KuCoin-backed companies launch $100M Web3 developer fund

Crypto exchange KuCoin’s venture capital arm and nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace have launched a $100 million “Creators Fund” to help bootstrap early-stage NFT projects at the intersection of art, sports and GameFi.

KuCoin Ventures and the Windvane NFT marketplace have created the fund to help artists and creators showcase their work and scale their business to wider audiences, the companies announced Tuesday. The fund’s mandate is to support promising NFT projects that are contributing to the development of Web3, which refers to the next iteration of the internet powered by blockchain technology.

Windvane is a new NFT marketplace from KuCoin that aims to tap into the crypto exchange’s large user base. At the time of writing, KuCoin was the fifth largest crypto exchange by volume, according to CoinMarketCap.

The rise of Web3 has given creators a new venue to mint NFTs that have real utility inside virtual worlds. Yet Siu, the co-founder and chairman of venture capital firm Animoca Brands, recently told Cointelegraph that Web3 provides an efficient way for creators to work collaboratively for both name recognition and economic benefit.

Related: The future of the internet: Inside the race for Web3’s infrastructure

‘This is the Mona Lisa of the digital world’, This is what Sina Estavi who bought the NFT in March 2021 told then Jack Dorsey’s first tweet was con­verted to a NFT last yr & sold for $2.9 mil­lion. Now, it may be resold for less than $14,000. pic.twitter.com/fvDU37lgmV

While the nonfungible token market has slowed recently, as evidenced by the plunging resale value of Jack Dorsey’s genesis tweet NFT, the industry’s builders continue to attract significant interest from venture capital. As Cointelegraph reported, NFT avatar startup Genies recently closed a $150 million Series C funding round at a valuation of $1 billion. In January of this year, NFT-focused holding company Metaversal raised $50 million to expand its investment capacity in the digital collectible and metaverse sectors.