Lemniscap

We're thrilled to announce the launch of our new $70M fund to support early-stage Web3 projects tackling pre-trend narratives & up-and-coming markets. We're proud to partner with Accolade Partners as the anchor of our fund and are looking forward to working with their team to power a decentralised & transparent future together. The new fund will focus on a wide array of opportunities across the blockchain space, with some of the key verticals including Zero Knowledge Infrastructure, Consumer Applications, the emerging Bitcoin Ecosystem, Security, Phygital & DePin. We believe in fostering Web3 innovation at the grassroots level and are eager to support visionary founders who share our vision to build a robust & resilient decentralised ecosystem. By working closely with our portfolio companies, we develop a nuanced understanding of their needs. We are committed to providing hands-on guidance and leveraging our extensive network of industry experts and partners to empower emerging protocols and platforms to scale As a first-cheque VC, we would love to hear from you if you are innovating in the blockchain space! Feel free to contact our investment team Roderik van der Graaf, Shaishav Todi, Nicola Santoni, Sjors Witteveen, Griša Černe or reach out to us by email. Check out the full story by Yogita K. in The Block today: https://lnkd.in/dZ-NmnM7

Lemniscap is proud to have led the $1.85M Pre-Seed Round for the cutting-edge data availability solution HyveDA. Given the conveyor belt of dApps and L2 solutions coming to market, the importance of low-overhead & high-throughput data availability is crucial for ensuring the scalability, security, & efficiency of blockchain networks. Paving the way for the next generation of blockchain ecosystems & applications, HyveDA – a fully permissionless data availability layer – is alleviating bottlenecks at both the network & individual component level, meeting the needs of the most ambitious dApps. Powered by a throughput of 1 GB per second, HyveDA is addressing growing demand for secure, scalable & cost-effective data availability, operating on a permissionless network, backed by leading infrastructure providers. We are firmly aligned with the team’s mission to support developers & enterprises looking to build high-performance dApps with high-throughput, no latency, scalability & flexibility – critical elements of what will be an increasingly decentralised future.

Our latest report: “Make Ethereum Whole Again: Sequencing the Future with Based Rollups and Preconfirmations”, delves into based rollups and preconfirmations. What are they? How do they work together? And what problems are they solving? https://lnkd.in/eBJJNZXk Ethereum's rollup-centric roadmap has accelerated transactions, reduced costs, and enabled new low-latency dapps. Yet, it has also led to fragmentation and centralization issues at L2, and doubts about value accrual at L1. On top of that, the traditional single-sequencer rollup poses risks of rent extraction and censorship. Shared sequencer layers decentralize this process and offer a unified transaction ordering mechanism across multiple rollups, but a new layer means new trust assumptions. Based rollups offer an alternative solution - the key distinction being, who is sequencing? Instead of a centralized sequencer or shared layer, based rollups re-use Ethereum builders to pick up pending transactions in L2 mempools and order them. As these builders sequence both the L1 and L2 blocks, there is no need to rely on the L2 single sequencer to manage transaction sequencing. Instead, the design leverages Ethereum’s existing validators, providing a reliable and credibly neutral transport layer. But while based rollups offer various advantages in terms of decentralization, security, and economic alignment, they simply cannot provide fast transaction confirmations like centralized sequencers due to Ethereum's block time constraints. Justin Drake proposed based preconfs in Nov 2023 to solve this constrant. This approach involves Ethereum L1 proposers offering credible promises of future tx execution for tips, and these promises can be made very fast. The benefits for Ethereum's UX are manifold: stronger assurances than soft confirmations, fast commitments (~20 ms in Taiko Labs test env), gasless txs (in Puffer Labs design), social alignment, x-chain atomic inclusion, and the promise of synchronous composability. Ethereum is having its "Fedwire moment." Just as Fedwire enabled seamless transactions across regional banks, shared sequencers and now based preconfirmations could unify rollups, facilitating efficient and decentralized asset transfers across the Ethereum universe. Based preconfs are also important wrt L1-L2 economics. EIP-4844 blobs have slashed L2 costs by substantially reducing base layer DA costs, but also cut Ethereum's revenue and burn rates. Post-EIP-4844, margins going to L2s are at ATHs and Ethereum revenue is down ~70%. "Going based" could balance L1-L2 economics by improving composability and "growing the pie" for all L2s, introducing preconf tips at L1, and making MEV extraction more efficient. Overall, fostering a more integrated Ethereum ecosystem.

Reminder that there's an opportunity to join Lemniscap as our Platform Lead! Lead growth, innovation, and support for top blockchain startups. Apply here👇👇 https://lnkd.in/e7DA-pK2

🚀 An exciting opportunity has opened to join our team as Platform Lead! 🚀 We are a forward-thinking investment firm specialising in crypto assets and blockchain startups. As Platform Lead, you’ll nurture a global ecosystem of founders, developers, and experts, all while driving product innovation. Monitor KPIs, identify growth opportunities and synergies, and deliver actionable insights that drive impactful results. We value creativity, hustler mentality, and initiative with prior experience in crypto, blockchain, or fintech. You'll collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the industry and help them reach their full potential. If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you! 📧 Submit your application below.

