March 29, 2024

Polygon Co-Founder Launches $50M Fund to Invest in Web3 Projects

Polygon Co-Founder Launches $50M Fund to Invest in Web3 Projects

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal launched Symbolic Capital, a $50 million venture fund focused on...support for Web3 startups in emerging markets.

Nailval's partner in the project was the founderCere Network Kenzi Wang. Their joint company raised funds for the fund from other venture capitalists, crypto exchanges, family offices and institutions, whom they declined to name.

According to Nailwal, the structure intends to primarily support the creators of dapps.

«My main mission is to provide massimplementation of Web3, and this will happen through applications. I'm not going to create a blockchain to be used. People don’t do this directly, but always through some kind of dapp,” he explained.

Symbolic Capital has already invested in approximately 15 projects, including the BlinkMoon web3 game studio, the Polygon-powered Planet Mojo metaverse, and Community Gaming, an esports platform.

Nailwal noted that the fund intends to 80-90% of the capitalallocate to start-ups from developing countries. The investor is intimately familiar with crypto projects in his native India, while his partner Kenzi Wang is a specialist in the Web3 ecosystem in China and Southeast Asia. They believe that this gives them a broad view of the leading emerging markets.

One of the main motives for launching SymbolicNailwal called the opportunity to more formally support projects that are already in his orbit of influence. Since meeting at Binance Labs in 2019, the partners have jointly invested in more than 40 startups as business angels.

Nailwal said that the fund intends to pay special attention to projects in the field of fantasy sports.

«In Fantasy Web3, you can have NFTs,which you can rent out when you're not playing and earn passive income. You can earn tokens on the platform and become part of this ecosystem from a very early stage,” he emphasized.

According to the investor, such economic incentivesvery important for users in developing countries. As existing examples, he named the M2E application Stepn, popular in such markets, and the P2E game Axie Infinity (the founders of Symbolic invested as business angels in the Sky Mavis studio behind the latter).

Regarding the assessment of potential fund investmentsNailwal noted that the firm has built an internal data platform. The solution will collect information on project activity on GitHub, interactions with Discord, token performance, employment and hiring trends. The company has also developed its own due diligence structure. 

Recall that in August, Polygon acted as an anchor investor for a new fund in the amount of $25 million from the venture studio SuperLayer.

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