Despite the bear market, venture capitalists are still raising money and looking to deploy capital.
On July 12, crypto venture capital fund Multicoin Capital said it has raised $430M to invest anywhere between $500K-$25M in early-stage opportunities and up to $100M in mature projects.
The fund will make investments in web3 infrastructure, DAOs and DAO tooling, consumer products, new IP-based business models, and creator monetization. Multicoin is looking for protocols that offer “proof of physical work” – ones that incentivize communities to “do verifiable work that builds real-world infrastructure.”
Multicoin Capital began investing in crypto five years ago and their portfolio includes early investments in Ethereum, Solana, blockchain explorer Dune Analytics, crypto-IoT network Helium, crypto exchange FTX, and DAO accelerator Seed Club.
DataDAOs
Multicoin will be especially focusing on “DataDAOs” – DAOs that incentivize users to contribute data and push data governance into the hands of their communities.
Tushar Jain, co-founder and Managing Partner at Multicoin, told The Defiant he expects many DataDAOs to pop up that could be “segmented by data type (mapping/location, social media, financial transactions, etc.)” or “segmented by data consumption ( having different DAOs selling to different customers, consumers joining multiple DAOs)”. Multicoin has already invested in Delphia, a DataDAO that uses investors’ data to improve its trading strategy.
“Multicoin is probably the single most contrarian venture fund operating in the crypto arena right now. They are not afraid to bet big and be first,” Delphia CEO Andrew Peek told The Defiant.
DAO Tooling
Multicoin is also focused on DAO tooling, especially projects which enable new ways of capital formation. “This could be things like group buying of NFTs, NFT social platforms, guild coordination tools and more,” Jain told The Defiant.
As for innovating IP-driven business models, Jain told The Defiant he is really interested in new IP models coming out of the decentralized music and science industries.
“Music remains one of the most under-monetized art forms when compared with its huge cultural impact,” he said. Decentralized music has gained traction over the past year with music NFT startups like Royal spearheading the movement.
