Norwest is a venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies. Since its inception, it has invested in more than 600 companies and partnered with over 140 active companies across our venture and growth equity portfolio. The firm invests in early to late-stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. It offers a deep network of connections, operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders scale their businesses.

Norwest Venture Partners

GFC is a globally oriented, stage agnostic venture capital firm that empowers gifted entrepreneurs. The firm seeks to invest in companies that operate within the internet, retail, financial software, media, communication, and information technology sectors. It was founded by Oliver Samwer in 2013 and is based in Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Global Founders Capital

The world of financial services is transforming and more ready than ever for thoughtful disruption. The combination of permanent structural changes to the global financial services industry and readily accessible infrastructure will unlock empowering financial and technology innovation at across the FIRE sector - from finance, to insurance and real estate - through products and services that are fair, transparent and give consumers and businesses full control of their hard earned money and the data tied to it.  LaunchPad Capital builds and invests in pre-seed and seed stage Fintech companies.

Launchpad Capital

Paradigm is a crypto-focused investment firm based in San Francisco. It invests in crypto-assets and businesses from idea formation through to maturity. They take a really hands-on approach to assisting projects in reaching their full potential, from technical mechanism design, smart contract security, engineering, through operational recruiting and regulatory strategy.

Paradigm

Robot Ventures is a (pre-)seed investor in exceptional fintech and blockchain companies led by founders with big ambitions, and contrarian worldviews.

Robot Ventures

Polygon is a platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development and web3. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 7,000+ applications hosted, 1B+ total transactions processed, ~130M+ unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured.

Polygon

Solana Ventures' mission is to accelerate the growth of the Solana blockchain and adjacent ecosystems by providing capital to the most promising teams building in the crypto ecosystem.

Solana Ventures

Circle Ventures invests in projects that accelerate global crypto innovation and adoption in service. They foster crypto innovation by assisting founders and teams that are committed to open access, financial inclusivity, and programmable commerce, all of which may contribute to global economic success.

Circle Ventures

FTX Ventures invests in equity and/or tokens, at any check size and stage of blockchain. It leverages resources across FTX and the ecosystem of global partners. It supports founders and wants the team to retain flexibility and decision-making, not to get in their way.

FTX Ventures

A* Capital

Haun Ventures is an investment firm that invests in crypto-related startups. It is a firm designed from the ground up to help founders build the next generation of the internet. Founded by Kathryn Haun, a former Andreessen Horowitz general partner.

Haun Ventures

Exponential DeFi

Exponential DeFi platform makes it easy to discover, assess, and invest in DeFi yield opportunities. Anyone can become a lender or market maker with DeFi. Financial freedom is within everyone's reach when individuals have the ability to grow their wealth exponentially. Its platform helps investors assess the risk of DeFi yield opportunities so they can invest with confidence. Exponential DeFi platform was founded in 2021 and is based in San Francisco, California.

<div>Exponential offers a platform that enables users to find and compare yield-generating lending pools across a number of digital assets and blockchains. The platform leverages an institutional-grade risk assessment system named “rate my wallet” to analyze each investment for potential risks in the underlying protocols, assets, and blockchains. The company also planned to allow users to invest directly in DeFi projects through its platform. As of October 2022, the platform had assessed over 100 protocols across 20 blockchains. </div>

Disrupting the traditional financial system using blockchain

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Exponential

<div>
 
 Exponential offers a platform that enables users to find and compare yield-generating lending pools across a number of digital assets and blockchains. The platform leverages an institutional-grade risk assessment system named “rate my wallet” to analyze each investment for potential risks in the underlying protocols, assets, and blockchains. The company also planned to allow users to invest directly in DeFi projects through its platform. As of October 2022, the platform had assessed over 100 protocols across 20 blockchains. 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 
 In October 2022, Exponential raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13493">
 USD 14 million
 </a>
 in seed funding led by Paradigm.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 MakerDAO is a DAO (governed through the MKR token) that manages the Maker Protocol.&nbsp;
 
 
 Developed on the Ethereum blockchain, the Maker Protocol allows users to place their funds (through cryptocurrency) as collateral in exchange for its stablecoin DAI, which is pegged to the USD. DAI can be used like any other cryptocurrency and even as savings since holders of DAI are entitled to a return based on the DAI Savings Rate (DSR). The DSR is determined by members of the DAO using a mix of public and proprietary market data. In October 2022, MakerDAO 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14067">
 passed a proposal
 </a>
 to separate its DAO into multiple self-sustaining units called MetaDAOs. These DAOs will be separate from Maker&rsquo;s broader governance system and will have their own community and token.
 
