White Star Capital Launches $120M Web3 Fund

White Star Capital has launched a $120 million Digital Asset Fund (DAF) to back crypto networks and blockchain-enabled Web3 businesses, the venture capital platform announced in a news release Monday (April 11).

“The DAF investment team takes a deeply research-driven approach and applies both a crypto native and traditional VC lens to partner with founders across Seed, Series A, and token rounds,” the news release said. “Since raising its first Digital Asset Fund in 2020, White Star Capital has successfully invested in 20 companies across seven countries including Ledn, ALEX, Multis, Paraswap, Exlusible, and Rally, just to name a few.”

Learn more: Stronghold Fund to Focus on FinTech, Web3

The company says the fund will distribute $1 million to $7 million in token and equity investments into 20 to 25 companies, focusing on North America, Europe and Asia.

“In less than two years, we’ve backed many of the world’s most successful and promising crypto companies as they were just starting out, which is a testament to our strategy, global network, and unique domain expertise,” said Managing Partner Sep Alavi. “Through our new fund, we’re looking forward to continuing to back a new generation of visionary founders building tomorrow’s greatest Web3, DeFi and gaming companies as they unlock the new internet of value for billions of people around the world.”

See also: Web3: Is There Any ‘There’ There? And if so, Where Is It?

Web3, also known as Web 3.0, is considered the next iteration of the internet, one that proponents say will be censorship-free and controlled by its users — in other words, the people — rather than the Big Tech firms that control the internet now. The term comes from the idea that Web 1.0 was curated gardens — think AOL — and Web 2.0 is the current web, overseen by companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook.

White Star’s fund is the latest in a long line of big investments in Web3 announced so far this year. For example, February saw the launch of Stronghold’s $100 million investment fund, which is focused on supporting Web3 and blockchain, as well as overlooked and underrepresented founders and fund managers and the payments and FinTech ecosystem.