Polychain ties with Web3 to develop a new investment fund atop Polkadot network
|- Polkadot is expected to be launched later this year.
- The Web3 Foundation had reportedly sought a $1.2 billion valuation for the project.
Polychain Capital recently announced its collaboration with the Web3 Foundation. They will collectively launch a new investment fund for projects building atop the Polkadot network. In an interview with CoinDesk, Polkadot Ecosystem Fund didn’t give any information on how much was committed. However, they did say that it is “in the millions.”
Polkadot is expected to be launched later this year. It is predicted to be an interoperable proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain network. The Swiss non-profit Web3 Foundation is developing it in close collaboration with blockchain startup Parity Technologies, which is led by ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood.
The Web3 Foundation had reportedly sought a $1.2 billion valuation for the project through multiple token sales from investors (including Polychain Capital). However, it is not yet known how much was ultimately raised by the project. Zeke Turner, Web3 Foundation communications lead, also commented on the partnership. He said:
There’s a track record of successful collaborations that we want to continue. The investment committee is looking for projects that will add long-term value to the Polkadot ecosystem.
Turner also spoke about the size of the fund. He said it’s “in the order of millions and can be recapitalized at any stage depending on the supply of investment targets.” He also stated that investments from the Polkadot Ecosystem Fund might ask a percentage of equity from participating startups. Turner added:
It’s safe to assume there’s some transfer of value in both directions to align long-term incentives.
The Web3 Foundation has been using Polkadot’s blockchain application framework, Substrate, to issue grants to projects since last December. Currently, on its fourth wave of grants, the Web3 Foundation has funded over 40 projects in total by the non-profit with amounts ranging from $3,000 to $100,000 per grant.
Earlier in August, Web3 Foundation released an experimental version of Polkadot called Kusama for early application developers and validators to test out. Recently, Kusama enabled staking, where it allows users to earn rewards for validating transactions and processing blocks on the network. Gavin Wood, who is also president of Web3 Foundation, said he sees the Polkadot Ecosystem Fund as “an important outlet for teams at all stages to get the support they need.” To this, Polychain Chief Investment Officer Olaf Carlson-Wee added:
We are excited to invest and partner with hardcore engineers and entrepreneurs to catalyze the development of economic software built for Polkadot.
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