GM and welcome to Dove Dispatch #39!
Today, we are digging into the role of Y Combinator in the crypto capital market.
Dove Metrics is sponsored by BarnBridge - a protocol for tokenized risk, that enables users to calibrate their exposure to different risk vectors within DeFi. Its SMART Alpha application gives you more control over exposure to the performance of digital assets.
📹 Watch What is SMART Alpha?
From Alliance DAO to Blockzero Labs, several projects are trying to build the Y Combinator of the decentralized world.
As highlighted by Zachary Dash, the Y Combinator’s old-fashioned model is being disrupted from several angles: it relies on equity and doesn’t incorporate tokens into the mix, it doesn’t distribute ownership back to the community, and it also constraints projects in outdated templates with fixed valuations, forcing them to pass on many innovative founders.
But, with two of the Web3 major success stories being Y Combinator alumni (Coinbase and OpenSea), it seems like the most famous accelerator program in the world still plays a significant role in the space.
Y Combinator Web3 startups raised more than $1.42B across 51 deals since 2014. In 2021 alone, 17 fundraises were announced, with more than $313M raised. OpenSea’s $100M Series B, TRM Labs’ $60M Series B, and QuickNode’s $35M Series A account for 62% of the capital injected into former Y Combinator participants.
Out of the 55 Y Combinators startups building in the Web3 space we have identified, 25 publicly announced funding rounds.
Former Y Combinator projects raised $29M on average. In 2021, the average amount raised was $18M, compared to $25M for the entire industry.
The S12 cohort has been the most prolific one in the crypto fundraising landscape, thanks to Coinbase ($547M raised).
Then comes the W18 batch with OpenSea ($427M), CoinTracker ($101.6M), and Quantstamp ($3.2M) leading the charge.
🙌 Thanks to our sponsors at BarnBridge
Infrastructure is the number one category in the YC Web3 fundraising ecosystem, with 26 deals and $393M raised. Then comes CeFi with, once again, Coinbase breaking ground, but also Hedgehog, Mudrex, Coinrule, and DeFy.
Recently, 1,100+ Y Combinator alumni launched Orange DAO, with a clear mission: “support past, present & aspiring YC founders building the future of crypto.”
Interestingly, the DAO wants to help projects being accepted into Y Combinator, and provide them with pre- and post-YC funding.
The $40M first fund is now oversubscribed and plans to:
Continue writing small checks into many early startups (~$25k), not necessarily associated with YC,
Invest $100K in each YC W22 crypto startup that they can get allocation for (that would be $2-3M or 20% of the fund).
Most of their investments have not been disclosed but they are said to have backed around 30+ startups so far, including Goldfinch.
In 2017 already, some YC alumni launched the Pioneer Fund. Quantstamp is their only blockchain-based portfolio company.
Last week 40 projects announced fundraising rounds:
Axelar ($35M) | Connecting dapps with Blockchain Ecosystems — with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital, North Island Ventures, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Cygni Capital, Lemniscap, Olive Tree Capital, Blockchange Ventures, Node Capital, Waikit Lau, and Gokul Rajaram.
TRST01 ($557k) | A multichain blockchain platform working on Climate Tech, ESG, Carbon Credits — with participation from Octave Ventures.
Hyperspace ($4.5M) | Solana’s NFT Aggregator — with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Pantera Capital, Jump Capital, Solana Capital, NFX, Galaxy Digital, Shima Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Sfermion, 6th Man Ventures, Soma Capital, Social Capital, and Folius Ventures.
Playible ($10M) | Gamified NFTs coming to the Terra blockchain — with participation from Hartmann Capital, Grizzly Capital, and Big Brain Holdings.
RabbitHole ($18M) | Enabling to earn crypto by using the latest crypto application — with participation from Greylock Partners, The Chernin Group, and others.
BUD ($15M) | The best virtual platform to create and share 3D interactive experiences — with participation from Qiming Venture Partners, Source Code Capital, GGV Capital, and Sky9 Capital.
Skill Wallet ($1.65M) | NFT IDs that unlock the true power of Web3 Communities — with participation from 3K VC, The Graph, YouBi Capital, ConsenSys Ventures, Protocol Labs, Fenbushi Capital, Hashkey Capital, Eniac Ventures, Pareto , Scott Belsky, John Packel, Rouven Heck, and Arjun Kalsy.
