Crypto venture investment firm Variant has raised $450 million to invest in "builders of the user-owned web."

‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎

The funding will be spread across a $150 million seed fund and a $300 million opportunity vehicle that will “double-down on projects with demonstrated traction in our portfolio," according to a website announcement published Thursday.

‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎

The Variant Fund III will primarily focus on financial empowerment through decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain computing, Web3 consumer applications, and new forms of decentralized ownership.

‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎

To do this, Variant has doubled its team to 15 professionals with expertise across DeFi, consumer, and infrastructure, as well as expanded its portfolio support function to "offer guidance on go to market, token design, community building, and more."

‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎

“Variant was designed for this moment in crypto. And we have stayed small for a reason: because it enables us to work intimately with our portfolio and guide founders through the most important questions they face early on in their journey.” Variant partners Li Jin, Spencer Noon and Jesse Walden wrote in the announcement. "That work is as critical now as ever.”

‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎

The firms previous two funds, which raised $22.5 million and $110 million, respectively, invested in leading Web3 projects such as NFT platform Magic Eden, decentralized exchange Uniswap, publishing platform Mirror, and Ethereum Layer 2 Polygon, among others.

‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‎

For more from us at Waivly, join our free fun-to-read and to-the-point newsletter enjoyed by hundreds of people across the internet every day of the week 👇