The Rise of the Ecosystem Fund: Lyrik Ventures (A Year In Review)

The successful development of any L1 Ecosystem requires the right combination of a number of factors: Users, Builders, Investors, and Infrastructure. In the NEAR Ecosystem, Lyrik Ventures has emerged in 2022, as a leading Ecosystem Fund — committed to exclusively investing in products and protocols built on or integrated with the NEAR Ecosystem.

The Ecosystem Fund Thesis:

The concept of an ‘Ecosystem Fund’ centres on a specific thesis for the future of crypto centred around the notion of composability: As NEAR is an asynchronously sharded blockchain, dApps on different shards can communicate with one another seamlessly — creating a ‘cloud’ platform for decentralised applications and services. A ‘World of dApps’ ecosystem such as NEAR, is one whereby value can intermingle across products. This ‘composability’ means that there is a collective benefit for the entire ecosystem, in creating products and public goods that can benefit from one another.

The Ecosystem Fund Thesis, states the following: That there is long term value in concentrating investments inside of a specific ecosystem, because of the network effects, composable value, and shared community. In short, just as it makes sense to invest in specific regions or countries around the world, in crypto, it makes sense to invest exclusively inside of specific L1 Ecosystems.

Lyrik Ventures and the NEAR Ecosystem:

The NEAR Ecosystem as it stands today, includes NEAR native (standard NEAR shard), the Aurora Network (EVM on NEAR), Octopus Network (app-chain platform), Calimero Network (enterprise shard), as well as an emerging privacy shard designed around Zero-Knowledge Proof technology. Other verticals inside of NEAR include the emergence of Regenerative Finance (ReFi) especially through the ecosystem of Open Forest Protocol, dozens of gaming dApps, as well as infrastructure for wallets, on-ramps, and custody.

Lyrik’s participation in the development of NEAR verticals going forward is built around three key strategic priorities:

(1) First, to invest in fundamental infrastructure across these verticals — in 2022 Lyrik successfully co-led rounds with Tonic Orderbook DEX, Calimero Network, Crystals of Naramunz, as well as invested in Bastion Lending Protocol on Aurora.

(2) Second, to develop a network between the NEAR Foundation, Proximity Labs, the Aurora Team, as well as the many different builders and community members on NEAR. This is to streamline communication, expedite needs of portfolio companies, and stay up-to-date on future plans across the different verticals of NEAR.

(3) Third and finally, to incubate, coordinate, and support the roll-out of public-goods, and liquidity incentives, and third-party infrastructure providers to improve access into and between the NEAR Ecosystem and other financial platforms.

Grant Deployment:

Lyrik’s origins began as the first grants program in the NEAR ecosystem in February of 2021. With ‘Special Ecosystem Partner’ status with the NEAR Foundation, Lyrik possesses the ability to deploy up to 50k fast grants to emerging NEAR projects, that could have potential for future investment, or operate as fundamental infrastructure for other dApps on NEAR. Since then, and throughout 2022, Lyrik has distributed 10 grants, including the following:

• Token Terminal: Data Infrastructure on NEAR for better visibility into the status of NEAR projects.
• Science Card: Decentralised financial allocation to scientific research projects and to create a legal-wrapper for IP using non-fungible tokens, such that the development of Decentralised Science (DeSci) on NEAR can be accelerated. The first step in bringing DeSci into the NEAR Ecosystem.
• Pikespeak: The first data aggregator and analytics platform on NEAR, providing insight and visibility into key metrics across the product stack for both NEAR and Aurora.
• Talent Forte: Community development surrounding DeFi in the NEAR ecosystem, specifically for the benefit of bringing users and liquidity to order books.
• UniWhales DAO: Bringing multi-chain tracking and tooling to provide insight and analytics into cross-bridge transfers of Assets between NEAR and other ecosystems, as well as Whale wallet tracking across Aurora and NEAR itself.
• NEAR HummingBot Bridge
• Dappy Network: Integrated NEAR to multi-chain remittance network.
• Hyperplane
• NEAR Hub: NEAR’s first community owned metaverse, with AI integration and infrastructure for decentralised land ownership and NFT generators.
• Kuutamo: Non-custodial infrastructure tooling for spinning up validator nodes on NEAR.

