The global fund plans to continue aggressively investing in promising ventures
During SF Blockchain Week’s VC Panel, Monday Capital, in partnership with RootstockLabs Innovation Studio, announced the completion of the first round of investments in its Ecosystem Fund. Two of the three investment recipients, Vega and Multis, were announced in early October, with the third, Pocket Network, set to close its own seed round within the month.
The announcement comes on a wave of global expansion for RootstockLabs during the last half of 2019, including the acquisition of Latin America’s largest social network, Taringa, a partnership with Japan’s largest Blockchain accelerator, BinaryStar, and their latest partnership with Singapore’s first government-backed accelerator, Tribe.
The Innovation Studio will work with Ecosystem Fund recipients to provide guidance and resources for the development of these solutions.
Vega is a protocol for creating and trading derivatives on a completely decentralized network. Fully automated processes and incentives for trading margined financial products democratize access to the derivatives market, allowing everyone to create financial products, removing rent-seekers and high costs.
Multis is a cryptocurrency lender, multi-sig wallet, and user-friendly interface all in one, designed to facilitate a convenient online banking experience for companies.
Pocket Network is a middleware protocol that provides an incentive for individuals and businesses to run full nodes for any blockchain. This is done by providing an API marketplace for developers to access data for their applications. Pocket Network is blockchain agnostic, allowing it to serve the long tail of blockchains, can guarantee 100% uptime through being decentralized and redundant, and is a magnitude cheaper to access than traditional third-party providers.
Katerina Stroponiati, Founding partner at Monday Capital, commented “The goal of the Ecosystem Fund is to identify talented founders who can turn the idea of decentralization and the free internet into actual products that will open the door to the creation of new markets and economies – Pocket Networks opens up a new income stream for investors, Vega opens the siloed derivatives market by democratizing the creation of new products and Multis opens the doors to (easy to use) banking solutions for the crypto era.”
Diego Gutierrez Zaldívar, former CEO of RootstockLabs, commented, “We launched the San Francisco Innovation Studio and Ecosystem Fund with the dream of turning the Internet of Value vision into very concrete solutions for companies. We’re elated that our first Ecosystem Fund recipients share in this vision and have already shown a strong capacity for innovation, adaptation, and delivery. We look forward to supporting their growth and continuing to expand our investments.”
About the Innovation Studio and Ecosystem Fund
The San Francisco Innovation Studio and Ecosystem Fund were formed to facilitate the creation of next-generation blockchain solutions in partnership with startups and enterprise companies.
The Ecosystem Fund, managed by Monday Capital, a strong supporter of the RIF Ecosystem, focuses on supporting projects around the world that would benefit from Rootstock/RIF OS technology integration through targeted investments. The Ecosystem Fund works closely with the Studio to ensure holistic support of the projects.
About RootstockLabs
RootstockLabs is a key contributor to Rootstock, the first, biggest, and longest-lasting Bitcoin layer 2.
RootstockLabs specializes in pioneering innovative solutions within the blockchain space, empowering developers with funding, technology, and marketing support to expand the frontiers of decentralized technology and make Bitcoin work for everyone.
About Rootstock
Rootstock is the first, biggest, and longest-lasting Bitcoin sidechain. It is the only Bitcoin layer 2 that combines the security of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, with Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities.
Rootstock is open-source, EVM-compatible, and secured by over 60% of Bitcoin’s hashing power, which makes it a gateway to a vibrant ecosystem of dApps that continues to evolve to become fully trustless.