Bessie Liu

<div id="highlights-block_630cbd1aa69ec" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Symbolic Capital raised a $50 million venture fund to support building Web3 companies</li>
 <li>Animoca Brands KK is supporting Web3 efforts in Japan after raising $45 million</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Web3 startups continued to be an area of focus for investors this past week.



Cryptocurrency venture capital firm Symbolic Capital, led by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, raised a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/polygon-founder-raises-50m-for-web3-fund/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$50 million</a> venture fund to support building Web3 companies.



Along with Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Cere, Symbolic Capital wants to use its newly raised funds to back consumer-facing decentralized apps. It has previously invested in gaming studio BlinkMoon and other Polygon-based platforms.



On the other side of the world in Japan, Animoca Brands KK also raised a significant amount of money — <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/animoca-brands-japan-raised-45m-to-foster-local-web3-efforts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$45 million</a> — to support Web3 and NFT efforts in the country. 



The latest capital will also be directed into securing licenses for intellectual property (IP) of popular anime and manga series and increasing the value and utility of the company’s branded content.



Estonian crypto startup focused on cryptocurrency options trading, BITLEVEX, secured $50 million from GEM Capital, an alternative investment group that has poured millions of dollars into Web3 companies this past month.



GEM Capital previously committed <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/funding-wrap-gaming-startups-still-a-hot-item-for-venture-capitalists/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$50 million</a> to decentralized farming protocol XION Finance and $25 million to Geeq, a multi-blockchain platform that uses a patent-pending blockchain consensus mechanism.



Web3 developer platform thirdweb also locked in a significant amount of cash from investors this week, closing a $24 million Series A led by crypto investment firm Haun Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Shopify, Protocol Labs, Shrug VC and Joseph Lacob.&nbsp;



Katie Haun, founder and CEO of Haun Ventures, said in a statement that she hopes that the firm&#8217;s investment portfolio can “accelerate the next generation of the internet.”



“As complexity to develop in Web3 continues to increase, the experienced team at thirdweb led by Furqan and Steven have built an elegant solution that allows developers to build fast while avoiding costly mistakes,” she said. “I’m pleased to see proven founders of this caliber dedicating their next chapter to crypto and look forward to supporting their efforts.”



Steven Bartlett, thirdweb’s founder is a university dropout who previously built Web2 company Social Chain, valued at $600 million. His latest project, thirdweb, provides tools for its users to launch and manage Web3 projects including NFT (non-fungible token) drops, digital marketplaces, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), games and many more. 



“Web3 is the most important technological shift I&#8217;ve witnessed in my lifetime,” Bartlett said in a statement. “I don’t think anybody quite realizes how much Web3 is going to change the world.”



Other worthy fundraise mentions this week:



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Credit risk assessment infrastructure Web3 startup Spectral secured $23 million from General Catalyst and Social Capital.</li><li>Comm, a company that wants to be Web3’s Discord, raised a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/web3-startup-comm-raises-5m-in-bid-to-compete-with-discord/">$5 million</a> seed round.</li><li>Solana mobile stack, a subsidiary of Solana Labs, secured <a href="https://twitter.com/solanafm/status/1563049379405017088?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">$4.5 million</a> in seed funding led by SBI Holdings.</li></ul>



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Funding Wrap: Venture Capitalists Continue to Prioritize Web3

Ornella Hernandez

<div id="highlights-block_63091143de596" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Symbolic Capital is backing emerging founders and early-stage decentralized applications</li>
 <li>The funding follows $500 million in combined raises by CoinFund and Shima Capital last week </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has raised $50 million for a new venture fund focused on early-stage Web3 startups.&nbsp;



Nailwals’ firm, Symbolic Capital, is backed by a number of undisclosed venture arms of crypto exchanges and family offices, as well as fellow venture capitalists. 



Symbolic is set to offer advisory and recruiting services for its portfolio companies, as well as public relations, marketing and auditing services.&nbsp;



Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Cere Network, has joined the startup as a partner. The duo have co-invested in more than 40 companies together — including Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games and Biconomy — since meeting at Binance Labs in 2019.



The fund’s mission is to foster mass adoption of blockchain technology and Web3, the founders said in a statement. It seeks to support consumer-facing decentralized applications — such as zero-knowledge proof or metaverse apps and those that drive interoperability between blockchains — as well as NFT startups and the broader business of creators and influencers.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">With Symbolic, we’ll be able to create that shared vision for web3 by funding projects that will help onboard the next 1b users to crypto.&mdash; Kenzi🚀 (@0xkenzi) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xkenzi/status/1563156363475566596?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The fund has already invested in more than a dozen projects, including Web3 gaming studio BlinkMoon, Polygon-based metaverse Planet Mojo and e-sports platform Community Gaming.



The move comes after <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/venture-capitalist-launches-200m-crypto-fund-as-web3s-missing-layer/">Shima Capital’s private crypto fund</a> raised about $200 million, Blockworks reported last week. The firm’s limited partners include hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and crypto-focused venture firm Dragonfly Capital.&nbsp;



The same week, digital assets specialist firm <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinfund-on-the-lookout-for-promising-web3-companies-after-300m-raise/">CoinFund took in $300 million</a> for its latest venture vehicle that plans to supply capital in later funding rounds. CoinFund, run by venture capitalist David Pakman, has invested roughly $1 billion in seed-stage startups since 2015.&nbsp;



The startups have commenced operations in the midst of what market participants have dubbed a crypto winter, indicating a growing interest in opportunistic strategies as both private and liquid digital asset markets have presented bargains for deep-pocketed investors.



Venture capitalists invested $9.3 billion in crypto companies in the first six months of 2022, <a href="https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech-ecommerce/crypto-funding-falls-h1-2022/?utm_source=cb_daily&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=20220715&amp;utm_content=intro&amp;utm_term=content&amp;utm_source=cb_daily&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=20220715">according</a> to Crunchbase data — down from $12.5 billion during the same period last year.



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