Our inception: Hello world 3.0!
Today we are very excited to announce the launch of our Web3 initiative: Veris Ventures. Veris is a thesis driven early stage venture firm in the blockchain industry focused on infrastructure & DeFi investments. Our mission is to back visionary founders who leverage blockchain to provide consumers & institutions with novel use cases in an effort to bring the first billion users on-chain.
At Veris, we envision an inevitable transition towards decentralization and individual empowerment through blockchain, which has provided the perfect medium to create a transparent, equitable and inclusive social & economic infrastructure. By redefining the meaning of ownership, decentralized networks have turned their users into owners across disciplines ranging from finance to social media, and we are convinced such an approach allows bigger and faster growth than their traditional centralized counterparts adopt.
We are thrilled to be pushing this novel wave of permissionless innovation and fund ideas that will deliver on our vision of revamped consumer and enterprise web business models.
Who we are
Based in Europe & Asia, our team has very diverse backgrounds and skillsets. From corporate finance to regulation to startups and crypto mining, we come together to offer expertise, guidance and resources in a broad array of important facets to growth and development. The team brings together a unique blend of traditional and crypto-native perspectives, having been in the space since 2013.
We have focused our efforts on developing blockchain infrastructure tools & decentralized finance products based our expertise and the support we are able to provide projects with.
How we work
We invest $200K - $800K into projects at the early stages, backing founders with a clear vision for their ideas and products that we believe will bring value to the market. Our team is research oriented, keen to understand the environment the founders operate in, to be able to provide well informed counsel in strategic or decision-making moments.
Our style of relationship with projects post-investment is hands on. We think of ourselves as a partner to projects we work with, acting as a spare pair of hands should support be needed at any stage. Constantly on the lookout for possible cross-portfolio synergies, we believe that correct partnerships are an essential ingredient for growth and traction.
Our resources remain always at founders’ disposal:
· Infrastructure provision (nodes, oracles, databases)
· Compliance & regulatory expertise
· Access to high quality developers
· Advisory & stress tests on token designs
What we’re looking to fund:
1. Scaling infrastructure to accommodate a mass user base
2. Bringing Decentralized Finance to retail & institutions
3. Digital identities
Infrastructure
The year 2021 saw increased activity on the blockchain, which highlighted certain bottlenecks the infrastructure in place had when faced with accommodating a large user base. To successfully onboard the mainsteam mass in the years to come, the fundamental pillars to solidify are scalability, user experience, and security.
Some ideas we want to back:
Blockchain layers: the foundational building block of this technological innovation. General purpose or application specific, scaling solutions must evolve to service unlimited users simultaneously and provide ample block space to enable developers to build increasingly complex on-chain applications
User Interfaces: current access points to the blockchain are difficult to navigate and have low user retention due to complexity. We see the need to build solutions that provide simpler & more friendly ways of accessing the vast array of applications being built on the blockchain
Accessibility: the philosophy behind blockchain is that access is permissionless. However, certain groups are denied access due to not all fiats being supported for purchase of crypto assets. We want to fund initiatives that broaden access to the blockchain to all parts of the globe to realize on our vision of onboarding the mass
Security for users: security of assets will become increasingly important as blockchains attract more capital from more users; doubts about safety of funds will be a barrier to new onboarding users. Therefore we believe security review and smart contract audits are vital
Protecting sensitive data: from healthcare to gaming to finance, in certain instances data privacy is achieved by using zero-knowledge proving methods; not all data is for the public to see on-chain. We want to back initiatives building tools adapted to cases where it is useful to verify authenticity of data without having to reveal it
Decentralized Finance
DeFi has proven to be a gateway to an efficient, trustless and disintermediated financial system. However, it has remained largely disconnected from the traditional institutions, limiting its ability to harness greater capital inflow. We want to make the leap of bridging the principles of DeFi with the legacy financial system to democratize & optimize access to the vast array of existing financial tools.
Some ideas we want to back:
Onboarding institutions: businesses need to be able to seamlessly conduct their activities if they migrate to the blockchain. We want to fund DeFi structured products such as on-chain derivatives, options, money market funds and bonds so they can do so
More asset classes: tokenization of real world assets on-chain unlocks liquidity and opens up new financing opportunities for asset originators. Being the foundation on which financial markets are built, tokenizing such assets will play an important part in opening DeFi to all
Efficient lending: collateralized loans form a very small portion of total borrowed capital in the traditional market. With the goal of preserving users’ capital efficiency, we’re looking to back founders exploring uncollateralized borrowing options
Borrower evaluation: most advanced credit-based financial solutions require an assessment of borrower’s risk. Contrary to traditional credit ratings, real time credit risk assessment is possible on the blockchain by analyzing on-chain public metrics
Digital Identities
Regulatory pressure is a major pain point in our vision of making Web3 mainstream; the anonymity of blockchains drives institutions away and has become a hurdle to adoption. We see a need in creating individual digital identities on the blockchain that ensure blockchain addresses are linked to verified individuals & entities and, simultaneously, implement zero-knowledge technologies to keep users’ data concealed while being able to prove successful verification.
Some ideas we want to fund:
Digital Identity protocols: to deliver on such a vision, trusted parties are needed to carry out such verification processes on addresses which will be recognized as the industry standard. We want to fund such initiatives that will be trusted by all institutions, dApps and users to create a truly composable Web3 environment.
Simplified onboarding: wallet management is an issue new entrants face when coming to the blockchain. Seed phrases, recovery words and backup codes are complex security approaches when targeting non-crypto natives. Digital identities bring a more friendly method of safeguarding wallets
Controlled access: we welcome regulation and believe in some verticals permissioned user access - either on application or chain level - will become a feature that helps onboard corporations and institutions on-chain. We are happy to support projects building along this vision.
We are humbled to be part of this movement as early believers and are excited to work alongside the most talented teams shaping Web3 & the Open Economy.