Lyrik Ventures Portfolio Companies

2022 has been the busiest year to date for Lyrik Ventures — NEAR’s most active Ecosystem Fund. Since the start of the year, Lyrik has deployed over $7mm in capital to more than 16 different projects — all exclusively in the NEAR Ecosystem. Below is a breakdown of some of Lyrik’s investments to date, as well as its plans for the coming year.

While an up-and-coming ecosystem fund, Lyrik has made a number of sizable investments in 2022. Most notably are the four leads or co-leads of blue-chip projects on NEAR: Tonic Orderbook DEX, Calimero Network, Crystals of Naramunz, and Renaissance Labs.

Tonic Orderbook DEX is a fully open-source on-chain orderbook, launched to bring more complex financial products into the NEAR Ecosystem (such as Perps). Lyrik Co-Led the Pre-Seed round in Tonic alongside Electric Capital, supported by other investors from Framework and DAO5.

Calimero Network, is bringing enterprise services to NEAR by launching the first private shard on NEAR. Lyrik is co-leading the round with Khosla Ventures. As the leading infrastructure investment of Lyrik in the NEAR Ecosystem, Calimero holds the promise of bringing a number of globally renowned enterprises onto NEAR in the coming years.

Crystals of Naramunz, meanwhile, represents Lyrik’s largest Gaming investment to date. As a co-lead with Coinfund, Naramunz is a multi-action RPG game built out of Sweden. For Lyrik, Naramunz is a unique opportunity to demonstrate real product market fit of P2E gaming on NEAR, leveraging NEAR’s unique account model.

Last but not least, Renaissance Labs, represents one of the world’s first fractional art markets of physical artworks. Uniquely held in physical vaults around the world and insured to 110% of the value, users and galleries alike have the opportunity to benefit from fractional ownership and decision making on the use and value of the pieces.

A Growing Portfolio Across the Crypto Product Stack:

Beyond lead and co-leading, Lyrik has actively participated in over 10 other deals inside of the NEAR Ecosystem. These investments include key infrastructure; Request Finance (for Web3 financing and invoicing), Chaos Labs (for Security infrastructure), PlayEmber (Gaming developer tooling), kuutamo (Validator Node Infrastructure) and Utila (Non-Custodial Wallet API), DeFi; Bastion Protocol (Lending on Aurora), Pembrock Finance (Leveraged Yield Farming), and MetaPool (Liquid Staking on NEAR), as well as the nascent world of non-fungible tokens: Mintbase (NFT factory on NEAR), Few and Far (emergent NFT Marketplace), and Tamago (Music NFTs), and ReFi; Open Forest Protocol (On-Chain Carbon Credits).

While non-exhaustive of the entire portfolio, Lyrik has solidified its position in the NEAR ecosystem as a young, hands-on, and highly active fund interested in investing and building the future of the NEAR Ecosystem.

The Future of Lyrik & NEAR:

As crypto markets rise and fall, the Lyrik team is committed to continuing to both build, deploy capital, and support existing portfolio companies throughout 2023. The NEAR Ecosystem remains a nascent L1 ecosystem with high potential and hundreds of projects being built. As a composable ‘World of dApps’ ecosystem the opportunity to invest across different verticals, and products is a unique and concentrated thesis that Lyrik Ventures has taken. In the coming months as NEAR grows, Lyrik will continue to operate on the front-lines of development of NEAR as both partner to the NEAR Foundation, as well as key builder in networks, communities, and dApps on top of NEAR.

From hosting workshops on Audit preparedness, to supporting portfolio company protocol or dApp crypto-economics, Lyrik aspires to be the most hands-on and involved NEAR Ecosystem Fund.

Lyrik Ventures: Website, Twitter, LinkedIn

About NEAR Protocol

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