• Rome Protocol

  Participated · Equity · Jul 2024

  Rome is building shared sequencers and data availability (DA) infrastructure for Ethereum layer-2s by leveraging Solana as an auxiliary state chain. The founders, Anil Kumar and Sattvik Kansal, argue Solana's performance makes it a strong choice for running a shared sequencer and low-cost DA. Rome also plans to enable atomic transactions between different Ethereum L2s so multi-leg cross-chain operations either fully complete or revert, minimizing user cost to a small Solana fee if a transaction fails. The project emerged from stealth alongside the funding announcement and says a closed network will be open to developers this month, with a testnet planned for the end of 2024 and a mainnet launch in mid-2025. Rome positions itself within the broader modular-blockchain trend alongside projects such as Metis, Espresso Systems, Nuffle Labs, and Avail. The company disclosed $9 million in funding from venture firms and angels; no revenue or user metrics were provided in the article.

• NexGami

  Participated · Seed · May 2024

  NexGami operates a Web3 gaming platform aimed at hosting competitive gaming events across multiple titles and bringing traditional gamers into the Web3 space through tokenomics. The platform enables developer integrations, lets users organize tournaments, allows players to compete for rewards, and supports content creators in sharing gaming experiences. All revenue on NexGami is redistributed to users who create, share, and engage with esports content to foster a sustainable ecosystem. The company is led by CEO and founder Brice Bian and is based in Vancouver, Canada. NexGami says it will use the recently raised funds to expand operations and accelerate development efforts. NexGami is a Web3 gamefi company focused on the eSports industry, integrating blockchain technology and decentralized finance elements to create new opportunities for gamers. Its platform emphasizes integration solutions and aims to enhance the gaming experience for users within the Polygon network. The company is led by founder and CEO Brice Bian. NexGami intends to use recent funding to expand operations and accelerate development efforts. Financially, the company completed a Seed round that values it at $20M and raised $2M. The article did not disclose other operating metrics such as revenue or user counts.

• Usual Labs

  Participated · Equity · Apr 2024

  Usual issues USD0, a community-focused, yield-bearing stablecoin launched out of stealth in early 2024. USD0 is backed 1:1 by real-world assets—primarily U.S. Treasurys—and the protocol is governed by the USUAL token. The protocol is designed to distribute real yields generated by its reserve holdings to holders, and it projects an 80% annualized yield. Users can stake USD0 for up to four years to earn rewards paid in USUAL. USD0 crossed a $1 billion market capitalization and was approaching $1.5 billion, making it the seventh-largest stablecoin by market cap and the sixth most-traded by volume, per CoinGecko. Usual recently inked a deal with onchain stablecoin infrastructure firm M^0 to help expand its backing assets, and its founder and CEO Pierre Person is a former vice president of the presidential political party that spearheaded France’s crypto asset legislation and an ex-member of the French Parliament. Usual Labs is developing Usual, an innovative protocol that bridges traditional finance and decentralized finance via the USD0 stablecoin. The project includes a Liquid Deposit Token (LDT) designed to establish the offering as a DeFi-native stablecoin. The company has committed $75M in Total Value Locked (TVL) to ensure the protocol’s timely launch. Usual Labs raised $7M in funding to support its next steps. The funds will be used to prepare for the pre-launch of the USD0 stablecoin on the Ethereum mainnet in Q2 2024. The company was founded in 2022 in Paris by CEO Pierre Person, Design Executive Officer Adli Takkal Bataille, and COO Hugo Sallé de Chou.

• Kiln

  Participated · Equity · Jan 2024

  Kiln is a French white-label staking technology provider that offers on-chain smart contracts, SDKs and APIs to enable one-click pooled staking integrations in non-custodial wallets. It also operates a large network of Ethereum validator nodes and is the largest operator by validators with just over 4% market share on Ethereum. Kiln programmatically manages staking through its smart contracts, collecting an automated commission on rewards, which ties its revenue growth to assets under management. The company currently manages 1,168,288 staked ETH, roughly $3 billion at current exchange rates, and has increased its stake under management fivefold over the past year. Kiln provides dedicated validator operations for partners and counts clients such as Ledger, Crypto.com and Coinbase for pooled staking services in their non-custodial wallets. The company plans product expansion and the establishment of an office in Singapore. Kiln has raised a total of $35 million since its inception. Kiln is a Paris-based, enterprise-grade staking technology platform provider offering infrastructure and tooling for staking across major proof-of-stake blockchains. Its product suite includes Kiln Connect (a single SDK to integrate staking, rewards data and custodians), Kiln On-Chain (smart contracts for ETH staking and automated rewards management), Kiln Dashboard (staking dashboard, administration, reporting and data export) and Kiln Validators (dedicated or shared validators with enterprise SLAs on multi-cloud Kubernetes). The company manages over $500 million of assets staked under management. Customers include Binance US, GSR and Ledger. Kiln plans to use the newly raised funds to expand its staking infrastructure product range. The business is co-founded by CEO Laszlo Szabo, CPO Ernest Oppetit and COO Thomas de Phuoc and targets institutional-grade staking customers.

• Bubblemaps

  Participated · Seed · Sep 2023

  Bubblemaps builds a supply auditing and blockchain data-visualization tool that uses colorful bubble interfaces to make on-chain data for blockchains, DeFi and NFTs easy to understand. The product targets supply auditing for tokens and NFTs and surfaces on-chain relationships and metrics through its visualizations. Bubblemaps has established partnerships with multiple blockchain projects, including Polygon, Fantom, Cronos, BNB, Arbitrum and Avalanche. The company intends to use the new funding to expand operations and accelerate development efforts. Financially, the company completed a $3.2M Seed funding round to support its growth.

No current team members are available.