Six Blockchain Projects That Raised Over $100 Million in 2022: Will They Be the Ideal Investment Targets in 2023?
2022 was a breathtaking year. Some investors made a fortune during the Play-to-Earn boom in early 2022, while some others deposited all their assets in FTX. No matter what, that terrible year is now finished. Despite the prevailing mood of pessimism among institutional investors about the economic prospects in 2023, profits remain on the top of their wish list as always.
As 2023 just kicked off, let’s go through the projects that raised over $100 million last year but have not yet issued tokens. Will they be the ideal investment targets this year?
- zkSync
As one of the most frequently mentioned projects in late 2022, zkSync has earned extensive recognition among investors. The project raised $200 million during its Series C financing. Meanwhile, its team announced that upon issuing tokens, two thirds of the supply will be distributed to users of the zkSync ecosystem.
The zkSync 2.0 mainnet, which went live in October 2022, is the first ZK Layer 2 project compatible with Ethereum on the market. Right now, the zkSync ecosystem covers projects in multiple segments, including DEXs, NFT platforms/projects, derivatives transactions, infrastructure, etc. Meanwhile, many crypto investors are confident in the future development of ZK projects.
- Limit Break
Limit Break is the parent company of DigiDaigaku, an NFT project that went viral in August 2022. During the same month, the company raised $200 million during a fundraising campaign led by Josh Buckley, Paradigm, and Standard Crypto, with participation from FTX, Coinbase, Positive Sum, Shervinator, Anthos Capital, etc.
The company was co-founded by Gabriel Leydon and Halbert Nakagawa, two big-shot designers in the game industry. The two founders excel at MMO game designs, and Limit Break also revealed that the funds raised will be used for developing Web3 MMO games.
It seems that DigiDaigaku was just a market experiment conducted by the two founders that yielded successful results. This is also why Leydon said that the company will build games with the Free-to-Own (F2O) model in the future, which is big news for the entire GameFi community. Market players look forward to a potential boom of such games.
- Aleo
Aleo is a familiar name to anyone who invested in crypto last year. The project focuses on the privacy public chain category, which is a popular segment with constant innovations. Last February, Aleo raised $200 million in a Series B financing led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank, with participation from Samsung, a16z, etc.
Aleo rolled out Testnet 3 mining rewards in late 2022. It planned to distribute 25 million Aleo points (ALEO) to developers and validators. After the mainnet goes live, the points can be converted into native tokens of the chain at a fixed rate of 5:1.
Apart from privacy, Aleo is highly editable and scalable thanks to its modular design. Moreover, the project also created an appealing market narrative before issuing any token. In the future, Aleo might become a dark horse in the field of privacy chains.
- LayerZero
Since late 2022, LayerZero has been frequently ranked as one of the most promising projects by media networks and crypto institutions. This multi-chain interoperability protocol raised $135 million in Series A+ financing from FTX Venture, Sequoia Capital, and a16z in March 2022.
Although the financing involved FTX, which collapsed in late 2022, we are still impressed by the major role of LayerZero in the future development of multi-chain interaction and DeFi in the omnichain narrative.
Right now, LayerZero offers many outstanding projects, and the market is optimistic about its growth prospects.
- MagicEden
MagicEden, the largest NFT marketplace on Solana, raised $130 million in June 2022. Although FTX went bust, according to data from the world-renowned crypto exchange CoinEx, Solana remains the 12th largest crypto by market cap, and the SOL price has even rebounded recently.
That said, MagicEden is no longer as trending as it used to be, and investors have turned to other categories.
- Aztec
Aztec is a scalable privacy-preserving protocol on Ethereum’s Layer 2. According to the Series A financing information disclosed in December 2021, the project managed to raise funds from Vitalik Buterin. A year later, Aztec raised a whopping $100 million from investors led by a16z.
After the Tornado Cash sanctions, discussions on blockchain privacy have gained traction. As a trending project in the category, Aztec said that it does not plan to issue coins for the time being, but it has earned the recognition of many powerful players with its strong programmability and anonymity on Layer 2.
Although the series of negative events in 2022 buried countless crypto figures and projects, we also witnessed many new narratives and models that recorded fast growth despite sluggish market conditions. Amidst the mighty torrent of history, many platforms and institutions didn’t make it to the dawn, yet still, many others survived.
As a world-renowned crypto exchange that has witnessed bulls and bears, CoinEx celebrated its fifth birthday in December 2022. So far, the exchange has provided services for over 4 million users across more than 200 countries and regions around the world.
Over the past year, I often traded cryptos on CoinEx because it listed more than 1,000 trading pairs and over 600 premium cryptos, spanning popular categories such as DeFi, meme, NFT, and GameFi. Its Market page features the major crypto categories and the New Listing segment, which allows users to categorize their assets and enjoy great ease of use.
CoinEx has never suffered any security breach since its inception. Besides, the exchange has introduced multiple internal review mechanisms for token-listing, which minimizes investment risks for users and enhances security.
Disclaimer: No investment advice is provided in this article, and all data mentioned herein are for reference only. You should not rely on the information provided herein to make any investment decision, and you will be fully liable for your own investment decisions.