Polychain · 868

Blueprint Finance completes strategic financing led by Polychain Capital

In comparison, institutional on-chain financial infrastructure developer Blueprint Finance announced the completion of strategic financing, led by Polychain Capital, Bullish, Keyrock, BitGo, FalconX, G-20, Flowdesk, JPEG Trading, Sentient Capital, Andes, and 2Square. Blueprint Finance is the core developer of Concrete. Concrete is a full-stack treasury infrastructure for institutions, agreements, and asset managers to launch, manage, and allocate capital through complex on-chain strategies, integrating execution, accounting, risk control, rebalancing, and protocols into a unified treasury system. This round of funding will support it to continue expanding Concrete and promote collaboration with protocols, asset issuers, networks, and institutional allocators to build a vault that supports on-chain yield products and acts as a core liquidity infrastructure. In addition to treasury infrastructure, Blueprint Finance is also expanding the Concrete ecosystem and launching on-chain finance primitives such as AssetCx and ConcusD. Nic Roberts-Huntley, CEO and co-founder of Blueprint Finance, said that DeFi is going beyond simply chasing the highest advertising returns. The next stage involves infrastructure, which provides control, transparency, automation and risk management for professional allocators while retaining the advantages of the on-chain market.

2d ago#financing

Some people use it, have brands, and don't issue coins. Why has POAP reached the end?

Author: imToken Original title: When POAP also comes to an end: When the “wave of bankruptcies” in the crypto industry hits, how can ordinary users cope with themselves? Recently, the crypto industry seems to have entered an intensive farewell period. From BitMEX, which has been in operation for 11 years, to Satori Finance, which has received investment from top institutions such as Polychain and Coinbase Venture, one familiar name after another has ceased operations and officially reached the end, covering various directions such as trading platforms, DeFi, wallets, NFTs, and infrastructure. Among them, POAP's departure was unquestionably particularly impressive. If you've gone through the previous crypto cycle, especially if you've participated in Devcon, ETHDenver, Hackathon, DAO community events, or various online and offline meetups, many people can probably pull out a few POAPs from their wallets. It may be from a conference, an online sharing, or just a community event where you can't remember the details. Most of these POAPs aren't worth much, but because of this, they're probably closer to the original meaning of “collecting” than many NFTs that used to be expensive. It is for this reason that POAP's farewell is particularly representative. It didn't suddenly go back to zero due to hacker attacks, and didn't even issue a native token that needed to continuously maintain price expectations. It just had real users, clear scenarios, and a high enough brand awareness, but in the end, it still hasn't found a business model that can support the company for a long time. This is exactly what is changing in the crypto industry today. In the past, we were more accustomed to discussing how a project was born; next, we may need to get used to discussing how a project dies. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, as regular users, we need to know how to avoid being affected by the aftershocks of a bear market. 1. A new form of “shutdown wave” swept through the Web3 encryption industry. In the last round of expansion, it is actually not difficult for a project to prove that it was “founded.” The completion of financing, the launch of the main network, the issuance/airdrop, and a round of liquidity incentives are enough to attract the first batch of users. TVL, number of addresses, and transaction volume can quickly grow. Even over a long period of time, whether a project actually has revenue is not the most urgent issue. However, when the cycle is reversed, and token prices and liquidity cannot continue to perform financing functions, this model will reveal one of the easiest questions, which is, if no new money comes in, can this project support itself? This round of projects came to an end in 2026, and this is where the real focus is also on. Because many of those that have disappeared are not air projects that had no products at the beginning, but projects that have already been funded, launched, have real users, and even run well technically. For example, on July 23, BitMEX announced that it would officially shut down the trading platform on September 23, 2026. This trading platform, founded in 2014, was once one of the most representative companies in the entire crypto derivatives market. Perpetual contracts, 100x leverage, and a complete set of trading products that were later widely used by the entire industry are closely related to the early development of BitMEX. It even specifically emphasized in its official shutdown announcement that “in more than 11 years of operation, BitMEX has never lost user funds due to hacking,” but this has not made it an infrastructure that can run permanently. A similar story happened on the DeFi and infrastructure circuit. As a Bitcoin L2 project that has been under construction for nearly four years, Botanix has maintained 100% normal operation and zero security incidents since its launch. It has processed about 25 million transactions, 200,000 wallet addresses, and tens of millions of dollars of assets have entered the network, and is connected to infrastructure and DeFi products such as Chainlink and Morpho. Looking only at traditional Crypto KPIs, it's hard to even call it a “no-go” project — the chain has been created, the products can be used, the users have come, and the money has come in. But in the end, Botanix decided to shut down the network, and the review showed that the actual transaction demand was insufficient to generate sufficient fee revenue and could not cover the infrastructure costs required for the long-term operation of an independent network. At the end of the day, Crypto used to be too used to measure an ecosystem with TVL, number of addresses, and number of transactions, but it rarely asked that last question:...

