Mantle EcoFund, promulgated through a Mantle Governance vote in July 2023 as one of the largest ecosystem funds of its kind with a catalyzed capital pool of $200 million, announced the commencement of its fund deployment and liquidity support provision, beginning with LiquidX, an application layer-focused venture studio building web3 companies, Valent, a decentralized money market exploring the frontiers of liquid staking derivatives finance (LSDFi) and real world assets (RWAs), and Range Protocol, an all-in-one on-chain asset management platform and ecosystem.
The brace of deals come on the heels of TOKEN2049, and mark the commencement of the fund’s deployment. In addition to its deep coffers, Mantle EcoFund distinguishes itself with continued post-investment support: A new DAO proposal, MIP-26, has been freshly passed by the Mantle community to allow for up to a combined 60M USDx (stablecoins), 30k ETH, and 120M MNT in liquidity provision for EcoFund-invested decentralized applications (dApps), with each individual allowance up to 10M USDx, 5000 ETH, and 20M MNT.
Mantle EcoFund Invests In LiquidX to Help Catapult Web2 Phenoms Into Web3
The first of the three initial recipients of Mantle EcoFund investment is venture studio LiquidX. One of the strategies the fund has adopted is to work with venture studios anchored by founders with strong web2 background. The fund’s investment into LiquidX demonstrates its commitment to help catapult web2 phenoms into web3.
“LiquidX excels as a builder and solution provider in the liminal space between web2 and web3, and at the intersection between gaming and DeFi,” said David Toh, partner of Mirana Ventures, Mantle EcoFund’s operator. “The Mantle core team will be a close partner of LiquidX to help build apps that will bring the next millions web2 users into web3.”
“We focused our round on onboarding strategic investors that can bring value to the companies we are building,” said Chris Sirise, co-founder of LiquidX. “We’re excited to have Mantle onboard and look forward to working closely with their ecosystem team to build consumer applications that are fun and will onboard the generation of users.”
Mantle EcoFund and Selini Capital Join Hands in Backing Valent
Mantle EcoFund is also joined by its strategic venture partner Selini Capital in an investment in Valent, a decentralized money market that is on a mission to chart the future of DeFi with explorations in LSDFi and RWAs.
“Selini is delighted to join Mantle EcoFund for the first time in investing in Valent and supporting it at the ground level,” said Jordi Alexander, chief investment officer of Selini Capital. “We look forward to bringing our combined expertise and capital into the ecosystem and to support Valent’s growth.”
“We are thrilled to have Mantle EcoFund and Selini supporting our exploration of newer DeFi use cases,” said Rahul Agarwal, core contributor of Valent. “We look forward to breathing new life into DeFi with our next-gen solutions that boldly go where few have gone before.”
Mantle Greenlights Liquidity Support for Range Protocol
Following the passage of MIP-26, Mantle EcoFund will also begin to provide liquidity for selected projects, starting with on-chain asset management platform Range Protocol.
“The liquidity support will be a timely boost as we look to offer average DeFi users easy access to professional automated trading strategies to enhance their yield,” said Siddharth Lalwani, CEO of Range Protocol.
These projects demonstrate Mantle Ecosystem’s growing momentum, as it has also seen adoption across Mirana Venture’s portfolio companies. Tsunami, EigenLayer, iZUMi Finance, Clique, Solv Protocol, CharmVerse, SynFutures, Lootex, etc. have all either deployed or are planning to deploy on Mantle.
ABOUT MANTLE ECOFUND
Mantle EcoFund is an ecosystem venture fund established by the Mantle community through DAO governance to help fuel the growth of Mantle. The fund aims to catalyze and manage a capital pool of $200 million, and be the “first money” into high quality and innovative early-stage projects building within Mantle Ecosystem. Mantle EcoFund is the one of the largest ecosystem funds of its kind in the space. Projects looking to build on Mantle are encouraged to reach out to Mantle EcoFund at https://www.mantle.xyz/ecofund
ABOUT MANTLE
Mantle Ecosystem comprises an Ethereum layer 2 (L2) — Mantle Network, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — Mantle Governance, one of the largest on-chain treasuries — Mantle Treasury, and an upcoming Ether (ETH) liquid staking product — Mantle LSD: all built on Ethereum. Mantle token is the unified product and governance token of the ecosystem.
Mantle’s first core product is Mantle Network, an Ethereum L2. Mantle Network strives to be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Mantle Network’s modular architecture separates transaction execution, data availability, and transaction finality into modules — which can be individually upgraded and adopt the latest innovations. Mantle Network is the first L2 to partner with ETH restaking protocol EigenLayer for the data availability module. By adopting a rollup architecture, Mantle Network is secured by Ethereum. As the world’s first DAO-spawned L2, Mantle Network is pioneering a vision for the mass adoption of token-governed technologies.
Mantle token ($MNT) powers Mantle Network as its native gas token and ecosystem growth token, and serves as the governance token of Mantle Governance. All future Mantle products will likewise be initiated by the Mantle token holder community through vote and powered by Mantle token.
To support the next-generation of innovators, builders, and developers, Mantle is growing its ecosystem via Mantle Grants Program and Mantle EcoFund, a catalyzed capital pool of $200M.
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ABOUT MIRANA VENTURES
Mirana is a global investment firm that focuses on web3 technologies. We support teams that bolster the web3 economy, including web3 funds and early stage projects. We provide investment, legal, and other advisory services for web3 projects including the Mantle ecosystem.
ABOUT SELINI CAPITAL
Selini Capital is a market making firm fostering collaborative partnerships and achieving success by pairing world class technology solutions with crypto-native insights.
ABOUT LIQUIDX
LiquidX is an application layer-focused venture studio building web3 companies that can last decades. The venture studio is currently building Pixelmon, a gaming-first IP studio, Gvrn (“Govern”), a SaaS company that is the first blockchain-to-legal bridge, and an anime publishing and licensing company that is in stealth.
ABOUT VALENT
Valent is a next-gen lending platform built on Mantle that enables DeFi use cases beyond traditional pool-based solutions. Users can customize their positions across their entire portfolio and underwrite risk efficiently.
ABOUT RANGE PROTOCOL
Range Protocol is an all-in-one on-chain asset management platform and ecosystem. It connects DeFi users with skilled vault managers, who use advanced quantitative strategies to make near-instantaneous adjustments by changing market conditions.