Why did Uniswap need a particular venture capital wing for Web 3 investments?

Having a particular venture capital wing would make the crypto exchange focus on its core operations

Popular decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap announced forming a venture capital fund Uniswap Labs Venture (ULV), focused on projects and companies indulged in Web 3 related innovations. There is no specific stage for a company to invest in; rather, the firm would invest at any developing stage across different projects or Web 3 related technologies, infrastructure, consumer-facing applications, and developer tools as their area of interest.

Uniswap has invested in about 11 companies, and protocols related to Web 3 include decentralized money market platform Aave, a famous decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that backs DAI stablecoin – MakerDAO, and LayerZero, a blockchain bridging protocol. In the announcement, the crypto exchange expressed its intentions to look for interesting projects for funding, although it has not revealed any projects further to have plans of investing in.

The announcement marked that the company also focused on investing in projects aligned closely with life values, building for the long term, openly collaborating with communities, and putting the users first. Founder of Uniswap Hayden Adams, in an announcement on a Twitter thread, shared that ULV has plans to participate in the project’s governance in which it makes investments. In addition to that, they reveal the plans to participate in Aave governance systems along with Compound Finance, MakerDAO, and Ethereum Name Service. However, there was no detail disclosed about the capital amount in the venture fund of Uniswap under management.

Uniswap has appointed Matteo Leibowitz, venture fund lead, who will be healing up with Chief Operating Officer Mary-Catherine Lader. Leibowitz had been strategy lead for the decentralized exchange and been founder and editor of the newsletter ‘Crypto Chat’ and research analyst at The Block.

It seems like crypto companies are diversifying through venture capital firms. FTX centralized cryptocurrency exchange has launched a crypto fund in January worth $2 billion to invest in businesses related to Web 3; on the other hand, NEAR Protocol has led a funding round of $350 million for the same cause.

Capital firms’ interest in crypto is on the rise as several research shows and reported approx 144% rise in capital inflows in this sector between 2020 and 2021, where DeFi turned out to be the most favored for investment. However, there was no immediate comment from Uniswap in response to several questions asked.

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Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing