VALR, a cryptocurrency exchange based in South Africa, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round.

The funding values VALR at $240 million.

The exchange’s Series B equity funding round was led by Pantera Capital with participation from Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, Cadenza, CMT Digital, Distributed Global, GSR, Third Prime and Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with the parent company of Fidelity Investments.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/01/african-crypto-exchange-valr-raises-50m-in-series-b-led-by-pantera-capital/

John Richmond, an English fashion designer, partners with Shiba Inu for a fashion collaboration.

https://twitter.com/Shibtoken/status/1498350166046539776

Mines of Dalarnia 2.0 Testnet will be released in the coming days.

https://twitter.com/minesofdalarnia/status/1498702794563506179?s=28

Electric Capital, a crypto venture capital firm, has raised $1B for 2 New Crypto VC Funds: a $400 million venture fund and a $600 million token fund.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/01/electric-capital-raises-1b-for-2-new-crypto-vc-funds/

French DeFi platform Nested has raised a $7.5 million Series A round led by hedge fund Alan Howard.

The British investor was joined by Republic Capital, Kenetic Capital and CMT Digital.

The former president of Polychain Capital, Joseph Eagen, also took part in the round.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/136020/alan-howard-defi-trading-nested

Dialect, a Solana protocol, has raised $4.1 million in a seed round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto.

Investors: Solana Ventures, Tiger Global, Joe McCann.

https://twitter.com/saydialect/status/1499024052635246593

Music brands Billboard and Universal Music Group are partnering to launch ChartStars, an NFT based project of digital collectibles built on the Flow blockchain.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/136095/billboard-and-universal-music-group-partner-to-launch-nft-project

Digital Currency Group announces $250 million Share Repurchase Program for Grayscale Litecoin Trust, Grayscale Horizen Trust, Grayscale Zcash Trust, and other Grayscale Products.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220302005278/en/Digital-Currency-Group-Announces-250-Million-Share-Repurchase-Program-for-Grayscale%C2%AE-Litecoin-Trust-OTCQX-LTCN-Grayscale%C2%AE-Horizen-Trust-OTCQX-HZEN-Grayscale%C2%AE-Zcash-Trust-OTCQX-ZCSH-and-other-Grayscale-Products

1inch Network adds a P2P feature, which facilitates secure crypto swaps between individual users.

https://blog.1inch.io/1inch-adds-a-p2p-feature-dec37e68a1f7

Rarify, an NFT infrastructure startup, has closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by crypto investment firm Pantera Capital at a $100 million valuation.

Other investors included Eniac Ventures, Greycroft, Hyper and Slow Ventures.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/03/pantera-capital-leads-10m-investment-in-nft-infrastructure-startup-rarify/

Subspace Labs, a developer of Subspace Network, announced the completion of a US$32.9 million strategic financing round led by Pantera Capital.

Investors: Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Alameda Research, ConsenSys Mesh, KR1, Hypersphere Ventures, Stratos Technologies, Alumni Ventures Blockchain Fund, GSR Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Definancex, Candaq, Vendetta Capital, Illusionist Group, NGC Ventures, Cabin VC, Gate Ventures, OneBlock Capital, and Automota Network.

https://medium.com/subspace-network/subspace-labs-raises-32-9-million-to-bring-internet-scale-to-web3-b0fdd4dffe7e

CoinList has announced the Axelar Token Sale.

The Axelar Token Sale begins on March 9, 18:00 UTC with one sale option.

Price: $1.00
Min/max: $100 min, $750 max
Lockup: Tokens unlock on/around May 11, 2022, followed by a 9-month linear release
Supply: 50M

The registration deadline for the Axelar Token Sale is March 7, 18:00 UTC.

https://blog.coinlist.co/announcing-the-axelar-token-sale-on-coinlist/

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has invested $70M in Lido Finance, a staking provider.

https://twitter.com/a16z/status/1499447054069817352

metaENGINE, a Web 3 gaming platform, has raised $4 million in the seed funding round co-led by Lemniscap and Jump Crypto.

Polygon Studios, Insignius Capital, Future Fund, CoinDCX Ventures, Efficient Frontier and others participated in the funding round.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/04/lemniscap-jump-crypto-lead-4m-bet-on-gamefi-firm-metaengine/

Praxis, a city-building startup, has raised $15M in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm.

Investors: Apollo Projects, Alameda Research, Three Arrows Capital, and Robot Ventures, and others.

https://www.praxissociety.com/content/praxis-raises-15mm-series-a-led-by-paradigm

ArDrive, a file storage app, has raised $17.2 million in a funding round to build a decentralized alternative to accessing the Arweave permaweb.

Investors: Blockchain Capital and Sino Global.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/03/ardrive-raises-17m-to-make-arweaves-data-storage-blockchain-more-usable/

MetaMask began banning all wallets related to Iranian IP addresses.

https://nftnew.net/metamask-is-banning-all-wallets-related-with-iranian-ip-addresses/

Mechanism Capital co-led a $2.5 million pre-seed round for Diagonal, a platform aiming to make it easier for Web 3 companies to process subscriptions.

MetaCartel Ventures, The LAO, Coinbase Ventures and other investment firms joined the funding round; angel investors Ryan Selkis, Anthony Sassano and others were also involved.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/04/diagonal-raises-25m-for-web-3-subscription-payments/

OKX has announced a partnership with the Manchester City Football Club.

https://go.okx.com/manchester-city

IndiGG has announced the partnership with FTX gaming.

https://twitter.com/YGGIndia/status/1500674680537038848

FTX now supports native Terra UST.

https://twitter.com/FTX_Official/status/1500471259578056710