I'm very pleased to announce the launch of the Lamina1 Ecosystem Fund (L1EF) on AngelList. Unlike other crypto ecosystem funds, L1EF is a rolling fund—the first Layer 1 blockchain rolling fund in history.

Why Are There Layer 1 Ecosystem Funds and Foundations?

Ecosystem funds are the second great invention in blockchain ecosystem development. The first was the idea of the Foundation — a not-for-profit entity that organizes capital, dreamers, thinkers, and operators, and focuses them on building the underlying value of the chain's assets, balancing the need for coordination against the need for quality decentralization.

Sometimes launching takes a while. Building a vibrant community and ecosystem always takes time — even when the core chain launches quickly. Post-launch, a Foundation can bring its entire balance sheet resources to bear, but it usually can’t use its token before mainnet. Ecosystem funds bridge this gap with “hard” fiat currency deployable ahead of mainnet launch. In exchange, they usually achieve broad macro-market access to an entire ecosystem at early-stage prices.

History

I launched the first Layer 1 foundation, the Bitcoin Foundation, with Gavin Andresen in 2012 and we raised Bitcoin from Bitcoin holders; today, foundations raise fiat capital from investors and use that money to get the chain launched.

As Layer 1 investors and operators have become more sophisticated, they have concluded that the equity-value companies building on chain have different capitalization and cap table dynamics than the chain itself; that’s where the ecosystem fund fits in. It’s a professionally managed investment fund devoted to making high-quality investments with the leverage that comes from partnering with a nascent fast-growing Blockchain.

L1EF Goals

Here are my goals for L1EF:

• Acknowledge that our ecosystem, while growing quickly, is currently small and that our community's capital capacity will grow, making a rolling fund—one that will naturally grow over the next years—an appealing structure.

• Balance “visionary venture” against 'sensible' near-term return style value investments that bring participants to the chain, more certainly and more cheaply, than doing only early-stage venture.

• Bring access to the ecosystem to a broad class of U.S. accredited investors in a regulated onshore vehicle. (Most token investments are closed to US investors for arcane regulatory reasons.)

• Be the preferred deal-flow destination for Lamina1's incredible incoming business demand. Within its first three months, Lamina1 had more than 1,100 written email inquiries to partner or engage in a business/investment relationship. This is an astonishing amount of interest. While Lamina1 is growing quickly, there is no other facility at the chain to work with partners that may have an investable business opportunity or who need money to launch on the chain.
  
  

In short, I hope L1EF will serve the goals Lamina1 has: to get an Open Metaverse built and to deliver economic access to the platform as broadly as possible. We plan to do this by making L1EF the first place key businesses on Lamina1 get funded.

We'll be investing in games, fashion, music, art, NFT projects, emergent AI, Defi, Gamefi, DeSoc, virtual machines, Layer 2 protocols, identity, data storage, data availability, privacy, payments,, DAOs, marketplaces, bridges, applications, and immersive experiences.

L1EF Partnership

I'm honored to be joined by some incredible partners for L1EF's inception—Neal Stephenson is my cofounder at Lamina1, a well-known visionary. Rebecca Barkin runs Lamina1 operations, is fiercely effective, and will oversee content and transmedia-related investments. Music industry and arts exec, Jessica Toon, will head up our music investments. Christine Keung is here to keep us in line and ensure we can execute.

Investors should be aware that most L1EF partners work on Lamina1 and will own Lamina1 tokens, and plan to continue to own them. We will likely encourage portfolio companies to hold Lamina1 tokens as part of their business operations, and likely require most portfolio companies to have a clear use case for the Lamina1 blockchain, and an integration path with the chain. I own a venture studio, Studio6, which launched Lamina1, and the studio will launch other Lamina1 ecosystem companies.

Apply to Invest

Apply to Invest Now to set up your subscription. If you'd like to get in touch with the partners, email us at hello@l1ef.com.

If you're a builder and want to apply for an investment from the L1EF fund, please submit an application at lamina1.com/ecosystem.