SuperEx Research Institute｜Crypto Funding Weekly Report: Which High-Certainty Directions Is Capital Betting On?

Over the past week, the crypto primary market disclosed a total of 24 funding events, with cumulative financing of approximately $190 million. In the current market environment, this number is not considered aggressive, but its structural characteristics are extremely clear:

Capital is highly concentrated in infrastructure and real applications
Speculative narratives are cooling down significantly
Stablecoins, payments, cross-chain, RWA, AI, and security have become the main themes

This reveals one key fact: capital is positioning itself ahead of time for the “next adoption cycle,” rather than paying for short-term price speculation.

Largest Funding of the Week: LI.FI

Amount: $29 million (Series A)

LI.FI’s latest round was led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund, making it the largest funding of the week.

Unlike a single cross-chain bridge or DEX, LI.FI positions itself more like an “operating system layer for cross-chain liquidity.” It does not attempt to create new liquidity sources; instead, it orchestrates existing bridges, DEXs, AMMs, and aggregators through an abstraction layer.

Its core value lies in three aspects:

Developer-friendly: Through API / SDK / Widget integration, applications can gain multi-chain swapping capabilities within hours rather than weeks.
User-experience-first: Users do not need to understand “cross-chain paths”; they only see the outcome: the fastest, cheapest, and safest result.
Aligned with account abstraction and intent trends: LI.FI is naturally compatible with the new paradigm of “users express intent, systems execute automatically.”

From a capital perspective, this is an infrastructure investment made in anticipation of the upcoming Web3 application-layer explosion.

Seed and Early-Stage Projects: Real Demand Is Emerging

1. Ezeebit

Amount: $2.1 million (Seed round)，Investors include Raba Partnership, Founder Collective, and Terry Angelos.

Ezeebit has chosen a path completely different from the “DeFi narrative” — offline real-world commercial payments. Its focus is not on crypto-native users but on solving a long-neglected issue: How can merchants in developing countries access stablecoin payments at low cost?

Ezeebit provides a full merchant toolchain:

POS / e-POS
Stablecoin acceptance
Fiat settlement
Compliance integration

Projects like this often do not depend on bull markets; they depend on real transaction volume.

2. Incentive

Amount: Undisclosed (Seed round)

Incentive’s angle is highly “counter-cyclical”: it focuses on failed DeFi assets, liquidation residues, and historical losses. Essentially, it is doing one thing — turning “illiquid failed positions” into financial assets that can be priced and traded.

This is a highly specialized but potentially massive niche, especially in late-bear-market environments.

3. Pheasant Network

Amount: $2 million (Seed round)

Pheasant does not simply replicate traditional cross-chain bridge models. Instead, it introduces intent-driven cross-chain execution, where the logic is: users only need to express “I want to go from A to B,” and the system automatically selects the optimal route and uses optimistic verification to reduce cost.

This is fully aligned with current Intent-Based Architecture.

4. AllScale

Amount: $5 million (Seed round)

AllScale’s positioning is closer to a “global banking tool for the Web3 era,” serving:

DAOs
Web3 startups
Freelancers
Cross-border SMEs

It tackles inefficiencies in traditional finance: cross-border settlement, payroll distribution, and compliance costs.

5. Pye Finance

Amount: $5 million (Seed round)

Pye Finance is one of the most noteworthy projects in the Solana ecosystem this week. It re-financializes “staking accounts,” turning them into tradable assets, thereby:

Unlocking staked liquidity
Enabling customizable yield structures
Connecting to downstream DeFi reuse scenarios

This marks Solana’s ongoing progress in building an native yield-finance layer.

M&A and Strategic Funding: TradFi Is “Quietly Entering”

Several M&A events this week are worth noting:

Stripe acquired Valora
Robinhood acquired Buana Capita
Nexo acquired Buenbit

These acquisitions share one common point: TradFi is no longer merely “testing” Web3 — it is directly buying ready-made access channels. Compared with building from scratch, acquiring licenses, user bases, and regional networks is clearly more efficient.

AI, Security, RWA: Capital Is Betting on the “Next Certainties”

TestMachine ($6.5 million): The combination of AI + blockchain security indicates that auditing is evolving toward automation and continuous monitoring.
Surf ($15 million): AI is no longer just an “analysis tool,” but an execution hub.
Real Finance ($29 million): RWA remains one of the clearest directions for institutional capital.
Crown ($13.5 million): Compliant stablecoins — particularly national or local currency stablecoins — are becoming a major battleground.

