Polygon co-founder Sandeep
Nailwal has raised $50 million for a new venture fund focused on early-stage
Web3 startups.
Nailwals’ firm, Symbolic
Capital, is backed by a number of undisclosed venture arms of crypto exchanges
and family offices, as well as fellow venture capitalists.
Symbolic is set to offer
advisory and recruiting services for its portfolio companies, as well as public
relations, marketing and auditing services.
Kenzi Wang, co-founder of
Cere Network, has joined the startup as a partner. The duo have co-invested in
more than 40 companies together — including Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games
and Biconomy — since meeting at Binance Labs in 2019.
The fund’s mission is to
foster mass adoption of blockchain technology and Web3, the founders said in a
statement. It seeks to support consumer-facing decentralized applications —
such as zero-knowledge proof or metaverse apps and those that drive
interoperability between blockchains — as well as NFT startups and the broader
business of creators and influencers.
The fund has already invested in more than a dozen projects, including
Web3 gaming studio BlinkMoon, Polygon-based metaverse Planet Mojo and e-sports
platform Community Gaming.
The move comes after Shima Capital’s
private crypto fund raised about $200 million, Blockworks
reported last week. The firm’s limited partners include hedge fund billionaire
Bill Ackman, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and crypto-focused
venture firm Dragonfly Capital.
The same week, digital
assets specialist firm CoinFund took in
$300 million for its latest venture vehicle that plans to
supply capital in later funding rounds. CoinFund, run by venture capitalist
David Pakman, has invested roughly $1 billion in seed-stage startups since
2015.
The startups have
commenced operations in the midst of what market participants have dubbed a
crypto winter, indicating a growing interest in opportunistic strategies as
both private and liquid digital asset markets have presented bargains for
deep-pocketed investors.
Venture capitalists
invested $9.3 billion in crypto companies in the first six months of 2022, according to
Crunchbase data — down from $12.5 billion during the same period last year.
Source: blockworks