Mapping the rising Israeli blockchain and crypto startups
In a little over three months, five different Israeli startups in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors have raised significant funding
Despite the global crisis in high-tech and the countless hits suffered by the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors over the past year, Israeli startups in this space have enjoyed a renaissance over recent months.
Five different startups, ranging from a semiconductor company focused on disruptive blockchain hardware to security and marketing offerings designed specifically for the needs of the blockchain and crypto worlds, have all raised money to help them scale to the next level.
With this in mind, CTech presents the Israeli startups in the blockchain and crypto sectors to have raised funds over recent months:
Name: Chain Reaction
Founded: 2019
Founders: CEO Alon Webman and CTO Oren Yokev
Funding: $115 million
Chain Reaction is a semiconductor company focused on disruptive blockchain and privacy hardware. It announced last month that it raised $70 million in its Series C funding round led by Morgan Creek Digital, with participation from Hanaco Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, KCK Capital, Exor, Atreides Management, and Blue Run Ventures.
The new round brought total funding to $115 million and will be used to expand the engineering and development teams, which have grown to 100 full-time employees.
Chain Reaction, which was founded in 2019 by CEO Alon Webman and CTO Oren Yokev, said the round will expedite the deployment of enterprise-grade blockchain solutions – Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and systems. It will also scale Chain Reaction’s privacy tech solutions involving the design of cloud data center infrastructure to accelerate privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs).
Name: Chaos Labs
Founded: 2021
Founders: CEO Omer Goldberg and CTO Yonatan Hayun
Funding: $20 million
Chaos Labs has developed an automated economic security system for crypto protocols. It raised $20 million in Seed funding last month led by Galaxy and PayPal Ventures, with participation from Coinbase, Uniswap, Lightspeed, Bessemer, and top angels such as Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.
The company’s automated economic security system for crypto protocols utilizes state-of-the-art monitoring and simulations. Chaos Labs provides protocols with custom and automated economic security tooling that verifies a protocol's durability and stability in any market condition.
In its first year of operations, Chaos Labs has partnered with major DeFi customers, including Aave, Chainlink, Uniswap, BENQI, and Osmosis, to secure and optimize the protocols against manipulation and black swan market events, while also offering capital optimization recommendations.
Name: Ironblocks
Founded: 2022
Founders: CEO Or Dadosh and CTO Assaf Eli
Funding: $7 million
Ironblocks has developed a blockchain-native cybersecurity platform. It announced that it raised $7 million in Seed last month in a round co-led by Collider Ventures and Disruptive AI. Additional participants in the round also include ParaFi, Quantstamp, Samsung Next, Balaji Srinivasan, ex-CTO of Coinbase and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Calvin Liu, chief strategy officer at Eigen Layer, Simplex co-founder and ex-CEO Nimrod Lehavi, Fos Finance, venture investor Lluis Pedragosa, and others.
Ironblocks is developing a smart contract-based security solution that operates on-chain to automate threat detection and enable DeFi protocols, Web3 platforms, market makers, and cross-chain bridges to take action to stop hackers in real time to secure funds before they are funneled into their wallets.
Last year saw more than $3.9 billion stolen from DeFi protocols by hackers, a more than 50% increase over the previous year. According to Ironblocks, 80% of all exploit hacks are successful - something the company is trying to prevent.
Name: Addressable
Founded: 2022
Founders: CEO Tomer Sharoni, CTO Tomer Shlomo, and Chief Scientist Asaf Nadler
Funding: $7.5 million
Addressable has developed an end-to-end solution for Web3 marketing. It raised $7.5 million in Seed at the end of January. The round was led by Viola Ventures and Fabric Ventures, with participation from Mensch Capital Partners and North Island Ventures. The round will help accelerate the expansion of the company’s platform including additional blockchains and social media integrations.
Addressable’s SaaS solution provides Web3 marketing teams with a platform to launch campaigns and target new audiences by matching blockchain activity with social profiles. This type of targeting reduces cost-of-acquisition compared to more traditional Web2 tools and is already being used by Web3 companies like Polygon, Bancor, Immutable, and Kryptomon.
Name: CyVers
Founded: 2022
Founders: CEO Deddy Lavid and CTO & CPO Meir Dolev
Funding: $8 million
CyVers develops proactive Web3 security for smart contract applications via the detection and interception of crypto attacks across blockchains. It announced $8 million in funding led by Elron Ventures last December. This funding was joined by Crescendo Venture Partners, Differential Ventures, HDI, Cyber Club London, and Cyber Future.
The company’s agentless, plug-and-play solution capture transactions during the few moments between the time a transaction is broadcasted and when it is registered irreversibly to a blockchain ledger. CyVers customers include Israeli-founded companies Bit2C, Solidus Capital, and CoinMama, among others.
