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The 2023 Investments of Polychain Capital
Polychain Capital is a VC firm that recognizes potential. Their early investments include MakerDAO in 2017, dYdX in 2017, and Starkware in 2018. We're going to dive into their 2023 investments so far.
Polychain Capital is a VC that realizes potential:
MakerDAO in 2017
dYdX in 2017
Starkware in 2018
Today’s post will be dedicated to looking at their 11 investments of 2023 so far.
The firm was founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee who was previously the Head of Risk at Coinbase. Polychain Capital has been very active over the past year as you can see below. Bargain deals are found in the bear market if you look hard enough.
Investors in Polychain Capital include some heavy hitters:
@a16Z ($35B AUM)
@sequoia ($85B AUM)
@usv ($1B AUM)
@foundersfund ($11B AUM)
Since their first investment in 2017, they've made 85 total investments. Seeds and Series A investments comprise the majority (67%) of their deals. As for category, they typically opt for DeFi, infra, and L1s (65%) . Let's look at their investments made this year.
Polychain Capital Investments by Round and Category
Quasar is a decentralized appchain enabling Interchain asset management for the Cosmos ecosystem. Quasar general purpose asset management vaults that can be customized to suit different needs.
GM GM! We promised, now we deliver:
ITS ANNOUNCEMENT SEASON:
New fundraise closed, new website is live and we are announcing our public Questnet launch date!
Lets dive right in! 👇👇👇 🧵
— Quasar 🛰️ (@QuasarFi)
5:13 PM • Jan 11, 2023
This company was built in order to facilitate cryptography and databases research and development. Their primary product is Proof Market and enables zkLLVM work together to simplify zk implementation for developers.
1/
=nil; Foundation raises $22mln and reveals Proof Market (proof.market) to facilitate zkOracles, zkBridges, and danksharding.
The end of the dilemma of choosing between costly infrastructure and insecure operations between Ethereum, L1s & L2s:
http— =nil; Foundation (@nil_foundation)
2:45 PM • Jan 19, 2023
SPACE ID is building a one-stop shop universal name service network. Their infrastructure provides a multi-chain name service that will give anyone the ability to create a web3 identity.
Thrilled to announce that #SPACEID has secured $10M strategic round led by @polychain, @daofive, & others.
The investment is a strong endorsement of our vision & execution, as we’re entrusted to continue pushing boundaries in the #Web3 sp#Web3
Learn more:
https://— SPACE ID (@SpaceIDProtocol)
12:59 PM • Feb 7, 2023
Cysic is a zk hardware startup that aims to provide the physical needs for zk proof protocols.
EXCLUSIVE: Polychain leads ZK chip startup Cysic's $6 million raise (via @karivmcmahon)
theblock.co/post/212613/po…— The Block (@TheBlock__)
2:08 PM • Feb 17, 2023
Polyhedra Network is building infrastructure powered by zk tech. They have designed zkBridge, trustless infra for L1 and L2 interoperability as well as zkDID, a scalable and interoperable DID solution based on SBTs.
, provider of zero-knowledge proof-based infrastructure, has raised $10M in a round led by @BinanceLabs and @polychaincap. @BrandyBetz reports.
— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk)
2:01 PM • Feb 21, 2023
Scroll managed to raise $50M at a $1.8B valuation. Scrolls is a zkEVM-based zkRollup built on ETH that allows for compatibility between other on-chain apps.
An update: To accelerate plans for developing our zkEVM, pursue cutting-edge research, and continue building with a broader community, we've raised capital from a global set of participants.
— Scroll 📜 (@Scroll_ZKP)
6:41 PM • Mar 6, 2023
Cubist is a company that prides themselves on providing two things: First-class security that makes developers more productive and a development environment that lowers the barrier to entry and frees developers from lock-in.
We are proud to announce our $7 million seed round to make dapp development more efficient, secure, and scalable. Read more about our funding below and get started with the Cubist SDK today!
— Cubist (@cubistdev)
4:10 PM • Mar 9, 2023
EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking. This allows for the reuse of ETH on the consensus layer by providing pooled security. This reduces capital costs and significantly increases trust.
Happy to announce that EigenLabs, the team behind the initial development of the EigenLayer protocol, has raised $50 million in a Series A round led by @blockchaincap
— EigenLayer (@eigenlayer)
4:37 PM • Mar 28, 2023
Berachain is a DeFi focused EVM-compatible L1 built on the Cosmos powered by Proof of Liquidity Consensus. Their three token model is novel and will be interesting to see in action.
We're excited to announce our $42.0M fundraise from leading funds and angels including @polychaincap@hack_vc@daofive@tribecap@citizenxcrypto@shimacapital@robotventures@zmanian
@musalbas and many others to build the deepest pools of liquidity in DeFi.— Berachain 🐻⛓⚛️ (@berachain)
2:00 PM • Apr 20, 2023
Thetanuts Finance is designed to provide treasury management for DAOs and help retail traders earn organic yields on their assets by simplify trading with their vaults.
Thetanuts Finance has completed a $17M institutional funding round led by @polychain, @HyperchainC & @Mag@Magnus_fundpporting our ambition to create a thriving two-way altcoin option market and continue to push the boundaries for structured DeFi products.
httplink.medium.com/NyblUR9dgzbp
— Thetanuts Finance (@ThetanutsFi)
2:20 PM • Apr 24, 2023
Webb has built the infrastructure for an ecosystem of privacy protocols powered by zk tech for a multi-chain world.
🚀 Exciting news! Webb has secured $7M in funding to strengthen privacy in the cross-chain ecosystem! Co-led by @polychain and @Lemniscap, with participation from @hicommonwealth, @ZeePrime, @cmsholdings , and more.
— webb (@webbprotocol)
1:02 PM • May 8, 2023
Conclusion
You can save yourself from researching random protocols and doing DD on their picks. This is the simple route you can take but is far from exhaustive. Which do you think will be the best performer?
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