12d agoburnking

Stablecoin infrastructure provider Yellow Card closes $40 million strategic funding

Comparatively, global stablecoin infrastructure provider Yellow Card announced today that it has completed a $40 million strategic funding round. Investors include SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, and other strategic investors under Standard Chartered Bank. This round of funding will be used to expand the size of Global USD Accounts (Yellow Card's end-to-end dollar accounts for enterprises) and expand the stablecoin track connecting to the global market. Yellow Card's cumulative equity funding has surpassed $120 million. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

18d agoburnking#financing

Movement Labs filed for bankruptcy, and the founder's $1.6 million claim was the largest debt

According to The Block, Movement Labs (MVMT), the original core development company of the Movement blockchain, applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the Delaware Bankruptcy Court at the beginning of this month. According to documents filed on July 15, the company reported assets of between $100,000 and $500,000 and liabilities of up to $10 million, listing nearly 299 creditors, the largest unsecured claim of over $1.6 million from the ousted co-founder Rushikesh Manche. Manche retains 34.25% of the shares and has previously been sued and upheld by a Justice Department grand jury investigating legal expenses related to the MOVE token issuance scandal. The company was the core developer of the Movement Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, and completed a $38 million Series A round led by Polychain. The December 2024 MOVE token offering was in crisis due to a market maker sell-off, and Manche was fired after an internal investigation, and core development work was transferred to Move Industries.

31d ago#Shut down the tide topic

The 2026 H1 Crypto VC Report Unveiled What Cruel Signals

Source: Tiger Research Authors: Henry Kim, Ryan Yoon Compiled and edited by: BitPushNews Crypto market capital is undergoing a paradigm shift — funding is being concentrated at an accelerated pace on specific tracks and leading companies. Tiger Research and RootData jointly analyzed a total of 9,416 investment transaction data from 2018 to the first half of 2026 to outline the changing trajectory of this capital pattern. The core finding was that in the first half of 2026, capital inflows to the crypto market reached $13.3 billion, almost the same as the full year of 2024's $13.2 billion. However, funding rounds plummeted to just 435, a sharp drop of 78% from the 2022 peak of 1,978. The market is rapidly dividing: on one end there are a few large crypto-native venture capital firms that focus on leading investors, and on the other end are subsidiary investment departments that rely on exchange liquidity. Mid-sized funds, which are sandwiched in the middle and lack a clear competitive advantage, are being pushed out of the table at a speed visible to the naked eye. Game circuit funding rounds plummeted from 141 in 2024 to just 5 in the first half of 2026, a drop of 96%. The payments and stablecoin circuit, as well as capital inflows to the centralized exchange (CEX) circuit, are almost all driven by mergers and acquisitions. Traditional financial institutions participated in 54.5% of all investment transactions recorded in the first half of 2026. 1. 2021 Market Review: Using speed and diversification as a strategy The core strategy of the 2021 crypto investment market is to pursue speed and diversification of portfolios. In that year, investors executed a total of 1,750 transactions (including seed rounds), and competition for speed was so intense that AU21 Capital alone was able to close more than 13 transactions per month on average. Investment decisions at the time were reduced to extremely simple standards, such as token generation event (TGE) timelines and tokenomics (tokenomics, a structure that governs how project tokens are issued and distributed). Since issuing tokens alone can generate returns without any actual product development, venture investors largely pursue a “spray and pray” (spray and pray) strategy, spreading funds across hundreds of projects, regardless of their high or low valuations. Speed of execution was placed above strict due diligence. A new round of financing can close almost instantly, and venture capital firms that miss one round tend to chase the next project with a higher valuation. This fear of misunderstanding (FOMO) continues to circulate throughout the industry. Most VCs running this strategy failed to survive the subsequent bear market, and those that survived fundamentally changed their investment methods. 2. Which VCs have survived: The industry landscape has changed 2.1. Lead investment: The first indicator we need to examine in the past and present is “lead investment” (Lead Investment), which is the funding round that major venture capital companies have historically dominated. Some venture capital firms are still active in leading investment deals, while others have completely disappeared or only recently emerged. Since leading a round of financing has always required the reputation and capital scale only large venture capitalists have, companies that have led major rounds in the past have shown strong resilience, and most of them are still in the top ten today. 2.2. The differentiation of surviving venture capital, judging from the latest data from 2024 to 2026, crypto-native venture capital firms and established large institutions are concentrating their resources on leading investment transactions and participating more deeply in a single transaction. They changed their business model: reducing the overall number of transactions while raising the due diligence threshold, and actively seeking board seats and more influence over project governance. However, the cumulative number of regular round participation (round participation) outside of leading investment transactions showed a very different picture. Among the top 15 venture capital firms that participated from 2024 to the first half of 2026, venture capital institutions under the exchange account for a large share. Exchanges are far more willing to participate in financing rounds than lead investors. Among them, Coinbase Ventures ranked first with 140 transactions, OKX Ventures ranked second with 94, and yZi Labs ranked third with 92. Note: yZi Labs...

