Follow the Money: Nearly $500 Million into Web3, Bet on RWAs, Farcaster Acquisition, and DeFi Rounds

Between October 1 and October 17, 2026, the Incrypted editorial team recorded 34 investment deals, 23 of which totaled $492.5 million. Traditional venture fundraising dominated both by number of deals and by total capital raised. We break it down in more detail in our weekly digest.

Classic Venture Capital

Over the period in question, 18 projects received funding. In particular:

• $90 million — Spiko. The financial platform raised capital in a Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates. The company is building tools that enable businesses and retail investors to earn yield on cash balances by investing in short-term government securities, integrating these RWA assets and money market funds directly into the blockchain ecosystem. The round marks the next stage of development for the platform, which aims to make cash yield more accessible to a broader range of users.

• $37.5 million — Meanwhile. The company, which specializes in bitcoin-based life insurance, disclosed details of the funds raised from investors led by Bain Capital Crypto. The financing will help meet demand for bitcoin insurance among families in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. In early 2026, Meanwhile launched its BTC Life 1-Pay product for clients outside the US, which includes a one-time premium payment in bitcoin and a lifetime payout in the first cryptocurrency. 

• $30 million — DATA Network. The Sui Foundation is investing in the project as part of a strategic partnership to develop AI training infrastructure. Under the agreement, the project will integrate with the Sui blockchain and the Walrus decentralized data storage platform, and its own blockchain will be shut down once the migration is complete. DATA tokens will be migrated to the new network at a 1:1 ratio, while the asset lockup and vesting terms will remain unchanged.

• $19 million — Navra. The fintech company led by Figure and SoFi co-founder Mike Cagney closed a Series A round led by Ribbit, with participation from Baseline, DCM, Jump Crypto, and Figure Technology Solutions. Navra is building a single interface for retail and institutional users that will provide access to various blockchain venues, onchain yield protocols, and payments infrastructure. The platform also includes self-custody without traditional private key management, an AI assistant integration, and control tools for institutional clients.

• $16 million — Noah. The stablecoin-based cross-border payments platform announced funding as part of a seed round extension, with participation from Endeit Capital, FJ Labs, LocalGlobe, Felix Capital, and angel investors. Noah connects local payment systems with stablecoin settlement, enabling businesses to accept and send money abroad without a separate integration for each market. The capital will be used to expand its regulatory footprint, hire engineering and compliance specialists, develop local payment rails, and open an office in New York.

• $13 million — Vest Labs. The startup raised seed funding led by Portal Ventures, with private investors including executives from Citadel Securities, BlackRock, and KKR. Vest provides traders with the firm’s capital to trade perpetual futures in live markets, allowing them to keep up to 80% of the profits they generate. The funding will help scale a prop trading model that differs from services built around paid simulated challenges and payouts based on virtual results.

• $10 million — Fission. The financial platform secured Series A funding led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, New Form, gumi Cryptos Capital, Borderless Capital, and other investors. Fission is building liquidity infrastructure for tokenized financial products that enables investors to access capital without waiting for a fund’s scheduled redemption. The funds will be used to increase platform liquidity, support a broader range of tokenized private market funds, and integrate with the digital investment ecosystem.

• $8 million — Multiliquid. Uniform Labs, the company behind the Multiliquid tokenized-asset settlement platform, reported funding across pre-seed and seed rounds, with the latter led by Polychain with participation from Strobe Ventures, CMT Digital, Metalayer Ventures, Generative Ventures, and Circle Ventures. The platform enables institutional clients to swap tokenized assets and stablecoins within a single transaction and is already live on Ethereum and Solana.

• $5.2 million — Zaria. Zaria Systems raised seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to expand its lending and structured finance infrastructure. Its technology provides real-time collateral monitoring, loan servicing, and collateral controls, including for lending against digital assets and tokenized securities. The company has also applied for a US banking license, which, if approved, would allow it to consolidate these services under a single regulated trust bank.

• $5 million — PERPTools. The decentralized perpetual futures platform reported seed funding via DEXTForce, the venture arm of the DEXTools ecosystem, with participation from Orderly Network, BigBrain Holdings, NEAR Protocol, Animoca Brands, Sfermion, and Shima Capital. The project is integrating perpetual futures trading into the DEXTools ecosystem and is also building infrastructure for automated trading powered by AI agents. The funds will be used to develop the platform ahead of a token launch planned for Q4 2026; in total, the project has raised $8 million, including a previous round of $3 million.

• $4.6 million — Walapay. The company announced seed funding led by Generative Ventures with participation from Commerce Ventures, Polygon, and other investors. Walapay is building API infrastructure for cross-border payments that combines account opening, collections, FX conversion, and payouts via local payment rails. The funding will be used to secure licenses, expand banking partnerships, and hire, and the company says it is processing $2.5 billion in annual payment volume.

