Uniswap Venture Capital Wing to Invest in Web3 Projects

Uniswap, the popular decentralized cryptocurrency exchange (DEX), has announced that it has formed Uniswap Labs Ventures (ULV). ULV is a venture capital fund focused on investing in Web3 projects and companies. There is still no official announcement regarding how much capital is available in Uniswap’s venture fund.

According to an announcement on Monday, April 11, the firm will invest in various projects or technologies, regardless of their stage of development, that relate to Web3, developer tools, infrastructure, and consumer-facing applications.

11 companies and Web3 protocols have already received funds from the firm, including Aave, the decentralized money market, MakerDAO, which is the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind the DAI stablecoin, and the blockchain bridging protocol, LayerZero.

Uniswap also expressed in the announcement what it was looking for in projects that wanted funding. However, Uniswap did not reveal any projects that it had plans to invest in.

The statement from the announcement reads: “We’re also focused on investing in projects that are closely aligned with our values: building for the long term, collaborating openly with communities, and putting users first.”

Hayden Adams, Uniswap’s founder, posted a tweet on Twitter that corroborated the firm’s announcement, and shared that ULV plans to participate in the governance of projects that it invests in. He added that the firm plans on participating in the governance systems of Aave, Ethereum Name Service, Compound Finance, and MakerDAO.

Matteo Leibowitz will act as Ventures Lead, and will head up the effort with Uniswap’s COO, Mary-Catherine Lader. Leibowitz is the former Strategy Lead for Uniswap and was the founder of the Crypto Chat newsletter, as well as a research analyst at The Block.