• Zest Protocol

  Participated · Seed · May 2024

  Zest Protocol provides a lending protocol built specifically for Bitcoin, enabling users to deposit BTC through native Bitcoin transactions and then engage in lending or yield-generating activities. The company leverages upcoming Stacks Nakamoto and sBTC blockchain upgrades to create a fully Bitcoin-native lending experience. Using sBTC’s peg-in wire format, users deposit BTC to fund their balance on Zest Protocol. Its lending infrastructure is currently live on Stacks mainnet with Stacks market as it prepares for the sBTC launch. The company says it will use the funds to expand operations and development efforts. Zest Protocol is based in George Town, Cayman Islands and raised $3.5M in seed funding.

• Movement Labs

  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.

• Avail

  Participated · Seed · Apr 2023

  Avail operates a data availability network that helps blockchains store transaction and other information cheaply and in an easy-to-reference manner, particularly to support layer-2 rollup networks. Its technology offloads data from main chains, reducing burden and lowering costs for end-users. The company is building an Unification Layer, a modular stack combining data availability, aggregation, and shared security to enable modular blockchains to scale and interoperate permissionlessly and securely. Avail is also developing a Fusion Security layer intended to allow cryptocurrencies like ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC) to contribute to the ecosystem’s security; Fusion is expected to go live in early 2025. The new capital will be used to accelerate development, expand global presence, and address blockchain fragmentation, insufficient data availability, and limited scaling in Web3. Financially, Avail announced a $43M Series A and had disclosed a $27M seed round three months earlier. Avail is a Web3 modular blockchain services provider that aims to enable modular execution layers to scale and interoperate with minimal trust. The company focuses on simplifying the rollup experience and providing a unified, efficient platform for users and developers from any ecosystem. Its core offering targets modular execution and cross-ecosystem interoperability. Avail positions itself to reduce trust assumptions between layers while streamlining rollup integration. Financially, the company recently completed a $27 million seed funding round led by Founders Fund and Dragonfly.

• aWhere

  Led · Series A · Sep 2014

  aWhere enables the integration of complex agricultural, environmental, and public health data into local, actionable insight. The company provides localized information intended to help farmers manage weather- and climate-related risks. Reporting indicates aWhere raised $7 million in new Series A funding. Investors in the round include Elixir Capital and Aravaipa Ventures. The financing is described as intended to help farmers cope with erratic weather and climate change. The company is based in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

No current team members are available.