 
 MakerDAO offers access to investing and borrowing DAI through the Oasis app, developed by some of the creators of Maker Protocol. In addition, the Maker Protocol is available for developers of DeFi apps, who can build apps to facilitate earning, investing, and borrowing DAI. As of December 2021, the Maker Protocol integrated with over 400 applications, ranging from payments systems to gaming platforms. MakerDAO generates revenue through stability fees (akin to interest payment on borrowed DAI) and liquidation fees, which is an additional charge that occurs when the value of the submitted collateral falls below a set liquidation amount. 
 
 
 In April 2022, MakerDAO announced that it was bridging to StarkNet, a reportedly cheaper and faster zero-knowledge (ZK) overlay chain built by StarkWare. Along with its expansion on Ethereum, the DAO plans to move toward a multi-chain offering with this rebuild. It plans to roll-out this offering in 4 phases, beginning with a simple bridge between the main blockchain and StarkNet&rsquo;s Layer 2. &nbsp;
 
 
 In February 2023, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16269?industryIds=64">
 launched a new lending platform
 </a>
 named Spark Protocol, to enable users to borrow, lend, and stake DAI, the protocol&rsquo;s stablecoin. The platform, which is a fork of Aave's version 3 (v3), will be built by Phoenix Labs, a research and development company formed by the DAO. Additionally, the company also announced deployment of etherDAI, a liquid staking derivative for Ethereum that will be pegged to the value of ETH. Furthermore, in March, MakerDAO went on to
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17322">
 approve a number of new proposals 
 </a>
 that make changes to both its governance structure and the investment of its treasury. These changes divide the DAO&rsquo;s current structure into smaller self-governed and self-sustained units named SubDAOs, which will also have their own tokens in the MakerDAO ecosystem. Moreover, the proposal also planned to increase the protocol&rsquo;s revenues by investing a part of its reserves (worth USD 7 billion) into real-world assets and money-market funds. 
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 As of April 2022, MakerDAO had around USD 13.7 billion in total value locked (TVL).The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was in April 2020 for an undisclosed sum. Previously, the company raised USD 27.5 million through the sale of its MKR token to Dragonfly Partners and Paragon to expand its operations to Asia. 
 
 
 
</div>

MakerDAO

<div>
 
 Founded by former executives of Qualcomm, Solana Labs is the developer of the Solana blockchain, which uses the native cryptocurrency SOL. The company enables developers to create decentralized applications in its blockchain and is capable of carrying out 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a theoretical upper limit of 710,000 TPS for the architecture. As of December 2021, the blockchain averaged around 2,500 TPS. This is in contrast to Ethereum’s average of between 13 to 15 TPS. In addition to transaction speed, Solana also has other advantages such as lower transaction fees and improved scalability, given the differences in its consensus mechanism and underlying architecture.
 
 
 As of December 2021, more than 400 projects were created using Solana, ranging across use cases such as DeFi, NFTs, and gaming.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In June 2022, Solana partnered with Edgevana, an edge colocation services provider, to deploy 500 bare metal servers in 32 of Edgevana's data center and colocation facilities across the globe. This enables validators to leverage Edgevana's product offering to increase the speed of setting up. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Total value locked (TVL) in DeFi projects across the Solana blockchain amounted to USD 6.4 billion as of April 2022. The company raised USD 314 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) of SOL. The ICO was co-led by Polychain Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The funding was to be used to create a venture investing arm, a trading desk, and support the development of new applications in its blockchain.
 
</div>

Solana

<div>
 
 Swiss-based Eidoo is a developer of a wallet that supports cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, along with tokens such as DAI, MKR, AAVE, and UNI, among others. In addition, Eidoo provides a DeFi marketplace that integrates with its wallet, allowing users to trade any tokens that they hold. Eidoo also offers a debit card that allows the conversion of digital assets into fiat currencies, such as the GBP and EURO, and spending or even withdrawing cash from ATMs.
 
