Quick look at the first batch of 24 selected projects for the Variant Founder Fellowship.

First batch of 24 selected projects for Variant Founder Fellowship.

Recently, Web3 early-stage venture capital fund Variant announced the selection of the first batch of 24 projects for the Founder Fellowship (VFF) cryptocurrency founder education program, involving various fields such as DeFi, infrastructure, DAO, social, governance, security, NFT, etc. The founder education program lasts for 3 months and has received a total of 400 applications.

Variant is an early-stage venture capital fund that has invested in 52 Web3 companies, including Aptos, Aztec Network, Flashbots, Goldfinch, Maginc Eden, Mirror, Matter Labs, Scroll, Polygon, ZORA, and more. Currently, applications for the second phase of VFF students are open for intention.

Capsule

Capsule (formerly known as Korus) is an NFT marketplace targeting children, teenagers, and young people, allowing them to collect customizable digital cards from their favorite character artists and KOLs. The founders are Stephaine Carroll and Frankie Li.

Chroma

Chroma is building a full-stack solution for launching and managing DeFi lending markets. The founders are Jack Longarzo, Tim van Scherpenzeel, and Aaron Xie.

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Clave

Clave is a smart contract wallet that will be officially launched in August 2023. It supports login without keys or mnemonic phrases using security elements such as mobile phones, tablets, or laptops with biometric authentication technology. Clave will change the way users interact with the blockchain through transaction simulators such as “intents”, session key modules, and security modules, and support social recovery. Clave will first support zkSync and has opened up a whitelist.

In September, Clave was selected as one of the 18 projects in the Ethereum Foundation’s ERC-4337 account abstract funding round.

Dawn

Dawn is an Ethereum wallet on iOS that helps users use applications with the fewest number of clicks. It allows users to directly connect DApps from the Safari browser plugin. Dawn uses the iPhone’s Secure Enclave, and the wallet private key is encrypted and stored in the keychain. By default, Dawn supports Face ID to unlock the wallet. Dawn has implemented iLianGuaid compatibility and supports Zora, Tally, Snapshot, Daylight, Gitcoin, Uniswap, and Aave. Currently, Dawn supports 10 chains and has added support for Base Goerli, Sepolia, and Gnosis.

Digito

Digito is headquartered in Latin America and allows users to sign on-chain transactions and real-world documents with the same private key, track purchase payments, and implement fraud protection. Its founder, Amhed Herrera, previously worked at Coinbase. Digito will first launch in the Dominican Republic and has invested $1 million to establish a regulated infrastructure. It is expected to obtain the first license in the Dominican Republic in the first quarter of 2024.

Doormat

Doormat is a key management system designed for crypto users.

Forum

Forum was born out of an investment club and is an integrated application for friends to jointly own crypto assets.

Future Primitive

Future Primitive innovates on the basis of the ERC-6551 standard (Tokenbound accounts), turning each NFT into a smart contract wallet.

Hashcurve

HashCurve is a community-managed prediction market platform.

Heimdall Labs

Heimdall Labs is building a modular and decentralized compliance layer. Heimdall is a modular protocol that provides compliance smart contract solutions for crypto projects.

Mezzanine

Mezzanine combines the advantages of companies with the benefits of DAOs, bringing corporate governance onto the chain.

Neynar

Neynar is a developer platform for Web3 social protocols, allowing developers to read, write, and own data from Web3 social protocols.

Nosh

Nosh connects restaurants directly with drivers and consumers, eliminating the middleman of food delivery platforms.

LianGuaithfinder

LianGuaithfinder is an integrated community activation tool that uses natural language processing technology. It is building a user-centric interface for discovering and interacting with on-chain applications.

Ponder

Ponder is an open-source framework for the backend of blockchain applications. Developers can build GraphQL APIs for collections of smart contracts on Ethereum, with features such as hot reloading, type safety, and easy deployment to production environments. It solves the pain points of building indexers or stitching together out-of-the-box APIs for smart contracts.

Poolshark

Poolshark is a directional AMM where users can profit from volatility with less maintenance. Traders can also become LPs. Poolshark has launched its testnet.

Probably Something

Probably Something is creating tools to help users understand complex digital ecosystems. Its current products include the NFT toolkit Lifeboat and the AI-driven chatbot Lifebot.

Rocko

Rocko focuses on simplifying the lending process of DeFi lending protocols, allowing users to obtain loans that best suit their needs. Rocko is coming soon.

Seam

Seam is building a nostalgic yet innovative web social media application where users can design nostalgic custom social profiles and earn SP by completing tasks.

Shield

Shield is a Web3 security company that simplifies incident response and helps Web3 companies recover quickly after being hacked.

In April 2023, Shield announced the completion of a $2.1 million Pre-Seed funding round. Investors include Kraken Ventures, Eterna Capital, Alchemy, MoonLianGuaiy, Bessemer Ventures DAO (Steel DAO), Orange DAO, NGC Ventures, Wagmi Ventures, MH Ventures, Coinswitch, 2Punks Capital, Lecca Ventures, and Very Serious Ventures. Angel investors in this round of funding include Rob Behnke (CEO of crypto security auditing company Halborn), Peter Liebert (former Chief Information Security Officer of California), Vijay Maharajan (founder of Bitscrunch), as well as angel investors from Coinbase, Google, Microsoft, and FireEye.

Shield has also received funding from a16z’s Crypto Startup School Accelerator and is currently participating in it. Shield aims to help organizations take comprehensive security measures to prevent cryptographic vulnerabilities and improve users’ trust in the entire ecosystem. Shield’s threat detection software can be integrated directly into any platform through APIs or integrated into Discord as a security robot for online communities.

Studio X

Studio X is a music crowdfunding platform that uses NFTs to provide artists with early-stage funding. Users can collect an Alex Kings EP in advance, and if they hold it for a long time, they will be eligible for artist airdrops in the future.

Troops

Troops is a mobile-first web application designed to bring people together. Troops allows communities to collectively own and customize their on-chain homes in a collaborative manner. Behind Troops is an open-source “community stack,” with the main component being a full-chain permission protocol built on Safe.

Turbo

Turbo aims to improve the experience of independent game developers by creating a simple and easy-to-learn toolkit and marketplace.

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