Canonical Crypto, a new venture capital organization, has secured $20 million for its first fund to support blockchain infrastructure initiatives, with a bias for talent transitioning from Web 2 to Web 3.
The fund was supported by a slew of crypto heavyweights, including Chris Dixon and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Quresh, Shan Aggarwal, Coinbase Ventures corporate development head, FTX Ventures partner Amy Wu, and various family offices were among the other investors.
In a recent interview, Canonical Crypto creator Anand Iyer said, “The thesis is highly based on the world I grew up in, which is user infrastructure.”
“I believe we’re at a point in crypto where we simply need decent infrastructure.” To accommodate all of the planes that are operating, we need better airports.”
Moving from traditional computing into the world of crypto in 2021, Iyer launched Canonical Crypto. He has worked with Microsoft as the company’s ambassador to the Silicon Valley developer community.
Iyer said he jumped in after seeing a growing interest in blockchain technology among his Silicon Valley acquaintances, starting his own DeFi curriculum and partnering Pear VC to lead blockchain and crypto investments.
Canonical Crypto was launched from the ned to support early-stage blockchain developers, which Iyer define as, “everything that may make engineers more productive,” from code collaboration to authenticating to privacy to storage.
Many Web 2 developers utilize Amazon Web Services, and Iyer believes that similar services should be unbundled for Web 3.
Blockbuild’s Take
With the inaugural fund, Canonical Crypto plans to invest in 40 to 50 startups, with cheques ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 for pre-seed to seed-stage investments.
The firm will provide operational assistance, with an emphasis on assisting entrepreneurs in determining how to tailor their tooling for the proper set of customers and developing a go-to-market plan to get the solution to the correct audience.
The fund has made preliminary investments in a number of startups, including Form function, a non-fungible token (NFT) exchange located in Solana, a low-code decentralized software development platform, Thirdweb, Notifi, and a data infrastructure solution based in Solana, Vybe Network.
Despite the fact that the bitcoin bear market hasn’t deterred venture capital investments, Canonical Crypto is establishing its first fund. Last week, A16z announced a $4.5 billion fundraise for its fourth crypto fund, shattering industry records.
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