Crypto-fundraising startup Legion has raised $5 million in an extended seed round led by asset-manager VanEck and Brevan Howard Digital, with participation from Kraken Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, Bitscale Capital and market-maker GSR. The company is building an on-chain marketplace it says will give retail and accredited investors equal access to early-stage token offerings while seeking to impose disclosure and compliance checks that were largely absent during the 2017 initial-coin-offering boom. Early demand for the platform is evident in the public token sale of AI-driven trading project Almanak, which reached its $2 million cap just 45 minutes after launch on 21 Aug. Additional allocation requests remain open through next week. The sale values Almanak at about $90 million fully diluted, with all tokens scheduled to unlock at a generation event planned for September or October. Legion’s fund-raising and the brisk Almanak sale add to signs of renewed investor interest in on-chain capital formation. Singapore-based tokenized-assets exchange DigiFT announced an $11 million strategic round this week, while AI game-engine developer Akedo saw its $AKE token sale on KuCoin attract subscriptions equal to 80 times the 320,000 USDT target. The activity suggests venture investors and retail traders are again willing to back token offerings that promise clearer governance and regulatory safeguards.