A Crypto Fund Variant Will Invest 450 Million Dollars to Support Web 3, DeFi Projects
A seed fund with an allocation of $150 million will be dedicated to Web3, and an opportunities fund with an allocation of $300 million will double down on portfolio projects.
According to a post that was published on the company's website on Thursday, the cryptocurrency investment firm Variant, which was founded by veterans of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has raised $450 million for a new umbrella fund. The money will be divided between a $150 million seed purse for Web3 projects and a $300 million opportunities vehicle that will "double-down on projects with demonstrated traction in our portfolio."
During a bad market that saw venture capital investments in cryptocurrency plummet by 26 percent year over year in the first half of 2022, Variant has begun its third fund despite the fact that the industry is currently in a bearish state. According to data provided by Crunchbase, the amount invested decreased to $9.3 billion from a record $12.5 billion in the same time period the previous year.
Investment theses for Variant Fund III include new kinds of decentralized ownership, blockchain computing, Web3 consumer applications, and financial empowerment through decentralized finance (DeFi). In order to provide enough assistance for the new funds, the company has increased the number of employees working there to 15.
The company has previously made investments in a number of different companies, some of which include the privacy-focused smart contract platform Aztec Network, the Ethereum-based DeFi protocol Euler Finance, Polygon, and Uniswap. The $22.5 million debut fund came about approximately a year after the $110 million second fund, which in turn came about approximately a year after the $22.5 million first fund.
"Variant was created specifically with this point in cryptography in mind. "And we have stayed small for a reason: because it enables us to work intimately with our portfolio and guide founders through the most important questions they face early on in their journey," Variant partners Li Jin, Spencer Noon, and Jesse Walden wrote in the post. "And we have stayed small because it enables us to work intimately with our portfolio and guide founders through the most important questions they face early on in their journey."
"The importance of this work is higher than it has ever been."