Binance Labs Adds $500 Million to Web3-Supporting Fund

Binance Labs has closed a mega investment round with bagging $500 million (roughly Rs. 3,875 crore) for its Web3 focussed fund pool. A bunch of global institutional investors participated in this round, adding capital towards the future and progress of the Web3 industry. These include DST Global Partners, Breyer Capital, and Whampoa Group among other firms. The money will fund Web3 and crypto startups in their incubation and growth stages. The development comes at a time when the overall crypto industry is going through a slowed market movement.

Binance Global, the parent of Binance Labs, has established itself among the world’s biggest crypto exchanges since its launch in 2017.

Now, the platform wants to accelerate the use cases and adoption of Web3 elements including [cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as well as the metaverse via this funding being collected by Binance Labs.

“The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across decentralised finance (DeFi), NFTs, gaming, metaverse, social, and more,” Binance CEO Chengpeng Zhao said in a blog post.

Since its foundation in 2018, Binance Labs has already funded several Web3 projects it deemed promising amid the present hypercompetitive industrial climate.

Its portfolio includes industry-leading projects such as 1inch, Audius, Axie Infinity, Dune Analytics, Elrond, Injective, Polygon, Optimism, The Sandbox, and STEPN.

Meanwhile, institutional investments in the Web3 and crypto sectors are known to blow back life into them, especially when risks of recession have been axing their growth rates.

Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) recently pledged $600 million (roughly Rs. 4,661 crore) to accelerate research and development in the Web3 and NFT gaming industry. The name of this fund pool is ‘Games Fund One’ and it will focus on uplifting game studios, gaming infrastructures providers, as well as consumer applications.

Adding to the list of hefty investments, earlier this month, former Binance executives Ling Zhang and Wayne Fu put together a funding of $100 million (roughly Rs. 776 crore), in order to further the sectors of cryptocurrencies and the metaverse.

In May, Dapper Labs unveiled a $725 million (roughly Rs. 5,600 crore) ecosystem fund to invest in applications and growth for its layer-1 blockchain ecosystem named Flow. The Web3 player powers NBA Top Shot, the popular blockchain-based trading card platform.

Earlier this year, crypto venture capitalist Dragonfly Capital pledged $650 million (roughly Rs. 4,975 crore) in funding, betting on the crypto industry, marking its largest such fund yet.