Leading decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap has launched a new venture division targeting Web3 projects. The newly formed venture unit will invest in companies across various stages and areas within web3.
According to the company, the aim is to invest in growth and innovation, focusing on infrastructure, developer tools and consumer-facing applications. Investments will be made directly from the company’s balance sheet.
Uniswap has not disclosed the details on how large these checks will be or what would be the size of the balance sheet. The company is also approaching Matteo Leibowitz to lead the venture arm alongside Mary-Catherine Lader, Uniswap’s chief operating officer.
As per Leibowitz, the company intends to advance the benefits of Web3 and user adoption. Under this, the goal is to support teams that can benefit from the company’s experience and expertise as a fast-growing crypto-native company.
Uniswap Labs has invested in 11 startups and projects prior to the venture unit launch, including Aave, Compound Protocol, MakerDAO, LayerZero, PartyDAO, and Tenderly, an Ethereum developer platform.
In the blog post, the company also mentioned its plans to participate in the governance systems of the Aave, MakerDAO, Compound and Ethereum Name Service protocols. In addition to that, Uniswap Labs Ventures aims to assist startups in building and scaling across partnerships, strategy, product, engineering, and design.
The firm will fund both equity and token deals and further participate in on and off-chain governance of projects. Another leading cryptocurrency exchange FTX has recently announced the formation of FTX Ventures to focus on Web3 technology and blockchain.
“The Web3 companies supporting each other through funding and venture investments reflects the principles and collaboration that are so fundamental to the industry’s open-source ethos,” said Leibowitz.
