Paradigm Introduces $850M Fund for Early-Stage Crypto Ventures

Paradigm, co-founded by Matt Huang, has launched its third fund, dedicated to early-stage crypto projects. This new $850 million initiative aims to accelerate the development of innovative crypto technologies.

Thursday’s announcement confirms Paradigm’s plan to raise significant capital, first reported in April. The San Francisco-based investment firm is poised to lead the next wave of crypto innovations. “When we founded Paradigm in 2018, we believed that crypto would be one of the most important technical and economic shifts of the coming decades. Six years later, that belief has only gotten stronger,” said Huang.

Key Investments and Projects

Paradigm has a strong track record of supporting pivotal crypto projects. Among its notable contributions are Uniswap, a decentralized exchange that revolutionized AMMs; Optimism, a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum; and Flashbots, a leader in MEV solutions. Recently, Paradigm also backed a $70 million funding round for the BTC staking protocol Babylon.

The new fund continues Paradigm’s strategy of focusing on groundbreaking early-stage projects. The firm has also championed significant open-source initiatives like the Ethereum development tool Foundry and the Ethereum execution node Reth. Huang emphasized the rapid evolution of the crypto space, with Bitcoin surpassing a market cap of $1 trillion and major blockchains like Ethereum and Solana scaling with new technologies.

Huang noted that the global crypto market is undergoing a transformative phase, with stablecoins gaining traction and consumer applications expanding. The number of crypto owners has surged to hundreds of millions, and in a significant election year, crypto has emerged as a “main character” on the global stage.