Avalanche ecosystem accelerator Colony has raised $18.5 million in seed investments to bootstrap the next generation of Avalanche blockchain projects, underscoring heightened demand for the proof-of-stake ecosystem.
The investment round was led by the Avalanche Foundation, an organization overseeing ecosystem development grants, with additional participation from Shima Capital, HashKey, GBV Capital and Bixin Ventures. Members of the Avalanche community also participated in the seed round.
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Colony will use the funds to finance early-stage projects building on the Avalanche network and to provide liquidity for decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols. Colony’s community will also have the opportunity to invest in early-stage projects through a process called ecosystem farming.
Under Colony’s validator program, 10% of the accelerator’s capital will be deployed in Avalanche’s native AVAX token to be staked. Another 10% will be allocated to the top 10 Avalanche projects by market capitalization. Fifty percent will be used to support teams and projects building on the network, with the remaining 30% allocated to liquidity protocols.
Related: Finance Redefined: Avalanche launches $200M fund, wXRP to debut on Ethereum, Oct. 29–Nov. 5
Avalanche has quickly emerged as a leading blockchain project after receiving backing from some of crypto’s biggest venture funds, including Zhu Su’s Three Arrows Capital and Polychain Capital, among others. The value of AVAX has skyrocketed as a result, gaining over 2,900% year-to-date. At current values, Avalanche has a total market capitalization of $25.9 billion, putting it in the 11th spot among active blockchain projects.
As Cointelegraph reported, the Avalanche Foundation in early November unveiled a new $200 million fund to encourage developers to start building on the ecosystem. Three Arrows Capital, Polychain Capital, Dragonfly Capital, CMS Holdings and Ava Labs contributed financing alongside the Avalanche Foundation. At the time, the foundation said its new fund would prioritize four areas: DeFi, enterprise applications, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and so-called culture applications.
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