Web3 Daily: $530M in Funding, AI Agents, Bitcoin L2 Shuts Down — June 12

Today's briefing covers five stories across DeFi funding, institutional blockchain, AI-crypto convergence, Layer 2 infrastructure, and market structure.

Story 1 — Morpho raises $175M 1: The decentralized lending protocol closed one of DeFi's largest-ever funding rounds, co-led by Paradigm, a16z crypto, and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, and VanEck. The raise values Morpho at up to $2 billion. Morpho manages approximately $11 billion in deposits and underpins lending products on Coinbase and Kraken. 2

Story 2 — Canton Network raises $355M from Wall Street 3: Digital Asset, the blockchain infrastructure firm behind Canton Network, raised $355 million led by a16z crypto. Participants include ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Citadel Securities, SBI Group, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority — a who's-who of global regulated finance committing to permissioned blockchain infrastructure.

Story 3 — Coinbase launches AI agent accounts 4: "Coinbase for Agents" lets AI assistants including ChatGPT and Claude connect to user accounts to trade crypto and make payments autonomously, paired with user-defined spending controls via Coinbase's x402 payments protocol.

Story 4 — Spiderchain Bitcoin L2 shuts down 5: Botanix Labs is winding down its Polychain-backed Spiderchain — the highest-profile Bitcoin Layer 2 closure to date. The network processed 25 million transactions and onboarded 200,000 wallets but could not achieve economic sustainability. Users have until July 9 to withdraw assets.

Story 5 — Bitcoin dominance climbs to 59% 6: Bitcoin advanced and held above key technical levels while ETH and SOL stalled. BTC traded near $63,500 with dominance rising from last week's low. Derivatives data show muted new leverage and steady implied volatility — capital rotating into BTC, not into altcoins.