Despite a brutal bear market, money is still pouring into the crypto space: The founder of blockchain supplier of infrastructure Polygon today launched a new crypto-focused venture capital firm with $50 million in the bank.
Led by Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Cere Network founder Kenzi Wang, Symbolic Capital launched in May — but announced today that despite the crypto market crashing, it has raised $50 million to connect with early-stage Web3 companies.
And it claims to be different from other venture capital firms because it is run by crypto entrepreneurs.
Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network, is an interoperability and scaling protocol for launching Ethereum-compatible blockchains. Kenzi Wang’s Cere Network is a decentralized cloud computing platform.
The firm said in an announcement: “We are one of the first VC firms led entirely by web3 founders, which allows us to provide unprecedented support to the builders in our portfolio.” The term Web3 refers to what some believe is the next phase of the internet, which will make use of blockchain networks and cryptocurrency to become more decentralized and return ownership of data to users.
“When you look at the crypto VC landscape, it’s rare to find firms that were started by Web3 founders,” Nailwal added. “We built blockchain companies from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the unique challenges these projects face.”
Symbolic said it plans to focus on supporting startups building consumer-facing decentralized apps. These apps, known as dappsperform similar functions as regular apps, but use blockchain networks and smart contracts (the self-executing data code stored on blockchains) to cut out the middlemen. For example, Uniswap is a popular Ethereum-based dapp that acts as a decentralized exchange that anyone can use to trade coins and tokens.
Symbolic said it had already plugged money into blockchain gaming companies Blinkmoon, Planet Mojo and Community Gaming.
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