5ire ($100M) | A Layer 1 Sustainable Blockchain with a mission to bring a shift from for-profit to a for-benefit economy — with participation from GEM Global Emerging Markets.
Aleph Zero | A peer-reviewed DAG platform that is scalable, fast, and developer-friendly — with participation from RR² CAPITAL.
Label Foundation ($2M) | Blockchain-based entertainment-related copyright protection platform — with participation from eBEST Investments & Securities, and Groom Investments.
Carambola Finance ($200k) | Crypto payroll and benefits as a service.
Ethernity ($20M) | An Ethereum NFT marketplace focused on drops from celebrities and athletes — with participation from Thomas Vu, Michael Rubin, Steel Perlot, Kenetic, Black Edge Capital, Morningstar Ventures, Ripple, Algorand Foundation, Banter Capital, and Polygon Studios.
Gamium ($2.25M) | Build your Digital ID, Socialize-to-Earn & explore Gamium with your Avatar — with participation from DAO Maker, Metrix Capital, Magnus Capital, Vent finance, Master Ventures, Venly, Unanimous Capital, Peech Capital, ZBS Capital, RR² CAPITAL, Atesis Capital, Parachain Ventures, Mr. Beast, Willyrex, and Healthy Pockets.
GuildFi | A Web3 infrastructure to connect games, NFTs, and communities, with an aim to maximize players’ benefits and enable interoperability across the Metaverse — with participation from Binance Labs.
Kyro ($10M) | The first native Web3 building platform — with participation from Decasonic, Drive Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Signum Capital, UOB Venture, Woodside Incubator, Avalanche Foundation, Polygon, Tezos Foundation, Rally, Information Capital, and Brad Koenig.
Everyrealm ($60M) | Building the gateway to the entire metaverse ecosystem — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Hashed, Liberty City Ventures, Wilshire Lane Capital, Pillar VC, Griffin Gaming Partners, NeonDao, Coinbase Ventures, Brevan Howard Asset Management, Valor Equity Partners, Everblue Management, Galaxy Interactive, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GoldenTree Asset Management, Avalanche Foundation, Foresight Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Animoca Brands, NGC Ventures, Polygon, Dapper Labs, Onefootball, The Sandbox, Electric Feel Entertainment, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Gene Simmons, Lil Baby, Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus, Fara Leff, Ebonie Ward, Paris Hilton, Sebastien Borget, Jiho Zirlin, Anthony Saleh, Andrew Farkas, Mario Goetze, Nas, Gunna, Lauren Selig, and Jonathan Cohen.
Summoners Arena ($3M) | An innovative play-own-earn idle-RPG on BSC — with participation from Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Onechain Technology, GuildFi, Merit Circle, Cosmic Guild, Coin98 Ventures, Istari Ventures, Spartan Group, Impossible Finance, Kyber Network, Kyros Ventures, ChangHan Kim, Mirza Uddin, EM3 DAO, BTC12 Capital, Lead Capital, Ocular Crypto, and Day Zero Fund.
Portals ($5M) | Your place in the metaverse— with participation from Greylock Partners, Multicoin Capital, Foundation Capital, Solana Capital, Sino Global Capital, Alameda Research, Mantis VC, Cultur3 Capital, MonkeVentures, Wave 7, SkyVision Capital, Justin Kan, Robin Chan, and David Grider.
Karmaverse | A GameFi project, created by SLG top game developers — with participation from YGG SEA, Infinity Ventures Crypto, TPS Capital, and PANONY.
Salad Ventures ($13.5M) | Builds and catalyzes ecosystems that form the foundation of the play-to-earn economy of the future — with participation from Alameda Research, C² Ventures, Crossbeam, Foundation Capital, Gemini, Winklevoss Capital, Polygon Studios, Alan Howard, and BH Digital.
Automata Network | A decentralized service protocol that aims to bolster the privacy, assurance, and capabilities of decentralized applications — with participation from Binance Labs.
Humanode ($2M) | Decentralized private biometrically encrypted consensus mechanism and monetary system — with participation from Republic, Tribe Capital, Wintermute, GravityX Capital, Shima Capital, Genblock Capital, AU21 Capital, StaFi, Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Blizzard Fund.
Foodcoin ($339k) | A first crypto created by and for hoteliers which lets the customers accumulate food coin each time they eat at a restaurant.
