Analysis of a16z's investment landscape: 27 encryption projects led by 2022

Original title: "Web3 "Scout", Inventory of 27 Encryption Projects Leading by a16z in 2022"

Original author: wesely

a16z  (Andreessen Horowitz), the top investment institution in the Crypto field, behind many top-level applications in the crypto industry, a16z can be seen, such as  Uniswap , Opensea, Coinbase , Solana , Lido  , etc., with their unique vision, a16z is also called Web3 "scout" by many people.

As the so-called bear market BUIDL, only the bull market can harvest. Looking at the previous rounds of market performance, many outstanding projects were born in the bear market environment and survived the long After a long night, it finally became the leader in the spotlight. In the current bear market, what projects has a16z, as the "scout" of Web3, entered the game? With what advantages do these projects enter a16z's investment map? This article will take stock of all the encryption projects led by a16z this year and the latest progress of these projects. Let us stand on the shoulders of giants and look for the future shining gold in the chaos.

1. Everyrealm

Project introduction: On February 11 this year, Everyrealm was completed raised a $60 million Series A round led by a16z. Everyrealm is a metaverse service company with a wide range of businesses, covering investment, NFT  asset management, virtual real estate, game and infrastructure development, and more. Created a variety of products such as Everyrealm Arcade game center, Realm Academy learning platform, and Everyrealm Collection investment tools.

Latest news: Fantasy Islands is the first NFT project led by Everyrealm. It is an island community built on  The Sandbox  , 100 A unique private island with one-to-one community development, exclusive brand cooperation and other rights and interests. Currently, Fantasy Islands access keys are being exchanged for FI100 membership cards. The price of keys on Opensea is as high as 79ETH.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://everyrealm.com/< /p>

Second, Sardine

Project introduction: On February 11, Sardine completed the project led by a16z This week, Sardine once again announced the completion of a $51.5 million Series B round of financing, still led by a16z. Sardine is a company that provides fintech and crypto companies with instant, risk-free ACH (Automated Clearing House) settlements, enabling them to move funds more efficiently, reducing the risk of delays in funds and payment fraud. As a bridge connecting encrypted assets and real currency assets, Sardine's advantages can greatly empower traditional companies to enter the Crypto industry.

Latest developments: This month, Sardine has partnered with the NFT platform Autograph to launch the product of NFT fiat currency checkout, and plans to expand this product to other larger NFT transactions market.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://www.sardine.ai /

3. BreederDAO

Project introduction: BreederDAO is a digital asset factory, through its The developed professional tools can mass-produce in-game NFT assets, and set corresponding standard values for game assets in combination with game conditions and data analysis. BreederDAO's financing is jointly led by a16z and Delphi Digital , with an amount of 10 million According to its official website, there are currently more than 300 trade unions and game project parties cooperating with BreederDAO.

Token status: issued

Official website: https://www.breederdao.io /

Fourth, Autograph

Project introduction: Autograph was founded by Super Bowl champion Tom Brady An NFT platform, headquartered in Los Angeles, built on  Polygon  , brings together the most iconic brands and legends in sports, entertainment and culture to create unique digital collections and experiences. On January 20 this year, Autograph completed a $170 million round of financing co-led by a16z and American venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

Latest news: In addition to the cooperation with Sardine mentioned above, Autograph recently launched a new product called Autograph Signature Experiences. Primarily providing owners with rights to exclusive content and access, leveraging the innovations of web3 to go beyond the traditional one-way relationship of fans.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://autograph.io/< /p>

5. loopcrypto

Project introduction: loopcrypto is a program that allows organizations to automatically perform repetitive encryption The payment platform is also a set of APIs, payment tools and smart contracts, which can greatly reduce the complexity of dealing with financial issues on the blockchain, and provide a way for Web3 project parties to pay salaries and other regular payment services Convenience solutions, in April this year, a16z led a $4 million seed round of financing.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://www.loopcrypto.xyz /

6. Goldfinch

Project Introduction: At the beginning of the year, Goldfinch completed a16z led investment of 25 million USD A+ round of financing. Goldfinch is a lending protocol that supports unsecured lending. Goldfinch has three key roles, borrowers, investors, and auditors, which represent the lender, provider, and approver of funds. However, Goldfinch is different from our ideal unsecured lending on the chain. Goldfinch adopts the loan relationship of assets on the chain and off the chain. That is, the borrowers are still traditional industry lending institutions, and the essential loan relationship is still off-chain. , but the source of assets and the lending process are all on the chain, individual users cannot borrow without collateral, but this method of Goldfinch can still expand the use scale and scenarios of assets on the chain very well.

