NEAR Foundation, a Swiss non-profit that supports the governance and development of the NEAR Protocol, announced on Monday that it collaborated with Caerus Ventures to launch a $100M venture capital fund and venture lab.
NEAR Protocol is a scalable blockchain that provides the performance and user experience necessary to bridge the gap to mainstream adoption of decentralised applications.
According to the Swiss company, it will cornerstone the VC Fund, which will have an initial closing of $50M and a target of $100M for seed to series A investments.
Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, says, “Our cultural passions for live sport, film or music have historically been leveraged to on-ramp billions of consumers to new technologies. The creators, talent, and franchises with reach and influence spearheaded that growth and will now drive the adoption of blockchain at scale. But this time, they and their fans will have greater access to the value created.”
Culture and Web3
Founded by IMG/Endeavor executive Nathan Pillai, Caerus will back projects that place creators, talent, IP owners, and the highly engaged communities they serve at the heart of these new enterprises.
Pillai comments, “We’re yet to imagine many use cases for how Web3 technologies will change how culture is experienced, entertainment is consumed, and value is distributed. And that was the genesis of Caerus: to be a catalyst for innovation that unleashes projects in sport, music, film, TV, fashion, art and gaming which offer greater equity for all.”
The Venture Lab will attract Web3’s leading engineers, developers, and venture builders who want to create category-defining products around iconic talent and IP. It will also offer cross-functional support to portfolio projects.
Flament adds, “We’re backing Caerus because they have a uniquely differentiated proposition and robust investment thesis predicated on the tokenisation of entertainment and decentralization of rights and licensing. In this new economy, we believe that new incentive structures, native business, and funding models will empower creators with more control of what they produce and the rewards that come.”
Pillai adds, “I’ve been hugely impressed by NEAR’s value proposition for developers and users, but more importantly, their mission to empower creators and consumers of culture with more control over their assets. So we’re creating this partnership to help revolutionize the existing multi-layered entertainment ecosystems, growing the market size while promoting greater equity.”
NEAR Protocol
Founded by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin, NEAR‘s vision is to create a network that enables people to reimagine finance, creativity, and community in new and inclusive ways. With NEAR, blockchain mass adoption is possible.
NEAR is backed by top VCs such as A16Z, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures.
NEAR has previously been selected as the blockchain for entertainment franchises like Armored Kingdom as it supports various platforms, crucial for multiverse experiences across different mediums
With 18M accounts created and 550K members, the NEAR community is a globally distributed home to innovators, developers, and contributors supporting the protocol’s platform, ecosystem, and applications.
