The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Feb 2024

Analog develops interoperability tooling to enable unified liquidity and cross-chain transfer of assets. The project plans to build the Omnichain Analog Token Standard (OATS) to enable transfer of fungible and non-fungible assets across blockchains. Analog is also developing Firestarter, a real-world-asset (RWA) marketplace to tokenize real estate, collectibles and revenue-producing items. The team frames these products as solutions to fragmented liquidity that can impede tokenization adoption by traditional financial institutions. Financially, Analog completed a $15M token sale and now has $36M in total backing. The proceeds will be used to advance OATS, Firestarter and related interoperability efforts. Analog builds cross-chain communication tools aimed at helping developers pull and analyse on-chain data across multiple blockchains. Its tooling is positioned to simplify tasks such as aggregating DEX data for best-route price discovery. The company plans to use the newly raised capital to upgrade and expand those cross-chain developer tools. Analog secured $16 million in funding in the reported round, and the startup’s valuation is expected to reach $120 million after the raise. The round was backed by a mix of crypto projects, Web3 funds and venture firms including Near, Wintermute, Orange DAO, Benqi Finance, Quantstamp, Tribe Capital, Alumni Ventures and NGC Ventures, plus individuals such as Balaji Srinivasan and Samara Asset Group. Coverage notes rising demand for cross-chain solutions as Web3 becomes multichained and references other projects working on similar problems, such as LayerZero and Axelar.

Participated · Equity · Jan 2024

NAVI Protocol operates a native one-stop liquidity protocol on Sui that combines lending, borrowing and liquid staking (LSDeFi) functionality. The Move-based protocol enables users to act as liquidity providers or borrowers and supports multi-asset collateral strategies. Since launching on Sui mainnet eight months ago, NAVI reports 150m+ TVL, roughly $55 million in borrowed assets and about 800k users, and it has accounted for 66% of lending volume on the platform. The team emphasizes security via Move and risk-balanced strategies to support assets at different risk levels. NAVI plans to expand its product set and scale operations, including completing its acquisition of Volo and rolling out features like flash loans and isolated pools. The protocol intends to broaden its footprint within and beyond the Sui ecosystem.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2023

Movement Labs is a San Francisco-based blockchain development team that combines modular elements to create a more secure and performant Ethereum ecosystem. The company is building Movement Zero-Knowledge Layer 2, a parallelized execution environment that targets 30,000+ transactions per second while using Ethereum for settlement. Movement’s Move-EVM uses a fully EVM-compatible bytecode interpreter to enable Move and Solidity developers to deploy code that is fully verified at runtime, preventing attack vectors like reentrancy. The team calls this an "Integrated Approach," combining shared sequencing, embedded formal verification provers, alternative data availability, and Ethereum settlement to enhance security and performance. Movement Labs will also introduce Move Stack, an execution layer framework compatible with rollup frameworks from Optimism, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The company raised $38M in Series A funding to bring Facebook’s Move Virtual Machine to Ethereum and further develop its stack. Movement Labs develops tooling and infrastructure around the Move smart contract language, including the Movement SDK that aims to deliver secure, high-performance Move environments to existing blockchain networks. Its first major SDK tool, M1, is a modular, horizontally scalable, and vertically composable blockchain that bootstraps ecosystem, liquidity, validator set, and EVM tooling by living within the Avalanche consensus. M1 is built on the Avalanche Subnet stack and is described as community-first, with transparent tokenomics and low staking requirements to encourage decentralization. The company emphasizes native protections in Move against common attack vectors like reentrancy and seeks to let developers use alternative virtual machines without extensive bridging or multiple wallets. Movement Labs plans to grow adoption and development of Move through its SDK and blockchain offerings. The company recently raised funding to support these product and adoption efforts.