Latest developments: Goldfinch recently launched an independent on-chain market called lark.market, which provides users with services to buy and sell NFTs representing the underlying investment positions of Goldfinch's lending pool.

Token Status: Issued

Official Website: https://goldfinch.finance/< /p>

7. Cross River Bank

Project Introduction: On March 11, Cross River Bank was completed With $620 million in financing led by a16z and Eldridge, Cross River Bank is a financial technology company. Cryptocurrency services are only one of its businesses, mainly providing crypto users with Crypto transactions, NFT markets and crypto wallets. Real-time access and other services.

Update: DigitalVentures, the investment arm of Cross River Bank, also participated in the Series B round of another fintech company, Sardine (same above).

Token Status: Unissued and low probability of issuance

Official website: https://www .crossriver.com/

Eight, M²

Project introduction: April 7, M², a project of the blockchain game company Improbable, completed a financing of US$150 million. This round of financing was led by a16z and SoftBank Vision Fund. The post-investment valuation of M² reached US$1 billion. It is worth mentioning that Improbable, as an M² development entity, received investment from a16z as early as 2015. At the same time, it also received a US$502 million investment led by Softbank in 2017. There are also top international investment institutions such as Temasek behind it. The strength can be seen Unusual. M² (MSquared) is an interoperable metaverse network that creates an interconnected virtual world experience for users. It has built-in various game streaming functions. Using Improbable's Morpheus technology and Web3 components, M² can also be in the metaverse Provide the construction, operation and service of Metaverse for other enterprises.

Latest news: The partner of Boring Ape's metaverse concept project Otherside is Improbable, so that players will be able to use M² (MSquared) to interact in Otherside, According to Otherside, they will announce related products of Metaverse in Q4, which will also bring a wave of attention to M² and Improbable.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://www.improbable.io /

Nine, Helium  Inc (now Nova Labs)

Project introduction: In March, the distributed wireless communication company Helium Inc. announced the completion of a US$200 million D round of equity financing, led by Tiger Global and a16z, after which the main body was renamed Nova Labs. Helium is a decentralized telecommunications network driven by encrypted asset incentives. Providers of network hotspots can obtain certain Token rewards.

Update: On the third anniversary of the Helium network, Helium has launched a 5G coverage device called MOBILE, a mobile hotspot device and Token rewards are provided for participants.

Token Status: Issued

Official Website: https://nova.xyz/< /p>

10. Battlebound

Project Introduction: Battlebound is a P2E game developer, mainly engaged in Blockchain game development, P2E game start-up company Battlebound announced the completion of US$4.8 million in financing, Battlebound has launched a multiplayer social platform for the NFT community -- evaverse, and has issued Evaverse First Arrivals NFT, Turtles Troops NFT , Hoverboard NFT A variety of avatars and game NFTs.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://battlebound.io/< /p>

Eleventh, Cryptoys

Project introduction: Cryptoys is a multinational toy manufacturing company Mattel (USA Tai, a world-renowned toy manufacturer, owns Barbie, Lion King, Batman and other brand-licensed toys) and NFT toy company OnChain Studios jointly developed an NFT platform that combines digital toys and games. In October last year, OnChain Studios, the parent company of Cryptoys, completed a US$7.5 million seed round of financing led by a16z. In June this year, it continued to lead the US$23 million A round of financing by a16z. Built on Cryptoys and the Flow chain, the Cryptoyverse will be an ever-evolving, expanding universe that will continue to feature new collectible toys, playsets, accessories, games, original content, and more.

Latest news: Cryptoys will release three NFTs of Genesis Corgi, Panda, and Kitty Hero. Currently, the 3-digit OG from the Zoo-FO Escape Genesis series is being launched Closed beta for heroes (Alphie, Comet, Juno), while Kitty Hero is planned to go live soon.

Token status: Not issued, but the official website shows that two different functional tokens, TOY and BD, will be launched in the future.

