Participated · Equity · Feb 2019

SendFriend provides a blockchain technology platform aimed at reducing the cost of remittance payments for Overseas Filipino Workers. The company leverages a partnership with Ripple and uses xRapid, employing XRP as a liquidity vehicle to convert USD to XRP to PHP in seconds and circumvent the correspondent banking system. Led by co-founder and CEO David Lighton, SendFriend was accepted into the Barclays Accelerator Program, Powered by Techstars, to further develop its customer-first solution. The company plans to launch in New Jersey and expand availability to OFWs in other U.S. states via desktop and mobile. Financially, SendFriend has raised $1.7M in total funding and intends to use the proceeds to build out the team, and to focus on community engagement and marketing efforts.

Participated · Equity · Aug 2018

Ultrain is a public-blockchain technology venture from China. The company focuses on public-blockchain technology. It has pursued external funding. In the reported round Ultrain raised $20 million from a number of venture capital firms and crypto funds. Named investors include Danhua Capital (DHVC), Sky9 Capital, FBG Capital, Ceyuan Venture and 8 Decimal Capital. The company disclosed the investment in a release.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2018

Fantom announced Sonic, a new chain described as a layer‑1 that connects to Ethereum via a layer‑2 bridge to access ETH and other assets while offering low cost, high scalability and speed. The project will introduce a native token called S and a governance vote approved a 1:1 migration path from FTM to S. Fantom said the Sonic launch will coincide with creation of the Sonic Foundation to handle governance and treasury and Sonic Labs to drive dApp growth, partnerships and user adoption. The team positions Sonic to support high‑throughput use cases including real‑world assets, perpetual DEXs, payments, trading and transaction‑heavy games. Fantom has also completed a fresh financing to support the Sonic effort, as described in its announcement. Fantom Foundation is a Seoul, Korea-based blockchain platform developing a DAG-based smart contract protocol. The platform is designed to process up to 300,000 transactions per second at nearly no cost, enabling faster cryptocurrency transactions than traditional payment systems like Visa and Mastercard. Fantom intends to use the $40M it raised to build and advance its platform. Its DAG-based protocol aims to enable businesses and consumers to execute everyday transactions more rapidly across all sectors. Backers named in the raise include Hyperchain Capital, Signum Capital, 8Decimal, Arrington XRP Capital, Bibox Fund, Link VC, Nirvana Capital and JRR Crypto. The funding was reported by FinSMEs on 22/06/2018.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2018

Fantom is a high-performance, scalable, and secure smart-contract platform designed to overcome limitations of previous-generation blockchains. It uses an aBFT consensus called Lachesis that enables low time-to-finality (around 1 second), EVM compatibility, and cross-chain interoperability so developers can port Ethereum-based apps quickly. Transactions on Fantom complete within about 1 second and cost only a fraction of a cent. The project is fully permissionless, decentralized, open-source, and its code is available on GitHub, with the foundation emphasizing transparency. A recent platform update, Go-Opera, improved time-to-finality, tripled P2P synchronization speed, and made node synchronization more efficient. Fantom positions itself for a wide range of use cases—payments, secure storage of sensitive records, supply-chain tracking—and says it will continue developing to remain fast, transparent, and secure. FANTOM is a DAG-based smart contract platform that aims to deliver near-instant, low-cost cryptocurrency transactions by dramatically increasing throughput. The project claims its protocol can process up to 300,000 transactions per second, far above many existing blockchains and traditional payment networks. FANTOM emphasizes decentralization and intends to enable everyday cryptocurrency use across consumers and businesses. The team is pursuing strategic partnerships and deployments across sectors including e-commerce, IoT, food tech, telecom, banking and financial services, insurance, electricity, and real estate. Major strategic partners named in the announcement include the Korea Food-Tech Association, Oracle, and SBCK (a SoftBank Korea subsidiary). To fund development, FANTOM raised $40 million from a group of strategic partners and investors.