Participated · Equity · Oct 2022

Blowfish provides a transaction-scanning service that detects malicious intent on behalf of wallets and submits safe transactions to the network, adding an extra layer of protection against phishing and hijacking. Its technology includes an API with warning symbols and guidance so crypto users can make safer transactions. The startup has integrated with Phantom and, since that integration, has scanned over 125 million proposed transactions and prevented over 11,000 wallet-draining transactions from being signed. The company cites the broader need for such tools given that $1.9 billion of cryptocurrency was stolen in the first seven months of 2022. Blowfish plans to use the new capital to upgrade its fraud detection engine on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, expand to additional blockchains, and hire a team dedicated to eliminating scams and hacks from Web3. The recent financing provides resources to scale its security tooling and partnerships.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2022

CoWDAO is the steward organization for CoW Protocol, a batch-auction-based trading infrastructure that enables trustless, peer-to-peer settlement and MEV protection on EVM chains. The protocol was incubated inside GnosisDAO for four years and was autonomously spun out via a governance proposal and community deployment that created CoWDAO and a vCOW token airdrop. CoW Protocol powers a network of traders and solvers and aims to become a core settlement layer for decentralized trading across Web3 by delivering better prices through P2P execution and co-shared costs. The recent $23M raise will fund ecosystem development, hires, expansion into new chains where MEV protection is needed, and marketing. Token distribution and the fundraising process emphasized decentralization: no single holder has >1% of vCOW supply except GnosisDAO, and more than 5,000 CoWmunity participants took part alongside 57 private investors. The community investment mechanism allowed protocol users to exercise options to receive vCOW tokens at a set price, vested linearly over four years. High take-up rates were reported: 90.9% of Ethereum-allocated options and 50.2% of Gnosis Chain-allocated options were exercised.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2021

Syndica is a Houston, TX–based Web 3.0 blockchain infrastructure company focused on the Solana ecosystem. It provides cloud-like infrastructure, developer tooling, and APIs to Solana developers. The company supplies an RPC node layer that sits between the blockchain and decentralized applications, allowing DApps to read and write data to the chain. Syndica emphasizes RPC node scalability and offers a suite of features including advanced logging, audience insights, and RPC usage analytics to help developers build products. Led by CEO Ahmad Abbasi and co-founder Danial Abbasi, the company plans to use new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Syndica completed an $8M Seed financing to support those efforts.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2021

Shipyard Software develops bespoke blockchain-based trading products, beginning with Clipper, a retail-focused decentralized exchange that uses a novel automated market maker to deliver low-cost, best-price execution for small-to-medium trades. The company says Clipper offers guaranteed best prices on retail-sized trades and has completed integrations with DEX aggregators 1inch and 0x. Shipyard launched Clipper (Beta) around June 30 and highlights CTO Abe Othman’s AMM research, which was cited in Uniswap’s v3 whitepaper. CEO and co-founder Mark Lurie leads the company from San Francisco. Shipyard will use the funding to further develop the DEX and grow Clipper’s liquidity pool. The product roadmap emphasizes tailoring DEXs to specific trader communities and instruments.