As digital assets and blockchain technology see record adoption across a range of industries and verticals, the Nervos Network is excited to announce the launch of a new $50 million fund with CMB International (CMBI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Merchants Bank. Dubbed InNervation, the new fund will make early and growth-stage investments in startups building user-facing products based on blockchain technology.
InNervation’s investment focus will include decentralized applications (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, distributed ledger platforms, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, and more. As more technologies and use cases transition from centralized to decentralized infrastructures, InNervation—the first joint investment fund between a prominent financial institution and a layer 1 blockchain—will fund developers and entrepreneurs building innovative new solutions that appeal to the mainstream audience.
As an early adopter of blockchain technology, CMBI has been exploring the use of decentralized applications with Nervos since 2019. CMBI was also an early investor in Nervos. This latest collaboration between CMBI and Nervos aims to expand the Nervos ecosystem through strategic investments.
“As early supporters of Nervos, we’ve worked closely with the team both as partners and investors,” said Samuel Wang, Chief Investment Officer at CMB International. “They’ve made no compromises in building their infrastructure, and we are committed to supporting Nervos and the expansion of its dApp ecosystem.”
The $50 million fund will be deployed over a three-year period, with startups receiving initial investments between $200,000 and $2,000,000 to support their project’s growth on Nervos and in the greater blockchain ecosystem. As part of its investment thesis, the fund will seek to make investments in projects and startups that have plans to integrate the Nervos blockchain into their long-term product roadmap.
“Our team has been working diligently to ensure developers and teams have access to a variety of tools so they can create, customize, and connect their dApps, protocols, and more across multiple chains,” said Kevin Wang, co-founder of Nervos. “With CMBI’s support, InNervation will be the catalyst for a new phase of development not just on Nervos but in the greater blockchain and crypto ecosystem.”
To take advantage of the wealth of opportunities in the blockchain space, funded startups will have access to Nervos’ suite of Layer 2 tools that have previously been in development and are now ready for use, including a decentralized exchange (DEX), an EVM-compatible layer called Polyjuice that enables developers to seamlessly port their existing Ethereum dApps to CKB, and a permissionless rollup framework, Godwoken. Force Bridge, a cross-chain bridge announced in Q4 2020, is expected to extend cross-chain support for Bitcoin, Tron, EOS, and Polkadot by the end of Q2 2021.
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