygon, Magic Eden, JoyCity, XL Games, and Big Brain Holdings, among others. The funding was directed towards the platform launching on Polygon.
The platform is creating its blockchain gaming platform powered by the Intella X token. It also features Proof of Contribution(PoC), a new mechanism that sets it apart from other gaming platforms. In addition, it also features a decentralized protocol for revenue sharing that redistributes its revenue shares to contributors.
Intella X has an all-in-one gaming ecosystem that features a Decentralized Exchange, games, Launchpad, web3 wallet, and an NFT marketplace. Through the features, it hopes to bridge the gap between web2 and web3.
In the first quarter of 2023, the platform will launch on the Layer 2 Ethereum scaling blockchain Polygon.
As the crypto market recovers, we expect more firms to receive funds to support the industry. Blockchain technology is poised to evolve into everyday use, such as how people interact, socialize, and transact.
Source: https://crypto.news/cryptorank-unveils-most-searched-early-stage-crypto-projects/