Between angel investors and venture capital funds, billions of dollars are being poured into promising projects shaping the future of financial services.
In the last couple of years, a new trend has emerged. In addition to deep-pocketed investors, prominent crypto exchanges and blockchain protocols, too, have begun venturing into funding. Crypto.com, FTX, Binance, WazirX – almost every globally recognizable platform, has rolled out in-house venture funds committed to backing early-stage crypto startups, thereby accelerating the growth of the evolving blockchain universe while simultaneously increasing ecosystem sustainability.
Ecosystem sustainability and self-sufficiency have long been a cornerstone of cryptoshere adoption momentum. Platforms frequently put aside funds in the form of native tokens to incentivize development within their networks and protocols, helping drive organic growth while enhancing platform functionality simultaneously.
Whether via grants or early-stage investments, these funds drive and sustain circular economies, improving the flow of capital through ecosystems and helping attract more widespread adoption.
To that extent, Nexo, a globally regulated platform for digital assets, has unveiled its own entry into venture funding. Days ago, Nexo launched Nexo Ventures, its in-house investment and acquisition platform focused on Web3.
The platform is committed to accelerating the development and adoption of blockchain technology, covering several key areas like Web3, decentralized finance (DeFi), the metaverse, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), GameFi, payments and trading infrastructure, as well as compliance solutions for the blockchain industry.
Tatiana Metodieva, Nexo Head of Corporate Finance and Investments, has been tapped to lead Nexo Ventures’ $150-million fund. Her role will involve allocating capital across a variety of early-stage retail and institutional projects synergistically aligned with Nexo’s core business model.
The Nexo investment team, leading up to the launch of Nexo Ventures, has already made significant investments, including 1inch, Yield Protocol, BlockFills, Texture Capital, Bware Labs, Qredo, and Rain, among others.
Meanwhile, Polkadot’s decentralized financial hub Acala has also launched a $250-million “aUSD Ecosystem Fund ” to support startups creating products in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems that will drive demand for the Acala stablecoin, aUSD.
With DeFi projects expanding rapidly across the Polkadot ecosystem, more than 30 venture firms and nine of Polkadot’s largest partners are backing the Acala USD Ecosystem Fund.
This includes parachain slot winners Astar Network, Centrifuge, Effinity, Manta Network, Moonbeam, Zeitgeist, OriginTrail, HydraDX, and Parallel Finance, as well as some of the largest venture firms like Alameda Research, Arrington Capital, Hashkey, Kraken Ventures, LongHash Capital, and many others.
According to the Acala team, funding will be granted to startups, especially those projects that are building use-cases for the Acala Dollar (aUSD) – the crypto-backed stablecoin aiming to serve as the foundation of DeFi across the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.
The funds will be used to support Solidity and/or Substrate-based applications like money markets, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), derivatives, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), payments, asset management, alongside other valuable use cases designed to drive yield and utility for aUSD.
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