SuperEx Research Institute Summary: Capital Is Returning to “Executable” Infrastructure Logic

In a market atmosphere that remains cautious and volatile, the crypto industry still completed 24 financing deals last week, totaling around $190 million. From both quantity and scale, this is not an explosive uptick — but its structural characteristics are highly meaningful. Capital is systematically avoiding “pure narratives” and instead betting on real demand, sustainable cash flow, and infrastructure-level projects.

1. Funding Has Not Cooled Down — but Its Direction Has Shifted Clearly

If we look only at the numbers, nearly $200 million in weekly financing is not low, especially when the market is concerned about entering a “liquidity tightening phase.” The truly important question is not “Is there money?” but rather “Where is the money going?”

Unlike the 2021–2022 cycle — when huge capital inflows went to NFTs, GameFi, and narrative-driven L1s — this round of funding displays highly consistent features:

Focus on infrastructure, not short-term application hype
Focus on “connection layers” and “service layers,” not single protocols
Focus on stablecoins, payments, compliance, institutional services — not high-volatility assets

This shows that today’s risk capital is not expecting “emotion-driven pumps,” but is building the foundation for the next structural growth cycle.

2. Cross-Chain, Payments, and Stablecoin Projects Continue to Attract Heavy Funding

Across segments, cross-chain liquidity, payment infrastructure, and stablecoin-related financial services remain the top choices for investors.

Funding in the cross-chain space is not about betting on new narratives — it solves a real problem: the multi-chain world is already here, but user experience is still fragmented.

Capital clearly prefers projects with “abstraction capabilities” — those that hide the complexity of bridges, DEXs, and routing layers — rather than single-chain or single-bridge extensions.

Payments and stablecoins show another layer of consensus: Web3 is shifting from asset speculation toward a settlement network. Whether it’s merchant payments in emerging markets or “crypto-native banking” for Web3 teams, DAOs, and freelancers — the competition is for one key gateway: the real usage scenarios of stablecoins.

3. Institutional and Compliance-Oriented Projects Are Increasing Significantly

A notable trend in last week’s funding list: projects focused on institutions, compliance, and licensing are increasing rapidly.

Such projects typically:

Serve institutions, enterprises, or high-net-worth individuals
Resemble TradFi products but run on blockchain rails
Have clear revenue models — fees, custody, market-making, service charges

This reflects a realistic shift: institutional capital is no longer “testing the waters” — it is preparing for long-term allocation. Especially in RWA, on-chain brokerage, and compliant stablecoins, investors care more about “whether it can integrate into existing financial systems” than whether it is aggressive or flashy.

4. AI + Crypto Is Transitioning From Concept to Practical Tools

Notably, several funding events this week involved deep AI-blockchain integration — but the form is now entirely different from earlier “AI narrative tokens.”

Funded AI projects today lean toward:

Security auditing and risk monitoring productivity tools
Data aggregation, research, and trading-assistant systems
Execution-layer and decision-layer tools for professional users

This shows AI’s role in Web3 is shifting — from a “story amplifier” to an efficiency amplifier. Capital now expects AI not to boost valuations but to improve operational efficiency across the crypto industry.

5. Frequent M&A and Strategic Investments Signify an Industry Moving Into Consolidation

M&A and strategic investments accounted for a significant portion of last week’s deals — a pattern usually seen when an industry moves from “wild growth” to “structural optimization.” Large platforms acquire:

Compliance licenses
Regional market access
Technology or user bases

This indicates the crypto industry is shifting from “competing on imagination” to “competing on resource integration.” In the future, small and mid-sized projects must either become niche experts or be absorbed into larger ecosystems.

Conclusion: A Phase That Is “Slower — but More Real”

Taken together, last week’s funding activity sends a clear message: the market has not abandoned crypto — it has abandoned crypto that cannot land in real use.

Capital is preparing for the next cycle — not gambling on short-term market movements. Infrastructure, payments, stablecoins, institutional services, and AI tooling may seem less “sexy” in the short term, but they determine whether Web3 can truly enter mainstream finance and commercial systems.

From an investment perspective, this is a return to fundamentals; from an industry-development perspective, it is a necessary and healthy evolution.

The SuperEx Research Institute believes: When funding increasingly flows toward projects that “nobody discusses daily, but everyone uses daily,” it often means a long-term growth cycle is quietly forming.