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The first batch of 13 projects graduate from Polygon's Web3 accelerator.

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Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal's Web3 accelerator Beacon has graduated its first batch of 13 projects.

Original Title: "Polygon Launches Web3 Accelerator, First Batch of 13 Projects Graduate"

Original Author: TechCrunch

Translated by: Karen, Foresight News

In December 2022, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, announced the launch of the Web3 startup accelerator Beacon, which will provide guidance and funding support to early-stage crypto projects.

The mentors of this accelerator program include Magic Eden CEO and co-founder Jack Lu, Halborn co-founder Rob Behnke, Polygon Zero co-leader Brendan Farmer, Coinbase Vice President of Business Development and Listings Dan Kim, and Decentral Games CEO and co-founder Miles Anthony, among others.

The first batch of the plan, "Cohort 0," was demonstrated on Tuesday. Sandeep Nailwal told TechCrunch that in Cohort 0, the Beacon team talked to more than 1,000 projects, and ultimately 15 startups participated, with 13 companies graduating successfully. For the "Cohort 1" batch, Beacon will invest $250,000 in each project in the program, with a post-investment valuation of around $8 million for each project. However, the "Cohort 0" batch will be subject to the situation as a trial run.

Beacon Accelerator's funding program does not have specific restrictions on particular blockchains. Most of the teams in "Cohort 0" are building cross-chain applications, but there are more teams building on Ethereum. Kenzi Wang, a core contributor to Beacon and co-founder of Symbolic Capital, stated during the demo day that among these 13 companies, there are 29 founders from 9 countries and 13 cities.

The startups in this batch focus on a range of encrypted sub-industries, such as gaming, infrastructure, decentralized lending, and development tools. Almost all of the startups are in the seed stage, except for Community Gaming, which has already reached the Series A financing stage.

Here are the detailed information of the 13 startups in Cohort 0:

Arcana: Web3 toolkit for developers

Founder: Mayur Relekar, Aravindh Kumar.

Stage: Seed round stage.

According to the official website, Arcana's investors include Republic Crypto, Woodstock, Digital Currency Group, Symbolic Capital, SHL Capital, Fenbushi Capital, LD Capital, Arcanum Capital, Paradigm Shift VC, AU21 Capital, as well as individual investors such as Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, JD Kanani, co-founder of Polygon, and Sandeep Nailwal.

Introduction: Arcana aims to help developers supplement their technical stack through tools to build secure decentralized applications, making it easy for developers to ensure the security and privacy of user data. Arcana's core toolset includes user authentication, tools for storing data and access control on its decentralized network. Arcana has currently launched its Beta testnet.

Blinkmoon: Game Development Studio

Founder: Hugh Behroozy, Hajeir Mazinani.

Stage: Seed round stage.

According to PitchBook information, Blinkmoon's investors include Binance Labs, NFX, Tess Ventures, and others. The Web3 venture capital fund Symbolic Capital, supported by Sandeep Nailwal, has also invested in the project.

Introduction: Blinkmoon is establishing an independent game development studio that focuses on the Web3 field. Prior to this, its team members participated in the visual effects production of "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Game of Thrones", and participated in the production of game series such as "League of Legends: Wild Rift", "NBA", "Zombie Siege", and "Rainbow Six".

ChapterX: Immersive 3D Platform

Founder: Chase Guo

Stage: Seed round stage.

According to the official website, ChapterX investors include Binance Labs, Spartan Group, Hyperedge Capital, Big Brain Holdings, GBV Capital, and others.

Introduction: ChapterX is an immersive 3D platform that allows users to build fully customizable worlds and avatars, while also experiencing a complete Web3 virtual life.

Colexion: GameFi ecosystem

Founder: Abhay Aggarwal

Stage: Seed round stage.

Colexion investors include Polygon, Brevan Howard, Jump Capital, Symbolic Capital, Firestarter, and GSR.

Introduction: Colexion is a card-based GameFi ecosystem aimed at bringing Web 2 games into the Web3 ecosystem through content centered around fantasy games. Colexion's Colexion Core system provides services such as coin casting, market, bridging, wallet, etc.

Community Gaming: Esports Platform

Founder: Chris Gonsalves.

Stage: A-round financing stage.

In April 2022, Community Gaming completed a $16 million Series A financing round, led by SB Opportunity Fund, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group, with participation from Animoca Brands, Binance Labs, BITKRAFT Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, CoinFund, Hashed, Multicoin Capital, Shima Capital, Polygon Studios, ConsenSys Mesh, as well as angel investors Jeff Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity, and Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games.

Introduction: Community Gaming aims to be an integrated esports competition platform. The platform is supported by blockchain payment technology based on Ethereum and Solana, and provides tools for players, organizers, and game developers to create, promote, and participate in esports tournaments. In addition, users can also profit from games by completing tasks in Community Gaming.

Cubist: Web3 developer tools and infrastructure

Founder: Ann Stefan, Deian Stefan (Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego), Riad Wahby, Fraser Brown.

