Original author: dLux

Original translation: TechFlow

Polychain Capital is a venture capital firm that discovers potential:

• Invested in MakerDAO in 2017;

• Invested in dydx in 2017;

• Invested in Starkware in 2018.

Want to learn about their 11 investments this year?

The company was founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee, formerly the head of risk at Coinbase. As you can see, Polychain Capital has been quite active over the past year.

Polychain Capital’s investors include some heavyweights:

• a16z ($3.5 billion in assets under management);

• Sequoia ($8.5 billion in assets under management);

• Usv ($1 billion in assets under management);

• Foundersfund ($11 billion in assets under management).

Since their first investment in 2017, they have made a total of 85 investments. Seed and Series A investments account for the majority of their deals (67%). As for sectors, they usually choose DeFi, infrastructure, and first-layer blockchain projects (65%). Let’s take a look at their investments this year.

Quasar is a decentralized application chain that supports cross-chain asset management for the Cosmos ecosystem. Quasar universal asset management vault, customizable according to different needs.

Nil is a project that aims to promote research and development in cryptography and databases. Their main product is Proof Market, which enables zkLLVM to work together to simplify zk implementations for developers.

SPACE ID is building a one-stop universal naming service network whose infrastructure provides multi-chain naming services that enables anyone to create a Web3 identity.

Cysic is a zk hardware startup that aims to provide the physical requirements for zk proof protocols.

Polyhedra Network is building infrastructure powered by zk technology. They designed zkBridge, a trustless infrastructure for L1 and L2 interoperability, and zkDID, a scalable and interoperable DID solution based on SBT.

Scroll is a zkEVM-based zkRollup built on top of ETH, allowing compatibility between other on-chain applications. Scroll raised $50 million at a $1.8 billion valuation.

Cubist is a project that aims to provide two major advantages:

Best-in-class security that increases developer productivity;

A development environment with lowered barriers frees developers from being locked into the development environment.

EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces a re-pledge mechanism. This enables ETH to be reused on the consensus layer by providing pooled security, thereby reducing capital costs and significantly increasing trust.

Berachain is a DeFi-focused EVM-compatible L1 that uses a proof-of-liquidity consensus algorithm and is built on Cosmos. Their three-token model is novel and will be very interesting to see in practice.

Thetanuts Finance aims to provide fund management for DAOs and help retail traders generate organic returns on their assets by simplifying the trading process.

Webb has built the infrastructure for an ecosystem of privacy protocols powered by zk technology, suitable for a multi-chain world.

Which project do you think will perform best?

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