Official website: https://cryptoys.com/

Twelve, Clockwork Labs< /h3>

Project introduction: Clockwork Labs is a game company located in San Francisco, established in 2019, Roblox  The founder CEO also participated in the process. The core product of Clockwork Labs is an MMORPG game called BitCraft, in which players can cooperate to build a new civilization in a wilderness with ancient history. The BitCraft gameplay emphasizes skills , building, crafting, farming, trading and exploring.

Latest news: Currently, the BitCraft game is not yet online, only Pre-Alpha registration is supported.

Token status: Not issued, but in a recent community Q&A, the developer revealed that the BitCraft game will have its own Token.

Official website: https://clockworklabs.io/

Thirteen, Entropy

Project introduction: Entropy is a decentralized asset custody protocol, which is on the same track as Gnosis. Entropy is headquartered in New York. Prior to founding Entropy, founder Pacific worked at the cryptographic network  NuCypher  . Entropy’s solution is similar to Google Authenticator in that it doesn’t provide its own wallet or user-facing product — it just “signs” and processes data cryptographically. Behind this $25 million financing, in addition to a16z, there are well-known investment institutions such as coinbase and Dragonfly Capital .

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://entropy.xyz/< /p>

Fourteen, Azra Games

Project introduction: Azra Games is a P2E game studio, Focusing on game product development and brand building, the $15 million financing led by a16z is also mainly used to launch its first combat RPG game "Project Arcanas". Project Arcanas is positioned as an epic battle and collection RPG game.

Latest news: Azra will soon issue a PFP NFT called "The Hopeful" in Magic Eden, which is also a permanent Pass card.

Token status: not issued, the roadmap shows that AzraToken will be issued in the third phase (the current progress is in the second phase).

Official website: https://www.azragames.com/

Fifteen, Tiptop Labs

Project introduction: Tiptop Labs is a Crypto currency service provider founded by Bastian Lehmann, the founder of the food delivery service Postmates (acquired by Uber for $2.65 billion) , aiming to build a financial solution that can link fiat currencies with cryptocurrencies. After Tiptop Labs completed a $23 million investment led by a16z in May, as far as the official website and official media channels are concerned, the current project is not making much progress. Still in the process of building a team.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://tiptop.xyz/< /p>

Sixteen, PartyDAO

Project introduction: PartyDAO is a decentralized NFT bidding platform , On June 10th, PartyDAO completed a financing of US$16.4 million led by A16z, with a valuation of US$200 million, which is also one of the highest valuation projects among current community-driven DAOs.

Token Status: Unissued, the market has strong expectations for token issuance

Official website: https://www.partybid.app/

Seventeen, Adim

Project Introduction : Adim was founded by the well-known actor and producer Rob McElhenney. Adim recruits creators in an open manner. Member cooperation, when each Creator Room ends, each participant will get a separate core role NFT, including the ownership of the work, governance rights and rewards (royalty or revenue sharing), etc., NFT is not transferable.

Latest news: According to the co-founder of Adim, the number of creator applications has reached the level of a thousand.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://adimverse.com/< /p>

Eighteen, Flowcarbon

Project introduction: Flowcarbon is a blockchain carbon credit trading platform , in order to solve the opacity of the carbon trading market, Flowcarbon hopes to introduce the blockchain into the carbon credit field to create a blockchain carbon credit trading platform with transparent prices, decentralization, and positive incentives. The platform allows project developers to use Blockchain technology tokenizes carbon credits for storage and trading, but the negative deeds of the founder of this project, Adam Neumann, have also been criticized by many people.

Token status: Issued

Official website: https://www.flowcarbon.com /

Nineteenth, Metatheory

Project introduction: Metatheory is an interactive technology and entertainment The company mainly builds Web3 games, interactive content, social experience and other community-driven adventure games. Its first game project, DuskBreakers chain game, has been launched. Metatheory has completed the A round of financing of 24 million US dollars. This round of financing is led by a16z cast.

What's New: In DuskBreakers they recently launched Gribble Eggsperience with new mint + video game + 16 chapters visual novel + XP system.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://duskbreakers.gg/< /p>

Twenty, Fanhouse

Project Introduction: This is a creator monetization platform, Fanhouse While receiving $20 million in Series A financing led by a16z, the platform also announced that it will receive more than $10 million in creator spending in less than two years, Fanhouse charges 10% of creator income, and supports fans Purchase the in-app currency "Coins" outside the app to support creators and avoid app store commissions.

