Former Goldman Sachs bankers Mahesh Ramakrishnan and Salvador Gala raised $25 million for Escape Velocity, a venture fund focused on investing in crypto startups. The Block reports.
Investors included the founders and staff of Castle Island, a16z, Framework Ventures, Multicoin, Ribbit Capital and Apollo Global Management.
The amount raised could rise to as much as $30 million before the official close in the coming weeks.
Escape Velocity is targeted at early-stage projects that advance network decentralisation. For example, those focused on wireless communications and energy, or providing tools to enable this transition.
“There is now a lot of computing hardware with excess capacity that can be monetised. We are approaching a moment when this paradigm will be more valuable and economically efficient than scaling,” said project representatives.
The fund has already made five investments, including Xnet and Andrena.
Earlier, Pantera and Archetype supported the distributed validator startup Obol Labs in a $12.5 million round.
Earlier, in January, Nil Foundation raised $22 million. The team developed the Proof Market protocol, aimed at decentralising zero-knowledge proofs.
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