• $3.5 million — IMMIX. The trading firm raised funding from Crane Venture Partners, BTSE, and Portfolio Ventures to build out infrastructure for exchanging stablecoins across different currencies. Its technology combines an AI pricing model with institutional liquidity, helping payments companies execute conversions, including in FX markets beyond the US dollar. The funds will be used to improve the pricing engine, expand liquidity, and grow its partner network. According to the company, since 2024 its systems have processed more than $25 billion in trading volume.

• $3 million — Soda Labs. The cryptographic infrastructure developer secured seed funding fully backed by crypto investor NextBlock. The company is building programmable privacy technology for financial transactions on public blockchains, using a combination of garbled circuits and multi-party computation. The investment will go toward developing Soda Bubble — a cross-chain privacy tool being deployed across the Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Base ecosystems, with Solana support in the works ahead of launch.

• $2.5 million — HyperLink. The brokerage platform for Hyperliquid reported an inflow of capital from Alliance, North Island Ventures, Reverie, Node Capital, Breed VC, and other investors. HyperLink gives traders access to Hyperliquid liquidity, lower fees through aggregated trading volume, and private order routing. The company will continue building brokerage infrastructure for trading on Hyperliquid; according to its data, $254 million flowed through the platform over the past month.

• $2 million — Spout Finance. The platform announced a strategic investment round involving Draper Dragon, Anchorage, Flow Traders, Taisu Ventures, Vessel VC, Solayer Labs, 2Square Capital, and Bering Waters, and also received strategic support from Solana Labs. Spout Finance is building a lending service backed by tokenized shares of US companies, enabling users to borrow USDC at a fixed 50% loan-to-value ratio with zero interest for the borrower. Lenders earn yield through premiums from the weekly sale of covered call options on the pledged assets.

• $1.5 million — Imperial. A decentralized perpetual futures platform closed a seed round led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Solana ecosystem investors. The project is building Armada, a derivatives trading mechanism that combines Solana’s speed with cross-chain DeFi liquidity, aiming to deliver a deeper order book and lower fees. The funding will support the development of the trading platform as it launches the second season of its user rewards program.

• $1.2 million — Orbio.so. The project announced it has raised funds to build infrastructure that will enable AI agents to independently obtain compute resources, hardware, and private infrastructure. The CREDIT token is used as the financial layer for paying for compute, including inference, and the project is tied to the Robinhood Chain ecosystem. The company did not disclose investors, the funding stage, or valuation, but said it is directing the funds toward building tools for autonomously provisioning agents with the resources they need.

• $1 million — Anyflo. A payments service building infrastructure for cross-border stablecoin payments received investment from Mysten Labs — the company behind the Sui blockchain, where the project was incubated. The company plans to focus development on payments infrastructure for marketplaces, neobanks, and payroll services that want to integrate cross-border payments into their products.

Several other projects also raised funding but did not disclose the investment amount.

Financial platform efy Finance announced funding from Tether as part of a seed round to develop stablecoin-based financial services built on USDT and USAT. The company is building business infrastructure that combines cross-border payments, capital transfers, and multi-currency financial management. The new capital and partnership with Tether will help accelerate stablecoin adoption in Latin America’s corporate and institutional sectors.

Crypto exchange OKX reported a new capital raise at a $25 billion valuation, with participation from existing partners Circle, Ripple, and SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s investment arm, as well as Qube Research & Technologies. The company did not disclose the size of the round, which followed a March 2026 financing in which Intercontinental Exchange — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange — invested about $200 million. According to OKX global managing partner Haider Rafique, the funds raised will be used to strengthen the exchange’s long-term market infrastructure.

Bitcoin finance platform Xverse received strategic investment from Draper Associates, Trust Machines, and Draper Dragon, without disclosing the terms of the deal. The company is developing a non-custodial financial app for bitcoin holders that combines asset storage, yield generation, payments, and access to loans without handing private keys over to third-party services. The capital will be directed toward further development of financial infrastructure that enables users to use the first cryptocurrency for savings, payments, and liquidity access without selling their assets.

Token Sales

The first half of October saw very low activity in the token sale sector. During this period, only the Jumper and AlloX protocols managed to successfully conduct an ICO, raising $3 million and $1 million, respectively.

You can learn about current and upcoming token sales via the relevant section on the website, where all users can access information about active and upcoming asset sale campaigns. Our team also runs a dedicated Telegram channel and tracks the most relevant developments:

Corporate Placements and Deals

This week, three financial transactions were recorded in the corporate sector:

• $280 million — Strive. The public company bought 3,311 BTC for approximately $280 million, marking the largest weekly bitcoin purchase since January 2026. To finance the acquisition, Strive primarily used about $208 million raised from warrant exercises, and it also expanded its capital raise through preferred shares. After the deal, the company’s total reserves increased to 32,773 BTC.

