Polygon Founder Raises $50M For Web3 Fund

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

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. 

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. 

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 Shima Capital’s private crypto fund 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. 

The same week, digital assets specialist firm CoinFund took in $300 million 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. 

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, according to Crunchbase data — down from $12.5 billion during the same period last year.

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