The ecosystem fund for the Flow Blockchain platform has been raised to $725 million. Andreessen Horowitz and Coatue are backers.
The Flow blockchain will provide a wealth of resources for crypto builders. The project announced Tuesday the creation of an ecosystem fund worth $725 million that will support everything, from FLOW token grants to incubator programs and office space to development resources.
The new fund will also contribute to projects in development. Its backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue and Greenfield One.
Dapper Labs is the creator of Flow, the blockchain ecosystem which powers the NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day. Flow is also home to a number of other projects, including avatar platform Generation and kid-centric NFTs, from Zigazoo. It has since evolved to an open, distributed platform for app development.
Mik Naayem is co-founder and chief executive officer of Dapper Labs. He told Decrypt that the fund was created through a conversation between Greenfield One and has grown to include contributions from more than fifteen backers.
He also said that it won’t be managed centrally. Each backer will support its chosen projects in its own way, whether it be token grants or investment. The Dapper team will assist with making connections.
Naayem stated that the pool of resources is dedicated to the Flow ecosystem and each investor deploys their support. “We believe that this is important because instead of one person making decisions, there are groups of people making decisions based upon their expertise.
As part of the fund, some participants will receive unique benefits. Greenfield One will provide office space in Berlin, while AppWorks Accelerator will do the same in Asia. Liberty City Ventures will also offer college scholarships to students who want to work on Flow-based projects.
Naayem stated that the fund’s top priorities include supporting projects based on Flow infrastructure, Decentralized Finance (DeFi),, as well entertainment projects. The fund grants will be customized to each project’s needs, including product development, user acquisition and scaling.
Flow has experienced an increase in activity in recent months. The monthly transaction volume tripled from 3.9 million in Sept to an all-time high in February at over 11.8million, according to Flowscan. April was not far from that record of 11.4 million transactions. The platform recently reached new highs in daily flow accounts created and daily transactions users.
Naayem pointed out that two startups based on Flow recently became crypto “unicorns”, with a value of at least $1billion. Genies raised $150M in April at a $1B valuation. OneFootball raised $300M as part of plans for NFTs. OneFootball was not valued, but Dapper Labs supported both companies.
Naayem said, “These past two months have been quite incredible.” “We believe [the fund] will] provide an incredibly strong amount support for the existing Flow ecosystem and also help it grow significantly.”