• $15 million — Solana Company. The public company developing a Solana-based treasury strategy and providing institutional access to its ecosystem is raising about $15 million through a registered direct offering to a single institutional investor. The deal includes the sale of Class A shares together with warrants to purchase additional shares. The proceeds will be used for a potential share buyback, purchases of Solana (SOL) to increase crypto reserves, working capital, and funding strategic initiatives.

• $11 million — AGM Group Holdings. The technology company specializing in the production and sale of high-performance equipment and computing systems closed a private placement. The deal with an institutional investor was completed on October 5, 2026. The proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including working capital, project development, and the execution of strategic initiatives.

In addition, Rip Cars sold CARS tokens over the counter to three buyers — DBA, Novora, and Anas Khader. All deals were executed at a price of $0.1065 per token with no lockup or vesting period, and in total the buyers purchased more than 4.46 million CARS. The company will allocate the proceeds to its treasury. The transactions do not involve any merger or acquisition.

The decentralized finance protocol raised $5 million through the sale of ANVL governance tokens to institutional investors led by Founders Fund. Anvil is building a universal collateral layer for onchain finance that enables digital assets to be used to secure financial obligations, including deposits, lending, and payments. In parallel, the company is developing an SDK and tools for enterprise integrations, and companies working with this infrastructure include Bullish.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Between October 1 and 17, the market recorded eight mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals aimed at expanding payment infrastructure, advancing onchain finance, and strengthening companies’ positions within blockchain ecosystems.

The decentralized social apps network Farcaster came under the control of Network School, which acquired the platform from Neynar. The new owner plans to change its moderation approach, introduce user voting mechanisms for community rules, and develop tools to bring online communities together into physical communities. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Crypto payments network Mesh acquired Bluvo, a developer of technology for connecting to crypto exchanges. Bluvo co-founders Florian Sabani and Luca Dalla Chiara joined the Mesh team and will help build out infrastructure for transfers across different blockchains, wallets, exchanges, and currencies. The parties did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Crypto company Anchorage Digital bought payments platform Routable, which helps businesses automate payouts to suppliers, contractors, and other recipients across multiple countries. The deal is set to expand Anchorage Digital’s corporate payments capabilities by combining regulated digital asset infrastructure with traditional payment rails. Routable will continue operating under the Routable by Anchorage Digital brand, and its services will add support for settlement in stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

Decentralized exchange Orca and lending protocol Loopscale announced a merger and the creation of a new company, Formation, headquartered in New York. The combined team will bring together Orca’s trading and liquidity infrastructure with Loopscale’s lending products and investment vaults to provide a path from asset issuance to financing and trading. Both protocols will continue operating, and the financial terms of the merger were not disclosed.

Anyflo, a company building stablecoin corporate payments infrastructure, acquired the team behind Native, a project that was building a bitcoin-backed lending platform on the Sui network. Native co-founder Robert Zaremba and his team will join Anyflo, bringing engineering expertise and cross-chain interoperability technology. The deal is expected to accelerate the development of Anyflo’s payment solutions for marketplaces, neobanks, and payroll services; the amount was not disclosed.

Public company SVRN acquired FastNEAR — an RPC infrastructure provider that apps on the NEAR network use to fetch data and submit transactions. FastNEAR will become an SVRN subsidiary, and its co-founders, Eugene Kuzyakov and Mike Purvis, will join the acquirer’s team. The acquisition is expected to enable SVRN to directly develop NEAR infrastructure and build additional tools for developers; the financial terms were not disclosed.

TruGolf Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed company, completed the acquisition of Polymath Research — the developer of the Polymesh Layer 1 blockchain built for regulated assets. The deal combines TruGolf’s golf simulator and software business with Polymath’s infrastructure for tokenizing financial assets. The companies plan to develop joint solutions, including equipment leasing programs and fractional franchise ownership using tokenized securities.

Public fintech company TROOPS entered into a conditional agreement to merge with EFFORCE Group. The combination is expected to bring together TROOPS’ financial infrastructure with EFFORCE’s blockchain technology, regulatory capabilities, and sustainability solutions, which was co-founded by Steve Wozniak. The companies plan to expand into digital assets and financial services, and are also exploring opportunities in trading carbon credits and environmental certificates; closing is subject to meeting certain conditions and obtaining the necessary approvals.

Accelerators, Grants, and DAO Funding

This week, ecosystems and DAOs did not allocate funds to support projects.

Top Investors

The most active investors of the week were Circle, Generative Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Draper Dragon, and North Island Ventures, according to CryptoRank data. The first company completed three rounds, while the others completed two each.

What Is in Investors’ Focus?

Between October 1 and 17, projects from segments such as DeFi, blockchain services, CeFi, blockchain infrastructure, and others raised funding. Investors’ main focus was on DeFi.

As a reminder, in September, projects in the Web3 space raised more than $1.43 billion in investments.

Follow the coverage on Incrypted to stay up to date on new investments driving the development of the digital world. 

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