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

What will the verifiable web look like? Our new report explores the role of web proofs (aka zkTLS) and their potential use cases. What are web proofs and what real-world problems can they solve? https://lnkd.in/evVJW44F The Problem: The current web is built on trust. Users rely on centralized entities to verify data, creating inefficiencies and vulnerabilities. Web proofs aim to replace trust with cryptographic verification of your data. Enter web proofs. Web proofs allow you to cryptographically authenticate any data you exchange over HTTPS. They ensure: • Authenticity: Your data hasn’t been tampered with. • Provenance: Your data came from a specific source. • Privacy: You only reveal what you want to. Use Cases: Web proofs unlock diverse applications across four objectives: • Credentials: Prove your data to a third party • Data Integrity: Improve data accuracy and reliability • Data Portability: Move your data from one platform to another • Data Assets: Monetize your data We identified 20+ exciting use cases that can be organized by these objectives (+ “Other”). We describe each use case in detail and how web proofs enable it, so you don’t have to. We hope you find it useful – dive in! If you're building in these spaces, we'd love to hear from you! Feel free to DM the Lemniscap team Roderik van der Graaf Shaishav Todi Nicola Santoni Sjors Witteveen Griša Černe Hiroki Kotabe, PhD or reach out to us by email. Lastly, a big thank you to madhavanmalolan .eth at Reclaim Protocol Euler Lagrange & dawufi at Opacity Labs Inc. Joshua P. at zkPass YJ at OpenLayer danilo kim at Zap Labs Vicky & Xiang Xie at Primus labs Tracy at Pluto for fruitful discussions and feedback.

We’re delighted to have co-ed the $8.3M seed round for MultiVM blockchain Cytonic, alongside Lattice. Developed by MultiVM Labs, Cytonic is an execution layer engineered to address blockchain compatibility challenges, emerging as the first Layer 1 that runs multiple VMS within the same network layer using shared storage. Recognising the heightened fragmentation across multiple chains that has hindered obstructed Web3 growth, Cytonic is compatible with most blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, & Solana, enabling different transaction types to be processed together in a single block. Cytonic Co-Founder Ivan Miskovic is driven to make on-chain interactions easier & more efficient for everyone involved, reducing transaction fees & waiting times when moving assets between chains. We’re proud to support Cytonic’s mission to break down the silos between blockchains, empower developers & drive collaboration, innovation, & adoption across the Web3 ecosystem. Congrats to the team on today’s milestone!

We're very pleased to have led the $4M seed round for Termina, the SVM-as-a-Service platform by Nitro Labs – empowering developers to create customizable Solana-based networks optimized for performance & privacy. Having experienced the security & cost issues of the EVM first-hand, Nitro Labs got to work on building Termina, tapping into the long-term potential of the SVM, with its robust community, safety, & scalability. Termina has a clear mandate to scale the SVM while enhancing developer engagement & accelerating blockchain deployments – and it's working – over 20 ecosystem partners are building alongside Termina, including both Solana-native & cross-chain projects. As reported today by The Block, Termina aims to improve the accessibility and flexibility of Solana block space by allowing developers to deploy & manage purpose-built SVM networks quickly & efficiently. We look forward to supporting the team as they prepare for their upcoming testnet launch this year. Check out the full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/eqJ6AUdQ

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!