Official website: https://fanhouse.app/

21, Co: Create

Project introduction: Co:Create is an infrastructure service that provides NFT projects with native Token A protocol that expands its digital ecosystem. Projects can use the platform to mint NFTs and control the royalties paid by their native Token. Co:Create provides a set of standardized smart contracts that any NFT project can use to build around their NFT products Build a high-efficiency ecosystem.

Token Status: Unissued, but Co:Create plans to convert it into a DAO, and will launch its own native Token at that time.

Official website: https://www.usecocreate.io/

Twenty-two, Tally Labs

Project introduction: Tally Labs is a Web3 media platform, which has released many PFP and web3 concept projects such as Jenkins The Valet, Good boy, Azurbala, etc. Tally Labs also established CharacterDAO for management and decision-making, and hopes to build its own IP library. In addition, Tally Labs' NFT IP story is also supported by the Hollywood artist agency giant CAA.

Token status: not issued

Official website: https://www.tallylabs.xyz /

Twenty-three, Ready Player Me

Project Introduction: Ready Player Me is a The metaverse identity system aims to allow users to establish virtual identities in the metaverse through virtual products such as NFT. Currently, more than 1,000 project parties have used its products on this platform. This round of US$56 million financing was led by a16z. They hope to connect various metaverses through avatars. Ready Player Me was hatched from Wolf3D. Wolf3D has cooperated with Tencent, Verizon, HTC and other companies to build customized corresponding identity system.

Token Status: Unissued, low expectations for issuance

Official website: https:// readyplayer.me/

Twenty-four, Halliday

Project introduction: Halliday was born in 2021 In November 2018, it designed a tool to lower the barriers to entry in blockchain games and metaverses. It is the so-called "play first and pay later". Players can first obtain the right to use NFT through Halliday (ownership belongs to Halliday), experience the game or metaverse first, and then make repayments later, and support different payment methods on-chain and off-chain .

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://www.halliday.xyz /

Twenty-five, VeeFriends

Project Introduction: VeeFriends was created by Gary Vaynerchuk NFT series, holding NFT can become a member of VeeFriend community, launched in May 2021, each NFT has a specific message hand-painted by Gary, this is a social NFT with the theme of creativity and business. Different VeeFriends NFT holders can participate in different social activities, mainly around business, marketing, creativity, creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation, competition and fun.

Token Status: Unissued

Official Website: https://veefriends.com/< /p>

26. Farcaster

Project introduction: a decentralized social protocol, In July, Farcaster completed a $30 million financing led by a16z. It is an open protocol that supports multiple clients. Users can freely move their social identities between applications, and developers can also freely build new features on the network. Functional applications, currently, Farcaster is still in the development and testing phase.

Token Status: Unissued

Update: Farcaster is currently testing the network from Rinkeby Net migrated to Grli.

Official website: https://www.farcaster.xyz/

27. Morpho

Project introduction: Morpho is a  DeFi  lending agreement built on the existing lending market, which transfers the existing lending liquidity pool to ( Aave /Compound ) into a peer-to-peer lending mechanism, which provides investors with higher returns and can provide more attractive APY for both borrowers and lenders.

Latest news: Recently, Morpho launched the second phase of rewards, and plans to issue 1% of MORPHOToken through Morpho-Aave and Morpho-Compound within three months (10 million pieces).

Official website: https://www.morpho.xyz/

In addition to the above items, This year, a16z led the investment in several well-known projects such as Aptos , Optimism , Yuga Labs, and PROOF, the parent company behind Moonbirds. Since these projects have been discussed a lot, I won’t repeat them here.

Summary

Looking at the investment landscape of a16z, we can see that what they focus on Most of the projects are projects that can bring external growth or promote the transition from Web2 to Web3. For example, projects supported by celebrities can attract users in the web2 field very well, and Sardine and Cross, which solve the problem of swapping cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. River Bank can reduce the intercommunication threshold between Web2 and Web3. In addition, in the above-mentioned investment projects, because of the investment of a16z, it also promotes the cooperation between various projects, such as Sardine and Autograph, Improbable and Otherside, etc., which is also one of the functions of investment institutions.

Finally, judging from the above project classification, it basically covers games, metaverse, public chain, NFT, social networking, payment tools and other fields, especially chain games , is the field where a16z has made the most shots, but since this year, a16z has not been involved in the DeFi field much, and more focus is still on the chain game field, which may become a reference for us to judge future trends.

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