Even with Bitcoin, Ether and altcoins in a bear market, venture funding for the blockchain industry continues to grow.
Prominent crypto investor Multicoin Capital has launched a new venture fund valued at $430 million, further demonstrating venture capital’s growing interest in the blockchain economy amid the bear market.
Multicoin’s Venture Fund III will invest between $500,000 and $25 million in early-stage companies across various crypto- and blockchain-focused industries, the company announced Tuesday. It’s also willing to invest values of up to $100 million or greater for later-stage projects with an established brand and market presence.
Related: VC Roundup: ‘Web5,’ Metaverse sports and Bitcoin monetization startups generate buzz
Venture Fund III will place greater emphasis on crypto projects that have demonstrated “proof of physical work,” or protocols that have created economic incentives for permissionless contribution.
“While the vast majority of crypto-innovation has been focused on coordinating digital communities and economies, tokens also create opportunities for innovation in capital formation and human coordination that extend beyond the digital world and into the physical,” Multicoin wrote.
The company also highlighted data decentralized autonomous organizations, also known as data DAOs, as offering strong incentives for user participation. As Cointelegraph reported, Multicoin Capital was a key investor in the data DAO project Delphia, which closed a $60 million Series A funding round in June.
0/ I’m excited to announce that Multicoin has led a $60M round in @delphia with participation from FTX Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Cumberland, Road Capital, and others.
Delphia is the first instantiation of a new type of organization uniquely enabled by Web3: a DataDAO.
— Tushar Jain (@TusharJain_) June 8, 2022
Creator monetization, a category that includes social tokens, nonfungible tokens and decentralized finance, was also cited as a major investment theme moving forward.
Related: What are the top social tokens waiting to take off? | Find out now on The Market Report
As investors brace for more short-term pain in the cryptocurrency markets, venture firms continue to add to their portfolios. In the first quarter alone, $14.6 billion in venture funding flowed into crypto and blockchain startups, according to Cointelegraph Research. Although funding is expected to have declined in the second quarter, 2022 is shaping up to be a record year for venture funding.
