"Crypto's Wild Ride: VC Backs Blockchain, BTC Surges, Trump Boosts Market"

The first quarter of 2025 has seen significant volatility in the crypto market, with Bitcoin (BTC) experiencing a rally to all-time highs, a major correction, and a presidential boost from Donald Trump. Despite the market's fluctuations, venture capital firms have continued to invest in blockchain and crypto startups across various sectors, including decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs), Web3 gaming, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and derivatives exchange markets.

In the latest VC Roundup, seven funding announcements highlight the ongoing interest in these sectors:

Alchemy, a blockchain developer, launched a $5 million "Everyone Onchain Fund" to promote Web3 adoption on Ethereum. The funding will provide developers with gas and computing credits, initially supporting OP Stack and Arbitrum Orbit. Alchemy offers rollups-as-a-service, enabling developers to launch and grow their own blockchains. One of Alchemy's prominent partners is World, a biometric digital identity project with over 23 million users worldwide.

Mavryk Dynamics, a layer-1 RWA network developer, closed a $5 million funding round led by several venture capital firms. Mavryk is developing an RWA tokenization platform that bridges traditional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) by offering non-custodial features. The company has already secured over $360 million in RWAs, contributing to the market's growth to $17.9 billion as of early March.

Rho Labs, the developer of the decentralized rates exchange Rho Protocol, received $4 million in seed funding. Rho operates a decentralized derivatives market that allows users to stake, lend, and trade perpetual futures in one venue. The company has processed over $7 billion worth of notional volumes and aims to normalize funding and forward rates between CeFi and DeFi.

Teneo Protocol, a DePIN project, raised $3 million in a seed round led by RockawayX and Borderless. The funding will support Teneo's mission to democratize access to social media data. Teneo is built on the layer-1 network Peaq and operates a Web3 browser extension that rewards users with Teneo Points, exchangeable for Teneo Tokens. The company claims to have over 3.5 million users across 191 countries.

Fluent Labs, an