Nigeria’s EchoVC Announces $8M Blockchain-Focused Pilot Seed Fund – BitcoinKE

EchoVC, a venture capital firm headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, has announced its first blockchain fund ‘EchoVC Chain’ with a budget of $8 million. The fund is piloted to support underrepresented founders and underserved markets.

“Over the last few years at EchoVC, we have been fascinated by blockchains. The more we explored and learned, the more excited we became about the use of blockchain and its functions in Africa. EchoVC said.

The venture firm, whose goal is to become “Sequoia Capital for undervalued founders and markets”, has already invested in nearly 40 companies across different global markets and made its first investment in the blockchain industry in 2021.

Since 2021, when it made its first blockchain bet, the firm has grown its blockchain portfolio to 7, across 3 sectors, namely B2B infrastructure, DeFi (B2C) and market making.

The portfolio companies include:

• Ponto
• Muda (Africa)
• OneLiquidity (Africa)
• FuhlStack (Africa)
• Fonbnk (Africa)
• Stakefair (Africa)
• Odum Research (Africa / Global)

Focus areas

For its pilot seed fund, EchoVC says it has three main areas of interest, stemming from blockchain’s ability to abstract/tokenize, and its ability to scale autonomously.

“For African markets, we believe that blockchain functionality is more of a need, rather than a want, and our task is to leverage these capabilities to enable new leaps, or unlock new market opportunities, across the continent.”

1.) The firm will mainly look at fintech infrastructure including infrastructure that leverages stablecoins to optimize payments, liquidity and treasury. Additionally, it looks at startups that are “exploring the unbundling and delivery of crypto/fintech building blocks, or “primitives” – that other companies can use to scale faster.

2.) The second focus area is blockchain functionality where EchoVC has pointed to DeFi and NFT. According to the firm, DeFi functionality can be leveraged in Africa for innovative financial products that improve access to credit and savings, or perhaps power new-age decentralized neo-banks.

“NFTs can serve to advance the creative economy for the rising Gen-Z, enable games to offer new ways to make money, or even fractionalize real-world assets and portfolios to reduce affordability barriers to investment. “

3.) Finally, EchoVC has mentioned DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) that are attractive because of their ability to scale autonomously and organize human networks, such as Africa’s social collectives and informal networks.

“DAOs can organize offline and informal networks in a way that is beneficial to all participants. This should free up labor liquidity and increase the earning potential of the bottom of the pyramid demographic. Other examples include decentralized agent networks, social networks, as well as gaming networks.”

While the focus may be on three main areas, the firm adds that it continues to explore other areas ranging from digital identity, privacy, decentralized infrastructure edge nodes and agile supply chains to a possible future intersection of AI/ML and DAO.

Submit a proposal via this link: https://bit.ly/EchoVC-Pilot

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