Venture capital injects $527 million into crypto startups in July

Venture capital funds (VC) invested $527 million into crypto startups in July, up 14.5% year over year, according to DefiLlama data.
The blockchain infrastructure sector raised $420.7 million last month, and its startups contributed the largest amount, representing nearly 80% of the total. 
Artificial intelligence (AI) protocol Sentient secured $85 million in a round led by Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures, making it the most successful round among blockchain infrastructure projects.
Blockchain payment network Partior raised a significant amount of $60 million from traditional banking giants JPMorgan and Standard Chartered. Thus, only 2 out of 41 infrastructure-related funding rounds accounted for roughly 34% of the amount raised.
DeFi protocols received $86 million in investments in July. Bitcoin restaking protocol Lombard raised $16 million, registering the largest amount raised by a DeFi project last month.
ZAP, a community-driven protocol for token distribution based on Blast, raised $15 million from notorious crypto names such as Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and economist Alex Krüger. 
Notably, the DeFi ecosystem of Layer-1 blockchain Monad received significant attention from VCs in July. Kintsu and aPriori, both liquid staking protocols, raised $4 million and $10 million, respectively. Additionally, Kuru received $2 million to build a decentralized orderbook on top of Monad’s infrastructure.
The blockchain gaming ecosystem also captured capital from venture capital funds last month, wrapping up July’s funding rounds with $20.5 million raised. 
Cambria, a Runescape-inspired game on Blast network, received $2.5 million from Bitkraft and 1kx. 
Furthermore, Pantera Capital, Mantle Ecosystem Fund, and other high-profile names have allocated $18 million to NPC Labs, a protocol building a blockchain ecosystem.
VC interest in crypto is more vibrant this year compared to last year. From January to July last year, crypto startups raised $4.22 billion from funds, while this year, the same period saw crypto projects raise nearly $5 billion.
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