Top Projects That Raised Massive Funding in 2022: Flow, Polygon, Near...

Written by: The DeFi Investor

Translated by: TechFlow

Venture capital invested in MATIC and SOL before their 100x runs. So I looked into the biggest VC moves from 2022. Below are the top projects that raised massive funding rounds in 2022:

1. Flow

Flow is a Layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for NFTs, developed by Dapper Labs. In May 2022, the team announced a fund of up to $725 million focused on investing in network development.

The fund received backing from many big names, including a16z and Spartan Group.

Dapper Labs has a strong track record of creating highly successful NFT products such as CryptoKitties. Flow reportedly solves scalability challenges by distributing security and performance tasks across different groups of nodes.

In terms of popularity, Flow currently ranks among the top five blockchains by NFT sales volume. Its TVL is under $10 million, but that’s not an issue because Flow was built specifically for NFTs.

To date, over 300 million transactions have been processed on Flow.

2. Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs is the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. They raised $450 million to develop a new NFT-based metaverse (Otherside).

a16z and FTX participated in this funding round.

Yuga Labs partnered with Improbable, whose team members have contributed to popular games like LOK and Call of Duty, who are now helping build this metaverse.

Otherside is still in early development stages. However, the second demo of Otherside is expected in March 2023.

3. Polygon

Polygon is developing eight scaling solutions. One of their most anticipated ones (Polygon zkEVM) is expected to launch in the first half of this year.

In February 2022, the team raised $450 million from 40 venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

These funds are being used to continue investing in ZK technology and expanding its suite of scaling solutions, including:

• Polygon PoS.

• Polygon Edge – a modular framework for building EVM-compatible blockchains.

• Polygon Avail – a blockchain centered around data availability.

4. Secret

A blockchain with default data privacy on mainnet. Secret smart contracts enable many new use cases such as privacy-preserving applications (DEXs, money markets, etc.).

Last January, the team announced a $400 million ecosystem fund. This funding has been used to provide financial support for developers and founders building on the network.

5. NEAR

A high-performance Layer 1 blockchain. It uses a unique scaling mechanism called Nightshade sharding.

NEAR raised $350 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global in April 2022. Other prominent VCs such as Jump Crypto and Hashed also participated.

NEAR was one of the hottest crypto projects at the beginning of 2022 after announcing an $800 million fund to support ecosystem growth.

However, with the onset of the bear market, much of its TVL evaporated. That said, if NEAR successfully executes its roadmap, returning to its all-time high remains possible.

6. Mysten Labs

Mysten Labs is developing a Layer 1 blockchain built on Sui Move, a language derived from the Move programming language.

They already raised $300 million in a September funding round led by FTX. Other investors include Coinbase Ventures, Jump Crypto, and a16z.

I don’t believe FTX being their lead investor is a major concern. Moving forward, the second wave of the Sui testnet is now live.

The $SUI token launch has been confirmed, so there may be an airdrop.

7. Immutable

Immutable is the leading platform for building Web3 gaming on Ethereum. Simply put, Immutable is an Ethereum Layer 2 designed for games and NFTs.

In March 2022, Immutable announced it had raised $200 million.

Additionally, the team announced a major partnership in early 2022 with GameStop, the world's largest video game retailer.

Illuvium is one of the most popular Web3 games built on Immutable and has already launched in Alpha testing.

8. zkSync

An upcoming Ethereum Layer 2 zkEVM scaling solution. In November, zkEVM announced raising over $200 million in a funding round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly Capital.

More impressively, they achieved this while reserving two-thirds of future tokens for the ecosystem. Shortly after, zkSync 2.0 Baby Alpha went live on mainnet.

AAVE, Uniswap V3, 1inch, and other DeFi giants will be deployed on zkSync 2.0.

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