As the summer season officially comes to a close, the crypto fundraising landscape is heating up, with eleven crypto startups collectively securing an impressive $115.5 million in investments across various sectors this week. Among these, gaming stands out as a particularly lucrative niche.

Leading the pack, Proof of Play, an on-chain game studio, successfully raised $33 million in seed funding on Thursday. The funding round saw participation from numerous angel investors, including well-known names like Balaji Srinivasan and Justin Kan. A16z's crypto arm played a pivotal role in leading the funding round and lauded Proof of Play founder Amitt Mahajan, who is already recognized for his role in co-creating the popular Farmville game that gained immense popularity on Facebook in 2009. A16z expressed support for Proof of Play's vision, emphasizing the importance of asset ownership and game composability in the future of gaming.

Proof of Play's flagship game, Pirate Nation, combines role-playing elements with NFT functionality and allows developers to build on its foundation using "on-chain game contracts." The game was launched in December and is built on Ethereum and Arbitrum Nova.

In the realm of crypto custody and digital asset infrastructure, Bastion secured $25 million in funding. Bastion, which recently emerged from stealth mode, focuses on offering crypto custody, wallet management, and digital asset trading services primarily to corporations. Nomura's Laser Digital Ventures, Robot Ventures, Not Boring Capital, and other investors joined A16z crypto in supporting this seed round. Notably, Bastion was co-founded by former executives from A16z crypto, Riyaz Faizullabhoy, and Nassim Eddequiouaq, who previously served as the firm's CTO and CSO, respectively.

Verifiable computing provider Jiritsu also made waves by raising $10.2 million from investors, including gumi Cryptos Capital, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, LLLP, Republic Capital, and others. Jiritsu is pioneering the Tomei RWA asset tokenization platform, utilizing zero-knowledge attestations to enhance the management of crypto assets.

Other noteworthy funding rounds include:

1. Fuze, focused on the Middle East and North Africa, secured $14 million to facilitate the offering of regulated digital asset products by financial institutions.

2. Briya raised $11.5 million in a Series A round led by Team8, offering a blockchain-secured healthcare data exchange platform.

3. CoinScan, a competitor to cryptocurrency data sites like CoinMarketCap, raised $6.3 million, with participation from a shareholder of DraftKings.

4. GRVT, a crypto exchange blending features from centralized and decentralized exchanges, raised $5 million in a seed round, valuing the company at $39 million.

5. Freatic emerged from stealth with $3.6 million in seed funding to develop a decentralized ecosystem for information exchange.

6. Bubblemaps, an on-chain intelligence provider, raised €3 million ($3.2 million) in an oversubscribed seed round.

7. Orb Technology, the team behind the Lens Protocol-based social platform Orb, successfully closed a $2.3 million pre-seed round, with support from Superscrypt and others.

8. Decentralized hackathon platform BeWater secured $1 million in an angel round.

Additionally, alumni from Sino Global, Coinbase, and Libra have come together to create Oak Grove Ventures, a $60 million Web3 fund. These diverse fundraising efforts across gaming, custody, healthcare, and information exchange platforms demonstrate the robust growth and investment potential within the cryptocurrency ecosystem as we transition into the fall season.