Led · Seed · Mar 2024

Karma3 Labs is building OpenRank, a decentralized reputation protocol that enables developers and web3 protocols to provide ranking, recommendation, and reputation services on‑chain. OpenRank lets developers permissionlessly compute on reputation graphs constructed from on‑chain or peer‑to‑peer social graph data and supports graph algorithms such as EigenTrust. The protocol leverages zero‑knowledge proving systems to make graph‑algorithm computation verifiable and cost‑effective, and aims to be Sybil‑resistant, open‑source and permissionless. Early use cases cited include community ratings for app marketplaces like MetaMask Snaps, ranking and recommendation APIs for Lens and Farcaster, on‑chain discovery feeds for wallets, and reputation‑based voting and governance. Karma3 plans to use the $4.5M seed to broaden adoption across early use cases and to launch protocol v1 for developers. The team positions OpenRank as a foundational reputation compute layer intended to reduce centralized gatekeeping and power decentralized web‑of‑trust experiences.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2024

Founded in 2018 by Uchi Uchibeke, World Innovation League (WIL) is a nonprofit tech talent accelerator that evolved from NaijaHacks to AfricHacks and now WIL. The organisation runs programs offering tech skills training, mentorship, hackathon participation and short-term work experience. The current $1.2M funding will be used to equip Africans and Black immigrants in Canada with tech skills and to establish an accelerator programme. WIL aims to increase representation of Black Canadians and new immigrants in key tech roles by 50% over the next five years. The immediate programme funded by this round will train 500 participants within four months. Historically, NaijaHacks/AfricHacks grew to over 1,300 then 2,800 participants and at one point offered ₦100 million (approximately $72,000) in prizes.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2023

Induced AI provides a platform that converts plain-English workflow descriptions into real-time pseudo-code and spins up Chromium-based browser instances that read on-screen content and control websites like a human. Its purpose-built browser environment on top of Chromium includes memory, a file system, and authentication credentials to handle complex flows such as two-factor authentication, SMS autofill, file downloads, and stateful interactions. The system eliminates manual HTML tagging by discerning needed information from English instructions and can run multiple tasks simultaneously while allowing bi-directional human involvement in workflows. The company was founded this year by Aryan Sharma and Ayush Pathak and currently has five members. Induced AI has signed a few small- to mid-sized customers, including a sales firm using the product for employee onboarding, and is working on many new use cases. The company raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round.

Led · Equity · Jun 2023

Lens is a decentralized protocol designed to serve as infrastructure for social and consumer apps; users own their identity and content and apps act as clients to the blockchain. It defines social primitives — accounts, usernames, graphs, feeds, and groups — and supports developer-created rules for access control, token gating, and subscriber-only feeds. Lens v3 is a complete protocol overhaul that moves the stack from Polygon to zkSync and validiums to dramatically lower transaction costs and enable consumer-scale usage. The project powers apps on Lens v2 including Zora, Hey, Kaira, and Orb, and the team aims for interactions to cost roughly as much as cloud server costs so developers can absorb them. Avara announced a $31 million funding round for Lens, and the Lens team plans to launch the Lens v3 mainnet in the first quarter of 2025. Avara founder Stani Kulechov frames the effort around decentralization that gives users more power and enables new revenue-sharing models for creators. Lens Protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol developed by Aave aimed at creating an open, neutral layer for social apps. The protocol focuses on giving users more control over their data and enabling developers to build varied use cases from gaming to social media. Lens has been in beta since May 2022 and so far has granted access to a limited set of users while additional desktop and mobile applications are being built (Orb, Riff, Enso Collective). The team says the roadmap will remain in beta until infrastructure and the ecosystem grow sufficiently to open protocol access more broadly. Lens aims to be a flexible, neutral protocol that shares monetization across contributors rather than being owned by a single incumbent. The protocol raised $15M to expand its ecosystem and continue development; there is no valuation available.

Led · Seed · May 2023

Blocktorch is a web3 observability platform that enables engineers to query logs, traces, and metrics of all components of a decentralized application in one place. Users can find relevant insights, set metric- and event-based monitors on any data point across the full dApp stack, and deliver alerts to the right person at the right time. Led by CEO Gery Pollak and based in Berlin, Germany, the company aims to help developers take data-driven decisions about their decentralized applications. Blocktorch raised $4.2M in a Seed funding round and intends to use the proceeds to continue expanding operations and development efforts. The company plans to launch the official version 1 of its product as part of its near-term roadmap. The Seed investors include a mix of venture firms and individual backers.