 
 Eidoo began with the proprietary token EDO, which it also used to raise USD 27.9 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017. The token was then upgraded following its merger with blockchain oracle provider Provable Things to establish pNetwork, the infrastructure that facilitates cross-chain interactions between multiple decentralized apps, governed by the token PNT. To obtain an Eidoo debit card, users are required to stake PNT ranging from 20 to 200,000 for various service tiers.
 
 
 Eidoo had several applications such as virtual account numbers to deposit money and obtain a tokenized representation of their deposit as well as features to buy, hold, and trade NFTs in the roadmap as of December 2021.
 
</div>

Eidoo

Synthetix is a DAO (governed by holders of its native token SNX) that offers a platform on which users can trade and vote on the creation of on-chain synthetic assets, which are derivatives based on real-world assets. These synthetic assets enable traders to capture the price movements of assets such as cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, stocks, and commodities, among others, with zero slippage. The protocol allows users to stake SNX as collateral for the debt pool and earn weekly rewards. As of April 2022, Synthetix had USD 642 million in total value locked (TVL).Additionally, Synthetix also offers the opportunity for developers to build on top of the platform to tap into its liquidity as well as develop decentralized perpetual futures, options markets, deal coordination markets, and more. As of December 2021, the protocol served large DeFi platforms including 1inch, Curve Finance, Yearn Finance, and Paraswap.In February 2023, Synthetix <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16609?industryIds=64">deployed version 3 (v3) of its platform </a>on the Ethereum mainnet. V3 reportedly offers more efficient architecture that enables developers to create products that offer a liquid market for any financial derivative, as well as more complex decentralized applications. Additionally, the solution also offers staking and differentiated debt pools, to enable stakers to earn fees from supplying collateral to specific asset pools. The company went on to deploy its protocol on Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain developed by Coinbase, in April 2024. Moreover, the company announced plans to launch a new perpetual futures exchange named Infinex in the following months. Funding and financialsIn March 2023, Synthetix <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17267">received an investment of USD 20 million </a>from DWF Labs, a Web3 venture capital company. Synthetix plans to use this investment to drive volume for its protocol across both centralized and decentralized exchanges and invest in product development.

Synthetix

<div>
 
 Compound is an open-source lending protocol built on Ethereum that allows developers to build DeFi applications for functions such as deposits and lending. Compound offers adjusted money market interest rates based on asset-specific supply and demand and supports a number of Ethereum-based assets for users to take collateralized loans and lock-up assets without borrowing. Locked assets are automatically liquidated if an independent oracle determines that the price has dropped too low. Additionally, since assets are stored in a shared pool, even users with liquidated collateral can claim tokens if they are able to repay the general pool. Compound also 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13038">
 offers borrowing services
 </a>
 for institutional clients that allow them to borrow USD or USDC at a fixed annual percentage rate of 6% using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ether as collateral, with a loan-to-value of 90%.
 
 
 
 
 As of April 2022, Compound has a total value locked (TVL) of USD 2.1 billion. The protocol is governed by its native-token COMP, which along with a variety of other digital assets that are a part of the Compound ecosystem, are supported by Coinbase Custody, a crypto asset custodian. In August 2022, Compound launched a version of its protocol named “Compound III” which features a single borrowable asset. Users can supply collateral that can never be withdrawn by other users (except during liquidation) and borrow USDC.
 
 
 
 
 In May 2022, Compound
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10267">
 received a B- credit rating from S&P Global Ratings
 </a>
 on its enterprise credit facility which offers 4% annually on deposits of the stablecoin USDC. Notably, Compound claims that this is the first time an "institutional DeFi" product has been scored by a major credit rating agency.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 Compound’s last funding round was in November 2019 where it raised USD 25 million in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund to help the company further decentralize the protocol by enabling crypto exchanges and custodians such as Coinbase to maintain the protocol going forward.
 
 
 
</div>

Compound

All companies within this industry are either blockchain-based platforms or offer blockchain-centric services

Promotes financial inclusivity, allowing those that won't traditionally have access to credit to raise funds

Companies with the infrastructure segment offer solutions for users to build decentralized applications

Organizations and protocols that allow individuals to lend their crypto assets and take out collateralized or uncollateralized loans from to/from these projects

Exponential

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

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Exponential raises USD 14 million in seed funding

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