The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Aug 2022

Mellow Protocol is developing a permissionless vaults platform that automates liquidity rebalancing, including a first strategy contract, developer documentation, and a production-ready UI. The team open-sourced a backtesting SDK, built data infrastructure for rapid on-chain research, and performed internal tests including L2 live deployments. Operational readiness includes audits completed with ChainSecurity, BlockSec, and Cod34r3n4, plus published content on LPing, vault architecture, and strategies. The project launched a Discord community and has expanded its core team to 12 people. Upcoming plans focus on a guarded Mainnet launch of initial strategies, integrations and further L2 deployments, a strategist UI, and a V2 design. Financially, Mellow closed a $2.75 million seed round in August 2021 to develop and bootstrap the Protocol.

Participated · Series A · Jan 2022

Web3Auth builds non-custodial key management and authentication infrastructure for web3 applications and wallets, enabling password-less auth and OAuth logins (Google, Twitter, Discord, Reddit) to simplify blockchain onboarding. It is powered by the open-source Torus Network and aims to eliminate seed phrases by leveraging social accounts and devices users already own. The company supports familiar login flows while still allowing advanced users to connect traditional wallets or key management systems. Web3Auth plans to use new funding to accelerate expansion into decentralized gaming, NFTs and social applications and to increase headcount. Financially, it closed a $13M Series A and has raised $15M total since its 2019 inception. Operatively, more than 300 apps and wallets had selected Web3Auth in 2021 to secure over four million users' private keys, and its user base grew 30x year-over-year.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2021

Immunefi is a Web3 bug-bounty platform that connects decentralized projects with whitehat hackers to identify and remediate vulnerabilities. Launched in December 2020, the company developed a scaled bug-bounty standard that ties rewards to risk, encouraging projects to offer payouts equivalent to about 10% of funds at potential risk. Immunefi says it has paid out $60 million to whitehat hackers and claims to have saved more than $25 billion in funds from being hacked. Its bounties have reached as high as $10 million (Wormhole) and $6 million (Aurora) to reflect the high stakes in crypto. The platform faces competition from firms such as HackerOne (which has moved into web3) and Safeheron. CEO Mitchell Amador said the new funding will be used to scale the team amid almost $2 billion lost to hacks and scams in crypto this year. Immunefi operates a bug-bounty platform for smart contracts and crypto projects that enables security researchers to review code, disclose vulnerabilities, and receive payments. The platform lets companies access security talent and run programs to uncover critical vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols, where bugs can lead to direct loss of users' funds. Clients include Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, Bancor, Cream Finance, Compound, Alchemix and others. Immunefi has facilitated large white-hat payouts—Polygon paid out $2,000,000 via Immunefi for a vulnerability that threatened roughly $850 million, and Belt Finance paid $1,050,000 via Immunefi after a critical discovery. The company emphasizes that Web3 bugs act as emergency-response issues rather than conventional Web2 reports, and founder Mitchell Amador says the platform helps protect DeFi projects and shape the industry's future. With billions locked in DeFi and rising losses from hacks, Immunefi positions itself as a critical security layer for the ecosystem.

Led · Seed · Jun 2021

Divergence is a decentralized platform for volatility hedging and trading that focuses on blockchain-native asset prices, LP tokens, interest rates, and DeFi farming and staking rewards. Its token, $DIVER, has three initial uses: staking to claim a share of protocol fees, buy back & burn to create deflationary pressure, and governance to vote on platform parameters. Staking makes token holders eligible to periodically claim a percentage of protocol fees that go into the fee pool, while a portion of protocol fees will be swapped for $DIVER and removed from circulation. Governance via $DIVER lets holders vote on fee rates, the introduction of new supported underlying assets, and other platform parameters. The company completed seed and private financing rounds, raising $2.9 million. Investors named in the announcement include institutional crypto funds and noted angel backers.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2021

Unslashed Finance provides insurance products for crypto assets, covering risks from exchange and smart contract hacks to validator slashing, stablecoin pegs and oracle failures. The company has built a decentralized protocol that enables people to buy insurance and lets investors earn an uncorrelated yield; all underwritten risks are constantly collateralized and the claims process is fully decentralized, independent and transparent. Unslashed has sold more than $400M worth of insurance across different protocols and policies. Its clients include decentralized exchange aggregator ParaSwap, Ethereum validator Lido Finance, on-chain asset management protocol Enzyme, and crypto hedge funds such as Techemy Capital. Led by founder Marouane Hajji, the company intends to use the newly raised funds to continue expanding operations and its business reach.