39d agoWendy#CEX #DEX #VC #invests #depths #financing

Are Chinese University of Science and Technology+Shibata's college bullies and money industry bosses running away from New York?

Another exchange in the coin industry is about to disappear. AscendEX (Pinnacle, formerly BitMax) ceased operations. According to AscendEX's official website announcement, the platform will completely stop all business operations from July 1, 2026 — it will no longer provide account opening, deposit, trading, pledge, loan and activity services, and will only retain limited account access to handle withdrawals, KYC updates, complaints and export transaction records. Since July 6, all withdrawal channels have been automatically processed, and all have been reviewed manually. The official even bluntly stated in the announcement: “Withdrawals may be delayed or may not be processed during the review period. There is currently no guarantee on the timing or amount of withdrawals”. AscendEX blamed the shutdown on the “current market environment” and the impact of the European Union's Crypto Asset Market Regulation Act (MiCA), claiming that it was forced to shut down due to a lack of MiCA authorization combined with “broader regulatory, financial, and operational factors.” ZachXBT serial warning: From “withdrawal delays” to “almost zero liquid assets” as early as June 26, 2026, on-chain detective ZachXBT issued a community alert on the X platform: several AscendEX users reported that withdrawals were delayed for several days to weeks, or even impossible to process at all. Judging from feedback from communities such as Reddit and X, starting in early June, many users will stay in the “Initiating” (initiating) state for a long time after submitting their withdrawal requests. The problem seems to have come to an end as early as May. An AscendEX user told Bitpush: “My withdrawals have been restricted since May 6th, long before AscendEX's official shutdown announcement. AscendEX asked me to stop my public activity and notified me to enter a phased settlement process on June 12. On June 24, they authorized the first settlement withdrawal, but then the withdrawal was marked “Rejected” without any TXID. This isn't just a MiCA issue. ” The user claims that there are still 34,174 USDT + 25,592 XRP that have not been settled or withdrawn. After reviewing AscendEX's known hot wallets, ZachXBT found that the platform had almost no reserves on mainstream assets such as ETH, USDT, and SOL. Blockchain data platform Arkham Intelligence shows that currently (as of July 8, EST), AscendEX label addresses only hold about $13.45 million in crypto assets, of which more than $12 million is concentrated in the platform's own ASD token and Unbound Science's Unite token. To put it bluntly, there are almost zero mainstream stablecoins and liquid assets that can actually be used to pay user withdrawals. However, while the platform freezes withdrawals, it still accepts user deposits normally. By July 2, the situation had worsened further. ZachXBT revealed that AscendEX's official X account has been suspended for 9 consecutive days since the initial warning. A victim of large sums said he had contacted AscendEX co-founder George Cao several times to report issues and received no response. At the time, ZachXBT publicly advised users whose funds were frozen to report cases to the law enforcement authorities and supervisory authorities in the country or region where they are located. By July 8, ZachXBT stated that its verified user claims had reached millions of dollars, but judging from AscendEX's public hot wallet situation, there is currently almost no current assets available to pay for relevant withdrawal requests. Another detail is worth noting. On-chain records show that on June 20 — six days earlier than ZachXBT's initial warning — the AscendEX wallet balance suddenly crashed, evaporating more than $240 million in a single day. Strangely enough, less than two months ago, the address had a capital injection of about the same size, and since then the reserves have stabilized at around 50 million US dollars. That $240 million capital injection held up the books for a short time, but it was emptied all at once on June 20. This means that the core liquidity of the platform had already been artificially taken away 11 days before the official claim was forced to shut down due to MiCA regulations. Was it an early transfer? Is debt repayment? Or is it the last “retreat” for some? No one knows yet. The only sure thing is: the money is gone. The founding team disputes AscendEX founder George Cao (real name Jing Cao), who has a gorgeous resume. According to Linkedin, Cao Jing has a doctorate degree in computer science from the University of Chicago. He...