Stage: Seed round stage.

Introduction: Cubist is a development tool and infrastructure provider, enabling developers to easily build, test, and deploy cross-chain and multi-chain DApps. The Cubist team has collectively published over 80 research papers on topics such as computer systems, programming languages, security, and cryptography.

FastLane: MEV Solution on Polygon

Founder: Alex Watts, Jordan Hagan.

阶段：种子轮阶段

Introduction: The FastLane protocol focuses on creating profits for validators, improving the efficiency of algorithmic traders, and reducing the pressure on network participants when they are "drowned" in redundant transactions, without the need to install or manage custom software on validation nodes.

Meta Apes: Web3 Game

Founder: Taylor Shim, Nicholas Carr.

阶段：种子轮阶段 -> Stage: Seed Round

Meta Apes was previously selected as one of the "Most Valuable Builders" (MVB) in the fifth batch of the BNB Chain Web3 Accelerator Program, and received investment from Binance Labs.

Introduction: Meta Apes is a free win-to-earn mobile Web3 game built on the BNB Application Sidechain (BAS). Players can build their own cities and communities, compete and explore to win the "race to space". The game aims to combine traditional game elements such as massive multiplayer online (MMO) strategy with Web3 elements such as in-game currency. The team members have previously worked at companies such as Ubisoft, Gameloft, Zynga, AppLovin, and Epic.

Mystic Moose: Web3 Game Development Studio

Founder: Mike Levine.

Stage: Seed round.

In December 2021, Mystic Moose completed a $5 million seed round of financing, with Animoca Brands leading the investment and participation from Courtside Ventures, Republic Crypto, Alameda, AU21, Sfermion, Polygon Studios, Collab+Currency, Sky Vision Capital, Spartan Capital, HyperEdge, Momentum6, and Fourth Revolution Capital.

Introduction: Mystic Moose is a Web3 platform, game studio, and publisher. The team members have previously worked at Activision, LucasArts, and Electronic Arts. Mike Levine's first game, Planet Mojo, is built on its scalable backend platform Sumatra and is a browser-based interconnected game server. Its auto chess game, Mojo Melee, is currently undergoing alpha game testing and is planned to be launched on the web and mobile platforms in the first quarter of this year. The studio is supported by companies such as Animoca Brands, Republic Crypto, and Polygon Studios.

Nillion: Web3 Infrastructure

Founder: Alex Page, Andrew Yeoh, Andrew Masanto.

Stage: Seed round stage.

In December 2022, Nillion completed a $20 million financing round, led by Distributed Global and with participation from AU21, Big Brain Holdings, Chapter One, GSR Markets, HashKey, OP Crypto, and SALT Fund.

Introduction: Nillion is a Web3 infrastructure startup that focuses on ensuring the storage, computation, and fragmentation of data on the Internet. Nillion's technology, Nil Message Compute (NMC), is specifically designed for decentralized secure storage and computation. Nillion's founders include former employees of Uber, Indiegogo, and Hedera Hashgraph, as well as executives from Coinbase and Nike.

Davos Protocol: Stable Asset Loan Agreement

Founder: Varun Satyam, Julian Hayward, Filipe Gonalves.

Stage: Seed round.

Davos Protocol stabilizes assets with DAVOS, using liquidity collateralization and over-collateralization to solve liquidity lock-up problems. Specifically, Davos Protocol accepts tokens from multiple PoS networks as collateral to borrow DAVOS stable assets. Then, Davos Protocol runs various low-risk strategies to generate income from the collateral assets and redistributes it to DAVOS stakers and DEX liquidity providers. Davos Protocol's risk team manages the protocol's monetary policy to balance the best price stability with yield, and votes weekly to decide the reward distribution between stakeholders and liquidity providers. The project's strategic partners include Polygon and Ankr.

Timeswap: Decentralized Lending Protocol

Founder: Ameeth Devadas, Harshita Singh, Ricsson Ngo.

Stage: Seed round stage.

Timeswap announced the completion of its seed round financing in October 2021, but did not disclose the amount of financing. Investors participating in this round of financing include Multicoin Capital, Mechanism Capital, and Defiance Capital.

Introduction: Timeswap is a decentralized lending platform and an AMM protocol supported by Polygon. Its main features include flexible interest rates and collateral factors, allowing users to determine their risk-return ratio flexibly. It also allows users to create any Ethereum-based ERC20 Token pool by providing appropriate liquidity.

Further reading: "Understanding Timeswap, an AMM-based non-custodial lending protocol in 5 minutes."

Ylide: Wallet Communication Protocol

Founder: Ignat Shapkin, Kirill Zubkov, Danila Simonov.

Phase: Seed Round.

Introduction: Ylide is a decentralized protocol used for wallet-to-wallet communication, allowing for cross-chain messaging, data storage to smart contracts, and end-to-end encryption. Ylide also has its own email client, and developers can integrate communication functionality into their projects.