Participated · Equity · Jul 2024

Igloo, Inc. is a collection of crypto-native companies based in Miami, FL, and the parent company of Pudgy Penguins. Founded in 2024, its portfolio includes Pudgy Penguins®, Pudgy World™, OverpassIP™, and other crypto-native products and platforms. The company raised more than $11M in funding to support its next phase of development. Igloo intends to use the proceeds to establish Cube Labs, a new venture under the Igloo banner to lead blockchain research and technology development. Cube Labs will oversee and contribute to the development of Abstract, a consumer-focused blockchain empowered by ZK cryptography. Abstract aims to drive mass adoption of crypto by pioneering culture, community, and creativity onchain while leveraging ZK Stack and EigenDA to provide cheap, fast, and secure transactions.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2024

ALEX develops a decentralized finance layer tailored to the Bitcoin ecosystem. The protocol leverages Layer2 solutions, cross-chain bridges, oracles and additional infrastructure to enable Bitcoin-native DeFi. The team intends to continue building its financial layer on Stacks. The company completed a strategic financing to fund continued protocol and infrastructure development. The article does not disclose operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. The financing is positioned to accelerate ALEX's technical roadmap on Bitcoin-focused stacks. ALEX is deploying its mainnet on Stacks to bring permissionless DeFi to Bitcoin, offering fixed-rate, fixed-term lending and borrowing without risk of liquidation. The platform also includes an advanced decentralized exchange, yield farming, and a launchpad where community members vote on token listings. ALEX’s native token $ALEX opened at $0.32 for the Stacks community on January 10 and will be available for staking at mainnet on January 17. On testnet, over 19,000 unique addresses accessed ALEX and more than 110,000 transactions were processed. The protocol has completed audits with CoinFabrik and Lease Authority and aims to activate dormant bitcoin holdings, citing the potential to mobilize over $1 trillion of idle bitcoin. Financially, ALEX has secured recent financing including a $5.8M round and an additional $2M oversubscribed private round, and plans a retail IDO.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2023

ZTX is developing a 3D open-world virtual world and creator platform, building components of an ecosystem for creators and IP partners. The company launched a private, invite-only Playtest of its upcoming platform and has collaborated with Dust Labs to create ZTX Partner Wearables to help IP partners produce 3D assets. ZTX plans to launch an inaugural Genesis Home Mint of 4,000 bespoke 3D District Homes that grant holders membership in one of four Districts (Arts, Financial, Fashion, Games) plus special access to drops, events and enhanced gameplay. The platform is a joint initiative of Jump Crypto and ZEPETO and has been actively building since its 2022 founding. The company says it will use the new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. The articles do not report revenue or user metrics.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2023

Social Future provides MAY (“Meet Another You”), a blockchain- and AI-built platform that enables immersive social experiences via personalized 3D avatars that convey real-time expressions and voices. MAY lets users generate ownable 3D virtual worlds and NFT spaces where avatars and communities reside, and includes AI companions and AI features within 3D spaces. The company envisions interconnected worlds that become an open metaverse for socializing and playing. Social Future is integrating its original IP, ThreeEarsBunny (TEB), into MAY as a fun-filled theme park with a collection of NFT-based games. TEB launched two months before the article and has amassed a community of over 30,000 members; its leisure games have been played more than 200,000 times and there is an active game prop market. The company raised $6M in funding from a syndicate including SNZ, Everest Venture Group, Folius Ventures and others.

Participated · Series A · Dec 2021

iZUMi Finance is a multichain DeFi protocol that provides one-step "liquidity-as-a-service," enabling conversion of one asset into another asset or cash. Its product suite includes iZiSwap Pro, an automated market maker-driven order book decentralized exchange available on the zkSync Era network. The company says iZiSwap Pro reduces transaction costs and mitigates custody risks compared with similar products. iZUMi has roughly $25 million in total value locked, per Defi Llama. The recent fundraise is intended to provide early liquidity for iZiSwap Pro. The protocol also issues on-chain financial instruments via partners to structure investor exposures. iZUMi Finance is a multi-chain DeFi protocol that provides Liquidity-as-a-Service (LaaS) and liquidity-mining products such as LiquidBox and the iZiSwap DEX. Its core DEX, iZiSwap, uses a Discretized-Liquidity-AMM (DLAMM) model to discretize price ticks, reduce slippage, enable a limit-order feature, and improve capital efficiency versus traditional AMMs. The protocol also launched iUSD, a U.S. dollar-pegged, 100% collateral-backed bond, and uses Bond Voucher and iUSD sales as fundraising and liquidity tools. As of May 18, iZiSwap had accumulated over $13M TVL and generated over $500k in trading volume within two weeks of its soft launch, and on several BNB Chain pairs it exceeded competitors in liquidity depth. iZUMi has established products and partnerships including a veNFT DAO, a collaboration with HOURAI, and liquidity work with BitDAO, and plans to extend liquidity services to multi-chains with built-in DEX and bridges. Founder Xinshu Dong leads the platform, which promotes Bond Farming to lower impermanent loss for LPs and structures revenue to repay investors first while rewarding market makers, with security involvement from partners like Solv Protocol, EthSign and Cobo Wallet. izumi Finance builds tools to optimize liquidity strategies on Uniswap v3. It designs non-homogenous liquidity incentives and Uniswap V3 LP staking protocols that target specific price ranges to improve incentive distribution and boost liquidity provider earnings. The team says its approach lets projects use Uniswap v3 without requiring extra liquidity and aims to make Uniswap v3 more competitive with Curve in stablecoin trading. izumi introduced a purpose-made C-AMM bridge to link Uniswap v3 to other blockchains and plans to extend service to the multi-chain world. The company is also focused on NFT-centric initiatives for Uniswap and enabling access to emerging "financial NFTs." izumi completed a $2.1 million strategic funding round to advance its liquidity ecosystem.