Polygon Founder Launches $50 Million Early-Stage Web3 Fund

Despite a brutal bear market, money is still flowing into the crypto space: The founder of blockchain infrastructure provider Polygon today launched a new crypto-focused venture capital firm with $50 million in the bank. 

Headed up by Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Cere Network founder Kenzi Wang, Symbolic Capital launched in May—but today announced that despite the crypto market crashing, it has raised $50 million to plug into early-stage Web3 companies. 

And it claims to be different from other venture capital firms because it is run by crypto founders. 

Polygon, previously known as Matic Network, is an interoperability and scaling protocol for launching Ethereum-compatible blockchains. Kenzi Wang’s Cere Network is a decentralized data cloud platform. 

The firm said in an announcement: “We’re one of the first VC firms led exclusively by web3 founders, allowing us to provide unparalleled support to the builders in our portfolio.” The term Web3 refers to what some believe is the next phase of the internet, which will make use of blockchain networks and cryptocurrency to be more decentralized and return ownserhip of data to its users.

“When you look at the crypto VC landscape, it’s rare to find firms that were started by Web3 founders,” Nailwal added. “We built blockchain companies from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the unique challenges that these projects face.”

Symbolic said it plans to focus on backing startups building consumer-facing decentralized apps. These apps, known as dapps, perform similar functions as normal apps but use blockchain networks and smart contracts (the self-executing computer code that is stored on blockchains) to cut out middlemen. For example, Uniswap is a popular Ethereum-based dapp that functions as a decentralized exchange that anyone can use to trade coins and tokens.

Symbolic said it had already plugged cash into blockchain gaming companies Blinkmoon, Planet Mojo, and Community Gaming.