45d agoWendy#AscendEX #CEX #Exchanges #Shut down the tide topic #original #Cao Jing #Run away #Zenith #hacks

Blockchain data infrastructure company Cambrian closes $6 million seed round led by Franklin Templeton and Polychain

In comparison, blockchain data infrastructure startup Cambrian completed a $6 million seed round, co-led by Franklin Templeton and Polychain Capital, with the participation of Flow Traders, Selini Capital, Paper Ventures, and Nomad Capital. Cambrian also received $5.9 million in pre-seed funding led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with a cumulative funding amount of $11.9 million. According to reports, Cambrian was founded in 2024 and currently provides an API for institutions and AI agents, covering real-time and historical on-chain data such as earnings, risk, loan interest rates, trading activity, liquidity positions, and market sentiment to help users allocate capital on the chain. The company plans to expand the existing API into a verifiable blockchain data oracle network to serve institutional finance customers, AI agent builders, and protocols that require reliable data to control the flow of funds. Unlike traditional oracles that mainly provide price data, Cambrian wanted to aggregate lending agreement data, DEX liquidity, social sentiment, developer activity, and historical market data. According to Cambrian, its platform has processed millions of API calls, currently indexes the four major lending agreements about $4.5 billion in TVL, tracks 1,789 vaults under 895 curators, and monitors over 320,000 DEX liquidity pools on Base and Solana. The company also plans to expand transaction data support to include Hyperliquid and richer perpetual contract data.

59d ago#financing

Polychain senior partner Josh Rosenthal announced his departure

Comparing news, Polychain senior partner Josh Rosenthal wrote that after working at Polychain Capital for almost 5 years, I decided to leave. I am blessed to have been able to witness the birth and growth of some of the companies that have defined the cryptocurrency industry up close, and I will always be grateful. I'm starting a new business now, and I'm looking forward to sharing more information in the near future.

60d ago

Canton developer Digital Asset raised $355 million led by a16z Crypto

Comparatively, Digital Asset (Canton developer) announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$355 million, led by a16z crypto. The lineup of participants includes Abu Dhabi Investment Authority subsidiaries, Apollo Fund, BNP Paribas, Castle Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain, S&P Global, SBI Group, SoFi, Tradeweb, etc., showing a clear Wall Street + The dual participation characteristics of cryptographic native capital. The company said that after the completion of this round of financing, Digital Asset has entered a profitable state. Its CEO, Yuval Rooz, pointed out that the financing expansion balance sheet not only enhances the company's financial flexibility, but also enables it to more freely advance mergers and acquisitions, participate in emerging projects, and assist partners in building a chain-based financial business system. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

72d agoburnking

Polychain-related addresses unlocked and redeemed 122 million EIGEN cards, accounting for 16.5% of circulation

In comparison, according to monitoring by crypto analyst Ember @EmberCN, about 7 hours ago, a batch of addresses suspected to belong to Polychain unlocked and redeemed 122 million EIGENs from the EigenCloud (formerly EigenLayer) pledge contract, worth about US$23.88 million, accounting for 16.5% of EIGEN's current circulation. Currently, the relevant EIGEN remains at the address, and no further transfers have taken place. Ember said that this batch of tokens came from the 2024 investment allocation, and Polychain was one of EigenCloud's early lead investors.

92d ago