Sup ($12M) | Community-crafted sci-fantasy universe — with participation from Paradigm.
Sardine ($19.5M) | Provides fraud prevention as a service to FinTechs, Digital wallets and Crypto companies — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Nyca Partners, Experian Ventures, XYZ Venture, Sweat Equity Ventures, 112 Capital, and Village Global.
Philippine Digital Asset Exchange ($50M) | Philippines-based crypto exchange — with participation from Tiger Global Management, Kingsway Capital, Jump Capital, Draper Dragon, Ripple, UBX Philippines, BEENEXT, Cadenza Ventures, Oak Drive Ventures, and DG Daiwa Ventures.
Aperture Finance ($5.3M) | Cross-chain investment ecosystem with a community-driven marketplace for strategies — with participation from ParaFi Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, Rarestone Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Divergence Ventures, Krypital Group, Athena Ventures, MEXC Exchange, Double Peak, Do Kwon, Richard Dai, Ashwin Ramachandran, and Stakely VC.
Forbes ($200M) | A global media company, focusing on business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership, and lifestyle — with participation from Binance Labs.
TerraZero ($9.8M) | A vertically integrated Metaverse technology company — with participation from BIGG Digital Assets.
Pyypl ($11M) | A non-bank financial services provider focusing on Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.
WingRiders ($4.5M) | Fully Cardano native and super fast AMM decentralized exchange platform — with participation from cFund, Spartan Group, Coti, LongHash Ventures, and Double Peak.
Strider ($3M) | A Web 3 platform that lets creators use DAOs, which are a kind of substitute for a company — with participation from 1kx, Decasonic, Scalar Capital, Sfermion, Yield Guild Games, Jeffrey Zirlin, and Jaynti Kanani.
Airwaive ($3M) | Decentralizing the last mile of the Internet — with participation from "UOB Venture, Signum Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Spartan Group, Fundamental Labs, DFG, Gate.io, Jsquare, Athena Ventures, and Spark Digital Capital.
Nomic Foundation ($15M) | We build open-source software to unlock developer productivity in the Ethereum ecosystem — with participation from Ethereum Foundation, Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase Ventures, ConsenSys Ventures, The Graph, Polygon, Chainlink, Gnosis, Andreessen Horowitz, A.capital, and Kaszek Ventures.
RareRound ($1M) | Gaming Platform which allows using any NFTs as bets and which is fully owned by the community — with participation from Mechanism Capital, County Capital, Cryptopathic, CL207, Michiel Lescrauwaet, Zain Allarakhia, Myles Snider, Phil Bonello, Crypt0mer, C B, ZLOY, and DCFGod.
Quantum Art ($7.5M) | An NFT platform for artists and collectors to share their work with the world — with participation from True Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, FlamingoDAO, and Collab+Currency.
OAK Network ($5.5M) | The Web 3.0 hub for DeFi and payment automation — with participation from Foundation Capital, Greylock Partners, Hypersphere Ventures, Electric Capital, GSR, Shima Capital, Blockwall, and Monday Capital.
BNV ($4M) | Where fashion meets the Metaverse — with participation from Animoca Brands, K3 Ventures, ArkStream Capital, Grizzly Capital, Meteorite Labs, Startive Ventures, Sparkle Ventures, MyAsiaVc, Cube Entertainment, Miss Bitcoin, Michael Kazam, Alex Moukas, and AngelHub.
Ruby Protocol ($7.3M) | A cross-chain, privacy-first protocol for Web3 — with participation from Digital Strategies, DFG , Signum Capital, D1 Ventures, Global Coin Research, DWeb3 Capital, Maverick Global Ventures, and Ocean.
Digital Power-Optimization ($2.5M) | Cryptocurrency Mining as a Service — with participation from NYDIG, Wakestream Ventures, NBDR Ventures, and Luxor Technologies.
Dove Metrics newsletter is sponsored by BarnBridge.
BarnBridge’s SMART Alpha application was recently launched on mainnet as well as on Polygon and Avalanche. It allows users to get leverage or absolute downside protection on the asset performance. SMART Alpha achieves this by redistributing the assets of one side to the other. Seniors give assets to juniors when price performance is positive, and vice versa when price performance is negative.
📹 Watch What is SMART Alpha?
👀 Read Messari report on SMART Alpha
🕹 Play with SMART Alpha