We’re delighted to have co-led the $5.2 million seed round for universal proof generation layer Fermah, alongside a16z crypto. The round also included participation from Bankless Ventures, LongHash Ventures, P-OPS Team, Public Works, ZKV, LambdaClass, Daedalus Angels, Zero DAO, Velocity Capital, & Daemon Ventures, as well as a range of top angels. Functioning as an efficient marketplace for ZKP generation, Fermah can generate proofs for any instance in which ZK is used, enabling more developers to integrate these advanced cryptographic techniques into their systems. Fermah was founded by Vanishree Rao, a highly accomplished cryptographer who has been actively designing & building ZKPs for the past 15 years, having also worked on one of the earliest & most innovative ZK protocols, o1Labs. Vanishree has extensive experience working with a range of intricate cryptographic primitives, & is assembling a best-in-class team of domain experts, aligned on a mission to make ZKP generation cheaper, faster & more reliable. ZKPs are one of the core focus areas for our recently launched fund, & we are thrilled to be supporting Vanishree Rao & the Fermah team in igniting a surge in innovative ZK applications. Check out the full announcement in The Block: https://lnkd.in/eiK39Dks

Lemniscap is thrilled to have led the $6M seed round for Puffpaw – a project that is driving innovation at the intersection of #DePin, #Culture & #Vaping. The round included participation from Volt Capital, The Spartan Group, Folius Ventures, Karatage, Seed Club Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Panga Capital, Everest Ventures Group (EVG), Corner, Social Graph Ventures, & nonce Classic. The round also garnered support from a range of renowned angel investors including Santiago R., Meltem Demirors, Mable Jiang, CMO of StepN, & Soby, Founder of XAI. By turning vaping into a gamified experience, Puffpaw has huge potential to onboard its users into the #Web3 space, with a very practical & novel deployment of DePin. The Puffpaw’s core team brings together synergetic experience from the e-cigarette & blockchain domains. Together they are aligned on a mission to turn traditional vaping into a gamified & rewarding experience. Congratulations to the team on today’s announcement!

We're thrilled to announce the launch of our new $70M fund to support early-stage Web3 projects tackling pre-trend narratives & up-and-coming markets. We're proud to partner with Accolade Partners as the anchor of our fund and are looking forward to working with their team to power a decentralised & transparent future together. The new fund will focus on a wide array of opportunities across the blockchain space, with some of the key verticals including Zero Knowledge Infrastructure, Consumer Applications, the emerging Bitcoin Ecosystem, Security, Phygital & DePin. We believe in fostering Web3 innovation at the grassroots level and are eager to support visionary founders who share our vision to build a robust & resilient decentralised ecosystem. By working closely with our portfolio companies, we develop a nuanced understanding of their needs. We are committed to providing hands-on guidance and leveraging our extensive network of industry experts and partners to empower emerging protocols and platforms to scale As a first-cheque VC, we would love to hear from you if you are innovating in the blockchain space! Feel free to contact our investment team Roderik van der Graaf, Shaishav Todi, Nicola Santoni, Sjors Witteveen, Griša Černe or reach out to us by email. Check out the full story by Yogita K. in The Block today: https://lnkd.in/dZ-NmnM7

Not long to go until the 2nd annual Lemniscap Portfolio Day at EthCC, happening next Thursday. Don't miss the chance to network with our portfolio founders and industry leaders in the heart of Brussels🇧🇪 ! Last spots remaining. Register here👇 https://lu.ma/l8ry2cln

We’re very excited to have co-led the $1.75M pre-seed funding round for Farworld Labs alongside Variant, with participation from Base Ecosystem Fund & Coinbase Ventures. The funding comes as Farworld Labs is preparing for the highly anticipated launch of the Farcade platform in collaboration with top studios & developers, providing a suite of tools for developers to build crypto-native games that integrate with onchain social. Alongside the rapid expansion of its onchain mobile gaming ecosystem, Farworld Labs is also gearing up for the launch of Season 1 of Farworld – an onchain monster training game. Interested parties can sign up to the waitlist on https://farcade.xyz. In the 3 months following the POC launch of Farworld, Farworld Labs launched the game’s MVP, sold out 8 consecutive drops, generated over $500k in revenue, & broadened the community to tens of thousands of gamers. Since Meta restricted third-party developers from creating games within their apps, the integration of gaming within the walls of social media hit a low ebb. Pioneering a unique ‘embedded gaming’ model, Farworld Labs is enabling gamers to play games directly where they already are. We look forward to supporting their mission to drive innovation at the exciting intersection of decentralised social media & Web3 gaming, while empowering gamers and developers to build onchain!