The majority of funding went toward infrastructure-related initiatives including Oobit, EigenLayer, and EtherFi.
DefiLlama data indicates that $485 million was invested by venture capital (VC) funds in cryptocurrency startups in February. This is the largest investment volume over the previous three months and a growth of 5.3% month over month.
With $387 million allocated to infrastructure-related companies in February, those initiatives received the majority of funding. With a $100 million investment from a16z in a private round, EigenLayer received the highest venture capital allocation for cryptocurrency companies in February.
The liquid staking platform EtherFi secured a noteworthy $27 million investment in a series A round headed by CoinFund and Bullish. Tether and CMCC Global led a $25 million series A fundraising round that was successfully completed by payments platform Oobit.
Investors also took notice of teams developing decentralized finance (DeFi) technologies, allocating nearly $48 million to those projects in February. In a seed round headed by Polychain Capital, Superform Labs raised $6.5 million to develop a global yield marketplace.
Investors responded favorably to Omega’s aspirations to create a DeFi ecosystem atop Bitcoin, and as a result, Borderless Capital and Blockchain.com participated in a $6 million private round.
Last month, venture capitalists invested over $18 million in Web3-focused products. In the biggest financing round in the cryptocurrency space, Beoble raised $7 million from funds including Samsung Next and Hashkey Capital to develop a Web3 messaging software and social platform.
$33 million was raised for gaming initiatives, with the most pertinent investments going to new game studios. The $8 million series A round from Helika, a game studio, was led by Pantera Capital. Together with Animoca Ventures and Delphi Ventures, another $8 million was invested in the Web3 game Pixelmon.