Participated · Seed · Feb 2024

Lava positions itself as an access layer to an open, more innovative internet enabled by blockchain. Developers can already use Lava to access 30+ chains, and wallet users can participate in Magma to earn points. The company plans to launch its mainnet in 2024. Lava is seeking to partner with rollups and blockchains to scale node infrastructure for developers and users. The team announced a $15M seed raise and lists a broad set of investor and partner backers supporting its growth and mainnet build.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2022

Shardeum is a scalable EVM-based layer-1 blockchain that deploys dynamic state sharding. Its dynamic state sharding approach keeps gas fees low and TPS high as participation grows by performing consensus at the transaction level and lowering the computational power required for validator nodes. This consensus mechanism aims to allow anyone to run a node and increase decentralization. The company intends to use the $5.4M in new funding to expand operations and accelerate development efforts. Operating metrics on the testnet as of July 7, 2023 include over 7.4 million transactions, 820K+ accounts and more than 230K contracts deployed. Shardeum raised an $18.2M seed round in October 2022 from investors including Jane Street, Big Brain Holdings, Struck Crypto, The Spartan Group, Ghaf Capital, DFG, CoinGecko Ventures and Foresight Ventures. Shardeum is a remote, EVM-based Layer 1 blockchain that implements sharding to increase transactions per second as nodes are added while retaining atomic cross-shard composability. The protocol emphasizes low gas fees forever and leverages dynamic state sharding to balance decentralization and security. Founded by Nischal Shetty and Omar Syed, the company raised $18.2M in Seed funding. Backers include Jane Street, Struck Crypto, The Spartan Group and a broad group of institutional and angel investors. The company plans to use the funds to further enhance its dynamic sharding technology, accelerate ecosystem development, and focus on product and design improvements. It will also expand research and marketing efforts and host hackathons in India and the U.S. to incentivize developers to build on the platform.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2022

Tonic is building a permissionless decentralized protocol for fast, seamless trading of any asset on NEAR and Aurora. The platform is designed to enable developers building on NEAR’s Layer 1 to integrate trading functionality into their applications. Tonic plans to build an open-source orderbook DEX on the NEAR Protocol and deliver a scalable platform for trading and building DeFi applications. The company also intends to continue expanding its team to support development and growth. Tonic closed a $5M funding round to support these efforts. Founded in January 2022 and based in Miami, the company is focused on infrastructure for decentralized trading on NEAR and Aurora.

Led · Series A · Sep 2021

Octopus Network provides a multi-chain cryptonetwork designed to bootstrap and run Web3 application-specific blockchains (appchains). Led by founder Louis Liu and based in Tokyo, the platform targets developers building Substrate-based and other Web3 teams. The company plans to launch its mainnet in September and its first appchain, DeBio (a decentralized biomed network), in October. Octopus raised $5M in a Series A to accelerate growth and expand operations. The Octopus Foundation will directly fund 20 appchain projects each year, granting them up to $1M in total per year. Its Octopus Accelerator Program offers open and composable courses and seminars to Substrate developers and Web3 teams worldwide. Octopus Network builds base-layer infrastructure that lets projects publish independent blockchains (appchains) with flexible on-demand shared security, out-of-the-box cross-chain interoperability, and infrastructure services such as explorers, API endpoints, and indexers. The platform aims to reduce the capital expenditure for launching an appchain by two orders of magnitude, lowering costs from millions to tens of thousands of dollars. The team is focused on enabling a new wave of Web3 applications to develop in a cost-effective, scalable, and secure manner. The company is using its recent seed funding to build out the base-level infrastructure for Octopus Network and support appchains preparing to deploy. Financially, Octopus completed a $3 million seed round and previously received a $1 million strategic investment from the NEAR Foundation. The project communicates updates via Discord and Twitter and positions itself as complementary to NEAR Protocol.