Investor Spotlight: NGC Ventures
NGC Ventures is one of the largest institutional investors of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Based in Singapore, their team has been a key contributor to a number of leading blockchain projects.
1. Why did you invest in Sifchain?
The team has a strong technical background with rich experiences in developing leading blockchain projects including Thorchain and Cosmos. We also like Sifchain’s value proposition in building an omni-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) that aims to deliver faster trades with lower fees.
2. What is your thesis about the future of DEXs?
We think there will be more derivatives products launching on DEXs and more streamlined integration within other elements of decentralized finance (DeFi) — especially lending and borrowing. When the market goes up, retail investors will continue seeking multiple ways to trade with leverage.
3. What is your value add as a firm?
We connect projects with trusted third parties to help them grow exposure in Asian markets. Given that we are an early player in the field with many portfolio companies, there are many synergies among our portfolio teams.
4. What are some of your contrarian views on DeFi in 2021?
The total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi ecosystem will continue to see strong growth, mainly driven by new Defi projects and continued improvement of existing ones. We expect that the boundary between centralized exchanges (CEX) and DEXs will also be blurrier as shown in the recent strategy of CEXs.
5. What are some ways to bootstrap community engagement for DeFi projects?
The token metrics should retain reasonable a portion for the community, whether through direct airdrops or third-party entities/KOLs (key opinion leaders) that help enhance users’ awareness. Frequent updates on development and streamlined communication channels to accept proposals from the community are also important.
6. Anything else you want to share with our readers?
In addition to DeFi ecosystems, NGC Ventures supports projects based on Polkadot and Cosmos. We expect that to enhance the adoption of DeFi, cross-chain solutions are important for the underlying infrastructure.
